The ripple effect caught me off guard when it hit during “telephone confusion.” EMF reduction–that is, lessening the amount of magnetic, electrical, and RF waves hitting my body–was a good and proper step toward protecting my health. The problem was the old rule I’d momentarily forgotten:

Whenever you take one major step to improve your situation, several additional unexpected crises will hammer you about the head and shoulders.

In other words, be prepared for the ripple effect.

Why worry about EMFs at all? I’ve published two previous posts on this topic (see “EMF Radiation” index above, just below the header photo) and will not go into that on this page. Suffice it to say that I’ve already noticed some benefits, one of them being increased long-term energy at the keyboard. When you’re not getting zinged every second by a WiFi router, you last longer. Or at least I do.

It also helps to get rid of your cell phone, but how many of us are going to do that in this day and age? Not even me, and I’ve regretted Alexander Graham Bell’s existence for a long time now. Although if Bell hadn’t invented the telephone, someone else undoubtedly would have. But my disabled wife lives in Arizona for medical reasons. She needs to be able to reach out and touch me at any moment of the day or night, 1,325 miles away in Montana. So…gotta have the sell phone. (That’s no typo; we gullible consumers really have been sold on this technology.)

In the end, while I still have a flip phone, I did find it necessary to upgrade a bit. My old LG Revere 3 simply didn’t have the speakerphone power I needed to get the RF waves away from my ear. On Thursday, I drove to one of Butte’s Verizon outlet stores where I asked an employee to check out the Revere 3’s speakerphone. It turned out this was no ordinary employee. I asked him about the “President’s Club” notation below the name on his name tag. With Verizon, that means the man qualified as one of the top twenty salesmen (or women) in the entire company for the entire USA. In little old Butte, Montana, he did this. Wow.

This wasn’t Allstate, but I was certainly in good hands for a new (ahem) sell phone.

The President’s Club dude turned up the Revere 3’s speakerphone volume all the way but it still sounded like nothing but a tinny little screech coming out of it. No good. Now I have a brand new Kyocera DuraXV LTE flip phone, a heavy little thing, rubber wrapped and so rugged you can drop it in the toilet (which my wife has done with two cell phones over the years, so don’t laugh) without doing any damage. Best of all, the Kyocera has a speakerphone through which I can hear human conversation just fine. Better than the old phone did when stuck to my ear, believe it or not.

End of telephone confusion, right?

Well, no…not exactly. I’d wanted a landline but it turned out that Hughes Internet (which I have), although making phone service available to those who ask, does not have the capacity to provide a customer with an unpublished number. So no dice there. I haven’t had my number listed in the white pages for the past forty years. I’m not going to fall off the unpublished wagon now.

Enter Anton, a former Marine, fresh out of the service, who is Spectrum’s new sales rep in Deer Lodge.

Note: If you’re a Deer Lodge area resident, reading this, and in the market for the best deal around, feel free to give Anton a call at (406) 551-0187. You’ll be glad you did.

We sat down in the living room and chatted for some time. I asked a bunch of questions. Anton knew most of the answers and looked up the ones he didn’t. What I discovered:

1. Unpublished landline number available? Yes.

2. Above ground cable too ugly for words? No problem; they can bury the cable if desired.

3. TV programming? No problem; they have all of my current DISH TV favorite channels.

4. Internet speed? Up to 30 mbps, average 20 to 25. (Hughes claims 25 but I can tell you from experience that’s B.S. Average speed is more like 5 mbps. I can’t even stream a five minute YouTube video with Hughes, no matter what they claim.)

5. Contract time left? No problem; Spectrum has a “contract buyout” available.

6. Don’t need a router? That’s cool; they’ll provide a modem only. (I have no use for WiFi at all.)

7. Well now, this is the kicker. Every customer’s needs and preferences will differ, but suffice it to say I will be getting all three services (versus the two with Hughes and Dish) and saving $107 per month in the process.

That should finally end the telephone confusion once and for all. I’ll be able to make from-home calls on the landline (NO bad RF or magnetic waves frying my brain), and when I must use the cell phone, I’ve got a speakerphone to at least keep those brain-killers away from my ear.

And now…the ripple effect.

When it rains it pours, right? In a single week, all during the time of telephone confusion as I was de-poisoning my head in the EMF sense, three specific “home breakdowns” decided to get my attention.

–The washing machine busted its pump impeller for the second time in less than a year. The Sears tech can’t get here until April 2nd (thirteen days from breakage date). Fortunately, Deer Lodge does have a really decent Laundromat and my machine is still under warranty.

–The electrical circuit that powers the entire east wall of the house (double wide mobile home) tripped its breaker. In other words, there’s a dangerous short somewhere. Top suspect is the living room outlet that hasn’t worked since I bought the place in 2017. Electrician will hopefully be here Monday.

–The aged hot water heater gave up the ghost and started leaking. I discovered this when moving furniture to make a pathway to the electrical breaker box. Reaching down to shift a TV cord, a knuckle grazed damp carpet. Uh-oh. Hot water heater was, I knew, just two feet away from that spot. Sure enough, it was leaking–slowly, thank goodness. Not a gusher.

Miraculously, a morning phone call to Galle Plumbing in Anaconda got two plumbers here in the afternoon. By five p.m., the new heater was fully installed and warming up nicely. The old, busted heater was fifteen and one half years old. I’m extremely relieved that it didn’t start leaking a few weeks ago when it was below zero here. Or maybe it did but I just didn’t notice until the time was right. Who knows?

Summary: This is a double barreled post, one barrel being the EMF-inspired telephone confusion and the other barrel discussing three home maintenance challenges illustrating the ripple effect created when anyone drops a pebble into a pond. The ripple effect may be mild or it may be extreme but it always exists.

You might want to remember that whenever you decide to make a change in your own life. One close friend of mine changed religions years ago and all but one member of his family turned against him forever. Another friend miraculously turned away from an early life of crime and her own mother and aunt tried to destroy her, going so far as planting drug paraphernalia in her vehicle and then calling in an anonymous tip to the police, swearing they knew she was both using and selling and had drugs in her car, none of which was true. In both of these extreme cases, my friends survived the rejection and attacks physically and legally but were left with emotional scars. Surviving change for the better does require effort. I personally force-changed my handwriting in specific ways in 1980 in order to force-improve my personality and character. That worked as I knew it would but the ripple effect led to five more divorces, two bankruptcies, and one foreclosure (among other things) before my life found its new balance.

I’ll settle for a little telephone confusion and a few home repairs any old time.

Bonus section: It wasn’t all that much of a surprise when I discovered in my research on EMF (electromagnetic field) effects on human health included three different frequencies: Magnetic (slow), electric (faster), and RF (faster yet). Nor was it startling to find out that the fastest frequency has been shown in studies to be the most dangerous. After all, the faster you punch a guy in the face, the more likely you are to give him a black eye, broken nose, or missing teeth. The body’s lack of defense against magnetic or RF waves was depressing but expected.

Yet our bodies do have some ability to neutralize electric fields. That was a pleasant shock. (Heh heh.) Why is this is so? From one perspective it makes no sense. Slower magnetic and quicker RF waves roll right on through, unimpeded. Electricity is right in the middle. There are undoubtedly engineers and/or scientists out there who can explain it, but….

Then again, who cares? It is what it is.

The main point here is that different human bodies are able to zero out different electrical field strengths. Logical, right? We’re not exactly carbon copies of each other–unless we get into cloning, which is another topic altogether. Anyway, my “cupped palm” held in front of the EMF meter’s sensors will block several hundred volts per meter (V/m) from the refrigerator all the way down to zero, while a friend who visited the other day can get that same field down to 12 V/m…but not all the way to zero. My overload limit is obviously set a bit higher than his is at the moment. This probably doesn’t put his health at risk unless he sleeps while hugging his fridge.

My greater “electrical resistance” may have to do with the difference in ages between us. We know babies and young children conduct electricity more easily than adults because of the higher water content in their bodies. Perhaps my friend’s body at thirty years of age is “wetter” than mine at seventy-five. I do recall someone once being referred to a “dry old stick.”

It’s an intriguing thought, for sure. Deserves more research when I encounter willing test subjects.