Till the last drop of beer”
– Julia Vinograd
RadLab Rats
or
Picnic in People’s Park
a dissertation in one act
by Jamie Jobb
CHARACTERS:
(Short bios at page 33)
HOWARD DOBBS, aka “Dobbs”, caucasian male, 27.
CURTIS DONNER, aka “Curt”, caucasian male, 27.
MORGAN BERNARD BECK, aka “M.B.” and “Nibbs”, African-American male, 42.
JULIA-MAY BECK, aka “J.M.” and “Her Majesty”, African-American female, 43.
PEARL DALY, Japanese-American female, 49.
RUNNING SACAGAWEA, aka “Sacks”, Lakota-Nez Perce female, 55.
SETTINGS
all in Berkeley
People’s Park – up right
Downtown Bar – up center
Cafe Strada – up left
Swift Mosaic – down right
Moore Lobby – down center
RadLab – down left
Apologies: George Hearst, Edward Teller, Glenn T. Seaborg, M.B. Curtis, Robert Cade, Frances Moore Lappe, Fat Dog, Wavy Gravy, Humphrey Bogart and Humphrey GoBart.
RadLab Rats
or
Picnic in People’s Park
Scene One
PEOPLE’S PARK, Berkeley. A winter evening.
AUDIO: Persistent rain on plastic “roof”. Howling wind.
PROJECTION: The Park, dark and damp.An empty shopping cart. Under plastic tarp withsleeping bags and blankets, PEARL and SACKS huddle.
PEARL: He was some strange cat. Bearded grizzly bear of a guy. Dressed in a suit. Didn’t look like a student at all. Too old!
SACKS: We’re old!
PEARL: He sure talked like a student. Big mouth. Big words! (beat) Anyway, he didn’t see us. Tripped right over ME. Right there on Telegraph.
SACKS: It happens.
PEARL: Yeah, he should-a known. Everybody sees us sit there every day. Same spot, outside Amoeba Records.
SACKS: Manners!
PEARL: Anyway, I get up, follow the cat. He don’t notice.
SACKS: We’re invisible, Pearl.
PEARL: Fine. I follow him five-six blocks, toward campus. Suit and tie! (beat) What he don’t know won’t hurt ME.
SACKS: Might hurt HIM – not US!
Pause.
PEARL: So I track him up Bancroft, into Cafe Strada. Ya know – we can sit there, no hassle. Who’s gonna say squat to us? Everybody there looks homeless anyway … Or at least one-foot-out-the-door.
SACKS: Don’t let it hit you in the backside, kids!
PEARL: So I sit there. Close enough to study the students. He orders his luxury lappe (sic). Sits and sips and seems to wanna wait for somebody. (beat) He just stares out into space. Not stuck on his phone. Or his lapdog computer. (beat) So naturally, I know he’s up to something.
SACKS: They usually are ... college kids!
PEARL: You know that’s a great spot to fish for bits of bagel and cold coffee.
SACKS: No bagels between semesters!
Pause.
PEARL: The food they throw away – students! (beat) After a while the cat’s friend shows up. Another beard. Another burly Bear. Suddenly the first beard talks about his “project at the Lab”, he calls it the “Goldwater Project”. He talks like some Mad Scientist.
SACKS: They usually are ... students.
PEARL: Then they talk a ton of math. (beat) I just can’t dig it.
SACKS: It happens.
PEARL: Plenty leftovers sitting there so I don’t care what they say. After a couple minutes of math, first cat says he’s got this “Experiment” unquote. What he says drops my jaw clear to the sidewalk. (beat) He says he has a machine to take GOLD out of water!
SACKS: Goldwater?
PEARL: Mining student … in the mining department.
SACKS: Mining department?!?
PEARL: The University – they have a department for miners. Like the fire department. They go to mines instead of fires.
SACKS (perplexed): What about the Goldwater?
Pearl pulls Sacks close.
PEARL: Listen, this is big. Very very big. I can’t believe he talked about it.Right there in public. Out in the open: GOLD ... from water! Forget the Lottery. (beat) RunningSacks, we could be rich, my friend!
SACKS: Aren’t California’s gold mines all played out?
PEARL: They are! They’re shut, locked up! But that’s the beauty of it – there’s all this old Goldwater trapped up there in those mines. Just sits there – over a hundred-fiftyyears. He said the water’s full of gold. And silver. And heavy metals and stuff! I mean – it’s like they left us another Mother Lode! Locked up in that water.
SACKS: Well, well, well – we don’t say! Gold’s in the water – water’s in the well!
PEARL: It’s just all dammed up. (beat) Waiting there for a couple of native Americans like us to take it.
Pause.
SACKS: You’re Japanese-American!?
PEARL: Correct …
Pause.
PEARL: You’re Nez Perce.
SACKS: … and Lakota Sioux!
PEARL: (beat) Can’t get more Native American than that!
SACKS: Bombs away!
Pause.
SACKS: These are WHITE guys, right?
PEARL: Great White Hunters!
SACHS: Kill things … spread disease.
PEARL: Correct. (beat) They know all about water in California. How precious it
money to get it out!
SACKS: You always said we live in a Cadillac Desert!
PEARL: People gotta drink!
SACKS: We’re too thirsty for earthquakes. Whole state’s on fire!
Pause.
PEARL: Anyway, first beard said he’d figured out how to take out the gold. Plus make the water safe enough to drink! He said that would give them two kinds of products for profit. One wet, the other dry. He said they’d make a fortune.
SACKS: That’s pretty smart! (beat) For college kids.
PEARL: And get this: To get it out – they “extra-act” (sic) it. With bananas!
SACKS (goofy grimace): What?
PEARL: They take the gold out somehow. He said it’s “extra-acted” out of the water. (beat) That specializes it somehow. With “nano bananas”, something like that. Makes it more expensive gold. “High-Grade Gold” is what he called it.
SACKS: Must have lots of carrots (sic), that gold.
PEARL: They’re making it right here in Berkeley!
SACKS: Where?
PEARL: At the Lab ... The RadLab.
SACKS: The Rat (sic) Lab?
PEARL: The RAD-Lab … like “Radical, man!”
SACKS: Don’t they call it something else?
PEARL: “The RadLab” – that’s what Old Hippies call it.
SACKS: We’re Old Hippies, Pearl.
PEARL: I know where that Lab is! I been there a lot. Bike delivery.
SACKS: Where is it?
PEARL: Up the hill, above the Greek Stadium.
SACKS: Bitch to bike up there!
PEARL: Yeah. Big round building, been there forever.
SACKS: Is it that big round thing Fat Dog calls “Oppenheimer’s High Church”?
PEARL: Yeah! The one with all the windows in a circle around the top. It’s easy toGet inside. I’ve done big drops like that before. Nine years in Circus Oz, you lose all fear of heights. (beat) I just need enough rope to rappel me from the roof to the floor.
SACKS: Why we wanna do that?
PEARL: Do I have to (Desi Arnez accent) ‘esplain everything, Lucy?
Pause.
SACKS (dawns on her): … to “extra-act” the gold?
PEARL: Let the kids have the water. We’ll take their gold!
SACKS (thinking it through): Can’t weigh much, if it’s dust.
PEARL: Piece of cake – all crumbs!
AUDIO: Hard rain on plastic.
Pearl searches under blanket.
PEARL: Where’s that Lottery Ticket?
Sacks hands Pearl newspaper Tearsheet and Lottery Ticket.
SACKS (dejected): Wrong numbers again.
LIGHTS
Scene Two
Downtown Bar, evening.
AUDIO: Muffled voices. Clinking glasses and bar din.PROJECTION: Upscale bar with leather booths.
Agitated couple MORGAN and JULIA-MAY BECK sit with drinks.
MORGAN (looks around): I miss Blakes!
JULIA-MAY: Dive!
Beat.
MORGAN: Brennans!
JULIA-MAY: Down on the tracks … Dead end!
Pause.
MORGAN: The old Durant, Henry’s Publick – that was a great bar!
JULIA-MAY: Dump!
MORGAN: Block from campus. We got great shots there!
JULIA-MAY: We could get SHOT there! Perhaps you recall the deranged Iranianstudent who held thirty-three hostages at Henry’s in Nineteen-Ninety? Huh? One of our students died in that stupid shootout. Remember?
Pause.
MORGAN: Nothing pleases us, does it?
JULIA-MAY (sips, grimaces): Impossible to get good mixed drinks in this town! If you wanna good cocktail, you gotta go to L.A.
MORGAN: Stupid one-mile rule! Who thinks students can’t ride a mile for alcohol? Another dumb idea from your Campus That Cares! (beat) Oh, how we yearn for Berkeley in the Sixties! What does our “Dean of Students” candidate have to say about that?
JULIA-MAY: You know, we weren’t here in the Sixties! Anyway, that limit used to be two miles then. It was a stupid TWO-mile rule! (beat) Where the hell is she?
MORGAN: Traffic, running late.
Long Pause.
JULIA-MAY: Another stupid idea – your so-called “open marriage”!
MORGAN: I thought we’d expand our horizons.
JULIA-MAY: Good God! You might have mentioned she’s an Uber driver (beat)with two kids!
MORGAN: Comes in handy sometimes.
JULIA-MAY: You thought Uber would expand our horizons?!?
MORGAN: You know I lost my car!
JULIA-MAY: (sarcastic) Gimme a Lyft! (pause) Morgan Bernard Beck, untenuredprofessor of mining. Married, but footloose and fancy free. You’re long overdue to upgrade your C.V.! And you’ve got enough mileage now from your D.U.I.s!
MORGAN: Keep kicking that dead mule on down the road!
JULIA-MAY: There’s too much slack on your tenure track! That does not make me look good.
MORGAN: Can’t make ME look good either.
JULIA-MAY: I’m avoiding Faculty Senate! My absence doesn’t help any slimhope I have. (beat) It’s a national search! Nobody on campus moves up to Dean’s Chair without strong faculty support. You know that!
MORGAN: You gotta hold out, J.M. Only one way to look at it. Prepare yourself! They’ll select you, eventually. And if the Vice Chancellor won’t call, you can rest assured nobody will ever tell you why you weren’t picked! So … Visualize that chair! It’s the only thing you can do.
JULIA-MAY slams down her glass.
JULIA-MAY: Dammit – you just love to let things slide, don’t you? (beat)Tenure! Promotions. (beat) Fatherhood! … (mocks his voice) “Visualize Father’s Day, Julia-May!” You have no idea how silly that sounds, spoken by a man with no pants. (sneezes)
MORGAN: All things happen in due course – Junior has to wait! (beat) Who said our academic career would be easy?
JULIA-MAY: You’re off track, Nibbs! Don’t drive ME off track. Julia-May Beckdoes not wander off track!
Pause.
MORGAN: Our idea’s too good, J.M. It’s too lucrative. Congress is bound to continue fund us. Everybody at DOE sees the value of our research. We get the gold AND we get the water too!
JULIA-MAY: Well, that’s not what I’m hearing at Sproul. Congress just made massive cuts into DOE’s budget. You’d know that if you’d read the link I posted – yesterday’sL.A. Times.
Pause.
Morgan suddenly seems threatened.
MORGAN: Has “She” talked you into moving back to UCLA?
JULIA-MAY (snaps): “He” doesn’t like to be called “She”!
MORGAN (befuddled): Is “She” a man or is “He” a woman? I keep getting confused about “Them”.
JULIA-MAY: You tell me! “He” can use any bathroom “She” wants! (beat) Are “You” paranoid?
MORGAN: Call me trisexual! (a fib) You know I’ll “try” anything. (beat) Once.
JULIA-MAY: Really!?!
MORGAN (blurts): Why are you keeping Her from me? It’s a golden opportunity.
JULIA-MAY: You know how hush-hush we have to be right now ...
MORGAN: I won’t say anything. You know that!
Julia-May is getting very angry.
Pause.
JULIA-MAY: I’ve had it with your flirtatious lies! Your fake fictions! She doesn’t need to know you … ever. That would send everything off the rails! I won’t get The Chair and you’d never be tenured ... Ten years from now we’ll find Morgan Beck still wandering the HighSierras, looking for his sacks of gold. California’s modern Jim Beckwourth – big black bear of amountain man on the loose!
Pause.
MORGAN: I love you!?
JULIA-MAY: Three empty words. Who loves whom?
MORGAN: No riddles!
JULIA-MAY: You’re just another sad sack. Grow a beard!
MORGAN (confused): Julia-May ... Beck!
Pause.
JULIA-MAY: I asked Ari to draw up papers.
MORGAN (jumps up): What?!?
Julia-May remains seated as Morgan stands.
MORGAN: You can’t get a divorce in an open marriage.
Morgan turns, scratches his head.
MORGAN: … Can you?
JULIA-MAY: Yes I certainly can. I filed before the end of the fiscal year.
MORGAN: No!
JULIA-MAY: Yes! I’m leaving you and your Berkeley pie-in-the-sky Gold Rush dream!
MORGAN: Julia-May, I need you by my side! Especially now!
JULIA-MAY: You want MORAL support!?! (beat) Run for Congress!
Pause. Morgan gathers himself.
MORGAN: I told you what happened to the man who invented Gatorade. Robert Cade. University of Florida. He waited for just his right moment.
JULIA-MAY (cold): I don’t recall.
MORGAN: He kept telling the administration that the University ought to market his product, which at the time was only produced in house for their athletic department. But the University sand-bagged him, year after year. So finally he got fed up and went straight to Stokley’s by himself. Sold the patent rights outright. Of course, then he had the University’s attention. And his wife’s.
JULIA-MAY: What’s your point?
MORGAN: He’d developed Gatorade on their time, in their labs – not Stokley’s. So then the University had to negotiate directly with him. But he came out far better on the deal than if he’d waited for them to act before he did. He could have died while the administration worked out things on its own, “in due course” – as we say in the mining business. Instead, he took the line of least resistance.
Pause.
JULIA-MAY: Are you finished?
MORGAN: I hope not!
JULIA-MAY: Nibbs, this is NOT Florida, your late great Sinkhole State! You’re ascientist – act like one! You should know California has submerged coastlines!
MORGAN: What the hell are you talking about?!?
JULIA-MAY: Stuff sinks in these waters! When that happens, you got nothing to sell the private sector. And you know what that means to an academic reputation. Sell out or die!
She gets up.
JULIA-MAY: Adios, muchacho!
She exits.
Morgan remains at bar.
MORGAN (dejected): She’ll never dig me.
LIGHTS
Scene Three
RADLAB, Berkeley’s hills. Same evening.
AUDIO: Faint electronic buzz. Distant voices echo.PROJECTION: Radioactivity warning sign “Highly Classified”.
An odd contraption of a scientific experiment,The Instrument, is all wrapped in Aluminum Foil.Tinkering with Instrument are two grizzly graduate students,DOBBS and CURT, both in burly beards.
CURT: Rats.
DOBBS: Rats?
CURT: Rats!
DOBBS: Domestic? Or foreign?
Curt examines base of Instrument.
CURT: Too small for Lab rats -- they're so overweight and depressed.
DOBBS: Got in from outside?
CURT: Yeah. I keep telling Maintenance, but they don’t respond … after that last mishap. And they sure don’t listen to M.B. He needs to get off his high horse and hop on this dead mule right away – talk to his “Dean” unquote.
DOBBS: Julia-May’s in a royal snit! She won’t help him.
CURT: Nobody can help him!
Dobbs moves in for closer look at Instrument.
DOBBS: What’s the damage?
CURT: Massive. Look!
Curt pulls out a Mess of Chewed Wiring from Instrument.
DOBBS: Good God, chewed right through!
CURT: No wonder it won’t reboot!
Curt drops the wiring Mess.
DOBBS: So … that shuts us down?
CURT: Totally.
DOBBS: Second time this semester!
Pause.
CURT: We can’t finish this term. No way.
DOBBS: Can’t we just … rewire?
CURT: Dream on, Dude. We lost the entire data set!
DOBBS: You mean …?
CURT: It fried both backup drives, plus the main drive AND mother board. Had to happen early this morning, during monthly maintenance.
DOBBS: I told you we shouldn’t trust M.B.’s TimeMatter app. Where’s he find this crap – Japanese black market?
Dobbs picks up wire Mess, shakes it.
Pause.
CURT: This little mishap means I gotta get another loan.
DOBBS: Me too! (drops wire Mess) What about our housing notice?
CURT: Deadline passed last week.
DOBBS: I’m not sure we can live off campus now.
CURT: We won’t be able to eat.
DOBBS: And pay rent at the same time!
CURT: Berkeley’s a bitch on no budget!
DOBBS: We’ve gotta talk to M.B. Where is he?
CURT: Having drinks, downtown with Her Majesty.
DOBBS: Don’t call her that! (beat) Shit! He won’t be back tonight.
CURT: Maybe not tomorrow.
Pause.
CURT: Think he knows?
DOBBS: I don’t think so ... maybe.
CURT: I saw her going into Lunchbox Wax. (beat) At lunchtime!
Pause.
DOBBS: We know – why can’t he see it?
CURT: His very own wife, cheating on him – openly like that.
DOBBS: With another woman!
CURT: That’s no woman, Dude!
DOBBS: And HIM cheating on her too! You saw that Uber chick he found on Tinder!
Pause.
CURT: They’re all cheating on US!
Pause.
DOBBS: I’m gonna have to go back to tending bar.
CURT: I’m gonna have to learn how to drink, again.
LIGHTS
Moore Lobby
Scene Four
MOORE LOBBY, UC campus. Next morning.
AUDIO: Footsteps and muffled voices reverberate in vaulted dome.PROJECTION: The magnificent Hearst Mining Building lobby.
MORGAN crosses lobby while CURT and DOBBS enter right.They tend to whisper as they walk toward each other.
DOBBS (walks): We just left the Lab!
MORGAN (walks, upset): DOE’s sending their Inspector General – from Albuquerque! Tomorrow afternoon. This is one royal screw up.
Pause.
Curt and Dobbs meet Morgan, downstage center.
MORGAN: RATS, really!?!
DOBBS: There’s nothing we can do up there now.
MORGAN: Do we have any determination – outside rat or inside rat?
DOBBS: Outside.
MORGAN: How do we know for certain?
CURT: Too tough for fat Lab rats.
DOBBS: Wasn’t tagged.
CURT: We called in the Animal Ethics Manager ...
DOBBS: Per Lab protocol!
MORGAN: How do we know our critter wasn’t riddled with disease?
CURT: Had it tested. Rabies. Hantavirus …
MORGAN: … Salmonellosis? Leptospirosis?
DOBBS: All negative. Just another healthy hungry homeless rat.
Pause.
MORGAN: So, there’s nothing we can really do about Lab damage now. (beat) But we do need to recalculate costs – just in terms of rescheduled time on the beam-line. We’re looking at adding a lot more zeroes to a budget already sinking in zeroes.
CURT: What else can we do? We’ve demonstrated that parallel osmosis and high-grade nano-extraction work – in theory. But do they work together in practice? We still don’t know!
DOBBS: I know this project will pan out. It has to. Gold and boutique bottled water? Both high-end luxury items. The potential profits are more than enough to pay off our R-and-D expenses. Congress is very pleased with what we plan to do – cleaning up a toxic Superfund Site and turning profits at the same time!
Pause.
MORGAN: DOE funding has dried up everywhere, but I thought they’d refund us – especially now, with all the renewed interest in Big Money and nano high-grading.
Morgan looks up at portrait of George Hearst.
MORGAN: If our founder only knew what would happen to his hard-fought legacy of 1849. Mining’s not the same! It’s all turned to dust, like “Treasure of Sierra Madre”.
DOBBS: “Ashes to ashes, sacks to dust.”
CURT: Pays to recycle.
DOBBS: “I don’t got to show you no stinking aluminum cans!”
MORGAN: Go ahead. Pitch your jokes, Dobbs. It’s not funny.
Dobbs gets serious.
DOBBS: I know I shouldn’t poke fun at the homeless.
CURT (aside): We could be one.
Pause.
MORGAN: Do you have any questions?
DOBBS: This IS serious!
MORGAN: That’s not a question!
CURT: OK. What are we gonna do?
DOBBS: Can we launch a Kickstarter – for academic research?
MORGAN: That’s a legal question, I can’t answer.
CURT: J.M. should know.
MORGAN: She’s currently … unavailable.
Pause.
MORGAN: What about corporate naming rights? Surely there’s potential monitization there?
DOBBS: Ah yes, our publicly-funded “Vintage Water” project – your logo goes here!
CURT: “Ivanka’s Vintage Water”? She’d bite!
Morgan shakes his head.
Pause.
DOBBS: We also tried to call it “Organic Water ... Heirloom Water.”
CURT: “Waters of Our Ancient Ancestors.”
DOBBS: “Shaft-Aged to Perfection – One-Hundred-Seventy Years.”
Pause.
MORGAN: That’s Flower Power talk. It won’t impress Albuquerque. Bureaucratsdon’t drink bottled water, even in the desert.
DOBBS: We’ve been having trouble landing a proper name.
CURT: Subcommittee settled on Cobalt Blue. Basically because of school colors.
DOBBS: Old Blues are never color blind.
Pause.
MORGAN: That won’t add value in Washington D.C.
CURT: I know somebody who worked for Kamala Harris in Sacramento.
MORGAN: State staffer won’t help with Congress.
CURT: We don’t know any Senators.
DOBBS: Or Congress people. What about J.M.? She has those K Street cousins.
Hard pause.
MORGAN: Julia-May left me!
CURT (gasps): No.
DOBBS (beat): Shit.
Pause.
MORGAN: This is going to be tough. She’s selling the house – I’ve got to leave Kensington! (self-pity) Down-grade … myself!
CURT: We started looking for a place off campus.
DOBBS: … Wanna join us?
MORGAN: You know I can’t live in The Flatlands!
LIGHTS
Scene Five
CAFE STRADA, Berkeley. Next afternoon.
AUDIO: Brancroft Street noise.
PROJECTION: Cafe exterior seats.
DOBBS and CURT, deep in discussion, sit with drinks.PEARL, bundled under blanket, listens in shadow.Curt closes his Notebook.
DOBBS: That’s the problem with the old jargon.
CURT: “High-Grading.”
DOBBS: It means two opposed things – one good, one bad.
CURT: What’s bad about high-grading?
DOBBS: High-Graders!
CURT: Huh?
DOBBS: Archaic Miners term. Look it up!
CURT: You mean the guys with the sacks in their pockets?
DOBBS: Yeah! Miners ripping off the mine! Bad bio-metrics!
CURT: Can’t steal something invisible – nano gold!
Pearl, under blanket, moves in for better view.
DOBBS (his best Spanish): Donde están los sacos?
CURT: Where are the sacks?
Pause.
CURT: Like we say in chemistry: “Nature bats last!”
DOBBS: That doesn’t make any sense. As a retort!
CURT: Yes it does!
DOBBS: It doesn’t make any BASEBALL sense!
CURT: Sure it does: Nature’s the Home Team!
DOBBS: So what!?
CURT: Home Team bats last!
DOBBS: Home Team can strike out!
CURT: Well …
DOBBS: Nature can strike out, batting last.
CURT: That’s not what it means.
DOBBS: Nature could ground out.
CURT: No!
DOBBS: Worse, she could hit into a double play!
CURT (blurts): She could hit a home run!
Dobbs and Curt have gotten very agitated and annoyed.They get up to exit with their argument.
Forgetfully, they leave behind Curt’s Notebook.
DOBBS: Home run won’t help when she’s ten runs behind. (on exit) Do the math!
After they leave, Pearl goes to their table.
She picks up Notebook, turns to exit with it.
LIGHTS
Scene Six
SWIFT MOASIC, UC Berkeley campus. Early evening.
AUDIO: Bird song. Creek water flows.
PROJECTION: Swift Mosaic glistens in dappled light.
DOBBS sits with JULIA-MAY, looking at BAM/PFA foldout.Hiding behind a bush, PEARL listens.
DOBBS: Gold Hat actually says “I don’t HAVE to show you ANY stinking badges!”
Dobbs offers his smartphone to Julia-May.
AUDIO [that same line muffled from “Treasure of Sierra Madre”]
JULIA-MAY (views smartphone): Incredible! His grammar is perfect.
DOBBS: Everybody misquotes the Big Bad Guy from Mexico!
PEARL: Clearly!
DOBBS: He doesn’t say “I don’t GOT to show you NO stinking badges!”
JULIA-MAY: I never noticed, before tonight’s screening. You’ve seen it ten times!I’ve only seen it twice now.
Pause.
Pearl, behind bush, moves in for a better view.
DOBBS: So, this is our last Film Archive date?
JULIA-MAY: Afraid so.
DOBBS: We’ve been great movie buddies.
Pause.
JULIA-MAY: Once I heard the Search Committee was looking for an Ivy Leaguer, I decided it’s time for me to split. I’m really gonna miss Berkeley, but UCLA calls … You know I’m on a Dean’s track wherever I go. Why don’t you move to LA? Movies all day, and night!
DOBBS: “Day for Night”!
JULIA-MAY: Traffaut. (beat) M.B. just doesn’t get it. He can’t think like an administrator. He thinks like a pure researcher – always go slow!
DOBBS: He should have seen this coming. I tried to warn him. (beat) You warned ME!
Pearl bends lower to hear better.
JULIA-MAY: I know, but to whom does he listen?
DOBBS: Himself. First and foremost.
JULIA-MAY: Remember what he used to say when we moved here?
DOBBS (mimics Morgan): “So I asked myself, Morgan: Where do you want to live? And I said to myself: Morgan, I want to live in Kensington, so I can look down on people! See the top of their bald heads.”
JULIA-MAY: NorCal Snob! He still wants to live there! Doesn’t understand how remote it is ... up in those hills. Might as well live in San Remote! (sic) Doesn’t matter now, I’m gone and they’ve started staging the house. So he’ll have to get out now.
DOBBS: That’s too quick! Has he told you where he’s gonna live?
JULIA-MAY (beat): The Lab!
DOBBS: Seriously? In a sleeping bag?
JULIA-MAY: Where else can he go? He’s still trying to crack that code for H-three-Oh!?!
DOBBS: Now he’s calling it (again mimics Morgan) “Ivanka's H3O … California Vintage Goldwater with Luxury Trace Essentials! She’ll never freeze on you!”
Pearl eats a bit of bagel.
JULIA-MAY: He’ll stay there until they kick him out. DOE could do it anytime.I’m worried about Morton … He knows his students hate the homeless. You’re gonna have to keep me posted!
DOBBS: OK … Turns out the Albuquerque inspector was a Russian spy … She was arrested right after she got to the Lab. Some kind of ICE raid, I think. Everybody drew lots of guns. Security was dumbfounded.
Pause.Julia-May looks into her purse.She panics.
JULIA-MAY: So … THAT’S it!?!
DOBBS: What?
JULIA-MAY: My gun!?!
Pearl exits.
LIGHTS
Scene Seven
PEOPLE’S PARK, Berkeley. Same evening.
AUDIO: Steady raindrops on plastic.PROJECTION: The Park, dark and damp.Shopping cart, sleeping bags under tarp.
PEARL curls up long Rope into coil.SACKS sits with several empty plastic gallon Jugs.
SACKS: Are we sure we’re in good enough shape for this?
PEARL: I’ll pull it off. Piece of cake.
SACKS: We’re not as nimble as we were for Occupy Oakland.
Pearl continues to coil Rope.
Pause.
PEARL (curling): Occupy could have used more rope!
SACKS: Pearl Daly, this is crazy!
PEARL: I survived the first Gulf War. I’ve lived in People’s Park since Nine-One-One. All that experience, I know one thing certain: (beat) EVERYBODY’S crazy!
SACKS: Runningsacks NOT crazy! We see the future! (beat) The future is wet!
Pearl stops curling Rope.
Pause. They listen to the rain.
She mulls Sacks’ prognostication.
PEARL (thinking hard): You mean we should “Extra-Act” the water too?
SACKS: Yes! (beat) We save the Goldwater.
PEARL: Why?
SACKS: It’s worth more than the gold!
PEARL: How do we know?
Sacks pulls out a National Geographic from under blankets.[April 2010 issue: “Water: Our Thirsty World”]Sacks hands magazine to Pearl.
PEARL: National Geographic! (reads) “Our Thirsty World”?
SACKS: They got that right.
Pearl flips through pages.
PEARL (reads): “Sacred Waters … Silent Streams … California’s Pipe Dream …Freshwater Crisis … Water Is Life … The Big Melt.”
SACKS: Right on! Water Is Life! The climate sucks, but geography rocks!
PEARL: How could I be so blind?
SACKS: Read the part about “Hardly Soft Water”?
Pearl scans magazine.
PEARL (reads): “Pure liquid, better than water” …
SACHS: What do they call it?
PEARL: H-Three-Oh! (beat) “Never freezes!”
SACKS: And THAT’s what they’re making in the Lab?!?
PEARL: No doubt about it – if it’s in National Geographic.
SACKS: Fake News maybe.
PEARL: Fake fiction!
SACKS: There’s no Fake Geography!
PEARL (dawns on her): And THAT’S what they were talking about at Strada!
SACKS: Get the gold out of the water and …
PEARL: Get the water out of the Lab!
Pause.
PEARL: Gimme those jugs!
Sacks hands Pearl empty water Jugs, held together by twine.As they both exit, empty Jugs bang together.
AUDIO: Banging empty plastic Jugs.
LIGHTS
Scene Eight
RADLAB, Berkeley’s hills. 3 a.m.Lights out, but for dim glow of security lights.
AUDIO: Faint electronic buzz.Odd banging of plastic Jugs echoes.PROJECTION: Dark clerestory circle of windows.
Suddenly a swinging silhouette.PEARL hangs from Rope, swinging.She holds several empty gallon Jugs.
PEARL (struggling with Jugs, whispers): Dammit!
Up from floor, MORGAN leaps out of Sleeping Bag.
MORGAN (throws off Bag, groggy): Who’s there?
Pearl swings on her pendulum.She does not speak.Pause.Morgan slowly approaches swinging Pearl.
MORGAN (now awake): WHO are you?
Morgan stops Pearl’s swinging, untangles Rope.He helps Pearl land onto floor.
MORGAN: What’re you doing here?
PEARL (dizzy): The wildfires ... I’m thirsty!
MORGAN: Hang on …
Morgan rushes back to sleeping bag, comes out with Gun.Pearl continues to untangle herself from Rope and gallon Jugs.
MORGAN (points Gun at Pearl): Hands up, sister!
Pearl stops, but does not put her hands upward.She twirls a Jug instead.Pause.Morgan sees she is a menace.
MORGAN (still points Gun): I said: “Hands up!”
Morgan shakes Gun at Pearl.She does not react.Jug continues twirling.Pause.Pearl stands firm.Morgan again shakes Gun at Pearl, who does not flinch.
Pause.
MORGAN: If you don’t have the decency to duck, I don’t have the decency to shoot!
Pause.
PEARL: You’re chicken, aren’t you?
MORGAN: Correct. (beat) I work for the University.
PEARL: You’ve never shot anybody before.
Morgan puts Gun down by his side.
MORGAN: Correct.
PEARL: You were holding it all wrong.
MORGAN: I was?
PEARL: You could seriously hurt yourself holding it out so loose like that!
MORGAN: Nobody ever showed me how to use a gun. I never joined Boy Scouts.
PEARL (reaches out): Here, let me show you. You need to hold it firm.
Morgan hands Gun to her.She takes it.
MORGAN: Can you tell if it’s loaded?
PEARL (inspects Gun): It is.
MORGAN (relieved): Good! At least I got that right.
Pearl suddenly points Gun at Morgan.
PEARL: Stick ‘em up – yourself!
MORGAN: Huh!?! (at wits end) … Do you have a Visitor’s badge?
Pearl is shocked to hear this.
PEARL: I don’t got to show you no stinking badges! (beat) Stick ‘em up!
MORGAN (aside): Why do I trust a strange woman on a rope?
PEARL: Give me the gold … AND the water.
Morgan panics, waves his arms recklessly.
He begins to spin.
MORGAN (spins): I’m trying to help you out. This is a university, not a bank!?!
Pearl reaches out to stop Morgan’s spinning.
PEARL: You wanna catch rats? Trap ‘em with a PayDay candy bar.
Morgan stops spinning.
MORGAN (bewildered): What!?!
PEARL: Learn how to help yourself, Professor Beck!
MORGAN: How do you know my name?
PEARL: I overhear things! Give me the Goldwater!
MORGAN (suddenly brave): I don’t got to show you no stinking Goldwater!
Morgan and Pearl wrestle with Gun.
AUDIO: Loud Gunshot!
LIGHTS OUT
Scene Nine
RADLAB, Berkeley’s hills. Next morning.
AUDIO: Faint electronic buzz. Distant voices echo.PROJECTION: Radioactivity warning sign “Highly Classified”.
A glowing halo of clerestory light encircles Instrumentwith exfoliating aluminum foil.DOBBS and CURT carefully remove Instrument parts,gather a big bag full of aluminum foil.
DOBBS: Turns out it was ROOF rats!
CURT: Read all about it in The Daily Californian.
DOBBS: No – not “The Homeless Acrobat!”
CURT: You mean the REAL rats? Not Morgan.
DOBBS: Yeah. They came in through the roof too.
CURT: How do you know?
DOBBS: Maintenance found the hole. They went poking around up there, gathering evidence for that homeless woman they caught. Then they noticed the real rat holes. There were a lot of them.
CURT: Explains all the ladders and lifts on the roof this morning. Plus all the cops.
DOBBS: Nothing like a little front-page gossip to get us kicked off the beam-line.
Curt pulls out Daily Californian.
CURT (reads): Quote: “RadLab Break-In and Shootout” … “Mining Prof Jailed in Pre-Dawn Love Tryst” … “Homeless Acrobat Released Unhurt.”
Pause.
CURT: Police said she was “crazy” … unquote. I don’t think that’s accurate. Cops don’t talk like that, my cousin’s a cop. Anyway, they had to release her. She seemed totally nuts. And she had no University property in her possession. But somebody saw the rope and suspected Morgan of hanky-panky. You know his randy reputation. So, they were considered “consenting adults”. University dropped the Breaking and Entering charges to keep it all quiet.
Pause.
Curt hands The Daily Cal to Dobbs.
CURT: As you see, that did no good.
DOBBS: We gotta clear outta here by noon. (beat) Neurobiology gets our spot.
CURT: That’s gotta be fun – hook up somebody’s brain to the beam-line!
DOBBS: Frankenstein in the RadLab! Look out Frat Row!
Pause. Dobbs looks around Lab windows circling above their heads.
CURT (regards Dobbs): What?
DOBBS: I’m gonna miss this place, this High Shrine of Holy Science. No joke!
CURT (looks up): Me too.
DOBBS: We had a lot of fun in here. That’s why we joke about it so much. We care!
CURT: I think that’s half the problem. Too much fun, and not enough hard data to show for it!
DOBBS: We might’ve accomplished something if we didn’t have to deal with the notorious Professor Morgan Bernard Beck.
CURT: There’s just no way to know in advance if you’re getting a jerk like that for your graduate advisor.
DOBBS: Everybody else we know gets great faculty support!
CURT: We get a sorry lover who’s a lousy sharpshooter. Who knew?
DOBBS: How’d science get so riddled with politics?!? (beat) It’s only math!
CURT: Here’s some old math: Follow the money!
Pause.
DOBBS: No bar in Berkeley’s hiring, so I landed that barista gig at Cafe Strada.
CURT: I went to REI to upgrade my pack. I can head for the Sierras anytime now.(beat) Wanna go?
DOBBS: I gotta work, I’m tapped out. You found anything?
CURT: No. I’m no good in the service industry.
Pause.
DOBBS: You can’t hang in Yosemite forever, Curt. Eventually you gotta findsome way to afford to stay a student.
CURT: Well … there’s always People’s Park!
AUDIO: Curt’s smartphone rings.
Curt takes out phone.
CURT: Hello?
LIGHTS
The Mural at Amoeba Records
Scene Ten
PEOPLE’s PARK, Berkeley. Thanksgiving evening.
AUDIO: Persistent raindrops on plastic.PROJECTION: Park with campfire, dark and damp.Curt’s Backpack propped up as a “chair” againstGrocery Cart packed full of gathered food stuffs.
PEARL and SACKS prepare dinner under tarp.CURT enters with Paper Plates. He hands them to Sacks.
SACKS (takes plates): Wow! Luxury plates! For Thanksgiving.
PEARL: Thanks for all the foil.
Sacks puts down Plates,
begins to wrap her bare feet in Aluminum Foil.
SACKS (wraps foot): You know this trick?
CURT: No …
SACKS: Traps in the body heat. (winks) Gives me hot feet!
CURT: We use foil for “baking” our instruments – in the Lab. Makes a vacuum.
Pearl hands Curt his Notebook.
CURT (takes Notebook): Thanks, I’m glad you found my notes.
PEARL: Good thing your phone number was in there. You’d have missed our feast!
CURT: I’ve never been to a Thanksgiving picnic before – certainly not in People’s Park!
PEARL: We picnic all the time. It’s just that we ran out of plates. For Thanksgiving! Nobody wants to go out in this weather! You showed us you care, man!
SACKS: That means a lot to us.
CURT: It’s nothing – I love rain. (beat) You live in the Park year round?
SACKS: We will until they close it.
PEARL: We’ve learned to love the lifestyle. The freedom. But we’re still fighting the University’s plans to replace us with housing. Can you believe that?
Pearl takes another pastry piece out of bag.Sacks puts it on plate, hands it to Curt.Curt eats it.
CURT: Thanks.
PEARL: We’re fighting for rights of all homeless folks to remain homeless right here! People’s Park IS Our Home! We’ve been fighting that one for fifty years! Long before anybody ever called us “homeless”.
SACKS: We had Bob Dylan down here for dinner last time he played The Greek.
PEARL: “She knows there’s no success like failure and failure’s no success at all.”
SACKS: Carefree – and free … Like The Diggers!
CURT: What’s The Diggers?
SACKS: From The Bible. The Acts of the Apostles. They were Protestant radicals, the first anarchists, really. They called themselves The Diggers because they dug the common land. They were farmers in old England. Then in the Nineteen Sixties, here in Haight Ashbury, another bunch of Diggers took the name and helped homeless hippies find food in San Francisco.
Pearl hands Curt a banana. He takes it.
SACKS: Organic. From the gleaner bins at Berkeley Bowl.
CURT: Thanks!
SACKS: Organic don’t last as long. Turns brown sooner.
PEARL: They don’t gas the organics. That’s why the color changes.
SACKS: Doesn’t really affect the taste.
CURT: I’m not sure that’s true.
PEARL: I think it tastes better.
SACKS (peeling Curt’s banana): Try it!
AUDIO: Sudden smartphone alarm.
Curt pauses at this awkward moment.DOBBS enters, holding his smartphonewhich he points at Curt.
DOBBS (to Curt): Bite it, Big Boy! You wanna hide from me, turn off your GPS!
CURT (embarrassed): Ah, Dobbs … these are my friends. (turns to Sacks and Pearl). He’s a grad student too. Sorry I don’t know your names.
PEARL: I’m Pearl and this is Running Sacagawea.
SACKS: We call us Sacks.
Sacks shakes Dobbs hand vigorously.
Pause.
CURT: I was just starting to tell them about our “Vintage Water” project.
DOBBS (upset): They know all about it already! (points) She’s the RAT who broke in!
Pearl picks up a gallon Jug, twirls it.
PEARL: Who you callin’ “rat”, Frat Boy!?!
Dobbs backs down.
DOBBS (to Curt): You don’t have time for this foolishness! Haven’t you heard?They’re fencing in the Park tomorrow!
PEARL: Don’t talk to us like that. We have rights. We’re trimmigrants!
SACKS (offers Dobbs plate full of food): Here, have some dinner.
Sacks hands Dobbs heaping full plate.
DOBBS (confused): Thanks.
Dobbs has no choice but to sit and eat with them.
They eat.
CURT: What are you gonna do?
SACKS: We’re headed up to Humboldt. You might wanna join us. We go with Wavy, we make a lot of money in two months.
PEARL: They call us “Trimmigrants”. We trim the buds. We have our union – The Cannabis Cooperative Clippers Union – CCCU. We only work when we want to. Two months a year. We’re nomadic, camp anywhere. I know one friend made over five grand last season outside Portland. (beat) How’s your union set up – at school? (beat) You’ve got a union right?
Dobbs and Curt look at each other.
Long pause.
PEARL: Don’t you graduate students have an organized union?
DOBBS (sheepish): We don’t belong. We can’t!
CURT: We’re GSR – the only employees not protected by Local 2865.
PEARL: What’s GSR?
CURT: “Graduate Student Researchers”. We work in the Lab, not the classroom.
DOBBS: Our union is an ongoing battle. But frankly we don’t have time for it.Our hands are full with Lab work.
Pause.
PEARL: You mean your hands WERE full. They kicked you out, remember?
DOBBS: Yes.
SACKS: So … what do you think you’ll be doing – now that you’re out of school?
CURT: What’s that deal with the trimmings?
PEARL: The Trimigrants?
SACKS: There’s no sign-up sheet, no tuition – if that’s what you mean.
PEARL: Yeah, and there’s no fees to join the Homeless Union. We’re all card-burning members!
SACKS: We give you a card
PEARL: And then you burn it!
SACKS: Just like the Draft!
DOBBS: What’s the Draft?
SACKS: Man, Pearl – did you ever think you’d meet a Berkeley student who didn’t know about The Draft!
PEARL: Better get out your Dylan lyrics …
SACKS: “Once upon a time in a place called Sproul Plaza, a man stood on the steps, But he was not alone …”
LIGHTS – SLOW FADE
END of PLAY
all photos by
Jamie Jobb
HOWARD DOBBS, aka “DOBBS” - UC Berkeley PhD mining student on the last year of dissertation. Working with chemistry department on toxic mine water reclamation and purification project. Head researcher. White male, 27, single.
CURTIS DONNER, aka “CURT” - UC Berkeley PhD chemistry student working on same project at the RadLab. White male, 27, single.
MORGAN BERNARD BECK, aka “M.B.” and “Nibbs” - Untenured UC Berkeley mining professor moving past his time. Another botched research project. White male, 42, married.
JULIA-MAY MAY-BECK, aka “J.M.” and “Her Majesty” - UC Berkeley Assistant Dean of Students. Out of patience with her husband and involved in an affair at the Lab, which the grad students know about. Black female, 43, married.
PEARL DALEY – Former circus aerialist and homeless Gulf War vet. Japanese-American female, 49, single.
RUNNING SACAGAWEA, aka “SACKS” – Shaman who traces her heritage back to Sitting Bull. Lakota-Nez Perce female, 55, single.
PRODUCTION NOTES
“RadLab Rats” is written for white-box production with these props:
tarp, sleeping bags, blankets
shopping cart
plastic gallon Jugs
bar and stools
drinking glasses
four chairs
Rope
Lottery Ticket
newspaper Tearsheet
smartphones
lab table the Instrument
plentiful aluminum foil
National Geographic, April 2010
Daily Cal Tearsheet
Mess of Chewed Wiring
Backpack with Paper Plates
Curt’s Notebook
one Gun
one Sierra worthy backpack
Projections and audio clips may be used, as noted, to embellish each setting.
PROJECTIONS:
Thanks for help: Delbert Uhland, Doug Flett, Jeff Polisner, Dianna Bolt, Geoff Gaines, Bob Shipman, Paul Craig, Bebo White, Paul Borenstein, Harlan Bailey, Douglas McCoy, Jerry Pfeiffer, Joseph Torchia, Frances Moore Lappe, Fred Wickham.
* * *
copyright (c) 2021 by Jamie Jobb - all rights reserved
CAUTION: Nothing within this one-act play may be replicated, for any reason, by any means, including any form of photographic reproduction, without expressed permission of the author.
This written work is subject to a royalty and are fully protected – in whole, in part or in any method of production – under the Copyright Laws of the United States of America and all other countries of the Copyright Union.
All rights – including professional, amateur, motion picture, radio, television, recitation and public reading – are strictly reserved by the author. All inquiries concerning performance should be addressed to him, contact details below.
First Edition: January, 2018
ISBN:
Library of Congress Catalog Number:
Jobb, Jamie
“RadLab Rats” or “Picnic in People’s Park”
Contact Details regarding performance rights:
Jamie Jobb
Traveling Light Studio
Post Office Box 12
Martinez Ca 94553-0001
925 723-1782
FURTHERMORE:
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-021-01184-0
Conventional laboratory housing increases morbidity and mortality in research rodents: results of a meta-analysis
“The Secret of NIMH”
“The Environmental Disaster That is the Gold Industry” (Feb. 2014)
“Why Tens of Thousands of Toxic Mines Litter the U.S. West”
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/30/conservation-groups-deter-gold-mining-in-californias-sierra-nevada-mountains/
“High Grading”
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,885744,00.html
“Water: Our Thirsty World”
SACAGAWEA:
HARC/HARP
RadLab
Dean of Students first year:
Henry’s Publick House – Durant Hotel: September 28, 1990.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_Pub_hostage_incident
Grad Student Murdered for Data?
Academic promotion:
Campus drinking …
The two-mile-dry zone:
UC Berkeley, then called the College of California, moved to its current spot from Oakland in 1873. The state legislature was nervous about putting impressionable youngsters in easy reach of alcohol, especially students at a college with a lot of clergymen in powerful positions, so they enacted a law banning the sale of liquor within two miles of the university.
UC Berkeley, then called the College of California, moved to its current spot from Oakland in 1873. The state legislature was nervous about putting impressionable youngsters in easy reach of alcohol, especially students at a college with a lot of clergymen in powerful positions, so they enacted a law banning the sale of liquor within two miles of the university.
http://www.eastbaybeer.com/2013/01/28/berkeleys-premature-prohibition/
Mine waters:
Mine waters are not merely to be perceived as problems, they can be regarded as industrial or drinking water sources and have been used for sewage treatment, tanning and industrial metals extraction. Mine-water problems may be addressed by isolating the contaminant source, by suppressing the reactions releasing contaminants, or by active or passive water treatment. Innovative treatment techniques such as galvanic suppression, application of bactericides, neutralizing or reducing agents (pulverized fly ash-based grouts, cattle manure, whey, brewers' yeast) require further research.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs002540050204?LI=true
Open pits and underground mining operations commonly extend below the regional water table and require dewatering during mining. In particular, mines intersecting significant ground water aquifers, or those located in wet climates, may have to pump more than 100 000 liters per minute to prevent underground workings from flooding. At some stage of the mining operation, water is unwanted and has no value to the operation. In fact, unwanted or used water needs to be disposed of constantly during mining, mineral processing, and metallurgical extraction.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-662-05133-7_3
Acid mine drainage (AMD), an acidic metal-bearing wastewater, poses a severe pollution problem attributed to post mining activities. The metals usually encountered in AMD and considered of concern for risk assessment are arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead, manganese, zinc, copper and sulfate. The pollution generated by abandoned mining activities in the area of Butte, Montana has resulted in the designation of the Silver Bow Creek–ButteArea as the largest Superfund (National Priorities List) site in the U.S. This paper reports the results of bench-scale studies conducted to develop a resource recovery based remediation process for the clean up of the Berkeley Pit.The process utilizes selective, sequential precipitation (SSP)of metals as hydroxides and sulfides, such as copper, zinc, aluminum, iron and manganese, from the Berkeley Pit AMD for their removal from the water in a form suitable for additional processing into marketable precipitates and pigments.The metal biorecovery and recycle process is based on complete separation of the biological sulfate reduction step and the metal precipitation step. Hydrogen sulfide produced in the SRB bioreactor systems is used in the precipitation step to form insoluble metal sulfides. The average metal recoveries using the SSP process were as follows: aluminum (as hydroxide) 99.8%,cadmium (as sulfide) 99.7%, cobalt (as sulfide) 99.1% copper(as sulfide) 99.8%, ferrous iron (sulfide) 97.1%, manganese(as sulfide) 87.4%, nickel (as sulfide) 47.8%, and zinc (as sulfide)100%. The average precipitate purity for metals, copper sulfide,ferric hydroxide, zinc sulfide, aluminum hydroxide and manganese sulfide were: 92.4, 81.5, 97.8, 95.6 , 92.1 and 75.0%, respectively.The final produced water contained only calcium and magnesium and both sulfate and sulfide concentrations were below usable water limits. Water quality of this agriculturally usable water met the EPA's gold standard criterion.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1027332902740?LI=true
http://jamiejobbbackstagepass.blogspot.com/2015/12/als-ucb.html
Jim Beckwourth – mountain man, black chief of Crow Nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Beckwourth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Berkeley_60-inch_cyclotron.jpg
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/images/cyclotron_group_image.htm
Heavy metals released by mining into water:
Lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, iron, nickel, copper, zinc, cobalt
Toxic residues of arsenic in Mother Lode:
http://www.intimeandplace.org/El%20Dorado/gold/arsenic.html
Mercury (“Quicksilver”) residues in Mother Lode placer mines:
http://www.intimeandplace.org/El%20Dorado/gold/mercury.html
Of course all of these enterprises [including hydraulic mining] create a wide waste in their paths. Tornado, flood, earthquake and volcano combined could hardly make greater havoc, spread wider ruin and wreck, than are to be seen everywhere in the track of the larger gold-washing operations. None of the interior streams of California, though naturally pure as crystal, escape the change to a thick yellow mud from this cause, early in their progress from the hills. The Sacramento River is worse than the Missouri. Many of the streams are turned out of their original channels, either directly for mining purposes, or in consequence of the great masses of soil and gravel that come down from the gold-washing above. Thousands of acres of fine land along their banks are ruined forever by the deposits of this character. A farmer may have his whole estate turned into a barren waste by a flood of sand and gravel from some hydraulic mining up stream; more, if a fine orchard or garden stands in the way of the working of a rich gulch or bank, orchard or garden must go. Then the torrent, dug- out, washed to pieces and then washed over side- hills, masses that have been or are being subjected to the hydraulics of the miners, are the very devil's chaos indeed. The country is full of them among the mining districts of the Sierra Nevada, and they are truly a terrible blot upon the face of Nature.
http://www.intimeandplace.org/El%20Dorado/gold/reading/bowles.html
The agency has the unenviable task of cleaning up after one of the planet's most polluting industries. In the American West, federal law allows mining companies to extract precious metals and valuable minerals from public land nearly for free, and doesn't hold them responsible for cleaning up their messes. That job is left to the EPA to clean up on the taxpayers' dime.
https://www.kcet.org/redefine/10-california-mine-disasters-worse-than-augusts-spill-in-colorado
A 2014 news story on a local TV station revealed that the mine's owners have another method in mind: cleaning the water up and selling it to drought-ravaged Californians. Regardless of the means by which the water's taken from the Harvard Pit, it's a big task: about 55 million gallons of the contaminated water will need to be removed safely each year starting in 2018. Aside from the threat to the Tuolumne and the San Joaquin River and SF Bay Delta into which it flows, hundreds of drinking water wells are just downhill of the Harvard Pit.
https://www.kcet.org/redefine/10-california-mine-disasters-worse-than-augusts-spill-in-colorado
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Gold_King_Mine_waste_water_spill
Over 120 million laboratory rats and mice are used worldwide each year. Many are used to study distressing conditions like cancer, arthritis and chronic pain, and nearly all spend their lives in small, empty box-like cages: a kind of permanent lockdown.
Our new analysis shows that this restrictive, artificial housing causes rats and mice to be chronically stressed, changing their biology. This raises worrying questions about their welfare — and about how well they represent typical human patients.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Cade
George Hearst grew up before public education was widely accessible in Missouri, so his elementary education was inconsistent and fragmented. Hearst supplemented the gaps in his formal education by observing the local mines, and reading information about minerals and mining in his free time.[4]
When his father died in 1846, Hearst took over the care of his mother, brother and sister. In addition, he did some mining and ran a general store.[5] He first heard of the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Before deciding to depart, he continued to read further news on the subject so that he could be more certain it was true. Finally, in 1850, as a member of a party of 16, he left for California.[6] After arriving in 1850, he and his companions first tried placer mining in the vicinity of Sutter's Mill on the American River. After spending a cold winter and making meager findings, they moved to Grass Valleyon the news of a new lode. Using his mining education and experience in Missouri, Hearst switched to prospecting and dealing in quartz mines.[3][7][8][9] After almost ten years, Hearst was making a decent living as a prospector, and otherwise engaged in running a general store,[10] mining, raising livestock and farming in Nevada County.[11]
In the summer of 1859, Hearst learned of the wonderful silver assays of the "blue stuff" someone had picked up over what was to become the Comstock Lode, and sent to a Nevada County assayer. Hearst hurried over to the Washoe district of western Utah territory, where he arranged to buy a one-sixth interest in the Ophir Mine there, near present-day Virginia City. That winter, Hearst and his partners managed to mine 38 tons of high-grade silver ore, packed it across the Sierra on muleback, had it smelted in San Francisco, and made $91,000 profit (or roughly $2,513,480.45 in 2016 dollars). It was the sight of the bars of Ophir silver that started the rush to Washoe.[12] G. Hearst knew Marcus Daly from the Comstock Lode work and in the summer of 1872 Daly suggested the possibilities of the Ontario silver mine in Park City, Utah. The Ontario carried Hearst through the Panic of 1873 and produced seventeen million dollars in ten years. Hearst later financed Marcus Daly to operate his Anaconda mine in Butte, Montana and acquired an interest in that mine as well.[13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hearst
The Diggers …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diggers_(theater)
Trimmigrants
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/trimmigrant
“I don’t have to show you any stinking badges”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ
“Nature Bats Last”
coined by ecologist Paul Ehrlich … no baseball fan!
The Gatorade Trust:
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/royalties-gatorade-trust-surpass-billion-spoil-us/story?id=34190450
UCB grad student union status.
Student homeless:
http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-uc-berkeley-homeless-student-20180311-htmlstory.html
“Diamonds and Rust”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamonds_%26_Rust_(song)
BERKELEY NAME POOL:
Spruce, Lawrence, Dwight, Bancroft, Durant, Sather, Phoebe, Maybeck, Sproul, Oxford, Julia Morgan, Shattuck, M.B. Curtis, Euclid, Bernard Maybeck, Sutter, Dutch, Ward Rust, Forest Hill, Miller, Dana, Jacob, Samuel, Flenn T. Seaborg, Ernest O. Lawrence, Hubert Howe Bancroft Apperson, 1873!
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/09/student-worker-strike-columbia-university-hits-boiling-point
ReplyDeletehttps://truthout.org/articles/low-wages-and-exploitative-conditions-are-sparking-graduate-student-strikes/
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. university, imbued with the ethos of managerialism, has increasingly become a corporate enterprise in the guise of an intellectual steward. The infiltration of the priorities of capital into college administrations, underway since the onset of the neoliberal era, has incentivized forbidding tuition rates and the cultivation of a precarious workforce, subjecting many of those who perform the actual labor of the academic profession to intolerable strain.
ReplyDeleteHere are some facts, much remarked-upon, that nonetheless bear repeating: U.S. student debt has reached inconceivably vast proportions. Even advanced schooling is far from a guarantor of future financial security; for those aspiring scholars fortunate enough to find any employment at all, those prospects are overwhelmingly of becoming adjunct or contingent faculty — highly stressed and low-paid. Romanticized notions of academe belie the dim conditions endured by the bulk of actual academics. For most, tenure remains a dim hope.
Many graduate students find themselves caught between these multiple fronts: burdened with past student debt, earning sub-living-wage pay in their present work and facing dwindling future opportunities. Universities have grown over-reliant on graduate students and other contingent faculty to maintain a pool of low-cost labor. But an upswell of organizing activity in the last year indicates that graduate students have been emboldened to take a collective stand against the precarity and untenable conditions that mar the academic experience in the U.S.
https://truthout.org/articles/low-wages-and-exploitative-conditions-are-sparking-graduate-student-strikes/
https://truthout.org/articles/higher-education-is-now-a-battlefield-between-workers-and-corporatization/
ReplyDeletehttps://www.salon.com/2022/04/03/universities-are-failing-the-next-generation-of-scientists_partner/
ReplyDeleteThe long-term job outlook for a freshly minted science Ph.D. can be pretty grim. After devoting more than a half decade to becoming an independent researcher in the field of their passion, after sacrificing opportunities for better pay and work-life balance, and after writing papers and presenting at who-knows-how-many conferences, graduate students may emerge from the ivory tower only to find that there are no jobs that allow them to do the thing they've been training to do.