Piketon’s Town Hall will be a big deal for the community of Piketon, Ohio, which for 70 years has been suffering the effects of radioactive contamination from the Portsmouth Nuclear Site (PORTS), 4 miles south of the village.  

The Town Hall will be hosted by reporter Duane Pohlman of WKRC TV in Cincinnati. It will be a forum to give voice to the people in the area who have suffered cancers and other illnesses in their families.

Several radioactive isotopes have been found in Department of Energy (DOE) monitors outside PORTS and in offsite samples taken for the DOE by Solutient Technologies and analyzed by Auxier & Associates. Dr. Michael Ketterer, professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry at Northern Arizona State University, will also speak. He has analyzed samples taken from outside PORTS and has also found radioactivity. Epidemiologist Joseph Mangano will speak online from New Jersey. He has reported that the premature death rate in Pike County is twice the national average. PORTS looms large as a suspect in these illnesses.

Right around the height of the COVID-19 global pandemic, I lost hope. I saw the worst of us on display during that time. I looked in horror upon the anti-vaxxing, anti-masking, privileged, blatantly racist, proudly ignorant population, and I lost hope. All of it. All my faith in humanity – right down the drain.

Before then, I didn’t realize how much I actually relied on that hope to get through life. It was only when I lost it that I missed it and realized it. I spent a few years in an emotional rock bottom. I withdrew, physically and emotionally, in disgust. I stayed in my bedroom, leaving it only to eat and to work. I cried a lot. I wept when I caught glimpses of people or performances that espoused hopefulness. (Such a performance was Melody Gardot’s music video for “From Paris With Love”. It’s made up of selfie-recorded videos from people all over the world during the pandemic. It’s worth watching. Melody Gardot - From Paris With Love (Official Music Video) (youtube.com))