October marks a period of accelerated pace at this time of year--students begin their term papers (due by the end of November), parents and children anticipate First Holy Communions (and First Anguished Confessions), some teens their Confirmations, and--as if we didn't have enough to do--people with ambitious projects for March 2009 visit me and the Parish Council meetings.
Yesterday, in fact, a woman from the well-known Movistar telephone company ("communication services provider", I think is the accepted term today) appeared at my parish office and offered to build us a belltower--with their microwave "repeater antenna" apparatus installed within it.
She gave me the impression that I was number 53 on her "must visit" list for the day--a little harried, armed with a minimum of brochured information and presuming that I had received an e-mail from the company a week before (I hadn't--she had the wrong address). I expected pressure tactics--and she didn't disappoint me ("I thought of approaching the nearby parish of Santa Isabel with this offer, but then I thought, 'Why not the parish in a poorer area?' ...")--but she couldn't hide a certain note of intense interest in our turning over a portion of parish property for the building of this microwave tower--I mean,, belltower. When I asked her when she would like a decision on our part regarding this offer, she smilingly stated, "Yesterday," but then when I asked whether it would be all right to wait until November 5th, the Parish Council meeting, for an answer, she acceded right away.
The visit was short. She also provided me with a look at a handwritten list of (presumably) happy customers from the Church ambience in the country who had accepted similar offers, and she also showed me some printouts of photos of other belltowers built in Chile. I noticed a Columban priest on the list, so I sent him an e-mail, after seeing the representative out the door.
I "googled" around cyberspace and tracked down news articles from about ten years ago and later that detailed the community concerns over microwave cell-phone towers in both North America and Europe, the most recent ones from fire department personnel organizations who are concerned over their stationary, long-term exposure to such antennas that communications companies have often constructed right over their heads. Fire stations seem to be desired locations, since they already have communications equipment and, frequently, towers in place. U.S. federal law requires towns and communities to accept company requests, although the precise location for the installation of these antennas is negotiable.
The lack of any scientific studies on the effect of these towers on human beings surprised me. The opinion of an informed blogger at one of the New York Times sites focussing on the issue, however, made sense to me--just as the better part of a century needed to flow by before the cause-and-effect relationship between tobacco use and lung cancer could be established, so such a direct consecuence of microwave exposure could only be established after much time has passed. However, I did dig up a number of reports that pointed to a higher frecuency of cancer in areas near such towers--not enough data, it seems, to warrant concluding that a connection exists.
Coincidentally, my next visitor was a 13-year-old cancer victim, with his mother. She needed work, and she wanted to introduce her son to me (he had been a special concern for the previous pastor, Fr. Yong Hoon) as well as to ask me whether I knew of any available jobs in the areas of housecleaning or building maintainence. The boy looked more like 10 years old, and was quiet, smiling shyly. He wanted to join the choir again (he had to leave it last year due to treatments and his exhaustion). His mother spoke to me privately after a few minutes, and told me her son was on anti-depressants.
The form letter left behind by the Movistar rep assured me of the equivalent of over 1,000 U.S. dollars a year for the parish, if the tower were allowed to be built. But I realize now, after reading about the issue--and also keeping in mind this child's visit, reminding me of the long history of large corporations selecting poorer areas for their riskier operations throughout the world (Bhopal, India)--that our neighbors will have to have a say about this offer-request. Cell-phone use in Chile is a huge business, and the Movistar company, in intense competition with other, recently-arrived companies, no doubt wants to expand its services in a shrinking market.
Stay tuned--this won't be the last of this issue.
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