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

In correspondence with my tutor…
“The big point I am making, is that unlike holism, deep ecology, Naess, I am suggesting it is the interconnections/processes, the doing, the perpetuation of life, love as a doing word, not the overall ecosystem which require the vital protective emphasis and focus. The problem with holism is that it reduces the worth of the individual. For example, farming is a kind of holism, ecocentrism (Leopold), but species are worth killing for the good of the idea of what is ‘whole’ by the farmer. Instead, by valuing the processes, individuals are generally indispensible. I disagree with the main tennet of deep ecology that the whole, including non-organics, is worth more than the individual. … Read more

Photo by me.

Some scientists are already saying ~ the longer we leave change, the more radical it will need to be in order to avoid unmitigated disaster.

— Ginny (@ginbat) December 29, 2017

Strong associations between radical action and risk-taking in psychology. Some are just not risk takers. Playing it safe. OK.

— Ginny (@ginbat) December 29, 2017

But biodiversity declines and climate changes may require more radical solutions before many people are 'ready' to take the risk. There is a gap or a deficit.

— Ginny (@ginbat) December 29, 2017

I can't find a word for this, so in my tradition of ethics as a work in progress on Twitter, I'll call it the Transilience Gap.