climate change

It's not cheap energy

I was just reading an update on the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  There were four reactors involved. Three reactors melted down. Number four reactor's spent fuel pool, containing nearly 1500 fuel rods, was severely damaged.

A remote camera and geiger counted were recently inserted in a hole in the ceiling of the basement of number one reactor.  The readings were 10,000 times higher than normal. A human would receive a year's allowable dose in 20 seconds and be dead in an hour.

Officials in charge admit new technology will have to be developed to handle repair and containment.

Also on the nuclear power front, Cental Maine Power, recently won a lawsuit in the tens of millions of dollars against the US government (taxes paid by US citizens fund the government, don't forget) for the government (taxpayers) failing to provide a safe place to store the spent nuclear waste for the next 20,000 years.

How did we get into this mess and why is it still going on? How did nuclear energy ever get approved without provisions to store the waste? Why should the taxpayers pay for the cost?

We are having the wool pulled over our eyes, folks, nuclear power is not cheap!

Only to the power companies, who are subsidized by the taxpayers so the people running the power companies can be rich! you can bet the folks in charge of energy are in the top one percent of the population.

We are fed all kinds of propaganda against alternative energy. Propaganda that divides the green movement.

I consider myself a devote environmentalist. Yes I feel badly for any birds that fall victim to an unshielded windmill. Just as I do for squirrels that get electrocuted on telephone poles. But a nuclear disaster contaminates the world's environment with deadly radiation for centuries.

I don't believe for a second that living near a windmill compares to living downwind or downstream from a nuclear power plant. 

Personally I love the sound of a windmill in action. whoomfph whoomfph whoomfph. Lookout birds!

Hydro power...how is this a bad thing? How difficult and expensive is it to build fish ladders compared to trying to figure out how to contain three melted nuclear reactors? And once again, although I am an environmentalist, given the choice between the loss of a fish species to spreading cesium and plutonium all over the planet, I will take the former. Without hesitation,

Solar power, tidal power, geomass- ! How are these things bad for the environment or too expensive?

What is the value of safe energy?

Tree Ocean

Brothers, A Bird in the Hand

Tree
I have had 7772 page views, this is my 772 post and it is 7/7/2012

On the Pulse of Morning

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.
Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers -- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours -- your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope --
Good morning.

Maya Angelou

Local Wildlife

This crow did not like me taking his picture. He pooped on my car afterwards.

Alewives returning from sea to spawn

Wild Geese with Goslings

Welcome

if you believe nothing is always what's left
after a while, as I did,
If you believe you have this collection
of ungiven gifts, as I do (right here
behind the silence and the averted eyes)
If you believe an afternoon can collapse
into strange privacies-
how in your backyard, for example,
the shyness of flowers can be suddenly
overwhelming, and in the distance
the clear goddamn of thunder
personal, like a voice
,If you believe there's no correct response
to death, as I do; that even in grief
(where I've sat making plans)
there are small corners of joy
If your body sometimes is a light switch
in a house of insomniacs
If you can feel yourself straining
to be yourself every waking minute
If, as I am, you are almost smiling . . .

Stephen Dunn

Hello My Friend

I have been worried about the Goldens. I have not seen much of them this year. Willow has assured me they are still around as she sees them in the skies during recess.

School is on vacation this week. Yesterday we took a drive to a roadside entrance to a mountain trail. There were about 8 vehicles there before us. The trail was well maintained. We didn't hike very far in when Willow called, "Eagles, Eagles!"

I looked up just in time to see one soar past, low among the cliffs, and a second, and a third. I let out my whistle and we stood and waited. I didn't think they would respond. Then there they were, tight circling, just above the trees, looking down at us. I have to admit my eyes welled up; I was so happy.

We made it nearly to the summit when I was outvoted to stop for a lunchbreak on a lovely lookout outcropping. I had my first experiences with vertigo watching the Firebird standing so close to the edge. Suddenly I felt empathy for my mother when she used to freak out when I was that age and did the same thing, wondering what was she freaking out about?

Willow-sharp-eyes saw the eagles again= they cruised by about 50 feet off the cliff and I gave the whistle again. They came back about 20 feet away, streaming by. wings not even flapping. We were so thrilled!

We continued upwards through a plateau of oak and beech, perfect grey squirrel habitat. The eagles were still with us, now overhead.

No signs of squirrels despite the amount of den trees and habitat. A light went off . Were the eagles tagging us in hopes that we would startle up some prey? We had passed several places on the trail that had grey squirrel hair in bird excrement. Why, with so many acres of woods, were the eagles dropping their load on the trail?

The descent went much faster than the ascent, and before long we were on the flat trail headed back to the parking lot. A series of sharp twittering calls haunted us.

"They're saying goodbye" said one member of the hiking party.

"They're trying to teach me a new whistle," I said.

the whistle I generally use I have learned is an alert call. So maybe the reason the eagles come back is because they think I have an eagle under my shirt or something.

Then I recalled young Willow jumping up and down repeating her version of the whistle, which I am sure she does on the playground as well, and not for one second do I think the eagles think she has an eagle somewhere about her person because she simply is too small to hide one effectively. I also don't think eagles are that stupid! They surely realize what is whistling.

We reached the parking lot, the lone vehicle remaining, and wet our whistles. I tried out the new whistle, trying to remember it.

"Is that it?"

Suddenly the eagles were back, now circling us over the parking lot. I could hear another call from the base of the mountain, one I couldn't identify. Did the eagles have a hungry nestling?

If so, they were on their own hunting squirrel- as we left them with nothing but an empty parking spot and a darkening wood.

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ringed with the azure world he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls

,And like a thunderbolt he falls.-

-by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Vernal Pool Damaged

Courtesy of Iberdrola's CMP transmission line expansion.

That little orange sign? Says, "Vernal Pool"