QUAKE UPDATES Day 9

Found out this morning amidst the chaotic onflow that the Wednesday night before Kasumi and family were to head south, Tatsuya got word from his company to get back to work on Friday, at his office even nearer the nuclear epicenter - no doubt they sorely need his architectural skills - so on Thursday morning he took the family to Tokyo and said goodbye, went to work the next day, is still living in the apartment...! So there will be no family photo, I’m afraid... Will post what photos I can, update later on any details I learn...

Not a good move, in my opinion, but Japanese loyalty to their companies etc. has always been beyond me... must talk to K about all this, but she is still ill over there, we are picking up the trio only today... facts are shifting everywhere... let me check my passport again, be sure I’ve got the right name... and could you tell me what planet this is?

This morning I heard the story told by the grandfather in charge of his village’s tsunami sea gate who, when he received the earliest warning of the huge wave coming, was torn between running at once to his family and urging them to safety or doing his duty and rushing toward the sea to close the big gate, possibly losing his own life but at least saving many others-- he stood torn on that edge for an instant... then ran for the gate and got it closed in time, slowing the destruction for a few moments and so saving many who now had time to escape; he managed to survive somehow, and when he got back to his home, it was gone. They later found only the upper floor, torn loose and far away, with his wife, daughter and grandchildren inside, all drowned. In the midst of all the destruction he stood pointing to where he thought his house had stood, weeping in his official village uniform and helmet as he told the story, how he could have helped his family and did not...

The heartbreaks of this event will live on long beyond... how can they be eased?

QUAKE UPDATES Day 8

What with the dirty plutonium slight-of-mind I found out about yesterday, K+T and the girls got out of there just in time. Talked to K earlier this morning for the first time since their return, she's still a bit under the weather, so today the girls’ other grandmother (who speaks excellent English, a rarity among Japanese grandmothers, and great for the English skills of the girls) is taking the trio to the Lake Biwa Museum, a great place for kids. Here’s to their new and increasingly healthy life, if the authorities wake up, stop power struggles, openly debate short cuts, eliminate pork dealing and cut bridges to nowhere (dream on! or wake up and take action). Tomorrow we’re going to drive over and bring them all back here for the day of some planning and option consideration, after we've had all the fun and catching up we can take. Next week we all go shopping and renting them a car. Can’t wait to see those smilies.

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Interesting to watch the news networks slowly drift from the serious genuine struggle for words with which to worthily update the reality of totally unspun, even unspinnable, horrendous events, as they revert to chippy, chirpy, soundbitey, blowdried newsiness... Me too, actually in my way-- though unblowdried and not very chippy or chirpy, let alone soundbitey, I'm drifting fully back onto the mountain above the Lake, into the house and the garden... but rest assured I’m keeping a gimlet eye on the plutonium mongers and will not sit still or silent for their idiocy...

It’s always amazing, how tiring intense concern is, the more intense the more tiring... I have been focused to a pinpoint...

BUT THERE’S ALWAYS THE BARON 

Having gone out in the fresh heavy snow this morning to unflatten my lettuce, I noticed at the garden gate - which I REMEMBERED TO CLOSE the eve before yesterday -  the big hoofprints of the Baron, who apparently knows now where the gate is and stood there dancing in the snow wondering what in hell or whatever his idiom had happened to his new reality, there was consternation in those hoofy patterns, there definitely had been an opening right here, he was sure of it, that had led to succulent spinach, crunchy onions and other luxury delights unheard of in his otherwise minimalist diet, he was frustrated, didn’t care about no reactor, no uranium, plutonium, hooey... where was his version of comfort food? I enjoyed the moment.

PLUS I GOT A BUCKET

I found a bucket! At another store! A good, strong, big bucket, for holding water！And whatever! It can hold anything! It was the last one left, the laaaaast one, and I didn't have to wrestle anybody for it! There were no gasoline cans there, or flashlights either... chainsaws, two-cycle oil, duct tape, plastic sheeting-- all zeroized! But I got a bucket!

Ecstasy is surprisingly relative...

QUAKE UPDATES Day 7 +++

Another heavy snow here, another earthquake up there, where "suicide squads" are frantically trying to stop several meltdowns as quakes keep happening and it's extra cold for March, but at least Kasumi and family are out of their shaky waterless danger-zone apartment and safe down here, at least till the next step, whatever that may be... no telling when or if they might return up north...

I haven't seen them yet, they arrived in Kyoto late afternoon yesterday, exhausted (they took 5am bus from their town), hungry and with basically only the clothes on their backs and a few things - and from there went to Tatsuya's parents' big house across the lake, ate, bathed (the luxury!) and went to sleep. Miasa was sick but seems better, but now Kasumi is sick. I'll talk to them tonight, find out when they'll be fit to visit over here where the kids can pick some spinach, plant some radishes, stack some firewood, go wild...

I see that the US govt is urging Americans to leave Japan or not travel to Japan, has planes at the ready to assist where necessary; press is interviewing Americans here, most aren't leaving, it seems, though some may, I don't know anyone who is... I've long opposed nuclear power for many reasons, and if this involved plutonium, the use of which is insane, I'd be out of here last week, but as of now I have no plans to leave despite some uranium byproducts in the air. I'm assuming that they'll see the dumbth of their ways, clean it all up eventually under the gaze of a stern public eye and never do it again, but I'm not holding my breath, though I might wear a mask while I withhold judgment pro tem. It's just too beautiful here to let it be destroyed for any reason, let alone greed, and though long-term foreign residents can't vote in Shiga, we can oppose. This site has good insights and rich links on local nuclear activism.

Always amazing, how low ad hoc lowlifes can go; in this case, a potassium iodide ripoff! List price $5.99!...

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"But what makes reactor 3 so special? In one acronymic word: MOX.

All of the fuel rods in all of the other reactors are made essentially of uranium with a zirconium cladding to seal in radioactive emissions. Reactor 4 uses something different. Its fuel rod are only 94% uranium, with 6% plutonium stirred in and then the same zirconium shell. This mixed oxide (hence the MOX moniker) formulation has one advantage [the public doesn't know what's actually in it]—and a number of disadvantages."

THOSE IDIOTS! 24,000 years!! Five times the length of our civilization!! Rethink.....

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"Denis Flory, a top safety official at the agency, pointed out that all used nuclear fuel contains plutonium." [Oh, that's OK then...] It forms naturally within conventional uranium fuel as the uranium is bombarded by neutrons. ["Naturally..." that's a nice 'official' touch...]
And although plutonium is a long-lived emitter of radiation, it is also quite heavy, so it is not likely to move very far downwind from its source. [Comforting, to be sure. And just how far IS "not very far downwind," in officialese? Just keep running, folks, and don't breathe too much... only 23,999.999 years to go...]

QUAKE UPDATES Day 6 ++
“The United States on Wednesday urged Americans who live within 50 miles of Japan’s earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to evacuate, and the top U.S. nuclear regulatory official indicated that Japan faces an increasingly dangerous situation at one of the plant’s reactors.”

Got up at dawn this am, looked out the window at a foot of snow, high snow country cloud bank taking up 3/4 of the sky to the north, must be snowing heavily up there...

Message fm Kasumi that Tatsuya will come with them, at least for a while, they will keep trying to get out... if nothing soon I'm heading up there via the Japan Sea coast with a car full of gas and water... Tokyo is panicking to the north, I'm off into Osaka this am, on Tues there were 1/3 fewer commuter train passengers... seems folks are staying home and indoors... More from the big city when I get there...

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Here's a picture of the girls in their kimonos in better times, a few years ago...

Kaya in the middle, Mitsuki on the left, Miasa on the right.

More asap...
The train is half full today... even emptier than two days ago... I've never seen this... I can't help but think it's because of the radiation threat, though it hasn't reached here yet, as far as I know... in any case, Japanese workers in the spirit of Bushido never take days off for earthquakes, hurricanes, blizzards etc. if they can get to work at all, even when severely ill, as long as they can walk... but radiation may be different; I can't think of any other reason why they might be collectively staying home in such numbers...

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Came out this morning into the dawn from tsunami dreams to clean the snow off the car for the trip down the mountain and saw that the mountains around were rumpled up like an old blanket with the snow thick in its folds... how clear it was from this broad snowscape that the earth, the mountains and the Lake itself, to say nothing of the sea, have always been shaken, pushed, tossed, buried, uplifted, flooded and stretched, forested and burned, molten and broken into cliffs, ground into ground, smoothed out by winds and rains, seas and ice and torn again with tremors, that we as part if it all live here now in sufferance of the same perils... that we should never be too complacent... that farming and the like labors - the waiting, snow-covered paddies informed me - honor this reality, are matters of hope and gratitude... it's hard for individuals alone to nurture hubris, it's only when they mass into government and big industry, big finance, that the restraints of common morality fall away... the earth, the sea and the seasons are simply being true to their natures-- as we should be true to ours, and to our place in the world...

******

Just got word from Echo that Kasumi has emailed: "we're leaving the house at 5am [not sure whether that's tomorrow or today] to catch the 7:30 bus to Tokyo, then shinkansen..." Hope everything goes smooth...

Turns out that's today, and by around noon they made it to the shinkansen, which is FULL of kids being sent south... they should be in Kyoto soon. Will post a picture of them all when possible...

QUAKE UPDATES Day 5  ++++

Yesterday I emailed Kasumi saying since Tatsuya isn't working and the kids aren't in school why not come here and wait it out, make further decisions together, we have food backup etc. I can meet you somewhere with gasoline...

Kasumi family has only a half tank of gas, roads broken and crowded, so as it is, if they could find a navigable way out they'd run out of fuel in the vehicular jam before they could get far, so I offered to drive toward them with cans of gas from here... shops even around here, far south of Tokyo, are running out of essentials as folks anticipate... this am we’re going to make a run for some essential backups, though we’ve been ahead of the game for years now, using kerosene lanterns, woodstove etc.

Six reactors now problematic, say the reassuring heads.... not to worry, just don't go outside or breathe too much... pay no attention to the frantic activities behind the radioactive curtain... we were on lunch break... the plug didn’t fit... the generators ran out of gas... the reactor coolers ran on electricity and the reactors...um... weren’t generating electricity, how could we have foreseen that in all our tons of plans on paper, so we got some more generators... we have a big plan... we’ve always had a big plan... astonishing, when all is revealed...

Once again Japan is the world’s canary in the coal mine...

Cryptic txt note from Kasumi last night: “WE FOUND A POSSIBLE ROUTE”, apparently by bus? or train? to Tokyo, then Shinkansen to Kyoto... no details... emailed back, waiting...

Thank you all again for your emotional support... will keep you posted asap...

Love to all...

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No looting, just keeping calm and carrying on: Ordinary Japanese try to get back to normality

Chernobyl clean-up expert slams Japan, IAEA

America on radiation alert: Japan faces world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl as experts warn fallout may reach U.S.

"They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots." 

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Strong winds last night from north, not good; today colder with snow, gentle wind from southwest, good.

Got in touch with Kasumi later this morning, she said they're thinking about delaying the departure because one of the girls has a fever; Tatsuya thinking of not coming south because he has to be ready to go to work when the company notifies him. He doesn't think it's going to be too serious but the girls should leave just in case; it's a bus-local train-another local train kind of route they figured out might work, I can't picture that, carrying so little with them, Kasumi doesn't want to take the van and run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, doesn't trust the roads or access to needfuls along the way anyway, and how would I find them, me without a cell phone...(!) Tatsuya will go with them via their route to Tokyo and then return to their apartment at least till further decision, when he solo could move quickly...  I told her to argue with him, so I suppose she is... he could get back there quickly enough from here... six reactors now problematic, it appears, fewer and fewer reactor buildings left standing, in charge of The Faceless 50... 

Another 6.0 quake up there around noon today... 

Snowing hard now; have to go out and buy supplies...  more later, w/time and energy... 

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Got back from our foray to find a message from Kasumi, she’s been trying but can’t get a place on any buses heading out, likely all booked up for quite a while... no surprise there... I have the feeling we’ll eventually have to go get her and the girls somehow...

Shoulda said 'have to go out and try to buy supplies'... At the various country shops things are sold out completely like flashlights,batteries, buckets, water containers, masks, gas bombes, cooking stoves, tarps, certain tools, the list goes on, but don’t bother, there aren’t any. Oh. My mistake; there was one tiny flashlight left, for 50$. Asked if the big farm store will be getting some of all the other stuff soon: “No telling when; they’re all being shipped north.”

We did get some stuff though, in case the electricity goes, like a big steel pot to put atop the woodstove for hot water... harks me back to the days of living in rural Spain with no utilities (where Kasumi was born; that picture in the sidebar is us in Spain, her at the age of 3 days and I somewhat older). 

This will be just like old times... only hold the radiation, please...

Lotta snow tonight; hope those good folks up north have at least found warm places in the dark...

 

QUAKE UPDATES Day 4 ++

I have been asked a number of times where folks can donate to help alleviate and overcome this disaster. So much is needed, of so many things. This link is to the best list I've seen of reputable organizations through and to which one can donate.        (big thanks to Kimberlye...)

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No endless "talents" on tv! No ads! No sports! It's real tv, telling real words, with real emotion, about real events! Folks in Tokyo stocking up on radiation masks and bottled water, real food! Gasoline!

A beautiful girl about 12 years old, camera-lit in the dark of the crowded gym, forlorn and tearless, says: "I have no family... I have no home... I have no food... now I know how really happy I used to be..."

Kasumi and family are hanging in there through the aftershocks in their chaotic apartment, thinking the future over... electricity on and off but no water yet, the girls are making the best of it, fortunately K and they went camping last summer for the first time so they knew together what to take fast when the time came in the dark of the shaking apartment: light, water, warm clothing, dense foods... and Kasumi learned from her parents (that's us) to have a good backstock of food in the house... the shops that still exist ration sales in the dark, and are all emptied fast... a friend from a nearby town called Kasumi, desperate for gasoline, asked if there were any open gas stations near her house, but he finally gave up... one station with a line for miles... the owner was tiredly pumping out by hand what gasoline was left... no deliveries coming anytime soon... Tatsuya and so many others called by their companies, told not to come to work until notified... Toyota, Sony, Honda, Nissan, Panasonic also closing down for who knows how long due to absence of infrastructure-- no utilities, ports, roads, rails.. injured/missing/homeless employees... and who will rebuild there? A third reactor has exploded, rolling blackouts everywhere in the north, including Tokyo...

Some foreign journos are puzzled over the protracted absence of looting in Japan following the long quake, like they see everywhere else in the world in the wake of natural devastation-- Chile Haiti etc.... Where are all the looters in Japan they wonder, it’s been three days, where are they... fact is, those poor folks have never lived anywhere as deeply civilized as this country... yes, this level of civility can be achieved, but it may take a few millennia...

They just can't figure it out, though; there must be some reason-- they must want to loot, they must be like us, they'd loot if they could... No, it's because they have respect for one another right from the start, earthquake or no. And as to gangs? One of the most helpful groups at the local level in the ‘95 Kobe quake was the yakuza.

This morning on the way to work I passed several groups of young folks out on the streets with boxes for donations to help the earthquake needy... they were shouting "help the victims" and so forth, the open-topped boxed in their hands were filled to overflowing with bills and coins, and I am certain that not one yen of all that money will be filched, misdirected, or snatched by sly passersby-- it will all go where it is intended to go. That’s why there was so much in those boxes, why folks were so willing to give on the street to strangers: because they trust one another. Anything else would be unthinkable. That characteristic of the Japanese is their biggest asset in overcoming any difficulty, even devastation like this, the images of which at times remind me of the aftermath of Hiroshima. Look what these folks accomplished after that.

Millions homeless, cold night, snow falling up north...

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“Please do not go outside. Please stay indoors. Please close windows and make your homes airtight. Don't turn on ventilators. Please hang your laundry indoors,"

Better go cover my lettuce...

A bit of prelude...

QUAKE UPDATES Day 3  ++

Tough day yesterday...

Called Kasumi’s cell phone many times but battery likely out as seems to be a common problem with cell phones inundated with well-wishing inquiries that use up battery life... so on an off chance E called their apartment phone and there they were!

K and T had just arrived back home to look things over; the building was damaged externally but structurally ok as of the moment (T is an architect, so I trust his judgement), so they went in and began trying to clean up while the girls stayed back at the gym and played with friends... When the big loooooooong quake (first tremor 20 times longer than the Kobe quake of '95) hit on Fri afternoon K was home alone working on her jewelry when suddenly the building began rocking violently she stood in the room doorway for a bit but the shaking was getting worse, she figured she’d better get out, got the front door open went out as the shaking got worse, figured she shd head for school and the girls, but by then she couldn’t walk, the building was tossing her around, so she just stood there holding on to the railing... oddly, there was no one else in sight! In quake intervals she finally got down to the ground, took her bike to the school over the broken road, found kids milling around outside and inside, the teachers looking everywhere for the Earthquake Emergency Guide, she took the girls home, Miasa barefoot, lost her shoes in the gym, had to run back and find them amidst the tremors and screaming children everywhere, they finally got to their still shaking home, grabbed some blankets and pillows and slept in the car. Well, the girls slept. K said she couldn't sleep at all in the car... too worrying, too cold and earthquakes every 15 minutes,though it's a lot better now, only an earthquake an hour...

More soon...

Love to all for your kind messages and thoughts...

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After all I’ve seen, wherever I go around here, my eyes expect disaster... Words fail, the things we’re seeing and hearing 24/7... over 10,000 lost, injured and missing thus far, homes lost, whole villages, cities lost... only by chance and good fortune were Kasumi and family spared... the sorrow everywhere, people finding each other, losing each other, tales of helplessness at watching family members washed away perhaps never to be found... who can sleep? I want to go there with water and food and help... so many tales of courage... husband, wife and daughter washed away holding hands, swirled far away until, passing a stationary fragment of another house managed to clamber onto the roof of the car in the remains of the garage, stood there all night as the water roiled at their feet; father tiring, daughter took off her belt and looped it over an wooden beam of the garage so her parents could hook their arms through and hold on... an elderly man in the flooded house, hearing their panic in the darkness, kept yelling out all night “Ganbatte! Ganbatte! Ganbatte! Hang on! Hang in there! Don’t give up!” His cries weakening through the night... when in the morning they were saved by rescuers, the man in the house was found to have died.  

Other glimpses:
...he can’t even find the street where their house used to be... roofs full of people, rivers filled with houses, even the water is on fire... cars speed down narrow streets, the drivers fleeing fishing boats... village floats past its residents, watching from the hillside... all the paddies now sea marshes... everywhere smells of gasoline... boats on expressways, cars clustered like bacteria, no exit from the flooding bridge... waves full of roofs... was that a person? the center does not hold... only the sea is true... the sound of trucks, roofs, earth, walls, cars grinding together... it all... slows... to silence... then reverses faster, faster out to sea... Amid the aftershocks, elderly woman points to building in her garden, asks What is this? How did this get here? So many tales of strength... Tatsuya starting out from his workplace right after the first quake and walking the debris-washed beach road of the lightless night through the aftershocks, tsunami threats, mud and wreckage to get to his family 7 hours away... Husband and wife in their late 80s rescued from the wreckage of an old inn, he and she smiling, saying Let’s push on, let’s rebuild! They remembered the last tsunami and how they did so then... There’s the heart to it all...

And in the young couple holding hands in the distance, walking the lost road out of the remains, their lives in their backpacks...

More, soon as I can...

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Only once in 1000 years - quake magnitude 9.0

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Astonishing before-and-after photos of tsunami areas - slide black bar across photos...                    via Mary Contrary

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Can’t even send Kasumi packages by private delivery services...

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--"Partial Nuclear Meltdown 'No Disaster'" says the talking head... The awkwords of authorities trying to calm us down...

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 Rolling power outages start today in Kanto...

EARTHQUAKE UPDATES Day 2

8:06am - Thanks and hugs to all who sent messages in all those ways... No more word from Kasumi and family yet, likely no electricity up there in Ibaraki for quite a while, no charging phones, no anything we're all used to... I trust they're well for now in the school gym-- safe, fed, warm and relatively rested... but  the news about those reactors is not good, in fact is getting worse... wonder if those experts have a really safe backup for their formerly safe backup (170,000 to be evacuated from the vicinity so far)...  no point in trying to drive up there, wouldn't even get close and would likely get in the way even if there were roads that went there... the silence is not welcome, though... will post here anything I hear... All night I kept thinking of them, snuggled together in the dark gym, and of Tatsuya leaving his office (right on the ocean in the tsunami area!) immediately after the quake and walking for 7 hours to get home to his family, walking all the way south along the coast during the tsunami, half of the walk in the electricless dark, through the same landscape the whole world has been seeing on the news, arriving 10:30 at night... I didn't sleep much,being more there than here... our hearts to you all, for your love and prayers...

EARTHQUAKE UPDATES   ++++

Thanks and embraces for all your kind messages-- We are all fine, no evidence of quake up here on the mountain, but Kasumi, who lives near the shore up north in Ibaraki, texted that she'd been at home while the girls were at school when everything in the apartment crashed to the floor-- no electricity, no water, she rode her bicycle to pick up the girls at school, all the kids there were milling around not knowing what to do, Tatsuya, K's husband, had to walk about 6 hours to get home, they had to sleep in their van, no water, no food, can't easily go back into apartment cell phone battery prob fading as they run out of gas, just texted her this am to find out whats up, awaiting reply while watching images on tv of tsunami and after effects-- chilling; now a possible reactor meltdown about 30 km from there; will update with details as they arrive... Hugs to you all...

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No word back from Kasumi yet... the com networks must be far overloaded... I felt the quake at the office in Osaka, far south of the epicenter in Sendai, the building swayed for a long time, not the usual few seconds... then again ... and again... Been here 40 years, never felt that type of quake before... ominous... more later

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8:50 am - Still awaiting word from Kasumi... seeing those videos of the tsunami right near where they live, 10 minutes from the ocean and sleeping in their car, hope they were able to drive away somewhat but roads jammed from what I understand... don't want to picture it...  Quake was magnitude 8.9; most powerful in Japan's history

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10:08am - Text fm Kasumi that they didn't sleep all night, too cold... and too dark to go back into apartment, got a bottle of water from roving assistance people, so she and the girls huddled in the van... Tatsuya arrived home at 10:30 after walking from work 7 hrs away, morning came they went into apt and got some blankets etc. chaos in there, possibly structurally unstable in re continuous strong aftershocks... at dawn they were all evacuated, drove to high school gym, roads heavily damaged... still no utilities, no food so far... nearby reactor still uncertain - Headline says Japan may have hours to prevent nuclear meltdown, unthinkable - that be a whole new half-life ballgame for this nation -

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12:40pm - No further word from Kasumi-- hope they can drive out of there soon--  At the compromised nuke plants a few kms away, because its now too dangerous  to do close-up meltdown-preventive work, the fixers are sitting around at the perimeter trying to figure out what uncertain step to take next, before there's nothing anyone can do (last emergency steam release from a reactor was at Three-Mile Island, btw)... 4000 people evacuated from that neighborhood so far, as the circle widens... 3km...10km... ???km... people seem to be returning to their mountain houses up here... we wait for news fm Kasumi family... wish I could drive there with water, food and wet masks... remaining roads jammed... we gotta try something... going out now, be back...

BEING SEEDS

Last night after a cold but sunny day of casual work in the garden and firewood (chainsawed a big stash of cherry from the landscaper below) I was beginning to think we’d had our last frost and Spring is here, when I looked out the big front window before heading to bed last night and there was already a big white BAM! on the deck, and snow was falling heavily in fat flakes.

So Spring is NOT here yet, nyah, nyah, said each flake, my potseeded lettuces getting more anxious by the day, like the beginning bergamot, dill, thyme and Italian parsley, all bent in green eagerness from their little pots toward the window each morning to sense what they can about the weather and the temperature out there, is it time yet, is it time? Are we there yet? sussing out the day length and all that other stuff plants know so much about, wind strength, moon phase too probably, angle of sun etc., all that natural computing going on in their stolid green beings. And we think we have the brains.

So this morning down at the ice-covered train station, my thoughts wisping Springy things around in the background there, I gazed at the beauty of the sugarcake mountains powdered with white against the big blue morning sky, when up at the edge of my uplooking eye I saw something moving and looked further upward -- there, coursing along in the high blue were two broad wedges of geese heading north-- in silence, from down where I was, though way up there the air was likely filled with excited chatter at the big goings on.

I stood and watched them go for as long as I could see them, each wedge being 70-100 geese; the sight filled me with the feeling I've been waiting for, the rush I get each year when the unspoken promise is kept once more as nature declares the arrival of Spring, and it came to me what seeds we humans are.

Spring wind

wants every thing

where it's supposed to be

FLAME RECIPE

In late autumn and through the winter I maintain a big stack of firewood (about half a cord) out on the deck by the door nearest the woodstove. Fire demand from mid-December to mid-February is pretty much full flame ahead.

As winter fades, though, the maintained pile dwindles, and by this time of year there are days when we need no fire at all, the sun does a fine job, especially with no leaves on the trees, so there's little woodstack replenishment going on (there are lots of other things to do like soil prep! pruning! raingutters! lettuce! potatoes!), with just enough wood at stoveside for maybe an evening.

But the other morning before dawn, after a few warm days I found myself plunging out into a sudden blizzard to get some firewood for the day; I'd be in the office, but Echo would be teaching yoga so there had to be a fast but long-burning fire that would quickly get hot and then stay hot. For kindling we have a big tin-lined hibachi box next to the stove that we stock with pine cones, autumnal cedar branch windfall and chopped up woodscrap, so starting was no problem, but for a fast first burn I'd need a mix of various woods and sizes, some small split cherry would do, plus a bit of narrow locust and cluster of beech limbs, this thin bit of oak would give it some heart, plus a good piece of camphor to put atop the stove, nice yoga spice...

Out there in the snowy silence I found myself doing the same sort of thing I do when planning to cook: I was gathering a bit of this and that of flame and heat, of this duration and that intensity, to fit the duration/heat/frequency needs of morning, afternoon and evening, and was doing it without thinking about it, it was perfectly natural to be out there among all those kinds of wood, selecting for certain qualities-- nice ring they give off in the snowsilence too, as you stack them on your arm...

So I wandered around the various firewood stacks for a few minutes gathering the right mix for a fast-hot, room-warming morning fire that with a nice piece of ironwood as the long-lasting firecore would segue smoothly into a deep, warm and steady yoga fire that needed no stoking, then some cherry logs to add for the afternoon fire, plus some large chunks of gold-- i.e., hard dry oak, to carry the fire into dinner and on through the night. Took about 15 minutes to carefully select those armfuls of only the finest ingredients to meet the precise requirements of my Endless Flame Recipe for a certain day in March.

Guide Michelin, eat your heart out.

AN EVENING’S TASK

From out of a sunny day it started snowing late this afternoon, and up here when it snows like this you anyway want to go walking where you can feel the deeps of calm at the heart of the snowy forest, the calm we are born from, that you hold in your open hands.

The snow whispers itself to itself upon the ground, upon the trees; the way is now untraveled, the snow unstepped as I walk up through the white that is featherfalling everywhere; along the narrow road through the snow-covered oaks, the smaller trees lean over the road in a tunnel to whiteness; here and there along the way the roadside cedars block the fall with their own tall feathers, leaving patches of dark road as though the way beneath the snow were a river of black ice leading into white forest --

Along the higher and narrower path, whole groves of tall, thin bamboo arch over beneath the curving weight of snow, whole groves of pale eyebrows where once stood dense stands of green flags in the wind-- above them now rise empty trees frosted with snow, reaching like their own ghosts into a sunless sky the silver color of themselves and the silence...

I leave the narrowing road and turn upon the rough path upward along the noisy snow-fed stream galloping down through the trees and at the source of our water I step into the pushing cascade in my high boots, begin to clean away the debris of a week from the mountain above and the water rises in our channel-- where there are folks, there are rules, and after a few moments in that wild splash through the heart of the silence my turn at the task is finished.

I emerge from the path onto the road with only my coming footsteps in the snow and stand there looking around me, listening, letting it all soak in: the sky, the trees, the stream, the snow, the road, the breath, the passing of time, the stillness, like water being, like forest seeing, trees reaching, all yet to come alive from the silence when spring brings back all the voices...

WANTED!

On the bulletin board in my mental post office I have a huge WANTED! poster with a couple dozen monkey mafia mug shots on it, you can jail any one of them if you can find them (they blend right in); they’re all on the lam from one Brady job or another.

I don’t yet have a wanted poster up for bears, which surprises me, from what I’ve been hearing about bears not far from here, but bears aren’t a bother to me, at least not yet, so there isn’t a bear poster. There is room for one, but I’m generally content with bear preferences for acorns, grubs and berries.

I don’t have a poster up for wild pigs either, which surprises me even more, because I’ve seen them go after the rice in these parts and everything else in other parts of the world, even uprooting lawns in some places to get earthworms, but I don’t have a lawn; maybe that’s why the porkers don’t bother me. Yet they don’t want free fresh potatoes, tomatoes, squashes, cucumbers? Not that I’m offering, but it is another of the natural puzzles that seem to be burgeoning everywhere these days. Let the dear bristly creatures enjoy their acorns and wild yams or whatever.

Still, it seems somehow unnatural, and worries the greenness in me. I’m pretty green when it comes to most things, especially being Irish and all. Regarding plants and creatures I say live and let live, except again for the local monkeys. That’s where I turn from green to red. Most folks who don’t live around here and get their vegs at the supermarket LOVE monkeys, those dear furry creatures on tv and in the zoo, so cute and suitably distant there in the magazine or on the net in the hot spring, aren’t they adorable they’re so human!

I have no rabbits as pests either, though rabbits have always in my mind been notorious, gardenwise, ever since Peter. I’ve seen one or two of the hoppies around here in 15 years, so they are in the vicinity, but they seem to be very old-time Japanesey and prefer their original native diet, though the younger rabbits might start going for the easy food available in my garden, you never know when it comes to animals-- they evolve.

But I always trusted the deer...sniff, sniff...Santa has deer... At least, once I’d put up my garden fence to protect among other things my spinach and green onions, after which the deer just went around munching wild herbs and acorns, but then I spotted the Baron himself, the symbol of noble integrity with his crown of antlers, lowering his regal head to filch my shiitake, scarfing them like a king in a pastry kitchen.

Today, in response to severe nocturnal nibbling of some new shiitake buds by ruminant teeth and I don’t mean cows, as I was moving some of my older shiitake logs inside the garden fence and rigging a pro tem net on poles over the bigger, newer logs, I was mentally designing my DEER WANTED poster, I have the mental mugshot of the noble countenance posing before being booked, one hoof holding up the little black personal data plaque, full-face and profile, looking so innocent - Don’t smile please, look straight into the camera...

I wouldn’t press charges, you understand, I don’t want the Baron to actually go to jail, maybe just some sort of mushroom restraining order. The monkeys you can throw the book at, though that has no effect, I’ve tried. Rocks don’t work either, for the long term. I know they were all here first, but I was here second and I had a loan from a bank. If that’s not legitimate I don’t now what is.

BOB AND THE BEANSTALKS

This morning was nice and sunny so I spent some early time in the garden checking on the beans I planted in the autumn, staked with a bamboo lattice and covered with broad netting and fine mesh to protect them from the snow, thereby rendering them inaccessible and largely invisible.

I lifted off those layers and exposed the graphic reality of beanstalks and dirt left on their own for 3 months, saw that succulent weeds had sidled in from the cold to enjoy the warm serenity of beanworld, and that the beanstalks and the weeds had become good friends, the stalks rejecting my inviting bamboo framework in favor of base groveling, wrapping their tendrils around feckless weedery in the lowest form of companionship, the kind mothers warn their young teens about.

In order to free the beanstalks from their iniquity, that they might better to pursue the natural instincts of their breeding and reach the full bean potential that is their birthright, I had to break up these earthy relationships, and as I went along I saw in every instance - every instance, as though it were a completely natural thing - which I suppose, looking back on my own life, it is - that the beanstalks had preferred tendrilizing with the weeds, not in a single instance grabbing onto the convenient bamboo, over which in some cases the beanstalks had even grown downward to reach the weeds!

There beside them was offered a bamboo structure that would lift them to levels of which they were capable; that would elevate them to greater, sunnier, more productive heights, yet instead they leaned heavily toward their baser instincts, bent to the bottom of their world, acted against their own benefit and potentially toward their own detriment; that’s one of the problems with new youth, even of the beany kind.

There is a lesson here - if I may be so didactic, and having been so thus far, I will - one which I could have followed better myself, had I in my earlier life been even slightly more aware of the benefits of the metaphorically speaking bamboo framework that had been prepared for the beanstalk I was; on the other hand, however, there is something to be said for the weeds, the heady benefit of that lower perspective, that sense of implacability you take with you when at last you unbend and strive upward-- it makes you tougher, makes you more patient, renders you less needful of hope and more in possession of grit. So go low, beans, go low if you must, but don’t stay there too far into Spring; and above all, do not abide the weedy path...

To add weight to my inner words I disassembled the whole bamboo framework, expelled the weeds and from the overpoles suspended lengths of rough gardening twine about a foot apart, hanging down helpfully among all the suddenly weedless beanstalks looking around like new graduates of Legume U.

The world awaits you all, my beans; tomorrow is yours!

SILENT SPRINGS

We all know in our own ways that randyness is a basic building block of the universe; it keeps the race going, neck and neck etc. Back in the days of my own youthful sexperience, that uberactivity pretty much subsumed every other, filling the body, the air, you name it, melodies everywhere... Thank aging, that madness has diminished a bit so I can finally enjoy continuities of other kinds, interspersed as they are...

Japan, as many of us also know, with its softer connection between sex and morality, its countless love hotels and esoterically kinky sex toys, is one of the most erotically informed cultures in the world, a leader in those subtler reaches. All the more incomprehensible then was this headline I saw recently in a J-newspaper: "More young Japanese, married couples, losing interest in sex: gov't survey."

I saw the term "gov't" and right away thought: How erotic a survey could that be? But yes, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (Health?? Labor?? Welfare?? Turn down the passion!) in January released the results of a survey of 3,000 J-men and J-females between the ages of 16 and 49 across Japan, with a 57.2 percent response rate, which to the discerning observer means that well over half the J-population of procreative age had nothing better to do than fill in the blanks on multipage government survey forms. This does not bode well for a decent sex life, let alone procreation.

The survey pretty much nailed the fact that increasing numbers of young Japanese have no interest in sex; but not to worry, the trail-blazing government is on the case, coming up with sexy solutions, like maybe reducing work time (it works for parliament!), which I guess they think would somehow stimulate modern youth to devote their off-hours to cranking out an appreciative electorate, instead of playing MRPGs in their rooms as the population declines.

O yes. The point-- well, one of them. “The percentage of male respondents who said they had no interest in or had an active aversion to sex stood at 18% -- an 8-point jump from 2008 figures. The percentage of women who agreed rose 11 points to 48%. There were particularly sharp increases in the 16 to 19 year old age range, where the percentage of females with no appetite for sex went from 46.9% in 2008 to 58.5% in 2010, while among males the rate more than doubled from 17.5% to 36.1%." "Young males not interested in sex more than doubled!" This is one of the biggest-shocks-of-this-year-that-went-entirely-under-the-world-news-radar. (“[Place name here] has sex with Sarah Palin” would get 24/7 skywriting headlines worldwide for a month; but “Half the Youth of a Major Nation Says No to Sex!” Who cares?)

For the sake of statistical integrity it should be pointed out right away (as was not done by the Ministry, I might add) that the survey itself probably interfered with imminent sex by at least a thousand or so respondees (Was that the doorbell? It looks like a government official! Get dressed!) (Government survey diminishes birth rate!). Plus, it need not be said but what the hell, youth who are not having or preoccupied with having sex, or not entertaining thoughts of being preoccupied with finding a way to have sex, must have a lot of time on their hands both day and night, engaging in dispassionate activities somewhere other than bedrooms and love hotels, indeed everywhere they go; such individuals tend to have big chunks of time to throw away responding to surveys and engaging in other time-shredding activities, so the sample is statistically flawed from the start.

Even so, an amazing number of hypohormonal youth are consciously checking the "No" and "Never" boxes on all kinds of forms, so there must be something to all this silence of the springs. Some say it's caused by pollution, others blame it on junk food, other groups say it's parenting and video games combined with global warming, yet others say it's a blend of pesticides and hormones in the food, compounded by tv programming, or vaccines, or all those drugs, something in the water, as men become epicene like back in Heian times (though those earlier epicene males were downright priapic, cruising the streets of Heian-kyo doing their ardent best to generate today's electorate...

Anyway, seems like everybody blames this apathy on a different cause, but it must be due to something; young loins couldn’t be simply giving up on sex because it’s no fun and not worth doing -a bother, even - since that is an utterly laughable statement en masse and would indicate collective insanity, apart from being blatantly untrue and a few other things as well, like here comes the end of the world-- or at least Japan, which would have to close down for good with a population smaller than that of Antarctica. (Would there still be visas?)

Apart from the niagara of internettable porn flooding eyeballs with both sexes and then some, another possible cause, if not merely a symptom (but if you ask me, there is nothing mere about sex; I'm a big fan) could be the increasing use of the "boyfriend's arm pillow," a best-selling prop that replaces the least procreative aspects of a boyfriend, who, being elsewhere by mutual preference, is increasingly likely to be dozing on his "girlfriend’s lap pillow," a best-selling item that does the same for the guys whose arms have been taxidermically replaced, as their entire presences are increasingly cold-shouldered and the national population graph suffers erectile dysfunction.

As if that weren't enough, after decades of young J-males depilating their bodies and learning to wear makeup in an effort to appeal to females who it turns out prefer to sleep on manufactured boy parts, Japan is concurrently giving birth - ironically speaking - to another social phenomenon, that of the hikikomori, defined as a person who hasn't interacted with anyone outside their family for more than 6 months, three-quarters of such individuals being male (many having been replaced by pillows), who number over a million so far and are increasing by the day, if the lengthening lines at pillow shops are any indication. It will be a dark day indeed, and for all the world, when Japan's last love hotel shutters its doors.

I should add that, in so many earlier ways, Japan has been the canary in the world's coal mine... So get ready, world.

+

WHERE HAVE THE GOOD MEN GONE?

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Japan’s Fashion Subcultures

 

 

Firelight flickers
so you can't read -
then it tells your stories

MORE YUZU MAGIC

I’ve posted previously on the flavor magic of yuzukosho and other yuzu culinary possibilities that are wildfiring from chef to chef around the world, as well as yuzu's non-cuisinal uses, but I never knew of the following use for the mystic citrus until a few weeks ago when I got hold of some sun-dried yuzu seeds at Hot Station, where the lady told me I could soak the seeds for a few weeks in mild alcohol (shochu, sake) and make a good organic skin lotion. She had a little jar of it there as a sampler, so I bought some seeds to try...

I used some unfiltered sake I had, left the batch for three weeks, shaking it every now and then as it thickened, the result being a bunch of yuzu seeds in a viscous gel-fluid, sort of like an undecided jelly, but not sticky. Some substance in (or on?) the seeds had semigelatinized the sake, and when shaken and filtered through a sieve, yielded a good quantity of a pleasant thickish gel for skin/face lotion etc. I’m now using the same seeds again to make a second batch, slightly less gelly than the first, it seems.

Echo and I each made our own experimental preparation - she used rose essential oil in hers - and are saving the rest (about a cupful) in the fridge. I added a few drops of apricot oil to mine, plus a drop of lavender essential oil (other good essential oils for the skin are eucalyptus, tea tree, clary sage, lemon, myrrh, patchouli...) to make a little test squidgerful (beside the big jar in the foto) to use on my hands after I’ve been working outdoors.

Echo says it’s great for rough heels and elbows as well, but my rough heels and elbows have never been a bother to me (or others, as far as I know). Anyway, the lotion feels great, is cheap (free if you got a yuzu tree), no artificial additives, preservatives (add some vitamin E for that) or coloring --  it’s smooth, soothing, dries fast, not tacky, goodfeel to rub on, dissipates quickly, seems to fill in some dermal gaps and lubes or something. Feels good later too, slightly astringent perhaps. I'll try a new blend as an aftershave balm and experiment with other formulations.

You can go ahead and make a million with this; I have to go get some firewood with my new hands.

WOODEN HORSES

Out in the blustery dawn loading up on firewood to restock the holder beside the cold morning stove, using the work to get the bodyheat. Eyeing the oak first of course, as I have all these winter days, the old reliable winter fireheart with its hard and long-burning golden flame, taken straight from the sun.

Oak is our best flame for the heart of winter, heats every nook and cranny of this mountain house, but now that I’m warm so quickly out in the morning, it seemed to me that we’ve passed the heart of winter - though it may return for a passing shove or two of its icy shoulders - so out of habit I was eyeing the big firepower of oak I have out there, turning that gold they get when they’re ready to give back the sun, but then I catch a glimpse of the other stacks, the lighter fiery ones of cherry wood, with that flamey red they dry to, that glows in the morning light and in the stove burns so happily, so friendly flickery...

It’s hard to describe without getting too cute, but cherry is the perfect wood for blustery days because it’s warm in other ways than heat, like a grandma serving cookies and cocoa in front of the fire; it gives back a spritely, cheery kind of flame, long-embered but not strong, not the let’s-get-to-work kind of deep-tempered, hard-edged fire that oak brings to the room when there’s ice on the windows, oak like iron, the workhorse of firewood, the Percheron of flame, its big muscles hauling us all across winters of ice...

After a decade or two with a woodstove on a mountainside with a wide supply of wild windblown wood you get to be kind of a firewood gourmet, it’s like wine or coffee in its way, with body, bouquet, hints of this and that quality, each kind of wood, indeed each tree, having its own character that it’s best to know as best you can, and as I scanned the stacks something spoke to me from inside like the urgevoice that says “Boy, a cup of coffee sure would hit the spot right now,” or “A bit of Puligny-Montrachet would really go good with this meal,” as the conjurevision of the topic shows itself the mind’s eye and that’s what I saw, some cherry wood burning in the stove just minutes from now, with the sky turning the same color outside and the chill wind blowing by, rattling the bamboo, all souled by the cherry flame and the wine color of the dawning sun, it would just all fit together better than it would with oak, I thought, and it did, what can I say, I’ve tried in these awkwords.

Anyway, as to cherry, brighten just one letter and it's cheery...

COUPLE DOZEN THOUSAND MORE REASONS TO GROW YOUR OWN

Pesticide Residues in Food and Feed

Veterinary Drug Residues in Food

via: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyLI8UVdTzQ   

(5 min)

(Love the way they gave it a Latin name resonant with "nutritional expertise")

and it's international!

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FOOD INC.

(Entire documentary)
(Effectively removes any remnant wool from eyes)

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GM Soy in animal food - Greetings from Monsanto

Short and to the point.

via: reddit

WHY GOOD CROWS GO BAD

This morning as I was making tea in the silence that verges a clear-sky sunrise - it was still rather dusky - out of the corner of my sensitive tea-making eye I noticed a large, dark shape shoot by outside just above the deck, where large, dark shapes rarely shoot by at any time of day.

I looked out the big window into the garden to see what it had been, and who was it but Dr. Crow. He was flying hard, had taken a brave and unprecedented shortcut right over the deck, which had always been a Dr. Crow no-no, since one of those featherless biped conundrums could pop right out of a doorway and grab him, teach him to say "Nevermore" or something.

Why did he break his rule and fly over the deck I wondered, why is he flying so hard when nothing's chasing him and there's nothing much going on? Then when he flashed by a second time I realized he was searching for a secure location, because gripped in his beak was an entire slice of bread, the equivalent of a week's salary for a crow, even a doctor.

Right away I wondered where he'd gotten a whole slice of bread up here on the mountain, but then I thought: he's a crow; of course he can get a whole slice of bread up on a mountain. He landed in the meadow across the road, then immediately flew back, straight across the deck, empty-beaked; he had hidden the bread in the grass!!

A moment later he was whizzing by again, straight as the crow flies, with another slice-- you could practically hear him panting, he was flying so hard in his hurry to get the heist all stashed, but this time he headed in a slightly different direction, off through the trees; he would hide this portion of his treasure in another place he knew about.

It was a haul; he had hit it bigtime, and was stashing it here and there in his version of the Cayman Islands. Soon he'll be seen in only the finest trees, smoking big cigars, a sultry crowette on each wing and no apparent source of income, used to work for Goldcrow-Sachs.