Halt, Who Goes There?

That is a Christian name with no surname and no title please. There is more about me on my name page on Ward's Wiki. I am known on several wikis simply as RiVer, which is how you type my name to link to this page.

My email is river@redbricks.org.uk.

I am a fairly regular attender of meetings for worship with the Quakers in Manchester England, and a convinced pacifist. (My pacifist convictions led to my interest in the Quakers, not the other way round)

In November 1999 I attempted, with another Quaker, to disarm the final UK Trident nuclear submarine, and in January 2001 was found not guilty by a jury of conspring to commit criminal damage. As we had admitted our intentions we can only presume that the jury agreed with us that these weapons should not exist.

This was part of the ongoing Trident Ploughshares campaign. A page I recently contributed to their legal wiki site is at http://www.andrewgray.uklinux.net/tpwiki/wiki.pl?WasThereANuclearWarOnThatDay - read that page and maybe you'll indirectly learn quite a bit about me even though it is not officially about me. The last line is definitely on topic here.

There's nothing off topic here, by the way, apart I suppose from gross obscenity. We've always defined ourselves more by culture, community and the choice of hosts than simply by topic. We are also defined by the fact that people are allowed and encouraged to talk about Jesus and Christianity here, after Ward judged that it had become a subject too big (and possibly too heated) for Wiki.

The thing I am most interested in discussing, that might be relevant on this clublet at least, is the international plowshares movement, see Plow Shares.

Given what we have already discussed and the world situation since September 11th, that is likely to be of interest to a number of people here.

I really like the idea behind the Breaking Bread Test, especially as it involves lunch. I live in Manchester England and if anyone wants to set up lunch with me please email me (address near top of page), preferably including your phone number as well.

I also visit Scotland three or four times/year and would be happy to meet any of you for lunch on my way there, in any of the mainline railway towns between Manchester and Glasgow.

Mc River would be an option then? It would be good for any of us living in the UK to meet up with you. Scotland may be a possibility with me in December/January. I would look forward to that. -- Richard Drake

Hi River and welcome to Why!

When I say my name I don't get anything except a "nice to meet you".What is it like to get 20 questions about something so simple as a name? -- Kathy Bracy

There are good and bad points. Halt, Who Goes There? is an example of one of the bad points, but even that is not totally bad. The contact was not comfortable for either of us, yet it is clear that Richard Drake and I have actually made contact.

And that is actually the biggest upside. I never get that long mutually embarrassing silence after an introduction that I used to get. And the reasons for choosing the name River are all inherently close to things that matter to me, so the conversation gets off to an area I care about instead of making polite chit chat about football or the weather or whatever.

Best experience ever was a woman who heard my name being called and answered to it. Turned out her surname was Rivers, Dawn Rivers. Not her maiden name nor her husband's name, but a surname she had chosen in order to avoid both those conventions. So swapped Chosen Names experiences for about five minutes till my (then-) girlfriend came up.

"Hi Dawn" I said, to the astonishment of Ms Rivers, "meet Dawn". Between us we'd got both her names.

Hahaha.... Well you see if I were to meet you in person and find out you only had 1 name, I would have 20 questions! Like: Why? How did you pick that name? What does it mean? River you would have me entertained and intrigued for HOURS (and I'm serious)! -- Kathy Bracy