on second thought

On Sunday I learned that the siege isn't entirely over -- the other lady who had to leave town reports that at least it's much better, in that it won't actually kill her now. I'll be dragging my feet returning to town, but I'll get around to it sometime soon.

In other news, I sat in a hot bath for a while on Saturday, which is one way to detox by sweating, and by Sunday I had a rash on my back. Yesterday it spread to the front of my shoulder, and today I finally recognized it. It very strongly resembles the tiny rash I had on that same part of my shoulder in about the second week of the siege. I think detoxing Tucson's air quality problem is going to be a bit more uncomfortable than I expected.

Since that's not a lot of fun, have a picture from last summer's road trip:


Those of you who have seen Cars will recognize the Fabulous Hudson Hornet, which resides in real life at the Darlington Raceway Museum in South Carolina.

siege broken, probably, plus venting

Recently I learned from the helpful PDEQ guy that the base doesn't have an incinerator; it has something like six generators, for which it has permits, and if the fuels for those have changed, I'd be pretty surprised. It would have been nice if someone had told me this information before now, but, for reasons I'll get to in a minute, the base doesn't appear to have anything to do with anything anyway.

In extremely related news, I can't say definitively, but I expect the air quality problem is over. The woman who had been the squeakiest wheel about the whole thing has not been detecting it since about Monday, day 56. Those of us who have had to leave town will be trickling back carefully.

Very carefully, because squeaky wheel has been feeding us highly suspect information this whole time, and I fell for it off and on, and I'm pretty pissed at myself. I actually do believe that she's not reacting to whatever it was right now, so it's probably safe to come home. However, she has concluded that the base is the source and PDEQ was in cahoots with them based on the principle of whoever you screamed at most recently before the air cleared was responsible for the problem. Now I feel like a jerk for believing anything she said, and my current attitude could lead to a screaming phone call, and oh my God, I could be the next great polluter of Tucson.

siege day 56

Today I heard that the air quality problem in Tucson has been turned over to the solver of tough problems at PDEQ, and he's determined to get to the bottom of it. That would be easier than me getting to the bottom of it, and it'll probably take less time.

But until I get to talk to the man myself, we'll have to settle for some pictures of some wildflowers, so here you go:


Those were up at Russian Ridge Open Space Preserve (up on top of the peninsula) on Wednesday. On Friday I learned that poison oak makes green berries this time of year, which maybe I knew once but had certainly forgotten.


For good measure, here's a picture I kept meaning to share of a grey fox (I think was, anyway) in the most natural environment the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum could cook up. Apparently pink towels are natural enough.


This last one is what happens when there's a botany prof in the house, and one of the other profs needs some female ginkgo branches. Branches on the kitchen floor are par for the course around here -- when my husband brought me here, we were warned not to eat the poison mushrooms in the refrigerator that would be going off to school soon to be shown off to students.

And because I haven't announced anything will kill you for a long, long time, pesticides on food will give your kids ADHD, and the mushrooms in the refrigerator will kill you.

siege day 46

Today I learned that the reason we have some uneducated-sounding nutjobs in the Arizona legislature is because a few years back, Arizona leveled the playing field, financially, for candidates, so anyone who could raise 220 donations bigger than $5 could go for it. That apparently made it too easy for the uneducated-sounding nutjobs to look legit and make it into office.

In other news, Chevron's technical question guy was really, really helpful. He reminded me of the engineers I used to call in grad school, looking for some weird answer, and they'd happily chat your ear off. Apparently there are standards, and your gas has to fit into a very narrow window, contents-wise, so once you get it organized, it takes a lot of work to change it even a little bit. There are variations between batches, but it wouldn't be enough to cause a city-wide death cloud. This year's summer blend is the same as last year's, so we're good to go with blaming the Air Force base.

I got the FOIA request written, so hopefully in about a month (maybe less) we'll have actual evidence. But, it's the base. I just need them to understand what the problem is so they can tell me when they'll be done so I can come home.

siege day 45

Today I learned that President Nixon declared war on cancer, and this year is the first year the annual cancer report to the President said that we need to reduce environmental causes of cancer. They specifically mentioned things like formaldehyde and pesticides.

I need to call the EPA and see if they can do anything more than PDEQ and ADEQ about the stuff I can't pin down but is most likely from the base. Tomorrow I'll finish the FOIA request, but I don't expect gasoline companies to tell me anything, ever.

I appear to be working at a standard EI glacial pace on the FOIA request, but I walked 10 miles yesterday, and today I sorted the greater part of an extensive paperback book collection and babysat for 3 hours, so Aunt Molly is tired.

siege day 43

Today, on a suggestion from the PDEQ lady, I started looking into car exhaust. It appears that Tucson switches from the oxygenated winter blend gasoline to the summer blend on April 1, and most stations start a little before then, so the timing is right for the pollutant that's killing us EIs. So far I learned that gasoline comes to Tucson from El Paso (pdf), and we take some (the rest goes to Phoenix) and put it in the 'tank farm,' which is right next to the west edge of the Air Force base and consists of a whole bunch of storage tanks you use to fill gasoline trucks. Then when the gas is in the truck, you add whichever additive you need to make it a specific brand, and off it goes to the stations. Thus I learned that Circle Ks are Conoco stations, we don't have any BPs, and we have twice as many Shell stations as Chevron stations.

I would call Conoco, Chevron, and Shell to see if they changed anything, but it's way after 5 pm, plus now the grapevine has reported that the whole problem is that the base is burning its used degreasers along with some hydraulic fluid or cleaner (I forgot which). I can't really believe the base would burn hazardous waste or store it for four years before burning it, but stranger things have happened, so the FOIA request is half written. You can't just ask a simple question with one of those -- you have to request records, so I'm trying to be specific but not too specific, and we'll just have to see what happens. They have 20 days to get to your request after they receive it, so the answer should be in plenty of time for me to tell the newsletter editor something before the next edition.

siege day 40

Today I learned that even if you did ok at the outlet mall a few days ago, that doesn't mean you can go to the regular mall. My husband trusted me to get myself out when I needed to, but I didn't get my normal cardiac stuff, I just got weird. I remember feeling cranky, but I attributed it to going into a mall on a Saturday, which I can't believe I tried.

In other news, pizza sauce, while yummy, can be replaced with a layer of olive oil with basil leaves on it. I'm not even sure you need the basil leaves as long as you have enough other toppings, and I didn't even put cheese on mine.

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Last night I learned that the other lady who had to leave town and I have made similar amounts of progress in the last week on Tucson's air quality problem, which is to say that we've both been working on our current living spaces and haven't done a blessed thing. I have to admit to taking an eight-mile walk one day instead of making phone calls, but I have a month's worth of exercise to catch up on, too.

I don't know if anyone else has had to leave town besides just us two. I know all the EIs on my side of town are suffering, but what kind of fancy club do you have to belong to such that you need to leave town? I didn't think I was that sick anymore, but I guess I thought I could go into a mall on a Saturday and get myself out before I got really messed up, too.