Tuesday, March 15, 2011

A Disturbance In The Force



Thursday night as I got in my car to go to work, I hadn't driven a half a mile when I felt an over whelming sense of foreboding.  As I drove along I was thinking about how I had never ever had such a strong feeling and in spite of my best efforts to rationalize it away, the feeling wouldn't leave.  As I approached the interchange for the Interstate leading into town, I saw six Highway Patrol and Sheriff's Department cars on top the interchange and I figured my feeling must have had something to do with what ever was going on at that site.  I was wrong.  The closer I got to town, the worse the feeling got.  

I got into work to find out a very close friend of mine had been relieved of her responsibilities as Director of the mental health center I work at, and that in turn precipitated my immediate supervisor, another person I care deeply about, handing in his resignation.  Given some other recent employee decisions at the Center, I realized I was now kind of an orphan, sort of the last one standing in a group of friends that went back a full decade with this company.  And yet, with all of this, the feeling was still there. 

All during this time I have a client up who is never up at night and so I asked him why he couldn't sleep.  He finally says it's because another client had threatened to stab him in his sleep and he didn't think it was a good idea for him to fall asleep.  I didn't take this threat too seriously except that some schizophrenics can be hugely sensitive to disturbances in the force and then act out on their undifferentiated paranoid feelings, so I suggested we watch some TV, perhaps he could fall asleep on the couch.  But even this knowledge did not explain my own feeling of foreboding.  And then I turned on CNN

My client and I were simply stunned with the video of the Japanese tsunami.  There were no words between us.  There didn't have to be, there couldn't be.  Thoughts of being stabbed by fellow clients and thoughts of fired fellow workers were driven to dim recesses of our minds.  We were linked with the people of Japan.  And then came the news about the reactors at Fukishima Daiichi and I knew that was the target of my foreboding.  This situation was going to be very very bad.

I have spent the last five days praying hoping meditating that the employees of this complex would be able to get these reactors under control but every day has brought worse news. As I type this there is yet another fire in reactor number four.  These fires, even though they are occurring in a plant which is essentially a spent fuel container repository, represent the largest threat to Japan.  These very radio active rods are essentially out in the open except for their bed of cooling water and the concrete building they sit in.  I am not surprised the Japanese are attempting to use helicopters to drop boric acid--which essentially says there is a containment leak in the roof or helicopters wouldn't be necessary--because this fire represents a much bigger radiation risk than a contained reactor melt down.  I am not surprised that they are asking for retired volunteers to help work in the plants--another message about the seriousness of what is actually happening in the plant.  I am saddened that the Japanese government has not issued an evacuation order for pregnant women and children.  We know from Chernobyl what happens when radiation and pregnant women and children are mixed together.

At Chernobyl, because there was a huge blast, much of the radiation was elevated to the stratosphere which turned out to be the only good thing about Chernobyl.  At this point, it does not look as if such a thing will happen on it's own at Fukishima, meaning the vast majority of the radiation will either fall locally or in the ocean if the winds cooperate.  Japan can clean itself from the ravages of the tsunami, but radiation is another animal all together.  My heart goes out to the people of Japan, but my prayers are with the remaining employees at Fukishima Daiichi.  Their heroism is not only inspirational, it is essential and hopefully successful. 


I see one last worse case scenario should things continue as they are,  in which to save much of the heart of Japan from radiation poisoning, the Government chooses to turn Fukishima Daiichi into another Chernobyl in an effort to send much of the radiation up, not out.  That would not happen by accident.  That would happen by choice, but maybe that's the message in this disturbance in the force.  When it comes to man's hubris and Earth's reality and nuclear power, there really aren't many good choices.







 

3 comments:

  1. I could not sleep and felt really restless and went online to a music site I frequent at about the same time as the earthquake in Japan. It sort of freaks me out that that happened. I found out about the earthquake later that day when I turned the TV on first thing, and normally I don't watch TV first thing. A piece of music I wrote, Rising Tide, was composed 40 days prior to that earthquake, which makes me wonder even more of why that music came to me when it did. 40 seems such a biblical number. I first thought Rising Tide had something to do with the political climate in the Middle East, which it may have, or the energy of the rising tide of expanding consciousness breaking through as well is in the mix maybe.

    My prayers go out to the people of Japan. The nuke industry is very vulnerable and susceptible to failure with the type of weather extremes happening now. This is a real wake up call for the world's leaders to change their focus and investment from oil and gas to safer sources of energy.

    I read a little about Taoism the other day. It seems that Christianity by itself cannot complete the circle of life, to bring us new life. I only recently have felt this real need for something more, beyond my prior spiritual conceptions. It seems that eastern insight is a necessary component to being able to function during great trials and tribulations. All faiths need to learn from one another. I find that I need to know more about eastern religions to ride the waves of change that are sweeping the Earth like a tidal wave.

    qi or chi or ch'i translates as "energy flow."

    I watched a video of the tidal wave hitting Japan tonight and I experienced the same sort of pain on a specific point on my head, on the left side of the forehead. I experienced an inner feeling that was so uneasy and like riding an ocean wave. Is that the sort of experience you also had Colleen?

    Thanks for this blog and for sharing your thoughts.

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  2. It seems that the societal gluttony for power will eventually ruin the planet. We had the deep water drilling in the Gulf and the cleanup and all the lies abut the cleanup.

    Now we have 4 nuclear reactors in Japan that one or all are in trouble of breeches of many degrees of seriousness. I am no nuclear scientist but I do know that if one of those reactors explodes and carries a plum of nuclear steam and material into the ionosphere or about 22,000 Ft. above the earth, we will have nuclear fall out all over the world, but some of the first to be involved besides China and other parts of Asia will be the northern Pacific Rim countries and Hawaii.

    Some do not remember or never new of the radioactive fall out that hit all of Northern Europe after the Chernobyl catastrophe. Many children and other people have gotten many types of cancer including blood, bone, and thyroid. It a radioactive plum comes our way the only thing we have to help ourselves in KI or potassium Iodide liquid or capsules to try to prevent thyroid cancer.

    Question, Why does Hawaii not generate all its power from the geothermal material escaping every day from the big island. The great physicist Professor Tesla remarked in the1890's that oil and coal were dirty and could never sustain us but that we have all the power we need right in the center of the earth and we should drill holes down and harness it. Of course Japan could do the same thing. The West coast of North America could do the same thing. With the plasma waves in outer space and the magma inside our earth, there is plenty of power to sustain us. Why are we not utilizing it?

    One answer is greed--- the greed of the companies that take 85 + percent of the funds appropriated to improve energy. The big oil and coal companies are receiving almost all the money in CORPORATE WELFARE. If we put our minds to it just as we did after sputnik, we could change the source of all our energy in 10 years. Why not --- Well the big companies are paying politicians to not listen to reason.

    I asked a sixth grade science class the other day if there was a such thing as clean coal or clean nuclear power. Not one of the 80 kids 4 classes thought that there was, but what was Obama talking about just a little over a year ago--clean coal and nuclear.

    This is greed! This energy problem is more a problem than any abortion or any type of birth control. The survival of the planet as we know it depends on a more sensible and less greedy world. Will people be able to see through the corporate money even now at the local level of government and elect better representatives? Will it take an uprising like is occurring in the Middle East to drive out the greedy Bas.....s? Will man be able to accomplish it? Future History will call all our recent wars the oil wars because greedy heads of multilateral corporations control the military strike forces in the United States.

    What are the Catholic Bishops saying about what is really wrong? Now we see why so many of the higher educated are leaving Catholicism and Christianity. Our own leadership is affiliated with the greedy bast...s that are destroying our earth and our society.
    dennis

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  3. It seems that I was looking at the wrong date in my extensive music library of improvisational midi-keyboard creations and Rising Tide was not composed 40 days prior to the Japan earthquake. It was written 12 days prior on 1/30/2011.

    In addition, in the news stories on TV there has been some sense of awakening to the dangers of nuclear generating facilities so close to very largely populated areas. Their stories have focused, from what I have witnessed, and it is possible I missed some story or other to the contrary, however the main thrust has been on an escape plan for citizens in the event of some catastrophe.

    I would like to point out that in largely populated areas, in NY and NJ for example, one will be stuck in traffic. There is no way such populations can just leave their homes at the drop of a hat. First of all, it would be impossible to do.

    The focus should be on supplying these populations with the antidote to nuclear fallout with the iodine pills. The US government should supply this to these entire populations, without exception.

    The cost for such an endeavor would be a lot less than the terrible cost to human lives, as well as their entire livelihoods, the cost economically too, and having to abandon their homes, becoming refugees and homeless for an indefinite period of time. Besides the nuclear danger it would create a domino effect that would collapse the economy.

    I'm really quite surprised that the news broadcasting people can't seem to connect the dots.

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