Face-It Book

A nurse came into my room and saw my computer. My good friends with great effort had set it up for me, connecting a myriad of cables so that I even had my printer. Although she was busier than a bee she stopped and looked at the screen. She giggled and said, "Oh, that machine takes up so much time! I waste hours on FaceBook."

Almost everyone seems to be on it. I'm sure it has its uses, but I don't even know how to write the name correctly. I am preoccupied with another source I call Face-It Book. I'm not on it, but we are all in it.

Who am I to preach or warn? Who would listen if I had the ability to do so?

A wonderful phenominon has made anyone's warnings impossible to refute. Instead, this amazing situation can be measured with great accuracy so that there is no room for arguing. Even the animals know about it and warn us as their bodies wash ashore. This is no diatribe, any more than someone in a hotel noticing that it is burning down and telling people about the advance of the flames. It is, of course, the spread of radiation.

I was reading a forum when I saw a commenter's logo. It was a cute little Micky Mouse with three ears and three eyes. Some people get it.

Ever get tired of being warned? There must be a psychological condition known as Warn Fatigue. I have it myself.

When I was a kid I admired great figures in the world of chemistry. If I had had bedroom posters, one of them would have been of Madam Curie and her discovery of Radium. I have left that phase behind. But the effects of the new chemistry of radioactive isotopes, even man-made ones, are impossible to escape. They are knocking on the door.

My new heroes are people who understand these things and talk about them. I'll name two--Helen Caldicott and Christopher Busby.

Helen is a physician. Her daughter is also. Helen was talking to her daughter about the cumulative radiation in our bodies. Her daughter said, "Don't worry about it, Mother, you'll be dead before it gets you." "What are daughters for?" said Helen.

Now Christopher is a little more laid-back. He really reminds me of the actor who played Topper--super conservative, with a clipped diction. Christopher, please take off your beret. I wonder if he wears it in the shower?

But I really like such people. They tell us about the facts--the ones that no one can deny or do anything about. The nuclear cat is out of the atomic bag. These folks are the secular prophets of our age, echoing God's prophets of long ago, in His Face-It Book.