Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 25)

Climate scientists and activists are still tending to think and communicate to the masses in human socio-political terms, even going so far as to reject the worth of saving NGO-promo animals (trees, whales, pandas, polar bears), or other teresapiens in general as an un-emotive or meaningless exercise, and continuing to place the human species as central to all like a gravitational force.

To bring people into the Nawoken, may require the initial motivation of something much closer to themselves. What immediately touches us drives us. But tragically, that too is a legacy of white, ‘Enlightenment’ colonialist separation, reductionism, or bifurcation. Many of the indigenous communities, before the violence of European colonisation erupted, were already living vast eco-logical interconnected lives, honouring and respecting living beings and places, to include the inorganic, where humans were culturally not centre-placed in isolation in all decision making. … Read more

L is for Language (photo by me)

My first language is English. It matters not what my ethnic heritage is or is not. I did not choose for it to be. I was born into an English speaking family.

English, according to linguistics scholars, is a Western Germanic language on the family tree of all languages. It also uses core words originating in Latin, French, Norse, and others through acts of (brutal) Colonialism.

I am also aware that English is also contended as the “lingua franca”, the first globalized linguistic strategy of humans, but I would argue against that as a good thing, as I would argue against the validity of globalization itself. … Read more

I am in my new, rented, Victorian back yard, refreshing the pot garden and pond in the fading light, though there’s a spectacular beauty who already presides here, and I acknowledge I am in her realm. She is known by the taxonomists as Araneus diadematus, garden orb-web spider, but I call her Queen. Queen has made her home inside the head of my sea horse wind chime, and I have to remember to avoid her incredible web at all times as I carefully potter about in her shadow.

White markings on her abdomen in the shape of a cross are made from cells containing the protein guanine. … Read more

Coal spoils at Llanbradach, South Wales. Photo by me. Please click on the photo for more information from the Wildlife Trusts on the nature of Llangwellas known so far as Brownfield Sites.

A while back, I was asked by Jo Cartmell, @watervole and @nearbywild on Twitter, to think about creating a new word instead of ‘brownfield’ when referring to abandoned industrial or waste land after development. As she rightly points out, some of these places can be buzzing with the most amazing wildlife, often small and beyond of our consciousness at first, due to the exquisite evolutionary process of primary succession.

I know such sites, and feel the pain of their making, the joy of their gradual strive to return to the floloca. … Read more

The Wye, Autumn. Photo by me.

Manchester Metropolitan University

Course: PHD

Working Research Title: Love is the River; ecology, emotion and resistance

Faculty: Faculty Of Arts & Humanities ~ Manchester Writing School.

Director of Studies: Paul Evans

Proposed Supervisor(s): Gregory Norminton

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I am honoured, daunted and yet excited to share this with you all.

At 50, after a type 3 cancer diagnosis and treatment to lengthen my life,  if only a few years…

If this is the last project I’ll do, I’ll be content.

And to have such an esteemed team! I am so, so grateful for this chance.

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  … Read more

I haven’t been to Bodenham Lake for a few years. Last time, I sat with my little girl in a bird hide on a cold wintry day, with Bendog at my knee, bewitched by barnacle geese feeding and preening. Today, Gracie started sixth form college, so I decided to mark it with a wilder walk on my own.

My intention was for a quiet moment of reflection. But, ah, to wander the old quarry lake worked hard by the Wildlife Trust for the benefit of gentle waders, with their stick-thin legs and crackable eggs. With internal combustion engines at full blast, and the other crushing, whiny sounds of bulldozers and chainsaws travelling loud across an expanse of flat, steely grey, there were no water birds to be seen. … Read more

Wye at Hereford – mute swan paddles through reflections of the Bishop’s Palace. Photo by me.

Moved.

From our big sky vista to a small Victorian brick yard, my pot garden is ruffled, but not dead. Plants, some bagged for ease of carry, are limp over algae concrete sloping to a small drain cover I already cleaned.

I couldn’t face a last fare-thee-well to my Cardiffian birds. I looked up briefly through the crack in the door, hand on steering wheel, as I lowered into the driving seat. A few gulls and pigeons peered down at me from the balcony wall, and I felt rightly judged. … Read more