Maine Spring

2011 has been a cold gray spring in this part of Maine. The wind has (howled) out of the North for the last four days; big clouds scudding southward.

The sun came out today. The black flies, normally thick this time of year, must have been swept down to Massachusetts. The increased airflow apparently hurried the mosquito hatch along-or they are last fall's survivors protected by our early and late snows and snow snow snows in between.

The usual white-knuckled icy glazed roads have turned beautiful. Everything is bursting. Emerald green fields blanketed in gold-dandelions. The eye-wrenching spring yellow is reinforced by the forsythias, in full color. White clouds of apple blossoms, pink ornamental cherries, brilliant fuschia-creeping phlox. More screaming yellow in beds and beds of daffodils. Red red red tulips.

The trees won't be denied. Bursting pink buds, drooping pollen-encrusted blossoms, light light green buds everywhere.

Eyes closed, the afternoon sun glows blood-orange through the back of the eyelids. The mosquitoes take their share.

Rain comes.

The Hanging Man

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did.

Sylvia Plath

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Radiation Detected In Drinking Water In 13 More US Cities, Cesium-137 In Vermont Milk

Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium-137 has been found in American milk—in Montpelier, Vermont—for the first time since the Japan nuclear disaster began, according to data released by the Environmental Protection Agency late Friday. more...

To the Tune of Riverside City - For ten years here I wander and there you lie

* 「十年生死兩茫茫。不思量，自難忘。千里孤墳，無處話淒涼。縱使相逢應不識，塵滿面、鬢如霜。夜來幽夢忽還鄉。小軒窗，正梳妝。相顧無言，惟有淚千行。料得年年腸斷處：明月夜，短松岡。」“For ten years here I wander and there you lie./ I don't think about you often,/ yet how can I forget you!/ With your grave a thousand miles away,/ where can I confide my loneliness?/ Even if we met, could you recognize me,/ with dust all over my face/ and hair like frost?/ Last night I had a dream in which I returned home./ By the window,/ you were combing your hair./ We Looked at each other silently,/ with tears streaming down our cheeks./ There's a place which every year will be my misery：/ the moonlit night,/ the hill of short pines. 「Su Shi, 《江城子·十年生死兩茫茫》，蘇軾」

unforgiven

Google very kindly gave me my account back with their apologies and advice to change my password.

In the meantime I read something on the AP wire that claimed an individual nuclear reactor had a 1-100,000 chance of an accident. And that the mainstream public was too uneducated to understand how low the risk was, or how irrational is the fear of radiation .

IMO a major accident is a release large enough to cause evacuation. That has happened at least three times: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. At least one reactor involved @ Fukushima, perhaps as many as three or four reactors involved.

Since google search claims less than 500 active reactors in the world, where the 1 per 100,000 figure comes from I have no idea.

Logically it would appear that if the risk was 1 in 100,000 and there have been accidents at a minimum of three reactors, there would have to exist 300,000 reactors to create those odds.

Let me assure you that my lack of understanding those statistics has nothing to do with a lack of education.

Zeitgeist Moving On

I went to a local pot luck dinner and showing of Zeitgeist Moving On last night. I am already planning on what food to take to the next one.

There we were, a little over a dozen of us aging hippies. It's up to us to change the world?

"Don't underestimate" said Boss, herself a Swedish native who naturally seeks the left path. (Although Boss had not heard of the documentary, most likely since Mr. Boss, also left, is a Dr. of Economics. The economists are portrayed as the bad guys in the film. Shhh, didn't tell Boss!)

Basically Zeitgeist portrays a point of how and why things are wrong with society. It begins quite classically with the nature or nurture argument, ie, whether a trait is inherited or aquired through external stimuli.

Zeitgeist takes the postition that external influences can stimulate an inherited trait to wake up or sleep. In otherwords, the fact that a trait is inherited deosn't matter unless it is the external force that triggers it. While the writers were busy making that argument, I didn't see many red-haired people in the film.

Economics is discussed at lengt; how health care makes up a huge part of our GDP so the country actually looks better on the books if a lot of people are sick. Sick people= higher health costs.

How making things for profit builds in a made-to-break mentality; just to keep the production line moving.

How the monetary system began, who started it, and how people now make money on the idea of money. And those people make more money than people trying to find a cure for cancer.

A perfect little Utopian society is introduced at length as the solution, at this point feeling like a well done High School class project, "How would you build your perfect society?"

Oh, without violence that is caused by abuse that is caused by stress that is caused by poverty that is caused by 1% of world's population owning 98% of the wealth.

If any of that's news to you, watch Zeitgeist Moving On.

One more snow

7:30am


7:35am

Roots and Leaves Themselves Alone

ROOTS and leaves themselves alone are these;
Scents brought to men and women from the wild woods, and from the pond-side,
Breast-sorrel and pinks of love—fingers that wind around tighter than vines,
Gushes from the throats of birds, hid in the foliage of trees, as the sun is risen;
Breezes of land and love—breezes set from living shores out to you on the living
sea—to
you, O sailors!
Frost-mellow’d berries, and Third-month twigs, offer’d fresh to young persons
wandering
out in the fields when the winter breaks up,
Love-buds, put before you and within you, whoever you are,
Buds to be unfolded on the old terms;
If you bring the warmth of the sun to them, they will open, and bring form, color,
perfume, to
you;
If you become the aliment and the wet, they will become flowers, fruits, tall blanches and
trees.

Walt Whitman

How do you like those odds?

There are 440 commercial nuclear reactors in the world. There have been major nuclear accidents at 5 of them: Three (so far) at Fukushima, one each at Chernobyl and Three mile Island. There have major accidents at 1 in 90 commercial nuclear reactors.

For something as dangerous as a nuclear accident, are those odds acceptable?

What odds would you feel comfortable with, 1 in 1000, one in a million? Do you suppose big business admitted the odds are 1 in 90 that a major contamination would occur?

My hopes and prayers go out to those touched by this disaster.