View across the Outer Harbour of Stornoway

Friday 6 April 2012

Evening post




With thanks to Donna for previously providing these graphics

A nice bright day in Stornoway, with good sunny spells. It was a day with an unusual ship in port, I'll post pics on another occasion.

It looks as if Virginia Beach in the States has come off lightly when that F18 fighter-jet crashed onto an apartment block. Although devastation is extensive, nobody was killed (well, as far as we know at 6pm EDT) and only six people hurt. The story of the pilot apologising to people on the ground for crashing onto their apartment made me smile.

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Friday 6 April

Good Friday today, the start of the Easter weekend. From point of view of Biblical history, this is the day that Christ was crucified. In two days time, on Easter Sunday, the tomb where Christ was interred, will be found empty and He will have been resurrected. It is customary in places like Germany and Holland to attend a performance of the St Matthew's Passion by J.S. Bach, of which I embed a performance of the final choral.

The keyphrase runs "In tears we sit down", as the disciples gather round the tomb where Christ's body has been put after his death on the cross.

There will be many tears, silent or not, in Bosnia Hercegovina today. It is the 20th anniversary of the start of the bloody civil war back in 1992, which included the infamous siege of Sarajevo. That city was cut off for 45 months, and more than 11,000 died. Some distance to the east, the worst atrocity of all, at Srebrenica, took place in July 1995. The UN had kept a safe zone there, and at the nearby town of Gorazde, for Bosnian Moslims, only for it to be overrun by Bosnian Serbs under Gen Ratko Mladic. Troops from the Dutch UN battalion, friends of mine included, were forced to cooperate with Gen Mladic in gathering the Moslim population, separating the men and boys and putting them on buses to be taken away. All 8,000 of them were killed.

I'll have another post later today.