Resources

See below for further reading and advanced hellraising on the articles in this issue:

• Dr. Dolphin (dolphin healing)
• A Giant Spraying Sound (pesticide dangers)
• The CIA Crosses Over (non-official cover)
• Learning to Love (sex and teenagers)
• A Lust for Gold (mining dangers)

Dr. Dolphin by Rich Blow

• Our reporter–a convert–hesitates to encourage crowds at the dolphin pool, but we believe in sharing information: Purchase tickets to Dolphins Plus in advance by calling (305) 451-1993.
• Or if the idea of dolphins in captivity makes you sick with rage, find out how you can register your disapproval by writing to Russ Rector, director of the Dolphin Freedom Foundation, 824 S.W. 13th St., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33315.

A Giant Spraying Sound by Esther Schrader

• When a 20-year-old farmworker died two days after bathing in an irrigation canal, his death was almost written off to a karate blow. But enviro-studies professor Angus Wright’s investigation into The Death of Ramon Gonzalez (Texas: University of Texas Press, 1990) turned into a hard look at pesticide (over)use.
• Rachel Carson warned readers about chemical pesticides more than 30 years ago in the environmental classic Silent Spring (New York: Fawcett, 1962)–two years before she died of breast cancer. Was anybody listening?
• Unsettling footage drives the narrative in two video documentaries: Bill Moyers looks at what’s In Our Children’s Food in a 1993 PBS “Frontline” program available to schools and “other institutions” (call (800) 424-7963 to order), while Patricia Diaz Romo’s Huicholes & Pesticides depicts the unfortunately intimate relationship between its title subjects. Call the Video Project at (510) 655-9050 for information.
• News updates from the world of pesticides are available online from the Pesticide Action Network. News items are posted weekly. Subscribe to the group’s free newsletter by sending a message via e-mail (“subscribe PANUPS”) to majordomo@econet.apc.org.

The CIA Crosses Over by Richard Dreyfuss

• The 27th book (and counting) by Great American Novelist and Village Voice co-founder Norman Mailer is Harlot’s Ghost (New York: Random House, 1991). At 1,000-plus pages, it’s a hefty but brilliant tale of both real and invented players in “America’s postwar church,” the CIA.
• Don’t look for spy stories in Jeffrey Richelson’s The U.S. Intelligence Community (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1985). It’s a solid textbook on the agency and its workings that serves as a bible for most intelligence experts.
• It might be hard to imagine good-guy Harrison Ford playing the deputy director of intelligence for the CIA, but he did it with style in last summer’s box office hit Clear and Present Danger (directed by Phillip Noyce). Adapted from Tom Clancy’s best-selling 1989 novel, the movie toned down the author’s famous right-wing politics, presenting Ford’s Jack Ryan as an aging Boy Scout caught in the covert operations of a Reaganesque president.

Learning to Love by Nell Bernstein

• Everything you ever wanted your children to know about sex but were afraid to say out loud: Let Robie Harris say it all before it’s too late. Her hip intro to puberty and sexuality for preteens, It’s Perfectly Normal (Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 1994), is rounded out by Michael Emberley’s funky illustrations, celebrating the diversity of life and love.
• Don’t let Sassymagazine’s cheeky attitude and neon graphics fool you: This teen glossy is a lot smarter and more progressive than its puffy counterparts. (When a reader inquires about the “average age for a girl to start shaving,” a Sassyadvice columnist shoots back: “By answering this question, I’m not advocating shaving, OK?”) The magazine’s frank and realistic approach to sexuality has, sadly, distanced advertisers; its profit margin is skinnier than its models.
• Whether you want to read it yourself or pass it to your teenager, Judy Blume’s back-of-the-school bus classic, Forever. . .(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1975) still keeps, with one crucial caveat: In a preface added to newer editions of the novel, Blume urges her teenage readers to use condoms (unlike her ’70s-era protagonist, who leaves a Planned Parenthood clinic with only a prescription for the pill).
• Go back to school with Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd (New York: Random House, 1956), a somewhat dated and stuffy sociological look at adolescence that, to its credit, was one of the first to seriously consider the ways in which teenagers fit into our screwed-up world.
• Most films aimed at capturing teenage angst are either sappy, mindless, or just plain lame. But Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert recommends The Man in the Moon (directed by Robert Mulligan, 1991), a Southern weeper about a 14-year-old girl’s unrequited love for a boy who is, alas, captivated by her sister.
• For insight into teenagers’ music, listen to your Offspring. Spawning top-40 singles like “Self-Esteem” and the anti-gun “Come Out and Play,” the group’s second LP, “Smash” (released by Epitaph, 1994) reflects all of the frustration (or is it naivete?) of their suburban upbringing.

A Lust for Gold by Jessica Speart

• There are a whopping 4,000 abandoned mine sites in America’s national parks, which doesn’t make for a pretty picture. The National Park Service has nonetheless produced a full-color primer on their environmental impact. For a copy of Abandoned Mineral Lands in the National Parks, write: Chief, Mining and Minerals Branch, Land Resources Division, National Park Service, P.O. Box 25287, Denver, CO 80225-0287.
• Then check the Mining Conservation Directory (Washington, D.C.: Mineral Policy Center, 1994) to find out how to join grassroots efforts to halt mining development in your area.