I have a very simple creed: that life and joy and beauty are better than dusty death, and I think when we listen to such music as we heard today we must all of us feel that the capacity to produce such music, and the capacity to hear such music, is a thing worth preserving and should not be thrown away in foolish squabbles. You may say it’s a simple creed, but I think everything important is very simple indeed. I’ve found that creed sufficient, and I should think that a great many of you would also find it sufficient, or else you would hardly be here.
— Bertrand Russell, Ninetieth birthday celebration speech (18 May 1962), as cited in his Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: 1944-1969 (1969)
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Peace is the mind’s old wilderness cut down – A wider nation than the founders dreamed. Peace is the main street in a country town; Our children named; our parents’ lives redeemed.
Not scholar’s calm, nor gift of church or state, Nor everlasting date of death’s release; But careless noon, the houses lighted late, Harvest and holiday: the people’s peace.
The peace not past our understanding falls Like light upon the soft white tablecloth At winter supper warm between four walls, A thing too simple to be tried as truth.
Days into years, the doorways worn at sill, Years into lives, the plans for long increase Come true at last for those of God’s good will: These are the things we mean by saying, Peace.
— John Holmes, “The People’s Peace”, Hymns for the Celebration of Life.
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In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. What really matters is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk. You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.
— Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966)
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On this date, 27 October 1553, Michael Servetus, physician and theologian, was burned at the stake in Geneva, Switzerland, for the crime of rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity. He was the first European to describe pulmonary circulation. The description, unnoticed by any of the heretic hunters who examined Servetus’ works, was hidden in the book that Calvin ordered to be burned along with Servetus himself.
A useful summary of Servetus’ life, works, and death, as well as a list of his works, can be found at the Michael Servetus Institute web site. Fuller descriptions of Servetus’ life, works, trial, and execution can be found in Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone, Out of the Flames: The Remarkable Story of a Fearless Scholar, a Fatal Heresy, and One of the Rarest Books in the World, or Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511-1553.
… celebrations in most countries outside of India and South Africa have been, at best, muted.
Perhaps that is because the Non-Violence promoted by the commemoration is not just a sort of vague warm fuzzy pacifism, but an active strategy for social change.
After the bombing of Hiroshima and the Russian declaration of war, Japanese leaders decided to sue for peace. Advocates of surrender needed only enough time to work out acceptable terms and to reconcile military officers to the inevitable. As the Japanese discussed policy, the Americans followed standard military procedure. Control shifted from the commander in Washington, President Truman, to the commander of the bomber squadron on the island of Tinian in the Pacific. Plans called for Fat Man, a plutonium bomb, to be ready by August 11. Since work went faster than expected, the bomb crew advanced the date to the ninth. The forecast called for clear skies on the ninth, followed by five days of bad weather. Urged on by the squadron commander, the crew had Fat Man armed and loaded on the morning of the ninth. And again following military SOP, the pilot shifted his attack to Nagasaki when clouds obscured his primary target.
Had the original plan been followed, Japan might well have surrendered before the weather cleared. Nagasaki would have been spared. But the officer who ordered the attack had little appreciation of the larger military picture that made Nagasaki a target or that made the Soviet Union a diplomatic problem connected with the atom bomb. He weighed factors important to a bomb squadron commander, not to diplomats or political leaders. The bombing of Nagasaki slipped from the hands of policy makers not because of some rogue computer or any power-mad, maniacal general, but simply because of military SOPs.
— James West Davidson & Mark Hamilton Lytle, After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection, fourth edition (2000)
On August 9, 1945, the bomb named “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki by a USAAF B-29 airplane named “Bockscar”, piloted by U.S. Army Air Force Major Charles Sweeney. Source.
On 6 August 1945, at approximately 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima time (approximately 7:15 p.m. on 5 August Washington D.C. time) crew of a US Army Air Force B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb to be used as a weapon of war.
Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains — August 4, 2026” from The Martian Chronicles reflects the day before the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. This version from BBC Radiophonic Workshop, 1977, titled “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains”, was adapted for “Narrator, Vocoder and Synthesizer” by Malcolm Clarke.
Someone’s comment on the YouTube page for a different version provides some context:
This Ray Bradbury story is an anti-war message, as is the Sara Teasdale poem with the same title. However, the full title of the story in The Martian Chronicles is “There Will Come Soft Rains — August 4, 2026”. On August 5, 1945 (US time), the USA dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. August 4, 2026 marks the end of a full 80 years after the bombing. The destroyed house repeating “Today is August 5, 2026” endlessly is a warning of what happened when we forgot Hiroshima 81 years before. Bradbury wrote the story in 1950, just after the Soviet Union first successfully tested a nuclear bomb in 1949. The story was right for its time as it is today. It is about what a Cold War brings when it gets hot.
Sara Teasdale wrote her poem around 1918 during a time of total war and pandemic. Perhaps the poem still has something to say to us in our current condition.
(War Time)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone.
The people are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property, between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them, become that between employer and hired labor. The freed are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
— General Gordon Granger, “General Order No. 3“, June 19, 1865, Galveston, Texas
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