The Bremen Bod Blog

  Till the little ones weary No more can be merry The sun does descend, And our sports have an end: Round the laps of their mothers, Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest; And sport no more seen, On the darkening Green.   The Echoing Green by William Blake   Dear Friends, Even as a Catholic, I can honestly say I’ve never taken much spiritual growth from hardship or found any virtue in the idea of offering up our sufferings. Sure, I get that we should all carry our crosses and I understand that the meaning of our existence isn’t to be found in comfort. Yet, I often think on the words of Dorothy Day who described the goal of Catholic Worker as trying to create a society where it ‘is easier for people to be good’. Even when Dorothy embraced voluntary poverty for herself, she still understood that living was meant to be joyful. Dorothy goes onto say that ‘life wasn’t meant to be so hard, God never intended for th...

By now you’ll have seen the disturbing footage from Buffalo of a rather grandfatherly looking gent being shoved backwards by the Police, followed by the image of dark blood seeping from the back of his skull as it smacked into the concrete. It turns out that this 75 year old man was Martin Gugino, a long standing peace activist and member of Amistad Catholic Worker. I’m tempted to say he’s one of our own, if only to highlight the acute problem of us not always thinking of everyone else on such protests as ‘one of our own’.    Fortunately, Martin’s condition is described as stable and his friends say Mr Gugino would want us all to get back out onto the streets and continue to protest and resist alongside Black Lives Matter activists, while he remains in hospital, just as Dorothy Day stood with  Martin Luther King  Jr. and  Cesar Chavez.    That after all, is the Catholic Worker way but if you were to ask a Catholic Worker how else we mig...

I was very interested to see a digital copy of the 1935 Gourock Directory posted on social media last week. There are dozens associations listed in the Gourock Directory; From cooperatives, guilds, fraternities, friendly societies, libraries, reading rooms, to a League of Nations Union branch, various social clubs, working mens clubs, political party branches, trade unions and numerous sports clubs and Church denominations. Reading this fascinating piece of social history highlighted just how associational and voluntary our community was back then, and how strong our civil society was too. It’s clear that in those days, people tended to do more things collectively, within institutions and not so much as individuals. This was also a time when small towns had their own thriving cultural life, long before the dominance of big cities and the centralisation of capital, subsequently closing down many of our local banks and financial institutions.   In my opinion, associa...

Germans were the masters of the Sugar Trade and most of the warehouses in Greenock were built by Germans. Naturally these German engineers and bosses brought over there own workers. At the time Germany was a very backwards rural country with little work, much like Ireland. Plus Germany and Britain had a very strong relationship. Most of the ethnic Germans in Greenock came from around Hanover. At one time the House of Hanover and Britain had the same King and the King's German Legion had fought for Britain in the Napoleonic War, the Hessians had fought for Britain in the American War. Even in WW1 there were ethnic Germans known as the Kaiser's Own fighting for Britain. Immigration from Germany went from about 1850ish up to 1880ish. By 1900 there were over 800 ethnic Germans in Greenock. By WW1 this figure was dramatically reduced with most immigrants going back to Germany or onto the US. (We still have distant cousins among the "Fancy Dutch" in Pennsylvania due to this...