Like Tom I'd just like to start with people we know and love.
Had a kid who worked for me in the late sixties/early seventies in San
Francisco who had attended Parsons College in Iowa. He went back every
Fall for the marijuana harvest. Came back to the City with a VW van
full of "weed" harvested from ditch banks. He was a very bright guy
with wonderful people skills and a talented artist. He never was
incapacitated at work but he certainly was part of the Haight-Ashbury
culture of that day. Last I heard of him he was back in the mid-west
working for Apartment Life Magazine and dealing in collectable metal
containers of all kinds. Over the five years we worked together I
certainly saw a change in his abilities and focus. We worried about
him at the time but lost track and he has always been a source of
concern for us.
Of course, some of our customers were early victims of the AIDS
epidemic too. I'm sorry to say I really don't have the same sympathies
for them. My cousin was an epidemiologist for the City-County Health
Department in Oakland and one of the first to become involved in
tracking the spread of that virus. He left very early on in that
process but his stories, very non-specific, were chilling.
Then there's the people I know who were "downwinders" from the Yucca
flats tests in Nevada. That grey ash that covered the area around St
George where Glen now lives "supposedly" (according to the Atomic
energy Commission people) was not dangerous. I've lost far too many
friends to cancer who lived in Southern Utah during the above ground
testing to believe everything I have been told.
Wes
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