Trillium

Dear God,

I'm still thinking about the March 27 meeting of of the Windham Regional Commission, and I've remembered an interesting moment. Nuclear activist Gary Sachs (who back in December of 2007 at a Windham County forum on Vermont's Energy Future provided another moment of interest by saying a no-no about doo-doo) was called to the front of the room to begin his testimony. At the WRC meeting, rather than stand formally and address both the audience and the panel, he walked directly to one commissioner, leaned down in an intimate style, and whispered something that seemed like it might be obscene in the commissioner's ear.

I thought it was obscene because it clearly made the commissioner uncomfortable. Or maybe it wasn't what Gary said. May the commissioner didn't like how close Gary came to him. Maybe he didn't like being singled out. Maybe he didn't like what a whisper to him alone implied about his impartiality or lack thereof. That last "maybe" might explain why he interrupted Gary, once Gary had begun giving his testimony, to announce the one word Gary had said to him.

"Trillium."

Why "trillium?"

Gary's testimony was a hodge-podge of items—about housing prices going up rather than down on the Bailey Peninsula of Wiscasset, Maine when Maine Yankee closed for safety reasons; about the fact that every day at Vermont Yankee, even when safety margins are high, small, deadly quantities of radiation are released; about whether speculations that the price of energy will go up if Vermont Yankee is not relicensed are reliable blah blah blah.

His testimony said nothing about trillium.

So why did Gary whisper "trillium" to the commissioner? Was he referring to trillium reliquum, a herbaceous perennial with whorled leaves? It's in the environment of the Vermont Yankee plant and the NRC commissioned a study, the results of which were reported in January 2004, that looked at Vermont Yankee's effect on it as well as a number of other endangered species. Was Gary hinting that new data show that Vermont Yankee poses a threat to trillium reliquum? (I can find no evidence of that, but it's possible.)

Was Gary referring to Trillium Corporate Communications, the PR firm that has presented Patrick Moore at NRC meetings as a Greenpeace founder whose pro-nuclear industry testimony is impartial--when he is, in fact, a long-standing paid consultant to the nuclear industry?

Was Gary referring to the Trillium Press, whose illustrations for an edition of Dante's The Divine Comedy Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard used in a January 2007 Power Point presentation called "Heavenly Aspirations." In this presentation, Mr. Leonard identified "Non-Regulatory Fleet Issues" that are obstacles to some of Entergy's holy hankerings. Interesting: Of all the plants in Entergy's non-regulated fleet, only Vermont Yankee was identified by Mr. Leonard as having "anti-nuclear groups" issues worthy of mention.

Mr. Leonard's presentation incorporated quotes from a variety of writers. For example, he used Dante's "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate"--or "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here." He used William Shakespeare's "Fortune brings in some boats that are not steer’d”--though I do hope someone is steering this "boat" of Entergy's. He used John Kenneth Galbraith's "One of the biggest troubles for success is that its recipe is about the same as that for a nervous breakdown." He even used a quote by Jack Paar. I recommend that anyone who wants an inside view of what Entergy's corporate strategy was of January 2007 read this presentation. The entire thing is on the web, or at least it is as of March 31.

But best of all, just like The Divine Comedy, J. Wayne Leonard's January 2007 Power Point presentation listed the Seven Deadly Sins, about which you know, Lord, I am highly curious but largely without experience. (This January 2007 Power Point Presentation was, of course, created prior to the pope's very recent introduction of the New Seven Deadly Sins, which are genetic modification, human experimentations, polluting the environment, social injustice, causing poverty, financial gluttony and taking drugs. By my guess, numbers 1, 3, 4, and 6 of those may be showing up on Mr. Leonard's Power Point presentation next January as something that Entergy does very well.)

Anyway, Lord, I haven't yet figured out what Gary Sachs meant by whispering "trillium" to a commissioner of the Windham Regional Commission but I'm trying to stay ahead of this story. To do so, I must remember:

1—Sachs has an "h," not a "k."
2—To water my plants, especially my trillums, since if they become extinct due to New Sins 1, 3, or 6 I'll be able to sell them on eBay for a killing.
3—Gary might have said "titanium," not "trillium." Or maybe "titillation" or "tether ball." I'm not actually sure.

Amen,

Fake-Rob