Monday, June 4, 2007

First Days of the Walk

Just arrived at a B&B outside Ayr after three days walking. The Walk organizers happened upon our hostess while looking for a place. We have been walking through urban and rural areas. The first day was cloudy, the second rain all day, the third, cloudy then sun. Beautiful countryside with violet Rodie's everywhere, the color of my home. We stayed in a Church of Scotland in Glasgow, a Christian Reformed Church in Barrfield, St. Matthew's Roman Catholic last night. The CND hosted us with meals and a program, which we presented about nuclear disarmament and Foot Prints For Peace. I shared some Gandhi words. Around 45 miles in three days.

Today as we approached Prestwich, police sized us up by asking many questions about our trip and identities. Prestwich Airport has had many protests about the cluster bombs flown in from the US on the way to Israel to be used on Lebanon, also People were flown to Guantanamo through the airport.

All in all we have been treated very well. I do not know how often I will have access to the Internet in the next few days. At present, we have seven walkers, two from the UK, Two from Australia, three from the US. Numbers will increase as we get closure to London. Walkers come and go.

I understand that the Faslane 365 website has pictures of our arrests.

3 comments:

Larry Kerschner said...

Stay well, Bernie. Here's a poem for you.


little boy little girl



in defiance of current

theories of the physical universe

on August 6, 1945

ten thousand paper peace cranes

flew out of a black hole

in the sky

above

Hiroshima

overcoming Death,

the destroyer of the worlds

for Sadako Sasaki




(Little Boy was the name of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Sadako Sasaki was a two year old girl living in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped. Ten years later she developed leukemia. She heard of a Japanese folk tale that if you folded 1,000 origami paper cranes the gods would grant your wish. She died before she finished but she inspired a peace movement in Japan that continues. The black hole reference is a play on modern black hole theory and the statement made by the pilot of the plane dropping the bomb. He said that the explosion drew up so much dirt that there appeared to be a black hole in the sky. Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, called 'the father of the atomic bomb, quoted a passage from the Bhagavad Gita after viewing the first atomic explosion. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”.)

Bernie Meyer said...

Larry, Much appreciated. What keeps us going.

Julie said...

I wanted to say that I really like your poem, Larry. What a lovely homage to Sadako Sasaki and to all those who have perished from The Bomb.

[I was just looking at "On Lying and Killing" by Phil Berrigan who points out that the nuclear bombs themselves and the radiation have killed many people (He cites Dr. Rosalie Bertell's estimate that 57 years of nuclearization brought about the deaths of 30.5 million people. He writes that he thinks Bertell's estimate is probably too low, noting that scientists estimate that 9 million people died because of the disaster at Chernobyl alone.)]

peace-