Wild at Heart: A New Beginning for Ma Kettle

The new year arrived with a grueling diagnosis for Carol Van Strum in rural Oregon of heart failure and an immediate recommendation for open surgery as soon as possible. Friends and family from far and near have come together to assist with preliminary diagnostics and preparing her for an extended recovery. Having lived for many years on Social Security and the modest returns of her seminal book A Bitter Fog: Herbicides and Human Rights, Carol simply cannot afford the tremendous costs attending such an invasive and taxing procedure. Her tribe is humbly requesting donations in order to help cover extensive travel between her remote farm and doctor’s appointments in the city, lodging, food for her and her sons and other family members staying from out of state, sundry services from hired helpers, feed for the animals, as well as fire wood for the remainder of the winter.

Fiercely independent and a perpetual 'troublemaker', Carol has been an active community member for decades in addition to running her modest homestead in the north west. She has been and remains instructive in guiding environmental activists and the public at large about the grave dangers of toxic chemical proliferation. Her story can be heard in detail in the documentary film titled The People vs Agent Orange, which focuses on her successful challenge to the USFS against soaking our roadways and our national forests in Rainbow Herbicides throughout the 1970’s.  She has given so much of herself for so many years-surely we can repay those efforts in kind during this very trying time.