In which Chlorosilane shakes her groove thang

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Chlorosilane, that ordinarily virulent harbinger of toxic chemical doom, is bustin’ a move today.

Now why would that be? It might be because today I read in Newsday that there has been a

42 million dollar stimulus package designated for the cleanup of the Brookhaven National Lab nuclear reactor sites. Chlorosilane is clearly getting a big jazz out of this.

Breaking away from Chlorosilane’s joyful performance art for a moment, let’s flash back to early February, 1986, where a gaggle of geeks were holding a going away party for a skinny little nerdling of theirs who was in the process of joining the Air Force. You’ll want to take note of Jeff. He’s the guy on the extreme left.

I met Jeff and his other friends in the NY Tech Science Fiction Club. Jeff was, like most of the rest of us, a classic geek. Star Trek, Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, spaceships and chicks in chainmail. Jeff was a brilliant and witty guy, and our only physics major. He lived, breathed and ate science and science fiction. He also was (like many other geeks) that bizzare mix of inveterate, unashamed lech and entirely-too-polite-for-his-own good gentleman. Here you may behold him facetiously asking the taker of this picture (Debbie, the girl on the extreme right in the other picture) to marry him.

In this particular photo, the guys are engaged in playing one of the more sarcastic examples of gaming that came out in the 1960’s, Nuclear War. Jeff was very proud after he graduated from NY Tech and got a job at Brookhaven National Labs. He worked around the reactors and was constantly joking that “his work around hazmats was making him turn a fresh minty green”.

Jeff’s love of science fiction ensured that he was always easy to find at ICON, the SUNY Stonybrook Science Fiction convention (incidentally being held this weekend at it’s new location in Brentwood). Also a member of the Stonybrook SF Forum, he was usually to be found volunteering his time at the con information desk. We all know this was true love – to spend your time behind a desk helping others instead of running off to all the programming or the dealer’s room.

His absence was palpable one year, and when I bumped into Debbie at the con and asked where he was, I was informed that he had died a few weeks before. He had suffered a major asthma attack. It was then that I realized that Jeff’s health had clearly gone south over the years, although his infectious smile and cheerful attitude betrayed little of it. The Jeff I knew in college had no asthma. His exposure to the hazmats at BNL had indeed killed him.

He had so much to offer the world. He was a genuinely nice guy and a brilliant scientist. Working at BNL was his dream job… and it killed him. He was my age. He never saw 43.

I wonder how many other Jeffs are out there all over Long Island… all over America… all over our bases and other international operations? People who studied hard in school, didn’t pick the soft or easy path, worked for DoD contractors, held clearances, served their country. People whom the meatgrinder of our military/industrial complex destroyed as surely as if they’d been blown away in the heat of battle.

So if you want to know why Chlorosilane is uncharacteristically happy today, the cleanup of Brookhaven National Labs is the reason why. President Obama, this commendable effort comes too late for my old college friend Jeff, but that it comes early in your term is an encouraging sign that a return to enforcing and enacting environmental responsibility within and upon the military/industrial complex is very much on your agenda. This action does not merely make digital puppets dance and bloggers sing praises, it touches lives that are very real – and will stop many of them from being over far too soon. I am hoping that all levels of government follow this fine example on Long Island and everywhere else it applies. And I hope that if there is any pushback from our military and their contractors or other corporations, that they are MADE to comply with standards that affect the health of their employees and the surrounding community.

Thank you.