Monday, November 08, 2010

VIGIL AT BATH IRON WORKS



These photos are from Saturday's walk from Bangor to Belfast. I am always a couple days late posting photos.

We arrived in Bath at 3:30 pm today just as the workers at Bath Iron Works were leaving work. We vigiled for a half-hour and people were surprised afterwards that it was not as negative a response from the workers as they had expected. Our signs were very positive making the call for conversion of the Navy shipyard that now builds Aegis destroyers which are outfitted with "missile offense" systems. It is clear that many people who work there would like to build wind turbines, rail systems or civilian ships.

We moved on to a local Episcopal church where I am now writing this post. We'll have a pot luck supper tonight.

When we left Rockland this morning it was raining after a huge storm passed through Maine during the night. By noon the storm had quieted and we finally saw the sun appear after several days of clouds and rain. We had a great lunch break at the home of Steve Burke who is a leader of the peace group in the Rockland area. His old house is right on Highway 1 in Warren so we were able to walk right up to his door.

Just beyond Rockland we walked through Thomaston where a local Episcopal church opened their doors to us for a break. They clanged the bells as we arrived at the church and served us coffee, tea, and snacks. They were so kind and had planned to come out and greet us as we walked past their church but our support people had stumbled onto the church by accident and knocked on their door to see if we could take a break there. So a nice coincidence for us.

We go back to Bath Iron Works at 8:00 am for a half-hour vigil before walking to Freeport. I notice that there is a 30% chance of rain tomorrow so maybe we will get lucky and avoid more water.

We had two newspapers cover us today (Village Soup in Rockland area and Times Record in Bath) so more articles should be out on Tuesday.

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