December

IMG_3277.JPGAlmost winter. The fruit trees in our yard are bare. The chickens are molting and laying no eggs. I’m revising.

I got my manuscript back from editor Leonard Tourney. Not only an editor and literature professor but also a thriller novelist himself, he gave me some breakthrough insights. Pacing. No info dumping. So, what to do with all the science and history and real life information about education in the trenches? Cut, Cut,  Bloody cut.

I’ve changed the title of my novel to Fruit of the Devil. I’ll put some of the science and information about methyl bromide, pesticides, and politics here in this blog. Maybe someone will be interested. Maybe, as friends have suggested, I can have an appendix in the back of the novel. Or send sections that have been cut for being too dry to some magazine or other.

The most important information, to me, is the list of pesticides used by the three growers whose fields surrounded the school where I taught in Watsonville, California. A young colleague and I went to the agricultural commissioner’s office and requested copies of the pesticide use permits, and then we wrote challenges to the permits. We used as a template a permit challenge from another community provided to us by Pesticide Action Network activists.

There were 13 different acutely toxic chemicals being used in proximity to that elementary school, and we documented the “above allowable limits” drift into the school. No studies have been done on the synergistic effects of mixing all those chemicals, but it is safe to assume that the synergistic effects make the toxic brew off the charts. I want to put the chapters that I’m cutting (because they are too “technical”) here, on this blog. I wish someone would read about this and take an interest. It’s really pretty important. Anybody interested?

 

 

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