Prospecting for Gold

Back in the 1930s, when gold was $36 an ounce, many people found it worthwhile to head for mountain streams with a shovel and a pan. It was harder physical work than some of the amateurs expected, and the icy water from melting snow was hard on those with arthritis, but if you were lucky, you could eke out a living. Nowadays, silver is worth $36, and as I write this, gold is getting $1,548 per ounce. What makes gold so valuable?
Well, inflation accounts for some of the price rise of course, but basically, people want it, and are willing to pay that high price. Can you eat it? No. Will it keep you warm? Nope; won't burn; and a blanket of it would be way too hard and heavy. But it has several other features that are unequalled by almost any other substance.
First, it is beautiful, not only as a symbol of wealth, but in itself. About half of new gold production is used in jewelry, especially in Asia. Second, gold is dependable. Even when inflation lowers the value of paper money, gold is usually accepted in exchange for goods. About one sixth of gold production is stored in government vaults like Fort Knox ,or the Federal Reserve in Manhattan, which also holds funds in trust for other nations. Another sixth of the annual gold production is held by private investors. Thirdly, gold has industrial uses. Silver and copper are better electric conductors than gold, but they tarnish..Gold never tarnishes or corrodes. Plating switch contacts in computers and other electronic devices with a very thin layer of gold prolongs the life of the device.
For all these reasons, gold continues to be in demand. Most gold nowadays is produced, not by lonely prospectors with gold pan and pick, but by international corporations employing thousands of men and women. As recently as five years ago South Africa was the world leader in gold production, but its gold mostly lies two to four kilometers below the surface, and is therefore expensive to mine. Recently China took first place with 320,000 kilograms mined in 2009. Australia, South Africa, United States, and Russia were all nearly tied for second place with a little over 200,000 kg apiece. Most of USA's gold nowadays comes not from California or Colorado, but from Nevada, with Alaska next.
Papua New Guinea is rising through the ranks of gold producers, being number12 in 2009, but may soon be number 6 if some of its new projects are successful. A Canadian company working in PNG is pioneering the first deep water gold mine, Solwara 1. There, a mile below the ocean surface, the top of an undersea mountain is covered by a hundred-feet-thick layer of copper and gold-bearing silt deposited from a natural hot water vent spewing a black plume of mineral matter. (think of it as a baby volcano.) Nautilus Minerals Corporation believes it can pump this sediment up through a pipe, dry it aboard ship and haul it by the barge-load to the town of Rabaul, 70 kilometers away for further refining. And a former Nautilus executive is now leading a similar project deep in the Red Sea off Saudi Arabia.
Pumping sediment or gravel off the ocean floor appears to be much less polluting than on-shore mining. Any initial residue can be laid down on the ocean floor again No blasting is involved, no sludging of rivers and flooding of rice fields. Presumably little or no toxic waste deposited at the site (though it will ultimately have to go somewhere.)
But there must be precautions taken. There are hundreds of such sea vents in the dark deeps, home to strange life forms which don't depend on sunlight or chlorophyll, but live on the sulfides and other minerals from the vent. No one has thoroughly studied these plants and creatures yet; no one knows what medicines or other products they might produce. We must not carelessly damage their environment, even if it can be shown that they can migrate on deep ocean currents to other hot, nourishing sea vents hundreds of miles away.
Nor should we endanger fish and other dwellers nearer the surface by polluting rivers with sludge, cyanide, mercury, acids and other toxic products used to refine gold and other minerals we extract. A great many people's jobs and income depend on wildlife, forests, and tourist industries. Jobs and income from mines and and oil wells are also important, but must be balanced against those from co-existing industries.
As an example, a huge deposit of copper and gold in Alaska lies at the root of the Aleutian Peninsula, near the shores of Iliamna Lake and the rivers that drain into the Pacific Ocean's Bristol Bay, the center of Alaska's salmon fishing industry. Two mining corporations, Rio Tinto and Anglo-American, are proposing a 2 mile-wide, 2000 feet deep open pit mine, with 80-foot high dams to contain waste products. They have not reassured anyone about plans to use cyanide or other toxins in the refining process; they reportedly only say they are "considering" the matter.
When genuine and legitimate conflict arises among two industries like mining and fishing, the average wage earner can't compete with the resources behind the big company executives and lawyers. The only ones with clout enough to assure that proper precautions are taken are government watchdogs. I will have to amit I don't really like the arrogance (and sometimes incompetence) of some bureaucrats, but neither do I like the arrogance and greed of some big businesses.
I practiced medicine for thirty-five years in Idaho's "Silver Valley" mining towns. Some mine accidents are inevitable, but others are preventable. In 1972, ninety-one miners died of monoxide poisoning in an underground mine fire for which management was unprepared. No one thought it could happen. A few years later, the filter system in the lead smelter was accidentally destroyed. It could have been repaired by shutting down the smelter for a few days, but management decided (deliberately, the jury found) to ignore the danger to the surrounding towns and run operations without filtering the lead from the smokestack. The lawsuits over the next few decades have cost management over one billion dollars. Corporate CEOs sometimes make huge errors, that cannot later be corrected. That is why public authorities must sometimes step in and say. "Thoroughly study the effect on the environment and local economy first." There are other values besides gold.

Book Signing

BOOK SIGNING

I was down in Richland, WA, house sitting and cat sitting for my daughter while she was away,and using the time to sell a few books to the local libraries and bookstores. I hadn't made major plans in advance, but usually carry a dozen-or-so assorted copies of my books in the car when traveling.

Talking with the book department supervisor in a local franchise of a regional chain, I showed her my latest novel, The Samana Incident, and its companion novel, Flame Tree, and asked if she'd like to carry a few of each in stock.

"Glad to," she replied; "we can arrange a book signing too, if you like." This took me by surprise. Store managers aren't usually that receptive to authors wandering in off the street, even if they can reasonably be featured as a local or regional author. Maybe her budget is better at the beginning of a new year.

"When's your busiest customer load?" I asked.

"Probably Friday, four to seven. People are getting off work then, and it's payday for a lot of them."

"I'll be here. I have a few copies of my other books with me, too. Can I sell them?"

"Sure. But I'll have to make a separate inventory contract for each one. Fill out these forms, and then leave the books here. You get 60%, we get 40."

My publisher takes 50%, but even the remaining 10% of the 60 nets me about a dollar-fifty per copy, and there is always the possibility of more business later on in other branches of the bookstore chain.

Friday, at ten to four, my wife and I checked in. The manager had set up a table facing the entry doors, with all my books arranged. But wait a minute; where were the copies of Flame Tree?

"I'm sorry. Our major wholesaler already has that one available in their list. We would have to order through them." She handed my six copies of Flame Tree back to me..

"Can I give these six to my wife and have her sell them out of my car in the parking lot?" I asked.

"You can do whatever you like as long as it's not inside the store" I didn't know what her boss might think of that idea, but I took her at her word, and stationed my wife in the car and myself at the book table.

Bookstores provide authors with a chair, but I've found it better to spend most of the time standing and making eye contact with approaching people. (Guys, if a man and woman enter together, eye the man. His wife/girlfriend will likely express interest too, if he stops., and you avoid the risk of irritating the man by eying his girl. My greeting is not "Would you like to buy one my books," but "Do you like a good story?"

The potential customer may pick up a book and/or say "About what?" Some, of course, will just pass by, perhaps with a smile of brief greeting, or with eyes averted. That's okay; Some do stop. I try to answer with no more than a sentence or two for each one they seem interested in. I think it helps to have all five displayed - if an author has that many titles to offer, most people assume he can write.

The first to approach me that night was a boy who couldn't have been more than eleven or twelve. After looking over my table, he asked "Did you write these?"

"Yes I did."

"I've written a book too," he said.

"Have you? What's its name?"

"Pulling Weeds to Picking Stocks." he said. Seeing me take out a notepad, he offered "Here, I'll write down my website." Talking about this experience to the store manager later, she told me, "Oh yes, I know him; he did a book signing for us not long ago."

I have learned that I can't tell much about book readers from their appearance. Three grungily dressed teenagers eyed my table from a distance for a short while and then came up and looked at the books. "You a doctor? That's cool." They muttered among themselves for a while, and it turned out that hadn't enough money among them to buy a book. But they reappeared after a few minutes and chose the least expensive Access to Medical Care, for $8.95.

I thanked them, and offered to autograph it. "How shall I sign it"

"We're a musical group. You can sign it to Pigeon Fist."

"What?"

They spelled it out. So I signed the book "To Pigeon Fist" and my name. Who knows? maybe one or more of them are headed for medical school.

One thirty-something man with a dirty T-shirt over a large abdomen, was apparently just off work. I asked him what kind of story interested him. "Oh, music." What kind? Rock. I didn't have anything to fit that, but he bought a book anyway.

A young couple took a copy of Samana, and after I told them it was a sequel to Flame Tree, wanted that too. I think they were more intrigued by buying a copy out of a car in the parking lot, but my wife said later that yes, they came out and bought one.

Others bought out of interest in the stories or because they worked at the nearby hospital, or just seemed to be looking for something, I - and maybe they - didn't know what.

With a final purchase of two books by a lady at one minute to seven, table was bare, every copy of every book sold (except Flame Tree out in the car.)

The manager wanted five more copies of each, but shipping them would shave away my narrow 10% profit. Never mind, she said, I could send them with my daughter next time she comes home.

Why Set a Novel in a Country Like Papua New Guinea?

     Aside from a few old geezers who fought the Japanese in Papua New Guinea sixty five years ago, and the occasional missionary or tourist who has been there, who cares what happens in a mountainous jungle island, far beyond the exotic lagoons and hula dancers of Hawaii? Why complicate a plot with strange people, odd customs, and geography?

      One reason is, there's a market for such books . Some people like to read about the Navaho Tribal Police, or the Ladies' Number 1 Detective Agency of Botswana, or Chief Inspector Chen of the Shanghai Police, all of which have become popular series.

      A second reason is, an unfamiliar country gives many opportunities for unexpected twists in the plot. In Papua New Guinea, the setting of my latest crime story, the majority of the population are very poor, without much schooling. They are vulnerable to exploitation by timber merchants or mining companies who destroy the forests on which the people's lives depend. They are willing to listen to anyone with a get-rich-quick scheme, only to find out that someone else gets rich at their own expense.

      In such a country, an honest cop or government official can stand out, especially if the writer can make his character believable as well as unexpected. As the story develops, and the real problems of the country evolve, whole new opportunities for extending the story to a series arise. When I started this story ten years ago, PNG had little to offer the world except scenery and some gold and copper to mine. But now in the past year, PNG suddenly turns out to possess some of the largest fields of natural gas in the world. International gas and oil companies are investing 15 billion dollars over the next several years to produce 6.6 million tons of liquified natural gas per year to export to Asian markets. How will corrupt and inexperienced government officials handle this windfall?

There's the foundation for yet another story about police officer - now Inspector - Jason Kerro.

The Samana Incident

Lieutenant Jason Kerro, Royal Papua New Guinea Police, thought the early morning report of an armed attack on the foreign translators' base at Samana was an ordinary robbery attempt by the "rascal gangs" that roamed the country's Highlands. No one in town had recognized these intruders, or knew where they had come from or had gone. Except that one spoke English with a foreign accent, and had cut the power to the radio station and town switchboard before being driven off by security guards.

Jason suspects a connection with the assault rifles and drugs that have been turning up for sale in nearby Mount Hagen. The word on the streets is that some of the police are taking payoffs from smugglers moving in from Asia, but no one is talking about it; those who did are no longer alive. Jason doesn't know which of his police colleagues he can trust. 

 

The sponsors of the translators' base, concerned with the safety of the families there, send in a pair of investigators with past experience with Asian drug dealers. George and Vienna Daniels are, to all appearances, short term medical volunteers at Samana's clinic. Jason soon discovers their usefulness as under cover allies in areas beyond his own jurisdiction. The intruders have hidden their trail well, but George and Vienna supply Jason with the edge that opens the case.

Look for it at your local bookstore,or ask them to order it: "The Samana Incident" by Keith Dahlberg. iUmiverse Press, ISBN 978-1-4502-6311-5. Also available on amazon.com, or from the iUniverse on-line bookstore, In soft cover ($14.95) or e-book format ($9.99)

Billion-Dollar Boondoggle

The federal government charges its Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with protecting human health and the environment. Over the last thirty years it has worked effectively in the North Idaho "Silver Valley" mining area (lead, zinc and silver) to decrease health hazards through covering the site of the lead smelter and zinc refinery, and removal of polluted soil from yards, parks and playgrounds. Blood lead levels rarely exceed the national safety level of 10 micrograms per deciliter nowadays, and free blood tests are still available to those who request them.

Although EPA tells us that human health is no longer at risk from lead, zinc, arsenic and other minerals in the environment, it wants to extend its work to the whole watershed of the Coeur d'Alene River's South Fork, to protect fish and other wildlife, because some species are sensitive to zinc levels that are harmless to humans. The cost of the project, they estimate, will be 1.3 billion dollars, and the duration will be 30 to 90 more years or longer.

Their premise has some logic. Shoshone County, Idaho, has been a major mining area for 125 years, with over 300 mine sites, most of them small and no longer operating. Some of the mine tailings and ground water sources still have significant mineral content. EPA wants to funnel all those sources (a volume estimated at 30,000 gallons per minute, or about 5% of the river's volume) into the EPA's Central Treatment Plant at Kellogg, which currently handles about 1/10th that volume. There, the metals are precipitated out by raising the water's pH and trapping the metals in a flocculent sludge with alum. The purified water, no longer acidic, is put back into the river. EPA pumps the sludge to a 2-acre pit on top of the nearby Central Impoundment Area (CIA).

The CIA is a 200+ acre collection of tailings from the Bunker Hill Mine (lead, zinc and silver) which the EPA covered over with plastic sheeting and then laid down clean soil and grass on top of that, to prevent recontamination of the surrounding cleaned-up areas. All of the CI Area is sealed off except for the sludge pit destined to take water pollutants from the whole South Fork drainage basin. The pit has no plastic lining or anything else to prevent fluid from the sludge from draining downward into the original alluvial plain and aquifer that feeds into the adjacent South Fork River.

When I asked EPA how fast seepage of the sludge liquid occurred, EPA estimated 9 gallons per minute; the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) estimated 35 gpm. A couple of 5 gallon bucketsful seeping downward into the soil doesn't sound too alarming until you multiply 10 gpm x 60 minutes x 24 hrs x 365 days and get a figure of over 5 million gallons each of the last 10 years plus five to seven more years before EPA intends to make a new, plastic-sealed sludge pit. When I asked the metal content of this seepage, both DEQ and EPA said they didn't know. Probably most of the pollutants remain in the sludge, but before I risked re-contaminating the lakes and river downstream, I'd try and find out. Five million gallons a year wouldn't have to carry much.

One of EPA's dilemmas is finding places to deposit the lead/zinc-polluted soil they have dug up from house lawns all over the valley. There are quite a few uninhabited gulches available, several of which they have already used, but the present repository they are placing in the middle of the river's flood plain, next to a large marsh inhabited by the very birds and fish they are trying to protect. The Coeur d'Alene River floods every few years; a flood in a tributary in 1974 took out the eastbound lanes of Interstate 90, not to mention houses. A flood sweeping away the contaminated soil could undo the EPA's last 20 years of cleanup. EPA appears unconcerned

And then there is the cost—1.3 billion dollars. The so-called Asarco Trust Fund, from fines and settlement with the mining companies contains about 0.45 billion, and EPA is quick to point out that it can generate twenty million in interest (but only if they don't spend the principal.) Other than that, and some of EPA's own budget, the only source of funds would from Idaho citizens' taxes. Raising $ 900 million from about 2 million people is allegedly legal, but I question its morality, spending that much on the health of a few thousand fish and birds when the state is cutting back on funding for schools, medical care, roads, and other human needs

There wil be a public meeting August 4th where EPA will once again present its case, and another on August 9 when Idaho legislators and business people will present theirs. I hope common sense will prevail. Not always the case in politics.

Learning from Disaster Response

DAY 5 OF THE HAITI QUAKE: CNN and other news media are doing a good job of reporting both good and bad events in Port au Prince. All disaster responses seem desperately slow,at first, given the critical 2 or 3 day time window for saving lives. But response to this mega-disaster is actually proceeding about as fast as can be expected, given the number of victims and the limited harbor, road and airport facilities.

Several issues, however, seem to have got less attention than needed:

Security: Rumors are inevitable, but common sense suggests that a medical team should not abandon its patients for unidentified "security" issues. CNN's Dr. Sanji Gupta should be congratulated for taking the initiative of staying all night with one hospital's patients until the medical team returned. (When this issue arose in the Cambodian refugee crisis of 1979, Thai military had a dusk to dawn curfew for our medical teams in our camp of 25,000 people. But they let one medical team stay each night in the thousand-bed hospital; fears about our safety proved groundless.)

The response now, at the end of day 5, shows that distribution is improving, but slowly. Water tanker trucks, replenished from decontaminated sources outside the city might be more efficient than passing out 100,000 bottles of water (which represents less than a single drink for each of two million people.

Cranes, bulldozers and helicopters are first priority needs after an earthquake. Flying these in on the first day would seem a higher priority than transporting swarms of officials who want to "see for themselves." Haiti has a second harbor and airport at Cap Haitien, well out of the quake zone. Helicopters could shuttle supplies from there to improvised landing pads almost anywhere in Port au Prince, until the harbor is working. But such plans must be set in motion quickly. Spending the first two days merely considering options means thousands die unnecessarily.

Large rescue plans tend to focus operations in the main population center and work outward from there later. That's where the most people are, of course. But people outside the epicenter starve or die of trauma just as quickly, and in some disasters people beyond the city receive no help until weeks later. (The 2005 quake in Kashmir with 75,000 deaths comes to mind.) Even with bad roads, teams could be sent by helicopter or truck out to secondary population centers.

God bless the local citizens who began rescue operations, with their bare hands in many cases, and who translated from Creole to English or French for newly arriving rescue teams. And bless all the competent and caring people who dropped what they were doing back home and showed up in Haiti to help. Many of you will look back on this as the high point of your career.

Death Panels and all that

Like Mike Doonesbury this morning, I had thought all the Death Panel furor was behind us. But if Gary Trudeau thinks it's still a current topic, and Newsweek gives it featured coverage (The Case for Killing Granny, Rethinking end-of-life care, Sept. 21, pages 36-40 and page 8), it may be useful to review it one more time for those gullible enough to believe that we old-timers are about to be shut out of the system and left to die. That's deliberate nonsense. The facts are:
Living wills (or advance medical directives) have been around for years. My own was first notarized in June 1997, and I update it as "still valid" and sign it every year or two to show that my mind hasn't changed. I make sure my own doctor and any hospital I go to has a copy.
The reason doctors and hospitals advise people to do this is so that the your personal desires are on record even if you are later found unconscious, or are unable to communicate, or have relatives telling the medical attendants to do this or do that regardless of your own stated wishes.
You may state that you want everything done to keep you alive, or want Hospice care, or want to let nature takes course, or any degree of treatment in between. It's up to you. But unless your desires are recorded while you are still conscious and of sound mind, the doctor or hospital will have nothing to go on.
My own advance directive says, in part, "If I am disabled by [for example] stroke, dementia, or cancer, I do not wish my life prolonged artificially. If there is no reasonable chance of recovery or fully conscious existence, then let my dying process take its natural course without tube or IV feeding, radical surgery, extended use of a respirator or other resuscitation measures. Relief of pain and/or routine nursing care are OK. I do not want my medical care to threaten bankruptcy of my family and heirs.
"In particular, I do not want attorneys, judges, doctors, or ethics committees quibbling about my intent or wish. What I want is to go to my Maker when my time comes, with what measure of human dignity is possible."

The difference between a "Death Panel" and a Living Will is who makes the decision - a nameless bureaucrat, or you yourself?

As a doctor, I have seen people kept alive for a few extra days while they are dying of incurable, painful cancer or other disease, and their medical costs keep building up to loss of home and all the family's funds, only to prolong the pain or keep the heart beating, but with no useful outcome. But without instructions to the contrary, doctors do what they can to keep a person alive.
President Obama's Health Plan encourages doctors to counsel patients on how to make their wishes known. It's still a matter between only you and your doctor.