Tag: Nuclear

July 16th, 1945, The Big Boom and Me

On this day back in ’45 — 5:29 and 45 seconds in the damn morning — the desert out in Alamogordo lit up like somebody flipped on a second sun just to see what kind of trouble it could make. A bunch of scientists stood around in welder’s goggles, slathering on suntan lotion like they were prepping for a day at Revere Beach instead of kicking off the nuclear age.

Enrico Fermi, cool as a guy waiting for the T that’s already late, took bets on whether they’d ignite just New Mexico or the whole planet. Real casual end‑of‑the‑world office pool.

Then the thing goes off — BOOM — sky goes white, sand melts into this ghostly green radioactive glass, like the desert tried to make its own cursed souvenir.

Ken Bainbridge, Harvard physicist running the whole Manhattan Project circus, turns to Oppenheimer — the man who’d spend the rest of his life haunted by the glow — and drops the line only someone with a New England soul could deliver clean: “We are all sons of bitches now.”

Weeks later, August 6th and 9th, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leveled — the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used in war. A permanent scar on humanity, no matter how you slice it.

Bainbridge spent the rest of his life trying to undo the monster he helped midwife into existence.

And about a year after all that, I boomed onto the planet myself — born into a prefab little government town called Oak Ridge, where the fences hummed, the jet fighters buzzed overhead, and every entrance had a guard who looked like he’d seen too much. I spent my first ten years around atomic plants, security checkpoints, and the strange quiet of a place built to help make the damn thing in the first place.

Thirty years later, I was getting myself arrested trying to stop nuclear proliferation — life’s funny like that, it circles back with a badge and a pair of handcuffs.

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Clamshell Echoes: A Rambling Harbor Reflection on Seabrook and Sanctuary

There was a time when the salt air of New Hampshire carried more than the scent of low tide; it had the pulse of resistance. I remember it not as a headline or a footnote, but because I was there as part of the Clamshell Alliance, and we stood stubborn and unarmed against the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant.

We weren’t just protesting a facility; we were trying to protect a way of life. The marshes, the estuaries, the fragile coastline — they weren’t just geography. And when the government said “progress,” we said “not here.”

My friend Ron Rieck, a pacifist apple picker with the soul of a poet, climbed the weather observation tower in January 1976 and stayed there for 36 cold hours. Alone but not isolated, he turned that tower into a lighthouse of resistance. I was supposed to go up there with him. That was the plan. But duty called me back to Baltimore, to Jonah House, where the work of peace and resistance and support was unfolding in its own sacred rhythm. I wasn’t there in body on the tower with Ron, but I was there in spirit, tethered by purpose and friendship.

In May of 1977, over 2,000 of us occupied the construction site. This time I was there. I felt the ground beneath me, the tension in the air, and the quiet resolve of people who knew they might be arrested but refused to be silenced. More than 1,400 of us were taken into custody. We slept on armory floors, shared stories, and turned confinement into communion.


The Clamshell Alliance wasn’t just a protest group—it was a blueprint for change. We organized in affinity groups, practiced nonviolence, and made sure our resistance was as disciplined as it was passionate. We weren’t radicals. We were caretakers. And we believed that energy should be clean, democratic, and rooted in respect for the land.

Seabrook eventually went online in 1990, but not without delay, bankruptcy, and a legacy of resistance that still echoes. The plant may have risen, but so did we. And in that growing, we shaped a movement that inspired anti-nuclear activism across the country. Jonah House, as the war in Vietnam ended, became involved in Nuclear disarmament, as Phil Berigan said. “Nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself.”

Now, decades later, I sit in Rambling Harbor and remember. Not with bitterness, but with pride. Because sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is stand still. To plant your feet in the sand and say, “This matters.”

We were clamshells—fragile, beautiful, and unbreakable in our unity. And though the tide has shifted, the memory remains. A protest becomes a poem. A moment becomes a movement. And a harbor becomes a sanctuary.

Here is a line from Allen Ginsberg’s Plutonian Ode: “I declare the end of War!” “I chant your absolute Vanity. Yes, you are pure Void.” “I enter your secret places with my mind…” “I call upon the soul of Man to arise and walk.”

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