I haven’t done a “News Poem” in a while. I hope you enjoy this one on a tiny little fact that came out of the horrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
The planet we live on is quiet and deep
But sometimes it tosses and turns in its sleep.
On a cold winter night when it pulls tight and snug
We small little humans can be crushed like a bug.
When the news crosses oceans and national borders,
We’re told that our days are now just bit shorter.
The big party known as St Patrick’s Day is upon us. Saint Paul, like many cities, more or less shuts down for a day as the town is painted green and flows with rivers of Guinness that wash celebrants down the streets from one bar to another. The theme of the party is Irish Pride, something that seems like a cheap excuse for a lot of drinking to most people. The Irish aren’t a people who stand out most of the year, blending in as part of the great majority of our culture here in the US, Canada, Australia, and all the other places we’ve settled.
But it wasn’t always this way. The reason we still have a party isn’t just a big drunk as we wait for Spring. Irish Pride was earned the hard way, like fraternity hazing. It’s a standard that nearly all ethnic groups have had to go through as generations move from being immigrants to mainstream citizens.
The earthquake and tsunami in Japan was a horror on its own, but the effects on several nuclear reactors has added to the emergency. There has almost certainly been a partial “meltdown” in two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi and there may be more. This is still unlikely to lead to a catastrophic failure and release of a large plume of radioactive material, but even a small chance multiplied by the potential for thousands more deaths makes the situation very tense.
There will be some “fallout” from this event no matter what – at least in terms of our interest in expanding or even maintaining our nuclear plants. There is likely to be another tense event here in Minnesota in the next few weeks that will face a lot of scrutiny. What has happened in Japan, and can it happen here?
Every day starts with open eyes. If you’ve had what you need to keep going, the world has been turning for about 8 hours and the news stories piled up around our humble ball that is spinning and pitching through space. This information comes to you over airwaves or the internet or a newspaper that greets you on the porch, however you choose.
When the world is close to equilibrium, the news stories are easy to understand. We all have our own frames that allow us to filter our world and make sense of it, assuming that today is a lot like yesterday and tomorrow won’t be that different. The institutions that keep the world truckin’ on while we sleep operate more or less the same way. But what happens when an awful lot happens at once? That depends equally on the events of the day and the smugness that we greet it with.
Today is one of those days. An awful lot is happening.
There’s nothing new about the “Gotcha!” moment in teevee nooze. It was pioneered by some of the most respectable figures in journalism long ago, most notably “60 Minutes” over 30 years ago. Back then, it was a camera crew led by Mike Wallace openly hunting down people where they least expected it – as they got out of their car or on a golf course. More recently we’ve seen public figures such as NPR’s former chief Ron Schiller and Wisconsin Gov. Walker taken in by ruses that make the “gotcha” even more intimate than it was in the past. But is it really newsworthy, and is it really fair game?
These private moments where public figures are goaded into speaking their minds are only news because that they reveal that our institutions are run by actual humans. What’s shocking about this is that it’s considered shocking at all.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 