The Vegas Report
I just returned a little less than 24 hours ago from Las Vegas - my first time. I met Martin Sheen, too! But not in a casino...out in the middle of the desert, protesting nuclear weapons and commemorating the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
About 700 of us gathered at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, which resides in the middle of nowhere, about 65 miles from even the nearest glimpse of Vegas lights. Martin wore a blue suit and tie. I wore flip-flops and jeans. We both got covered in beetles. Yuck. There were beetles the size of golf balls climbing all over everybody, which gave the night a very "Survivor: Nevada Desert" feel to it.
I won't go into great detail yet, but most of the weekend was pretty powerful, especially some of the speakers who were there - most notably Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who directs The Shalom Center, and Tony de Brum, an indigenous resident of the Marshall Islands - the site of numerous nuclear tests throughout the 1940s, 50s, 60s and likely even today.
Tony de Brum had the crowd in his hands. Half of them, myself included, barely even knew where the Marshall Islands were. Here we find out that if you add up the yield of U.S. nuclear weapons tests on the Islands since the U.S. started testing nukes, you'd have 1.6 Hiroshimas dropped per day, every day, for 12 years. Unbelievable.
His spirit was so strong, his story and experience so rich, yet devastating. His drive to talk about nuclear weapons and testing - a subject about as interesting and sexy as social security - reminded me of that Jane Addams quote, "Nothing could be worse than fear that one has given up too soon and left one effort unexpended which might have saved the world." Tony made me believe that we can still change this world. So did Rabbi Waskow, but I don't have the focus right now to get into his sermon.
This is more or less just a note to let everyone know that I am back on the blog, and that I survived McCarran International airprot. Forget losing your ass at a casino...I almost tossed my cookies taxiing on the damn runway!
About 700 of us gathered at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site, which resides in the middle of nowhere, about 65 miles from even the nearest glimpse of Vegas lights. Martin wore a blue suit and tie. I wore flip-flops and jeans. We both got covered in beetles. Yuck. There were beetles the size of golf balls climbing all over everybody, which gave the night a very "Survivor: Nevada Desert" feel to it.
I won't go into great detail yet, but most of the weekend was pretty powerful, especially some of the speakers who were there - most notably Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who directs The Shalom Center, and Tony de Brum, an indigenous resident of the Marshall Islands - the site of numerous nuclear tests throughout the 1940s, 50s, 60s and likely even today.
Tony de Brum had the crowd in his hands. Half of them, myself included, barely even knew where the Marshall Islands were. Here we find out that if you add up the yield of U.S. nuclear weapons tests on the Islands since the U.S. started testing nukes, you'd have 1.6 Hiroshimas dropped per day, every day, for 12 years. Unbelievable.
His spirit was so strong, his story and experience so rich, yet devastating. His drive to talk about nuclear weapons and testing - a subject about as interesting and sexy as social security - reminded me of that Jane Addams quote, "Nothing could be worse than fear that one has given up too soon and left one effort unexpended which might have saved the world." Tony made me believe that we can still change this world. So did Rabbi Waskow, but I don't have the focus right now to get into his sermon.
This is more or less just a note to let everyone know that I am back on the blog, and that I survived McCarran International airprot. Forget losing your ass at a casino...I almost tossed my cookies taxiing on the damn runway!
posted by MikeJ at
10:00 PM
1 Comments:
What airline did you fly?!!?! Hope it wasn't my dad at the controls!!!
By
The Overeducated Beggar, at 3:58 PM
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