This morning I'm packing my suitcase and heading back to the states after a dizzying weekend in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for the international writers conference. I was very fortunate to share the stage with wonderful writers like Margaret Atwood, Elena Poniatowska, Naomi Wolf, Joy Harjo, Rikki Ducornet (who was my teacher many years ago), and many other writers from Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. The joy and energy of this conference was incredible! I'm filled with hope and excitement for writing, literature, and the power of the written word.
Tidbit of the Day: Here's a great contest sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: What School Didn't Teach Us: The Truth about Nuclear Weapons (more…)
Kristen Iversen
SLOW FIRE: Thoughts on writing and the writing lifeIs It Safe to Build on Contaminated Land?January 3, 2012
One of the issues I talk about in my forthcoming book, Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, is the ongoing controversy over the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge, which is slated to soon open to the public for hiking and biking, as well as what should happen to the land surrounding Rocky Flats. Government agencies claim that the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge is safe and nearby areas are fine for homes, businesses, and recreation. Yet at the same time a 1970 study by AEC scientists showed that land now held by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on the eastern portion of the Rocky Flats site—as well as an adjacent off-site area of roughly thirty square miles—had been heavily contaminated with plutonium released from the plant. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years.
The FWS is currently considering several proposals for the use of some of this contaminated land. The privately financed Jefferson Parkway Authority proposes a major toll highway on land along the eastern edge of the Rocky Flats Wildlife Refuge that would link up with an existing beltway around the city of Denver. Completion of this project would spur even more residential and commercial development near Rocky Flats. The city of Golden, which opposed the highway and wanted to build a bikeway along the same strip of land, is about to end its opposition in exchange for some concessions that would ease traffic moving from the Parkway through Golden. Hundreds of local citizens signed a petition demanding that FWS first determine the quantity, depth, and extent of plutonium contamination in the land proposed for the highway or bikeway, noting that construction itself churns up plutonium-laden dust that could pose a risk to construction workers and residents. In the fall of 2011 FWS announced that it would not implement such a study. This is a very controversial issue that demands participation by local citizens and the broader community. On Writing Full Body BurdenJanuary 1, 2012
Today is New Year's Day, 2012, and I thought I might never reach this point, the moment when I could look back over the previous year and say, yes, at last, the book is finished!
Full Body Burden has been a tough book to write for many reasons. It's a deeply personal story, sometimes exhilarating, sometimes painful. And what I originally thought would be two or three years of research turned into more than ten. I grew up in Arvada, Colorado, near the Rocky Flats nuclear weaponry facility, which secretly produced more than seventy thousand plutonium triggers for nuclear bombs and, unbeknownst to residents, contaminated the environment with toxic and radioactive materials. Arvada is near Boulder, Colorado, not far from Denver. Our house was next to a lake, with a backdrop of the Rocky Mountains. My siblings and I played in the backyard, swam in the lake, and rode our horses in the fields around the plant. No one knew the land was contaminated, and none of us understood what was happening just down the road. Cold War secrecy was the rule. Rocky Flats was the great monolith of my childhood. Everyone in my neighborhood knew of Rocky Flats and was fearful of it—and fascinated by it—but no one knew what really went on there. Some thought it manufactured cleaning supplies. For decades, Rocky Flats had been releasing toxic and radioactive elements into the air, water, and soil, but it had all been covered up. The government, Dow Chemical, and later Rockwell assured us that Rocky Flats was safe, despite constant and ongoing leaks and fires. There was a lot of cancer and illness in my neighborhood, and we all wondered if it was related to Rocky Flats. But no one talked openly about Rocky Flats. I moved away after college and was living in Germany when the accident at Chernobyl occurred. (I thought I had escaped having to worry about radioactive contamination!) I returned to the States to go to graduate school. In 1995, when I was a single parent with two young sons, working my way through graduate school, I went to work at Rocky Flats. Many of the kids I grew up with had ended up working at Rocky Flats because the pay and benefits were so good. I needed the job, and I was keen to learn what actually happened at the plant. The weekly reports that I typed as part of my job described problems with toxic and radioactive waste storage, leaking drums and containers, spray “irrigation” of radioactive waste, fires, and other environmental problems. I learned strange acronyms like MUF, meaning “material unaccounted for,” a bland way of saying that pounds of plutonium had been lost. I began to learn the history and problems of the plant, including some of the details of the 1989 FBI raid, and I felt stunned by what I had not known all those years—and what the public did not know. The day I learned that I was literally working next to 14.2 metric tons of plutonium—much of it unsafely stored—was the day I knew I had to quit, and that someday I would write a book about Rocky Flats. I had a number of interesting experiences when I was working at Rocky Flats. On my lunch hour, along with some of the other female employees, I would put my high heels under my desk, don a pair of tennis shoes, and walk around the plant site for exercise. Each day we walked past a flat area marked off with yellow police tape that said “Do not cross this line.” A secretary explained to me that this was the “903 Pad.” I later learned that this was a deeply contaminated area due to thousands of leaking drums filled with plutonium-laced materials that had been stored there for more than a decade, in the open air. She explained that the yellow ribbon was to keep us from walking on ground contaminated with plutonium. “How does the plutonium know not to cross over to this side?” I asked. “It knows. Plutonium doesn’t travel,” she answered. This, of course, turned out to be false. Particles of plutonium can attach to dust and soil particles, and are easily picked up by the wind. One millionth of a gram of plutonium can cause cancer. On another day, I was having lunch with an administrative assistant named Patricia. She brought along a friend who was a technical writer. He started talking about what Rocky Flats had produced— plutonium “triggers” for nuclear bombs, and how deadly they were. “It’s not actually a bomb,” Patricia said. “Right,” I agreed. Like all the other workers, we used euphemisms like “trigger” or “pit” or “button.” It was easy to think about someone else making bombs or pulling the trigger. We weren’t really responsible, or even fully aware of the plant’s history and operations. “Well, what is it then?” he asked. “A pit,” I said. “That’s a bomb,” he replied. “No, it’s not,” I said. I should know. I’d been typing pages and pages about pits. “A pit is only a critical component of a nuclear bomb,” said Patricia with authority. She’d been typing pages and pages, too. “It’s not the bomb itself.” He laughed. “Are you girls kidding me? That’s like saying that water is only a critical component of the ocean. Or that the planets are merely critical components of the solar system.” He paused. “There’s no bomb without the pit,” he said somberly. “The pit is it.” That was the day that I realized the magnitude, on a national and international level, of Rocky Flats, and began to come to terms with my own feelings about being involved in the nuclear weapons business. Twelve years of research and writing went into Full Body Burden. I read hundreds of pages of documentation, conducted extensive interviews (as well as relying upon many conducted by the Maria Rogers Oral History Program and the Rocky Flats Cold War Museum), and pored over newspaper articles, photographs, and previously classified information. Also, through the research and writing of this book, I was able to reconnect with many of the people I grew up with. Randy Sullivan, for example, was a childhood friend (and crush), and we had lost touch. It turned out that not only had he also worked at Rocky Flats, but he was the last firefighter to fight a plutonium fire at the facility. The story of attorney Peter Nordberg is especially poignant for me. Peter was one of the prosecuting attorneys for Cook v. Rockwell Int’l Corp, the class-action lawsuit by local residents against Rocky Flats. He devoted more than twenty years of his life to pursuing justice in this case, and he spent many hours in interviews with me. Sadly, he died unexpectedly of a heart condition just weeks after our last interview, and just before his winning verdict was overturned on appeal. Several of the people I interviewed for this book have died within the last year or two. And yet, with a half-life of 24,000 years, plutonium on and near the Rocky Flats site will persist long after we—and our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, and the many generations beyond—are gone. An Amazing DayMay 12, 2011
“Life is what happens to a writer between drafts.”
I’m not sure who first said this line, but it’s felt true to me for years as I tried to balance writing, teaching, and raising two boys. I had no idea how long it would take me to complete Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats. I just knew it was a story I had to tell. When I first started researching and writing, my boys were in elementary school. Now they’re in college. All that work came to a head three weeks ago, when my book sold at auction to Crown. It was a day I won’t soon forget. Weather in Memphis has been stormy of late, and I was in my office at the university, grading essays and meeting with students. Two big cottonwoods stand outside my window, and sometimes, when the sun is shining (between all the recent thunderstorms), a student comes along and ties a hammock between the two trunks. He jumps in, reads intently for an hour or two, and then rolls up his hammock and heads back to class. I take comfort in seeing him there. It reminds me, in the chaos of classes and meetings and other necessary distractions, that I’m lucky to have the chance to do what I love best: read, write, and talk about books. Anything beyond that feels like gravy. On this day, my agent, who had sent my book out to over a dozen publishers a few days earlier, called to tell me to stay by the phone. Several publishers were interested, she said. Things were heating up. “Some of the editors will want to talk to you,” she added. Often it takes weeks or months for a publisher to decide whether or not to accept a book. Due to the intensity of interest, the book would be auctioned. She set a bidding deadline of 5 p.m. New York time. I put a yellow stickie on my door, “Please do not disturb,” and tried to keep my wits about me. Already it all seemed a little surreal. I’d lived with this book for over ten years. I wasn’t sure anyone would ever be interested in it. It’s a controversial story, a deeply personal story, about government secrecy and plutonium contamination and a young girl trying to make sense of it all. I wasn’t sure a publisher would take a chance on it. Then the phone rang. What happened that afternoon felt like a little piece of heaven suddenly opened up and showered bright stars. I spoke with editors in New York who not only had read the book but had read it closely and deeply. And they liked what they read. (“We were just blown away by the book.” “It’s a work of art, and a work of public service.” “I loved the way you deftly wove your own personal story into the Rocky Flats story.” “It’s effortlessly written.” “It opened my eyes to powerful subject matter.” “Beautifully rendered.” “The reader is right there with you, all the way through.”) Between editor calls, my agent called to discuss each offer with me. We closed the deal at 4:59 (or thereabouts), New York time, with editor John Glusman at Crown. My agent called with congratulations from her cab as she was on her way to the airport, heading off to the London Book Fair to negotiate potential deals with publishers from the UK and other countries. I drove home, shaken, wondering if it really happened. It did. Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats, will be in bookstores in late spring, 2012. |
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