Nuclear Waste

The New York Times ran a piece on the toxic cleanup at Los Alamos, New Mexico garbage site. It's costing a cool $212 million. Los Alamos was part of the Manhattan-Project in 1945 where they tested the Trinity atomic bomb.  Read more...

The article is linked to the Hanford, Washington nuclear site where the Department of Energy is working on a glassification project to store radioactive waste. It will cost $1.9 billion. It will take forever. Environmentalists say that Hanford may be the most polluted nuclear site in the country. 

I lived in Richland, Washington for a year paying the bills as a tennis professional at a club and writing. An engineer friend worked at Hanford. In June 2001, when the reactor was down for maintenance we went there on a tour. Surreal, educational and scary.

I wore a dose-o-meter badge to register the levels of radiation as we moved through various levels at the site. As I remember there were at least six deep levels underground; labs, control rooms, offices, machines, lower halls with 55-gallon drums destined to be placed in huge earth excavation pits, the core reactor area and a room with giant turbines. I stepped outside to see the giant electricity grid feeding the Seattle area.

Here is a brief excerpt from my novel, A Century is Nothing and images I took on the tour. 

...My team dived into, under and through massive Columbia waterfalls near tributaries where the confluence of Northwest rivers gnashed their teeth, snaked, roaring past abandoned Hanford nuclear plants where 55 million gallons of radioactive waste in decaying drums left over from W.W.II slowly seeped 130 feet down into the ground toward water tables. 

Tribal survivors ate roots and plants garnished with entropy. 

Fascinating. 

He turned another fragile yellow page marked Top Secret Evidence.

“It’s called Technicium, TC-99,” said an Indian scientist on a shuttle between reactors. “This is the new death and we know it’s there and there is nothing we can do to prevent it spreading.” 

“The waste approached 250 feet as multinational laboratories, corporations and D.O.E. think tanks vying for projects and energy contract extensions discussed glassification options and emergency evacuation procedures according to regulations. Scientists read Robert’s Rules Of Order inside the organized chaos of their well order communities. 

“Hanford scientists, wives and their children suffering terminal thyroid disease ate roots and plants sprinkled with entropy.    

“The postal worker and the nomad talked over a counter while a frantic mother yelled at her daughter, “DON’T touch the stamps,” because at her precocious age curiosity about colors blended itself toward planetary exploration developing her active imagination. 

“Holding a nebula in his hand he told the woman how, up in the invisible sky, are all these really cool galaxies which means we are a third the life of a 3.5 billion year old universe and she said, ‘That’s interesting. I never looked at the stamps before,’ handing him change.” 

He returned Omar’s papers to the folder and traveled beyond the forest on comet star tails.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, after seeing the atomic test said, "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

I suggest you see Hanford Watch for additional information and images.

Metta.

Fast Flux Reactor, Hanford, Washington.

The control room at Hanford.

Cooling rods being removed from reactor.

Ghost Stories

Greetings,

In today's New York Times I found my comments included in a section called "Ghost Stories." I would like to thank the editors for selecting my piece.

On October 22, I posted an entry called BEDLAM AND HEALING. It was about the NYT and their "Home Fires," opinion section where Brian Turner, a Vietnam veteran posted his essay and poem. I'd read this and entered a comment and later read all of the postings, numbering 163 at that point.

Here is the entire piece and a link to the site. Read more...

+

Hello Brian and Travelers,

I am a Vietnam veteran, author, English teacher and photographer living in Ha Noi after completing a teaching job in Indonesia. I felt it was time to “return” to a place where, as a green 19 year old, I was really on the ground.

I served with the 101st at Camp Eagle near Hue. I needed to get a sense of place and perspective. Nature has reclaimed all the land. Only the spirits and ghosts and memories remain.

I went to the Phu Bai airport. The yellow and green small simple cement building sits next to an “International” box. On the ground I found a discarded paper baggage handling tag. On one side in all caps it said, "EMPTY." I put it in my pocket.

‘Yes, ‘ I realized, ‘this completes the picture of my returning.’

As I wrote in my novel, “A Century Is Nothing” when I returned to San Francisco from Saigon heading to Denver they gave us a new green uniform.

It was a strange flight to Colorado. I grasped the significance of being a ghost. No one spoke to me. They averted their eyes. Maybe I smelled like death, evil incarnate, a green silent demon. Maybe all the passengers were afraid because I represented their worst nightmare. I was invisible, just like now.

Fortunately my “homecoming” was brief, then I continued to Germany where I finished my military time. Two years later while attending the University of Northern Colorado insensitive students, knowing my history, called me a “baby killer.” They had no idea. I didn’t absorb their sense of anger, frustration and illusionary ignorance.

Brian’s poem is a truthful insight how it feels to be invisible after a war. How leaves and rain and medicine birds are all. A cleansing and healing ceremony indeed. 

Bedlam and Healing

Greetings,

The NYT is featuring a blog called Home Fires. It concerns American veterans and their post-war life. I posted a small contribution concerning my adjustment after Vietnam referencing my novel.

Brian Turner,  an Iraq veteran and poet of a book entitled, "Here Bullet," wrote a piece for the Home Fires section and included a prose poem. You may find it worth your time. Since then over 163 posts were made as readers contributed their ideas and perspectives on war, returning veterans, politics and the current situation.

Jeffery M. Hopkins, a veteran and author contacted me and sent along his website to review his book, "Broken Under Interrogation." You can download a free e-book or order a hard copy through Amazon. I was grateful to hear from him.

Here is a short part of Brian's poem. It is about healing.

"Medicine birds break open in orange and red. Medicine birds have eucalyptus leaves for feathers and bandage the air when they fly. Medicine birds fly through the windows in the head, impervious to glass. They are impervious to WAR and hiss and steam and vapor and combat and the circling lost.

"Medicine birds fly through the windows to land in our beds when we’re dreaming our circling dream of Divisadero and Fresno with its lost and circling WAR. Medicine birds have eucalyptus wings and when they fly in our beds they transform themselves into leaves and rain and lovers.

"The lovers in our beds are eucalyptus birds flying medicine through the windows in our heads. The lovers in our medicine beds fly eucalyptus through the circling loss. The lovers in our beds bring medicine to our lips and call it eucalyptus, call it love, call it leaves and rain for our exhausted souls."

Metta.

Pictures of deceased Vietnamese in Ba Da temple, Ha Noi.

A man prays.

iPhone art

Greetings,

I read about David Hockney's new exhibit in London. He mentioned using a painting application on his iPhone. 

"It's all part of the urge toward figuration. You look out at the world and you're called to make gestures in response. And that's a primordial calling: goes all the way back to the cave painters. May even have preceded language. People are always asking me about my ancestors, and I say, Well there must have been a cave painter back there somewhere. Him scratching away on his cave wall, me dragging my thumb over this iPhone's screen. All part of the same passion."

The application he favors is Brushes. I also found another app called Sketchbook by Autodesk. 

I began learning, playing and experimenting with both. Fun. As Hockney said, it's a great little portable tool. In your pocket. No mess. No rags filled with pigment, oils and the usual artistic beauty. When you're finished you turn off the machine. 

Easy to upload, email, and share your art. Here are two examples of playful visual storytelling. A new iPhone gallery is in process.

Metta.

Hockney article in The New York Review of Books...read more.

Yesterday's face.

Autumn has no boundaries.

New Front Page

Greetings,

So, as usual I'm experimenting with the site design and decided to make the "Living on the edge," blog the "Front Page," that opens when you visit.

'It's like this,' said the seer during discussions discussing this eclectic option. 'Why start with Myths and Innuendos when people can immediately access the blog slog?'

'Excellent point,' I said. 'Everyone already knows about myths because they are alive. Most subscribers, visitors and friends have already seen the Myth page, read the book blurb and assorted philosophical insights.

'They are probably bored to tears wondering, why don't those two genius types get their electronic act together and streamline this baby so we don't have to click through to explore new stuff?'

'Clearly,' said the seer. 'Take the ideas and forget the words.'

Enjoy your travels through the Ha Noi neighborhood of reality and dreams. Feel free to drop us a line.

Metta.

On the sidewalk is a feather and a q-tip. Existential awareness.

A broken building at a temple in Ha Noi. Loving lines.

A man hauls out his heavy trash. His destination is the cart. A distant speck, horizon.