Thursday, March 17, 2011

St. Patty's Day in New York

We barely saw them from Vanderbilt and Forty-Second, the multitudinous in green on each others' shoulders cheering the marching band skirling in skirts; and a man in a revolutionary war costume brought a flintlock blunderbuss out in the sun, the only sunny day the saint of no snakes has had in these parts in many years: always those girls scantily clad and kicking in the cold, not to feel badly for them. Who doesn't love a parade?

In Grand Central they wore green hats, shoes, masks; always these were people who never come to the city for any purpose ever but St. Patrick's day or a wedding; more obvious even than the Catholics with their ashes on a certain Wednesday (probably the dying-est tradition in New York)are these well scrubbed suburban visitors, looking vigorous and lost.

They say the crowds were thick on Fifth Avenue.

And little seemed to trouble passersby less than the lone young woman asking alms for Japan.

There seems to be some sense that the Japanese, however this might be horrific, are expected to take care of this themselves and they know it, and this is why they have not been forthcoming about the forthcoming meltdowns.

Nine dash oh quake, 30 foot water wave, three, many meltdowns perhaps now in progress at Fukushima. Tens of thousands lost already in totally destroyed seaside towns along the northeast coast of Japan. Americans advised to stay fifty miles from the tidally compromised, coolant-deprived reactors as attempts to slow meltdowns becomes more and more makeshift and outlandish. Choppers drop water as if to put out a forest fire but this is no forest fire, it is eternal flame compared to forest fire and requires many many times more water than any chopper can drop.

Late news tonight, power restored to one of the plants but that doesn't mean they have anything left to turn on. But with power in the area, they may be able to get some real work done.

Fifth Avenue runs a long way uptown. Following it you can end up heading straight up the Hudson Valley and eventually after that you might get to a town called Buchanan 25 miles north and there'd be an outdated nuclear plant looking dirty and rundown and apparently near faultlines this writer never knew of and now the very Governor of the Empire State wants Indian Point decertified and shut down.

The plant supplies less than twelve percent of the NYC's electric and we're thinking the gubnah should have our support.