Tag: lynn

Breast Cancer Dragon Boat

  • The Dream Team of breast cancer survivors paddles away. (Photo courtesy of the Dream Team)

It’s hard to imagine you would be glad to have breast cancer.
But some women are now saying getting the disease has changed
their lives for the better. These crazy-sounding women are finding new life in a sport called
dragon boat racing. Julie Grant brings us their story:

Transcript

It’s hard to imagine you would be glad to have breast cancer.
But some women are now saying getting the disease has changed
their lives for the better. These crazy-sounding women are finding new life in a sport called
dragon boat racing. Julie Grant brings us their story:


(Sound of women talking and laughing)


The sun is just beginning to set on another weekday as twenty middle-aged women start
gathering near a boathouse. They’re all wearing bright pink racing jerseys.
And they’ve all survived breast cancer.



A few work together to pull the canvas cover off their baby, a long, thin wooden boat.
This is what’s known as a Chinese dragon boat. The front end is a dragon’s head, with a fierce
red face and green scales running down the dragon’s neck. Dragon boat racing started 2500
years ago in China. Some say it was believed to ward off evil and disease.


At this Midwestern boathouse, these breast cancer survivors give thanks for their chance to
paddle a dragon boat. They get in, sit in pairs, and push off. There’s still some fun and laughter,
but most of the women grimace as they attempt to synchronize their race-strokes.


(Sound of prayer)



They get in, sit in pairs and push off. There’s still some fun and laughter, but most of the women grimace as they attempt synchronize their race strokes.


In a race, paddlers stroke about 75 times per minute. That’s a big change for breast cancer
survivors. They used to be told not to use their upper bodies. No carrying groceries, babies, or
vacuuming. It was thought they could get lymphedema, a swelling of the arms. But testing on
women in dragon boating has shown paddling is actually beneficial.


Paddler Lynn Fritz has had two bouts with breast cancer over the past ten years.
Fritz says she’s talked about her feelings with a support group to help her deal with the cancer.
But she loves dragon boating, she says, because it’s helping her get on with her life:


“This was something that I thought, this is fun. Instead of just, gotta introduce myself and say when I
had cancer, don’t worry you’ll get through it. We don’t talk about it out here, out on the lake it’s
just peaceful. I needed it, bad.”



The “Dream Team,” as they’re known, has started competing in dragon boat races. It’s one of
the fastest growing water sports worldwide. Some of the other teams are also exclusive to breast
cancer survivors. The Bosom Buddies and Abreast in a Boat are two Canadian teams. But most
dragon boaters are just regular paddling competitors. The women have to be strong to keep up.
The Dream Team, in only their first year on the water, won one of their races.


(Sound of boat)


Jessica Madder remembers watching dragon boaters from the dock of her vacation home in Nova
Scotia. She always admired the women. She remembers the summer of 2005, toasting them
with pink champagne as they paddled by:


“Little did I know that the following summer, I was going to arrive home and have the birthday greetings that I had developed breast cancer that year and I had been through all the treatments. In fact, I wasn’t even two
months out of treatment when I first got in a dragon boat. So that was my first introduction.”


Madder paddled all that summer in Nova Scotia. Then she came back to her home in Ohio, and
went to see her doctor:


“His nurse greeted me for my appointment and she said, ‘How are you?’ Because of course
she had seen me as a recovering patient in the spring. How are you? And I said, fantastic! I’m so healthy, I’m a
summer athlete. And I just bounced.”


When the doctor saw how well she was doing, he wanted that treatment for the rest of his
patients, so he bought the Dream Team boat and life jackets. Madder didn’t know if she could
recruit 22 women to form a full paddling team. She quickly had 72 interested. She gets teary
when she talks about them:


“I still remember Linda saying to me, ‘I’m a survivor for 11 years and this is the first time the
loneliness of cancer has left my heart.’ I mean, how am I not gonna cry? And then they say thank you. I stand there, and I am so
truthful, and say, look, I did this for myself. I just wanted to paddle a dragon boat.”


Madder jokes with her husband, she wishes she’d been diagnosed ten years earlier. She’s
hoping she’s got enough time left to start a dragon boat team on every waterway in her state.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Who Should Watch Big Farms?

  • Hog manure being injected into the ground and tilled under. The manure fertilizes the crops, but if too much is applied it can foul up waterways. (Photo by Mark Brush)

Big livestock operations can raise thousands of cows, chickens or pigs
under one roof. It helps keep the price of food lower. But neighbors
complain the government’s not doing a good enough job of monitoring the
pollution these farms produce. Rebecca Williams reports there’s a
debate heating up in several states over who should be regulating these
big farms:

Transcript

Big livestock operations can raise thousands of cows, chickens or pigs
under one roof. It helps keep the price of food lower. But neighbors
complain the government’s not doing a good enough job of monitoring the
pollution these farms produce. Rebecca Williams reports there’s a
debate heating up in several states over who should be regulating these
big farms:


The days of small farms with different kinds of livestock grazing in
the pasture are fading from the landscape.


They’re being replaced by farms that specialize in one kind of animal –
and raise thousands of them. They’re called concentrated animal
feeding operations, or CAFOs.


There are battles in several states right now over who should be keeping an eye
on the CAFOs. Usually, the state departments of environmental
protection have power under the federal Clean Water Act to enforce laws
and issue permits. But in the Midwest, in states such as Ohio and
Michigan, and in the West, in states such as Oregon and Idaho, they either have transferred or are working to transfer oversight power to the state agriculture departments – and get U.S. EPA approval.


Jerry Van Woerkom is a Republican state senator in Michigan. Right
now, the state Department of Environmental Quality – or DEQ – has the
oversight powers. But Senator Van Woerkom is sponsoring a package of
bills that would put most of the state’s big livestock farms under the
Department of Agriculture:


“Those people tend to be supportive and come with the attitude of we’re
going to try to work together to solve this problem. Whereas when they
work with the DEQ the attitude is more like we’re coming with a
hammer and if we find anything you’ve done that’s out of line, we’re
going to wop you with it.”


The CAFOs are in the spotlight because they can produce tens of
thousands of gallons of urine and manure each day. That liquefied
manure is eventually spread onto farm fields.


The Environmental Protection Agency says that waste can wash from
fields into streams and creeks. That can cause fish kills. Animal
waste has also gotten into drinking water and made people sick.


Lynn Henning runs a small farm. She says there are 13 CAFOs within a
10 mile radius of her Michigan farmhouse. She says the manure odors
are overwhelming:


“We can’t hang laundry when the emissions are in the air. We have
severe fly outbreaks. We’ve had family farmers that have been diagnosed with hydrogen
sulfide poisoning from emissions from the CAFOs.”


Henning says the current oversight system is weak. She says the
Department of Environmental Quality doesn’t have enough funding to
monitor the CAFOs. So that job often falls to residents like her. She
says putting the Department of Agriculture in charge of oversight would
make the problems even worse:


“The MDA has no enforcement authority and they promote agriculture in
Michigan. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
You can’t give authority to punish to an agency that’s promoting.”


But it could become a wider trend if the states that are proposing the
switch now actually make it happen.


Karla Raettig is an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project.
It’s a group that’s been critical of weakening environmental laws.
She’s been tracking trends in enforcement of livestock farms:


“I think the Farm Bureau and other really large industry advocates are
seeing a chance to get regulation that is perhaps more cooperative,
less regulatory and less on the enforcement side. It isn’t totally
nefarious but I think it could have outcomes that are not anticipated.”


Raettig says you have to wonder what will happen without the threat of
enforcement from an environmental agency.


But Senator Jerry Van Woerkom from Michigan argues that farmers are
more likely to do the right thing if they’re overseen by a friendlier
agency, as he proposes:


“I mean you’re not able to cover up problems that happen, it gets in
the newspaper, people know when problems happen. But I believe that the
agriculture department will work with people, especially if people are
getting a bad reputation. I think they will work with them and if
those people do get out of line, it’s back to the DEQ.”


Environmentalists and small farmers are worried about the idea of
states handing off oversight of CAFOs… from their environmental
watchdog agencies to their agencies in charge of promoting the business
of agriculture.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Armadillos Migrating North

  • Armadillos are migrating from Southern states into the Midwest. (Photo by Hollingsworth, John and Karen – USFWS)

Armadillos are moving out of Southern states and are pushing into the
Midwest in record numbers. Adam Allington reports:

Transcript

Armadillos are moving out of Southern states and are pushing into the
Midwest in record numbers. Adam Allington reports:


Prior to the 1900s, armadillos were hemmed in by large rivers and open
prairie grasslands that weren’t suitable habitat. Now, all that’s changed.
Humans have cultivated the kind of woodlands and thickets that armadillos
need for cover.


Lynn Robbins is a biology professor at Missouri State University:


We’re getting a lot more records in central Illinois, we’re getting more records up into
Nebraska, we’ve found them now moving up into Indiana… have no records so far in
Iowa, I would not be surprised if somebody called and said ‘yes, they’re here.'”


Robbins says warmer winters and lower average snowfall are one hypothesis
for the expanding armadillo range. They are also prolific breeders and have
no natural predators.


For the Environment Report, I’m Adam Allington

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