When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

“I think the music is melancholy to a large extent, especially if you come out of the folk tradition. You know, if you grow up on a diet of murder ballads, and people being carried off by the fairies, and all that kind of stuff, you know there’s a certain sadness in the music. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a sad person; it doesn’t mean that you wallow in darkness. It just means that you sing about sad things. And then life goes on.”

—Richard Thompson

It Is Happening Again

(Since I am recurrently failing to secure sufficient time and energy to address the ongoing irradiating of Japan, I will in the meantime reprint this piece, from August of last year, which revisits Three Mile Meltdown and Chernobyl, and warns of today.)

Nearly a quarter-century after the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, the wild boar of Germany remain radioactive. Der Spiegel reports that government payments compensating boar hunters for lost income have quadrupled since 2007.

Germany’s Atomic Energy Law mandates government compensation to hunters who shoot animals that are too radioactive to consume. In regions particularly problematic, all boar shot are checked for radiation; there are 70 measuring stations in Bavaria alone. Especially in southern Germany, boar routinely test out with high levels of cesium-137, rendering them unfit to eat.

Wild boar are prone to the glow because they consume in large quantities mushrooms and truffles, which are very efficient in absorbing radioactivity. According to Der Spiegel, “the contamination of some types of mushrooms and truffles will likely remain the same, and may even rise slightly—even a quarter century after the Chernobyl accident.”

Mushrooms are 90% water; water accumulates radiation at a rate a thousand times greater than soil.

So one can imagine the lingering effects of Chernobyl in the water that falls and flows and pools throughout Germany. And the rest of Europe. And the world.