Lemming Tracks: The Donora Death Fog and the Good Old Days

"Oct. 26, 1948: Death Cloud Envelops Pennsylvania Mill Town"
This Day in Tech, Wired (October 26, 2010)

"1948: An inversion layer settles over the rust belt town of Donora, Pennsylvania, trapping industrial pollution in the atmosphere. When it clears six days later, 20 people are dead, another 50 are dying and hundreds will live out their days with permanently damaged lungs.

"Inversion occurs when the air near the ground is cooler than the air above it, a reversal of normal atmospheric conditions. When that happens, manmade pollutants are trapped, resulting in smog. The physical conditions around Los Angeles, for example, lead to frequent inversion layers over the basin. That, combined with heavy automobile pollution, consistently gives L.A. the worst air quality in the country.

"But L.A. has never seen anything quite like that one week in Pennsylvania, in what became known as the Donora air inversion or, more dramatically, the 'Donora Death Fog.'..."

The town is about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. During the night of October 26, 1948, pollutants from steel smelting plants and a zinc works got stuck under a temperature inversion there.

"...The companies connived with the U.S. Public Health Service to cover up the facts of the incident and succeeded in doing so for half a century. Whistle-blowers were silenced; records disappeared. It wasn't until 1994 that a full accounting of what happened in Donora was finally published...."

The Good Old Days and the Lemming

A good memory is one of the better defenses against pathological nostalgia, in the Lemming's opinion. It's okay to remember days of October's bright blue weather: but prudent, I think, to remember what didn't go so well, too.

Like the Donora Death Fog.

The Lemming isn't surprised that the cover-up happened in the 1940s. That wasn't a particularly bright patch in America's history, in several ways. Doctor John Cutler was making medical history in Guatemala, in cahoots with the Public Health Service. (Another War-on-Terror Blog (October 2, 2010)) The Tuskegee experiments - but those started in 1932 and continued until 1972. (Another War-on-Terror Blog (June 17, 2008))

Of course, those were scientific medical experiments on natives and other unimportant people - not like the little oopsie in Donora. The point is that the Public Health Service had a quite - convenient - sense of ethics.

You'd think that using words like "medical" and "scientific" wouldn't work so well as excuses for hurting and killing people these days - but I've discussed that in another blog (A Catholic Citizen in America (August 30, 2010))

Welcome to the Information Age

Between cell phones, blogs, and other threats to the power of old-school information gatekeepers, the Lemming doubts that something like the Donora Death Fog could be kept quiet for quite so long today. A few hours, maybe: not decades.

No, the Lemming doesn't miss 'the good old days.'

Not that the current era is particularly perfect.

Given changes in the establishment since the sixties, it's not likely that Big Oil, or any industrial outfit, would be given the benefit of the doubt in a "Donora" situation. Pollution seems to have replaced Communism as a major subject of fear - reasonable and otherwise - for America's leadership.

Humanity's talent for ethical lapses remains undimmed, though: and that's another topic.

Related posts, touching on health, ethics, and government:

• " 'I was Dead, But I'm Better Now' "
  (October 21, 2010)
• "Guatemala, Dr. John Cutler, Tuskegee, Nürnberg, and Learning"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (October 2, 2010)
• "Is it Wrong to Kill One Person on the Chance that Someone Else Might Benefit?"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (August 30, 2010)
• "They Saved Einstein's Brain"
  (June 2, 2010)
• "Mice Feel Pain (We knew That) - And Show it Like We do ('No One' Knew That)"
  (May 11, 2010)

Red River Valley of the North Flooding: Nostalgia?!

"Red River Flooding Brings Nostalgia"
Kasey-Dee Gardner, via Discovery News (March 18, 2010)

"Almost every spring, cities along the Red River in North Dakota and Minnesota battle fast-rising waters as the winter snow melts into the north-flowing Red River. This year is no different, and in fact, it may be worse than most. This Sunday, the Red River is expected to crest in Fargo at 38 feet. I know this is keeping locals working feverishly, filling and laying over a million sandbags as a last line of defense against the rising waters.

"It's been four flood seasons since I lived in North Dakota and every year when news breaks of the rising river, I get nostalgic for my old home. I lived in Grand Forks during their last major flood in 2006 where the water crested at a stage height of almost 48 feet (usually measured form the bottom of the stream bed). Flood stage for the river is anything over 28 feet. My apartment was only about 100 feet from the infamous river. Across the street from my apartment was a huge cement memorial dedicated to historic flood levels. It's a statue riddled with high-water marks.

"Grand Forks is no stranger to floods. In 1997, the city experienced one of the worst floods in the history of the United States. The Red River crested at 54 feet and spurred the evacuation of over 50,000 residents. Paradoxically, the flood triggered a massive fire in downtown Grand Forks, engulfing the city center. The entire downtown section was destroyed. When I moved to Grand Forks to work as a local news reporter, almost 10 years after this disaster, the city was still rebuilding from the destruction...."

The title didn't sound so crazy after I'd read the article.

It's a good human-interest piece, and gives more background than some more 'serious' articles do, on what happens when the river in some of the flattest land on Earth floods.

You might get the impression that it's nothing but floods in the Red River Valley of the North. I grew up there, and so can report that we also have blizzards, hail, and tornadoes. Boring, the weather isn't: not up there, or here in central Minnesota where I live now.

Related posts:

• "Snowmobiles, Safety, and a North Dakota Levee"
  (January 6, 2010)
• "Minnesota: As a Tourist Destination, it Could be Worse"
  (September 20, 2009)
• "Red River Valley of the North Flood, 2009"
  (April 20, 2009)
  • A moderately massive link page to more related posts

"White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" - Jefferson Airplane on the Smothers Brothers

"Somebody To Love/White Rabbit Jefferson Airplane"

foghatrules, YouTube (February 1, 2007)
video 6:35

"Jefferson Airplane performing live BOTH WHITE RABBIT AND SOMEBODY TO LOVE on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour!..."

The video includes introductions by each of the Smothers brothers.

This video was a treat for me, since the sound and picture quality are about as good as they were back in the sixties - and this video was a nostalgic trip back to my younger days.

The reference to eating / smoking bananas brings up the drug culture of that era. At the time, I enjoyed psychedelic art and music. I still do.

I've described the period to my kids as 'great music, great art, daft ideas.' As Jimi Hendrix discovered, adding chemicals to the mix that's already in your brain isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Those were exciting, crazy, times: and I'm glad I survived.

For the record, I didn't smoke bananas - the way my brain works, all I have to do is let up on the brakes a little.

As to why I still enjoy and appreciate art and music from that period: It was a wonderful experiment, intended to expand human understanding.

A great many talented people fried their brains in the process of bringing us those images and sounds. Many of them died. I think ignoring what they accomplished would impoverish our culture, and add to the loss we all suffered.

I also sincerely hope that the next outpouring of creativity can happen without the loss of so many minds and lives.

Playgrouds: Yesterday and Today

"Playground Fun" Retrojunk - Your Memory Machine (undated, probably early 2008)

Metal to plastic, sand to woodchips: This is a pretty good look at how playgrounds have changed. Photos, personal reflections.

Remember When a Computer Filled a Room?

"Top 10 Technology Nostalgia" - from "Rooms Sized Computers" to "Tiger Handheld Games."

Comments from 1955: Those were the Days

"Comments made in the year 1955:"

It starts with "I'll tell you one thing, if things keep going the way they are, it's going to be impossible to buy a week's groceries for $20."

I think my favorite is "I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now."

The author has some pretty good period pictures, too.

Fast Food, Bovine-to-Feline Style

This photograph of a cow, a farmer, and two very interested cats, reminds me of my father's descriptions of life when he was young. Like these cats, he has enjoyed milk still warm from the cow.