Drink like a sailor
After seeing Amchitka, one really wants to drink like a sailor. A bottle of rum would come in handy around now. But no. On this ship, we drink only wine and a brand of beer from Korea which promises "Fresh Taste Brewing System". If this is fresh, we would hate to see stale.
The Korean beverage is a brand called "Hite". We only need to add the 19th letter of the alphabet before "Hite" to title it even more appropriately. No doubt this extraordinary drink was scientifically concocted to function for drinkers just as the nicotine patch functions for smokers.
=> Read more...
Heart of Darkness
We are moored off Amchitka Island, as far west...and interestingly, on the map, also as far east...as a boat can go. How ironic it is that visitors here were once greeted by a sign "This is a wildlife refuge and no weapons are allowed", words rendered absurd when the U.S. government set off their biggest underground nuclear test ever here, blasting the earth, sea and animals to smithereens.
When the 1971 blast, code-named Cannikin, ripped through this island, puffins were found with their legs driven through their chests. Sea lions miles from shore had their eyes blown out of their sockets. And the sea otters this refuge was set up to protect? Against reason, I am hoping to see even one.
=> Read more...
Amchitka Island
As some of you may know, Kieran has written a great blog about Amchitka and our time there. For me it is taking a little longer to process. Hence, although we left the island this morning and are on our way back to Adak, you'll be hearing from me over several blogs about our time on this nuclear test zone. Starting now.
For any other stop I’ve been content to wander out of my cabin after the usual 7:30 wake-up call but for Amchitka I ask Hettie, who is on watch, to wake me at first sight of the island, even if it happens to be in the middle of the night. This is not likely, as we’re due to arrive at the staid old hour of nine am, but just to be sure.
=> Read more...
Overboard Annie
She has freckles, long eyelashes, a crooked smile and she's floating in the middle of the Bering Sea. There is no land in sight, no boats but ours. It is our job to rescue Overboard Annie.
How did she fall overboard? Actually, we threw her off, then circled the ship 'round to start our emergency drill. I was on the bridge talking to Captain Pete at the time, having forgotten all about the cryptic note on the blackboard this morning mentioning O.A. drill at 14:30. When I'd asked what it meant I was told it didn't involve me, as I'm only here for three weeks, unlike the rest of the crew who are mostly on for three month stints. So mid-afternoon there I was chatting blithely away to Pete when suddenly he responded to a message, moved to the control panel, pressed a red button and an alarm sounded.
=> Read more...
St. Paul
Today we're on the high seas, having left St. Paul around 11 last night. We weren't expecting a great reception in St. Paul. Something happened there twenty years ago that the residents have not forgiven Greenpeace for, according to rumours going around the Espy. Details are sketchy. It's said that we had a boat visiting St. Paul, and some campaigners went to a Tribal Council meeting in town while other mates went out in a zodiac and accidentally disturbed the seals, which St. Paul Aleuts depend on for their subsistence. Some of the seals took off out to sea, and as the annual seal hunt was next day, our accident was seen as sabotage.
=> Read more...
:: Next Page >>
About Me
stoweaway
USA
Hi, I'm Barbara, aka "Stoweaway", because my last name is Stowe and you get the rest. My last name wasn't always Stowe though. My father changed it from "Strasmich" (our ancestry is Russian) when I was five. I remember coming home from pre-school and hearing: "I've changed our family name" and me spittting back, "How dare you!" My father did a lot of things that pissed me off. In 1971, when our house was the (only) Greenpeace office in the world, and our home number was the only number, and I was fourteen years old, he tried to get me to go on Greenpeace's first boat, the Phyllis Cormack, which was sailing to Amchitka Island. That's because he couldn't. His eardrums were wrecked flying a tiny plane with the Civil Air Patrol in World War II, looking for German subs, and being on a boat made him violently ill. As getting a ship to Amchitka was his raison d'etre in life in '71 (our spiritual guru and alround wiseman, Bob Hunter, was grumbling "How can we go without our leader?) he was determined that one Stowe would get onboard. Family honour was as stake. "You should get on that boat," he'd mutter. "It's going to make history." Yeah, right. Like I'd jump on an eighty-foot fishing boat with eleven men and sail up to Alaska to try to stop a nuclear bomb test. Not. Furthermore, the captain wouldn't even let a female on board. He said they were bad luck. (Yeah, we've come a long way, and we're not babies). But a part of me that wasn't full of fear ached to try. After all, I'd been selling Greenpeace buttons, making Greenpeace T-shirts, and passing petitions around in school for a year trying to raise money for the voyage. The word "Amchitka" had a hell of a lot of resonance for me. So when Captain Pete and the Espy crew came to dinner at our house a few months ago and he said "We're going to Amchitka", I knew I had to go. For family honour. For my Greenpeace aunts and uncles, Bob and Zoe Hunter and the Bohlens and Bill Darnell and all the other sages who taught me so much and who never got to Amchitka, because neither the Phyllis Cormack nor the other boat we ended up sending ever made it. I'm a ghost from Greenpeace past, the first of that original wave who will finally sail into the Amchitka harbour on a Greenpeace boat. But I also represent Greenpeace present, the generation my father and the others were fighting for, who didn't want their children to grow up in a nuclear world. And now at age fifty I feel like a Greenpeace aunt to all the amazing new generations of Greenpeace who are changing the world. And for that I have my father, who had the confidence in me to believe I could get on that boat, to thank. Not to mention my mother...but you'll hear about her, and a lot of other people, in my blog.
Your Personal Activist Network
Archives
September 2007 (1)
August 2007 (9)
- more...
