Letters - 19 October 2018
From travelling through time to values in education
Travelling through time
I read with great interest the article in the Friend of 5 October, especially in respect of the fact that light from the Andromeda galaxy has taken two million years to reach us.
As someone who studied geology many years ago I can cope with the concept of millions of years in respect of geological history but really had little idea how far away the closest galaxy to our own would be.
As a keen ‘Facebooker’ I have sometimes posted photographs (not my own) of the Milky Way from sites such as High Force waterfall, or other dark sky areas in the North Pennines. I will now have to view them in a new light!
Given this incredible distance, I find it all the more disturbing that the anthropogenic problems of climate change, pollution, over-population and loss of biodiversity on our planet have worsened so significantly even during my own lifetime from the late 1940s.
At the risk perhaps of stating the obvious, I would like to register the point that so much damaging change in such a minuscule speck of time is deeply troubling. This article certainly brought this observation home to me, and I expect to others, very forcefully indeed.
Julie Stobbs
Moving stories
The very moving stories (28 September) from members of the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) confirm what many of us have found in the course of our work among refugees.
We may continue to offer support and comfort, but the realities of life here are often cruel, and now make joyful scenes of November 2016, when a few refugees were allowed in – seem hollow.
Yet the daily tragedies continue, and we must continue to support desperate refugees. More importantly we must oppose the wars and sales of armaments that are creating the problems in the first place.
Anne M Jones
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