Since my wife is from Victoria BC, I have been mildly interested in watching the progress of the Seattle Seahawks.  Despite video clips sent to me by my biographer, Delinda McCann, I don’t completely understand the game Americans call football.  We do not play it here.  We play real football, which I understand is called Soccer in the US.  Figures.

The comments of the Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson about teamwork being important in winning a game resonated with me.  I remember my own football coach yelling, “Pass the ball.  The whole team plays.”  Game after game he yelled at us, and we learned to play for the whole team. This is why I think my team won our national tournament.

I remember the day I got the concept of how to play football.  I’d learned the game from my cousins who were older than me.  They coached me and helped me look good on our makeshift field.  I must have been twelve, maybe thirteen, when my school coach yelled at us to “Pass the ball.” The thought struck home.  “I need to play like my cousins taught me and make the weaker players look good.  The team is like a family.”  I understood the meaning of family and helping the whole family to prosper

Now, in my country families do not live all over the country as they do in some more modern countries.  Most of us live with our grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins in one large compound.   Both of my grandparents had been killed in purges, so my parents chose to make their own family, however, I did live at The Cove, mama’s ancestral home for a number of years and for many years helped my family sell their fish and shellfish in the city where we lived.  We saw members of the family every week.

I look at cultures where many generations do not live together and I think, “How lonely.”  I think much of my loneliness has come from being separated from my cousins.

Celia tells me a different story about families living together.  Certainly, she could not have lived long with her parents or her younger brother.  They seemed to delight in hurting this brilliant creative woman.  Why?  My answer is that they were not team players.  They never learned the art of making someone look good.   Despite being family they puffed themselves up by putting a member of the family down.  I would not believe this had I not witnessed this myself.  I cannot understand what they are thinking. 

I have heard stories since I was a small boy of large families where the older aunties are cruel to the younger wives and attempt to rule over the younger families.  I heard those stories among the workers who had fled their family homes to escape the cruelty of harsh uncles or parents.  In this case, the refusal of the older generation to work together as a team, building each other up has caused the family to fly into separate pieces.  They chose pride and power over stability, wealth and happiness.

In order for families, communities and institutions to prosper they must learn to work together building each other up as a winning team.  Teasing, name calling and attempting to control other members of the family will tear the family apart. Parents who allow such behavior will find themselves when they are old wondering why their children never visit.  How much better it is to have your grandchildren and cousins about you, than to sit alone by the silent phone.  

Currently, I have my seed catalogs spread around me for the annual purchasing of seeds.  Really this ought to be some sort of gardener’s religious ceremony done to bring the sun back from wherever it hides in January.  I try to buy good quality seeds that will grow in my climate…well…whatever my climate will be this year is a bit of a crapshoot, but I try.

In addition to having no idea how many heat units I might be able to expect or if it will rain in May, I have another major challenge in my gardening.  My property is located within the plume of a copper smelter that operated on the Tacoma/Ruston waterfront for almost one hundred years.  My soil is contaminated with arsenic and lead, so I had the ASARCO Clean-Up Team do soil sampling to get a data-based idea of what is happening in my gardens. We found some interesting results.

I have been removing topsoil to rid my garden of the toxins so my counts, while high, did not qualify for remediation.  The researchers told me to continue to raise all food crops in raised beds and if digging dry native soil to wear a face mask.

So, what happens when soil is toxic?  Does the arsenic or lead go away?  No. My soil still tested high despite my efforts to dilute the toxin and get rid of toxic topsoil.  I’ve been doing the same things that would be done in remediation, but my soil is still contaminated.  By contrast, my imported soil is fine, and I have no trouble growing whatever I want in it.  The problem is that importing clean topsoil is expensive, so I get only a couple loads every year.

One question I asked the researchers taking my soil samples was, “Can I make compost out of the weed clippings from contaminated soil?”  The researchers took soil samples from where I had composted some weeds.  The compost tests turned out to have the highest toxin rating of any spot on my property.  Apparently, the weeds do pick up the toxins from the soil and concentrate them when made into compost. 

I wonder how many years it will take for the weeds to pull all the toxins out of the soil.  I’ve been gardening here for fourteen years and my soil is still too toxic to work without a facemask.  Fourteen years is not long enough for common plants to pull the toxins out of the soil.  Of course if the weeds stay in place they do no good at all.  Perhaps mushrooms would pull the toxins out faster, but then, one must pick the mushrooms and dispose of them at a toxic waste facility.  Plants that are particularly good at removing toxins would also have to be disposed of in a toxic waste facility if you can find one that takes organic matter.  For now, I will continue to dispose of my toxic weeds in the wooded areas of my property where I don’t garden.

So, in my yard, material grown in-ground is spread under the trees, and I make a compost pile of organic matter that is grown in clean soil.  Thus, when out working in the garden we sort weeds from raised beds into one garden cart while weeds and cuttings from another bed go into another cart.  It is more trouble than it sounds.

My experience causes me to ask questions about our food supply and agri-business.  I garden on less than an acre.  I have been pulling toxins out of my soil for fourteen years, and it is still too toxic to produce edible crops.  Now, multiply this problem by a thousand.  What will happen with the thousand-acre farm that has been dumping glyphosate (Roundup) on the ground for forty years? The longer the toxins are dumped on the soil, the more concentrated they will become.  Like my arsenic, glyphosate isn’t going away by itself, and food crops will pick it up.  It is a problem because it causes birth defects and has been linked to autism.  How on earth will those who follow our foolish agribiz-farmers ever clean up this mess?  How will people eat when our whole Midwest is reduced to a few farms or growing in raised beds?

I spent Monday with a sick grandchild.  She’s not really a child but she is sick.  She needs to have surgery on Wednesday and is anxious about the experience so I entertained her for the day.  She hasn’t been able to eat without pain for about six weeks now.  What is going on with her?  She’s too young for the level of trouble she has.  Is it nature, her genetics? Or are her troubles caused by nurture, her environment?

I am allergic to eggs.  When I was in school, I was the only child out of about a hundred kids who couldn’t eat a particular food.  Everybody thought it strange, that eggs made me so sick.  I have no idea how many times I heard someone say, “I’ve never heard of food making someone sick.”  Some people called me a picky eater because I wouldn’t eat eggs.  Those who knew I didn’t eat cookies or cake were compassionate over this strange phenomenon.

With my history, I was amused this fall when I heard a comic song about all the foods the guests at a Thanksgiving dinner couldn’t eat.  I occasionally see a cartoon with Jesus and the basket of loaves and fish.  The crowd is saying, “Is it gluten free?”  “I can’t eat fish.”  Food intolerances have become mainstream when the comics are finding them fodder for humor.

In short, something has changed since I was the odd little girl who wouldn’t eat the cake at birthday parties.  Preparing dinner for ten people is a dance around the eight most common food allergens.  What changed?  Did people suddenly wake up to the fact that some foods make them sick or has the nature of food changed? 

My history leads me to suspect that the nature of food changed.  My parents used to plant a garden every year.  The happiest time was when we could go to the garden select our own ear of corn and mom would boil it for our dinner.  It tasted so good.  Then, something changed.  My in-laws planted a shrunken gene corn that stayed sweet longer after being picked than did our good old Golden Bantam.  I started to itch.  I lived in the Yakima valley and started getting asthma when we drove past cornfields.  Had I changed and added a new allergy?  Had the corn changed?  I can still be near the heirloom cornfields and handle the heirlooms, so I suspect that the corn has changed.  Somehow messing directly with the genetics of corn has made it more reactive to sensitive people.  To make matters worse with the corn problem, they put high fructose corn sweetener in everything, and yes, it makes me itch.

Still, we have those who insist that the changes to food, especially corn are harmless, and the things they spray on food are harmless.  Are they?  Why are so many people complaining about allergies?  Why do so many people insist they can’t eat this or that?  It is embarrassing to have to refuse food prepared by a loving hostess.  Are more people into the joys of self-humiliation caused by saying,  “Oh that looks lovely, but I’m allergic to…”  After a lifetime of being embarrassed, I can’t see any joy in having allergies. 

So, scientifically, we know that food has changed and the chemicals used to grow food have changed, and more people are obese and have learning problems and allergies and autism.  Is it our food that is making us sick?  Many think so. However, proving causation in humans is scientifically a very long and complicated process.  It just isn’t ethical to poison people to see if they get sick.  Thus we have many scientists saying there is no evidence that the changes in food and how it is grown is causing any problems for consumers.  Of course there is no scientific evidence.  It is unethical to do the necessary experiments, so we wait until tens of millions of people are as sick as my granddaughter before we can scientifically say, “Changes in food chemistry are causing illness.” 

Beware.

We all heard the soft puff of sound over the beautiful strains of a Straus waltz.  We watched as the second violinist clapped her hand to her throat and fell out of her chair.  Since the musicians were working on a particularly vigorous movement, many assumed that the musician was being comic when she fell from her chair.

Being somewhat familiar with seizures, I recognized the signs and shook Danny by the arm, “Call the medics!” 

As I raced down the elegant glass staircase toward the stricken violinist, the other second violinist stuttered to a halt in his playing and turned to stare at the empty chair beside him.  The cellist hadn’t looked up from her music and still vigorously sawed away keeping the tempo.  The first violin stumbled in her playing, glared at the only upright second violinist, caught the tempo and continued to play, occasionally casting glances at her fallen companion.  The watching crowd still seemed to think this byplay was a comic addition to the performance and tittered.

I dropped to my knees beside the young woman and pushed her disheveled collar aside to search for a pulse.  I felt myself shudder when I found a small needle firmly imbedded in the woman’s neck.  I tried to find a pulse without touching the thing I took to be a dart of some sort. 

An elderly woman knelt on the other side of our fallen musician.  She gasped and moaned as she reached toward the dart.

“No.”  I shook my head as I positioned myself and made the first compression to begin CPR.

My new assistant nodded then gently positioned the head and prepared to begin forcing her breath into the unconscious woman.  Before we had time to administer more than a few compressions and breaths, the medics arrived with their machines and IV’s.

The old woman and I were not needed.  I wanted to find Danny, but the old woman clung to me.  Her claw-like fingers dug into my clothing.  “Please, you saw.  Please listen to me.”

I looked around me.  The musicians had put away their instruments and prepared to follow their colleague.  The crowd stretched their necks, straining to see the medics and woman on the gurney with her tubes and wires.  I nodded and stepped close to a pillar where a potted palm hid us from view.  Nobody would look at us with the interesting activity on the gurney to distract them.

The old woman whispered, “Someone else must know.  That dart was meant for me.”

I looked down, surprised at the tiny woman clutching my arm. 

She whispered in a heavy accent, “I am specialist in international relations.  I make my way to Israel.  My security find sabotage on my plane.  I try to travel in secret, hidden among the crowd.  Someone followed me.  Perhaps I have traitor among my staff.”

“Why would they try to kill you?”

“They do not want peace.  They profit from war.”

I nodded. “Did you see who did this thing?”

“No, I saw people in the right place.  The crowds that protect and hide me also hide a killer.”

Before I could learn more, the ship’s marshals surrounded us.  An officer in a white jacket almost whispered, “Say nothing.  Come with us.”

As the marshals led us away, I noted that they deftly separated me from the older woman.

We took an elevator that only staff could unlock down into the bowels of the ship.  Once we left the elevator, the officer beside me directed me to watch my step.  I looked down at the vinyl flooring.  When I looked up again, the party with the little old woman had disappeared.

I spent the next hour explaining that I’d been standing to listen to the music on deck seven by the stairs.  I did not see anybody fire anything, but heard a sound.  We went over several times why I thought the musician was having a seizure, and why I thought the thing in her neck was a dart. Privately, I seriously questioned whether I’d heard the old woman correctly, so I didn’t mention what she told me.

Danny was waiting for me when I returned to my room.  He wanted to  hear the whole story of the dart, and the marshals, and being questioned.

Danny held me in his arms and updated me on what he heard. “The rumor among the passengers is that she had a seizure and was airlifted to a hospital on the mainland.

“I wonder if they can keep her heart beating long enough for her to get help.  You know, that dart must have been poisoned to act so fast.  I saw only a tiny drop of blood.”

“Hush my love, it is probably safest to not talk about it if you think it was some sort of assault.  However, it is more likely that the girl has a history of seizures and has a medication she injects if she thinks she might have one.  This time she probably didn’t get her meds quick enough and ended up stabbing herself in the neck.”

I raised my eyebrows, “That didn’t look like a hypodermic to me.”

“They have all sorts of new ways of administering meds now-days.”

I asked, “What do you think?  Is that old woman some important negotiator?”

Danny shook his head.  “I don’t see why she would be on a cruise ship.  She’s probably senile and made up a story for something tragic that happened near her.”

Two marshals questioned me briefly the following morning.  Again, I didn’t mention what the old woman told me because I couldn’t believe an important negotiator would end up on a cruise ship.   

When I met Danny in the coffee bar, I told him about the interview, “What do you think?  Was I right to not mention what the woman said?  Even if she was telling the truth, she should be the one to inform the marshals if she is in danger.”

Danny kissed my ear.  “Of course darling.  I still don’t think such a person would be in a place like this, but if she was telling the truth, she should inform them herself.  I still believe she was making it up.”

I bit my lip.  “I don’t know, but she sounded so earnest.”

“She probably believed it herself.”

Danny seemed so certain, I decided I was being fanciful to even consider that the woman was telling me the truth.

I didn’t see the marshals or the old woman again until we were one day out of Istanbul.  A female marshal, Cheree called me at five-ten in the morning and asked me to meet her near the central elevators. 

By the time I hung up the phone, Danny had started pulling on his pants.  “I’m going with you.  This is our vacation.  You’ve told them what you know.  They should leave you alone.”

“Do you think it’s possible the old woman was telling me the truth or was she simply paranoid.”

“Why would anybody choose a cruise ship to get to an important meeting, and what can you do about it if she is?”

I shrugged and headed toward the central elevators.

Cheree looked at Danny and asked if we were together.  I nodded, and Danny put his hand in the middle of my back.

“Good.  Will both of you come with me then.”

This time, I followed Cheree to the doctor’s office.  Once seated in a small office, an older marshal came in, sat at the desk and asked me, “How well did you know the woman you were with at the time of the incident?”

I blinked my surprise at this question.  “I didn’t know her at all.  I thought the violinist’s heart was not beating.  I began chest compressions.  I hardly noticed the woman who started the breathing.  She stood by me while the patient was taken away.”

Cheree asked, “Would you recognize the woman who helped you if you saw her again?”

I nodded, “I haven’t seen her in the halls or at dinner though.”

Cheree began to stand up.  “Would you come with me?”

The older man led Cheree, Danny, and me down a plain corridor and opened the door to a chilly interior room.  When he turned on the lights, I saw a figure covered in a sheet on a gurney.   

The marshal walked briskly to the side of the gurney and pulled back the sheet.  “Is this the woman who tried to help you resuscitate the violinist?”

I looked at the tiny old woman on the gurney and nodded. I saw something that I took to be a bone protruding under the skin in her broken neck.  At that moment, I felt too much shock to respond to anything other than violent the death of someone I’d talked to.  Finally, as Danny led me back to my room, I began to believe she had told me the truth.  I thought, “Someone does not want peace in the middle east, because they profit from war.”

For days after we returned home, I wondered how I could tell others what I knew.  Finally, I just decided that all I could do was tell the truth to the best of my ability, and so I have.