Ben Is Dead, All For Wine
Click
Here to Add Comment Subject:
Ben Is Dead, All For Wine
Date:
Mon, 5 Aug 2002 15:21:58 -400
From:
Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of California, Department of Pesticide
Regulation
cc: Christine Whitman whitman.christine@epa.gov
Dear Mr. Helliker, Mitchel Cohen <mitchelcohen@mindspring.com> sent this to me.
Subject: Ben is dead, all for wine
Ingi's, Andy's and my dear friend, Ben, our old neighbor in Schellville (the Carneros), in Wine Country, died a few weeks ago. Ben was not only a lovely, decent human being but an artist who could no longer sculpt or teach much, hit so hard by the pesticides as well as a bird sound generator with oscillating sound waves and the propane cannon and the gun shots our nearest neighbor grower employed in his hellish pursuit of the gold-plated grape. Ben and his wife finally moved, as we did, and as three other families did, with a fourth considering doing the same, and another whom Ben believed put their house up for sale facing the husband's lung cancer. Either 3 or 4 others on their street had already died of cancers over a couple years' time, while 2 others and one on our street lived with cancers. All those who moved or were considering had been there long before this guy and others started growing grapes, and all had been there well over a decade, some over 30 years. Ingi and Andy and I are the only ones who'd been there less than a decade. I am personally devastated as Ben and I were a great mutual support system, and he was wonderful to my kids, as was his wife. The two of us did a lot of neighborhood organizing and marvelled at how people so sick, even those who knew it was the pesticides and the sound generators, still had to be prodded to talk about their illnesses. It took us a couple years to be able to paint the horrifying profile of just our end of the neighborhood and I went on to gather more information over time about the rest of the 2-block square neighborhood and later created an informal health survey which we used county-wide in Sonoma and especially around the Sonoma Valley to paint a picture of cancer clusters as well as other health problem clusters. Now Ben's wife, though she never wanted to go back there again after all their health problems and after having to give up their simple dream of living in the country raising their animals, doing their work in the arts and growing food for themselves, feels compelled to go back to look more closely at what is going on there, now a few years after they tried to escape that toxic hellhole which followed them and took Ben's life. And I want to support her any way I can.
I want to learn more in detail about these sound machines and the exact neurologic effects of what he referred to as oscillating sound waves. He talked about them jamming the nervous system. I know that we were all always on edge because of the variety of assaults by Dale Ricci on us. Imagine a propane cannon blasting sometimes every minute, sometimes every five minutes, sometimes every twenty minutes, often 16 hours per day. And Dale out shooting helter skelter at birds and, I had been told, over some people's houses. Then there was that artificial tweeting as well as the tractor spraying and his cropduster's cropdusting as well. The sound of Nelson Harding diving down to dump poisons would leave my heart racing. Often, this is what woke me at 5:30, even before the rooster was up crowing, and my heart wouldn't slow down for half an hour or more. Worried sick for my kids whose father continues to bring them there 3 weekends a month and who return throwing up, with fevers, with rashes and one with serious behavioral and attention problems, and sick with sadness for my friend who faces going back to the place which was the cause of agony for us all and which, ultimately, killed Ben, I would ask you to forward this message to the EHN list and ask people with specific information on the bird sound machine effects to please email me or send me information.
Thanks, Maxina Ventura
2399 East 14th St. #24
San Leandro, CA 94577
beneficialbug@netzero.net
If you would like to be included in our mailing list for continuing information on pesticides, please email us at list@safe2use.com.