Sunday, August 28, 2016

How the Human Mind Manages Its Miracles


My small orchid in early spring, with daffodils a few years ago.

Can Flowers Change Your Life? XV.   March 27, 2016 Easter 

Easter dawns grey with rain.  Our weather
defies prediction, but rain is always welcome
here. New daffodils rise; azaleas open their
white and red.  The world is alive with 
the courage I must summon one more time.
Pink and white apple blossoms join peaches 
and pears.  The big orchid in the window 
sends out buds.  It hardly needs water for 
sustenance but must have light.  I woke 
too early, sleep elusive, my mind locked 
on realities I live with every day.  How 
the human mind manages its miracles 
I don’t know, but mine dies and lives 
again so often I can’t keep track.  Winning 
my slow, determined way through doubts
that assail me at three A.M. may be why 
I’m here. So let go fear.  Doubts and
worries, you’re dismissed.  I’m healing.
My old body summons itself.  
Rest, yes, but give up?  Never.

***


Zinnias in full bloom in October two years ago.  Now they begin.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

Nuclear Apples? Debuts September 1


Nuclear Apples? The Third Penny Weaver Mystery.

Publisher: Hoganvillaea Books.

Paperback: $15.00 ISBN-13: 978-1530404506 E-book: $2.99.

223 pages

Book description:  

Penny Weaver, a mid-50s unconventional poet/activist takes on a nuclear plant CEO who has political clout.  Against a backdrop of environmental racism Penny Weaver sticks her neck out to free her friend, Riverdell’s community leader and nuclear scientist, who is accused of murder.  Will Penny and her housemates’ dream of an apple orchard be defeated by the cataclysm of nuclear fire?  Two of the plant’s public relations directors who secretly offer information to the community group are shot.  Penny copes with a slit tire, being followed, her room vandalized, and police brutality at a sit-in, but still the real killer eludes her.  Suspects include Penny’s skinhead neighbor, the plant’s CEO, who instigates violence against the demonstrators, and a pro-nuclear power supporter.

Reviews:  

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Judy Hogan was involved in a real-life citizen movement to keep high-level radioactive waste from being shipped from around the Carolinas and stored at a nuclear plant near her home. She has turned that successful struggle into a thrilling whodunit. This book captures the feeling of community and empowerment that came from neighbors banding together for the common good, and it reminds us that the same courage and solidarity are still needed today to guide the conscience of corporations, governments and the media.
--Jim Warren, Executive Director of NC WARN

In this compelling story of community activism set in 1992, Penny Weaver stands firmly with others concerned about the dangerous storage of nuclear waste in close proximity to her neighborhood. Will those who control the nuclear plant stop at nothing to undermine those protesting, including murder?  –K.M. Rockwood, Author of the Jesse Damon mysteries.

Events Scheduled in North Carolina for Nuclear Apples?

September 7, Wednesday, 10-11 a.m., Interview on Sanford Radio station WDSG, 1079. with Hogan and Susan Benning.

September 13, Tuesday noon to 1 p.m., "Lunch and Learn," with Hogan conducting a short workshop on how she published Nuclear Apples?  Lee County Library, 107 Hawkins Ave., Sanford, NC.

Then same library: 6:30-8, Lee County Library, with a dramatized scene from chapter 3 of the novel.  Contact: Susan Benning.

September 22, Thursday, 3-6 PM, at the Pittsboro Farmers’ Market, to sell and sign books.

September 24, Saturday, 1-4 PM, May Memorial Library, Burlington, Local Authors showcase, 342 S. Spring St.

October 2, Sunday, 2 PM.  West Wake County Library, 4000 Louis Stephens Dr., Cary. Local Author Tea. 


October 15, Saturday, 3 P.M. Cumberland County Library, 401 W. Mountain St., Fayetteville. Reading.

***


Photo taken at Malice in May 2015 by Lee Sauer.

Sunday, August 14, 2016

The People of North Carolina Deserve Better


Photo of an organic farm belonging to the Robersons in Chatham a few years ago.  Wonderful produce, but hard work!

***
This is a letter I wrote in protest of Tom Reeder's article in our local paper Chatham News/Record, that appeared August 4.  My response was printed in the paper August 11. (See Below) Something is terribly wrong with our state government.  Judy Hogan
***
Trust is the Key

I’m responding to an article in the Chatham News/Record on August 4, by Tom Reeder, the Assistant Secretary for the Environment at the N.C. Dept of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Mr. Reeder tells us that Governor McCrory’s administration has “become a national leader ..in addressing the threat of coal ash.” This opens the question of whether the citizens of N.C. trust Mr. Reeder, the McCrory Administration, the DEQ, and the N.C. General Assembly.  The people I talk to don’t.

The Dan River spill of many tons of coal ash happened early in McCrory’s administration.  Nobody was focused on the toxicity of coal ash before then.  True, the Coal Ash Management Commission (CAMA) was set up, but McCrory took the NC General Assembly to law to get rid of it, and it never operated.  The coal ash dumps that suddenly in late 2014 were planned by Duke Energy for Chatham (Moncure) and Lee (Colon Rd) had no help from CAMA, and the permits went through in record time for Charah to begin moving ash by truck and later by train, in October 2015.  No serious environmental justice study was done by the state or around the fourteen sites where unlined coal ash ponds are leaking into our rivers where millions of people get their drinking water.  Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump (CCACAD) and Environmental Lee began a court challenge of the permits, which is ongoing.

Then this year we learned of the secret meeting in June 2015 of Duke Energy’s CEO, Lynn Good, McCrory, and Van der Vaart, Secretary of DEQ, all with lawyers.  Shortly thereafter Duke Energy’s fine of $100,000,000 for the Dan River spill was suddenly reduced to $7 million, and two of the needed permits were released to Charah.  Meantime coal ash toxins (cancer-causing Hexavalent Chromium and Vanadium) had been found in people’s wells living close to the coal ash ponds, and the state Health Dept. scientists notified 350 families not to drink their well water or use it for cooking.  Apparently Duke didn’t like this.  They did begin providing bottled water to those families, but they have been recently claiming that there’s no proof the coal ash toxins came from the coal ash ponds.  Dr. Avner Vengosh of the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment has proved the toxins have leaked into the groundwater near the wells.  Next step is proving they reach the wells.

Meantime Dr. Ken Rudo, the highly reputable state toxicologist, refused to sign the second batch of letters going out from the state Health Dept, to tell people it was okay to drink their well water. EPA hadn’t yet set a standard though all the health agencies consulted agreed with Rudo that above .07 ppb (parts per billion) posed a health risk.  The new letter stated that 100 ppb was safe.  Did those folks who received these second letters believe them? Dr. Rudo was quiet for awhile, as Tom Reeder and a Mr. Williams pushed drinking this toxic water. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) recently took a deposition from Dr. Rudo, and he told the court under oath that even when the governor and his staff pressured him to sign the “do drink” letters, he refused.  Would you trust Tom Reeder, McCrory, Van de Vaart, or Duke Energy?

Tom Reeder tries to flip the blame off McCrory who, he says, will be “holding Duke accountable for years of mismanagement.”   He says the new 640 law recently passed by the General Assembly will save Duke Energy customers money because the cost of fully excavating all those leaking ponds would have been passed along to customers.  He’s defending the now legal solution of “capping in place” these ponds, which won’t stop their leaking into the rivers. The 630 law says Duke must run water lines to the homes of the “Do drink” letter recipients, but none of them want to keep living on toxic land.  This is quite a tricky game the McCrory administration is playing   The bottom line is that Duke’s carelessness created the problem, and Duke should clean it up and not pass the buck to its customers or dump it on other communities. Then our governor tells the media that Dr. Rudo was lying.  Whom do you believe?  Whom do you trust?  Me, I take Tom Reeder’s words with a boxful of salt.

Judy Hogan, PO Box 253, Moncure, NC 27559.  judyhogan at mindspring.com

Two links to check out: 

http://bredlbetweenthelines2.blogspot.com/2016/04/deqs-weird-science.html

http://abc11.com/news/watch-raw-interview-with-randall-williams/1357855/

***

Judy's desk a few years ago.  No cosmos this year, but zinnias rising, and lots of lantana and sunflowers.



Sunday, August 7, 2016

The Only Answer to Despair


Judy Hogan and Sheila Crump,  two of the leaders of the Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump at the Gospel Sing in Moncure, Mt. Olive Missionary Baptist Church, January 2016.  

***

Can Flowers Change Your Life? XI.  February 28, 2016

Every so often I ask myself: how am I doing?
Where am I on this path that now has so
many calls to answer?  I keep walking.  I
hear despair in other voices, some cynical,
others frightened.  I tell them to keep walking.
Believe in justice.  Let your hope outlast
your fears.  Each new task adds time, but
I share them, saying, “If we work, we think
less of our fears.  Without our belief, we
will fail.  Can truth-telling and simplicity
of heart win again?  It’s the only thing
that can.  Without my own call I myself
might stumble.  With it I keep striding 
forward.  I know that others walk with me,
trust me, and that is all I need to know.
My path and keeping to it is the only
answer to despair.  Trust that deeply placed 
call. Will to be myself, and keep walking.


Someone didn't like this sign Martha Girolami made, and vandalized it, but it expresses our Moncure Community's feelings about what Duke Energy, with the cooperation of the state government, is doing to us, shipping by truck and rail 12 millions of coal ash. Winter 2015-16