"The Perry Nuclear Power Plant is an infringement on the health and well-being of all the people living within a five-hundred-mile radius of its reactor core" - quote from Talk Radio
The Perry Nuclear Power Plant is located on a 1,100-acre (450 ha) site on Lake Erie, 40 miles (65 km) northeast of Cleveland in North Perry, Ohio, USA. The nuclear power plant is owned by First Energy Nuclear Operating Corporation.
The reactor is a General Electric BWR-6 boiling water reactor design, with a Mark III containment design. The original core power level of 3,579 megawatts thermal was increased to 3,758 megawatts thermal in 2000, making Perry one of the largest BWRs in the United States.
Built at a cost of $6 billion, Perry-1 is one of the most expensive power plants ever constructed.
Perry was originally designed as a two-unit installation, but construction on Unit 2 was suspended in 1985 and formally cancelled in 1994. At the time of cancellation, all of the major buildings and structures for the second unit were completed, including the 500-foot tall cooling tower. Aerial pictures of Perry show what appears to be two nuclear units. The completed sections have since been raided for spare parts to maintain Unit 1. It is theoretically possible that a second unit could be constructed on the site, but current economical and regulatory conditions are not conducive to doing so (in addition to back taxes that would be due to the "abandon in place" designations on many objects in Unit 2). At any rate, the second unit would have to be re-built from the ground up to accommodate the newer reactor design that would almost certainly be installed.
Perry was the 100th power reactor licensed in the United States. Start of commercial operation November 18, 1987.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Nuclear_Generating_Station
2. The Economic Climate of Cleveland
"Last night an eighty-year-old-grandmother was murdered on Euclid Avenue. Some kids needed cash for crack, so they stuck a knife in Grandma" (indicative of a declining area of the city). -quote from Talk Radio
In 1978, the Cleveland, Ohio, city government defaulted on 15.5 million dollars in short-term loans from local banks.
Cleveland became the first city since the Great Depression to default on its financial obligations. At that point in time, the city was more than thirty million dollars in debt. There were numerous reasons why Cleveland defaulted on its debts. Chief among these reasons was a declining population and relocation of businesses outside of Cleveland during the 1960s and 1970s. As businesses and people relocated, property values declined, hindering the city's ability to collect ample property taxes to meet its needs. City residents or Cleveland city officials repeatedly rejected tax increases during this period, failing to replace the funds lost due to the dwindling tax base.
Cleveland remained in default until 1987. http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1646
3. The movie "Light of Day" is filmed in Cleveland. (This movie is a good frame of reference for anyone trying to understand Cleveland in 1987, particularly since images and information from the 1980's is extremely limited.)
This, somewhat forgettable, film starring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett is still fun for Clevelanders because of its local settings and references. The movie, about a brother-sister rock and roll duo, features scenes filmed in Cleveland Heights and Cleveland's University Circle neighborhood. There's even a glimpse of Akron native, Trent Reznor, right before he burst to fame with "Nine Inch Nails."
http://cleveland.about.com/od/filmsandfilmmakers/tp/clevelandmovies.htm
4. Smoking in Cleveland (This is significant since Barry Champlain is a heavy smoker.)
Cleveland’s 1987 Clean Indoor Air Act – An Introduction
Clean Indoor Air is not new to Cleveland. On February 9, 1987, Cleveland City Council passed the 1987 Clean Indoor Air Act in response to citizen complaints that tobacco smoke rendered many public places inaccessible to those with health conditions, such as asthma.
Cleveland residents testified before Council that they were unable to enter banks, stores, and even City Hall, because of pervasive tobacco smoke. Others stated that smoke in the workplace infringed on their ability to be productive, and that it represented an occupational hazard.
The legislative process led to many compromises and exemptions. However, we should be proud that compared to legislation passed in other cities during that era, Cleveland's 1987 Act was on the cutting edge of this public health issue.
Why the 1987 Clean Indoor Air Act falls short
The 1987 Act completely exempts bars, certain eating establishments, bowling centers, hotel and motel rooms, and certain restrooms and public lobbies. According to the Northern Ohio Data and Information Service (NODIS) at Cleveland State University, this leaves more than 20,000 Cleveland employees and countless customers unprotected and exposed to secondhand smoke on a regular basis.
In addition, the 1987 Act calls on employees in office workplaces to "request" a "smoke-free work area." This falls short of addressing worker health for two reasons:
1) By requiring that workers "request" a smoke-free work area, the 1987 Act treats secondhand smoke as an inconvenience or preference, not as a known health hazard.
AND
2) Its definition of a "work area" is vague: "...any room, desk, station or other area normally occupied by an employee while carrying out his or her primary work functions." The only known way to protect workers from tobacco smoke toxins is to require separately enclosed, separately ventilated work areas for smokers and nonsmokers.
The 1987 Act does not define or require this standard. http://smokefreecleveland.org/issues/legislation.asp
5.) Sports: The Cleveland Indians in 1987 (Barry and one of the callers get into a debate about who will win the World Series.)
The Cleveland Indians finished in seventh place in the American League East. Sports Illustrated magazine predicted that the Indians would finish in first. Club president Peter Bavasi's would resign before the regular season began. Bavasi had joined the Indians in November 1984. As president of the Cleveland Indians, he served on Major League Baseball's Executive Council. [1] During the 1986 season, the team had an 84-78 record, its best since 1968, and attendance of 1.47 million, its highest since 1959. [2] There was a lot of optimism that the team would reach its full potential in 1987.
In 1987, the Cleveland Indians achieved a baseball first. The Indians had veteran pitchers Steve Carlton and Phil Niekro on their roster to add experience. Their most notable accomplishment was appearing in a game together against the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Carlton and Niekro became the first teammates and 300-game winners to appear in the same game. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Cleveland_Indians_season
6. Topography (Many different locations are mentioned throughout the script. The topography of Cleveland is central to the creation of the different areas of the city and its suburbs.)
"...flies it out over the lake and drops it in." - quote from Talk Radio
According to the United States Census Bureau,[1] the city has a total area of 82.4 square miles (213.5 km²), of which, 77.6 square miles (201.0 km²) is land and 4.8 square miles (12.5 km²) is water. The total area is 5.87% water. The shore of Lake Erie is 569 feet (173 m) above sea level; however, the city lies on a series of irregular bluffs lying roughly parallel to the lake. In Cleveland these bluffs are cut principally by the Cuyahoga River, Big Creek, and Euclid Creek. The land rises quickly from the lakeshore. Public Square, less than a mile (2 km) inland, sits at an elevation of 650 feet (198 m), and Hopkins Airport, only five miles (8 km) inland from the lake, is at an elevation of 791 feet (241 m).[36]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Ohio
7.Climate
"I waited a half hour last night. In the rain." - quote from Talk Radio
Cleveland possesses a humid continental climate (Koppen climate classification Dfa), typical of much of the central United States, with very warm, humid summers and cold, snowy winters. The Lake Erie shoreline is very close to due east-west from the mouth of the Cuyahoga west to Sandusky, but at the mouth of the Cuyahoga it turns sharply northeast. This feature is the principal contributor to the lake effect snow that is typical in Cleveland (especially east side) weather from mid-November until the surface of Lake Erie freezes, usually in late January or early February. The lake effect causes snowfall totals to range greatly across the city: while Hopkins Airport has only reached 100 inches (254 cm) of snowfall in a given season three times since 1968,[37] seasonal totals approaching or exceeding 100 inches (2,500 mm) are not uncommon in an area known as the "Snow Belt", extending from the east side of Cleveland proper through the eastern suburbs and up the Lake Erie shore as far as Buffalo, New York. Despite its reputation as a cold, snowy place in winter, mild spells often break winter's grip with temperatures sometimes soaring above 70 °F (21 °C). The all-time record high in Cleveland of 104 °F (40 °C) was established on June 25, 1988, and the all-time record low of −20 °F (−29 °C) was set on January 19, 1994.[38] On average, July is the warmest month with a mean temperature of 71.9 °F (22.2 °C), and January, with a mean temperature of 25.7 °F (−3.5 °C), is the coldest. Normal yearly precipitation based on the 30-year average from 1971 to 2000 is 38.7 inches (930 mm).[39] Yearly precipitation rates vary considerably in different areas of the Cleveland metropolitan area, with less precipitation on the western side and directly along the lake, and the most occurring in the eastern suburbs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland,_Ohio
8. Pedophilia in the Cleveland area
"In Shaker Heights, our good citizens (doctors, lawyers, dentists) have formed a little club - they're having sex with children." - quote from Talk Radio
Diocese confronted clergy abuse in 1987
03/10/02 James F. McCarty and David Briggs Plain Dealer Reporters
One of the darkest chapters in the history of the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland opened on the Sunday before St. Patrick's Day, 1987.
An editorial in The Plain Dealer warned that a pedophile priest with a criminal past had been secretly employed the previous seven years in the Cleveland Diocese. The story did not name the priest or his parishIn the 15 years since, substantially more has become known about the mystery priest - and about the cases of other alleged pedophile priests that flared up to embarrass the diocese in the months and years that followed.
All four of the priests whose alleged deviant behavior was made public in 1987 were later sent to new assignments, where some had easy access to children. But not all of their new superiors were told of the allegations.
The Rev. Gary Berthiaume, 1987's mystery priest, was assigned to Ascension Parish on Puritas Avenue in Cleveland's West Park neighborhood in 1979, after leaving the Diocese of Detroit.
Berthiaume brought with him a felony conviction and two sexual-abuse lawsuits for fondling youths in Michigan. He had already served six months in prison and was still on five years' probation.
Cleveland Bishop Anthony Pilla declined to warn parishioners about the pedophile priest he had placed in their midst.
Berthiaume had been "watched like a hawk" during his stay at Ascension Church, with no reports of illegal behavior - a strong indication, Auxiliary Bishop A. James Quinn said at the time, that Berthiaume had been cured of his disease.
But it turned out that the hawk watching Berthiaume at Ascension was the Rev. Allen Bruening - who himself would become the target of several allegations that he sexually molested Catholic grade-school children during his 20-year stay in the Cleveland Diocese.
In a lawsuit filed last year, a former Ascension student accused Bruening and Berthiaume of teaming up to molest him in the school's shower over three years in the 1980s.
Berthiaume left the diocese after the 1987 stories broke. He now works at the Cenacle Retreat House in Warrenville, Ill. Berthiaume did not return phones calls seeking comment.
Bruening was quietly forced to resign as Ascension pastor in late 1984, after another parish family accused him of a pattern of child abuse covering the previous two decades. http://www.cleveland.com/abuse/index.ssf?/abuse/more/10157562251923437.html
9. "Pick 'n' Pay"
"I'm coming out of Pick 'n' Pay and there's this kid sittin' on the hood of my car." -quote from Talk Radio
FIRST NATIONAL SUPERMARKETS, INC. (FINAST) is a leading supermarket chain in the Cleveland area. Its origin can be traced to 1928, when Edward Silverberg opened a small dairy store in CLEVELAND HEIGHTS In the 1930s, Silverberg expanded his company into a chain called Farmview Creamery Stores. He introduced the supermarket to Cleveland in 1938, when he opened a store on E. 185th St. called Pick-N-Pay, which carried dairy products as well as grocery items. Silverberg changed the corporate name of all his stores to Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets in 1940. Pick-N-Pay had grown to 10 supermarkets when it was acquired by the Cook Coffee Co. of Cleveland (later COOK UNITED, INC.) in 1951.
The one remaining Pick-N-Pay was closed in 1994 as well. Locally, in 1995 the chain employed 7,500 employees in 41 stores, including 25 in Cuyahoga County and 7 in the city of Cleveland. http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=FNSI
10. Demographics (The issue of race is broached several times in Talk Radio.)
From just over 45,000 residents in 1800, Ohio's population grew at rates of over 10% per decade until the census of 1970, which recorded just over 10.65 million Ohioans.[67] Growth then slowed for the next three decades, and approximately 11.35 million people resided in Ohio in 2000.[68] As of July 1, 2008, the state's population was estimated at 11,485,910 by the United States Census Bureau.[69] Ohio's population growth lags that of the entire United States, and Caucasians are found in a greater density than the United States average.
The state's racial makeup in 2006 was:[76]
82.8% White (non-Hispanic);
11.8% Black (non-Hispanic);
2.3% Hispanic, a category that includes people of many races;
1.5% Asian/Pacific Islander
1.3% mixed race
0.2% Native American/Alaskan Native
0.1% other races.
According to a Pew Forum poll, as of 2008, 76% of Ohioans identified as Christian.[77] Specifically, 26% of Ohio's population identified as Evangelical Protestant, 22% identified as Mainline Protestant, and 21% identified as Roman Catholic.[77] In addition, 17% of the population is unaffiliated with any religious body.[77] There are also small minorities of Jehovah's Witnesses (1%), Jews (1%), Muslims (1%), Hindus (<0.5%)
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