29 October 2018

Dear Ginny Battson

Thank you for your email of 10 October to the Cabinet Secretary for Education in relation to the ecoliteracy within the curriculum. I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary.

The Welsh Government is committed to supporting our young people to develop the knowledge and skills they need to become active, ethical and informed citizens of Wales and the world; which includes in the current curriculum engaging with topics delivered through Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC). Through ESDCG learners explore the links between society, economy and environment and our own lives and those of people throughout the world. … Read more

Lismore Lighthouse, nr Oban. Photo by me.

“Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits, or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays.” Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

So much fury is coming our way, those of us who bear the burden of understanding extreme capitalism, and the vast global inequity it perpetuates, is fuelling Earth Crisis.  The more we shine the light, the more profound the insecurity of those who benefit from it. From the alt-right to the eco-modernists, we are the object of increasing anger. … Read more

Yellow shell moth on my finger, photo by me.

This week, thousands of people marched the streets of London, calling for a second referendum on the British breakup with the European Union. Simultaneously, and perhaps connected in many ways, hundreds also marched in Lancashire to protest Cuadrilian fracking. And a group called Extinction Rebellion are planning active civil disruption, beginning at the end of the month, in the face of political inaction and apathy towards the climate crisis.

On Twitter, at least, I am registering a shift in the general zeitgeist ~ notice taken, at last, by a greater crowd beyond the long converted. … Read more

In creating Kinnaria, I have also coined 'Nagorasphere.' Inspired by work on bodily exchange by Luce Irigaray & Murray Bookchin's communalism.

N is for nature.
Agora ~ ancient gathering place, sometimes a market where exchanges take place. All is flow.
Sphere ~ ball, global.

— Ginny (@ginbat) October 15, 2018

 … Read more

Dear Minister

Thank you for the invite via Twitter to write to you further on egalitarian ecoliteracy.

Now the latest IPCC report has been published, still erring on the conservative side yet relentless in its call for urgent action, I hope beyond measure you will advocate providing ALL Welsh children and adult learners with the ecological systems and environmental knowledge/settings they truly require.

Equipping each and everyone for the rapid changes now, and the volatile future science predicts ahead of us, is the best gift we can bestow and a collective necessity in Wales under the WFG and Environment Acts.

And more. … Read more

Bombus lapidarius, the red-tailed bumblebee, photo by me.

“Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There must be the will to produce a superior thing.”
― John Ruskin

The banks of the river fell sharply away, just as Cormorant sunk beneath the surface like a lead weight. I traced her bubble fish-hunt until she popped up again like a charred log. With a smile, I acknowledged her ability. How did she learn this? Was it something innate, observational or was it by instruction? I returned my attention to the steep river bank, lowered myself over tussock and bramble, to find the sturdiness of a small shingle-cove. … Read more

There once was a time when I was out of my head on benzodiazepines, and as sleepless as the City That Never Sleeps.
Delivered by pumpkin-mice-magic (I can’t remember the car journey), I had found myself at the Cardinal Clinic, Windsor, to be treated intensively for PTSD.
Peak Fall. Crisp, clear days; the birds sang brightly and squirrels danced in the trees. But I could not engage. I could neither look nor listen. Burned into my memory was the vision of my mother, dead from suicide, in a blue nighty I’d bought for her birthday.
My Prince, based at the clinic that was once a King’s hunting lodge, was an ex-Gurkha Regiment psychiatrist. … Read more

Female mallard, by me.

UK nature, animal and conservation charities ~ some founded and inspired by courageous Victorian women such as Octavia Hill, Beatrix Potter, Anna Sewell, Alice Drakoules, Emily Williamson, Eliza Phillips ~ have been increasingly dominated by a patriarchal economy and scientific reductionism.

I’m here to say that emotions are absolutely vital. Cast off as irrational, the domain of the inferior female mind, weak, unreliable, emotions are far from it. They are evolutionary drivers of change. Lest we forget.

As humans, we are part of nature. The love we humans feel is a also a force in non-human ecological relationships (I argue via my soon-to-be-submitted Masters thesis), and a powerful one; a force that is inherent in life’s positive, generative interconnections and processes (Fluminism). … Read more

 
We played the common land this evening,

 
Poem and image by me.
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Woodland Edge, photo by me.

“As our mother earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature. [This] clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man’s supreme importance and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element.”

~ Ernst Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe

Prometheus Books, 1900