VIDEO: Dr. Magda Havas, Live Blood Analysis & EMR

By Kim Goldberg

April 11, 2014

Watch this 2 ½ minute video featuring Live Blood Analysis done before and after exposure to Electromagnetic Radiation, with Dr. Magda Havas of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

 

Dr. Havas examines her own blood under a microscope three times over a three-hour period on August 20, 2009.

In the first examination, she was in an environment with no significant electromagnetic radiation. She found that her red blood cells were round, some were separate and some were sticking to others. This is healthy-looking blood.

The second examination was done after she had spent 70 minutes working on a computer. The majority of her red blood cells were now sticking together like long stacks of coins—an appearance known as “Rouleaux Formation”.

The third examination was done after she had used a cordless phone for 10 minutes. There were now no separate cells. All were organized into Rouleaux Formation, and the separate “stacks of coins” seemed themselves to be stuck to one another. This is what doctors see in cancer patients.

The clumping of red blood cells into Rouleaux Formation interferes with the delivery of oxygen and the removal of waste products like carbon dioxide. It also results in poor circulation since capillaries are often just wide enough for a single red blood cell to squeeze through at a time.

Consequently, some of the symptoms a person may experience if their red blood cells are locked in Rouleaux Formation are:

-headaches

-fatigue

-difficulty concentrating

-numbness, tingling, cold extremities

-heart and blood pressure problems

-risk of stroke 

Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening…

George Parker: Military Exposure to Wireless Radiation

By Kim Goldberg

March 26, 2014 

George Parker was healthy and physically fit when he arrived for his 12-month tour of duty in South Vietnam in 1968-1969, where he was a Troop Sergeant of a Signals Communications troop in the Australian Army.

George Parker was healthy and physically fit when he arrived for his 12-month tour of duty in South Vietnam in 1968-1969, where he was a Troop Sergeant of a Signals Communications troop in the Australian Army.

George Parker served in the Australian Army for 21 years, from 1959-1980, working in worldwide communications within the Corps of Signals. But it was his one-year tour of duty in South Vietnam 45 years ago that changed his life forever. During that tour, George received much greater and more constant exposure to radio frequency microwaves from the various radio transmitters and receivers he was living and working with.

As a result of his Army exposure, George developed significant and lifelong electrosensitivity. But until the year 2000, he had no name for his disabling condition, and no insight into the cause of his torment. He just termed it his “silent illness”.

George outside of his quarters, South Vietnam, 1969

George outside of his quarters, South Vietnam, 1969

“I arrived in South Vietnam in December 1968,” George tells me. “After a month or so, I began to feel ill, strange and suffering from nausea. There was a 1,000-watt transmitting antenna that was radiating continuously over our base camp, for rear communications back to Australia. When not on operations, we were camped at our base camp. It was possible to boil water in front of the bed-frame antenna system. I lived and worked in close proximity to all of this equipment, and slept 100 meters away. That was just part and parcel of the life of a communicator,” George explains.

As his tour in Vietnam progressed, George’s symptoms worsened. “I was weak and tired, I was fatiguing easily and experiencing, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, joint pain, confusion, anxiety, and even bouts of crying,” he recounts in his diaries, which he generously gave me access to for writing up his story.

George, who had been a very physically fit soldier prior to his Vietnam tour, returned home to Australia in December of 1969 where his symptoms expanded further.

The George Parker who returned home to Australia after a year's exposure to RF radiation was tormented by his "silent illness" of electrosensitivity

The George Parker who returned home to Australia after a year’s exposure to RF radiation was haunted and tormented by his “silent illness” of electrosensitivity

“I suffered continually with chronic flu-like illness, aching glands, aches and pains in all joints and muscles, cold sweats, always feeling sluggish and extremely sleepy, and I had difficulty with memory and concentration,” George recalls. “The symptoms waxed and waned, interfering with my family, Army, and sporting life,” he adds.

George had adopted a rigorous fitness program and became actively involved in marathon kayak racing—all as part of his bid to conquer his mysterious affliction. But his recovery time after each grueling kayak race grew longer and longer until he finally had to give up the sport he loved in 1983.

Despite numerous visits to doctors over the ensuing years, none of them could accurately diagnose George’s malady. Instead, doctors scratched their heads, gave George a pat on the back, and sent him out the door with antibiotics, anti-depressants, and a variety of other pills.

“My Army mates nicknamed me Pills Parker,” George remembers.

George had long suspected that his time in South Vietnam was at the root of his ongoing health problems, which all seemed to start there.

“I began to believe that my respiratory disorder was due to inhaling Agent Orange, insecticides, other chemicals, gas, and dust [while in Vietnam],” he says. And indeed such toxins may have played a part in George’s baffling health problems.

“I felt as though I had ants crawling all over me”

So potent was the RF radiation near the bed-frame antenna system of the TRC-24 that it was possible to boil water in front of it. Shown here, the antenna is mounted on a mast beside the shelter while on operations north of Saigon, 1969.

So potent was the RF radiation near the bed-frame antenna system of the TRC-24 that it was possible to boil water in front of it. Shown here, the antenna is mounted on a mast beside the shelter while on operations north of Saigon (Long Binh Ops) 1969.

“By 1984, I was beginning to experience persistent lack of concentration, memory lapses, dizziness to the point of nearly fainting, severe headaches, migraines, numbness and tingling all over my arms, legs, and scalp. At times I felt as though I had ants crawling all over me,” George recalls. He became chronically drowsy. But when he fell asleep, he had “terrible strange dreams.”

It would take another 16 years before George would gain some real insight into the primary cause of his problems.

In 1997, George and his wife moved to Tasmania, an island state located 150 miles south of the Australian continent. Tasmania is famed for its large and comparatively unspoiled natural environment. The couple lived in a part of Tasmania with no mobile phone coverage, and the nearest power transmission lines were miles away.

“After a month in Tasmania, for no apparent reason, my health began to improve,” George recalls. “Eventually most of my symptoms disappeared, and I was experiencing good health for the first time since 1969.”

In 2000, George and his wife returned to the Australian mainland, and all of George’s symptoms quickly returned. The full picture finally emerged for George after he and his wife embarked on a caravan lifestyle, touring around Australia. When his wife activated her mobile phone, George felt burning and tingling in his limbs. Each time they would leave the road and enter a caravan park where he was exposed to much higher densities of microwave radiation from other caravans with mobile phones, as well as the low frequency electromagnetic radiation from the site’s power system, George’s symptoms would worsen.

“I began to realize that I was suffering from electrosensitivity,” George says. “Within twelve months, all my symptoms had returned with a vengeance.”  

The E513 was a 1,000-watt high-frequency transmitter, and was one of the components irradiating Geroge for 12 months in South Vietnam.

The E513 was a 1,000-watt high-frequency transmitter, and was one of the components irradiating George for his 12-month tour in South Vietnam in the 1960s.

Then in 2004, George came across some articles on microwave illness. “These articles confirmed that what I suffered in Vietnam was due to the high microwave radiation of the wireless equipment I worked with and maintained,” George tells me. “My symptoms, which began in South Vietnam, were the same symptoms of microwave and radio sickness, and they were further aggravated by my continuation of Army service in high power and microwave radiation areas at military establishments [after Vietnam].”

In fact, it was back in the 1950s that Russian researchers identified what they termed “microwave sickness” in soldiers and workers who received daily occupational exposure to radio frequency (RF) and microwave equipment. Clinics were established in Moscow, Leningrad and other cities in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to treat thousands of people afflicted with the same condition George was suffering from, due to his own military exposure to this radiation.

The AN-GRC 106 was a 200-watt high frequency receiver/transmitter used by George and his troop for for back-up communications

The AN-GRC 106 was a 200-watt high frequency receiver/transmitter used by George and his troop for  back-up communications.

In 1971, the US Naval Medical Research Institute compiled a 116-page report consisting of a comprehensive bibliography of all known “Reported Biological Phenomena and Clinical Manifestations Attributed to Microwave and Radio-Frequency Radiation.” That report, now declassified, contains a staggering amount data that is decades old. The list of known and suspected health maladies arising from exposure to this type of communications and radar-related radiation is pages long and spans everything from myocardial necrosis, convulsions, and liver enlargement, to blood and bone changes, scalp sensations, and irritability. This Navy report leaves no doubt whatsoever on the questions of: “What did the US military (and government) know, and when did they know it?” They knew it all in 1971 at the latest. And possibly much sooner, if they had access to the Russian research back in the 1950s.

After George was discharged from the Australian Army in 1980, he and his wife moved into populated suburban areas where high power transmission lines were never more than 50-100 meters from their home.

“This was another reason why my symptoms worsened,” George says. “Once I moved away from that environment [to Tasmania] from 1997-2000, my health improved.”

Now active in online support groups

George Parkerr today, at age 76.

George Parker today, at age 76.

Today at age 76, George is focusing on living the best life he can within the constraints of his retirement village in Gold Coast, Queensland, where neighbors populate their homes with the typical assortment of wireless devices.

He has become an active participant and contributor on several electrosensitivity support groups on Facebook. His decades of surviving with EHS (Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity)—and even keeping a sense of humor about it—have made him a bit of a legend in these online support groups.

“Wireless technology is no different than asbestos and passive cigarette smoking, which have finally been banned in most countries, but only after decades of fighting for our rights,” George reminds his fellow sufferers in a posting.

Elsewhere in cyberspace, he tells an electrosensitive woman who is having a difficult day: “I have always believed that the reason some suffer EHS so extremely and so much worse than other people is because they have a sensitive spirit.”

© Kim Goldberg 2014. All rights reserved.

(George Parker’s story will be included in Kim Goldberg’s forthcoming book REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague. Read more people’s stories here.)

EMF-Harm Interview with Kim Goldberg

March 9, 2014

(© Kim Goldberg)

(Photo © Kim Goldberg)

On March 6, 2014, I had the pleasure of being the featured guest on the weekly Occupy EMF Harm Teleconference hosted by Sandy Fields in New York City. 

For nearly two hours, Sandy and I and other callers on the line discussed electrosensitivity, smart meters, school wi-fi, health risks of wireless radiation, the desperate search for sanctuary, and my current book project: Refugium: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague

You can listen to the full interview here. (The conversation begins 9 minutes in, so just advance the recording to that point and play.) 

Sandy’s weekly Occupy EMF Harm Teleconference has been going since June 2013, and is one of the “hubs” of the InterOccupy Network. The network seeks to bring people together in a democratic fashion for discussion, organizing, and action in the spirit of the historic Occupy Movement that began 2011. 

Previous guests on the Occupy EMF Harm Teleconference have included Barrie Trower, Olle Johansson, George Carlo, Magda Havas, Joshua Hart, Sam Milham, Jerry Day, and many others. 

Kim Goldberg

Gary Duncan: Healed by the Land

by Kim Goldberg

February 7, 2014

Gary Duncan was a touring singer/songwriter as well as a successful builder and architectural designer until environmental illness (electrosensitivity and multiple chemical sensitivity) rendered him unable to work or perform.

Gary Duncan was a touring singer/songwriter as well as a successful builder and architectural designer until environmental illness (electrosensitivity and multiple chemical sensitivity) rendered him unable to work or perform.

Twenty years ago, Colorado native Gary Duncan was at the peak of his career as a professional builder, cabinet-maker, and architectural designer. But the same career that had rewarded him so well was about to take it all away. Gary plunged into a mysterious state of complete medical disability, which he was unable to explain despite seeing five doctors and having a $10,000 battery of tests performed. 

It ultimately took an acupuncturist to correctly diagnose Gary’s Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, triggered by years of exposure to formaldehyde in construction materials. 

Gary embarked on a series of lifestyle changes to rid his home and body of chemical toxins. An organic diet, elimination of pesticides, and a thorough housecleaning were all part of his health recovery. 

He responded quickly to the new protocol. But many of his worst symptoms remained, including headaches, tinnitus, and pain. Gary was determined to restore his health to one hundred percent. And that’s when he discovered the other piece of the puzzle contributing to his poisoning. 

Around this time, Gary met and befriended a man named Roland at a drumming circle. Roland was a building biologist and an electromagnetic field technician from Germany. When Roland visited Gary’s tiny trailer and brought his measuring instruments, the two men discovered that Gary had been living and sleeping in an alarmingly high electrical field—one that was many times higher than even the “extreme concern” level of fifty volts per meter, as set forth in building biology guidelines. 

“That’s when the battle began,” Gary explains. “As the unneeded appliances left my life, the remaining ones got shielded. I learned to avoid fluorescent lights, I dumped the CFLs [compact fluorescent lights], and things got dramatically better.” 

But the real turning point for Gary came later that winter in 2004. 

Gary spends his winters living in his 86-square-foot ”Micro Habitat"—a converted 1972 Nomad trailer. In this photo, he is parked 60 miles from town on the Colorado River in January. Outside, the temperature is 15 degrees below freezing. But inside, Gary is  warmed by the winter sun through a large window - cozy enough to play banjo in the nude, he says.

Gary spends his winters living in his 86-square-foot ”Micro Habitat”—a converted 1972 Nomad trailer. In this photo, he is parked 60 miles from town on the Colorado River in January. Outside, the temperature is 15 degrees below freezing. But inside, Gary is warmed by the winter sun through a large window – cozy enough to play banjo in the nude, he says.

“A very violent and shattering episode with a berserk, alcoholic landlord ended with me pulling my little travel trailer out of town in the middle of winter to a secluded canyon,” Gary recalls. “On the third morning, as I sat there with my cup of coffee, I had the distinct sensation that something was missing. What was gone was the pain, sinusitis, ringing in the ears, nightmares, despair, and fatigue that had destroyed my life for a decade without reprieve. I had slept like a baby both nights. I was fine.” 

In fact, Gary’s unplanned exit from civilization ten years ago confirms what is now known about both Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity. Namely, they are both “functional impairments” (to use the Swedish designation), not innate personal disabilities. 

“There is nothing wrong with the patient,” explains Gary. “What’s wrong is the deteriorated environment. Remove me from the mess, and I’m just fine. At 66, I have more energy than when I was 30,” he adds. “And I will remain that way as long as I am away from modern culture.” 

To ensure that he and others like him have safe places to live, work, and rebuild their health, Gary founded the Smart Shelter Network in 1996, and later the Land Steward Program. 

Ruth Davis, shown here with Gary, is another electrosenstive who has been healed by the land and is part of the Land Steward Program. This Toyota Chinook is her home on wheels. Read Ruth's story here: http://www.onaravenswing.com

Ruth Davis, shown here with Gary, is another electrosenstive who has been healed by the land and is now part of the Land Steward Program. This modified Toyota Chinook RV is her home on wheels. Visit Ruth’s website for details on her story: http://www.onaravenswing.com

Gary’s volunteer land stewards—people who have all been poisoned in some way by modern society—collectively manage and protect (with no cost to landowners or government) a huge swath of wild land in the Tabeguache Corridor. The corridor is a triangle of 10,000 square miles of land bounded by Telluride and Aspen, Colorado, and by Moab, Utah. The area encompasses the 800-year-old lands of the nomadic Tabeguache Ute Indians. 

In exchange, Gary and his land stewards are able to rebuild their own health and live in safety, far from the toxin of electro-pollution. 

“If the land can heal those with environmental illness, then those with E.I. should also heal the land.”

Gary’s land stewards remove invasive weeds with the use of hand-tools that Gary has created for the task. And they monitor and restore the land in other ways as well. 

“The wild lands are in deplorable shape from cattle overgrazing, motorized vehicle recreation, camper trash, weeds, and drug labs,” Gary explains. “I decided that if the land can heal those with environmental illness, then those with EI should also heal the land.” 

Tabeguache Area (Source: US Forest Service)

Tabeguache Area (Source: US Forest Service)

Gary is also deeply concerned about the thirty percent die-off of Colorado forests due to cell phone radiation and power-line EMF—a pattern he says is replicated in Holland, South Africa, and elsewhere around the world. 

“The killer,” says Gary, “is our myopic, self-centered obsession with instant communication. This is the disease of the wireless age.” 

Gary likens our cultural love affair with wireless technologies to alcoholism, drug dependency, or any other form of addiction. 

“Tell a cell phone user they are addicted, that it’s bad for their health, that there are 9,000 professional medical studies that prove it, and not to bring their phones into your presence, or grab the bottle of wine in a paper sack out of the grips of a wino in the park—the results are identical,” Gary remarks. “Anger, denial, venom, refusal, resistance to fact—all at the same time the patient continues to plummet.” 

Gary knows the terrain of addiction all too well. He is a recovering alcoholic, who has been clean and sober for 26 years. 

Juniper Tree at Black Canyon at Gunnison National Monument, Colorado (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Juniper Tree at Black Canyon at Gunnison National Monument, Colorado (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

“The mechanism and symptoms of addiction are identical in wireless communication dependency and terminal alcoholism,” Gary explains. “My own alcoholism recovery has given me the understanding about why information [on risks of wireless radiation] is of no use to the cell phone crowd.” 

But there is one important difference between substance abusers and cell phone addicts. 

“The drugs and alcohol are at least confined to the body of the addict,” Gary points out. “When the iPhone maniac logs on, everyone within a city block starts absorbing the radiation. And the texting addiction is constant. That phone is never off, none of them.” 

These days, Gary is parked in the desert outside Moab, Utah, in his 86-square-foot “Micro Habitat”—a converted 1972 Nomad trailer that he has retrofitted with a water catchment roof, passive solar design, a high-efficiency propane stove, extra insulation, and even a sound recording studio. His exposure to electro-pollution is limited to his weekly trip into Moab (what he terms “the bowels of digital radiation hell”) for gas, propane, food, and a quick internet connection. 

In summers, when Gary is travelling great distances through the Tabeguache area, he lives in his even smaller “Chariot”—a mere 24 square feet, which he converted from an abandoned farmyard trash-hauling trailer. 

A believer in minimalist living, Gary spend his winters in his 86-square-foot "Micro Habitat" (top right) . For his summer travels throughout the Tabeguache area, he lives in his 24-square foot "Chariot" (bottom left).

A believer in minimalist living, Gary spends his winters in his 86-square-foot “Micro Habitat” (top right) . For his summer travels throughout the Tabeguache area, he lives in his 24-square foot “Chariot” (bottom left).

As far as Gary is concerned, a minimalist lifestyle is the only real solution to problems both personal and planetary. 

“The best thing any of us can do for the environment, health, peace, and the economy is to live in smaller spaces,” he tells me. “When we reduce our domicile to less than 100 square feet per person, magic happens in terms of energy efficiency, comfort, function, and most of all junk accumulation.” 

The planet is alive—and pissed!

For Gary, electrosensitivity and chemical sensitivity are neither an accident nor an anathema. Rather, he says, they are a gift and a call to arms. 

“The planet is indeed alive,” Gary remarks. “And it is now pissed. It warned us fifty years ago to stop the abuse. Our greed wouldn’t listen. So it devised a scenario where we would. And I certainly am.” 

If anyone had told Gary Duncan ten years ago that he would be fleeing to the wild lands to live and thrive, he wouldn’t have believed them. 

“Back then,” says Gary, “I would have deemed the life I now live to be unfeasible and impossible. But it works and I love it. Bunnies know all of this. That’s why they live in holes and stay out of Moab.”

© Kim Goldberg 2014. All rights reserved.

(Gary Duncan’s story will be included in Kim Goldberg’s forthcoming book REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague. Read more people’s stories here.)

Lucy Sanford: Healing Mind and Body

By Kim Goldberg

January 23, 2014

Lucy Sanford

Lucy Sanford in her days as a top-selling Toronto real estate agent.

For 25 years, Lucy Sanford was a top-selling real estate agent in Toronto’s west end. Not surprisingly, her busy life and successful career were filled with all manner of wireless devices. In addition to her cell phone and nearby cell antennas at her office, there were no less than 20 cell antennas on the roof of her residence. She also had Wi-Fi, a blackberry, and four cordless phones at home. And her fancy car was loaded with gadgets generating high electromagnetic fields. 

“I loved the technology,” she recalls. “I lived, worked, slept and breathed in this environment.” 

But, as is the case for an increasing number of people in our electrified and wireless world, there was a price to be paid. Lucy developed an extreme and ever-worsening case of electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). The condition ultimately ended her career and sent her to the ER one night after she spent two hours convulsing in bed. 

However, it also set her on a long and fruitful healing journey, which she today describes as miraculous. 

Now, at age 60, Lucy is leading a healthy, vibrant life, and she is able to spend time (when necessary) in environments bristling with wireless devices without ill effect. She and her new partner are even thinking of building a sustainable community on a rural acreage in Ontario where they can offer their healing knowledge to others. 

Lucy Sanford today with partner and geomancer Alan Reed

Lucy Sanford today, healed from devastating electro-sensitivity and enjoying life with new partner Alan Reed, a geomancer who balanced the energies on her property.

“I believe people with EHS are the lucky ones,” Lucy tells me. “Our warning systems are forcing us to be aware of our environments and make changes and heal, as opposed to not feeling the warnings and getting something like cancer or Alzheimer’s. I would not change this experience,” she says of her 14-year ordeal with undiagnosed EHS in Toronto, and her subsequent 4-year healing journey in the much smaller Ontario town of Crystal Beach. 

The first symptoms of Lucy’s mysterious ailment, that would plague her life and confound her doctors for many years to come, began in 1995 when she noticed occasional numbness and tingling in her hands and ringing in her ears. Inexplicable nausea was also part of the equation. 

By 2000, her sleep was so disrupted that she was only getting two or three hours of intermittent sleep each night. 

“One night I went to bed, and all of a sudden I experienced what I can only describe as feeling like a bolt of lightning hit the left occipital area of my head,” she recounts. “It jolted me, my whole body convulsed, and then my bowels evacuated.” The convulsions recurred every ten minutes for the next two hours. 

Alone and terrified, Lucy called her father for help, and he took her to a hospital emergency room in Toronto. After being questioned by three different doctors for several hours, Lucy was ultimately transferred to the psychiatric ward of another hospital, where she remained for two weeks. 

“I was sent home with prescriptions for anti-anxiety pills and anti-depressants and a referral to a psychiatrist,” Lucy says. 

This pattern is all too common within the medical profession, even a decade after Lucy’s experience. So great is the medical community’s ignorance and outright denial of electrosensitivity, that many sufferers are still psycho-analyzed, drugged, and even involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards when they seek medical help for their potentially life-threatening physical reaction to wireless radiation. 

As Lucy’s symptoms multiplied (including the frightening effect of the entire left side of her body going numb and “drooping” for several hours at a time), her doctor speculated variously that it was due to menopause, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and more. Lucy was tested for Lyme Disease and Multiple Sclerosis, and given MRIs, CT scans, a spinal tap, and other tests. But her ailment remained a mystery.  

In 2006, tests showed Lucy’s body was laden with heavy metals. The removal of her mercury amalgam dental fillings brought immediate relief from some of her symptoms. 

Life became impossible

But by late 2009, Lucy was wracked with an ever-widening array of debilitating health problems—dizziness, nausea, extreme memory loss, slurred speech, intense leg pain, burning and itching, bronchitis, spasms throughout her head, numbness, chest pressure, inflamed thyroid, and much more. Life had become impossible. 

“I could no longer cope,” she says. 

Having exhausted all other diagnoses, her doctor speculated that Lucy may be electrosensitive and suggested she remove herself to a low-EMF environment on a trial basis to see if she felt better. 

A short stay on a friend's farm convinced Lucy that she had to permanently move out of the city. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

A short stay on a friend’s farm convinced Lucy that she had to permanently move out of the city.
(Photo © Kim Goldberg)

“I went to my girlfriend’s farm, and after only five days I was completely stunned!” Lucy recalls. “Almost all of my symptoms subsided enormously.” But her recovery was short-lived. In the two hours it took her to drive home along the highway flanked by cell towers, the symptoms returned. 

“The contrast was remarkable,” says Lucy. “I knew then that I had no choice. I had to get out of the city environment if I was to survive and feel healthy again.” 

So in December 2009, she pulled up stakes from Toronto, abandoned her home, referred her real estate clientele to another agent, and moved to Crystal Beach, Ontario—determined to change her life and rebuild her health. 

In the ensuing four years, Lucy has devoted herself to cleansing and repairing both her external and internal environments. She has been so successful in her single-minded campaign to reclaim her life that today she is able to go almost anywhere with little or no reaction to electromagnetic fields. She is, for all practical purposes, healed. 

Lucy bought a house on a 1/4-acre lot in a small community two hours away from Toronto, and then gutted it to bare walls so she could completely renovate it for low electrical fields.

Lucy bought a house on a 1/4-acre lot in a small community two hours away from Toronto, and then gutted it to bare walls so she could completely renovate it for low electrical fields.

Lucy’s first step was to remove herself from the toxic environment of electro-pollution and create a safe living space. She bought a house in an area with low electromagnetic fields and gutted it to the bare walls to renovate it for her condition. She used non-toxic materials everywhere since her hypersensitivity extended to chemicals as well. 

For house wiring, Lucy installed armored (BX) electrical cabling throughout her home so that the electrical wires in her walls were shielded. She also had each room separately wired, and with two “on-demand” switches per room (one for the lights and one for the outlets), so that there is absolutely no electricity in the walls of any room whose switches are off. 

And she ran DC wiring through the walls for lamps and a ceiling fan, powered by a battery that is recharged once every two weeks by the household AC. 

She had the smart meter (unavoidable in her region) moved off her house and mounted on a post on the corner of her property, and then shielded the backside with copper mesh.

She had the smart meter (unavoidable in her region) moved off her house and mounted on a post on the corner of her property, and then shielded the backside with copper mesh.

She buried the power cable coming into her home underground, and then grounded the house wiring to a grounding plate outside in the earth rather than to plumbing inside her home. She installed Stetzer filters, a Corcom filter, and an Eco filter to clean up dirty electricity that would otherwise be entering her home or circulating through her wiring from inside sources.  

She had the wireless smart meter (an unavoidable fixture in her region) moved from the side of her house out to the edge of her property. And she shielded the backside of the smart meter with copper mesh to block its radiation from reaching her house. 

To insulate her home from external sources of ground current travelling through the earth, she installed a continuous copper cable around the entire perimeter of her quarter-acre lot, and then grounded it to grounding rods at the corners of her property. 

Lucy planted 85 trees and bushes on her lot to shield her home from future sources of wireless radiation.

Lucy planted 85 trees and bushes on her lot to shield her home from future sources of wireless radiation.

To top it all off, she planted 85 trees and bushes to help shield her home from future wireless radiation. 

For a while Lucy slept in a Faraday canopy, which brought the wireless radiation down to zero under the canopy. But after she hired an expert in biogeometry to rebalance the energy in her home, she found she no longer needed the canopy so she took it down. 

The final alignment of the energies on Lucy’s property occurred in April 2013, when she hired a geomancer named Alan Reed to harmonize the rest of the magnetic lines in her home as well as the underground water veins on the property. 

“It was after Alan’s work that my healing shot forward,” Lucy recalls. 

Lucy and Alan’s common interest in earth energies blossomed into romance and now life partnership. Alan’s latest gift to Lucy was a 3,000-pound quartz crystal strategically placed on a beneficial underground water crossing on Lucy’s front lawn. 

Lucy's new partner, geomancer Alan Reed, gave her a 3,000-pound quartz crystal, strategically placed on a beneficial underground water crossing on her front lawn. Some will say the unexpected column of light engulfing Lucy in this photo is just lens flare. Lucy sees it differently.

Lucy’s new partner, geomancer Alan Reed, gave her a 3,000-pound quartz crystal, strategically placed on a beneficial underground water crossing on her front lawn. Some will say the unexpected column of light engulfing Lucy in this photo is just lens flare. Lucy sees it differently.

Clearly, Lucy was determined to leave no stone unturned and no energy field unmitigated in her attempt to create a safe haven from the electro-pollution of the surrounding world. And it worked. But unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life at home, that was only half the battle. 

The other half involved redesigning her mental landscape and literally rewiring her brain using the science of neuroplasticity. This allowed her to ultimately normalize regions of the brain (specifically, the limbic system) that go into permanent overdrive when subjected to prolonged trauma. (For a detailed description of limbic system retraining, read Cynthia Perkins’ article here.)

“For people with EHS, the parts of the brain that work to warn us about danger get stuck,” Lucy explains. “They don’t shut off. We are in a perpetual state of ‘fight or flight’, and we are not designed for that. We get sick, and then we need less and less exposure to make us sick.” 

Her inner journey has involved meditation, the power of positive thinking, a spirituality course, and copious reading on such topics as brain architecture, the unconscious mind, psychoanalysis, vibrational frequencies, Buddhism, the earth’s energy fields, underground streams, and geopathic stress. 

“I made it my job to study all of this, and it is everything I work on throughout the day,” she says. “I had to remove myself from negativity and from people who had negative outlooks. I had to stop thinking about ‘it’.” 

After two years of this intensive inner work, combined with her new life in a detoxed home, she says she was about 70 percent healed. 

“I could drive the two hours into Toronto along the highway dotted with cell towers, even turn on the heat or AC in the car and listen to music, and stay in Toronto in a restaurant or public place for a couple of hours without feeling too sick,” she recalls. “That was an amazing turn-about for me and gave me a huge amount of freedom.” 

Rewiring the brain

But Lucy wasn’t willing to settle for 70 percent. She wanted full recovery. And she sensed that the remainder of the work would somehow involve the unconscious mind—a subject Lucy was already well acquainted with, having studied it for more than thirty years. 

So she delved more deeply into brain science and discovered a program called the Dynamic Neural Retraining System, developed by Annie Hopper. 

brain“This was the last piece of the puzzle that made all the dots of everything I had learned come together. It allowed me to create my own program of self-healing,” Lucy recalls. (The DNR system involves self-directed neuroplastic changes in the limbic system of the brain, which is the seat of our fears and of our fight-or-flight response, among many other things.) 

“Those of us with EHS can get better and have normal lives through a combination of reducing and harmonizing the electromagnetic fields and radio frequencies and geopathic stresses in our environment, along with healing our minds and rewiring our brains using the science of neuroplasticity,” Lucy explains. “I am now 90 percent there and healing at a more rapid rate daily.” 

Lucy and Alan are weighing plans to develop a healing community and geomancy school on his 33 acre property in Ontario.

Lucy and Alan are weighing plans to develop a healing community and geomancy school on his 33-acre property in Ontario.

In recent months, Lucy has made multiple trips to Toronto, spending extended periods of time in highly toxic environments filled with wireless devices, loud music, fluorescent lights, high levels of dirty electricity, and many other triggers. And through it all, she felt fine. 

“I felt it,” she says of the electromagnetic fields and radio frequencies bombarding her. “But I was able to stop my reaction to it.” 

Today, Lucy considers her traumatic past with electrosensitivity to be a blessing rather than a curse. 

“Had I never gotten sick, I would never have discovered all these things,” says Lucy. “I have opened my mind and heart and soul. I am loving life, and I attracted love into my life,” she says, referring to her new life partner. “Alan and I have been discussing exciting plans to move out to his 33-acre property and build a sustainable community where we will offer workshops on the healing power of nature, a geomancy school, the power of the mind, and more.” 

What advice does Lucy have for those still struggling with electrosensitivity? 

“The most important thing I can tell anyone is to heal their mind and rewire their brain,” Lucy says. “EHS is very real, but it is a limbic system impairment…While withdrawing from the EMFs and RFs is vital and necessary to heal the body, it does not heal the mind, nor does it stop the fear and the unconscious, cross-wired program in the brain that keeps the body stuck in fight or flight,” she adds. “I meditate daily. I find something in each moment that I am grateful for. I focus on the positive. I live in a friendly environment and eat healthy food. And I surround myself with positive people and energies.” 

© Kim Goldberg 2014. All rights reserved.

(Lucy Sanford’s’ story will be included in Kim Goldberg’s forthcoming book REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague. Read more people’s stories here.)

FILM: Take Back Your Power, Coming to Nanaimo

By Kim Goldberg 

October 22, 2013 

Take Back Your PowerThree Vancouver Island screenings of the phenomenal new documentary film about smart meters, Take Back Your Power, are coming up next month: 

Nov. 5 (Tuesday) – NANAIMO: John Barsby Secondary School at 7th & Bruce, 7:00-9:00 pm. in the Multipurpose Room. Admission by donation (suggested: $5) 

Nov. 14 (Thursday) – LADYSMITH: Eagles Hall, First Avenue, 1:30-3:30 pm. Admission by donation (suggested: $5)

Nov 17 (Sunday) – NANAIMO: Harbourfront Library, 90 Commercial Street, 1:00-3:00 pm.

DVDs of the film will be available for purchase for $20 at each of these screenings. 

I recently had the opportunity to view Take Back Your Power. It is a chilling but essential look at the true risks and consequences of wireless “smart meters” that measure household electrical consumption—devices that have been forcibly installed on homes and business across BC and beyond. 

Produced and directed by Vancouver filmmaker Josh del Sol, this 90-minute film is fast-paced, smartly edited and truly riveting. It goes well beyond the conventional (if snoozy) cinematic terrain of “talking heads.” 

Vancouver filmmaker Josh del Sol

Vancouver filmmaker Josh del Sol

Del Sol travels the continent and even the globe in search of the ominous truth about the worldwide push for smart meters and the global smart grid they are creating. And what he finds in the wake of smart meter installation are soaring hydro bills, house fires, violations of privacy and property, civil liberty infractions, and even national security threats arising from the supreme hackability of a ‘smarted’ national infrastructure. 

The film concludes with copious evidence of the profound health risks associated with pulsed wireless radiation, which these meters are constantly emitting. 

It is hard to imagine how any impartial person (that is, anyone not under the spell of industry or misguided faux-green thinking) could view this film and not instantly want to go home and rip their wireless smart meter off the side of their home and replace it with an “old-fashioned” and safe analogue meter—or, failing that, go off-grid altogether. 

Visit Take Back Your Power on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TakeBackYourPower 

And on the web: http://www.takebackyourpower.net

ElectroSensitivity article in Ami Living

Photo © Kim Goldberg

Photo © Kim Goldberg

On June 12, 2013, Ami Living published a 10-page article on electrosensitivity written by Racheli Sofer and titled: “Are You Allergic to Your Cell Phone? EHS sufferers tell their stories of escape from modern civilization in order to survive.”

Read the full article here: Ami Living article on Electro-Sensitivity

Ami Living is a division of Ami Magazine based in Brooklyn, New York. I was interviewed at length for this article, in connection to my forthcoming book REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague (due out in 2014). 

The contents of the Ami Living article (normally available by subscription only) are being shared here with the permission of Ami Magazine. Visit Ami Magazine’s website: http://amimagazine.org 

Kim Goldberg

Tyler Hoffmann – Colwood, BC

By Kim Goldberg

August 15, 2013 

8-year-old Tyler Hoffmann (Photo by Janis Hoffmann)

8-year-old Tyler Hoffmann (Photo by Janis Hoffmann)

Eight-year-old Tyler Hoffmann has energy to burn. And his backyard trampoline, bike, basketball, and hockey stick each get a thorough workout on the afternoon I visit him at his grandmother’s home near Victoria, BC. 

But in April 2012, a different story was unfolding. Tyler began coming home from Sangster Elementary School in the Sooke School District with extreme headaches and fatigue. And he was having trouble sleeping at night. 

When asked to touch the part of his head that hurt, he would point to the top, his mother Lori recalls. But as the headaches grew worse over the next few weeks—to the point of nausea—Tyler was no longer able to touch the source of it, stating it was now in the middle of his head. 

Tyler Hoffmann (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

“After a few weeks of using Advil and Tylenol to alleviate the severe pain in Tyler’s head, we knew something was seriously wrong,” Lori says.   

The following month, she discovered what it was. 

“We accidently discovered, through another parent, that the school district had just finished installing commercial wi-fi networks throughout every school,” Lori explains. “This was done without informing parents. We were denied any opportunity for input,” she adds. 

Tyler’s pediatrician recommended that the school shut off the wi-fi router closest to Tyler’s classroom, so that Tyler could remain in school and complete Grade 2 with his friends. 

The school’s wi-fi routers, all active and transmitting day and night, were not being used at the time (and still aren’t) because there were no computers to connect them to. So the request from a doctor to turn off a single unused router seemed simple enough, Lori thought. The Sooke School District did not agree. 

School District usurps parental choice on wireless radiation

“The Assistant Superintendent told us that the router would not be turned off but would stay on 24/7 because they did not want to set a precedent,” Lori recalls. “I don’t have a cell phone, wireless router, cordless phone, wireless keyboard, wireless mouse or any other wireless devices in my home because I have made the choice of not exposing my children or myself to microwave radiation. The school district has now decided for me that Tyler will be exposed to it,” she says. 

Tyler Hoffmann - back to normal once removed from his wi-fi'ed school. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

Tyler Hoffmann – back to normal once removed from his wi-fi’ed school. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

Lori pulled Tyler out of school that same day rather than risk his health any further. And upon doing so, she was promptly informed by the school principal that Tyler’s teacher was under no obligation to give Tyler homework, marking, or evaluation so that he could complete Grade 2. 

“After we removed Tyler from school, his headaches and associated nausea completely stopped,” says Lori. 

In September 2012, his mother enrolled Tyler in an elementary school in the neighboring Victoria School District, where there would be no wi-fi router in his classroom.  

Free from the toxic effects of commercial wi-fi in the classroom, Tyler performed at the top of his math and reading classes at his new school.  

Tyler Hoffmann (Photo by Janis Hoffmann)

Tyler Hoffmann (Photo by Janis Hoffmann)

But transferring Tyler to an out-of-district school is, at best, a temporary solution, and does nothing to help the 8,500 other students in the Sooke School District. So Tyler’s family along with the Jeskes (another local family with electrosensitive children) have launched a legal challenge in an attempt to make Sooke School District classrooms safe for all children. Read their legal brief here.

The Hoffmann and Jeske families seek, at the very least, to bring the Sooke School District into compliance with the policies adopted in 2012 by the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils, which call for a moratorium on installation of further wi-fi in BC schools plus a minimum of one school at each level in each district to be free of wi-fi to accommodate electrosensitive students. 

“unlawful to experiment on children”

Tyler & his sister Julianna with both be attending schools in the Victoria School District to avoid wi-fi in classrooms. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

Tyler & his sister Julianna will both be attending schools in the Victoria School District to avoid wi-fi in classrooms. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

“It is unethical and unlawful to experiment on children,” says Tyler’s grandmother Janis Hoffmann. “Wi-fi is an unregulated technology that has not been tested for safety for children in schools,” she adds. “Parents have not been informed of the risks and have never been asked to sign a consent form. Ironically, the student field trips are explained in great detail, requiring parents to sign a permission slip before children are permitted to attend.” 

Tyler and his five-year-old sister Julianna will each attend school in the Victoria School District in September 2013 where they will not be exposed to wireless radiation from commercial wi-fi routers in their classrooms.

To donate to the legal fund for electrosensitive children sickened by wi-fi in schools, go here.

Text and images © Kim Goldberg 2013 (unless images are otherwise credited)

(Tyler Hoffmann’s story will be included in Kim Goldberg’s forthcoming book REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague, due out in 2014. Read more people’s stories here.)

BC Hydro Breaks Down Barricade to Install Smart Meter in Nanaimo

By Kim Goldberg

August 14, 2013 

Jurgen Goering has one more smart meter today than he had yesterday - and not by choice. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

Jurgen Goering has one more smart meter today than he had yesterday – and not by choice. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

NANAIMO, BC—One month after BC Energy Minister Bill Bennett announced that smart meters are no longer mandatory for citizens who do not want one, a Nanaimo man had a smart meter forcibly installed, and his property vandalized in the process, by an individual who appears to have been a BC Hydro employee. 

Jurgen Goering has one more smart meter on his home today than he did yesterday. And not by choice. 

Jurgen shows me the plywood barricade he had  placed over his three remianing analogue meters, with holes cut for meter-reading. BC Hydro broke the locks off the plywood to force a smart meter on him. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

Jurgen shows me the plywood barricade he had placed over his three remaining analogue meters, with holes cut for meter-reading. BC Hydro broke the locks off the plywood to force a smart meter on him. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

I visited Goering at his downtown Nanaimo home this afternoon. He told me that an unidentified man driving a BC Hydro van and wearing civilian clothes entered his backyard yesterday around 2:00 pm, broke through his padlocked plywood barricade guarding his three remaining analogue meters, and exchanged one of them for a wireless smart meter while Goering stood there telling him to leave. 

“This really shakes my faith in the political system and in BC Hydro,” Goering told me. 

“What [Energy Minister] Bill Bennett did when he announced the opt-out last month was to send a message that the war in the backyards is over. So why did this happen?” Goering asks. 

Goering says he confronted the installer on the spot yesterday and told him he was trespassing. 

“I also told him I was the homeowner and I was not granting permission,” says Goering.

BC Hydro ripped the woodscrews out of the plywood barricade to get past the padlock just one month after BC Energy Minister Bill Bennett said no one would be forced to have a smart meter against their will. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

BC Hydro ripped the woodscrews out of Jurgen Goering’s plywood barricade to get a smart meter on his Nanaimo home one month after BC Energy Minister Bill Bennett said no one would be forced to have a smart meter against their will. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

The installer, who had already ripped out the woodscrews holding the padlock on the plywood barricade, continued installing the smart meter beside a posted sign forbidding it and then left, Goering told me. 

Goering’s home has four hydro meters on it – one for each separate residence. And he owns the entire building. One of the four meters had been replaced with a smart meter a year earlier, when a tenant moved out and contacted BC Hydro to close the account. Goering was using plywood and padlocks to protect the other three analogue meters on his home from a similar fate. 

RCMP Non-responsive

Goering says he also phoned the police while the unauthorized installation was in progress. But the police told him to phone BC Hydro instead, leaving Goering dumbfounded.  

“Someone’s invading the privacy of your home and premises, and you can’t get them off your land?” Goering asks. 

Last month, on July 11, BC Energy Minister Bill Bennett announced that the province will now offer citizens alternatives to the once mandatory smart meter program. 

“People who want to opt out can,” Bennett stated. “They will not be forced to have a smart meter, but they are going to have to pay the costs… We don’t want to force people to have a smart meter if they really don’t want one,” Bennett told the public. “It’s not our intention to offend people or bully people.” 

Either someone forgot to inform BC Hydro of the Minister’s new policy, or else the government’s promise of an opt-out option for customers was never genuine to begin with. 

Jurgen Goering tends is tomatoes in his lush organic food garden in has backyard, and mulls the Orwellian implications of BC Hydro's forced installation of a smart meter on his home. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

Jurgen Goering tends his tomatoes in his lush organic food garden in his backyard and mulls the Orwellian implications of BC Hydro’s forced installation of a smart meter on his home. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

“It’s like living in George Orwell’s 1984,” says Goering. “It’s double-speak and double-think. They say one thing and do the opposite.” 

Last month two BC organizations, Citizens for Safe Technology and Coalition to Stop Smart Meters, filed a class action lawsuit against BC Hydro to force the corporation to adopt a genuine opt-out option in which customers will be allowed to keep or revert to their analogue meters, and pay no additional costs for their choice. 

More information about the lawsuit is here

Kim Goldberg is an award-winning journalist and author in Nanaimo, BC. Her next book, REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague, is due out in 2014. 
Text and images copyright © Kim Goldberg, 2013. 

Jordan Weiss – East Sooke, BC

By Kim Goldberg 

July 30, 2013

Jordan Weiss (Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

Jordan Weiss
(Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

With sketchpad in hand, Jordan Weiss walks out his back door and perches on a rocky bluff overlooking the Juan de Fuca Strait and the forested shores of the Olympic Peninsula beyond. The only sound as he works is the occasional rustle of dry grass and the shushing of his pencil across the pad. 

For many, the tranquil and unhurried life here in rural East Sooke on southern Vancouver Island would be a dream come true. But for a teenager who is here by necessity, this paradise can also be a prison. 

“I am very isolated here,” says 19-year-old Jordan. “I have very little socialization beyond my family.” 

The reason for Jordan’s isolation is his extreme sensitivity to wireless radiation. Exposure to wi-fi, cell towers, and even cell phones causes a range of physical maladies for Jordan as well as horrifying “night terrors”—a form of sleep-walking that can result in serious injury, and has on more than one occasion. 

Weiss Family: Karen, Tom, Jordan , Colin (and family dog Keisha)

Weiss Family: Karen, Tom, Jordan , Colin (and Australian shepherd Keisha)
(Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

In 2012, Jordan’s parents uprooted the family from their Cadboro Bay neighbourhood near University of Victoria and purchased the remote house and 3-acre parcel in East Sooke in a desperate bid to escape wireless radiation and give Jordan a chance to live a healthy life. (Jordan’s mother is also electrosensitive, but his father and older brother are not.) 

The isolated rural setting of East Sooke, located to the west of Victoria on southern Vancouver Island, offers  a lower ambient level of electromagnetic radiation. (Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

The isolated rural setting of East Sooke offers a lower ambient level of electromagnetic radiation.
(Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

After much looking at rural properties within commuting distance of Victoria where both parents still work, the family found an area in East Sooke that, because of landscape configuration, offered little or no cell phone reception. A handful of houses are located on that strip of land. One of those houses was for sale. 

(Interestingly, another of these properties belongs to a building biologist who bought there for the same reason—to reduce exposure to ambient wireless radiation. At the rate electrosensitivity is increasing in the population, one can only wonder how many years it will be before “No cell phone reception” becomes a coveted selling feature for real estate.) 

“Moving out here is not the complete answer,” Jordan tells me. “It’s a good start. But, as a teenager, I still can’t go out there and do the stuff I want to do.” 

Most teenage activities are in wi-fi’ed locations—whether it’s a café, school, rec centre, or private home. Nor are teenagers inclined to turn off their cell phones when asked. 

Jordan cooks us up an omelette with his special sauce. (Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

Jordan cooks us up an omelette with his special sauce.
(Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

“They make fun of me,” Jordan says of his attempts to ask friends to shut off their phones. “They don’t want to say it, but they think it’s all in my head. I want to be around people who love me for who I am and are not always on their cell phones.” 

Jordan’s electrosensitivity first manifest when he was 11, soon after he got orthodontic braces. (This is an increasingly common scenario for many electrosensitive children due to wi-fi in schools. Metal dental braces literally become an antenna, drawing ambient radiation into a child’s head.) Jordan began experiencing blistering headaches, nausea, clumsiness, weak legs, inability to focus or retain information, and severe exhaustion. 

His mother Karen believes the underlying trigger for Jordan’s electrosensitivity may reach as far back as pre-school when his daycare for two years of his life was across the street from a cell tower. 

Jordan’s symptoms swelled to crisis proportions when the family renovated their former home and installed wi-fi and cordless DECT 6.0 phones throughout, including beside Jordan’s bed. He felt awful at friends’ homes with wi-fi, and felt great when sleeping over at friends’ homes without wi-fi. 

After much research, investigation, and visits to doctors and sleep clinics, Jordan’s parents finally identified the cause of his problems: wireless radiation. They removed the wi-fi and cordless phones from their home, and Jordan immediately improved—at least for his hours spent at home. 

“It’s like being allergic to society.”

“When we first figured out what was wrong, we were relieved,” Jordan’s mother Karen recalls. “At last we had an answer. But then we thought about what it means—it’s like being allergic to society.” 

From his balcony, Jordan surveys the rugged rural terrain of East Sooke, and the Juan de Fuca Strait beyond. (Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

From his balcony, Jordan surveys the rugged rural terrain of East Sooke, and the Juan de Fuca Strait beyond.
(Photo © Kim Goldberg 2013)

The move to East Sooke has virtually put an end to the harrowing and dangerous night terrors. Yet every foray out into the world to attend an art class or social gathering or a meeting of the local mountain bike club risks a re-appearance of symptoms due to ubiquitous wireless radiation. 

“It is really a life-altering issue that adds an entirely new dimension to almost every decision Jordan makes,” Karen says. 

Jordan is a young man of many talents. He cooks us a scrumptious omelette made with his special sauce, then sits on the sofa and plays the Djembe (an African drum) with gusto. He tells me he would someday like to create graphic novels and design video games. A display case in the hall holds an impressive sampling of his sculptural works and other art. 

Yet with electrosensitivity dictating where he can and cannot go, limiting his training opportunities as well as social interaction and future workplaces, Jordan faces more challenges than most young people in discovering his path through this world and how to ply his talents in it. 

Jordan playing the Djembe. (Photo © Kim Goldberg)

Jordan playing the Djembe.
(Photo © Kim Goldberg)

In earlier years, he had wanted to be an architect. But now, the prospect of spending years at university—awash as they all are in wi-fi, cell towers, cell phones, iPads, laptops, and myriad other wireless devices—seems out of reach. 

Last winter, Jordan was training to be a ski instructor at Mount Washington on Vancouver Island. But the presence of a cell tower, plus the radios they all had to carry, nixed that plan. 

Most people, if asked to describe their ideal life, would talk about getting a piece of land, or finding that special someone, or having the time and money to write novels, or just kicking back in a thatched palapa on a tropical beach. 

When I ask Jordan what his ideal life would be, he immediately replies: “A life without pain or sickness.” 

And to a large degree, that is what he now has at his new home in East Sooke. His special refuge is rugged East Sooke Park, located just below his home. He visits it frequently with his Australian shepherd, Keisha. 

“I have always been drawn to flowing water,” Jordan tells me. “There’s one spot I hike to at East Sooke Park with Keisha—it’s overlooking a chasm. There’s water crashing all around me, and I just lie there until Keisha wanders off and I have to go get her.” 

Text and images © Kim Goldberg, 2013 

(Jordan Weiss’s story will be included in Kim Goldberg’s forthcoming book REFUGIUM: Wi-Fi Exiles and the Coming Electroplague, due out in 2014. Read more people’s stories here.)