Last night, after seven years of relative anonymity, my blog was finally read.
I mean, really read.
Some 89 of the over 850 pieces were selected from the anthology, appearing by name in the stats.
As I clicked through each of them for a re-read as author, silently noting each among my best I had to acknowledge that, whomever the equally silent visitor, he or she had chosen the printable list. You know. The stuff worth publishing.
I’d begun defiantly enough. Other would-be authors, with the gene for driving forward, would seek agents and press on until their own work reached the shelves of the best book stores. I would not be among them. Taking the path of quasi-humility, I would merely write; if my work were worthy, somebody would eventually just find it. Ah, the naivete of insularity.
Predictably, years passed. Nine, if one counted these past couple months. Ideas kept erupting. My fingers kept grasping them, preciously carrying every one to the keyboard to reach fulfillment. I’d remain there, editing endlessly, until each was set to “publish”, that rather pathetic facsimile provided by the hosting site for the far more powerful reality.
Friends would pass by, for the occasional visit. Even fewer among them would find reason to compliment the efforts. Then, the stats began. Soon, they declared regions and nations well beyond the United States. I counted them. Could it be? Had my one, anonymous blog really garnered a world wide readership?
I grew to believe, in my private heart, that I could write. Should it matter, therefore, if anybody actually paid hard-earned money for the privilege of a read?
Somebody finally told me, several years hence, that those visitors I fancied coming from every country on the planet were no more than web travelers choosing to appear incognito; one could sign in, citing any remote province on a given continent. My suspicions commenced.
By the time I realized that my work was likely being lifted, copied, pasted, parsed, reconstituted, translated……I’d passed the 500 mark. Five hundred plus finished essays, and poems. Who would care, anymore?
Last night, somebody did. Somebody hailing from “Poland.” I hope to God whomever this is will, at the very least, attach my name as author to each saved selection.
Everybody needs identity. We all deserve, okay desperately need, to believe we’ve made something of our puny lives. Perhaps you, my reader, will rise above mere plagiarism and be worthy of your own, as well.
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Copyright 2/19/23. Ruth Ann Scanzillo. Oh, what the hell.
The primary concern is unburned vinyl chloride. The uncontrolled, open-air fire is very highly unlikely to have burned even a majority of it: whilst it is flammable, like any other fire it requires oxygen, and there were no accelerants in the crash. The cars leaked for days before they were set on fire, and holes were made in the tankers: that is plenty of time for vast quantities to have seeped into the ground and surrounding water, which has been confirmed thus far to have contaminated the Ohio River, and will very likely be confirmed to have entered the Mississippi. The intense heat and lack of oxygen at ground zero means that the majority of the vinyl chloride, which boils at 8°F, is highly likely to have been lofted into the air unburned, and is currently being rained down again everywhere from Canada to NY to Kentucky.
It’s Not Just The Wind
The fact that acid rain has been reported as far north as Ontario, and as far south as Kentucky, constitutes something of a confirmation of another worst-case scenario: the chemical, which was leached into soil, rivers and groundwater, is evaporating and raining down again, far outside the area which could have possibly been reached by the winds, which are blowing east-northeast. Vinyl chloride takes months to denature when dissolved into water or leached into soil.
The Ohio and Mississippi River basins permeate most of the eastern side of the country. There is a smaller area covered by the Tennessee River basin around Georgia; while the contaminated water may or may not directly reach those areas, the prevailing winds are still likely to push the chemical to the east, even that far south. Southern FL might be lucky enough to escape the devastation, but I would not be waiting around to see.
Vinyl chloride is toxic in extremely tiny amounts. Specifically, the metabolite chloroethylene oxide binds to guanine in our DNA, completely and thoroughly destroying any affected DNA. It only takes the tiniest of exposures to be practically guaranteed severe cancers, particularly sarcoma of the liver, which is where that most toxic metabolite is first produced. Untold quantities of dioxin have also been produced: if vinyl chloride is the silver medalist of carcinogenicity, dioxin is the gold, and it is far more persistent in the environment than even the vinyl chloride.
A gigantic bonfire of millions of gallons of vinyl chloride is the single worst chemical and environmental disaster imaginable. If the entirety of Lake Michigan had magically turned into VX gas – a rapidly lethal World War II nerve agent – it still wouldn’t be anywhere near this bad.
Furthermore, there is mounting, albeit strongly circumstantial evidence, that this may have been a deliberate attack after all.
Green water has been reported in East Palestine. Let’s review the chemicals released and produced by burning, and the colors they will turn water upon mixing:
Vinyl Chloride (VC): Colorless water (primary product) and colorless to light yellow water (combustion product – hydrogen chloride)
Ethylene Glycol Monobutyl Ether (EGMBE): Colorless water (primary product) and clear to pale yellow water (combustion product – acrolein)
Ethylhexyl Acrylate (EHAA): Colorless water (primary product) and clear, colorless to cloudy water (combustion product – formaldehyde)
Isobutylene (i-C4H8): Colorless water (primary product) and clear, colorless water (combustion product – formaldehyde)
Butyl Acrylates: Colorless water (primary product) and clear, colorless to cloudy water (combustion product – formaldehyde)
None of these products produce bright green water. How could bright green water possibly have been formed?
3082 is the label for nickel oxide. Fifteen tanker trucks labelled 3082 were seen heading to East Palestine on the 15th of February, and the next day, there was reporting on residents’ bright green tap water. Nickel oxide – up to 150,000 gallons of it, given the capacities of the tanker trucks – produces nickel chloride when it is mixed with vinyl chloride, at atmospheric temperature and pressure, which certainly does turn water green. Nickel chloride is also extremely toxic and carcinogenic, and dissolves in water much more readily than vinyl chloride: if that is indeed what took place, which is not yet confirmed, but seems likely, then it’s that much worse.
Why, for the love of God, would anybody mix fifteen tanker trucks of nickel oxide into the spill? It is not a fire suppressant or dry powder agent like sodium bicarbonate. It is used as a flame retardant in small amounts for plastic mixtures (of which vinyl chloride is a precursor, to PVC), but absolutely not for anything approaching this scale.
Poisoning half the country and destroying a majority of America’s farmland would be a great reason.
Netflix released a movie in December (“White Noise”), playing out precisely what’s taken place here, down to being filmed in the very same town, East Palestine, in which it occurred.
The CDC also “updated” the data on vinyl chloride in late January, before the crash, and after 17 years untouched.
The EPA has also been very obviously falsifying air and water tests, and let’s not forget the reporter that was arrested for trying to investigate.
The conspiracy theorists are 60-nil these days, so I think Hanlon’s Razor is inverted until further notice. There’s no coincidences anymore.
Also notable is Deagel’s 100 million population prediction. This is the first event that could conceivably reach that number in the allotted time, by 2025; with 250 million people east of the Mississippi River, and the untold devastation knocking on to affect the rest of the country, this could easily do that.
Always late to the party, her fancy had been caught a good decade after his own run up to stardom. Averted by poster boys, she’d decided – likely due to an inborn resistance to popularity trends – that anybody celebrated should be shunned.
The trigger appeared to be trauma. Back then, the loss of her mother so swiftly to aggressive, blindsiding brain cancer just over five weeks from diagnosis, the grief was two fold. This abrupt departure would predicate divorce, from a husband in absentia. Emotional abandonment rendered her isolate; she would cocoon, death and divorce birthing escape into creative fantasy. Enter the surrogate, larger than life, to appear as hero.
Braveheart was released, that summer. She sat in the theater, transfixed by fearless, brute strength and a warrior love for the ages. Then, out she went to find the VCR cassette set. Thereafter, endless return trips to the video store for every movie in Gibson’s repertoire, she couldn’t settle for idol worship. This was serious succour; the actor in all his characters, whether conqueror, lover, or martyr, had to supplant her every unmet need. Two years hence, she submitted a completed screenplay intended for his perusal to the Library of Congress.
In need of nothing, she’d been the last innocent of her generation. Well, almost. Preserving her honor in the name of “godliness”, a trait reserved for zealots and virgins, she’d sacrificed intellectual focus at the feet of chastity, squandering potential for a life among the most highly qualified creative academics for the sake of saintly character. This would require its own unique liberator. Appearing at the front door in Sex, Lies, and Videotape, James Spader rang that bell. His penchant for soft porn splayed across her imagination with such magnetic allure, she spent months draped over the davenport, arrested by agony.
Bradley Cooper embodied what had thereafter become her lifelong persuasion: love, and the addict. Hers, seemingly benign, sugar sweetened chocolate; his, any manner of substances, Cooper’s Jackson in A Star Is Born knocked her flat out, so stunned was she by recognition. Of all these figments, he’d come the closest to stepping right into the frame of her actual reality. Perusing his catalogue, however, proved truncating; other characters were less relatable, at times too ambitious or clamoring. In Cooper, she’d responded only to the tragic, already plenty of pathos unfolding every day in her world.
Likely the last, Timothee Chalamet emerged gradually. Bones hardly reaching full growth, yet a gaze so arresting, clear pools reflecting a depth almost daring descent. Add to that French mystique, unbound by any convention, and you had the perfect pseudo paramour for a woman of any age, certain or unnamed. He would, among them all, likely outlive her. In this, she found comfort.
Every generation had its zeitgeists, so said Edward Enninfel. She wasn’t about to bow to mere adoration. Hers was a trauma bond. What the realm of cinema provided was an alternate reality which spoke far more poignantly than its art form alone. Her roster of personal therapists had played their roles worthy of prestigious award; what she gleaned, these had offered freely.
Fixations predictably fade. Every catalogue ultimately closes. By whatever name the value of each, in the end, is priceless.
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Copyright 2/18/23 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose story it is and whose name appears above this line. No copying, lifting, screen grabbing, pilfering, parsing, or translating permitted. Sharing by blog link, exclusively, and that not via RSS feed. Thank you, personally, for representing professional integrity.
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