water is life, humankind fracks itself

I was playing around earlier today, googling about Paul Bunyan. I found a website that lists the six towns across the USA, from Maine to CA but several in Minnesota, that have 23 to 26 foot statues representing Paul Bunyan.  It was just passing silliness that I indulged.

I had recalled the Paul Bunyan statue that was on the route from Minneapolis to Lake Mille Lac. My ex husband and I occasionally used his landlady's cabin on the lake.  We honeymooned there, actually. To get to the lake and the cabin, you turn at the Paul Bunyan statue in Brainerd.

The blurb about the Paul Bunyan statue in Brainerd included a warning about Brainerd diarrhea that first appeared in 1983. I looked up Brainerd diarrhea on wikipedia and read that it's causes are unknown, it always lasts months, it is virulent diarrhea, and it sometimes lasts years. Antibiotics don't help. Nothing seems to treat the condition but it eventually goes away.

Gee, do ya think there might be something in the water? Wikipedia said some blame raw milk but raw milk would contain whatever is in the water.

If you boil water during outbreaks, it seems to boil away whatever makes people sick. Gee, what's going on in the drinking world, the groundwater, the whole watershed that makes people sick even after water has been processed at a water filtation plant? Is there any fracking going on near Brainerd? If not fracking, what environmental degradation is being tolerated for the sake of local jobs.  I am all but certain that the water that sickens people in Brainerd for months or years is connected to some human activity and very likely for-profit activity. Nature does not pollute herself. Humankind does.

Water. Come on. Why do we keep letting people pollute what we need to live, kill off bees and butterflies, degrade our soil and food with pesticides and genetic engineering?