In midmorning, Mercury (contact person of the week) called to tell us that plans had changed. Instead of the two-hour prayer vigil outside we would hold a four-hour photo display inside the student union lobby. Joe was going to class and was able to give us a ride to campus. His VW had only one seat, the driver's. Bill and I sat on the cold floor, holding our backpacks on our laps, as Joe cleaned snow from the windshield. I had to repeat a line from one of Jim Morrison's songs, "This is one of the strangest lives I ever lived."

We got out behind the student union, with our packs and the bag lunches Metta had fixed, and were directed upstairs. Bill and I helped Morishita put up the literature table, then the photo display which was on the balcony overlooking the annual international students coffee house. Some of us went downstairs to get coffee. It wasn't ready, and we were told to stay upstairs lest two events be confused as one. Evidently, world peace was too controversial an issue for the international students to get involved in. We bought our coffee from the snack bar. But -- an hour later -- a few monks could be seen mingling in the coffee house audience and the muffled beat of prayer drums could be heard.

Carole, Nagase, and Shima had gone to a high school to address an assembly. The three had also spoken to individual classes. Not all of us were needed upstairs, so John, Andy S., and I went downstairs to talk to students and ask them to sign our petition. We had been told students here were apathetic; but about 75% of those we asked, signed the petition -- more than 200. We also handed out literature, and directed people upstairs to the photo display. For four hours, it looked like we were everywhere, on all three levels of the student union. Then we packed up our display, found the evening program cancelled by the snow, and ended up talking until midnight; tomorrow would really be a rest day.

This really is the strangest life I've ever lived. It has been good though.

   February 27, Rest day in Athens #2
I slept late and did not get out of bed until ll o'clock. Most of the day really was restful. I completely escaped into a two-hour basketball game, U. Va. vs Maryland. This was the first ACC basketball game that I had seen since leaving Durham. I would have to wait until we got to NC -- another month -- before I would find people who could talk intelligently -- and emotionally --about basketball.

Before the game my new hosts, David and Tish Rainey, invited some friends, a couple of recent Duke grads, over for lunch and conversation. They were pro-disarmament. Immediately, I think, we got into a two-hour debate about disarmament strategies, being realistic, etc. By the end of the debate I was exhausted. It seems that people can support disarmament intellectually but, at the same time, try to come up with all kinds of reasons for not working to help bring it about. I expected to talk more with David and Tish, very nice people, that evening. But as I was preparing to leave to attend the evening program, I got the word to take my luggage along: new hosts that night.

After a potluck and a service, each attended by over a hundred people, I got another surprise. After Morishita's speech following group singing of folk-songs, I was introduced as the next speaker. Afterward, I talked with Greg Jocey about getting a WRL chapter started in Athens and with a school reporter about sending them progress reports from the walk. It would have been good if we had the resources to put together a newsletter to send our supporters.

Bill and I were hosted now by Margaret and Warren Findley, both seventy-two. Mr. F. had been a college professor at U. Ga. until this year. Mrs. F jokingly told us he had retired at seventy-two since this was the age of statutory senility. She tutored "disadvantaged" pre-school children . He now works with the same kids, teaching them chess. We sat before the fire, drank tea, ate cookies, and spoke of many things, ranging from the Findley family and the peace walk to Mr. Findley's role in developing psychometric tests including the SAT and GRE.

They taught us a very simple grace for breakfast. (Grace was fated to become complex before we got to New York City, and a matter of contention. At this epoch in the walk, grace at supper would go about as follows. All circled, joining hands, while the local minister or host offered the traditional Christian grace. Then we would sing, usually "Thank you for this day, O Lord, Thank you for this day. This healing, this healing, this healing day," with ensuing verses with "day" replaced by "friends", "food", "walk". After this we chanted "Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo" three times. A few minutes of silence would then conclude the grace.)

I would have liked to include the Findleys' breakfast prayer, but the food was already nearly cold when we started to eat.

   February 28; Athens to Arnoldsville
This day was very cold. The road had been cleared, but there was still plenty of snow on the ground and it was deeper on the shoulder. So we walked 14 miles through melting snow. My feet felt frozen in the running shoes I wore; yet Nagase was wearing sandals -- without socks. Despite these bad conditions, 40 people walked with us until lunch, and ten with us clear to Arnoldsville.

Our morning break was outside a stockyard. It was Sunday, but people were working inside. They permitted us to come in, get warm, and use their toilets.

Morishita told me that his arms were sore. The monks had played ping pong all day on rest day.

Lunch in Winterville was a social occasion, with 50 folks crowded into their fine historic railroad station to eat. Town dignitaries including the city manager gave us an official reception and Joan Biles, chairperson of "Marigolds from America", read a short poem and distributed a large box of marigold seeds to demonstrate friendship from America. The library was unlocked for toilet use; it had a strong odor of books.

Jane, a young former school teacher, asked me about joining the walk. Now working in a factory, she had thought about us for a week before attending all our activities in Athens. She was a little unsure what it would be like. After fifteen minutes or so, I introduced her to Carole (still the only female walker). then to Morishita. A little encouragement was all she needed; we all gave that, happy with the prospect of another woman. Mercury and Carole had been blaming some of our tensions on "too much male energy and not enough female energy."

From Arnoldsville, people from Jubilee Farms drove us to their farms for a few hours; the monks would spend the night there. Jubilee was a religious community established about l980 to help settle war refugees. The ten "partners" at Jubilee had started out living in tents and gradually built houses. They accepted war refugees for six to eight weeks while these would learn basic English and basic living skills like the value of the dollar, shopping for food, and living on a fixed budget. There were now seventeen refugees from Cambodia and two from El Salvador. After a tour, Morishita told me excitedly that the Cambodians were Buddhist; but they didn't speak Japanese of course, so English, some pretty broken, linked the two groups of Buddhists.

After a fine country supper, I heard Mercury muttering something about tonight's schedule and "maximum exposure." Then the Cambodians and Salvadorans joined us for worship, beginning with an imaginative play written by the children with some help. Explained in Khmer and Spanish, it dealt with Beauty, Power, and Money -- the three Great Evils. Then came readings from the Old Testament: David and Goliath, the conquering of Canaan, with shocking militaristic language ("Cut off the head of the Philistine dog", etc.) I wondered whether the Cambodians had heard rhetoric like this recently, and what kind of impression this gave them of Christianity. But an apology followed: the stories connected to defeating the three Great Evils.

After the service I stepped outside for fresh air. Shima joined me. He felt as I had about the program. Jubilee Farms did excellent work, but the service was disappointing. Shima told me that seventy per cent of the Cambodian people had been killed in the past two decades.

It was easy to compare the U.S. wars in Indochina with the present one in Central America. Will the United States do to Central America what it did to Indochina? Will we destroy it in order to save it?

When we went back inside, popcorn had been popped and was being passed around. The faces of the refugees were happy. go to page 20