Is it Live or Is it Memorex? In Memory of My Mother

On February 7, 1925, the woman in the photo with me, below, was born in Chicago to a schoolteacher mother and soon-to-be engineering project manager father.  

Her maternal grandfather was a physician there.  Allegedly, during the erroneously-titled "Spanish Flu" pandemic, which ravaged Chicago, zero of his patients died.

His claim to fame? "Poison Cocktails."  On the occasions I got sick from "bugs" going around as a child, with a fever, I'd be given a Poison Cocktail, milk in a small cup with a precise number of drops of iodine -- the ordinary, soft plastic cups I'd drink water, milk, or juice from, like most houses had for little kids in the early 1960s. 

I was not presented with the concept of taking a bit of iodine as a nutritional supplement until I was well into midlife, unfortunately.  I would be seeking "concierge" doctors, chiropractors, and natural/traditional medicine providers in a sometimes desperate attempt to shore my health up enough to continue working. 

I'd justify the expenses by the amount of money I'd lose if I couldn't work.  In the late 1980s when my first, and most severe "collapse" of health occurred, it was at a time 50% of people who had what I did would become homebound, some bedbound.  I'd work from home, fortunate my husband loved computers and had purchased an IBM for $4,000 in 1985, and I'd manage getting to the office mid-morning and stay until 5 pm, Monday through Friday.   

I'd set a goal of being one of the 50% who "recovered".  "Recovery" was generally considered reaching 80% of your previous level of function.  I'd get the 80% doing what mainstream medicine suggested and prescribed, and thanks to a coworker and close friend who insisted I go to a particular chiropractor she knew of, I would be better at 31 than I had been at 13! 

I'd have good jobs with the University, and benefits, return to taking classes required to make application to the occupational therapy program, have an active social life which included outdoor recreation with a variety of friends, most of whom I'd also work out with at the health club -- all also working for the University.  The club had a little restaurant and we'd often start apres workout there, and on Wednesdays and Fridays go out for margaritas and Mexican.  Life was good!  I'd get Rollerblades for my 31st birthday, and later use that sport as a platform for teaching brain injury prevention and helmet use, with Rollerblade and Colorado State University collaborating with support for my project. 

It would help create a pivot on their "clamp down" on Rollerblades on campus, and instead lead to dedicated, challenging, and safer places for "tricks" or hockey.  That project made up for my relatively low grade point average, and got me a spot in the 1996 graduating class.  18 years after I began at  CSU, where I either worked or attended classes, or both the entire time less 2 years when I was with a contractor next door to campus for my employment, I left Fort Collins.  I'd visit often, at first, every time crying as I'd head to Denver, looking in my rear view mirror at the town where my life "blossomed".  The last time I'd seen my mother, before she died in 1987, was at my house, hosting the February birthdays.  

In 2004, the last year I worked in skilled nursing as an Occupational Therapist (Registered, or OTR), having passed the challenging national board certification in early 1997, my "outside the box" medical doctor ($200/hour, and I also had an M.D. in the box, who took insurance and let me know his concerns about "nothing that doctor does has evidenced based research to support it) confided he was hopeful I'd get well enough to continue working, but, in case, would prepare my chart to be helpful if I were to file for disability with social security.

Among the many things he sold from his clinic's shelves, based on his recommendations for each patient, was a brand of iodine called "Iodoral".  I'd also go twice weekly  IV nutrition called "Myer's Cocktails", which I'd learned of in 1997 in Denver with the concierge doctor I'd read about in The Rocky Mountain News not long after moving to begin Level II Internships.  Word spreads, faster or slower.  Unless it's being totally suppressed somehow....  Today, Myer's Cocktails are relatively well known, and cost up to 10 times what I paid in 1997, or four times what I paid in 2004.     

A decade after the Kansas-not Spanish flu pandemic a century ago, if you look into the true history of it, the stock market crashed, and "The Great Depression" era lead to my mother's grandfather's large home becoming a boarding house to supplement the loss of income he had from patients not being able to fully compensate for his help, as they had before. 

He housed my grandmother and grandfather, who was becoming an engineer, with their only child, my mother.  My grandmother worked within the boarding house.  My grandfather completed college by the time my mother was school aged, and ended up having a wildly successful career in the steel industry.

That career took his work, when she was in high school, to Nova Scotia, Canada, and my mother would have some very fun photos of a day in the woods with her boyfriend, a "mountie" and others, having traded clothing among themselves. 

My mother eventually, when in the right frame of mind to dredge up hurtful things from her past, would tell me that the Mountie boyfriend had told her they were surveiling her father, as he was a member of the KKK. I never was told what all really  went on to lead up to everyone in the photo being in each other's clothes.  "What happens in Scotia stays in Scotia", perhaps.  Grins.  

She'd go off to a college in Ohio, but during World War II it was effectively a girls school.  My father would say no self respecting man was not in the military at that point.  He was trying to get a degree completed as fast as he could and join the ranks as an officer, which he presumably did from Chicago around the time my mother was in Nova Scotia. 

While she was in Ohio in a sorority and getting a degree in elementary art education, he would eventually -- by 1949 -- be in a fraternity at UCLA where he was studying psychology.  A fun photo existed in black and white -- professional press type glossy, of him pinning Margaret Whiting, the singer / actress.  Guys from the "fraternity" were sitting around, all in suits.  We didn't get the year of that photo until he was literally on his death bed.  How many secrets went with them when they died -- how many lies were told or lies of omission made, I hazard to guess.  He did, after all, have a security clearance for his work in the military. 

Having not met husbands at college, my mother and three sorority sister friends bought a sedan and drove to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  My mother would get a job as a clerk in a bookstore near the University campus, where my father would come in one day to buy a gift for the girl he left behind in San Antonio, Texas.  What he was doing in San Antonio for the USAF, was never said, nor in Albuquerque's Sandia military base.  They didn't have much time to date, as my father was due to leave for England.

My mother would want to have a career and children, and they'd learn from neighbors in England how to breed, train, show, and sell golden retrievers.  That would lead to what property they bought outside Denver in 1954, and that would perhaps be the beginning of where this story begins. 

Fair warning: this blog thread is not going to be a short one.  It may lead to links taking readers off in different directions for "side bars" if interested in details on certain aspects.  

This lead-in, created on what would be my mother's 97th birthday, is just setting the stage.   I plan to weave in what I believe is going to enable readers to go forward, if desired, as I proceed with an "unfolding story" about the community where she and my father settled, struggled financially and with fertility, but eventually produced me -- unwell as I was.   It could have been worse -- it was worse for most of the "kids" who were my age and neighbors, once they had children.  I began really thinking something was awry in the environment.  But what?  

My curiousity about the area and possible environmental contributors for the higher-than-average maylay in health of long-time residents was "primed", like a pump, by my mother's findings from our local elementary school's third graders.  Since the puppies they were creating increasingly had hip dysplasia -- an entire litter was euthanized at their veterinary hip check and my father returned home with a bag full of puppy bodies to bury in the growing pet cemetary at the base of the mountain, said 'no more'. 

One puppy not long before that had a cleft palate, and they paid to have that repaired.  I was four, and it became my first "dog of my own".  Pootsie.  Everyone in the family one dog that was "theirs", to train, to hike, to show.  My mother's was a Grand Champion, Adam.  My Pootsie with the repaired cleft palate disappeared, around the time a pack of coyotes were observed in the area.  10 years had passed since they began living there, in a valley which had the confluence of another valley at the base of the mountain.  "Columbine Creek" would flow every spring in the small valley between the house and the kennel, which was nearer the base of the mountain.  The initial well on the property was between, nearest the house, but had been replaced by a well down by the larger, year round creek, whose headwaters were up near the elementary school in Aspen Park.  

It seemed idyllic, really.  We weren't consumed with concerns about atomic bombs (my father's work in the industry perhaps was why, he had insider information that was factual not the propaganda fed to the citizen outsiders).  Here's a photograph of me with a healthy dog that had been a puppy sold to someone who needed to rehome it due to a work transfer and cross country move to the East Coast.  

As I became school age, my mother re-educated herself at Loretto Heights College in Denver, a Catholic liberal arts school.  She'd be credentialed to teach general elementary and somehow, despite it being 1967, learned about "Sensory Integration Dysfunction" and the therapy techniques to help resolve the symptoms. 

She would get a job teaching at our local elementary, and have the support of the principal to screen every 3rd grader near the end of the year for "SID", then the 1/3 of the class with the most need for therapy would go into her fourth grade classroom the next year for "home room". 

There, 1-3x a week she'd skip over something in the curriculum that did not so much apply to these "lower functioning" kiddos, and instead do S.I.D. therapy en mass.  I'd help her build the short balance beam, and make the "rolling pin bat" that would hit a dangling ball between two stripes of tape on the pin, and all was well for the years I was in 4th grade through junior high. 

The "new junior high", less than a mile to the north from the old junior high / elementary campus, which had been delayed in construction and eagerly anticipated, would open the last quarter of my 8th grade year, and be the place fondly held in my memory as where I co-won 2nd place in the Stars of Tomorrow talent show (accompanying two clarinet-playing pals on the piano), was part of a fantastic evening dinner show the choir and "kitchen ladies" put on, and had our 9th grade continuation dance. 

I'd also not be selected for the basketball team, nor be able to run intramural track around the roundabout with parking lot in the midst.  For unknown reasons, I'd gone from being the fastest first grader to the slowest in 9th. I'd begin getting dizzy and blacking out every time I went from sit to stand, having excruciating menstrual cramps with excessive bleeding, and gained weight -- I was 125# when we weighed in for 9th grade P.E., which I somehow couldn't talk Mr. Lackey, our guidance counselor, into letting me out of.  

Here's a photo from Google of the area today.  The parking lot I couldn't run one lap around is 

A regime change was occurring, "Mr Mackey" had come in when the old-school counselor had left as my class began our 7th grade year.  Over at the elementary, the good ol' principal was about to be moved to an Evergreen school, and a woman principal would come to West Jefferson Elementary. The old-school teachers (and one secretary) would sometimes be at our house, hashing over their frustrations and having some laughs while they smoked with one hand, and drank their martini's in the other. 

I'd be fortunate to be included enough to know what they were processing then, and blessed with the memory I had to retain the pertinent parts.  Whether I'm blessed or cursed with my ability to pick up on things awry, and connect dots, I've not decided.  Maybe it's both.    

My mother would be pressured from the new principal, backed by the mountain area superintendent to stop doing the things not in the curriculum.  Refusing to stop doing what she believed, and knew to be true from experience teaching the "low kids" and seeing her mothods help, she retired early.   

Not only had the local sherriff's deputy followed her from the highway, all the way down our two lane side road and into the driveway, citing crossing over a yellow line like everyone always did at the intersection as his concern, the principal was citing her use of alcohol (which she never did until after school, even in retirement she waited until 5 p.m. on the dot) as a concern.  Her use of alcohol was part of the discussion with the principal.  She was never late to work, she rarely missed work due to colds, flu or appointments, and certainly never took off to take me somewhere or because I was sick.  I'd fend for myself. 

But she was not the same person she had been in her younger years, due to the acumulation of disappointments and frustrations she had experienced.  That affected her at home, and at school, as is always the case -- nothing unique there.  

That conflict affected our family greatly and indirectly leads me to be where I am today.  The pressure cooker of the conflict came when I was in high school, just as she had bought a ranch/ farm in New Mexico to leave to me.  Her thought was it would balance things out since my sibling wanted the property where we'd had our formative years.  I did not. 

I wasn't yet aware of it being a potential source of illness, but I was tired of shoveling snow and knew how expensive wells and plumbing, leaching fields and septic tanks, wiring and electricians, roofs and roofers would be. Every spring when the little creek came to live, I'd see the slimy green and orange stuff growing on the flowing water trickling down from the septic tank area, carried towards the major creek. 

I'd sided with my mother when we went in the early 1970s to look at building a new house in the new subdivisions, but ultimately the decision was made to stay and put in a new well and another addition.  Shortly thereafter I had the realization that my parents were not happy together, and wondered how it would be if they divorced.  I'd clearly be with my mother -- I'd thought that wouldn't be too bad a thing for anyone.  But it would not occur.   

Instead, just after I had my driver's license, she found the property she dreamed of in New Mexico and purchased it.  She could fore-tell the future, and knew we'd need to grow food -- maybe not in my lifetime, or your father's but in yours -- she'd said.   

I had gotten her into gardening with me, which had been quite a large garden in my teens.  My dad didn't think she was seeing things right -- if things were so bad and us "gringo's" had resources like food on a farm in New Mexico, we'd be killed for them, were his words. (He also had us keep our keys in the car ignitions in case anyone who might harm us needed a car.  They're insured, he said.  Ironically, after 50 years there, a car crashed while being chased by law enforcement and the guy was thought to be on foot on his property as he was getting home from a trip to Denver.  The guy wasn't found on his property, and he didn't take a car, but -- his fore-sight was perhaps not totally illogical and paranoid.)   

To my mother's credit, she managed to navigate the quirks of a guy who was a gentle genius, physically, and manipulator of people behaviorally.  Along the way, when I was a young adult, she several times let me know that he had been involved in something to do with mind reading in England, when also heading the A-bomb detonator maintenance training.  She'd say it when it was just the three of us in the kitchen/dining area, and he would get a nervous smile and giggle, then look to the clock and say "I need to go outside and ....".   

Some day, I'll get to looking into his life more, perhaps, more for entertainment for myself.  This, that my mother had come upon with testing the nervous systems for integrating sensory information with every kiddo midway through elementary, and finding ALL BUT ONE had impairments to some extent or more, seems to be worthy of bringing to the forefront here.   Was she silenced simply because the principal was sticking to the curriculum and didn't allow deviations even when proven beneficial?  Or was there knowledge those higher in the System (insiders) knew.  Had the medical - industrial - research - military complex found something out that my mother was feared to be revealing, and hence was effectively silenced? 

10 years she tested kids, more or less, so I'd estimate between 750 and 1,000 people.  Only one -- one -- had no symptoms on the day my mother tested her.  She'd tell me who -- a girl in my class (and literally in my class, we were in the "high" ability group home room), who could draw well, play a flute better than I in fourth grade, sing, be a cheerleader, and made more money giving kissing lessons to the cute boys than I did babysitting.  Fortunately, through Facebook, I became friends for the first time with Shellie.   

I've talked with her at length about why she was (apparently) intact and the rest of us were (apparently) impaired.  I'd remembered reading in the Canyon Courier, our local paper, that she had participated in "Grange", similar to how it was in the paper that I participated in dog 4-H.  I knew it to be homesteading skills and thought at the time it was rather odd.  It was, after all 1970-ish.  We were drinking Tang and eating Space Sticks, TV dinners and Wonder Bread, after all, having Dr. Pepper at 10, 2, and 4, the way their advertisement said....

I'd get a hypoglycemia diagnosis and diet in early high school, when inquiring with insurance-based doctors about my blacking out when standing.  They never could really answer me as to why my blood pressure was so low.  They never suggested testing in any way, nor special diets (such as lots of water and salt, for instance.) I learned to live with it, and it also improved when I lived in the dormitory at Colorado State University.  I'd get other symptoms then, though -- not tying it all together as "environmental" or "complex, chronic illness".   I'd deal with symptoms and take medications, then deal with the side effects, and so on.  I'd continue to exercise, and further restrict my diet once things changed after I was married at 21. 

I'd divorce, I'd remarry, we'd buy a house and I'd have a stepchild only 12 years younger than I as I ended my 26th year since birth.  The kiddo was in the tree one warm Friday evening in late February, not long after my mother had been the birthday girl there, seeing my new beautiful home and having dinner and desert for her 62nd birthday, when the phone rang. My mother was missing, then on the next call, had been found, dead in the home -- my father had been out of town checking up on his mother in Florida.  It was found to be a massive brain blood vessel burst, and the coroner informally said he thought she had a genetic condition that affects the vascular system.  I'd take that info to my doctors -- nobody ever caught on that my low blood pressure (and other symptoms) was related.   

I had gotten a big job, with a growing research program at Colorado State, funded by the National Park Service.  Our funds and need for office space allowed them to build a new addition on a previous "solar village" office building. One weekday morning, I just couldn't get out of bed.  The visual symptoms I had accommodated for all were worse (due to small eye muscles and the fatigue affecting them).  I sought a special type of eye doctor, like the one in Denver that I'd "missed" in my formative years,, despite my mother suggesting him to other parents of her self-made "senory integration / learning disabilities classroom". 

(In those days there was separate "special education", which was not part of the students she would screen that were in the three (low, middle, high) achieving home room classrooms).  If there was ever a silver lining, this was one!  After completing vision therapy, I'd seek The Reading Detective, who helped me figure out my varied difficulties and find strategies to work around, and I'd finally begin succeeding in university classes needed to make application to the OT program.)  

I'd also go to my primary care M.D., who referred me on to an ENT he said who was trained by National Jewish in Denver on what to look for and treat with my general weakness and fatigue.  He also told me "there's a bunch of whatever this is that you have right now, in Fort Collins".  Nobody else ever heard that, except on rare occasion I cross paths with someone from Fort Collins in those years who was in the "cluster", who heard of the cluster. 

I did as the ENT said, and I got better -- not back to how I was before, which was sub "well", but I was back to doing everything I needed to do.  Things I wanted to do waited.  There is a difference between need and want.  Chronic debility will teach you what's important to you the most, real fast. 

Around the same time, the neighbor man uphill from my parents back in the canyon a few miles down from the elementary school had similar symptoms to mine.  It was attributed to his getting chemical exposure going in to rescue maps after a fire was put out at his place of work at the Denver Federal Center.  I'd had chemical exposure in the new building my National Park Service - funded job had created, but nobody else in the building had fallen ill.  Nobody else at his work had either, apparently.  But my RADAR WENT UP at this point.  

By then, the "kids" who grew up around our place, including his, had, in many cases, procreated children, and there seemed to be a lot of problems in a high percentage of those children.  Significant ones, in many cases. Two died before they were 10, and a gal who had moved away had a son who died of cancer, too.  RADAR UP.  (The gal/mother died later, of cancer, and later the man who lived in the house next to the one with the map man did as well, after his daughter died, who had been raised there (I do not know of what, but she was middle aged.) 

I'd read the Canyon Courier when around on visits, and never saw anything like Love Canal and the EPA Superfund sites, or later what was so brilliantly portrayed in Erin Bracovich.  This was a mix of cancers and autism and in those older, progressive neurological disorders affecting movement and cognition. 

More time would go on, and the elders would start struggling or dying with whatever it was they'd have.  I'd be immersed in a group of people in Fort Collins and later Colorado Springs who had similar aged family members who didn't seem to have the same rate of unwellness.  MY RADAR WAS UP STILL and RED FLAGS WERE GETTING RAISED ONE BY ONE.  

In early 2004, I'd move across the state to The Grand Valley of western Colorado, which was famously a uranium town for a while, and an agricultural valley for over 100 years.  Grapes and wine were the newest facet, and live music at a winery in Palisade was, I heard, the thing to do in the summers. 

So, I went when my friend Alex was in town.  He'd gotten a degree in environmental stuff and biology at CSU when I was there studying occupational therapy.  He was a musician as well, so as we entered I looked for a good spot to see the stage and hear the music from where we would set our portable chairs. I happened to place mine next to a woman who introduced herself as being with an environmental health research center.  

She asked me how I liked The Grand Valley, as I was new.  Since she'd told me her profession, I went in that direction with my response.  I shared that I'd gotten some treatment on lunch hours, so easy a drive to access the doctor, as I had environmental illness.  I went on to say "I'm from Conifer and a lot of people there seem to be messed up." 

Her response was "Conifer is a known location for environmental illness."  I remember my thought response to that:  Why does nobody there know this?  Maybe I've missed it in the paper.  

So I'd look online, and looked through the stacks of Canyon Couriers when "home" visiting my father.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing.  I'd get to finish my OT career in a PT clinic within the new, big, Primary Care Partners building, and despite the management's opposition to helping those with complex, chronic conditions as "it's not what we're set up for", they learned of me, and by 2007 I'd co-created a very nice educational seminar forum, which lead to my creating Lumigrate in 2008/9.   

By 2008 I'd be learning Facebook in order to network and promote on the burgeoning platform Facebook provided, which happened to be 30 years since I and my "homies" graduated high school. I wanted to simply practice making a group among people I'd not be embarrassed learning with. 

As I was naming the group, I started thinking about how, when we'd put together reunions, people from other classes who knew us would want to be included, then others they knew, and pretty soon you just had to open it up to everyone. OR, stick to your guns and keep it selective.  I opted to open it up.  And, knowing there were parents who didn't go to school but who were on Facebook, I opted to just make it for anyone who ever lived there, if they wanted to join.

I soon realized it could help me connect with people from Conifer who were still there, and should know something about any suspicions of environmental illness.  My RADAR WAS STILL UP.  

I'd connect with those who said they still lived in the area, or had parents in the area.  At most, they' respond that people there had noticed more progressive neurological disease and thought it had to do with septic systems next to wells and too many wells close together and so on. 

Nobody there, however, knew what I'd learned from sitting next to a research insider at a concert in the Grand Valley.  

I'd see in the years 2006 and 7, how hard it was to get my father diagnosed and treated using a Conifer doctor, not that my father was pursuing it because, as he said once he could no longer drive, he didn't want the doctor to take away his driving priviledges. I'd use the group to connect with someone who lived in the area and knew all the doctors well due to being a paramedic, a guy who had been in the last home room my mother taught -- I was there her last day when the kids talked her into going down the slide on the playground, and he remembered that.  He, ironically, would die of the same thing my mother did, three decades later.  But he assured me, my father's doctor was one of the best in Conifer, and considered the top one for emergent things.  How could he not see that he had a progressive neurological disease and bring it up to him? 

I'd see people at my father's funeral or after at the house, who had lived nearby for 50 or so years -- the ones who were still alive and able to come out of their homes to attend.    

Along the way a few years after, when selling my furniture and moving out of the home I'd rented for many years (2006-2014), I'd talk to someone who had moved with his girlfriend to The Grand Valley, who said every person in the town his gal was from, in West Virginia, had their gall bladders removed.  "I'm not using a figure of speech, literally every person has had theirs removed."  ANOTHER RED FLAG -- remember my mother and her cousin's wife's gall bladder removals THEN fertility issues subsided and both had their last babies within a short time?

I'd find out from talking to a former psychologist from another small mountain town that had a growing college / university, who had retired to The Grand Valley (and I'd met at a yard sale where the last few of my furniture items were being sold, in 2015), that they'd noticed a disproportionate amount of "Parkinsons" in people from the area.  This was similar to what I'd noticed about people from Evergreen / Conifer, except it wasn't just Parkinsons, but Lewy bodies disease, Alzheimer's and other dementia's, which is like splitting hairs to separate the movement from the cognitive -- and is better lumped as "progressive neurological'. 

Ultimately, isn't it a continuum -- autism, fibromyalgia, movement / cognition (as time passes) -- all to do with the neurological systems being impaired.  Due to detoxification pathways impaired, and toxins not de-toxing.  Why does that occur?  Genetics loads the gun and the environment and lifestyle pulls the trigger.  

In my case, with hearing of people who still had connections to my place of origin, many neighbors of the area had bought their properties around the time my parents had, and stayed until they died, often handing the property down to grown children, or the grown child with their spouse would build or buy a nearby property or subdivide the one their folks' had. 

There was a continuity, and until I "left the scene" after my father's passing in 2010, I'd learn of their health issues. So I thought perhaps it was as much to do with having "the grapevine" with so many grapes (families) on it, as much as anything.  Maybe my friends from out of state families had just not kept in touch with as many people near their homes.  But it still seemed as though there was more in those from our area.  I let it rest -- for a long time.   

The photo, above, of the DVD, was taken very recently with my cellular camera phone.  The original photograph used on the DVD was taken with my point and shoot film camera in June 1982, almost 40 years ago.  My family of origin and our spouses were celebrating Father's Day by attending a British Festival in Denver. 

Almost 30 years later, that photograph would be scanned and used in a DVD produced by a talented extended family member/spouse, being chosen as the best representation of our immediate family on the DVD label.  We'd given our father / husband a card that had a big tag inside that you'd take off and hang around your neck that said "I'm the boss".  It was a perfect card for a day spent at a festival to celebrate Father's Day.  My mother and I were two peas in one pod, my father and sibling like two in another.  It was a rare photo of the four of us, together at once.

I particularly appreciate the way it is a bit fuzzy through the process, because it is also how things get with the passing of time.  If we're lucky, I suppose, to live long enough for the time to pass. 

END PREFACE / SETUP / BACKGROUND PORTION regarding Mardy, Mother, and the Old Days

 PRESENT DAY -- CHRISTMAS EVE, 2021

                                                       (Containing carbon tetrachloride, found for sale on Marketplace on Facebook, 2022)                                

The fire extinguisher, above, reminds me of one that was hanging on the wall by the bathroom / bedroom / kitchen / hallway in the cabin-style portion of my family's home.  For how many Christmases would the family be there, not ever needing it (thankfully).  

Christmas Eve 2021, outside Denver, two siblings who had grown up after I had, very near the elementary school, were together and the one had posted something on the 23rd to an Evergreen Facebook group, which on the 24th was added to the group I explained creating, above, about Conifer. 

The post raised the question "how many peers from our formative years had cancer compared to others our age we know who grew up in various other places." The poster asked if anyone else had heard the elementary school had been a chemical dump site for a major chemical manufacturer.  

I'd not heard THAT, but I had heard that the EPA had been monitoring wells from near the junior high, and the chemical they found had been used to clean school bus engines that were serviced on a property before there was a new, big, bus depot built halfway to Evergreen.  But that's all I'd been told -- the EPA initially said it would be a few years they were there, and in 2019 they were still there, decades later.  I was also told they were not supposed to talk about it, and most notably I was NOT TOLD that it had been an EPA SUPERFUND SITE.   

People who have family in the area of the Aspen Park schools were rapidly on the thread saying, literally, "Fake news".   But, according to what I had heard (told in confidence, and I won't reveal my sources of course) it didn't seem "fake", more "just a bit off". 

If I'd heard it, and don't have many close connections in the area any longer, certainly they would have heard it.  But despite my inquiries, they hadn't revealed it to me.  And as time went on after I initially wrote this in early February, as I rewrite in early March, it turns out, those people are surprised as to how they had family or were living in the area and had not heard of this!  

Along came a guy on the thread who I'd connect with soon after to message privately, suggesting disbelievers look up the location with the words "EPA Superfund" and "carbon tetrachloride".  Someone who had said "fake news" even gouged him for using a pseudonym, and not being a legitimate person in the group, a troll you might say. 

The guy (who I'd connect with privately at this point and discuss things with a great deal over the next hour and weeks) shot back with who he was, and how their families knew each other, explaining they use a pseudonym on Facebook because they work in administration educating young people. 

I pictured my family Christmases, and suspected they were perhaps enjoying some adult beverages, perhaps, to initially have been so unpleasant on the thread. But, essentially, my grandmother greatly funded an addition to the community church, and their fathers greatly contributed their talents in building to build it.  And -- we're all with family health histories, or our own -- that might lead one to at least wish there were a proper study done of the people living in the area.  Maybe it's been done, through data from doctor's offices combined with education records.  Maybe not.  I really do not know.  But I'd like to!   

So, on Christmas Eve, from my laptop at the table, I Searched the way the guy suggested.... and sure enough! Tah Dah! 

I'd ride to the elementary with my mother, then when the new junior high opened, walk smack dab through the area that was found polluted with carbon tetrachloride in 1994 and, with a struggle, somewhat remediated with 20 years of work by the EPA's funds.

I don't recall any other students doing similarly on a regular basis, though I do know that after school a lot of students would walk from the junior high and to the "hot dog" (a 20 ton "Coney Island" style concrete hot dog that is mentioned in the foreward to Centennial, by James Michener, as an example of the ruinous ways of man, of a beautiful state, Colorado. 

The photos above each show at the top, the bottom (southernmost) portion of the oval parking lot of the now-middle school / then- junior high school.  I'd walk pretty much right through the "bulls eye", as the elementary is basically due south. 

And so, it began.  Pulling things from the back burner and considering putting them on the front.  

This spring, about the time the crocus are blooming in Aspen Park and on the property others in my family inherited, I will be the age my mother was when she died.  I'm intending, by that time, to have returned to this thread with more developments, and, essentially, a step by step journey of my process as it unfolds looking into this "story", about known environmental toxins in the area my mother was finding most every student's sensory processing affected.  

I will return here, shortly, and provide the information about what my first step was, a month ago, literally the first steps I took after New Years.  (Hint: I was connected to an extremely well known public figure, who is an attorney.  As was his father, "attorney general" being among his titles, when alive. His life ended around the time my mother's innocent-enough screening of students began -- 1968.)

Are we live or are we Memorex? We are Lumigrate, and I'm Mardy Ross, alive and well enough.  

~~ Mardy (over and out at 4:34, on 2/7/2022).  

END, PRESENT DAY LEAD IN 

Chapter 1:  Leading up to, and getting to, the EPA website's link

I recall many things from an early age, which used to be considered more unusual than it is today. 

I personally believe it is a trait with those "further out on the spectrum" than others.  Of course, everyone's somewhere on the spectrum.  Someone has to represent the far "perfectly well" end -- Shellie, for instance.  At the other end of the spectrum would be someone with such profound neurological disorder known as "autism", they were totally dysfunctional.  So, in a way, we are all on the spectrum.  My afore-mentioned OT neurology instructor, Dr. Bundy, just helped me more accurately place myself further away from Shellie than I had previously.  

I recall my second birthday, with detail, and some in my family did not believe that I was recollecting from my memory and not from their story-telling.  I'd learn this around the time I was being brought into reality about my messed up neurological system at a family gathering at the family home and property for my birthday.  Funny things frequently occurred on my birthday -- a grass fire when I was three, for instance.  I'd prove to them in my 30s that I remembered that day when I was two by going outside and standing in the spot we had when a pony was delivered.  In a truck, not a trailer. 

It was not for me, a "coincidence" the rancher selling it brought it in the middle of my cake and presents.  I knew something wasn't "quite right" if I was getting a few little things and a sibling, whose birthday was half a year away, was getting a pony.  That's an example of how my mind works. Thankfully I have recollection of details many would not. 

My weekdays were very routine.  My mother would usually be up before I was, and would bring me a bottle of milk to drink in bed before I got up.  Sometimes she'd not be up, and I'd crawl into bed with her, and watch her dress for the day -- the scar from the pregnancy after the gall bladder surgery was pronounced and i'd feel badly for having caused it, though she had never said anything to that effect.  

One day in November, when I was 3-1/2, she was listening to the radio and eager for The Denver Post to be delivered to our box at the end of the driveway next to the mailbox.  The president had been assassinated the day before.  Once the paper arrived, hours late due to the mayhem brought on by the news, she scanned it using her finger to mark her place and, selectively, read out loud to me.  

She was censoring things, because of my young age.  I didn't approve, and asked to learn to read.  So she bought the Palo Alto Reading Program, and I used it and the Sunday comics to learn to read.  She was not a Democrat, and I don't recall any lingering effects of the news.   Of course, John F. Kennedy's brother, Robert, was his attorney general, and would later be assassinated as well.  I do not recall anything about that event. 

I do recall I was made aware of Martin Luther King, Jr. being assassinated in that timeframe, because at school, each third grader in my class had to stand in front of the room and say how Dr. King being killed affected us.  I stood and said something indicating I thought he was a king, not with the last name King.  I was embarrassed, clearly out of the loop because my father didn't allow the television in my grandmother's abandoned part of the house to be turned on, and he wouldn't allow one in "our" part. 

He was into censorship, too.  No religion, we were allowed to decide and practice when we were 18, whatever we wanted, but not before.  Including my mother, she would not be allowed until I was 18.  No television and no cartoon movies.   Once I learned more about what the government had studied and had information on, and utilized as tricky ways to influence the public, and appreciated what his secret tasks were with his USAF active and national guard duties, I appreciated why he limited as he did.  He also wouldn't allow me to study psychology at University, despite my strong interest in it and abilities to think psychologically and assess people's behavioral and cognitive functioning.  I'm now glad for that, but at the time, was displeased. 

After having learned of the Aspen Park / Conifer EPA Superfund site for carbon tetrachloride this past Christmastime, I studied all that was available at the EPA's link for the site.  I "noticed" some disparities, and wondered if I was picking up on something valid or was too inexperienced with such information.  I'd reach out to someone who used to be in law enforcement in that area, back in the days when I was there, to see if they could cypher it better than I.  They encouraged me look into why everyone is so tight lipped about it, as perhaps there's a pool of money at hand that those already in the know do not want others getting their share of, leaving more for each of them.  

Since my best science expert "at hand" to ask is Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, I emailed him.  He responded right after new years day, and said he would connect me to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.!  Wow, what a way to start 2022!  I just needed to provide an email address.  I looked into encryption email and decided to just go with a gmail account I had for Lumigrate purposes.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., responded from a gmail account as well, merely defering me on to his law partner. 

I provided the partner the information he requested, and he responded within a day, saying they would pass on making me a client (which wasn't what I was seeking, I was asking for someone with science skills to look at what I'd found curious and tell me if it was something worth pursuing checking up on -- AND someone who had a tool like Lexus Nexus to search for information I didn't have access to.  He encouraged me to seek other attorneys, because they simply were presuming the length of time since my contact with the "hot zone" cleanup site made it a poor likelihood of getting any funds for me.  

I've contacted one email address for a Colorado reporter, and gotten no response.  And that is where I've left it.  

Let me provide you with a link to the EPA site that has everything about it all in several links.  Things appear to have been uploaded without everything being thought out and organized what would go on what tabs -- it makes me feel better about the Forums at Lumigrate, which have a similar problem.  

response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx [1]

 END CHAPTER 1

Chapter 2 - WATER

At this point, I would share this news-of-mine with a friend who joined our elementary school in fourth grade.  She would not have been tested/screened by my mother, as she transferred in the summer.  She'd become my good friend, and stay that way since.  "This sounds like a Mark Ruffalo movie we just watched -- Dark Waters." 

So I looked and saw it was for sale for $15 from YouTube.  And I looked and it could be ordered on DVD through my local library.  So I requested it. (When it arrived I got an email, I went and picked it up, watched it -- excellent movie.  Worth buying for $15, actually!) 

In the mean time, I saw how there were other videos on YouTube about the situation in West Virginia which lead to a lawyer who fought for the residents once contacted by a farmer who knew his grandmother.  That changed that lawyers career from working for the chemical companies, to against them -- from within the same law practice, interestingly.  It's admirable what he and they did!  The lawyer's name is Rob Bilott, and his book is titled "Exposed".  It's a great book, a resource if you want details and to refer to them, such as if writing about it, or in depth study.

In that case, it was a different chemical, a type of "forever chemical", which is used in teflon and making carpets and fabrics water proof or stain resistant, etc.  At The Colorado School of Mines website, I found the information from when Robert Bilott was coming to keynote a 2-day event, and be part of a panel discussion for a Colorado Public Radio segment in January 2020.  Here's the link: 

www.minesnewsroom.com/news/attorney-who-inspired-movie-dark-waters-speak-jan-29-mines-campus [2]   Here's About Rob Bilott, from this source:  

"

About Rob Bilott

Robert Bilott is a partner in Taft Law’s Environmental, Litigation, and Product Liability and Personal Injury groups. For more than 29 years, Rob has handled a wide variety of highly complex environmental matters and related toxic tort litigation for a diverse array of clients, including the nation’s first cases involving PFAS drinking water contamination. To date, Rob has secured benefits in excess of $1 billion for clients impacted by PFAS contamination, including through key leadership positions in the nation’s first class-action, personal injury, medical monitoring and multi-district litigations and trials. In 2017, Rob received the international Right Livelihood Award, also known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for his decades of work on PFAS issues.  Rob is the author of the book, “Exposure: Poisoned Water, Corporate Greed, and One Lawyer’s Twenty-Year Battle against DuPont,” and his story is the inspiration for the new motion picture, “Dark Waters” from Participant Media and Focus Features, starring Mark Ruffalo as Rob. His story is also featured in the documentary available on Netflix, “The Devil We Know.”  Rob is a graduate of New College in Sarasota, Florida, and has a Juris Doctor degree from the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law."

 

If you'd like to view his presentation and the panel discussion / taping for CPR, here's the link:  www.youtube.com/watch [3]

 

(Editing March 7, 2022, The Colorado State Attorney General, in late February 2022 hopped on the forever chemical issue in Colorado, focusing on fire fighting products, so you can also look into that if you are interested.  See below, Chapter 4.   

I truly did not know that was coming down the pike when I opted to create this thread in early February!) 

Here's another -- please use your Search bar at YouTube or other places and find others, if you're interested.  

www.knowyourh2o.com/indoor-6/perfluorinated-chemicals-pfoa-pfos-pfas-pfcs-forever-chemicals [4]  -- Know Your H20 .com is a site I found helpful and am providing the link here. 

At the Youtube channel titled "Washington Post Live", I found "Dark Waters: A conversation with Mark Ruffalo, Bob Bilott, and Emily Donovan".  In particular, at 18 minutes in, Mark Ruffalo and Bob Bilott (the actual lawyer who was played by Mark Ruffalo in the movie) says this:  

Mark Ruffalo : "I'd like to add, why it's called "forever chemicals", it cannot break down in nature.  When it ends up in our bodies it stays there forever.  All of us, 99% of human beings have this in our blood.  I have it, you have it.  We have it because we weren't given the choice not to.  This is with us forever.  Foreverchemicals.com and we've started an advocacy group called fight forever chemicals .com.  ....Colorado, Vermont, there's many places in the United States that have hot spots of these chemicals."  

Bob Bilott  - The situation we see in Wilmington, N.C.  --- it took 20 years to bring the information about one of these -- PFOA.  We finally got the company to phase out that chemical, so they replaced it and phased in another chemical, which is in Wilmington, NC.  It's a whack-a-mole game.  So we've got to focus on this broad class of chemicals.   

Here is the link to the YouTube at Washington Post Live's channel, which includes a lot of clips of the film since the audience they were presenting to has not seen the movie.  www.youtube.com/watch [5]

Award-winning actor and producer Mark Ruffalo joins The Washington Post Live on Nov. 19 for a conversation about his forthcoming film, Dark Waters. Inspired by true events, the film tells the story of an unexpected crusader Rob Bilott, a corporate defense attorney, who discovers a community has been dangerously exposed for decades to deadly chemicals after following a trail of secrets implicating one of the world’s largest corporations.

 END CHAPTER 2

 Chapter 3 - What Consitutes a "Forever" Chemical, and is Carbon Tetrachloride One?

After I thoroughly went over the information the EPA provides about the Aspen Park Superfund site, including their presentation at the American Chemical Society in 2017 (because the cleanup provided challenges for them but they persevered and had it much better after decades), and was seeing the EPA and others in environmental policy are focused on the "forever chemicals", such as what was brought to the mainstream in 2019's movie thanks to activist actor Mark Ruffalo in Dark Waters , I wondered if carbon tetrachloride was considered forever, or just almost forever.... 

What I was gleaning was that there seems to be a focus on cancer, but what causes the body to be unable to deal with things and go into cancer? (Think liver / detoxification, etc.)  One site says, about carbon tetrachloride, the kidney and liver disorders are due to the central nervous system effects of the chemical. 

Remember, my mother had found one sole student among almost a thousand who had no evidence with her screening that day (screening exiting 3rd graders) of disrupted neurological systems' sympmtoms affecting sensory processing.  One sole girl was "not on the spectrum" somewhere.  The rest of us were.  Some more, some less.  Shellie was none/0.  That is how I view it, not the way mainstream does.  As a matter of fact, the mainstream is moving the bars for determining what is concerning and not, making it more difficult for youngsters to be included in what the system considers "affected".  

In searching for "carbon tetrachloride, considered a forever chemical", results included an EPA document about carbon tetrachloride.  It used to be used in many products for consumers, whereas today it's only approved for industrial purposes.  And it used to be used to fumigate grains.  Could it be that one "intact" student's report to me in our 50s of her formative years and their unique-for-those times diet is the reason her nervous system appeared perfectly intact? 

"We made most of our own bread, but we bought some commercial bread", she had said to me in a Facebook messenger chat about the subject back in 2015/16.  The ranchers in the area, to my knowledge, weren't doing as her family's "hobby farm" was -- chickens and eggs, cows and milk, grew a garden, made home made bread.  Many more people today are doing this, having learned from our mistakes, collectively, as a society in the 20th century.  

She had said, as I recall, "of course, like everyone we were on well water, and we were outside a lot in the sunshine and fresh air".   You're out a lot MORE when you have animals, and a garden.  And, as I experienced, a lot of pathways of snow to shovel, and kennel runs.  One of the kids we grew up with just put out a book of stories from his years living there, titled The Freaks of Evergreen High School 1976. (Available on Amazon, Greg Mann, author.)

He recognizes his time hiking around exploring, but once he had a driver's license, it was more time in a car going to parties outside.  "Woodsies", they were called before our time, "keggers" in our time. But was his nervous system already "jacked up" from --- foods made from grains fumigated with carbon tetrachloride at some point long before reaching our mountain area kitchens? The number of kids from our area who developed substantial substance abuse issues, alcohol included of course, seemed, also, high.  Pun possibly intended.  

Would my mother have found the same thing with 3rd graders' nervous systems had she worked in an elementary school down below in the flatlands, far from the carbon tetrachloride and other chemicals found around ranches and farms and subdivisions where they were, for whatever reason?  Are there many "hot spots" and then "cool spots or warm spots" around Colorado, depending on long-ago chemicals?  

In the Colorado State Attorney General's March 2022 focus on the military bases in Colorado, the article I read said there were a staggering number of spots in Colorado where these chemicals are known to be concentrated.   

Is there data out there for the Conifer residents over the years, that I have not found yet, which would substantiate what those who have kept in touch with people there have subjectively noticed -- lots of progressive neurological disorders and cancers?   (And substantiate what my mother saw with the elementary students having imperfect nervous systems, except one.)  The researcher I sat next to in 2004 in the Grand Valley knew, somehow, Conifer was a known hot spot for environmental illness.  

A link to a PDF from an EPA website about carbon tetrachloride: www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-09/documents/carbon-tetrachloride.pdf [6] .  Highlights:  Under Physical Properties: "Carbon tetrachloride is a clear, nonflammable liquid which is almost insoluble in water. (1)"  So maybe it would be an "Almost Forever Chemical"?  

It also says this: 

"Hazard Summary Carbon tetrachloride may be found in both ambient outdoor and indoor air.  The primary effects of carbon tetrachloride in humans are on the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system (CNS).  Human symptoms of acute (short-term) inhalation and oral exposures to carbon tetrachloride include headache, weakness, lethargy, nausea, and vomiting.  Acute exposures to higher levels and chronic (long-term) inhalation or oral exposure to carbon tetrachloride produces liver and kidney damage in humans.  Human data on the carcinogenic effects of carbon tetrachloride are limited.  Studies in animals have shown that ingestion of carbon tetrachloride increases the risk of liver cancer.  EPA has classified carbon tetrachloride as a Group B2, probable human carcinogen."

and 

"Uses Carbon tetrachloride was produced in large quantities to make refrigerants and propellants for aerosol cans, as a solvent for oils, fats, lacquers, varnishes, rubber waxes, and resins, and as a grain fumigant and a dry cleaning agent.  Consumer and fumigant uses have been discontinued and only industrial uses remain. (1)"

 So there's that from the EPA, now let us move on to the CDC.   Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. 

www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/carbon-tetrachloride/toxicological_effects.html [7]

An excerpt:  

Chronic Effects

The CNS effects of chronic exposure are open to question. Many of the impairments observed in workers chronically exposed to solvents could be attributable to other causes [Rom and Markowitz 2007], such as

• Chronic alcohol abuse,
• Other neurologic disorders, or
• Injuries.

Chronic neurologic effects can be classified as follows:

• Mild – consisting mainly of affective changes and loss of concentration,
• Moderate – with some impairment of concentration and memory, or
• Severe – with significant loss of intellectual functioning [WHO 1985].

Sensorimotor neuropathy and abnormalities of vision have been reported, but epidemiological data are insufficient to support an association between CCl4 exposure and these effects [O’Donoghue 2000].

End Chapter 3.

CHAPTER 4:  The Colorado State Attorney General, Late February 2022:

Going After 15 Makers of PFAS "Forever Chemicals" Used in Colorado in Firefighting Foam (And Others)

50 of 64 Colorado counties have so far been found to have PFAS contamination

120,000 locations have been estimated in Colorado to have "handled" PFAS over the years

The story begins: 

"The Colorado Attorney General’s Office filed suit Monday against 15 makers of firefighting foam that contains “forever chemicals” called PFAS, alleging the companies caused contamination found in water samples taken across the state and endangered public health. 

The lawsuit in state district court says the companies, including five related to DuPont, “knew or should have known their products harm the environment and public health, and is asking the court to require these manufacturers to pay for all costs to investigate, cleanup, restore and monitor contamination at all sites,” said Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesman for Attorney General Phil Weiser. 

“These companies knew that these chemicals posed significant threats to human health and the environment and nonetheless put Colorado at risk; it is important that they pay for the harm they caused,” said Attorney General Phil Weiser, in a release.

Other companies are also responsible for contamination, but the state is negotiating with them on a possible settlement, the release said. If negotiations fail, they could be added to the suit. The investigation into PFAS contamination is continuing, Weiser’s office said."

Here's the link to read on, please do!:

 coloradosun.com/2022/02/28/colorado-attorney-general-sues-firefighting-pfas-makers/ [8]

I'd find this story online from The Denver Channel, which I think has more information for those who are interested.  I'll provide some highlights, too.  

www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/colorado-ag-sues-makers-of-firefighting-foam-with-forever-chemicals [9]

"Officials released results of an investigation on Wednesday that showed wastewater tainted with toxic chemicals used in firefighting foam originally thought to have been discharged by the Air Force into Colorado Springs' wastewater treatment system likely evaporated into the air during hot weather in the region."

"According to the lawsuit, the EPA last November asked its science advisory board to review new data surrounding types of PFAS and new draft documents “indicate that the levels at which negative health effects could occur … are much lower than previously understood.” It said the EPA expects to issue new proposed rules surrounding the compounds this fall and a final rule in 2023.

According to a Military.com report [10] from December, Congress has plans to order the Pentagon to complete the process of identifying every installation contaminated by PFAS. The Pentagon has already banned the use of the firefighting foams containing them except for during emergencies and aboard ships, according to the outlet, but has had trouble finding foams that do not contain the compounds."

"The 2020 sampling [11] included half of the state’s community public drinking water systems, which serve about three-quarters of the population, and found 34% of those systems had some PFAS levels in their drinking water.

PFAS were found [12] in the Security-Widefield, Fountain and Air Force Academy areas, in Sand Creek downstream of Suncor, and in other areas of the state. They were also found in numerous groundwater and surface water testing sites and in soil testing, according to the CDPHE and the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says all samples taken from lakes and rivers in Colorado had some detectable levels of PFAS chemicals."

LET ME BOLD THIS .... ^^^^  BE SURE CATCH ^^^^ 

ALL SAMPLES FROM LAKES AND RIVERS IN COLORADO HAD SOME DETECTABLE LEVELS OF PFAS CHEMICALS.  

END, Chapter 4

Chapter 5 - Assembling a Group of "Homies" With Personal Proximity to Problems

The Facebook group for people to memorialize Evergreen graduates who passed had someone find the thread from December 23rd around the same time as the above article came out in The Colorado Sun.  Someone who had grown up near the elementary and high school in Evergreen had noticed a cluster in that neighborhood, and wondered.  He had also done some studying about a toxic dump site in the town of Louviers, and how it was made into a park with fields for game playing, since it's not allowed to build homes on such land.  

I'd contact people involved with the above article, or on their website as being to do with such areas, and found them eager to help provide links to what we'd already found on the Internet, but not seeming to be able (or willing?) to delve using tools they might have with subsciptions to find things that investigative journalists, and others in law firms and private investigation firms, use.  

But at least I had real professional journalists not finding anything in the mainstream, so I was getting more confident that I wasn't missing something.  

In a Facebook group I belong to, having to do with mold, a woman had started a thread saying she was an investigative journalist and was looking for people who had breast implants that had gotten mold.  While I do have someone I've helped who believed that to have been what caused her environmental, chronic illness, I opted instead to let this journalist know that I was looking for such a person with tools of the trade to look into something from my old home town.  Turns out the gal had gone on a driving vacation and her friend knew that Aspen Park was the inspiration for many characters and the overall "South Park" phenomenon.  What ARE the chances!?  

So, I've provided her with information, and soon it will be time for the meeting where she pitches it to those who decide what to run with and not.  

In the mean time, I created a quiet little Facebook group and loaded in three people, the two from Christmas' thread (siblings whose parents sold in early 2000s and benzene was found in the water, mother died of a leukemia linked to benzene after that....) and the man from near the Evergreen schools.  

My thinking is I'll post the pertinent information there, we can get practiced at knowing it well, and be available to the journalists and/ or lawyers, if they are to get involved.  

In the mean time, the SAG doing what it did in late February might influence the folks different at Robert F. Kennedy, Jr's lawfirm.  So I'm going to circle back around and share that with them.  In the mean time, I wanted to get this thread updated, edited for improvement, before going on. 

End Chapter 5

Chapter 6 - The Graduating Journalist

The graduating journalist let me know when she learned that the idea she pitched for this story to be a project for her before graduation was declined.  But the reasons were encouraging, and worth the disappointment of it being turned down for her to work on at this point in time (spring 2022): it was going to be a pretty big story to research, and there wouldn't be time to get it done in the time they had.  

She had hoped to get a job in Colorado, she said.  Then she messaged to say she had an interview with a Colorado news organization and would use this story in her interview.  She was very disappointed she did not get the job.  BUT, she was offered a job in a neighboring state, and will wait to get settled in "out west", and at the new job, and then suggest it as an idea for her to work there.  It would likely be June, she said.  

As I write this and close with "All for now", it is 18 April 2022.  All for now.  

Chapter 6 End