1 result for (book:nome AND session:873 AND stemmed:island)
[... 39 paragraphs ...]
(Through all of our personal activities, Jane and I are intensely conscious of the cultural, scientific, artistic, and economic aspects of the world we’ve chosen to live and work in. Each other individual is just as focused in his or her own unique reality, also. Right now, we’re very much aware of all of the good things the people of our world are providing for us and for millions of others, every minute of every day — yet a certain portion of our joint interest in that “outside” world is also directed toward the situation at Three Mile Island, the nuclear power generating plant located some 130 airline miles south of us. Four-and-a-half months ago, one of the two nuclear reactors at TMI malfunctioned and came close to a meltdown of its uranium fuel. The whole world was a spectator at the worst accident in the history of our country’s nuclear power program.
(The latest, Jane and I gather from a variety of reports, is that Three Mile Island’s damaged reactor, Unit No. 2, is still a sealed enigma, just as it was when I described it in Note 1 for Session 856. A great amount of radiation is trapped within the reactor’s containment building, so “many months” still must pass before it can even be entered. And “several years” will pass before scientists and engineers pronounce the site finally and safely decontaminated, at who knows what enormous expense, for each step in that cleanup process will have to be scrupulously managed for maximum safety.
(I left my thoughts about Three Mile Island, and began to consider a closing statement about Seth finishing Mass Events as summer passed its zenith and prepared to blend into fall. Then I had it. Of course: The change of seasons meant that while I would be doing my own work on the book, the geese would be flying south. Already I looked forward to their migration, that ancient movement I’ve become especially fond of since we moved into the hill house over four years ago. Through the geese I want to associate Jane’s and my activities with nature rather than technology, for in nature I sense a great, sublime, ultimate peacefulness and creativity that far surpasses technology, can we but ever manage to approach an understanding of what nature really means for us physical creatures. To me, without getting into questions about the magnificent overall originality embodied in All That Is, nature is the basic physical environment which all “living” species jointly create and manipulate within. And my personal, symbolic way of trying to grasp a bit of nature’s ultimate mystery lies in my admiration for the twice-yearly flights of the geese.
[... 1 paragraph ...]