Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: goldstategop
Deus ex Machina....


Something to ponder:

"...Miss Sasaki, who had already been moved three times, twice by ship, was taken at the end of August to an engineering school, also at Hatsukaichi. Because her leg did not improve but swelled more and more, the doctors at the school bound it with crude splints and took her by car, on September 9th, to the Red Cross Hospital at Hiroshima [The Atomic Bomb had been dropped on August 6th]. This was the first chance she had had to look at the ruins of Hiroshima; the last time she had been carried through the city's street's, she had been hovering on the edge of unconsciousness. Even though the wreckage had been described to her, and though she was still in pain, the sight horrified and amazed her, and there was something she noticed about it that particularly gave her the creeps. Over everything--up through the wreckage of the city, in gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks--was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the city's bones. The bomb had not only left the underground organs of the plants intact; it had stimulated them. Everywhere were bluets and Spanish Bayonets, goosefoot, morning glories and day lilies, the hairy-fruited bean, purslane and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and feverfew. Especially in a circle at the center, sickle sienna grew in extraordinary regeneration, not only standing among the charred remnants of the same plant but pushing up in new places, among bricks and through cracks in the asphalt. It actually seemed as if a load of sickle-seed had been dropped along with the bomb."

Hiroshima, by John Hershey, 1946 (pp. 69-70)

I always kind of wonder about talk of "saving" the Earth--I think that it's more or less capable of taking care of itself.
Whether we're around to see it is another matter entirely....
47 posted on 08/29/2006 6:26:44 AM PDT by demonrum ("[A]fter the last tree is felled, Christ will come..." James Watt)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: demonrum
Liberals have difficulty reading graphs.
48 posted on 11/15/2006 4:12:29 PM PST by Doofy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson