a warm afternoon </head> <body BGCOLOR="silver"> <TT>online: 10 april 2011</TT> <BR><TT>modified: 27 march, 10 april 2011</TT> <HR><FONT SIZE="5"> <BR>27 march 2011 <FONT COLOR="#white"> <TT>a warm afternoon</TT></FONT> <BR><BR><BR> <tt>city forest</tt> <br><br> ...calm atmosphere this afternoon... a gentle breeze in hazy sunshine... many people walking slowly while one person runs swiftly by... as if in a race... mixed sounds of voices, cars and aircraft... and perhaps bird calls, almost masked... <br><br> ...today's news includes a statement that the reported high level* of radioactive pollution of sea water close to the leaking reactors in Japan is not physically possible and must be mistaken... in all such discussions i like to remember that the sun is composed of thermonuclear explosions that sustain (yet threaten) organic life... but we all learn rapidly in these dangerous moments of natural and manmade disaster... pitiful as is the fate of those who are affected... <br><br> ...today, looking to the sun through mist... and through the branches of trees... in this filtered sunshine i do not need to seek shadow to protect my skin from mild cancer that began in childhood and has been treated successfully for three decades... (when a threat is understood and promptly treated the danger is gone!)... <br><br> ...the leaves that are sprouting all round me can be thought of as electro-chemical micro-factories sustaining themselves and us and other animals by photo-synthesis... so the way out of such marvellous yet dangerous processes is not by retreat... but by knowledge acted upon and not ignored or denied... <br><br> ..<blockquote> <center> 'the way out is through' </center> </blockquote> <br><br> ...a fast-walking man clothed in red and blue passes below the elevated seat where i am sitting... and now the earthen roadway below is empty of people... and the ground before me is covered with bracken (fallen ferns turned reddish-brown, and bent and crushed by natural forces... or perhaps by attempts to garden the forest).. to me the crushed bracken resembles the thousands of buildings 'reduced to splintered wood' by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan**... <br><br> ...a profusion of new nettles and some wild flowers and hawthorn blossom here ... while taller and more leafy trees are still bare... these seasonal changes are unstoppable, it seems... but surely the explosions and leakages in nuclear reactors can be avoided by more intelligent design... <br><br> <blockquote> <center> "In memory of Hilde Riess Gardner who loved the Heath.<br> Leipzig 1912 - London 2005" </center> </blockquote><br><br> (inscription on a seat where i stopped to write these words) <br><br><br> * <tt>radioactivity in the sea at Fukushima was reported as ten million times background radiation - this was later denied...</tt> <br><br> **<tt>David Cohen, 'whole streets are filled with houses reduced to piles of splintered wood' in his report of the disaster in <i>The Evening Standard</i>, London, Monday, 14 March, 2011, page 6.</tt><br><br><br> <BR><BR></font><HR><font><BR> </font><P><font> <FONT SIZE="5"><FONT COLOR="#FF0099"><TT> for comfortable line length please set the window to about half of the screen width</TT></FONT></FONT></font> </P>   <P> <A HREF="http://www.publicwriting.net">homepage</A> </P> <P>  </P> <P>   <FONT SIZE="2"><TT>© 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 john chris jones</TT></font> <P><BR><BR><FONT SIZE="2"><TT>You may transmit this text to anyone for any non-commercial purpose if you include the copyright line and this notice and if you respect the copyright of quotations.</TT></font></P> <P> <FONT SIZE="2"><TT>If you wish to reproduce any of this text commercially please send a copyright permission request to jcj 'at' publicwriting.net (replace 'at' and spaces by the @ sign)</TT></font></P> <BR><BR>  <script type="text/javascript"> var page_name = ''; var invisible = ''; function sE(){return true;}window.onError=sE;var wtsui='al1668'; try{var wtsb=top.document;var wtsr=wtsb.referrer;var wtsu=wtsb.URL;} catch(e){var wtsb=document;var wtsr=wtsb.referrer;var wtsu=wtsb.URL;} var wtsrn=Math.random();var qry=wtsui+':1::'+escape(wtsr)+'::' +screen.width+'x'+screen.height+'::'+screen.colorDepth+'::' +escape(page_name)+'::'+invisible+'::'+wtsrn+'::'+escape(wtsu); document.write('<a href="http://www.web-stat.com/stats/'+wtsui+'.htm" '); document.write('target="new"><img src="http://server2.web-stat.com/count.pl?'); document.write(qry+'" border="0" alt="web log"><\/a>'); </script><noscript><a href="http://www.web-stat.com"> <img src="http://server2.web-stat.com/1/al1668.gif" border="0" alt="web log"></a></noscript>  </body> </html>