Plague Journal, Entanglement
Yesterday we were privileged to have a guided tour of the Fabyan Estate home in Geneva, on the bank of the Fox River. George Fabyan, descendant of a wealthy Boston dry goods manufacturing family and his wife Nelle, purchased 300 acres in the early 1900s. The old farmhouse on the property was remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907. The Fabyan Villa is now a museum and contains a number of artifacts the Fabyans received from Japan.
Displayed in the dining room of the Villa I photographed this Oni, a demon of great strength, of ferocity which are often seen in the precincts of Buddhist temples in Japan.
The morning edition of the New York Times featured a description of the the remnant of hurricane Ida’s impact upon the City of New York, and the New England area. After smashing into Louisiana, the storm, like a raging demon-god delivering a second blow, impacted the East coast with rainfall causing flash flooding.
How much rainfall? According to the Times:
Here are the total amounts measured by the National Weather Service between 4 a.m. Wednesday and 4 a.m. Thursday at locations across the region.
- Central Park: 7.19 inches
- Kennedy International Airport: 2.77 inches
- Long Island Mac Arthur Airport: 2.63 inches
- Farmingdale, Republic Airport: 2.01 inches
- Shirley, Brookhaven Airport: 1.84 inches
- Westhampton Beach, The Gabreski Airport: 1.48 inches
- Newark International Airport: 8.44 inches.
- Somerville, Somerset Airport: 2.92 inches
- Trenton, Mercer County Airport: 5.6 inches
Last night at our Socrates Café meeting at Barnes & Noble we discussed the philosophical implications of a discovery in physics. At the foundation of matter, the particles of energy which compose the elements of everything that we see and touch — exist in many possible states at the same time. Only when a photon, or an electron is observed by measurement can one describe what the “objective” state of the particle is. Another word for this is “entanglement.” An actively observing subject, the participant-observer is involved in what we label “objective reality.” Observation is involvement, to be entangled with the object of our interest and observation.
Now a tragedy unfolds. We did not take this into account in the beginning, many years ago, as we fashioned a way of life injecting an enormous load of hydrocarbon produced heat into the earth’s atmosphere. We have been oblivious to our entanglement.
And now…?
