By wpengine November 4, 2003
“The novel is about life,” acclaimed author Salman Rushdie told a small group of reporters yesterday in a rare press conference, “and if you’re going to try and depict how real people really live then you have to talk about what’s really in their minds.” On Sunday and Monday, though, it was Rushdie who shared what was on his mind with the Ithaca community. As this year’s Distinguished Speaker in the Humanities at Ithaca College, Rushdie gave a speech Sunday evening at the Ben Light Gymnasium on the IC campus and met with faculty and students yesterday. Sponsored by the School of Humanities and Sciences at IC, the Distinguished Speaker in the Humanities program has featured Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Speigelman, among others. Sunday night’s presentation “Step Across This Line: An Evening with Salman Rushdie” took its title from Rushdie’s latest collection of nonfiction, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002. His speech touched on several topics that ranged from current American policy and politics to humorous anecdotes from his own life. In addition to his presentation, Rushdie spent much of yesterday meeting with IC faculty and students, offering members of the IC community a rare chance to meet the illusive Rushdie in person. Addressing approximately a dozen journalists yesterday morning, Rushdie answered questions about his writing, his political viewpoints and spoke briefly about his novel The Satanic Verses, a text that prompted the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran to declare a fatwa against him in February of 1989. The fatwa, a ruling that called for the excecution of Rushdie and of those involved in the publication of The Satanic Verses, earned the author a great deal of international notoriety. “What can you do if you find yourself stuck in the middle of an historical event like that?” Rushdie rhetorically asked reporters at yesterday’s press conference. “I think that [the fatwa] is noisier than most literary careers so of course it got the part of ‘what people know about me as a writer.’ My interest as a writer now is to get past it so that people stop thinking of me in that box. I think, in a way, that it was the greatest damage done to me as a writer; that people categorized me in some box called Islamic fanaticism, which really, is not what my work is like or about. Very few people mention, for instance, that The Satanic Verses is quite a funny book. It’s not discussed in those terms.” Though the fatwa was eventually lifted in 1998, the international support for Rushdie and the tight security required during those nine years left quite an impression him, Rushdie said. Though the fatwa garnered much media attention, Rushdie’s literary roots, his reputation and his international acclaim date farther back than the 1989 edict. In 1981, his novel Midnight’s Children was awarded the Booker Prize, the premier British award for fiction. Subsequently, that text has been published alongside titles like Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Auggie March and Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way as part of Penguin Putnam’s series, “Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century.” “Rushdie is at his best in early novels like Midnight’s Children, which enriched the English language by enabling it to hear the sounds and resonances of ‘Indian English,'” wrote Cornell Professor Satya Mohanty, English, in an email to The Sun. “But that novel was also important because of the way it debunked the pious nationalist myths of the Indian (and Pakistani) elites. Rushdie is an imaginative storyteller and a bold debunker,” he added. Mohanty, who teaches a course titled “The Modern Indian Novel” at Cornell, went on to address the politics of Rushdie’s work. “In a post-9/11 world, I think one of the most valuable things in Salman Rushdie’s work would be his critique of self-serving nationalist ideologies of all kinds — those imposed, for example, by Sadaam Hussein’s regime as well as those espoused by the current U.S. administration,” he said. Such critique was evident at yesterday’s press conference when Rushdie addressed the social and political climate of a post-Sept. 11 America and characterized the American media’s response to the Patriot Act legislation as “tepid.” “I think the American press is much less vigorously critical of the American administration than the British press is of the British administration,” Rushdie said. “And that actually surprises me, because remembering the last time around — during Vietnam — the involvement of the press in that subject was very, very vigorous and was one of the main reasons why the subject of Vietnam went the way it did. This time around there’s a kind of quietism which is just kind of surprising,” he added. Recently, Rushdie has dealt with social and political topics in his nonfiction, but when asked if he would attempt to write about a post Sept. 11 America in his fiction, Rushdie did not have a definite answer. “So far, it’s been nonfiction, but I think that’s the only way of making a quick response,” Rushdie said. “Novels are slow, not just because they take a long time to write, but because sometimes things just need to sit in your head for a long time. Before you find out what, if anything, you can do, I suspect you won’t get the great novel about that moment in American life for quite a long time. If you think about it, War and Peace was written more than half a century after the events it describes and yet, if you want to read a novel about the Napoleonic wars or about Napoleon’s campaign in Russia, you’d probably read War and Peace before anything else,” he said. Ithaca College director of media relations, Dave Maley described Rushdie’s visit as a success. “I think the campus and the local community got a real treat to be able to have an opportunity to hear from him [Rushdie] in his speech Sunday evening,” he said. “Students having interaction with him today in a master’s class was wonderful,” Maley added. Though many of the topics addressed by Rushdie over the course of the past two days dealt with issues of free speech and expression, authorial methodologies and international politics, his visit was not without it’s humorous moments. During Sunday night’s presentation and again at yesterday’s press conference, Rushdie appeared to be in good humor, even as he recounted the tense years of the fatwa. Yesterday, when asked if he thought the word “fatwa” would one day appear in his obituary, Rushdie replied, “The great thing about your obituary is you’re not around to read it.” Archived article by Nate Brown
By wpengine November 4, 2003
Like many older manufacturing towns, the Village of Endicott, known as “The Birthplace of IBM,” is currently facing the industrial consequences of its past. However, industry left more than economic scars on Endicott, as the residents now struggle to understand and deal with the “toxic plume” left behind by spills from IBM and other businesses. The New York State Department of Health and IBM say that the contaminants are currently below levels that would affect health, but some residents blame various health problems on the contaminated water and air in their community. Decontamination IBM has been dealing with the original problem of groundwater contamination since 1980. They began this decontamination process after an employee spilled 4,100 gallons of trichloroethane (TCA), a dissolving agent, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. Since then, IBM has installed several pump stations to pump out the contaminated water, treat it to remove TCA and other potentially harmful chemicals and return it to the ground. Currently, with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, IBM is examining this process to see if it is possible to “accelerate remediation,” making the cleanup faster and more effective, according to Todd Martin, IBM representative. Vapors However, the possibility of contaminated air is a more recent development in the Endicott case. Last year, NYSDOH required IBM to test the air in buildings above areas with contaminated soil to see if vapors from the soil were traveling up into the indoor air systems. Testing revealed that vapors were in fact migrating into the air. Although the vapors were present, both the NYSDOH and IBM say the levels of harmful chemicals in the air are far below levels affecting human health. According to NYSDOH, the highest levels measured of one of the other major contaminants, tricolorethene (TCE), are about 300 times lower than levels known to affect the central nervous system. Breathing very high levels of TCE can cause dizziness, difficulty in breathing and death, but the long-term effects of inhaling or ingesting low levels of TCE are unknown. “We don’t expect these acute effects,” said Robert W. Denny, the director for the Division of Environmental Health Services for Broome County Department of Health. “The concern is what is the effect of low levels of these chemicals over a lifetime of exposure.” Current data show some connections between TCE and cancer, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Some of the other chemicals contaminating the air and water in Endicott are also known carcinogens. However, two studies examining the health effects of contaminated groundwater in Endicott, done in 1986 and 1995 by NYSDOH, found that there were no increase or decrease in cancer occurrence since the contamination. With the discovery of vapor contamination, the NYSDOH is conducting a new study examining possible health impacts of the vapor. Although the chemicals are not supposed to have detrimental health impacts, NYSDEC is requiring IBM to remove the chemicals to a point of “no discernible impact.” To adhere to these regulations, IBM is in the process of installing ventilation systems in any buildings affected by the vapors. “IBM’s general approach to environmental management is extremely proactive,” said Martin. “Our goal is not only to meet regulatory standards, but to exceed them.” So far, IBM has offered residents 480 ventilation systems and installed 312 of them. The DEC estimates that scientists have 85 to 95 percent of the affected buildings and the rest have very low levels of contamination. Martin said that the air in an average home in a non-contaminated area could normally have more of these chemicals present than the air in some of the Endicott homes. “[These chemicals] are kind of present in our daily lives,” he said. Although they accept some of the blame for contamination, IBM claims that they are not the only source. The DEC is also going to test around three other businesses to see if they are possible sources of contamination. One of the possible sources, a local dry cleaners, has also offered to help with a voluntary cleanup program. Despite these efforts, Endicott residents, politicians and lawyers claim that IBM is not doing enough and the plume still poses health threats. Residents have formed two different organizations around this subject, Citizens Acting to Restore Endicott and Resident Action Group of Endicott. The coordinator and co-founder of RAGE, Allen Turnbull, said he formed the group after doctors diagnosed his wife with squamous cell cancer of the throat. “My wife does not smoke and does not drink alcohol. And the only way she got this is through what she drank or what she breathed,” he said. “I am highly suspicious that [the contamination] was what caused my wife’s cancer.” So far, his organization has convinced the Wall Street Journal to write a story on the town’s contamination and meets regularly with the NYSDOH, NYSDEC and ATSDR. They have also met with New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer, Congressmember Maurice Hinchey (D-22) and Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) to address the issue. Turnbull believes that most residents are dissatisfied with how IBM is handling the contamination. He referred to an online poll where two-thirds of residents answered no to the question, “Do you feel like IBM is making an honest effort to rectify the situation?” Although online polls can often be inaccurate, he said these results seem about correct. Turnbull himself thinks that IBM’s actions are too little, too late. “They could have done a lot more many years ago,” he said. As for citizens’ general reactions to the contamination, he said there isn’t one main response. “The mood of the community is all over the place. It goes from shock and disbelief, to outright rage, to people who just throw their hands up in the air,” he said. Although most people are mainly concerned about their health, many citizens also worry about their property values. RAGE recently collected 600 signatures from residents of Endicott as part of a petition drive to convince IBM to participate in a “Property Value Protection Plan.” This plan would require IBM to compensate residents for loss in market value of their property. So far, IBM has refused to participate, again citing that they are not the only source of contamination. Beyond pressuring IBM, Turnbull said RAGE’s long-term goal is to have governmental agencies establish “safe living standards for residential homes,” like the Occupational Safety and Health Association requires for the workplace. After hearing stories like Turnbull’s, Hinchey decided to become involved in the Endicott issue. “No one else was advocating for them. They’ve been suffering under these conditions for decades,” he said. He believes that although IBM is following the regulations, they are not doing enough to clean up the contamination. “The only thing they’re done so far is to mitigate the damage and reduce the damage, but not in a comprehensive way,” he said. “This is a matter of life and death.” He is also currently pushing for the Environmental Protection Agency to change the designation of the Endicott cleanup from a Class IV contaminated site to a Class II contaminated site. A Class IV site is supposed to be inactive, comple