Seasonalight

Struggling to imagine. Image by me.

There is a habit by most (not all) science-oriented academics and writers of analysing the present and simply adding external changes (temps, economics) to predict futures. In this way, they are missing out on the potential of shifting human values – a moral imagination deficit.

— 🧬 Ginny Battson (@seasonalight) July 21, 2022

Moral, mood, mode, modern, medicine – linguistic PIE roots “med” to take appropriate measures, Sanskrit midiur – I judge. As opposed to manner, mandate, from PIE root “man” and “do” meaning hand to give – the hand that does – the habit.

— 🧬 Ginny Battson (@seasonalight) July 21, 2022

Imagination, from latin imaginari, from PIE root “aim” to copy.

Talk by Ginny Battson, recorded largely by the River Lugg (fieldwork of place) for playback at the English Shared Conference, Manchester, July 2022.

Transcript.

[above gentle rush of water, some traffic noise, birdsong, including cooing woodpigeons, and occasionally duck wings flapping in water]

From Ginny Battson to Paul Evans

Hi Paul, I wonder whether you would be good enough to offer your thoughts on a new word I have been forging for this idea of introducing a little magic to non-fiction. You said you’d be disappointed if I didn’t come up with something!

I recently attended an online event with Catherine Wilcox and Charles Talioferro, and asked them what they thought of using highly imaginative interventions in non-fiction.

We are entirely into the gardening season, and I am protecting my wildflowers that grow along my front wall with polite signs (and additional cartoon butterflies), asking neighbours kindly not to “weed”.  I am the only person along my row of terraces to allow the flowers to grow freely. Last year, we had red admirals breeding in the low-lying pellatory-of-the wall and plenty of solitary bees and wasps foraging among the dandies and groundsels. This year,  a tiny aubretia appeared from nowhere. I hope they grow into a fine clump of purple.

I understand gardening, and even farming, sometimes require us to make choices in confined places. … Read more

The Old General Hospital, Wye.

Boon or bane, I was born downstream from this place I stand now under unfurling beech leaves, just past the Victoria walking bridge. Down there, around the bend. See it? A red brick hospital is now apartments with annual ground rents and an alloted view. I’ve grown up with my feet in this river, with the mayfly larvae, on sunny picnic days at Bredwardine beach too, knowing— turning wet pebbles in just my toddler’s knickers and sunhat – I was part of it all. This river taught me how to listen and swim. When you are bred into quiet waters and their teresapien communal places, you’re bathed in that soft green song. … Read more

21 April 2022

Dear Jesse Norman MP

Hungry for energy, the field, Westhope, 2011.

Another week, another bereavement. Could the grief bus just stop. I want to get off.

~~~

Meanwhile, thoughts are whirling around my head, several key projects stacked in my brain’s in-tray. I am returning to studies after a two-month bereavement break and, in all honesty, I am finding it difficult to concentrate on these longer works (though I’m trying), and much beyond my daughter’s imminent A’Levels, or bursts of 280 characters.

I am moving through a period of deep loss, ADHD diagnosis ~ also some kind of loss, but of my old identity ~ and medicine titration; a battle to even get anything from the NHS. … Read more

chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Ergonvast ~ energy wasted, akin to ecocide, impacts social, ecological and climatic systems in a negative way, and adds to planetary crisis.

Ergon ~ Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon). Doublet of work.

Vast ~ from Latin vastum. “Empty, desolate.” Origin of “waste”.

For example, light and noise pollution, uninsulated housing, wasteful advertising technology.

~~~ … Read more

Chapter Severn – The Mouth 

Danger.

The Mythological.

Jumping.