Not totally photo related, not just a journal. A bit of both.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

End of winter

Along a rural winter fence, 2011

In the Northern Hemisphere, winter will end very soon. The clocks changed this past weekend, and it is still light at 19hrs. Signs of optimism.

It has been a hard winter for me personally, but all this fades into the background when watching earthquake news from Japan. As I write this, there are new radiation evacuation warnings around a nuclear power plant that has exploded two or three times - with potential meltdown concerns ranging somewhere between Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. More and more video is cropping up of horrendous tsunami surges of water erasing entire coastal towns and valleys, turning everything to match sticks mixed in with cars, trucks and boats. The death toll is rising dramatically and catastrophically.

The events of the weekend and into this week are really tough to comprehend. Superlatives are often bantered around in the news for much less significant stories - a disastrous bus crash, a catastrophic house fire... All of them and more are appropriate when describing quake ravaged Japan, but are somehow insufficient.

News will get worse before it will get better, and I can't do one thing to help out except think good thoughts their way. If you can help out, you really should.

Mike

3 comments:

Alexia said...

The scale of the disaster is so enormous that I am finding it really, really difficult to take in. Thanks for posting these thoughts, Mike.

Bob Scotney said...

It's difficult to relate to events in Japan. The effort being put in by the workers in those nuclear plants will not be known fully for a long time.

Nice simple photo, Mike

21 Wits said...

Your thoughts and words are comforting and telling as is the beauty in your photos always! Blessings for you as well as those in need......