A Conversation with Absinthia, Part 8

A female demonstrator offers a flower to military police, October 21, 1967.
This is part of a continuing series of email letters exchanged with my Swedish friend, Absinthia. To see the whole series, start with Do the Right Thing.

Hello,

I think that the Chernobyl incident might have been a very loud kind of alarm clock for many in my age. The “green movement,” a.k.a. “progs” (you might call them a Swedish version of hippies with a strong eco-/political agenda), had more or less gone silent, and then BOOM--suddenly the eco-questions were a hot item again, something everybody had an opinion about.

Around here we have to relate to these questions--it is really a matter of everything we do, every day. For example, do we live in a radon-radiating house or not?! If we do, we have to act, or we will get low radiation illness. That is a fact of life for us. The radon really was a very small issue earlier, but now we have to count every bit of radiation very carefully, making both radon and background radiation into very big and important issues.

This has made me think, of course. I made very careful choices when we started looking for where to live our life. I looked for an old-fashioned house with only old-fashioned materials in it--materials that have been thoroughly researched for centuries, materials we are accustomed to and know how to handle safely. I had Gandhi’s theories in the back of my mind. “Choose local materials, they fit the local weather and the local way of life.”

So we chose a very old house, and we have made very few changes to it and only with “safe” traditional materials. And it seems Mr. Gandhi was right in this issue, too. So far we have had very low figures on every radon measuring!

Since there are so few ways we are able to avoid or reduce radiation, I think it is important for us to do everything we are able to do. Reduce what we can, so our bodies have a chance to help us stand up against that which we cannot avoid.

- Absinthia

This is the end of "A Conversation with Absinthia." In future posts, Absinthia and I will discuss ways to live a simpler, more traditional life, now posted starting here.

A Conversation with Absinthia, Part 7

photo by Leonard J. DeFrancisci
This is part of a continuing series of email letters exchanged with my Swedish friend, Absinthia. To see the whole series, start with Do the Right Thing.

Hello,

I am so happy to have a husband that very much agrees with me about living simply. The only thing he refuses to do, is get a real outhouse toilet. I grew up with one, so it seems natural for me, but he grew up in a city, with city-folks for parents.

It is very easy for me to just avoid certain things, like buying everything I see, going for trends and fashions, or believing I need a lot of stuff, and thinking that I need a lot of money to be happy.

We have chosen to not accept that way of life. We cannot work full time because of health issues, so we have to live on less money than what is considered the lowest income level in Sweden today. And yet we have a more stable financial situation than most of our neighbours. Funny, that. ;-)

We put our local library to full use, and by doing so we get to read all the books we want, see all the movies we want, play all the games we want, and visit a lot of exhibitions, presentations and talks, for free! :-)

We are to be considered poor with such a low income, but we live a much richer life than we did when we where still doing that “normal lifestyle.” I am so happy we turned off that road.

We have not made all the choices freely, though. Neither I nor my husband is in full health. We are not able to work full time--our health does not allow such luxury. But this made us think about what is a good life, what do we really cherish? What do we really want? What do we really need?

Maybe we would have made these choices later if our health hadn´t demanded that we take these steps, but I am sure we would have made them one day. We both think too much to not have come to these conclusions eventually.

- Absinthia


Dear Absinthia,

I have an example of what happens when you don’t have a compelling reason to make a needed change...

When I was in my 20s, I worked in a lab at a university. The lab had a radioactive experiment that had been run, and it was sitting idle, to let the low-level radiation half-life out. The radiation was so weak, that a piece of paper would stop it, and it was contained in a glassed-in ventilated chamber.

For the year and a half that I officed in the lab, I was unable to get pregnant, and the physicist who also worked in the lab had trouble with his wife carrying any pregnancies to term--probably because the ventilator fan had been turned off, and the air exchange was with the room’s air.

Years later, I realized that the low-level radiation, which the physicist and I were exposed to for 8 hours a day was probably causing the problem. How could I have been so blind to that?

I guess we often only see what we want to see, or what others like my boss and the nuclear industry want us to see.

- amanda


Hi,

It proves once again, that nuclear power is not worth the price it takes from us. There are so many other ways to heat our houses and light our lamps, we don´t need this risky experimenting with our lives, our bodies, our future, and our world.

- Absinthia

This conversation is continued here:
A Conversation with Absinthia, Part 8.

A Conversation with Absinthia, Part 4

(map from "Radiation from Chernobyl," (2007). In UNEP/GRID-Arendal Maps and Graphics Library.)
This is part of a continuing series of email letters exchanged with my Swedish friend, Absinthia. To see the whole series, start with Do the Right Thing.

Hi,

I saw posters today about a memorial, it is now 25 years since the Chernobyl acid rain. That poster and this conversation with you has activated a lot of memories I had totally forgotten, or maybe repressed, who knows really?

I remember now that for many years after Chernobyl, the news was full of information about how the native sami reindeer keepers had to slaughter their reindeer because of the acute radioactivity levels in the reindeer meat. They were unable to sell the meat and had to destroy it by digging it down in special pits. I thought so much about that. Their prime source of money is to sell the reindeer meat. Without that, where on earth would they get the money for everyday life? If they could not sell the meat, they would not get any money to buy any food, so... maybe they had to choose between starvation or eating that meat themsleves!? If the meat was too radioactive to eat, what happened when it was dug down, with the earth and the animals in the earth? I have no idea how many years that handling with the reindeer meat went on, maybe it still is going on.

I remember that for some years after the acid rain there was information in newspapers and other media about special places where you should go and have fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, and other food items that had been hunted/harvested in our area examined about whether it had too high levels of radioactivity to be allowed as food. This scared me so much! It was for a long while that I almost got eating disorders because I was afraid of possible radioactivity in the food.

After some years you learn to live with that low murmer of fear, but it never really dies down completely, at least it hasn't for me. I have learned to live with it, but that is not the same thing as accepting it, I think.

- Absinthia

You can find more details on the Sami people and their experience with Chernobyl here:
"Effects of the Chernobyl Disaster on Sami Life," by Melanie Blackwell


Dear Absinthia,

Living in fear is not a way to live. I think most of the politicians and the corporate powers in this world don’t care if we live in fear. Maybe they use it to manipulate us.

Either way, we have to do what we can to solve the problems that give us a fearful existence, and when we have done our best, then LIVE FEARLESSLY.

Who knows what tomorrow holds? We must find a way to be happy, moment-to-moment. That comes from doing our best to make things right, and appreciating this life for all the wonderful things it gives us. Appreciation is the antidote to fear, I believe.

-amanda

This conversation is continued here:
A Conversation with Absinthia, Part 5.