We've been doing experiments with depleted Uranium at the lab and I've beens surprised at how little is known about it, especially as a toxic chemical. I wrote the following letter to Science News in response to a recent article on the low-level of radiological risk of the material.

Editor, Science News
1719 N Street, N.W.
Washington D.C. 20036

Your article on the hazards of depleted Uranium (SN: 8/13/05, p.110) should not lull us into believing that depleted Uranium is a low risk material, especially for children who may later play on the battlefields of the current war. While, I applaud Mr. Marshall for using scenarios such as that of children playing in and around vehicles destroyed by depleted-uranium munitions in his radiological risk analysis, he, and others, fails to consider potential chemical effects that uranium may share with other heavy metals, such as lead. There is a rich body of literature documenting the deleterious effects (e.g. lowering IQ) of lead on children, even at doses below those considered acceptable by CDC guidelines. Little if anything, however, is known about the effects of uranium on the developing nervous system, leaving open the question of whether or not it affects children who might inhale uranium-contaminated dust or be exposed to it in food or water. Given the state of our ignorance it is important for uranium to be evaluated beyond its radiological effects as “a major player, in causing health effects,” especially where the well-being of children is concerned.

Here is my studio in progess. I recently repainted the wall and now I want to make some book shelves, but this gives you a sense of what it looks like in the tiny space I dedicate to painting.


My most recently completed painting is titled,
"The shape they should have been." The drawings of the rib cages were taken from a health text that I was recently given by relatives in Vermont. My great grandmother Shanley was a nurse, and her daughter Mary graduated from UVM medical school in 1938, the only woman in her class. The other, more abstract shape, is taken from a fabric collage I made while I was in graduate school in Iowa.

It's been a busy month, with interviews accross the state from Buffalo to Rochester, and then Vermont. This has not left much free time for painting or writing blogs. While in Vermont, I stayed at Anne Rowley's house, where her sons still run a dairy farm with about 400 holsteins according to Margaret. Margaret and Anne let me sort throughthe old books that were taken from the Milton farm, that so far no one else has wanted. The books included Helen Shanley's nursing books from the turn of the century, including histology, and a slim volume from the late 1800's on writing prescriptions in Latin--Humpf! No more.

The most precious text though was on the subject of law. The title was Roman Civil law, and the date printed in Roman numerals is 1724. The typeface has "s"'s that look like f's to me. It is very old. I have been looking at these books, and already have taken images from one book: pair of pictures of ribcages, and placed it in a new painting. One set of ribs is of a woman whose ribs were deformed by the use of laces and some sort of corset; the other set is normal. What a contrast. The descriptions of what happens to the internal organs is rather graphic and discourages such practices. Now, if we could just free our minds from the assault of modern advertisements that teach us to loath the natural shape of our bodies, we might terminate the practices that enslave our bodies and our pocketbooks for all time.

I was struck recently by a magazine article that I read on tummy tucks while getting my hair cut. Not being used to reading such magazines, I felt rather shocked by it--I know I'm out of touch with the popular culture by and large, but still.... It's awful to think that people today are still spending vast sums of money to make themselves over physically in to conform to popular notions of beauty. We haven't learned much of anything it seems in the last 200 years.