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at the heart of earth, art and spirit

May/June 2010 No. 260

ON BEING HUMANEXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH ANTONY GORMLEY

BHUTAN’S PRIME MINISTER EDUCATING FOR GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS

Resurgence gets it right, time after time.When most of the media gets it wrong,

Resurgence quietly points the way.

Andrew MarrBBC Broadcaster

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WELCOME

A t the end of last year, I had the privilege of participating in a workshop on education in Bhutan. At some point during our discussions, some university students asked me: “Our country is engaged in designing a

system of education for happiness to complement our vision of Gross National Happiness. What advice can you give us?”

“When you leave university, do not seek jobs,” I said. They were surprised by my answer. Some of them even

looked stunned.“What do you mean? How can we make a living without a

job?” asked one.“Rather than seeking a job, create a job. Even better, create

a livelihood!” I said. “After all, Bhutan is a Buddhist country where you have a tradition of right livelihood.”

As you can imagine, a lively discussion followed.When are we happy? We are happy when we are free and

contented. When we want someone else to give us a job, we become an employee, and an employee has to obey the wishes of the employer. When you are employed, your freedom to think, to imagine and to be creative is curtailed. And for the employees of large companies, businesses and factories, this holds even more so. Working in big institutions leaves the individual only a limited amount of ‘space’ to freely innovate, to follow their intuition and to take initiative. The result is frustration, discontentment and unhappiness.

At this present time, educational systems all over the world serve the interest of those who value the Gross National Product above all else, which then means education must be largely oriented towards getting better-paid employment. Intellectual work attracts higher rewards than physical work, so educational institutions pay more attention to developing the intellect of their students.

The Bhutanese vision of Gross National Happiness requires education to be broader than that: it has to be holistic too, placing

equal importance on head, heart, hands and home. Of course we need to learn to think and use our brains, but we also need to develop our intuition, our imagination and our heart qualities. Moreover, we need to learn handy skills and to be makers, builders and producers, rather than mere consumers of manufactured goods. We also need to learn to take care of our homes and our communities: not just our family home and human communities, but also our planetary home and the Earth community.

Education for economic growth emphasises the importance of the three Rs: Reading, Writing and Arithmetic (they are not even three Rs proper!). However, education for happiness needs to replace the three Rs with four Hs: Head, Heart, Hands and Home (E = H4). If we do this, then we will be better equipped and better prepared to follow our vocation and create livelihoods instead of seeking jobs or employment.

Bhutan is fortunate to have a wise prime minister, Jigmi Y. Thinley. He addressed our workshop (our Keynotes article in this issue is based on that presentation) and elaborated his vision for the future direction of Bhutanese education. He said that human wellbeing and planetary sustainability should be the paramount aim of Bhutanese education.

Mr Thinley’s thoughts resonate with the views of Richard Louv who, in an edited extract from his latest book, Last Child in the Woods, now published in paperback, warns us against a childhood condition he calls Nature-Deficit Disorder. When we learn from Nature and are in Nature we are at our happiest.

The vision of Prime Minister Thinley and Richard Louv can be realised by following the formula E = H4.

It is our absolute pleasure to publish these two thinkers in the pages of Resurgence.

Enjoy.

SATISH KUMAR

E=H4

FOR HAPPINESSEDUCATIONWhen we learn from nature and are in nature we are at our happiest

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FRONTLINE

6 TREES FOR LIFE 6 MOUNTAINS OF HOPE7 LIVING MAPS8 BEYOND THE BARRIERS9 THE SMOKY SPICE

UNDERCURRENTS

10 GOING BACK TO OUR ROOTS Julian Rose

Why the green movement urgently needs to revisit ‘Small is beautiful’

12 NUCLEAR IS NOT THE SOLUTION

Helen CaldicottExposing the myth that nuclear

power is in any way green

14 WHY WOOL STILL MATTERS

Sue BlackerStopping the demise of a

sustainable and natural resource

16 NATURE DEFICIT DISORDER

Richard LouvExtract from his book Last Child in

the Woods

18 HOLD FAST William ThomasIn the busy modern world, fasting

can be a chance to slow down

KEYNOTES

20 EDUCATION IS THE KEY Jigmi Y. Thinley

The Prime Minister of Bhutan on the role of Gross National Happiness (GNH) in education

BIOCULTURAL DIVERSITY

24 CELEBRATION Survival InternationalWe Are One photo feature

REGULARS

2 WELCOME Satish Kumar

30 A SENSE OF PLACERobert Ernst

32 PIONEERS: GEORGINA DOWNS Rachel Fleming

36 BIG FOOT, LITTLE FOOT Mukti Mitchell

38 THE VEGETARIAN FOODIE Jane Hughes

40 NATURE WRITING Patrick Evans

42 OCCASIONAL DIDYMUS John Moat

44 OPINION John Naish

45 LETTERS TO THE EDITORS

68 COMMUNITY PAGE

ARTS & CRAFTS

46 POETRY Peter Abbs

New Voices – a new anthology of recently-published poetry

SCULPTURE SPECIAL Three British sculptors give a unique insight into their work

48 IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE MASTERS

Andy ChristianArtist Andrew Lacey is finding greener ways to work in bronze

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50 MAKING TREESPaul Anderson A sculptor grapples with the limitations of his raw materials

52 ON BEING HUMANJan van Boeckel Our exclusive interview with the British sculptor Antony Gormley

55 CASTING A SPELLResurgence Arts Archive The Mythic Garden

REVIEWS

56 AWAKING CONSCIOUSNESS

Steve Taylor introduces his new book on our ‘natural state’ of being

58 A STEP BEYOND SCIENCE Philip Franses reviews Reinventing the Sacred

59 MUCH LESS RESISTANCE David Lorimer reviews A New Science of Life

60 ZEN COOKINGLaura Deutsch reviews The Complete

Tassajara Cookbook and The Tassajara Bread Book

61 ASPIRATION OR TABOO? Jane MacNamee reviews On Kindness

62 SYSTEM REBOOT Shakti Maira reviews bazaars, conversations & freedom

63 WILD GRACE Philip Vann reviews Bird on a Wire

64 AGROFUELS ARE NOT THE ANSWER Victoria Bawtree reviews Agrofuels

65 A HEARTFELT PLEA Caspar Walsh reviews The Barefoot Beekeeper

66 LIVING POETRY Jay Ramsay reviews The Secret Life of the Universe

67 WALKING ALLOWED Phil Maillard reviews Walking Aloud

69 CLASSIFIED ADVERTS

72 DISPLAY ADVERTS

FOR CONTACT INFORMATION FOR RESURGENCE OFFICES AND AGENTS, PLEASE SEE PAGE 83

FRONT COVER: Antony Gormley STILL I, 1994Lead, plaster, air13 x 19 x 30 cmPHOTOGRAPH: STEPHEN WHITE, LONDON

What a Waste!Over a third of Britons still do not recycle their household goods, according to a new survey commissioned by the British Heart Foundation’s (BHF) Furniture & Electrical stores.

Although over a quarter of UK households currently replace large furniture and electrical goods – including sofas and televisions – every two years, an alarming 20% of those families simply dump their unwanted goods in landfill sites.

BHF discovered most of the households still dumping these goods did not know recycling was an alternative and greener option.

Each year, British households are sending 50,000 tonnes of furniture to landfill – that’s the equivalent of burying 3,000 double-decker buses.

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ILLUSTRATORS William Hibberd is a graphic designerRachel Marsh is a graphic designerTudor Humphries is an artist & illustrator Sacha Peers (8 years) enjoys Lego and playing outdoorsAlberto Ruggieri is a freelance illustratorMeriel Thurstan is a botanical illustrator

The Weee Man: waste sculpture, Eden Project

NEW ON THE WEBSITESLOW SUNDAY: 30th MAY 2010A healthy pace: take a leisurely approach to vitality!

EDUCATIONClimate change: Bhutan Video report on how this tiny Himalayan nation is dealing with rapidly melting glaciers.

BLOGSIan Tennant: on UK AWARE.

RESOURCES ONLINEReaders’ groups pack: everything you need to know about starting a readers’ group. Contributor writing guidelines Green events listing

WEB EXCLUSIVESThe exclusive Antony Gormley article in full Art in Nature: Mythic Garden revisitedMore recipes: rhubarb and ginger pudding

www.resurgence.org

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FRONTLINE NEWS FROM THE GRASSROOTS

Since November 2006, millions of people from scouts to presidents have

been rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty planting trees as part of the United Nations Billion Tree Campaign.

The initial goal was to catalyse the pledging and planting of one billion trees, enabling the public to express their concerns over climate change and

ecosystem degradation, but the campaign has surpassed its original aims.

Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, said: “The simple act of planting a tree resonates and unites a child in the slums of Africa with a president in Mexico, or a corporate CEO in Paris. It is the kind of solidarity that now needs to be expressed by all governments and heads of state in order to move economies towards a low-carbon, sustainable future.”

Wangari Maathai, the founder of the Kenyan Green Belt Movement and co-patron of the Billion Tree Campaign, added: “Let’s continue to plant even more trees to celebrate this wonderful achievement, the fruit of collective action

by people all over the planet. By making the Billion Tree Campaign such an incredible success, people from every continent are calling on their governments to truly start caring for the planet and to find unity in the fight against climate change.”

China alone has planted 6.1 billion trees, of which 2.6 billion were pledged to the Billion Tree Campaign, bringing the number

of trees planted worldwide for the campaign by the end of 2009 to 7.4 billion. A number of other countries have also planted impressive numbers of trees: Ethiopia has planted 1.4 billion,

Turkey has planted 711 million, and Mexico has planted 537 million. The total now stands at more than 10 billion, with a further one and a half billion pledged.

As well as catalysing governments to take action to reforest their lands, the campaign has also brought together people from all walks of life in creative, original and pioneering initiatives. The Replant New Orleans programme sponsored the planting of fruit trees to “help breathe new life” into a community struggling with the aftermath of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina; the Greening Soweto campaign is transforming stark and dusty townships with new, tree-lined lanes; and 132 children in fifty-six countries have pledged to plant a total of one million trees

as part of the ‘Stop Talking. Start Planting’ campaign started by a German schoolboy.

The economic gains of tree planting should not be underestimated either: the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative, as well as planting 38 million trees in the region, has devised a tree-planting ‘green job’ proposal to stimulate the economy of Appalachia and reap the ecological benefits of a region-wide reforestation effort.

In addition, the Billion Tree Campaign has mobilised groups and individuals in post-conflict areas around the world, bringing the seeds of hope to communities in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Iraq, Liberia and Somalia, among others. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has planted nine million trees in and around refugee camps in Asia and Africa, with the aim of creating an environment that can nurture and nourish its displaced inhabitants. His Serene Highness Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco and the campaign’s co-patron, said: “I have always had a strong belief in the symbolic strength of the Billion Tree Campaign and I am delighted that it has exceeded our greatest expectations and will greatly benefit future generations.”

www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign

Report by Lorna Howarth.

G L O B A L

TREES FOR LIFEThe Billion Tree Campaign has now planted over ten billion trees — that’s one for every person on the planet.

In August 2006, a flash flood ripped through the province of Dire Dawa in eastern Ethiopia, leaving over 1,000 people dead and

10,000 more homeless. Deforestation and inappropriate agricultural practices were the primary causes of the devastation, and most of those killed were illegal migrants who lived in a squatter area of Dire Dawa which was prone to flooding as well as to inter-ethnic and religious violence.

E T H I O P I A

MOUNTAINS OF HOPECreating community out of catastrophe.

“The simple act of planting a tree unites the child in the slums of Africa with a president in Mexico”

Planting trees in Turkey

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compiled and edited by Lorna Howarth

Most modern maps of the Peruvian Amazon only hint at the lives, indeed, the very existence of the people who live there. There are

neat little dots representing the towns, and an occasional aeroplane icon to indicate where a pilot can safely land on an airstrip. Nature itself – a dense, verdant expanse of jungle – is shown in various shades of green, and if the map is a recent one, there will be shapes cut into those green areas denoting concessions to oil or logging and marking those areas waiting to be felled and exploited.

The blanket green and the empty spaces on the maps hide a cacophony of life because, aside from the rustle of its paper edges, a map can never sing as raucously as the jungle does. It does not resound with inhabitants’ voices as they travel along those blue lines that mark the river and its myriad tributaries, paddling their canoes to villages and hunting grounds, or the more ominous sound of large oil tankers as they too move along the Pastaza River – ominous because two-thirds of the Peruvian Amazon now falls under the shadow of potential oil drilling.

The Achuar of the Corrientes River, who live in the north-west of the Peruvian Amazon, already know the ecological footprint of the petroleum companies upon their land, leaving residues of oil-spills clogging the soil and polluting the rivers. This legacy does not show on the maps, but in the earth and water that people depend upon.

T H E A M A Z O N

LIVING MAPSHow new GPS technologies are being used in the Amazon to first plot and then protect Indigenous lands.

A remarkable project has since begun to transform Dire Dawa, enabling the poorest people in the area to better withstand the ongoing challenges of climate change. Community members and farmers have together reforested two mountains overlooking Dire Dawa’s main floodplain. Drought-resistant saplings have been planted and retainer walls – to control water run-off – have been constructed. If goats or cattle are found grazing in these areas, they are removed and their owners are prosecuted. So successful are the initial stages of the project

that, in the last six months, spotted hyenas and leopards, not seen for forty years in this region, have begun to return – a sure sign of a healthier environment.

This level of community-led involvement is the first of its kind in Ethiopia. Local people are integral to the decision-making process and use their Indigenous knowledge of the area to develop solutions. It is an extraordinary example of how members of a previously hostile and disparate community have learned to communicate and co-operate to reduce the risk of devastation on this scale happening again.

Technical support and resources have been provided by a small community-based Ethiopian organisation called JeCCDO, which was set up in the wake of the 1984 famine to provide support to displaced people. The community, working alongside JeCCDO, has also now abandoned the use of harmful pesticides and is using organic farming methods, with great success. JeCCDO has been advocating organic farming methods in Ethiopia for the past eighteen years and, thanks to the success of the Dire Dawa project, it plans to introduce these pioneering methods in other vulnerable areas.

Report by Angela Robson.

All that is about to change because, for the last three years, the Achuar people, along with another eighty-odd Amazonian communities, have been systematically mapping their lands in a project that, to date, has covered around a million hectares of Amazon forest. And it is this map – one forged from both the ancient wisdom of the elders and by using the most up-to-date Global Positioning System (GPS) mapping techniques – that Indigenous people will use to fill the blanks in existing maps.

“The mapping process is about empowering the Achuar people to communicate with the government and petrol companies to show where they live and why the forest is important to them,” explains Gregor MacLennan, co-founder of Shinai, a Peru-based NGO which introduced the mapping technologies and training to the Indigenous peoples. “The maps are

Local people are integral to the success of the project

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drawn by the community in a two-day workshop and then community members walk to all corners of their territory with a GPS, geo-referencing everything that has been drawn on the map. We trained local people to both facilitate these workshops and to use GPS.”

The result is a map where hand-drawn symbols mark places of hunting and spiritual importance and provide a new description of the land. This is a living map that shows the seasonal changes in the forest, where the animals migrate, established hunting grounds, where medicinal plants grow and fish may be caught. It also shows where the spirits reside and areas where visions can be sought. The Achuar of the Pastaza hope too that it will serve to demarcate a

boundary beyond which the petroleum companies cannot step.

Within the communities already affected by oil operations, Shinai has also trained environmental monitors to use GPS and digital cameras to plot and record any damage that is done by oil spills and pollution. Nantip, an Achuar elder, is categorical about what they are defending: “We collect many different resources from the jungle in order to feed our children and our grandchildren. We fish in the rivers and we wash and bathe in the crystal-clear waters of the springs and streams. Our ancestors lived here and depended upon the same resources and the same land. They cared for it well and left it, like a sanctuary, for us today. That is why we are alive and have life.”

The Achuar’s hope is that their hi-tech Living Maps prove that in this wilderness, under the density of the green canopy, the Amazon is an interconnected community where life is abundant and flourishing. It is not, as shown on other maps, an empty space. It is full of the calls of the forest, of the people and the animals that live there. These have a value, they have names and they have importance. Above all else, the Achuar Living Map is a land redrawn, not according to its potential resource wealth, but according to its real value to the people who live upon it.

www.shinai.org.pe

Report by Willow Murton, a researcher at the BBC.

Chihuahua’s Sierra Tarahumara in central northern Mexico is a land of daunting barriers:

deep gorges carved by ancient, raging rivers, and crumbling logging roads which twist through vast expanses of wilderness. Here, the tens of thousands of Tarahumaran Indians who live in isolated, impoverished hamlets in ecosystems degraded by logging and mining industries depend on the climate and subsistence agriculture for survival.

On this stage, the Indigenous Theatre Company made its debut eight years ago as part of an educational project overseen by the Community Technical Consultancy, an organisation that uses training and the introduction of appropriate technologies to improve the lot of Indigenous communities. The theatre workshops incorporate young people into a pedagogical process that previously only addressed the needs of the adult population.

In Chihuahua, young people have little say in community affairs, as is often the case in most traditional cultures. The elders ‘transmit’ sacred, cultural wisdom and exercise power, but the conversation is mostly one-way. Yet it is young people who hold the key to the future, possess new knowledge and face challenges that their elders may not fully appreciate.

It is in this precarious world that a creative outlet for the intelligence and energy of Chihuahua’s youth is making a great impact: puppet theatre channels their creativity, instils a sense of discipline and confidence and breaks down both the real and perceived barriers they experience

M E X I C O

BEYOND THE BARRIERSThe Indigenous Theatre Company of the Sierra Tarahumara.

in everyday life. Through the auspices of the puppets, they can express concerns and viewpoints they may not otherwise have the confidence to raise and, since the puppeteers travel to other communities with their plays, they also see more of the world, helping to conquer shyness and to affirm themselves as builders of their own destinies.

When they experience the fact that there is nothing better than laughter to open the heart and dispel fear; nothing like theatre to cure the human spirit and bridge the gaps that separate the old from the young, it engenders great potential in their lives.

The puppeteers travel many hours from distant communities to gather and work as a collective: they write their own scripts and songs and make their own puppets – be they hand puppets or huge, colourful, cardboard machinations. Their works speak of migration, genetically modified corn introduction, seed and forest conservation, community problems, regional myths, exemplary lives and others less so.

They build their sets and puppets out of refuse: cardboard, old sheets, house paint and newspaper, being endlessly creative with what was once termed ‘waste’ and keeping themselves from becoming dependent on

“There is nothing better than laughter to open the heart and dispel fear”

Members of the Indigenous Theatre Company dressed as cranes

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Decades ago, Mallorcan society, economy and gastronomy were all

intimately linked to a small pepper called the pebre de tap de corti, from which local pimentón, or paprika, was made. After the crop was harvested, the peppers were sent along to the master paprika producers who lived in the Mallorcan mountain villages where, soon after, the streets would become festooned with red chains of peppers drying in the sun. Today, sadly, most of the paprika the island consumes is imported from the Iberian Peninsula, Morocco or Brazil.

However, with the aim of restoring local food sovereignty – almost 90% of food in Mallorca is now imported, despite it being a fertile and verdant Mediterranean island – the Balearic Slow Food group began a project last year to recover the art of paprika-making. The campaign aims to revive the local variety tap de cortí and, in so doing, to avert the disappearance of the artisan production of local paprika, a preservative that is frequently used in the making of cured meats.

The campaign started with the distribution of 16,000 free seedlings to a group of ecological farmers who were working with local gastronomists to bring this variety of pepper back to the marketplace. They adopted traditional production processes, including sun-drying the peppers so they do not lose the natural antioxidants that give paprika its preservative powers. For this, the peppers are hung around house

exteriors, to dry slowly in the sun over a few weeks, providing a pungent aroma and unforgettable colour to the villages. After that, they are ground using a stone mill.

Millers once occupied a pivotal place in village life, being the conduit between the farmer and the cook; the artisans, whose job it was to turn raw food into a processed good. The loss of local millers highlights the breakdown that has occurred between agriculture and artisan processing, one of the main causes of the disappearance of hundreds of local food varieties from the Balearic Islands and, simultaneously, of a variety of highly skilled jobs.

Fortunately, the Slow Food movement was aware of such breakdowns in the chain of production, and various groups of people from across the island joined together to rekindle the traditional skills and communal connections. The project also included volunteers from the island’s prison, an NGO working with drug addicts, and people from the village of Santa Maria, where the initiative was located. In the first harvest, 950 strings

comprising two tonnes of peppers covered the buildings of Santa Maria – a spectacle that had not been seen for over thirty-five years. The production of locally grown artisan paprika not only provided an income for the farmers and millers involved in the project, but also a unique spice redolent of the intense summer sunshine of this beautiful island.

This small pepper is a common thread in the recovery of gastronomic values, linking good farming practice and artisanal skills, local food and biodiversity, popular culture and landscape, and strengthening the alliance between small farmers and social co-operatives, with the final aim of “bringing back to our landscapes, our markets and our meal tables this valuable food heritage”, as the local organisation’s slogan pledges.

Report by Laura Buadas.

M A L L O R C A

THE SMOKY SPICEMallorca’s Slow Food movement revives its paprika heritage.

Lorna Howarth is Development Director of Artists Project Earth (www.apeuk.org) and Resurgence Contributing Editor.

resources that cost money. This also proves that creativity doesn’t need large financial investment to manifest its brilliance: rather it relies on the vast wealth of the human spirit and imagination.

Usually, the plays are performed at the end of workshops: colourful deities on stilts strut through snow-dusted forests, cardboard horses lurch from between boulders, and graceful cranes cross

windswept plains. In 2009, however, the group participated for the first time before thousands of urban dwellers in the Chihuahua International Festival. It was inspiring to see the young people standing under spotlights, on a wooden stage, confidently speaking their lines, singing their songs and communicating their hopes and dreams.

Hats off to the Compañía de Teatro

Indígena de la Sierra Tarahumara for providing a creative yet dynamic cultural outlet for young people that allows them to address their growing concerns whilst learning important skills for adult life.

www.kwira.org/blog/teatro.html

Report by David Lauer.

Red peppers drying in the sun in Santa Maria del Camí, Majorca

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In the rush of excitement over both government and corporate moves to back green solutions for tackling climate change,

many of the lessons so clearly spelled out by our founding fathers, including Leopold Kohr and E. F. Schumacher, have been all-too-hastily abandoned by those who should have known better.

Not only should we all be questioning the direction in which the environmental movement has moved over the past decade, but we should be asking why it has failed to come up with a dynamic, localised and ‘human-scale’ solution to the large-scale and government-backed, corporate agenda that continues to dominate our lives and our landscapes. Instead, there has been a noticeable and insidious growing level of largely passive ‘green’ obeisance to central government policies and EU handouts.

It is salutary to take ‘energy’

issues as an illustration of this. Here, it is plain to see the increasing monopolisation of green issues by market-oriented, profit-driven business enterprises and government institutions whose goals bear no relationship to the ones that inspired the term “Small is Beautiful” or the potent spark that title once ignited in our imaginations. There is no relationship, either, to the deeper concepts of ‘sustainability’ and ‘scale’ which directly connect appropriate technological advances with comm-unity regeneration and a due sense of proportion in all things.

What we have seen instead is widespread failure amongst large segments of society to recognise that most negative environmental impacts come about because of the profligate material expectations that continue to dominate our Western world – expectations that are raised and continuously promoted by powerful corporate, government

and media vested interests. Government calls to move towards

renewable energy resources in order to “satisfy UK needs” (while meeting binding CO2 emission-reduction obligations) are really calls to continue to massage the needs of a consumer-fixated society rather than to address any of our actual needs, which, in truth, remain largely unknown. What is now known is that sentient human beings embody a greater need for spiritual, intellectual and emotional development than for the trappings of material opulence. The reason why this never gets mentioned is that we have allowed ourselves to be subjects of societal indoctrination, an indoctrination that promotes excessive consumerism as a baro-meter of human happiness and as being essential for the continuation of the now infamous holy grail: ‘economic growth’ and ever bigger profits for the dominant corporations.

UNDERCURRENTS THE REAL GREEN AGENDA

The green movement needs to revisit its fundamental principles; including (and especially) ‘Small is beautiful’, writes Julian Rose.

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But the long-sustained myth about the benefits to be accrued by this unending expansion of consumer-driven growth has recently been dealt a severe blow. There is no shortage of evidence of growing destruction to natural habitats and both ecological and human degradation continuing to be manifest even in ‘developed’ countries boasting a high GDP. Why then, in this ‘developed’ world, are the majority of green thinkers not converging on finding common and enduring answers to the ever deepening crisis in our midst? Are these deeper issues being sacrificed to the apparent imperatives of climate change?

If so, we need to recognise the fact and address it. Countries attempting to comply with national climate-change targets do so by postulating the need for so many million gigawatts of processed energy to fulfil ‘x’ perceived national demand. However, such calculations are predicated upon the wrong model: the current ‘living beyond our means’ one. The one that leads to the statement that we would need four more Planet Earths in order to supply the whole world with the standards of living “enjoyed” by Western Europeans and North Americans.

But what sort of standard of living are we enjoying when, for example, 10,000 tons of food is thrown out of households and supermarkets in England and Wales every day? When every rubbish tip is filled to bursting with packaging materials? When our impoverished soils are still being soused with thousands of tons of toxic agrichemicals every year? When almost everything we purchase today has three or four times less life-expectation than during the Victorian era? Is this still all going to be fine just so long as the generated energy that makes it possible is coming from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels?

The UK Green Party, for instance, is now publicly calling for help in the development of “Large-scale wind and tidal energy schemes” involving “massive investments” that will “raise wind energy production to the levels of Denmark by 2020”. Such ambitions seem to indicate that the Green Party is being swept along by the dictates of mainstream ‘business as usual’, in which broadly centralised energy-distribution patterns are main-tained and under the same corporate ownership – but driven by renewables instead of by fossil fuels.

Some may dispute this, but the impression being given is that there is a supposed ‘plus’ brought about by providing extra jobs through encouraging such schemes, and that this overrides the actual stand-alone merit of the schemes themselves.

So what would a renaissance of genuinely ‘people-led’ regional regen-erative initiatives actually look like?

The essence of my argument is that

we don’t need ‘massive investment’ in any grand schemes. On the contrary, we need lots of small investments in highly diversified local and regional schemes, owned and run by the communities they serve. Integrated, local regeneration and ‘people-led’ creative solutions are, I would suggest, the imperative of our time.

There are signs of the emergence of such schemes within localised food and farming initiatives and through such initiatives as the Transition Town energy descent models. However, good as these are, they still fail to touch the broad swathe of green supporters needed to create a critical mass of public opinion for deeper change.

Fritz Schumacher and Leopold Kohr argued most cogently for “appropriate scale” in all things constructed to meet our daily needs; ones that are at once low impact and affordable and utilise local materials, thereby exerting a largely benign influence on our environment. Their words resonate ever more clearly as each year passes. We need to remind ourselves of this and act on such fundamental wisdom while we still have the chance. Large-scale wind farms, vast banks of photovoltaic panels, giant hydroelectric schemes are not the solution in the majority of cases. Not to climate change, nor to human change. Schumacher, in his wisdom, once stated that no structure should ever be built to a height taller than the tallest tree in the area, thereby never dominating Nature or humans.

How far we still are from this level of sensibility and vision! Instead we see green energy proponents applauding the establishment of regimented rows of 30-to-60-metre-high wind turbines that are increasingly marching across the landscape of the Western world, starkly

symbolising continued obeisance to the gods of mass-produced power distributed through vast, centralised grid systems. It is a startlingly cogent reminder of just how sidelined and ignored the whole issue of scale, proportionality and environmental impact has been in the blinkered rush for idealistically flawed ‘green’ manufactured energy. ‘Scale’ as a humanitarian instinct guided by Nature, not by money and power.

So it has to asked, maybe even shouted: Why is it that the broader environmental movement is not promoting this sort of subtle and sensitive approach to our human and environmental needs? Why is so little emphasis given to the need for decentralised, human-scale solutions to the most pressing issues of our time? What has happened to environmentalists, ecologists, greens? Have the big environmental lobby organisations sold out to the ‘green’ corporate lobby? Are they simply the purveyors of a superficial greening of ‘business as usual’?

There is a pressing, urgent need to focus attention on the truly human-scale solutions that our world so profoundly needs and not to become obsessed with the grand technological fixes that are being mooted as potential deterrents to climate change. Let’s not be taken in by talk of a new ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ which so excites political figureheads and industrialists today. We citizens should have none of this. It’s more than time to take control over our destinies and cease supporting the out-of-control corporate theft of our futures.

Within the great shake-up which is now under way throughout a wide arena of planetary concerns, we have a one-in-a-million chance to do something radical: to help people take control of their lives at the local and regional levels, within communities, and not further appease the already ‘past its sell-by-date’ consumer-driven status quo.

Julian Rose is an organic farmer and President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. He is the author of Changing Course for Life: Local Solutions to Global Problems. www.changingcourseforlife.info

“Why is so little emphasis given to the need for decentralised, human-scale solutions to the most pressing needs of our time?”

12 May/June 2010

UNDERCURRENTS NUCLEAR POWER

Nuclearis not the

Solution

A t present, there are 438 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear

power were to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, we would need to build between two and three thousand large (1,000-megawatt) reactors at the rate of one a week for the next fifty years. Considering that almost no new nuclear plants have been ordered in the US since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel those reactors for eight years.

The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment, for example, is heavily subsidised by the US government. The true cost of the industry’s liability in the case of an accident in the US is estimated to be US$600 billion, of which the industry pays only 2% – the remaining 98% is covered by the US federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing US nuclear reactors is estimated to be US$33 billion. These costs – plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years – are not now

included in economic assessments of nuclear electricity.

It is said that nuclear power is emission-free, but the truth is very different. In the US, where much of the world’s uranium is enriched, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Kentucky requires the electrical output of two 1,500-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide. Also, this enrichment facility, together with one at Portsmouth, Ohio, was responsible for the release (from leaky pipes) of 93% of the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gas emitted yearly in the US. The Portsmouth plant closed in 2001, but the Kentucky plant still operates.

The production and release of CFC gas is now banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer up to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilises large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages: the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20-40 year operating lifetime,

and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.

Contrary to the nuclear industry’s propaganda, nuclear power is therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so (see list, right).

These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and, if inhaled by anyone living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including those near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease.

Tritium, another biologically significant gas also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors, is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen composed of two neutrons and one proton with an atomic weight of three. The chemical symbol for tritium is 3H. When one or both of the hydrogen atoms in water are displaced by tritium, the water molecule is then called tritiated water. Tritium is even

Pushing nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases is pure propaganda; don’t fall for it writes Helen Caldicott.

The tell-tale blue glow radiation is produced in the water surrounding nuclear reactors

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more mutagenic than gamma radiation, which incorporates directly into the DNA molecule of the gene. Its half-life is 12.3 years, giving it a biologically active life of 246 years. It passes readily through the skin, lungs and digestive system and is distributed throughout the body.

The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at the 438 nuclear reactors across the world is rarely, if ever, addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 tonnes of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per year and, already, more than 80,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools adjacent to or on the roof of the 103 US nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found.

The long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem. In 1987, the US Congress chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 150 km north-west of Las Vegas, as a repository for America’s high-level waste. But Yucca Mountain has subsequently been found to be unsuitable for this task because it is a volcanic mountain made of permeable pumice stone and is transected by thirty-two earthquake faults. In addition,

a congressional committee has now discovered fabricated data about water infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain; data produced by personnel in the US Geological Survey. These startling revelations, according to most experts, have almost disqualified this location as a waste repository site, meaning that the US now has nowhere to deposit its expanding nuclear waste inventory.

Vulnerable to terrorist attack during storage and transportation, high-level nuclear waste includes hundreds of radioactive elements that have different biological impacts in the human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases.

The incubation time for cancer, following exposure to radiation, is five to sixty years; those who are most sensitive to its malignant effects are children, elderly people, and individuals with already compromised immune systems.

Nuclear power clearly leaves a toxic legacy. It produces global warming gases, it is far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation and it can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Helen Caldicott is a co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility and the author of seven books on nuclear power.

Four good reasons to expose the myth that nuclear power is green:Iodine 131 was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield (Britain), Chernobyl (Ukraine) and Three Mile Island (US). Radioactive for just six weeks, it concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk, entering the body via the gut and lungs and migrating to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can cause thyroid cancer. In Belarus, near Chernobyl, more than 8,000 children, adolescents and adults developed thyroid cancer between 1986 and 2000, a situation never before recorded in the medical literature.

Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. It concentrates in cow and goat milk and accumulates in the human breast during lactation, and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukaemia.

Caesium 137 also lasts for 600 years but concentrates in meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.

Plutonium 239 lasts for 250,000 years. One of the most dangerous elements known, it is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram can cause cancer. Stored, like iron, in the liver and bone, causing cancers in both tissues. Can cause lung cancer if inhaled, and congenital deformities if it crosses the placenta. It has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and genetic diseases in future generations.

“Nuclear power is not green and it is certainly not clean”

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14 May/June 2010

UNDERCURRENTS NATURAL RESOURCES

Wool is now so undervalued, the cost of shearing a sheep is more than a farmer can expect to get for the fleece. But as Prince Charles backs a new campaign to stop its demise, wool producer Sue Blacker explains why we should all care more about this sustainable and natural resource.

For more than 500 years – from the 13th to the 18th century – wool formed the basis of the economic development of England and

Wales and was the foundation of our wealth. The resulting textile industry challenged innovators and inventors to create some of the earliest industrial machines and also provided the impetus to explore and create industries across the globe.

India’s very fight for independence, for instance, was based partly on a powerful image of the spinning wheel, but today, such is the low value we now place on this once all-important and natural commodity, that farmers find themselves burning or composting fleeces.

In the 21st century, both the growth of cotton and the emergence of artificial fibres made from oil and, more recently, from recycled materials, including wood and bamboo, has overturned the fortunes of wool to such an extent that currently it accounts for a mere 3% of today’s total textile markets. And while the UK retains high-end capabilities for increased wool production, mills are closing, the workforce itself is ageing and, since there

are no relevant college courses, no new people are being trained.

Yet wool remains the original high-performance fibre: it has crimp, which gives it a memory, resilience and bulk to insulate and cushion, and scales, which means it can be woven into stretchy, strong, soft yarns that may be fine and smooth or soft and thick. These scales also mean it can be made into virtually waterproof felted fabrics. It wicks water, and will naturally absorb up to 30% of its own weight in water before becoming sodden. And it is fire-retardant.

These properties explain why wool is still used in industry, why it has, over centuries, clothed our most intrepid polar explorers and mountaineers, why it is the basis of good carpets everywhere, and why it is still used in the best suiting cloth.

Wool is, of course, produced from sheep, which are the most extensively farmed livestock with least environmental impact. Sheep are known as pasture improvers, and in Britain we have more than sixty distinct breeds, most of which relate to the locations where they naturally thrive and many of which were developed

to cope with those specific environments, be they mountain or downland.

There are an estimated one billion sheep across the world today, producing 1.2 million tonnes of clean wool a year. Of this total, a third is produced by Australia, China and India, a third by the former Soviet Union countries, and the remainder from countries as diverse as Iran, Sudan, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and the UK.

The UK is actually the eleventh-largest producer of sheep, with 24 million, but it ranks seventh in terms of wool, producing 28,647 tonnes in 2005. It holds this ranking partly because of the existence of the British Wool Marketing Board, which collects, markets and promotes the British wool clip, and partly because of the larger size of British sheep fleeces.

Britain is thus unusual in that, as an EC member and ‘first world’ country, it has a significant sheep population and significant wool production. There are sheep in much of the rest of Europe, but because there are no built-in market mechanisms to collect and use it, their wool – which under European laws is now classified as hazardous waste – is left

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to compost or is burned.Britain still boasts a strong carpet

industry, and indeed the majority of the British clip is particularly well suited for use in carpets as the crimp in the fibres makes it resilient underfoot and it is extremely hard-wearing. Unlike

almost all other fibres, it is also fire-resistant. Britain has held its own in the fashion industry and British-spun yarns and woven cloth are still sought after worldwide for their fine quality. There is plenty of design provision in terms of training and courses, but, since there are now no UK college courses training carding and spinning engineers (or, for that matter, weavers), we must rely on an ageing population of trained engineers and technicians to actually turn those design ideas into reality. In fact, it is my understanding that the youngest carding

engineer in the UK is now probably around forty-five years old.

Of course it is not unreasonable that an industry should have to compete, and of course, as mills have closed in the UK, the equipment has been shipped to Mongolia, China, India, Pakistan, Turkey

and Lithuania. These machines are built to last and the fundamental designs have changed very little since they were first invented. It is also important that natural fibres in general continue to grow, albeit some have debatable credentials in terms of water requirements or environmental impacts from processing.

So, as many of us turn up the central heating, eat more meat, import cashmere from the rapidly desertifying steppes and find that despite the recent financial crises we can still afford it, should we care?

The answer is yes, we should. We

should care a lot.Wool is very much like timber in

Britain: an undervalued, sustainable resource, sitting right on the doorstep and not being used for its astonishing qualities. There are small projects where wool is used for insulation and in small-scale spinning and so on, but not enough to bring the average price per kilogram of wool up to a level which would encourage farmers to care about their clip.

The Wool Board economises and cannot collect wool from farms any more, so after the costs of shearing and getting the fleece to the nearest depot, the farmer is out of pocket and sees shearing and wool as welfare costs rather than sources of additional income. The Natural Fibre Company now pays more for wool where we have created demand by making and marketing good yarns and by helping those for whom we spin fleece to grow their markets, but we are a tiny outfit on the bottom left-hand corner of the country, and much more is needed.

At present, apart from the long-term role of the British Wool Marketing Board, there are two other significant initiatives for wool. One is the broader-based Defra Sustainable Textiles Roadmap project, which is endeavouring to rank textiles by environmental impact and to which the major textile retailers and producers in the UK have signed up. There is an exercise in life-cycle analysis to back this and it makes interesting reading: wool comes out quite well in terms of environmental impact for production (since it is effectively a sustainable and repeatable by-product of the meat industry) and pretty well in terms of processing. But it is largely ignored because cotton and artificial fibres are so much more important in terms of total volumes.

The second initiative is the recently launched Wool Project, backed by HRH The Prince of Wales, and based around expertise at The National Sheep Association. Again, the large retailers have signed up, and there will be a national Wool Week around the time of the autumn London Fashion Week. So wool is getting a makeover which is long overdue. We should all work to encourage this.

Sue Blacker is managing director of The Natural Fibre Company in Cornwall. She also farms her own small flock of specialist wool sheep. www.thenaturalfibre.co.uk

“Wool is very much like timber in Britain: an undervalued, sustainable resource, sitting right on the doorstep and not being used for its astonishing qualities”

THE WOOL FACT FILEWhilst the British Wool Marketing Board publishes a schedule of recommended fleece prices each year, in reality prices vary wildly, from as little as 3-4p to up to £2.50 per kilogram, and currently averaging out at 70p per kilogram.

Earlier this year, Prince Charles – who keeps his own flock of specialist sheep at Highgrove – launched the UK’s Wool Project, a new campaign that emphasises both the aesthetic and the eco-credentials of what has become a deeply unfashionable fibre, with consumers believing wool is bulky and uncomfortable to wear and preferring cashmere, which has become significantly more affordable.

The Wool Project will link fashion designers with farmers to remedy this by promoting wool as a durable alternative to throwaway garments. The campaign is also aiming to create a new ‘green label’ for woollen products and to encourage shops to promote wool for home furnishing as well as clothing.

“I’m worth how much?”

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UNDERCURRENTS CHILDREN AND NATURE

In Nature, a child can find freedom, fantasy and privacy

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For children, Nature comes in many forms. A newborn calf, a pet that lives and dies, a fort nestling in stinging nettles, a worn path

through the woods. Whatever shape it takes, Nature offers a child a larger world, separate from his or her parents, and, unlike television, it does not steal time but amplifies it.

Many of us grew into adulthood taking Nature’s gifts for granted; we assumed (when we thought of it at all) that generations to come would receive these same gifts. But something has changed. Now we see the emergence of what I have come to call Nature Deficit Disorder.

This term is by no means a medical diagnosis but it does offer a way to think about the problem and the possibilities – for children and for the rest of us as well.

I first became aware of this transformation in the late 1980s when, in the course of researching a book, I interviewed thousands of children and their parents. I often think of the wonderfully honest comment made by Paul, a San Diego schoolboy who told me: “I like to play indoors ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”

In many classrooms, I heard variations on that statement. True, for many children, Nature still offers wonders. But for many, playing in Nature seemed so…Unproductive. Off-limits. Alien.

One schoolgirl I spoke to told me she wanted to be a poet when she grew up.

“When I’m in the woods,” she said, “I feel like I’m in my mother’s shoes.”

She was one of those exceptional children who do still spend time outside, in solitude. In her case, Nature represented beauty – and refuge – and she told me of a part of the woods she had thought of as being her special place.

“There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I’d dug a big hole there, and sometimes I’d take a tent back there, or a blanket, and just lie down in the hole and look up at the trees and sky. Sometimes, I’d fall asleep back there. I just felt free; it was like my place and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to

go down there almost every day.”The young poet’s face then flushed. Her

voice thickened.“And then they just cut the woods down.

It was like they cut down part of me.”Over time, I came to understand how

Nature serves as a blank slate upon which a child draws and reinterprets a culture’s fantasies. Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualisation and full use of the senses. Given a chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world into the woods, wash it in the creek, and turn it over to see what lies on the unseen side of that confusion.

Nature can frighten a child, too, and this

fright serves a purpose. In Nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy and privacy; a place distant from the adult world and, as our young poet discovered, a separate peace.

These are some of the utilitarian values of Nature, but at a deeper level Nature gives itself to children – for its own sake, not as a reflection of culture. At this level, inexplicable Nature provokes humility.

As the pre-eminent Nature poet Gary Snyder writes, we attach two meanings to the word ‘nature’, which comes from the Latin natura – birth, constitution, character, course of things – and, beyond natura, nasci – to be born.

When considering children in Nature, one hungers for a richer description, a definition with more breathing room – one that does not either include everything as natural or restrict Nature to virgin forest.

Gary Snyder is drawn to poet John Milton’s phrase “a wilderness of sweets”. “Milton’s usage of wilderness catches the very real condition of energy and richness that is so often found in wild systems. A ‘wilderness of sweets’ is like billions of herring or mackerel babies in the ocean, wild prairie grass seed … all the incredible fecundity of small animals and plants, feeding the web,” he explains. “But from another side, wilderness has implied

chaos, eros, the unknown, realms of taboo, the habitat of both the ecstatic and the demonic. In both senses, it is a place of archetypal power, teaching and challenge.”

When we think of children and Nature, this third, more bountiful understanding is helpful. When I use the term ‘Nature’ in a general way, I mean natural wildness: biodiversity, abundance – related loose parts in a backyard or a rugged mountain ridge. Most of all, Nature is reflected in our capacity for wonder. Nasci. To be born.

As I was conducting my interviews, one mother summed up the mantra I was to hear over and over again from parents, grandparents, teachers and other adults across the country: “It’s all this watching,” she said.

“We’ve become a more sedentary society. When I was a kid growing up in Detroit, we were always outdoors. The kids who stayed indoors were the odd ones. We didn’t have any huge wide-open spaces but we were always outdoors on the streets –

in the vacant lots, jumping rope or playing baseball or hopscotch. We were out there playing, even after we got older.”

Another parent nodded in agreement, adding: “Something else was different too, when we were young: our parents were outdoors as well. I’m not saying they were joining health clubs and things like that but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbours. As far as physical fitness goes, today’s kids are the sorriest generation in the history of the United States. Their parents may be jogging but the kids just aren’t outside.”

Over time, I came to understand better some of the complexity represented by the boy who preferred electrical outlets and the poet who had lost her special spot in the woods. I also learned this: parents, educators, other adults, institutions – our culture itself – may say one thing to children about Nature’s gifts, but so many of our actions and messages, especially the ones we cannot hear ourselves deliver, are different.

And children hear very well.

Abridged from Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv (now published in paperback) who will be speaking at Schumacher College this May. www.childrenandnature.org.

Our children cannot enjoy – and learn from – the gifts of Nature if all the adults in their lives are saying one thing (get outdoors) and doing another (staying inside) writes Richard Louv.

“At a deeper level Nature gives itself to children – for its own sake, not as a reflection of culture”

18 May/June 2010

The virtues of fasting are extolled in all the major religions, and can even improve

life expectancy, according to a report published in Nature last year that showed how, in mice, occasional fasting switches on a gene that delays ageing. But fasting can be spiritual too, as it is a sacrifice – the relinquishing of something you want on the altar of something higher, which means it’s not the same as dieting, nor is it advised for anyone whose relationship with food is complicated, medically speaking. (If in doubt, consult your doctor or dietician.)

Fasting is a powerful practice because it engages with one of our primary needs, and it is also a highly accessible practice. It may sound easy, but it isn’t. When denied food, the body will, initially, throw the sensory equivalent of a tantrum – at least until it begins to understand the game. For these and other reasons a spiritual approach to fasting is helpful.

The ancient traditions say “Reveal your fasting to no man.” The admiration of others is not the goal. However, in a healthy learning environment one would reveal it to a teacher, guide or trusted friend, if only for safety reasons. In a family setting, one’s abstinence is, of course, going to be noticed, but aim to keep explanations simple and unsensational. Moreover, from a spiritual point of view, the timing should be decided upon in advance, preferably no later than the night before. To the extent that a fast is ritual space, it benefits from clear boundaries. Then, you wake up and affirm to yourself: “Today I fast.” Plan for a quiet day (or days) if possible, and talk as little as you can get away with.

Sometimes people engage in a “fruit fast”. This reduces the load on the digestive system, whilst maintaining the supply of sugar energy. Try that first. Fasting completely – only drinking water – yields the most profound results. It challenges your thoughts and desires, your mouth and jaws, your digestive habits, your energy, and your very relationship with life. We have been sucking, biting and chewing since the day we were born. You will become aware of your mouth in a new way, and you may experience a feeling of growing up.

You may well go through stages of feeling irritable, despondent and listless. The secret is to endure and outlast them all, whilst still monitoring your genuine state of health. If you are addicted to tea or coffee, you might get a thumping headache the day after you stop drinking it. This will go away after a few hours. For greater enjoyment of a fast, why not give up the tea and coffee a couple of days earlier? You can avoid that

headache by dosing yourself with progressively smaller quantities over two or three days. Drink plenty of water.

A point comes where the body realises the game has changed. There is every reason to suppose the body understands this: in ancient times food would frequently be unforthcoming. Digestion consumes a great deal of energy, and suddenly that energy is available for something else. The constant work of filtering, detoxifying and expelling food becomes less arduous. It is an opportunity for the body to achieve a greater degree of detoxification. Eventually it ceases whining and complaining. Aches and

pains are replaced by a tingling sensation. You start to feel clearer and less cluttered. A normal body still has sufficient energy resources in store to power the organs and support moderate (not strenuous) activity. Your senses are alert. It is an ideal time for wise reflection.

A moment of completion arrives. It may well be at the time you planned, but in any case try to stick to the schedule you agreed with yourself – resist any temptation to prolong the fast. How much you can achieve in one day depends on your metabolism and other factors – I need two days.

Finally, having achieved a fresh start, why not get off on the right foot with an act of giving rather than taking? Your first interaction with food could be to offer it to someone else. Acknowledge the wider world that sustains you – and, perhaps, whatever creative force underpins it. Your first meal should be light – no feasting. Eat some fruit or vegetables (to restore the supply of vitamin C) and then take a break. If you are still hungry a couple of hours later, have more. No alcohol for a day or two.

For millions of years we and our ancestors were shaped in a world where food was sometimes available, sometimes not. It isn’t unreasonable to guess that we unconsciously expect, and perhaps need, an occasional rest from incessant eating. Julia Ponsonby, catering manager at Schumacher College and the author of Gaia’s Kitchen, the Schumacher College cookbook, adds: “In a modern world beset with noise, activity and distraction, the practice of fasting offers an opportunity to slow down and focus. A period of abstinence also punctuates our experience of food with moments of renewed and heightened appreciation for the delicious subtle flavours in the food we eat.”

William Thomas is House Manager at Schumacher College, Dartington. www.schumachercollege.org.uk

UNDERCURRENTS FASTING

HOLD FASTIn a modern world beset with noise, activity and distractions, the practice of fasting offers an opportunity to slow down. William Thomas reports.

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My son wants to be a heroHe wants to save the planet

I could tell him to watch a nature show or movieto rent a DVD on climate change and biodiversityI could tell him about the birds and the beesthe moon, the flowers and the trees and how they’re all, one great familyintricately interwoven in intimate dependencyI could pat him on the head for recyclinga plastic container, start a discussionabout our energy-saverI could teach him to use cloth bags instead of plasticto look at those number charts all getting drasticI could tell him to buy fair trade to choose clothes that are Swiss-madeto buy his food from the marketto eat more veg and pick organic

But hell, am I reallyteaching him to fall in lovewith this earth?to dig life and get his hands in the dirt?Maybe I just need to tell himto spend more timeoutside.

Maryse Arnold

My son wants to be a hero

Freedom! Sacha Peers

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KEYNOTES GROSS NATIONAL HAPPINESS

A t the United Nations recently, I was deeply discouraged to see a world faced with unparalleled challenges

being offered partial, piecemeal and disconnected solutions to this or that particular crisis, whether in energy, food, poverty, resource degradation, water shortage, economic collapse, terrorism, or climate change.

What was patently missing – both in the analysis and in the solutions offered – was any understanding of the common disease underlying the symptoms of the deep malaise that threatens our collective wellbeing and survival. In fact, not only will many of the solutions offered, such as financial stimulus packages designed to spur more growth and spending, return us to the dubious and temporary comfort of living in debt and delusion, but they are the very cause of our most serious present global problems. To address the greed, materialism and consumerist fallacy that has turned us into mindless economic animals and is destroying the planet requires nothing less than a change in consciousness and hence of lifestyle. And we believe that education is the key.

The good news is that there is an increasing awareness that the temporary material satisfaction of fleeting desires leads to misery rather than happiness. Until just a few years ago, we in Bhutan used to think that our esteemed King’s proclamation three decades ago that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product”

was our own unique and particular take on life. So, I suppose, for a long time, we were content to think of ourselves as isolated ‘oddballs’ in a world obsessed with materialism. In the last few years, however, we’ve been taken aback to find our remote little country the subject of increasing scrutiny and envy by a world that is clearly deeply dissatisfied with its materialistic way of life.

In truth, we spent some years shying away from the responsibility of both presenting and implementing our Gross National Happiness (GNH) ideas by simply taking refuge in the vision, the concept and the term itself. I now know that this option no longer exists. For the world, and for all living beings with which we share this planet, as much as for ourselves, we have no choice but to demonstrate that we are worthy of the scrutiny to which we are subjected, by practising what we preach.

I am absolutely convinced that there is no more effective and far-reaching way to put GNH fully into practice and realise our shared vision and goals than to infuse our education system fully and properly with the humane and ecological principles and values of Gross National Happiness.

We are deeply aware that what we are trying to do is unprecedented. There are no road maps, and whilst individual schools in different parts of the world have created brilliant and transformative curricula and learning environments, no country has ever attempted to transform

its entire educational system along the lines we are proposing. To achieve this we must start, of course, with vision, without which we’d have no clear sense of purpose or direction and thus would quickly drown in a sea of disconnected and incoherent ideas.

We have spent several years trying to define, understand, and wrap our minds around what we mean by ‘Gross National Happiness’, and I believe we have now come some way in that endeavour. What began, really, as an intuitive and ‘felt’ sense, has now been articulated, expressed and even measured in some depth and detail.

Firstly, we have now clearly distinguished the ‘happiness’ component in GNH from the fleeting, pleasurable ‘feel-good’ moods so often associated with that term. We know that true abiding happiness cannot exist while others suffer, and can only come from serving others, living in harmony with Nature, and realising our innate wisdom and the true and brilliant nature of our own minds.

Secondly, we have defined GNH as a development path that judiciously balances sustainable and equitable economic development with environmental con-servation, good governance, and the dynamism and wisdom of our profound and ancient culture. We have now developed a GNH index that measures key conditions of wellbeing such as physical and mental health, community vitality, the work-life balance, living standards, TI

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Exploring how Bhutan might now implement its unique concept of Gross National Happiness into its educational system, the country’s prime minister, Jigmi Y. Thinley, explains how all countries could adopt this universal principle.

civic engagement, and the ecological integrity on which the whole human endeavour depends.

Finally, probably most importantly of all, we have identified education as the glue that holds the whole enterprise together. If, for instance, we are ignorant of the natural world, how can we effectively protect it? If we don’t know that smoking, junk food and physical inactivity are unhealthy, how can we have a healthy citizenry? If we are ignorant of politics and of national issues, how can we cast an informed vote? If we know nothing of the extraordinary teachings of Guru Rinpoche, Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal and other great masters who taught and practised right here in Bhutan, how can we appreciate our legacy, embody our own culture, and better serve the world?

Now we have our definitions of the concept of GNH, the time has come to act decisively and effectively, so that we begin to embody what we express, and so that our behaviour and actions, rather than just our words and good intentions, not only realise this vision but also act as a genuine and worthy example for a world desperate for sanity.

So the big question facing us now is how we can achieve this vision,

given the practical realities we face. What, for instance, does a GNH-infused science curriculum actually look like? How can we learn maths, history, language and even sports so that they all fully reflect GNH values? How can we

integrate genuine community service and meditative disciplines into our learning centres, and how should we physically design our schools so that the very buildings themselves embody GNH principles? How, too, do we assess teachers and students in ways that are less draconian, stressful and competitive than our current standardised exams?

So far, we have managed, here in Bhutan, to conserve our forests, wildlife and natural environment rather more successfully than many other nations, our culture is still relatively vibrant, and we have been blessed with a century of enlightened leadership, peace and harmony. But as Bhutan moves rapidly from a traditional value-oriented society to a modern economy, we ourselves are in danger of going off track in ways that are already clearly visible. I remember, rather nostalgically, how not so very long ago, the road to the Dzong was brimming with people walking to and from work in the mornings and afternoons, cheerfully chatting and socialising. Going to work was a joyful ritual of social interaction – an opportunity to make and nurture friendship. Those walkers are mostly gone now, replaced by cars, and those who are still walking sadly see themselves as the ‘have-nots’.

The sad thing is that even those who want to appear well off by owning a car very often cannot afford it, and take out large loans that expose them and their families to unnecessary risks. A recent survey in Thimphu, our capital city,

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Opening the doors of Trongsa Dzong, the ancestral home of Bhutan’s monarchy

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found that 75% of those who drive to work do not drive more than 3km – the minimal daily walking distance considered essential for good health. It is truly frightening to see how rapidly the materialist ethos has grown in just a few short years and it is precisely that rapidity that engenders our sense of urgency in wanting to see GNH principles and values embodied quickly in our educational system.

This sense of urgency also stems directly from the political reality of our fledgling democracy – the youngest in the world. This government happens to be deeply committed to a GNH development path, but terms of office in a democratic system are limited, and we don’t know what the priorities of the next government will be. It could so easily go down the development path of almost all other countries: plundering the natural world in the name of economic growth as communities disintegrate and our profound ancient culture becomes an antiquated museum piece. It may, of course, be my Buddhist background that gives me a deeply felt sense of impermanence, but I have a very strong feeling that if we don’t seize the moment now and achieve something tangible and transformative in the next three years, we may not get another chance.

It will be crucial that, in transforming our educational system, the framework we create be truly indestructible and able to withstand all challenges from an extraordinarily seductive and increasingly sophisticated, powerful and manipulative materialist and consumerist world. Equally, that framework – based on the most profound human and ecological values – will transcend politics entirely and withstand any political attempt to dismantle it. We have a word for such indestructibility in our language: dorji, which means ‘diamond-like’ and stems from our ancient teachings on the true and indestructible nature of mind characterised by innate wisdom and expressed in natural compassion. Whatever change we make in our educational system, however modest in curriculum or other practical terms, must be characterised by that indestructible wisdom, compassion and humanity.

What then becomes very clear is that there is nothing in the principles of Gross National Happiness that is not fundamentally universal. I firmly believe that if we succeed and bring GNH effectively into our educational system here in Bhutan, then how we do so will be equally applicable to educational systems throughout the world.

One of the aspects of so-called modern education that saddens and deeply disturbs me is when I hear of teachers in some Western countries being abused by students and for whom life in the classroom has become a nightmare.

Whilst many modern educators talk of teachers

being ‘facilitators’, rather than authoritative sources of knowledge, and of replacing fear within the classroom with confidence, I would suggest there is still a place for the teacher as ‘guru’, or at least as an exemplar, rather than as simply a facilitator. In fact, I believe that a teacher who truly embodies GNH principles and values will automatically be an authentic and natural authority figure to whom respect and even reverence are due. Confidence and even courage, of course, are both important, but so is the ability to sense fear. Without genuine and even earth-shattering fear of the consequences of climate change, for instance, we would blithely continue

to consume, indulge, and emit greenhouse gases as if there were no tomorrow. And, in reference to my Buddhist heritage, there is nothing like a healthy fear of consequences in the next life to encourage basic decent behaviour in this one.

So, once we begin to implement the principles of GNH in our centres of learning, how will we evaluate the degree to which these values have been genuinely internalised? What is the point, for instance, of being a model student during school hours, if the same student is a rude vandal on the street? And what is the point of cleaning up a school and making it spotless, if that same garbage is then dumped in a pristine natural place? A genuinely GNH-inspired educational system would ensure that these values were so deeply felt and internalised that they would manifest simply and naturally in all situations, in and out of school.

If ‘learning by doing’ is what really works, then the time has come to properly practise what we preach. It may be that we share the noblest possible aspiration – to see young people graduate from our educational systems with a deeply felt care for Nature and for each other, steeped in their culture, seeing reality clearly, living in harmony with the natural world and with their neighbours, and acting wisely for the benefit of all beings – but our true challenge now is to translate this aspiration into positive action, in both my country and yours.

Jigmi Y. Thinley is the Prime Minister of Bhutan. This article is adapted from the welcome speech he gave to the Education For Gross National Happiness conference held last December.

“As Bhutan moves rapidly from a traditional value-oriented society to a modern economy, we ourselves are in serious danger of going off track in ways that are already clearly visible to us”

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B IOCULTURAL DIVERSITY WE ARE ONE

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Maasai boy playing a kudu horn, Kenya

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WE ARE ONE is a collection of statements from the world’s tribal peoples, published by Survival International and supported by essays and literary

extracts from highly respected writers, artists, thinkers and activists including Jane Goodall, Damien Hirst, Arundhati Roy, Bruce Parry, Zac Goldsmith and our own editor-in-chief, Satish Kumar.

It explores the relevance of the knowledge and beliefs of tribal peoples to the present time and cherishes those philosophies that place human values above economic gain and that recognise a balance with Nature as being essential to the future of the planet.

Illustrated with stunning photographs that celebrate the lives, homelands, rituals, languages, ideas and values of tribal peoples, We Are One is not only a celebration of beauty and cultural diversity, but a potent call to arms to examine many of the contemporary humanitarian and environmental issues inherent in their fight for survival.

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Naadam horse festival, Khentil Province, Mongolia

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We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, created and edited by Joanna Eede for Survival Internationalis, Quadrille Publishing. Available from www.survivalinternational.org at £30.

“For us Indians there is just the pipe, the Earth we sit on and the open sky. The spirit is everywhere. Sometimes it shows itself through an animal, a bird or some trees and hills. Sometimes it speaks from the Badlands, a stone or even from the water. That smoke from the peace pipe, it goes straight up to the spirit world.”

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Kampa (Asháninka) man, Brazil

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Tsaatan shaman matriach, Mongolia

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A Life Entwined

Immersed in the pulse of a land he has farmed for twenty years, Robert Ernst believes his spirit will live on in the orchard grass and mistflowers, the drumming of the pileated woodpecker and the grazing cows.

A s I moved from task to task, feeding barn-bound livestock on a cold, black December night, my ear caught the

deep-throated trilling of a flock of sandhill cranes flying overhead, bound for warmer climes. I quit my chores and allowed for a momentary interruption of business in the name of connecting with the significant biological pilgrimage that was taking place in the skies over Plowshares Farm, my Kentucky home for the last twenty years.

Flocks of sandhills make this trip each year, passing over us on their winter journey south and then returning in the spring as they make their way back to northern breeding grounds, but the sounds of these particular birds passing in the inky December darkness indicated they were flying at a much lower altitude than usual. I scanned the moonless starry sky, scrutinising Orion, Taurus and the Pleiades for dark movement that might indicate the birds’ location. Close as they seemed, I could not catch sight of them, but I wondered aloud, “Do they see me?”

That simple question led to deeper musings about whether, in their annual circling of the skies over this insignificant

patch of central Kentucky hills and hollows, the cranes have any sense of the life of this place. My imagination soared with them into the cold night sky. I heard the land speak to them in a passing breeze, telling them tales of life and death, and of the woven tapestry of relationships that are lived out here in simple daily existence. My heart added a whispered hint of the connection I feel deep in the fibre of my being as my life intertwines with the boundless fecundity that marks the woods, fields, ponds and streams of Plowshares Farm.

Much as I would like to believe that the cranes share my sense of connection, what I really believe is that this is not possible without the ongoing immersion in this place that is a prerequisite for the development of such a vital bond. The fact of the matter is that I have never seen sandhill cranes on the ground here. This is not their place. They have staked a claim in lands far from here. In their seasonal journeys, they are not much different from the passengers in the helicopters that sometimes fly over the farm. They see the place from an enviable perspective that reveals its connection to a much larger landscape, but they miss

the ground-level intimacy that day-to-day sweat-inducing, heart-throbbing, soul-claiming engagement in this land allows. They are like thistle seed riding windy currents, passing by this place to land in another. I am the expression of a seed long ago planted in this rocky soil, sprouted and firmly rooted. I am fruit of this land, bearing elements in my being from every ancient ancestor whose flesh Earth repossessed upon death to feed the flowers and grasses, the birds, frogs and fishes, the people who eat of the garden’s harvest. This is not just the place where I live: it is also the place that has taken up residence in me, coursing through my veins and resting in the marrow of my bones.

My lungs have been filled with vapours from the dissipated dew that once wet the pasture grasses that fuel the production of the milk I drink. My muscles, strengthened with the sacrificial flesh of grass-fed steer and lamb, have shouted with triumph as they worked the hoe down a long row of beets. I have tasted sunshine in a fleshy pink tomato, staving my hunger with its juicy goodness. I have ploughed thick fescue sod, turning the heavy grass with a walking plough pulled by a team of willing Belgian

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horses, while I walked in the newly cut furrow, the smell of verdant Earth filling my nostrils. My daily interaction with this place has deepened my awareness of the intimate oneness of all living beings: our undeniable dependence on one another, on Earth that sustains us, and on God whose presence saturates it all.

I am the April hillsides dressed in the soft green hues of leafing trees and trimmed with the delicate pink and white lace of redbud and dogwood blossoms. I am the unexpected hooting of the barred owl at noon, asking the question, in true Kentucky fashion, “Whooo cooks for you, whooo cooks for y’all?” I am the copperhead snake encountered on the sunny hillside, or the two-lined salamander darting out from under an algae-coated creek rock. I am the soil of the garden plots: rich here where the cows fed one winter, shallow and stony in that stretch, heavy with clay on this end, crying for a more generous application of compost.

I have felt the biting wind of winter and mourned as ice-laden trees shed branch after branch, dropping them in explosive plunges to the forest floor. Spring has warmed me with a breeze through fragrant fields while the persistent call of

a red-shouldered hawk punctuated the vernal sweetness. Summer has always set me to running, gardens calling for the seed, the hoe, and the bent backs of the harvesters in the rows. The coming of autumn’s quilt-coloured woodlands at the end of the seasonal cycle has invited a welcome melancholy stillness. Each of these experiences has left an indelible mark on my soul and imprinted this land upon my psyche.

I have travelled to Africa, where the hillside farms of Rwanda turned my heart toward Kentucky. I have visited villages in Mexico and could not escape the constant reminders of the soil that runs in my veins. With each bloody birth, each bursting of bud into leaf, each harvest moon, each squirt of milk into the pail, my life has become one with the life of this land. A twenty-year immersion in the pulse of this place, its cyclical calendar of change and growth, its palette of life in astonishing diversity, its profound expression of our oneness in a complex web of life, has served as a crucible, firing in me a new and ever-growing passion for living in intentional relationship.

Such intentionality calls me to see more clearly my dependence on rock and soil,

air and water, sunlight and the darkness of a moonless night. It ties me to all, even the red fox that preys on the chickens, the deer that feast on the garden’s bounty, and the tick that partakes of my blood, leaving an itchy red calling card on my skin. It prompts me to drop those barriers that prevent the cultivation of such connections, to be constantly conscious of my place and my role in this living web of relationships, to celebrate life but to recognise the necessary role that death plays in it all.

On that day, when death takes my hand, I will lay my body down in the nakedness of my birth, and Earth will swallow me. The soil of this place will reclaim those ancient ancestral elements I have borrowed, and my spirit will live on in the orchard grass and mistflowers, in the grazing Jersey cows and in the drumming of the pileated woodpecker, resounding through the hollows like the beating of my heart in time with the pulsing rhythm of a life lived well on Plowshares Farm.

Robert Ernst, farmer and educator, shares his sense of place with others through Plowshares Farm Center for Education and Spirituality in Buffalo, Kentucky.

“This is not just the place where I live: it is also the place that has taken up residence in me, coursing through my veins and resting in the marrow of my bones”

Sandhill cranes fly overhead but never land at Plowshares Farm PHOTOGRAPH: JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC STOCK

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In November 2008, Georgina Downs won a landmark High Court action against the UK government over its failure to protect rural residents

against exposure to harmful pesticides. It was the first known legal case of its kind to directly challenge UK pesticide policy and agricultural practice.

With the media dubbing the case and the campaign ‘Georgina versus Goliath’, the High Court ruling was subsequently overturned in a controversial Appeal Court decision last year.

Many people, deciding the fight had become too long and too hard, might well have given up at this point, but not Georgina, who is now preparing to take her campaign to protect the public from the health impacts of agricultural chemicals to the European Court of Human Rights.

So why is she still fighting? What is driving her on?

“Well, I’d prefer not to be fighting the government,” she replies, “but I’ve come so far in the last nine years in my campaign to fight for people who are being poisoned by the UK policy on pesticides that I have to exhaust all legal options open to me.”

Georgina has direct experience of pesticide poisoning, and it was her own health issues that initially triggered the campaign. In the early 1980s, her parents moved to the Sussex countryside specifically to raise their family in what they thought would be a healthy environment. They designed and built their house on a piece of land bordering farmland which was initially used for grazing but later converted to arable crops that were regularly sprayed with pesticides.

“We were never warned about the dangers of the chemicals being used,” explains Georgina, “and so, from the age of eleven, I would regularly be out in the garden when crop-spraying was taking

place, with the tractor passing only a few feet away from me.”

Georgina began to suffer chronic health problems including headaches, dizziness and tinnitus. These became so bad that by the age of eighteen she was admitted to hospital with severe muscle wastage and other neurological problems. After tests ruled out a range of diseases such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease, it was Georgina herself who finally realised the cause of the problem. “I was looking out the window from home one day and the penny finally dropped,” she says.

“I saw a tractor in the adjoining field spraying something and started to wonder what it was. I made some enquiries and was astonished to discover they were spraying a cocktail of poisonous chemicals into the air where we live and breathe. I was even more astonished to find out that a farmer is permitted to do so under existing government policy.”

As a result of her own investigations, Georgina’s doctors confirmed her

condition as neurological damage caused by exposure to pesticides, and the medical details, which included blood and fat tissue samples, all containing high pesticide levels, were incorporated into the body of evidence in her campaign.

“When I first started going to meetings to find out more about the regulatory system for pesticides, I realised that no-one was representing my position as a rural resident being subjected to a high level of pesticide exposure,” she recalls. “So I decided that I would have to try and change the government’s policy on pesticides myself. Naively, I thought that it would take me about a year. Nine years on, it still takes up all of my time.”

From the start, Georgina’s campaign has been about changing government policy to protect people in the countryside who live, work or go to school near crop-sprayed fields. Since she began, she has received the support of many rural residents across the UK who report chronic illnesses – including cancers, neurological conditions, asthmas and

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allergies – that they too are convinced are a result of living or working next to sprayed crops. “Doctors and medical people aren’t trained to ask about chemical exposure, so they’re usually not going to know about what is causing these illnesses,” Georgina explains.

Georgina’s campaign wants the government’s pesticide policy to be changed in three clearly identified ways: a ban on any crop-spraying near to houses and schools; prior warning of any crop-spraying activity by farmers to local residents; and a legal requirement that residents be told what pesticides are being used, and when.

Her main argument is that the current method of assessing risks to the public is based on the model of a ‘bystander’ – an individual who is exposed briefly to a spray-cloud at the time of an application. It does not cover the scenario of residents who are repeatedly exposed to mixtures of pesticides throughout the year and over long periods of time.

“The fact that there is no risk

assessment for long-term exposure of those who live, work or go to school near pesticide-sprayed fields is astonishing,” says Georgina, “particularly considering that crop-spraying has been a dominant feature of agriculture for over fifty years. The government has conditions of use for protection of animals, wildlife and the environment, but nothing for the protection of residents and communities.”

Despite meetings with government ministers, officials and advisers as far back as 2002, and despite their promises to act on her evidence, it wasn’t until 2008 that Georgina’s argument had any official recognition thanks to the historic High Court ruling in her favour. In that hearing, her evidence, which included medical information about herself and others across the country, as well as data on flawed safety assessments generated by the government itself, was found to be irrefutable on the case put forward, including on human rights.

The High Court judge, Mr Justice Collins, stated that, in her case against UK

pesticide policy, Georgina had produced “cogent arguments and evidence to indicate that the approach does not adequately protect residents”, and “solid evidence that residents have suffered harm to their health”. He concluded that Defra “must take steps to produce an adequate assessment of the risks to residents”.

“I thought, at last. Now the government will have to change its pesticide policy,” says Georgina. “I thought there would be no way for them not to change it, given that the evidence was unarguable.”

But eight months later, the High Court judgment was overturned

by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the detailed evidence Georgina had amassed over nine years could not be used against the government because she had “no formal scientific or medical qualifications”. Instead, her original case and witness statements were substituted with the conclusions of a government-funded report published four years earlier.

“The Court of Appeal judgment was bizarre and inaccurate,” says Georgina, whose next stop, now that the Supreme Court has ruled out any further UK appeal, is the European Court of Human Rights.

“The High Court judge was very clear that the government had been acting unlawfully in its policy and approach to crop-spraying and that an appeal had no real chance of success. This was based on the evidence I provided. But the appeal judgment was not based on the evidence I provided. It was based on the evidence of a third party – which meant that it was no longer even a case of Georgina Downs versus Defra. It was clear to me right from the beginning of the appeal hearing that the High Court judgment was going to be overturned.”

In fact, despite winning the appeal, Defra has pledged to change its pesticide policy and has just completed a public consultation process which it publicly

As anti-pesticides campaigner Georgina Downs prepares to take her case to the European Court of Human Rights, Rachel Fleming asks what, after nine long years, still motivates her and just how far she will go to change British agricultural policy.

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acknowledged was a direct result of Georgina’s case. So, in some ways, and regardless of any ultimate legal outcome, she may have won after all.

“The court case was only one small way in which I tried to force the government to act,” she says. “If pesticide policy is eventually changed as a result then the outcome of the legal case will not be as critical. But in the meantime, I will exhaust all the legal options open to me, and if the European Court were to rule that there has been a breach of human rights then it would help people all around the world who are in the same position as I am.”

At the age of thirty-six, Georgina still suffers from her original symptoms and has other health problems, including osteoporosis with a high risk of fracture. Her father, who has also been badly affected over years of living so close to farmland, now wears a respirator, goggles and other protective clothing in his own garden when the neighbouring farmers are crop-spraying.

“The problem I have been up against in this campaign is that there is huge financial and political pressure for the government to maintain the status quo on this issue,” explains Georgina.

And she’s right that there is currently a clear and bizarre mismatch between the government’s long-standing failure to protect people from passive exposure to pesticides, and its approach in other comparable policy areas such as smoking in public places, asbestos and straw burning, all of which have ended in a ban for the protection of public health.

The fact is that pesticides are big business. Sales of pesticides in the UK alone are in the region of £490 million every year, and according to one report, the value of the world pesticide industry grew a staggering 29% to US$52 billion in 2008. The government regulators receive approximately £7 million a year from

the industry to grant pesticide approvals, so any change in the system is going to dramatically affect that revenue stream.

“The government is well aware of the financial implications, plus the fact that a ruling in my favour would have opened the floodgates to compensation claims from other individuals who have similarly suffered adverse effects from exposure to crop sprays,” adds Georgina.

She admits it has now become her life’s work to get agricultural policy changed, but she knows that the only way to ultimately protect public health is to prevent exposure to pesticides altogether and that this will only be achieved through sustainable, non-chemical farming.

“There is so much lobbying from the pesticide industry asserting that food production will decrease without these chemicals, but there’s no evidence in this country to prove that,” she says.

I wonder, as we come to the end of the interview and Georgina starts to explain the enormous workload she now faces in preparing for the European Court,

whether it has all been worth it.Her response is categorical.“Considering how many people know

about the health risks from crop-spraying as a result of the campaign, it has definitely been worth it. Members of the public have a right to the information they need to make informed and knowledgeable decisions to protect their health and that of their family.

“If the government isn’t going to tell people the facts, then, with all the scientific evidence I have amassed over the last nine years, I would be acting completely irresponsibly if I didn’t. I am planning to make a documentary and write a book. Both will be about how far one person has had to go to get the government to do what it should have been doing in the first place – protecting the health of its own citizens.”

www.pesticidescampaign.co.uk

Rachel Fleming is editor of The Source

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Getting There

In the second part of his new series on low-carbon lifestyles, Mukti Mitchell explains how the way you travel affects not only what you can learn about a place, but how you feel when you arrive.

I love travelling and all forms of transport. So, in my quest for ultimate joy, and believing in the importance of first-hand experience, I have tried out voyages by car, bus, ship, lorry, train, motorbike,

bicycle and sailing yacht and discovered that for sheer enjoyment they fall into that exact order, with sailing yachts being the most enjoyable of all.

In order to travel ‘low-carbon’, I designed a zero-emission microyacht, inventing a new keel that is so stable it can make a vessel both light enough to row and seaworthy enough to weather a near-gale, for which it was nominated for Innovative Boat of the Year 2005.

My friend Richard St. George then suggested I ‘prove’ the design by sailing around Britain. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I can’t afford to take six months off work.”

“Get a wind energy company to sponsor you – it’s a perfect advertisement for renewable energy,” Richard replied.

Two years later, after a 300-mile pilot tour and a year’s full-time preparations, sponsored by ten low-carbon companies and endorsed by HRH The Prince of Wales and all of Britain’s political and environmental leaders, I did indeed set sail around Britain to promote low-carbon lifestyles.

Another friend had advised that to attract more publicity, I should interact with people along the way,

so I gave talks on how to lead a low-carbon lifestyle, and was invited to schools, yacht clubs, town halls and universities. Sailing allowed me to fully experience the environment of each destination, and at my talks I would project photos of the local coastline on to the wall. Because of the way I arrived, I had a real sense of each place and so was better able to connect with the people. Asking navigation advice, for example, enabled me to talk to local boatmen, and I could discuss their unique coastal scenery with the audiences at my talks.

Having no engine, when I was becalmed I was forced to enjoy it. Sailing up from the coast of Devon to Scotland, I saw dolphins every day, and having no engine noise meant I could even hear them coming up to breathe. With no engine petrol smells, the breeze could carry me a coconut whiff of gorse from the cliffs or fish ’n’ chips from a coastal village. Sometimes my crew and I would find ourselves whispering to each other on deck. At times, just dropping a toothbrush sounded like a clang above the tiny liquid bell of water rippling past the bow. And when the sails sagged and the boat rocked motionless on a mirror sea, I would declare “free time at the gym” and begin to row, the only sounds the gentle splash and trickle, splash and trickle of the oars, and the calling of seagulls.

Speed is only beneficial when it is enjoyable in its own right, such as when skiing. Enjoying every moment is what is most important. We often use speed to escape experiences we don’t enjoy, but how much time, how many hours, do we lose speeding to a better place?

And if you ask which forms of transport provide the highest quality experience then what came as a wonderful surprise to me is something

Mukti Mitchell in Scotland on his 2007 Low Carbon Lifestyle Tour

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that hopefully you will discover too, which is that in general the highest-quality experiences have the lowest carbon emissions.

It was a surprise, because we have come to believe that fossil fuels improve our quality of life. But on further reflection, this discovery makes sense because, as humans, we come from Nature and we are Nature, so it follows naturally that what is truly good for us is also good for Nature. What a relief!

I appreciate, of course, that not everyone can (or will want to) build a yacht and sail to work, so above are my low-carbon-lifestyle guides to cutting your carbon emissions from transport. Between them they answer most of the questions I get asked a lot, such as if I have to drive, what car should I drive, how long should I keep it, and how do I cut my carbon footprint when I have to travel by car?

Mukti Mitchell is the founder of the website lowcarbonlifestyle.org and the author of The Guide to Low Carbon Lifestyles.

The Case For: Bus & BicycleA few years ago, I was working on a carpentry job just six miles from home. I travelled by bus for three months and then by bicycle for three months, and was astonished how this improved my quality of life.I took a good book on the 20-minute bus journey, giving me 40 minutes of extra reading time every day, and would become so engrossed in whatever book I was reading, I couldn’t wait to get on the bus in the morning, and would feel annoyed when I had to get off. In those three months, I read three books I had wanted to read for years.

By bicycle, the journey was 40 minutes each way, making one hour and 20 minutes of extra recreational time every day. After a few days, I started to notice some very positive side effects. The exercise was oxygenating my brain so I would arrive at work very alert and ready to get straight into the job. My concentration improved so I got more done in less time. I also noticed that the feel-good endorphins released during this exercise put me in an excellent mood which would last several hours, making every day more enjoyable. I was astonished by the overall effect of the daily exercise, and found myself far happier than when I had been travelling to work by car.

Using public transport does require you to be more organised though. You will need to know the timetables, plan for delays, keep shopping lists for different destinations and carry goods by hand. But once you are organised, using public transport saves a lot of time and money that can be spent doing better, more enjoyable things. A woman who previously attended one of my talks came up to me a year later and said, “I’ve been taking the bus to work, and you are right, you can read on the bus. I’ve been reading so many more books. Thank you!”

Cutting carbon from transportGenerally, commuting is the biggest emitter because it is multiplied by 250 days a year. If you currently drive, can you go by bus or train? If not, can you car share? Car sharing with just one other person cuts your share of emissions by 50%, which could reduce your annual footprint by a whole tonne. That’s the equivalent of two or three years’ cuts at a rate of 4% per year.

The average UK lifestyle emits 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per person per year. This is divided into five life-style areas of 2 tonnes each: transport, holidays, food, shopping and heating. So, if the goal is to cut those CO2 emissions to just2 tonnes, just how far can you travel by the various forms of transport?

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Purchasing carsHow long should you keep one car before selling it to move to a more efficient car? As a guideline, if you don’t do many miles or are not downsizing very much, then keep your old car until it is over nine years old before changing. If you do an average annual mileage (10,000 miles per year) or want to significantly downsize, keep your old car until it is over six years old. If you do a high mileage and want to dramatically downsize, keep your old car for just three years.

If you have a car and want to change it, can you downsize to a more efficient model? Smaller cars are more efficient because you are accelerating less weight around. Manufacturing emissions (also known as embodied energy) are roughly proportional to weight of car. Hybrids are more efficient for their size, but a large hybrid is not as fuel-efficient as a small diesel car.

CO2 emissions per 10,000 milesCO2 emissions for manufacturing (approx.)Source: Adapted from DEFRA’s GHG Conversion Factors

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REGULARS THE VEGETARIAN FOODIE

NEW TWISTS ON OLD FAVOURITES

In the first of her brand new columns for Resurgence, vegetarian ‘foodie’ Jane Hughes shares her recipe for ladylike asparagus tartlets which capture the exuberance of her style of cooking.

I adore vegetarian food. With more than twenty years’ ‘service’ under my belt, I’m still discovering foods that are new to me, new combinations

of flavours, new feasts for the eye: the unexpected sweet crunch of a pink pomegranate seed hiding beneath a bitter salad leaf; the warming lemony tang of ginger in a meltingly soft butternut squash risotto.

In a Zen cookery class with the charismatic Californian Buddhist chef and teacher Ed Brown (see page 60 for a review of his re-issued cookbooks), I closed my eyes and put just one raisin into my mouth. Sugary fruit baked brown by the sunshine – suddenly I was back in my mum’s kitchen, chewing on the blackened edge of a hot, sticky jam tart. Thank heavens I gave up that gristly grey stuff (meat) and made space on my plate for some of Nature’s bounty!

Vegetarianism is a positive lifestyle choice, not some kind of punishment or an exercise in self-denial. There’s a wonderful feisty new breed of punky tattooed vegans who are having lots

of anarchic fun ‘telling it like it is’ (see Skinny Bitch in the Kitch by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, and everything ever written by Sarah Kramer), and generally ‘kicking ass’ in the kitchen.

Eyebrows were raised amongst a group of food writers when I recently declared that a vegetarian can be a ‘foodie’. I’m still fighting my corner and it’s true that there are lots of foods that I won’t eat, but that’s only because I don’t consider them to be food.

But I’m not here to shout at anybody. I reckon the best way to get anybody to start thinking seriously about changing their diet, even if it’s just having a go at Paul McCartney’s Meat Free Mondays, is to demonstrate, right in front of their eyes, that vegetarian food is full of flavour, looks great on the plate and doesn’t require any special effort to make. That’s why, last year, I started to spend some time away from my computer and actually found the nerve to start teaching people to cook. I’m still not really out to convert anybody. I just want to explain that we all have a choice available to us,

and I think it’s a shame that some people are missing out.

There are loads of good reasons to be vegetarian, and Resurgence readers will already be aware of them. I know vegetarianism is good for me, and good for the planet. And kinder to animals. That makes me happy, but that’s not why I’m a vegetarian. I’m a vegetarian because I love vegetarian food. I smile every time I eat. I don’t feel I’m denying myself anything. I cook with colour, and cream, and rich olive oil, and wine. One of my favourite discoveries, a couple of years back, was a book about cooking with alcohol called The Spirited Vegetarian, by Paulette Mitchell. Black kale with tequila! Fantastic!

So, in future issues of this magazine, I’ll be trying to share some of the joy I get out of vegetarian food, and brazenly attempting to seduce you with gorgeous combinations of flavour, colour, texture and lusciousness.

Whether you’re veggie or not, I hope you’ll all enjoy what I’m bringing to the Resurgence table.

ILLUSTRATION: MERIEL THURSTAN

39Issue 260

Asparagus is still considered something of a luxury. I wonder why. It’s a native English plant that grows like a weed on parts of our coastline, a perennial that is thought to have been part of the staple diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Perhaps it’s because, despite the fact that asparagus is now available throughout the year, thanks to imports from South America, the ‘real’ crop is still a seasonal event that we all relish. Or maybe because it takes a certain amount of commitment to grow it – when starting a new asparagus patch, you have to let the plants settle in for three years before you start to reap the rewards, and these days delayed gratification is not popular. But in the

early 19th century, every country house devoted a half-acre plot to this precious and strange-looking crop.

The grassy flavour of fresh asparagus is easily trampled on. It demands a kind of elegant simplicity, and complementary flavours like lemon, lemon thyme, and eggs. These individual tartlets balance the greenness of asparagus with fresh young cheese and savoury-sweet shallots. Sophie Grigson calls shallots “ladylike” and I think that’s what I’m aiming for with this dish.

I didn’t really want to use goat’s cheese in this recipe, because goat’s cheese is fast turning into the standard thing to give a vegetarian. It’s a bit too predictable

and, if you’re not careful, the flavour can completely overpower anything else that’s on the plate. I wanted to use sheep’s cheese, partly because I’m interested in exploring the seasonality of cheese, and partly because I needed something that was very light, lemony and not too pungent. Then I went to the lovely cheese shop in my town (long may it thrive) and discovered a soft, light, grassy goat’s cheese with chives that ticked all the boxes for me. I asked the shopkeeper if it was widely available, and he said no. So, I’m going to suggest that you explore the shops in your locality and sample the cheeses that you find there! Support your local cheese-makers!

Jane Hughes is editor of The Vegetarian magazine, for The Vegetarian Society.

Rub the butter into the flour and add the salt. Mix to a soft dough with the cold water. Roll thinly to line four medium-sized tartlet tins. Bake the pastry blind for 10 minutes.

Cook the asparagus in boiling water for 2–3 minutes. Slice in half lengthways when cool enough to handle.

Soak the shallots in boiling water for a few minutes to make them easier to peel. Then

Why not also try...Fast and fancy: since eggs and asparagus can both be cooked in 3 minutes, how about serving boiled eggs with asparagus ‘soldiers’? Could make an elegant brunch offering for unexpected visitors!

If at all possible, take time to make Dennis Cotter’s Roasted Asparagus with Blood Orange Aioli (as published in Wild Garlic, Gooseberries… and Me) – asparagus becomes heroic with this orange cloak!

Mmm, Asparagus...

And to follow?For Jane’s Rhubarb and Ginger pudding recipe see www.resurgence.org

peel, slice thinly, and cook in olive oil until beginning to brown. Cool, and drain away excess oil.

Divide the shallots between the pastry cases and arrange the asparagus on top.

Mix together the beaten egg, cream, black pepper and goat’s cheese, and divide the mixture between the tartlets.

Return to the oven for 25 minutes until lightly browned and risen. Serve with a salad or baby vegetables and new potatoes.

...Tartlets80g butter160g plain floura pinch of salt40ml cold waterapprox. 40g of trimmed asparagus tipsapprox. 160g shallots (8 shallots)1 tablespoon olive oil 1 free range egg, beaten50ml single creama twist of black pepper50g soft goat’s cheese

Oven 180 °C/350 °F/Gas Mark 4

REGULARS NATURE WRITING

The Hunter as Teacher Still largely unknown outside Russia, the story of Dersu the Trapper is one of the earliest examples of environmentally conscious thought in popular literature, says Patrick Evans.

“Before me I saw a primitive hunter, who had spent his entire life in the taiga and was exempt from all vices which our urban civilisation brings. From his words, I gathered that everything in life he owed to his rifle... He told me that he was fifty-three years of age, that he

had never had a house in his life, that he had always slept under the open sky, and only in winter built himself a hut of bark and brushwood. His first glimmerings of childish memories were of a river, a hut, father, mother and little sister.”

So opens the purportedly true story of Dersu the Trapper by Vladimir Arsen’ev, one of Russia’s most famous Nature writers. The scene paints the beginning of a life-changing yet painfully tragic friendship between the hunter, Dersu, and Arsen’ev, a captain in the Russian Imperial Army, around the turn of the 20th century.

In Russia, Arsen’ev’s fame as a writer was quick to develop, with the first volume of his Dersu trilogy a hit on publication in 1921. In 1939 the book was translated into English, and in 1975 the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa adapted it into an Oscar-winning film. Today it survives in thirty languages, yet outside Russia it remains largely and puzzlingly unknown.

The real-life story starts in 1906 when Arsen’ev was surveying Sikhote-Alin, an area of mountainous forest on the fringes of Russia’s vast empire, and wilderness home to several so-called primitive hunting tribes, including the one to which Dersu Uzala belonged.

In Arsen’ev’s fictional story, Dersu arrives in the soldiers’ camp by dead of night, nearly getting himself shot, but thanks to his intimate knowledge of the woods and its inhabitants – bear, wild boar, deer, wolverine, leopard and Siberian tiger – he quickly wins a job as guide to the small military detachment. It is from this chance encounter that a friendship develops which forms the basis of Arsen’ev’s classic of adventure in the taiga (a Russian term for forest).

In the story, the persona of the Captain is initially placed firmly in the acquisitive ‘hunting’ tradition of shooting wild game, exploiting land for the greater good of the empire, and subjugating the natives to imperial command; yet Dersu’s knowledge of the wild forests is so rich that soon the Captain is forced to see things differently. Slowly, the soldier relinquishes his killing instinct, only allowing himself and his men to shoot what they can reasonably eat. Increasingly he spends his time observing Nature and soon he begins to despise the advance of civilisation into wild areas, seeing it as highly destructive.

Dersu anthropomorphises Nature and calls every animal a “man”, behaviour which at first the Captain finds eccentric, but gradually he acknowledges Dersu’s connectedness, something which today might be considered a sustainable attitude towards living off the land. In short, Dersu’s wisdom transforms the Captain from (ab)user of Nature to champion of the natural world. Not that this stops Arsen’ev from attempting to transform Dersu. When the hunter starts to lose his eyesight, Arsen’ev suggests that Dersu comes to live with him in town, which, predictably, has

40 May/June 2010

dire consequences. Forbidden to shoot his rifle in the street and outraged that firewood costs money, Dersu decides to return to the taiga, but as he leaves town, the ageing hunter is robbed and murdered by thieves, his body unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road.

Guilt over the tragic nature of Dersu’s death almost certainly drove Arsen’ev to write so compellingly about the value of Nature, but his influences stretched right back to his childhood enjoyment of popular adventurist literature including Sergei Aksakov’s idyllic boyhood memoirs of hunting and fishing and, as he matured, more sophisticated nature writing role models in Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin. He soaked up Russia’s great moral writers Lermontov, Pushkin and Tolstoy and, finally, found and followed in the footsteps of his biggest hero, the explorer Przhevalsky.

Evidence of how Arsen’ev used his immersion in this great tradition to astounding literary effect is visible throughout, taking various forms including language:

“The purple-red horizon darkened, as though by smoke. Simultaneously with the sunset, on the east appeared the shadow of the Earth, one end reaching the northern horizon, the other the southern. The outer edge of this shadow was purple, and the lower the sun descended, the higher rose the shadow. Soon the purple band fused with the crimson sunset on the west, and then a dark night came on. I gazed in admiration, but …[I] heard Dersu grumble: ‘That bad. Me think will be big wind’.”

A frequent device is repetition, whereby an adjective, in the above example the word ‘purple’, is repeated more than once, to lulling effect. Arsen’ev also repeatedly notes familiar scenes: the act of setting up camp, stoking the fire, Dersu lighting his pipe, turning in for the night, and the mysterious omnipresence of the tiger.

Repetitive language serves a dual function: it paints the taiga as vast, seemingly impenetrable in its inhuman sameness. It also reminds the reader that the book is an authentic text – a diary, containing faithful and scientifically valuable descriptions of creatures and plants.

Another aspect of language worthy of comment is the simplistic manner of Dersu’s speech. In the book, Arsen’ev portrays him as speaking a kind of ‘pidgin Russian’, a device that, unfortunately, helped establish a tradition of ‘dumbed-down’ natives, something Arsen’ev himself would have deplored. As it happens, Arsen’ev never lived to see his or Dersu’s reputation torn

apart by ideology. He died in 1930, at which time a warrant for his arrest as a spy had been issued but never served. In 1937, his widow, Margarita, was arrested and it was she who was shot, just a year later, in the Vladivostok cellars of Stalin’s secret police after a trial lasting just ten minutes. Their daughter, Natalya, spent fifteen years in a gulag.

It was not until 1949 that the Soviets saw fit to rehabilitate Arsen’ev, and even then his depiction of Dersu was used to demonstrate the ideologically palatable notion of a native tribesman in service of a Soviet ideal. Meanwhile, Arsen’ev’s championing of Nature was interpreted as proving the Soviet state’s intellectual mastery of wilderness, which in turn became technological, with large-scale mining and forestry operations planted right in the heart of Sikhote-Alin.

Today, the exploitation of Arsen’ev and Dersu’s beloved backyard continues unabated. To find out more about the influence of his writing on his environment, I travelled to the Russian Far East last autumn and met with Amir Khisamutdinov, Arsen’ev’s biographer, who explained that, originally called Goppmeier, and of Dutch extraction, Arsen’ev’s grandfather had changed the name to protect his family from anti-foreign sentiments. Had Arsen’ev retained his original identity, he would undoubtedly never have been acclaimed by the Soviets. As it is, Arsen’ev is a monumental name in Russia today and his Dersu books are standard texts in school.

The story of the friendship between Arsen’ev and Dersu is one of the earliest and most powerfully realised examples of environmentally conscious thought in popular literature. That it is hardly known in Britain is largely because it speaks of a place most of us will never visit, in a language now outmoded. Yet it is time that a new English-speaking readership evolved to help champion a long lost but never fully extinguished cause.

Few reach the very heart of the taiga. It is too vast. The wayfarer is ever struggling with the force of vegetation. Many secrets does the taiga conceal in her breast, hiding them jealously from the prying eyes of man. She seems morose and grim. But the man who grows to know her better soon becomes accustomed to her, and pines if taken away from the forest. It is only outwardly that the taiga seems dead; in truth she is full of life.

Patrick Evans is a writer and film-maker based in Cornwall.

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The poet Yeats had a real gift for chatting- up bright and

beautiful young women, whose advice or scolding he then fed with lyrical effect into his next poem. Well, this column is seldom short on lyricism, but good sense is something else – and the other day, over lunch, a young woman who not only fulfils all of Yeats’ criteria but is armed also with salient Resurgence credentials, talked me to the following poetic conclusion.

We were plumbing the deeper waters of the notion that women can’t read maps and men won’t ask the way. Suppose then, there’s a lost couple, and we’re, of course, talking in offensive stereotypes, and that the woman is commanding and that she does, in fact, have them stop to ask the way. Now, whether it is a man or a woman who is being asked for directions, the pair of them should be equipped (this is what I was being led to understand) to interpret the instructions.

But where there is only the one driver the inquiry becomes more exacting. Say the driver is your stereotypical man and that, however unlikely, he does stop to ask the way: everything’s fine so long as it is a man he asks – a sequential account of right and left turns and the destination is already in sight. If, however, he asks a woman, I mean your stereotypical woman, he’ll be exposed to the balletic, the autobiographical and the pictorial and the chances are that his dominant left-brain will be unable to cope. He may come away with her email address, but as for getting to his destination, he might as well pack up and go home.

Whereas, if our imaginary scenario is to be a woman asking a woman, then there will be perfect and effective communication. The contradictory hand movement, the time out to wipe the baby’s nose, the turning to face this way and that (as if to reposition true north) – the whole process is as complex and precise as the dance worker bees confront each other with to point the path to the nectar. It wouldn’t work for the man; but then a man’s left-brain stuff would have her stereotypically reversing wrong-hand-down into the oncoming traffic.

Had we, I wondered later, stumbled upon the key to the primary dysfunction of our species? Not that men and women won’t talk to each other, but that their respective modes of communication scramble the other’s ability to receive. But wait. Is this seeming abyss between the sexes something that resides in just as existential a divide between, say, nations? Maybe, instead of trying to promote nation speaking unto nation, we should be trailing “vive la différence”. Maybe nations speaking unto their own can most reliably be directed to their destination – to the destination. To our shared way home. Think globally, speak locally.

What, even Australians? I mean, of course, your stereotypical Australian. When Antoinette and I were driving and (fairly

constantly) lost in Australia, she would have me ask the way. Australians, we found, have a stereotypical approach to left and right. Ask an Australian the way, and she or he tends to look down at their hands, first one and then the other, as if taken aback by a range of choices. They then look ahead and down the road.

“Straight on mate, and then…” They stop and wave an index finger side-to-side. “And then that way.” “You mean first right?” you ask. He, if it’s he, looks at you suspiciously, like you might be another ‘difficult Pom’ or something. “That’s what I said, mate. That way.” The point is that it works for them. In the outback, we never saw couples hanging around looking lost – and besides, their running between the wickets is as good as it gets.

Or, if you want to really test the theory, what about the Irish? I was once lost in County Cavan, where the DNA of two Irish grandmothers and from-the-cradle exposure to the deviant logic of Devon’s lanes could do nothing to prevent me from going off the map. I accepted I would have to ask my way. It worked a charm because out of nowhere, on a bicycle, came what I believe is termed “a quare fella”. I waved, hoping he would stop. I think he accepted this as a greeting because, even though none too steady, he took one hand from the handlebar and waved with excited abandon that fetched him headlong into the hedge. I leapt out of

the car and when we’d brushed him down I asked him the way. The way I was delivered was a guided trip through the length and breadth and intricate byways of an enchanted land so extensive that I could, then and there, have returned home a fulfilled traveller. Finally, with some help he remounted, and as he wobbled on his way he called over his shoulder, “Now, neither is that the shortest way nor the quickest, but it is the way I would choose.”

Those who wake from enchantment often are left with only a hazy memory. In a haze I drove on. The details of his instructions had been spirited from me. I was surrendered to the providence of the lanes. And in due course, neither the shortest nor the quickest way delivered me directly to the house and home I was looking for. You see, trust your own. God knows where I’d have fetched up if I’d been an Australian.

The young woman and I – both part-blooded across the ‘bitter sea’ – had been momentarily silenced by the shift in human destiny that our conclusion must surely herald, when a person whom I believe is termed ‘a geek’ and who had been keeping an intrusive ear on our conversation suddenly shrilled, “SatNav will solve all your problems.” The young woman and I almost imperceptibly turned one shoulder and all our attention to the mango sorbet.

John Moat (www.johnmoat.co.uk) is a poet, painter and writer. His most recent book is The Best (Including Quite the Worst) of Didymus, which costs £7.99 from www.resurgence.org.

“Even though none too steady, he took one hand from the handlebar and waved with excited abandon that fetched him headlong into the hedge”

REGULARS OCC ASIONAL DIDYMUS

EACH TO THEIR OWNWho needs SatNav when you can simply ask someone else the way the next time you are lost asks John Moat?

43Issue 260

There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow from Les Miserables, 1862, Victor Hugo

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REGULARS OPINION

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Instead of barging into each other’s sacred spaces with endless emails, texts and tweets, we need a new e-tiquette to communicate more mindfully, writes John Naish.

The famous wartime poster slogan “Loose talk costs lives” may be due a comeback. In the Second World War, it warned

civilians against letting secrets slip. Today, it could encourage people to stop and think before adding to the overwhelming deluge of electronic communication swamping the planet.

It is easy to think of emails, mobile calls and other digital data as somehow ecologically neutral. After all, they don’t require much tree felling and they don’t need trucks and trains to transport them. But in an eye-blink of human history, our electronic traffic has reached titanic proportions. And it’s about to grow even bigger and faster.

Aside from the environmental damage this will wreak, we must wake up to its impact on our personal sustainability – our emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

Every day last year, some 247 billion emails were sent across the globe, according to technology research company The Radicati Group. In the UK, we made 110 billion minutes of mobile phone calls in 2008, with the average Briton sending, on average, 99 texts a month. And all that global chat amounts to far more than just metaphorical hot air.

To convey these messages, along with all the other digital information whizzed around the planet every second, vast numbers of computer data centres are being built. These consume masses of energy and radiate astonishing heat. The US Government reports that data centres

in America alone accounted for 1.5% of the nation’s electricity use in 2006 and predicts that this level of consumption may double in the next five years.

To deal with spiralling demand, companies such as Google are building ever-bigger data centres, often near hydroelectric dams so that they get rapid access to cheaper electricity. And cooling these vast computer warehouses requires even more energy, with the cooling equipment itself consuming 25% of the power used by a data centre.

Computer giants are now trying to improve energy efficiency, not least to save money and to forestall the threat of needing more electricity than can be supplied. One tactic is to relocate data centres to cooler climes. Microsoft recently opened one in Dublin, which has been designed to suck chilly Irish air through the roof, and councils in Scotland and Iceland are currently bidding for this kind of business.

But such efforts look inadequate in the face of massively accelerating demand. Not only is our use of communications soaring, but the IT is becoming ever more ravenous. In the early 2000s, for example, a supercomputer at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory used a few hundred kilowatts of power. Its needs are now projected to grow to 17 megawatts over the coming years: enough to serve 13,000 homes.

The ecological impact goes further. Digital technologies create masses of electronic junk, often containing

mercury, lead and cadmium. Last year, an undercover investigation by Greenpeace exposed how a television sent for recycling at a Hampshire County Council facility in England ended up at an illegal e-waste dump in Nigeria.

One of the biggest unintended consequences involves the way digital communications have changed our behaviour. A recent article in the Harvard Business Review entitled ‘Death by Information Overload’ reports that, on average, company executives get 300 emails a day and workers need 24 minutes to return to work after each email interruption. Brain-scanning science tells us that our human wiring is not configured for constant interruption and distraction. Just being in a situation where you are able to text and email can knock a whole ten IQ points off your brain – similar to the head-fug caused by losing a night’s sleep, says a study by Glenn Wilson, a psychologist at King’s College, London University.

One solution would be to practise e-silence and communicate mindfully and only when necessary. If we truly wish to create a sustainable, conscientious society, we need to encourage mindful living for all people. But a culture of endless talk and no silence does the opposite. It damages the global human ecology by obliterating a finite resource: our time for reflection, consideration and inner calm.

John Naish is the author of Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More.

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L e t t e r s t o t h e E d i t o r s

Reaching OutThe Nov/Dec issue (Resurgence 257) was very inspiring – particularly the articles about forestation, planting and conserving landscapes and all the related lifeforms from birds to flowers. Here, in the temperate rainforest where I live surrounded by firs and red cedar, it seemed the forests could go on forever, yet we are destroying our trees’ genetic history by the constant cutting and logging of what remains of our old-growth forests. We work desperately to preserve what we can in protected areas and parks and at the same time save the other plants and animals dependent on forests.

Meanwhile, across the world and in a totally different environment, Palestinians are responding to the loss of over one million trees in their small land (much smaller than Vancouver Island, where I live). Yet since 2003 more than one million new trees have been planted.

In 2008, the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), a volunteer group based in Amman and founded by exiles from Palestine, achieved its one million trees aim and started on its second million trees goal. The funds raised are used by APN’s partners within Palestine to distribute and plant replacement trees.

Every seedling represents new life and new hope, not just for Palestine but for peace and for environmental movements everywhere.

We can all express the same reverence for life by protecting and nourishing trees in our own communities. We can also reach out like broad cedar branches and support these creative initiatives if, as Resurgence states, “our aim is to help create a world based on justice, equity and respect for all beings” and if we dedicate ourselves to “the service of soul, soil and society”.Theresa Wolfwood

I Beg to DifferI read with interest the article ‘In Service of the Earth’ about the work of the artist Deirdre Hyde (Resurgence 258) and came across the following statement about Costa Rica: “…helped to forge

the ecological sensibility that is now a hallmark of this minuscule nation, which protects 25% of its landmass in national parks – a higher proportion than any other country on Earth”.

While it may be a matter of semantics and/or the official IUCN definition of National Park, I beg to differ. Seychelles is an even more minuscule nation of some 85,000 people and a land mass of around 280 sq. km, made up of 115 scattered islands as far apart as 1,200 km. And yet about 47% of this land mass is protected – either as National Parks (or the land areas of Marine National Parks) or as Special Nature Reserves, several of which if reclassified according to new world norms would qualify as National Parks. Seychelles also has two UNESCO natural World Heritage Sites, one of which is Aldabra Atoll, the world’s largest raised coral atoll and one of the least affected by human activities.

Of course I am not saying that Costa Rica is less wonderful than Seychelles in its attempts to protect land. What has been achieved in Costa Rica in the way of environmental awareness is fantastic, and the country is to be thoroughly congratulated for its efforts on behalf of the natural world. I just wish that other countries on this Earth would also increase their protected areas to match these two countries.Katy Beaver

When Will We Learn?I read with interest Peter Bunyard’s article on protecting the Amazon rainforest (Resurgence 257) and would like to highlight two examples of political incompetence that are cause for despair and that show just how far we are from attaining forest stability and how little value we place on forests and their role as carbon sinks.

As Tristram Stuart highlights in his new book Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (2009), feeding pigs swill terminated in the UK in 2001 thanks to the foot and mouth debacle. Before this time, pigs had transformed garbage food to flesh, but blanket policies were applied with no foresight. The EU followed suit resulting in tonnes of waste food from schools,

hospitals and hotels being dumped.So what was the cheap alternative? Soya

from the Amazon rainforest.Soya prices shot up and vast acres of

forest continue to be destroyed for soya plantations. Soya insidiously feeds us, pigs and cattle, both directly and indirectly and is very difficult to avoid.

Cheap beef from the Amazon has also made it almost impossible to get local beef anymore. To paraphrase Wendell Berry, it has become a case of a solution being neatly divided up into several new problems.

The Indonesian government, meanwhile, is trying to get money for preserving forest whilst trying to declare that oil palm plantations should count as forests. Meanwhile, the country’s true forests go up in smoke for the sake of palm oil which is another of those seemingly innocuous ingredients in so much food from margarine to fish fingers.

Stupid policies, cheap, faraway ingred-ients found in most processed food and the forests going up in smoke. When will we learn not to unleash the horrors of free-market globalised capitalism on the last remaining shreds of biodiversity? Sadly, I see no solutions from most EU politicians or leaders of the G7.Rajith Dissanayake

Relishing the IronyIn an issue celebrating Liberty (Resurgence 258), readers must have relished the irony of the panegyric on the Cuban political system (notwithstanding Cuba’s enforced move to sustainability). It would have reminded them of the past apologists for the Soviet Union.David Taylor

The Editors welcome letters and emails commenting on articles published in Resurgence. These should include your postal address. Send your correspondence to: The Editors, Resurgence, Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon EX39 6EE or email editorial@resurgence.orgLetters may be edited for reasons of space or clarity.

LETTERS REGULARS

46 May/June 2010

ARTS & CRAFTS POETRY

An Anthology of New VoicesKorculaFrom the noon-hammered streets the darknessWas like stepping into a deep stone wishOr the echo of a blessing.

A tree of life trellised the chapel’s arch-And hissed with flaming hearts,Squinting wild men and busy serpents.

Inside, a jury of saints, knotted like old yewsClenched their fists towards SinaiAnd howled silently into bleaching winds.

We broke the water in the stoop.It was tarn chill. Fingertips fashioned the lipsOf Christ’s kiss on our blazing brows.

Then we made the shekel slide of dull coinsPassing face over faceAs we paid for prayers and little flames.

Steven O’Brien

SkylarkShuttlecock trembling onthe pinpoint of vision, spoolair spills itself through.Little juggler holdingmy head up, diabolo,my heart stopped, spinningthe wind and pluckinga chatter of comb’s teeth, clickingyour tiny Xhosa; bubbling, pouring outpea-whistle arias as scalesfall from my ears.

(From the ground even bracken liftsits primeval cochlea to hear.)

Does your tongue’s needlejust quiver on territory, the poleof fury and possession? No, sweeter: strungthrough tug of eggs to earth’svessel whose skysail you are.

Matthew Barton

Evening Ferry

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Poetry section is edited by Peter Abbs www.peterabbs.org

Poetry AppreciationThursday, we talked of swans:tucked or ruffled

on a slate grey lake and how, between the seeing

and the writing on a page,something seismic moves

below the surface,like dark subterranean plates.

These were Heaney’s swansglimpsed along the Flaggy Shore

in County Clare, where wind and wingsbuffeting the car

catching you off guard,erupt the heart’s fault line.

I thought of swans I’d seen oncehigh above tarmac, pylons,

endless motorway signs. I longedto find the words

to write about these swans:flight-strong, glittering

in the sun, frost feathered,flung out white

against a winter sky –their wings wild-water-wide.

Lisa Dart

HawkWings wedged into that invisible seamwhere air suspends, unwavering eyehollowing the field below, spying throughgrass to the solo mouse as she minnows home.Feather-thronged hawk hangs before makingthat big-bang plunge without so much as a whisper.An arc above the field’s green forest theninsurmountable rise into petroleum blue.Not the cry but the arc – part round, partstraight line – sounds the song of flight. Notthe noise of it but the drive inside that noise –sheer, clear transcendent zoom of bird hunting.

Alyson Hallet

Staying OutLate June:

slow disintegrationof a long,glimmering eveningsettles on grass,

fox-light,

soft growlfrom an edgy pigeon,

apple-treesgiving up the ghostsof leaves;

as I fade into the dark,

your voiceis a ladder to the house.

Isobel Thrilling

Girl on a ShoreNot even first stars brought a poem,Crystal hints in the sand,

This shell in my hand,Its cold horizon, its infinite whorl.

Wait says the wind,Life has a crab-crawl rhythm here,

The storm-bent heatherGrows slowly, its carillon

Burnished by the sun;Yet on the shore, this salt-tongued page,

I’m a young girl againImpatient for words, like love.

Lynne Wycherley

Poetry Appreciation by Lisa Dart has been previously published in The Linguistics of Light (Salt). Skylark by Matthew Barton has been published in Vessel (Brodie Press). Girl on a Shore by Lynne Wycherley has been published in Poppy in a Storm-Struck Field (Shoestring Press).

48 May/June 2010

ARTS & CRAFTS SCULPTURE SPECIAL

In the Footsteps of the Masters

The rocky walls that frame artist Andrew Lacey’s South Devon workshop seem to reflect back its occupant’s sculptural intents.

Tucked into a corner close to the rock face, here, the trees and birdsong soften the sound of hammers and there is a sense of rightness in the open-air firing of crucibles of liquid bronze.

A corrugated roof covers the area by the workshop where the crucibles are heated, where bronze is poured into moulds and where, at dusk, pipistrelle and lesser horseshoe bats flit around, picking off

insects. There is an accord here between an ancient form of manufacture – sculptures cast in bronze – and the trees, the brook, the pond and the flora and fauna. And it is an accord Devon artist, Andrew Lacey, his partner Siân Lewis and his brother Robin (who both share the studio) are quietly determined to deepen.

It’s very rare to find someone like Andrew who is an artist, a historian and an artisan for other artists and who moves, apparently seamlessly, between these areas, whilst also running a busy workshop and studio. His expertise in bronze has led to consultations

Sculptor Andrew Lacey has gone back to the old texts to find ways of working with bronze that cause less damage to the environment. Andy Christian reports.

“It is as if they had been dug out of the sand or dredged from the sea. Only their forcefulness makes their contemporary origin inevitable”

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for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and he has even appeared on the popular UK television series Time Team. Andrew’s own work is inevitably fed by his knowledge of history and, of course, his particular knowledge of bronze. He has examined and handled ancient and classical bronzes, and that closeness, he says, is what has allowed him to understand the hands of those early sculptors.

By studying a material in such detail, an artist becomes a constant student of its chemistry and its behaviour. Potters, for instance, come to understand the particular clay they use and how it behaves as it dries, shrinks and fires. As a sculptor, Andrew is unusual in that he understands the archaeology of bronze and the ancient techniques. This in-depth knowledge gives him the edge on the artists who come to him and present their work for casting and also means he knows not only how to sympathetically interpret their work, but how they themselves would like it expressed in the casting and patination.

His own art is concerned with the human figure and with horses and their riders. None of his pieces are of complete forms but are studies which, through their vitality, imply the rest of their structures. It is as if they had been dug out of the sand or dredged from the sea. Only their forcefulness makes their contemporary origin inevitable. All his drawings and sculptures are concerned with what lies beneath the surface of their subjects. Flesh is implied through a quick line or a shadow but his search is beneath the skin into a world of bone, tendon and muscle. This concern for underlying form is incisive; a reminder of the essential structure provided by our skeletons.

In his busy schedule, Andrew is determinedly greening his workshop practices, delving into history for ancient methods that can leave bronze casting more free of environmental costs. The earliest tin alloy bronzes were made in the late fourth millennium BCE in Iran and Iraq. Copper is the main constituent of bronze and the earliest makers of bronze had to trade the constituent metals because they rarely occur in the Earth together. Their methods of making and casting made good use of locally available materials. But bronze-making, like so many other ‘industrial’ activities, has gradually accumulated processing and habits that use unsustainable materials

and methods. The challenge that Andrew and his team

have now set themselves is to reduce that accumulation and rethink the current use of materials, replacing them with naturally occurring and recycled substitutes. All of the bronze used at the workshop is recycled from copper wire and industrial waste. For the final patination, they use fruit and vegetable acids rather than laboratory chemicals. Potato replaces finishing polish compounds, and mineral salts replace laboratory chemicals. In the mould-making, plaster and gelatine are replacing silicon rubber; plant fibre is replacing glass fibre, as are animal hair and wool. Sand, ash and charcoal dust are replacing molochite-fused grain. Ultimately the fuels used will be wood,

charcoal and vegetable oil rather than gas, coal or electricity.

The prerequisite for selecting each new material is that it must adequately replace the physical quality of the former material in each process and not produce any significantly negative by-products. Also, that it should be produced or collected locally. For example, beeswax can replace microcrystalline and paraffin wax, amber rosin from pine trees can replace petrochemical materials, turpentine from larch trees can replace petrochemical solvents, and vegetable oils can replace petroleum jelly. Andrew has made a careful audit of his materials and processes and is now well on the way to completely replacing all those which are unsustainable.

The artists here are also changing back

to re-use more hand tools in finishing the bronzes. Thus out go grinders and electric sanders for tools that take a little longer but give much more sense of control and are much more pleasant to use. The atmosphere in the finishing workshop is reflective, busy and productive. There is a fascinating mixture of pieces being made for other artists amongst examples of Andrew’s own work. There is also a litter of inspirational objects, archaeological treasures, and vigorous drawings on scraps of card and paper.

It is clear that, despite its tucked-away location, the workshop houses a complex juggling act. Demanding artists call by to bring pieces to be cast, bronze pours take place, students stop by and plans need to be made for the next teaching assignment and the next piece of research. In the midst of all this, a sustainable model is being developed which uses medieval and Renaissance principles. Andrew is keen to point out that all he needs to achieve these principles is recorded in old texts and it strikes me that this is true of many other craft-based industries.

The fine statues made by Hindu artisans of the Chola empire in Tamil Nadu using lost-wax casting to depict their gods embodied a skill still practised in India today by craftspeople working in Swamimalai and Chennai. The bronzes made in the Kingdom of Benin are also examples of the highest skill and artistry using low-tech means. As Andrew Lacey’s workshop is quietly revealing, we do not need to be beholden to materials based on petrochemicals and diminishing energy resources.

Out of this ancient South Devon quarry a methodology is emerging which challenges conventions. Here industry and art are engaged deeply in the thoughts of a trio of makers who are determined to move forward with their work in a way that causes the least environmental impact. There is still further to go in the greening of their processes but there is an uncommon sense of balance in this working atmosphere, and what their commitment shows is that it is quite possible to question the rationale of the industrialised world and to find alternatives to common practice.

To see more of Andrew Lacey’s work, visit www.andrewlacey.com

Andy Christian is a writer and art consultant.

Hera: cast glass and bronze

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ARTS & CRAFTS SCULPTURE SPECIAL

MAKING TREESCommissioned by the Eden Project to make a sculpture that doubles as a seat, Paul Anderson found himself grappling (happily) with the limitations of his raw materials.

There is a compulsion in many artists to make trees, or at least their interpretations of them. Why is that, and what can it lead to?

I have been wondering if, by making art that’s inspired by a tree, an artist gets to sense, even if it’s only fleeting, something akin to what being a tree feels like. It certainly seems understandable – to want to experience that experience.

When I was asked by the Eden Project to design and make a sculpture that might double as a place to pause during the long haul up from the main arena to the visitor centre, my first thought was to look closely at the shapes and structures of the magnificent tree ferns and palms planted in that part of the project. And although I researched the patterns of these natural forms to help me fix on a ‘concept design’, I never intended to make something that would be informative or illustrative from a technical point of view. To be honest, it was the lushness and criss-crossing lines of a canopy of fronds looked up to on a hot day, the experience of sitting beneath them, blue sky above, in stripy half-shade, that was my inspiration: I decided, essentially, not to get too botanical but to stay naive.

The more exciting challenge would be to create something that took intrinsic aspects of the real palm as cues, yet resisted the temptation to replicate it faithfully. Actually, for me, there was no temptation: once I’d decided to use an unyielding raw material – oak, split unpredictably along the grain – for the hundreds of short leaves and long arching spines of the fronds, the work was never going to be capable of impersonation: it would always be something other than a skilful duplicate of the real-life version.

The process of riving (splitting) oak produces lengths of wood whose profiles speak of the way oak grows. Most English oak, even limbs selected for relative straightness, yields riven material that reveals little twists and kinks and changes of mind that are irresistible characteristics of the oak tree’s essential nature: wilful, wild, tricky, tenacious, and sensual. And it’s difficult to work with – the only viable way has to be without reference to straightness, flatness, or squareness. The fabrication

of the fronds would need to be carried out intuitively, playfully and inquisitively.

I figured, from past experience of making non-moving objects, that by working in this way I’d stand a better chance of being able to invest these inanimate forms with a sense of being alive and enjoy the process more myself. Animation, then, was my aim; faithfulness, the danger.

The part that excited me most was to be the making of the palm fronds: because I had never done it before, and because I didn’t know exactly how they’d turn out. Lots of big models, then. And, of course, I had made sketches, so I had expectations and conviction. But until I started handling materials and experimenting with ways of shaping lath into leaves and attaching them to the heavier, chunkier spines, I had no clear idea how the piece would turn out, what emotions it might arouse or even whether it would work.

Once I’d got hold of a few bundles of oak lath and a batch of specially riven heftier lengths to select spines from, I began to grapple with practical aspects in the studio. The leaves were to be fashioned from short pieces of lath measuring about 30mm wide by between 4mm and 6mm thick, and always varying, bit by bit. Delicate objects, but strong. Soon I was trying out different ways of tapering the tips, and at the other end of each one, I sawed, then chiselled a tapered peg shape, and tried driving them into pre-drilled holes made at regular(ish) intervals down either side of each spine.

I used a boat-building sealant to secure the connections against the ravages of sun and rain. Attaching hundreds of assorted leaves to twenty-four spines in an instinctive, unhurried way was clearly going to take virtually forever: it evolved into a merry meditation undertaken with the assistance of my friend Roy and much drinking of tea.

One thing we noticed, by accident at first, was that by altering the angles at which the holes were drilled sequentially along each side, we could deftly affect the degree of twist that some of the fronds manifested. So we worked, more and more, with and not against those inherent wiggles, expanding on what was integral. And we witnessed with some amusement (usually a good

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sign) the fronds taking unique shape, one by one: a thrilling process full of little revelations.

Gradually the space was filled with completed fronds, ready to mark out for fixing to the main uprights. Since these would be too long to manoeuvre around in the studio, they would need to go straight from the sawmill to Eden, which is where we carried out the next stage.

Pre-drilling the fat spine ends and putting the appropriate oak upright in the right place demanded concentration and careful marking and labelling. This was not creative: it was tedious. We spent a day liaising with the contractor who had been booked to fix the seven uprights into position and then aligned each of them according to a somewhat scruffy plan I discovered in my back pocket. I wanted to ensure that the fronds would project in all kinds of unparallel directions so that their tips met and didn’t meet in unforeseen ways, and I was just hoping there wouldn’t be any clashes. In fact, a few days later, once the concrete had gone off and we were back at Eden to bolt them into place, I realised that if I’d been able to source longer spines to begin with, we might have been able to create more dynamic spatial dialogues within the group.

Still, as each frond was bolted on, the semblance of a canopy, first dreamt up haphazardly on scraps of paper, began to take shape. Being up there alongside it, within it, on a glorious sunny day, was truly exhilarating.

I had made the most botanical parts of these seven sculptures, the fronds, as expressive as the materials would allow, and wanted the virtual canopy of arcs and stripes to be the focal point. Elsewhere, there is no hint of naturalness, which I like: the fronds are bolted, blatantly, with stainless-steel bolts, to the upper reaches of each perfectly straight, unworked, square-sawn stem – so that the cluster as a whole is categorically manmade.

I think as sculptures they work better that way. Why? Because, instead of standing there congratulating myself on having made sculptures that are amazingly realistic (which they’re not), I’m starting to wonder about the differences between the sculptures and real palms. Obvious but generally unspecified differences. Yes, the sculptures will, in time, no doubt offer convenient perches for birds; they can cast palm-like shadows on a sunny day onto surfaces of wood and ground and skin below; and they create a kind of visual athletics as you approach them or look up at them. But just look at what the living versions can do: they’re habitually rustling, waving, bowing, breathing, changing colour, growing, dying, multiplying, producing fruits, flowering, making shade… And while up in the canopy of twisty fronds, I wondered why we don’t also think of plants as being mischievous, moody, musical, hypersensitive, unpredictable, emotional, impulsive, depressed, fallible, joyous, lavish, restrained: we think of such qualities as being very human.

Back down at ground level, I look up at what I’ve made, and see rows and rows of little leaves splayed out against the bright blue sky; stripy lines of shade scattering down dispassionate uprights. It’s a curious jumble of unselfconscious geometry and high spirits.

The characteristics of the materials I chose to use for this work allowed me to make naive versions of palm trees that, funnily enough, actually ended up employing and displaying integral properties of English oak: its twistiness, awkwardness, and phenomenal strength when split along the grain. And it enabled me to convey a playfulness and a sensuality that may be more typical of plants than we sometimes imagine.

Paul Anderson is an artist who works mainly with relic oak: www.paulandersonart.co.uk

“As each frond was bolted on, the semblance of a canopy, first dreamt up haphazardly on scraps of paper, began to take shape”

The canopy in the making

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At some point during your stay in India in the 1970s, you were faced with a choice between the spiritual life and the artist’s life.

Yes, I had to choose between continuing my Buddhist studies and becoming a fully integrated monk and meditator within the Theravada tradition, or trying to do something else with my life. At that time, there were a lot of Westerners trying to find a different cultural context, but I did not want to escape my own history. I was more interested in bringing something into the home mix. In the end, I felt it was my responsibility to come back to Britain to fulfil some kind of creative role and maybe bring what insight I had arrived at in India into that development.

But those years of intense meditation remain the foundation of my work. It was the opening of the door to a new kind of knowledge that was about first-hand experience and using that knowledge to ask questions about what it means to be alive, to be conscious. And then using the body, both as an instrument and as a kind of arena, or landscape, for investigation, or a journey.

I think I am still there; that is still at the heart of my work: looking to the body not as an image, not as an icon to be used for its symbolic or narrative purposes, but as an open place of inquiry and exploration that is constantly changing.

The most recent attempts I have made to think about the body as an open zone involve using the language of foams, or the way that bubbles aggregate. Think of foam, in a bubble bath, or when you’re washing up, or in the head of a pint of beer: it is the most fugitive, evanescent, transforming form. A soap bubble has perfect form and then slowly disintegrates. So it is a very ephemeral thing and I think that is maybe where I am going now in my evocation of the body.

It may have something to do with my age, and the fact that I am now very conscious of things breaking down, of me in the second half of my life. All of the atoms which originated somewhere out there in an expanded universe are going to be taken back into the circulation of mass and energy; that is the physical condition of our existence.

Maybe as a result of meditation, I don’t find that frightening. In fact, it’s rather comforting. It’s a bit like surfing: we do it while we can and then the wave goes back into the sea. That’s an image of the Buddhist

notion of incarnation: that the whole rising and disappearing of lives and forms is a kind of endless mystery.

In light of this ephemerality, will you talk about the work you called Still?

Still (shown on the front cover), in its primary form, is simply a lead box, a lead skin made around a sleeping child, age six days. And you could think of this child sleeping on the breast or on the stomach of the mother, close to the place where the child grew in the womb. But the sculpture is as much about its removal from that position on the belly and its exposure to the wider world.

It is a small female child that is calm, and in contact with a supporting surface. But that supporting surface has moved from being the belly of the mother to being the floor. For many people, that is very shocking. This very small object that is very evidently human that is somehow abandoned. I often show it alone, in a big room. Females, in particular, find it very poignant. Whether it has to do with abortions they may have suffered, or the feeling of their own isolation in space, but people have become very emotional.

Our bodies come out of other bodies. In a sense, our primary experience is of dwelling within the realm of another. We learn how to listen, how to move, how to attend to the world, within a totally protected realm. Then, at birth, that is taken away from us. We are made into an object that, in a sense, is separated by space and skin. We are always in a relational field. There are a few moments, maybe in intimate love or moments of total immersion in an immersion tank, where we might recover something of that primal condition. But, in the end, we are born alone and we die alone.

In a sense, that is the human condition: that we are lost in space, from the moment that we separate from the body that contained us originally. This could be a tragedy, a kind of existential loss, but I don’t think it is at all. I don’t think of the condition of ‘aloneness’ of the human consciousness as being a limitation. It’s actually the great challenge and inspiration that each of us has. In a way, we are all spaceships.

At that moment of birth, we set upon a journey in time and space, and we have to use it as well as we can. People say about my work: “Oh, it’s all about isolation and

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ON BEING HUMANJan van Boeckel talks to Antony Gormley

To read this exclusive interview in full, visit our website: www.resurgence.org

54 May/June 2010

the loneliness and the contemporary condition of alienation.” Well, it might be, for those who want it to be. But I would say that to be fully human is always a balance between two states: together and apart.

And one is to be alone, aware and attentive to being itself. And that can only happen in a state of silent isolation. And the weird thing is that this is also a state of togetherness, togetherness with being. That is something that Buddhism understands absolutely: that the state of being is not limited to an individual consciousness that is isolated.

If you are within it, totally, it embraces all being, all living things. And not just all living things, all things that are: the vibrations within a quartz stone, the life in a tree or blade of grass. Somehow, they are all extensions of our consciousness, our ability to plug in to consciousness. And to become aware of that connectivity, you have to accept your position, as a point in space at large.

You once said that when you were in India, you saw people sleeping on the street, and that somehow triggered your fascination with the body.

The beauty of those experiences of seeing people sleeping on railway stations, on sidewalks, in India, was that it reinforced this same thing we’ve been talking about with Still: here is an isolated individual in space, vulnerable in a way we don’t see, or in a way that is not expressed in the West so generously. We have the huddled bodies of the homeless that we see in the alcoves of shops or in empty lots in our inner cities. But in India, it is a collective expression, this acceptance of the body as our first home.

I find that very beautiful, just seeing, in the early morning, these isolated and abstracted bodies, just covered by a thin membrane of cloth. And, often, just with these two shoes parked alongside, or a radio or something. I find it very moving that in India, that was all that was necessary to declare an intimate and individual place in the world. You could just wrap yourself up in your dhoti, lie on a mat and you would be respected as if you had a palace around you.

The British sculptor Antony Gormley was in conversation with Dutch doctorate researcher Jan van Boeckel. Jan is part of a research group at the Faculty of Art Education at Aalto University in Helsinki. www.naturearteducation.org. An

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ARTS ARCHIVE ARTS & CRAFTS

These are the words – first printed in Resurgence more than a decade ago – of Kenneth Ashburner, plant hunter, landscaper, botanist and gardener, who co-created the Mythic

Garden in the foothills of Dartmoor with his wife, former gallery-owner June.

“It is the power of this spell which we cannot understand; and perhaps it is futile to try to, beyond revering it and recognising that there is something deep in our psyche which responds, and responds in such a positive way we find healing and peace,” he added.

Now home to the national collections of both birch and alder, all grown from wild seed collected by Kenneth

and his botanical contemporaries over three decades, this five-acre woodland site exudes enchantment and is one of the few created landscapes where Nature does not necessarily “bat last”. Instead, whatever the exhibits on show, art and Nature work together in an uncontrived spirit of quiet but inspiring harmony.

The Mythic Garden at Chagford, Devon re-opens in May 2010 with a new summer exhibition showcasing the work of local artists, particularly sculptors.

For more details, call 01647 231311. To read the original article, Art In Nature, first published in the March/April 1999 issue of Resurgence (no. 193) visit our website, www.resurgence.org.

CASTING A SPELL “The garden is an art form. Its mysterious power goes beyond other art forms.”

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The Mythic Garden; sculpture ‘spider’ by Gary and Thomas Thrussell

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From time to time, most of us have moments when the world becomes more real and beautiful; when natural phenomena like trees, rocks and the sky seem to come alive and reveal

their inner being to us. An atmosphere of harmony seems to fill our surroundings and we feel a tremendous sense of wellbeing. The world becomes a benevolent place, and our normal sense of separation seems to fade away; all things appear related and we ourselves feel a part of this oneness too.

These are the experiences that are often referred to as “higher states of consciousness” or “spiritual experiences”. However, in Waking From Sleep, I suggest that rather than seeing them as transcendent or ‘higher’, we should simply see them as natural because it is my belief that these experiences represent a way of seeing and relating to the world which

AWAKING CONSCIOUSNESSIf we return to what should be our normal state – sensing the sacredness of the Earth – then we will overcome the suffering caused by our sense of separation, writes Steve Taylor.

REVIEWS IN MY OWN WORDS

Kiki with African mask, 1926 (gelatin silver photo) by Man Ray (1890-1976)

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was once normal to all human beings, but which we have lost.

In my book, I describe our everyday consciousness as a kind of ‘sleep’ from which, in these moments, we wake. Most of us are asleep in the sense that our perception of the world is automatic which means we don’t sense the ‘is-ness’ and ‘aliveness’ of our surroundings. We’re also asleep in the sense that we see all things – including ourselves – as separate from each other, which can make life itself seem meaningless, and the Universe may appear an indifferent and even hostile place.

This state of ‘sleeping consciousness’ can also be seen as the root of our reckless disregard for the environment: since we see the natural world as inanimate and as something other to us, we have no qualms about abusing it. We see it as nothing more than a supply of resources to use for our own devices, without responsibility. But in Waking From Sleep, I suggest that this state is really a psychological aberration, and that it is actually natural and normal for us to be ‘awake’.

Many of the world’s Indigenous peoples live in a state of wakefulness: they naturally possess(ed) a heightened perception, a sense of the ‘aliveness’ of things, and an awareness of spirit-force pervading the world. As Cherokee Indian scholar Rebecca Adamson points out, for Indigenous peoples “the environment is perceived as a sensate, conscious entity suffused with spiritual powers”. Almost all Indigenous peoples have a term for an all-pervading spirit-force: in America, the Hopi call it maasauu; to the Lakota it is wakan-tanka (literally, the ‘force which moves all things’). The Ainu of Japan call it ramut, while in parts of New Guinea it was imunu, or ‘universal soul’. In Africa the Nuer call it kwoth and the Mbuti call it pepo. The Ufaina Indians of the Amazon Rainforest call it fufaka. To these peoples, this isn’t an esoteric or mystical concept but an everyday reality.

Young children in all cultures are awake to the ‘is-ness’ of reality in a similar way. Their world appears a much brighter, more colourful, complex and beautiful place, and as developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik puts it, “Babies and young children are actually more conscious and more vividly aware of their external world and internal life than adults are… I think that, for babies, every day is first love in Paris.”

All of this then raises the question: If this ‘wakefulness’ was once natural to us – both as individuals and perhaps as a species – why do we (and did we) lose it?

In Waking From Sleep, I suggest that the answer is the same in both cases. As a species, we lost this state

because of the over-development of the ego. At some point in our history, we developed a heightened sense of individuality, and began to experience ourselves as egos occupying the space inside our heads, with the rest of reality ‘out there’. (I describe how and why this development occurred in my earlier book The Fall.) As well as creating a disconnection between ourselves and Nature, this ego began to monopolise our psychic energy, so that there was less energy available for us to devote to perceiving the is-ness of the world. And this is also what happens as we grow into adults. We ‘fall’ into separateness and automatic perception, and the world, so full of wonder in childhood, becomes a separate, shadowy, half-real place.

This isn’t to say that the ego is a negative development. For adults, it confers many benefits, including logical and abstract thought, the ability to organise and plan our lives, and to control our impulses, and so on. The point is that the ego has become too strong, like a government which has become too authoritarian and oppressive. However, human beings have always felt instinctively that our normal consciousness is limited and so have striven to attain temporary higher states of consciousness – or ‘awakening experiences’.

In Waking From Sleep, I examine the methods we have used, throughout history, to do this, including fasting, sleep deprivation, psychedelic drugs and meditation. Sometimes, though, awakening experiences happen accidentally, through contact with Nature, playing or listening to music, playing sports, or during sex. All of these activities can give us access to the world of ‘is-ness’ and meaning which is normally hidden from us.

I suggest too that awakening experiences have two basic sources: they can be caused by a dramatic change to our normal physiology or brain chemistry (for example through fasting, sleep deprivation or drugs) or through what I call an “intensification and stilling of life-energy”, through meditation, yoga, general relaxation, listening to music, and so on. If we know what causes them, we should be able to generate awakening experiences whenever we desire, but ultimately we need to make wakefulness our normal state again.

We need to wake up for ourselves, to become free of the illusion of separation and of the psychological discord which fills our lives with suffering. We need to wake up for the sake of the human race as a whole, in order to become free of the social chaos and conflict which have blighted the last few thousand years of history. And we need to wake up and sense the sacredness of the Earth so we can transcend our sense of separation and live in harmony with Nature again.

Waking from Sleep: Why Awakening Experiences Occur and How to Make Them Permanent by Steve Taylor is published by Hay House UK, 2010, ISBN 9781848501799.

Steve Taylor is also the author of The Fall and Making Time. www.stevenmtaylor.com

“This state of sleeping consciousness is really a psychological aberration. It is natural and normal for us to be awake to the aliveness of the Earth”

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58 May/June 2010

A STEP BEYOND SCIENCE

Stuart Kauffman (born 1939) is by no means a fundamental theologian striving to beat science into

submission with some creationist agenda. Having had a key role at Santa Fe Institute in the 1990s laying the ground of complexity theory, and now a professor at the University of Calgary and founding director of the Institute of Biocomplexity and Informatics, he is simply a thorough scientist collating the evidence. What he finds is that reductionism does not add up as an adequate explanation of how the world works.

Kauffman has turned the tables on the paradigm of science many times. Always willing to respond to science from the position of an independent inquiry, he has opened many new roads that have later come to carry the traffic of mainstream thinking. In his current book, he makes a new decisive turn; a space for the ‘sacred’ to be freshly voiced.

Classical science forever imagines it can catch the universe as a precisely described problem fitting snugly in a mathematical net. At university, studying mathematics, all the problems one is given are precise situations with exactly known starting conditions, which can be parcelled up in a neat solution. Yet, once one moves on from university there is a real dilemma in that the world thrives on ambiguity, plurality and an abundance of ways of doing things. How then to fit the round pegs of the world into the square holes of exact problem solving?

Complexity and chaos theory, as developed by Kauffman and others, see

the world beyond the need to furnish exact solutions to the question of living. Typically, natural systems work with a highly adaptive response to potential that can reorganise as context demands, in antithesis to the goal of science to discover a unique order that fixes things in a historic account of how the world came to be.

This dichotomy of purposes is illustrated in many examples of the limitation of reductionism in modern science:• a genetic programme unable to fully

explain the organism; • the mystery left in the heart of physical

law as to how the universe chose the right constant to allow life to emerge;

• the chaotic tendency of large systems to respond unpredictably to minute “butterfly” effects;

• quantum theory abandoning a direct mathematical description of individual events at the elementary particle level;

• a relativity that blurs the edges of any objective description. Kauffman calmly comes to the

scientific conclusion that science cannot deliver a full account of reality from a consideration of abstract parts. Instead he comes to the questions: How do we act when we cannot know? What possible means do we have to carry on with life, ‘living it forward’, as Kierkergaard said? We live forward into mystery. But how?

Kauffman is not asking this question with an ulterior agenda of evangelism, but genuinely as a scientist making sense of the world. He is asking for science to take a new road, where it looks seriously into the

nuances of meaning which participation in the world entails. He sees the necessity for science to go beyond the boundary of its own many successes and invites us to celebrate “our own created, lived, meaningful, unforeseeable human culture”.

In this latest offering Kauffman takes us on a journey where the sacred looks beyond the ground of knowledge, exhaustively describing phenomena from within. Crucially, he justifies his proposal by including the sacred as part of science, rather than describing another theory presented as if beyond any doubt.

The main success of the book is to feel that it is possible to have both views upon the table. His sacredness might disappoint some and his science might seem as surrender to others, but as happened with complexity, this book opens up the arena for debate. Re-engaging with the unknowable opens new horizons where purely rationalistic understanding has been unable to take us.

When consulting about the state of the Earth in global forums, it should be the heart feeling awe that is the guide of the council as to how to commit our resources and maximise the bonds of connection across the world. A delicate inquiry allows us to steer choice to answer to the beauty of the world. The universe must welcome the responsibility of a new ethic for our living.

Philip Franses is a mathematician, now teaching Complexity on the Holistic Science Masters Programme at Schumacher College, Devon.

Philip Franses appreciates an integral approach to holistic science.

Reinventing the Sacred Stuart A. KauffmanBasic Books, 2008 ISBN 9780465003006

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MUCH LESS RESISTANCE

I first met Rupert Sheldrake at the Mystics and Scientists Easter conference in 1983, where he shared

a platform with David Bohm, with whom he had a number of dialogues at the time. A New Science of Life had been out for a couple of years and had already created a huge stir, notably when John Maddox famously stated that the book was infuriating, and the best candidate for burning for many years. Burning, of course, is associated with heresy, and Rupert is a paradigmatic scientific heretic so far as orthodoxy is concerned. It’s a great pity that this categorisation of orthodoxy and heresy, inherited from Christianity, has been perpetuated in science, which should be an empirical pursuit. Rupert spoke eloquently and without notes at the conference, about his theory and its implications. It is hard to believe that more than twenty-five years have elapsed – an entire generation – and it is regrettable that in some quarters the prejudice against his approach is as strong as ever. However, informed members of the general public beg to differ.

Last summer, some readers may have noticed that this author wagered a case of fine port (with fellow biologist Lewis Wolpert) that molecular biology will not fulfil its promise of predicting in at least one case, given the genome of a fertilised egg of an animal or plant, all the details of the organism that develops from it, including any abnormalities. The same Lewis Wolpert, who is quoted on the original book as saying that “Sheldrake’s ideas are just nonsense” has now debated

with him a number of times in public but still reflects the widespread view that such things are impossible and therefore untrue. The preface of the 2009 edition of the book reviews developments of the last twenty-five years, while restating the original hypothesis of formative causation, which claims that Nature is habitual, as opposed to being governed by eternal laws.

An important theme is the way in which mechanistic biology has revealed its own limitations as a complete explanation of life and mind. It has turned out, for example, that humans have far fewer genes than expected and that the diversity of body plans is not reflected in diversity at the level of genes. This leaves a theoretical gap, which Rupert explains in terms of morphogenetic and morphic fields. He has expanded the scope of his original work, extending his studies as a biologist to telepathy in animals, which he regards as a natural capacity. He has also democratised the research process by enabling people to take part in experiments online.

The book retains its original structure, but much of the text has been revised and updated. Rupert has been giving lectures to younger scientists in universities, and has found that they do not exhibit the same resistance to his ideas as their teachers. They are not so wedded to inflexible laws, and are open to the theory of morphic resonance, which claims that previous forms have a causal influence on present forms across space and time. The plausibility of this theory is discussed in

detail in relation to the rest of science, and Rupert proves to be extraordinarily well-informed across a number of disciplines.

As in the first edition, the final chapter outlines four different metaphysical theories, all of which are compatible with the hypothesis of formative causation. However, there is a close correlation between the mechanistic theory of life and the metaphysical theory of materialism, which, as Rupert points out, are frequently confused. He suggests that a modified materialism is one possibility, as is a modified dualism whereby the conscious self interacts with the body through morphic fields. The third picture depicts a creative universe along the lines of Bergson, while the fourth briefly explains transcendent reality.

I thought, in the light of the many developments of consciousness studies in the last fifteen years, that this discussion could have been extended and that Rupert could have formulated his own view more fully, rather than leaving the reader suspended between four metaphysical positions – I think this was tactically astute in the first edition, but arguably no longer necessary. The appendices contain new tests for morphic resonance and an interesting dialogue with David Bohm. This is a welcome update for a new generation of readers, and it arrived just in time: the glue on my original paperback is now disintegrating.

David Lorimer is Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network and lives in Fife, Scotland.

David Lorimer welcomes an update on morphic resonance.

A New Science of LifeRupert SheldrakeIcon Books, Third edition, 2009 ISBN 9781848310421

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60 May/June 2010

A ZEN APPROACH TO COOKING

“Show up, start anywhere, make mistakes,” advises Edward Espe Brown, author of the recently

published Complete Tassajara Cookbook. The American master chef and Zen priest applies this mantra to both cooking and life: take what you have and dream up something tasty to do with it.

Brown, 64, helped shepherd vegetarian cooking from hippie to mainstream in the 1970s, introducing a generation to the joys of baking with the Tassajara Bread Book, dubbed ”the bible for bread baking” by The Washington Post. In celebration of its 40th anniversary, the bread book has been redesigned and reissued to coincide with the release of Brown’s new cookbook. A few of the bread book’s recipes have been lightly revised for this edition, but the primary change is the book’s more sophisticated look. An index, new introduction, and colour inserts featuring photos of recipes have been added.

A founder of Greens, San Francisco’s celebrated vegetarian restaurant, and co-author of The Greens Cookbook, Brown formerly headed the kitchen at Tassajara, a Buddhist meditation centre in California’s Carmel Valley and the new Complete Tassajara Cookbook combines and updates the best of Brown’s three other cookbooks, Tassajara Cooking, Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings and The Tassajara Recipe Book.

Zen may be timeless, but times have changed. Thirty-five years ago Brown didn’t mention balsamic vinegar, goat’s cheese, sun-dried tomatoes or red bell peppers in Tassajara Cooking. Now, along with standards like potato-leek soup

and marinated tofu, in the new book he uses a wider array of ingredients, offering recipes such as chili crêpes with goat cheese filling, and beet salad with pomegranate vinegar.

There’s no “right way” to prepare a dish, Brown insists. While the book teaches the basics, he encourages cooks to express themselves and rely on their own taste to decide what they like, and said it was a great compliment when a reader told him, “I used to need your cookbook; now I don’t. I do what I want.”

To help readers improvise, Brown presents 300 vegetarian recipes, with variations to suit different palates. He shows how to enhance a casserole of grains, beans or vegetables, with sautéed onion, garlic or bell peppers for flavour, or mushrooms or tomato for body and colour. He explains how to make a dish taste Italian with garlic, thyme, oregano, basil and Parmesan, or take it in an Asian direction with seasonings like ginger and dark sesame oil.

“You can see me in the way I cook,” he says. “Spicy, pungent, sweet and sour, I’m willing to be seen.” That’s why he agreed to be in the critically-acclaimed 2007 documentary, How to Cook Your Life, where viewers can watch his range of emotions from wry and delightful to what he describes as “angry, sad, moping, whining, fussing”.

Throughout The Complete Tassajara Cookbook, Brown sprinkles in poems and personal stories about food and Zen practice as palate cleansers and opportunities for reflection. Sometimes he writes

exuberantly, as when he describes a platter of radishes, “brilliantly red and curvaceous, some elongated and white tipped, rootlets intact with topknots of green leaves sprouting from the opposite end. It was love at first sight.”

At other times he is philosophical. In the final lines of a poem at the beginning of the chapter on soups and stocks, he writes:

Appreciate this carrot, cabbage,cucumber, and cress, this timewith the less than perfect.The remarkable flavor you have searched for is everywhere.Let it come home to your heart.

“Zen is about getting in the kitchen and doing something with what you have,” says Brown, emphasising the value of using what comes into your life, whether it’s food or an unexpected experience. “There’s something to be said for appreciating organic produce. But let’s not waste what we have or value only what’s perfect.”

Based in Fairfax, California, Brown teaches cooking and meditation throughout the United States and in Europe. He leads regular sitting groups in a zendo, or meditation hall, attached to his home and will be teaching in Austria and Germany in June and July this year.

Wherever he’s teaching, Brown says, “My goal is not to create masterpieces or architectural projects on a plate. It’s simply to bring out the best in things.”

Laura Deutsch leads writing workshops from Tassajara to Tuscany: www.lauradeutsch.com

Laura Deutsch discovers there’s no right or wrong way to prepare a dish.

The Complete Tassajara Cookbook: Recipes, Techniques, and Reflections from the Famed Zen Kitchen Edward Espe BrownShambhala Publications, 2009 ISBN 9781590306727

The Tassajara Bread BookEdward Espe BrownShambhala Publications, 2009 ISBN 9781590307045

Brilliantly red and curvaceous radishes

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61Issue 260

ASPIRATION OR TABOO?

In today’s society with its emphasis on aggressive competitiveness and self-reliance, kindness, the authors

argue, has become “a virtue of losers”. In a culture where we are all striving to tick the boxes of success, kindness is seemingly incompatible with our self-seeking lifestyles and no longer something to aspire to. Simultaneously, we create media icons of saintly kindness, with our tabloids delighting in recounting heroic acts of incidental kindness, presenting them as sensational, almost unbelievable in such a selfish age. How, the authors ask, did we reach this point, where “mutual belonging” has become one of the great taboos?

In this succinct volume, the authors aim to answer the fundamental question, “How do people come to forget about kindness and the deep pleasures it gives to them?” The pleasures of kindness have been written about and contended from the dawn of Western philosophical thought. Here, psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor espouse the words of the philosopher Alan Ryan, who maintains that we “mutually belong to one another”, and that the good life is one that “reflects the truth”. So, how did we get from Marcus Aurelius’ assertion that kindness is a person’s greatest delight to treating it as highly suspect and “a saboteur of the successful life”?

For Phillips and Taylor, it is a deeply troubling state of affairs. They counter Nietzsche’s theory in The Genealogy of Morals that “the inexorable progress of

the morality of compassion [is] the most sinister development of our European culture.” And, in contrast, they offer: “It is our view that the morality of compassion has not made progress – has indeed shied away from its shrewdest insights – and that this is the truly sinister symptom of modern life.”

The sections ‘A Short History of Kindness’, ‘How Kind?’ and ‘The Kindness Instinct’ range with great dexterity over centuries of debate on the subject, weaving philosophy and psychoanalysis together within changing socio-economic and political contexts. From the joyous pagan element of kindness found in both Stoics and Epicureans, we move through to the self-sacrificial definition of caritas by post-Augustinian Christianity. This concept of self-sacrifice was seized upon by Hobbes in his Leviathan as a fallacy and used to bolster his own view of humanity as an inherently selfish beast.

We emerge, thankfully, in the 18th-century Enlightenment with an alternative version of kindness, which treated the self and others as interdependent: “Here the self was seen not as isolated but as inherently social, formed through its kindly relations with others…” It is this version of kindness, later enriched and made complex by psychoanalytic insights, in particular Freudian, that lies at the heart of the book. It is a version originating in the concept of sympathy, and its development is explored here through the anti-Hobbesian theories of Adam

Smith and David Hume, and a more in-depth study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

If sympathetic attachments, as argued here, have been recognised for so long as fundamental to a healthy human society, how did we end up in the selfish and isolated state we are in today? This forms the subject of the last section, ‘Modern Kindness’, where we find, not surprisingly, that our selfish individualism owes much to the legacy we inherited from the Thatcher era and the tokenism of the ‘caring, sharing nineties’. We now have a kindness concept delivered to us through management: call-centre employees given ‘warmth and empathy’ training, nurses monitored by a ‘compassion index’, shop assistants wearing ‘Happy to Help’ badges, to name but a few sad examples.

We might despair at this point, but the authors give us hope by urging our re-connection with each other, the potential to rediscover and act upon “fellow feeling” and “mutual belonging”. Here a return to a sense of community is key. Not the virtual community of Facebook, but a genuine community that functions on daily expressions of fellow feeling and acts of kindness. Without being over-sentimental, living in a small rural community in west Wales I can bear witness to this kind of emerging community, and I believe that if it can be nurtured and expanded, there is hope.

Jane MacNamee has a background in classics and philosophy. She lives in Wales and works as a freelance Nature writer.

Jane MacNamee explores the meaning of kindness in a selfish age.

On Kindness Adam Phillips and Barbara TaylorHamish Hamilton, 2009 ISBN 9780241144336

Tea and sympathy; a recipe for kindness?

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SYSTEM REBOOT

Don’t let the rambling lower-case title put you off this book, for it is a marvellous attempt to weave

together concerns, ideas and change-making efforts from across the globe, to make the world saner, “well-thier” and sustainable. The ‘bazaar’ – the traditional and more humane, decentralised, local, face-to-face market system – is the author’s metaphor for both a lost ‘agora’ and future world-wide-web-inspired alternatives.

This book is the result of the kind of enormous effort one recognises when shown a beautifully woven sari in an Indian bazaar. To carry the sari analogy further, the book’s warp consists of important questions like: Is it realistic to assume that the common good will be ensured by everyone seeking their individual gain? Can we create ecological economic systems? Can we continue to let utility and wealth obscure freedom and justice? Can we expect the free-market mechanism to actually be fair? Can we create a better balance between the competing human tendencies of greed and generosity, competition and co-operation, conflict and conciliation, self-interest and the welfare of others? Or, as economist Jeremy Rifkin puts it, “Can civilisation (and we can add, life on Gaia itself) survive when only the commercial sphere is left as the primary mediator of human (and planetary) life?” Meanwhile, the weft of this ambitious book comprises stories of the many people who are creating new visions, systems, values and institutions that attempt to answer these questions by providing inspiring alternatives.

Primarily, Rajni Bakshi suggests a vision

for a socially embedded market culture – a market economy but not a market society: the creation of a “mindful market” culture (activist David Korten’s term), that has the best of market efficiency but is more attuned to social, ecological and moral responsibility.

In developing this woven vision, Bakshi skilfully employs a palette of issues, ideas and innovators. To mention a few: the mis-understandings and misperceptions of the work of social philosophers like Adam Smith and scientists like Charles Darwin in the emergence of neo-liberal economics; pioneers of alternative economics like E. F. Schumacher, Hazel Henderson, Amartya Sen, Muhammad Yunus, Ray Anderson, George Soros, Robert Kuttner, Herman Daly, Joseph Stiglitz, Ela Bhatt, Eisuke Sakakibara; the worldwide web, its emerging culture and its pioneers like Tim Berners-Lee and Linus Torvalds and what Bakshi sees as its societal possibilities for commerce and interactions. (The internet seems to be her new ‘bazaar’, and she even writes with some enthusiasm of a new ‘operating system’ for the market.)

While there is much value in the enormous swathe of ground Bakshi covers, I think she may have packed a bit too much into this book – perhaps her sari would have been more compelling if she had adorned it less. She could have had less history and greater exploration of the redemptive possibilities of a web-based society and its impact on conversation, freedom and commerce; and its enablement of a market economy with greater interdependence, decentralisation and democracy. But perhaps this will be her next book.

Yet Bakshi is careful not to suggest any grand design. The enormity of the changes that are needed globally is daunting, and she, as many of her exemplars, is undecided as to whether this can be pulled off. Only gently does she suggest that sustainability and happiness may require a new enlightenment that includes the practice of Gandhian simple living, a Vedantic and Buddhist understanding of desire management and a re-acculturation of the Mind – of what to value and what choices to make. Personally, I think she is spot on. We are in the midst of an enormous struggle for both a system redesign and re-acculturation – and they must happen together.

I was reading this book on 15th August (India’s Independence Day), when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that the most important challenge India faced was achieving 9% GDP growth. Ouch! I strongly recommend this book to him, suggesting that he at least heed the caution of Simon Kuznets (the ‘father of GDP’) that “the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income as defined by GDP”, and look at the many alternatives in this book for a different model and measure of progress. I would also recommend this book to Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and their teams.

Bakshi has chosen to be an amplifier of the work of the many people she has met and researched, which is a significant contribution. And she reminds us, as Dee Hock, creator of the Visa system, put it, “It is too late and things are too bad for pessimism. One must try!”

Shakti Maira is an artist, author and educationalist based in New Delhi.

Shakti Maira enjoys a book that outlines a vision for a socially embedded market culture.

bazaars, conversations & freedomRajni BakshiPenguin Books, 2009 ISBN 9780143064916

Sari detail

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63Issue 260

WILD GRACE

Guy Taplin makes elementally graceful sculptures of birds on the wing, and birds swiftly active or

dynamically poised on land and waters. His materials are odd bits of discarded wood or driftwood he discovers on the tidal estuaries and beaches of the Essex coast near where he lives, or on further expeditions to places such as New England, Portugal and the Greek islands. Yet as Ian Collins writes in this beautifully illustrated survey, “The biggest trove of tidal treasure … floats almost to the door of his studio.”

Taplin’s early childhood in London’s East End in the Blitz is recalled, when he found a hedge sparrow’s nest with four pale blue eggs in it – “I was awe-struck… It was so pristine, so immaculate – I went home and made one out of straw.” In late adolescence he became a keen egg collector and wildfowler on the Essex marshes. “Wildfowling was adventure and it opened up the Essex coast for me, with punt-gunning the last frontier… It was a rite of passage.”

In the 1970s, Taplin found himself, auspiciously, in his natural element working as a bird keeper at London’s Regent’s Park for four years, where he learned reverence for “an obese, cussed Muscovy duck”, which became besotted with him, and geese from Tasmania which would hiss at his every approach and sometimes lash out with webbed and clawed feet, tearing his corduroy trousers to shreds. A visit to Japan around this time helped deepen his interest in Zen Buddhism. Left alone for long days in the Regent’s Park bird reserve, inspired by its teeming avian life as well as by waterfowl decoys he had seen in antique markets, he

began modelling his first birds. In his last year as bird keeper, he travelled round the United States, meeting the last of the “old-timers … who had made decoys as tools rather than ornaments”. He found highly inspiring – as both subsistence craft and marvellously fresh folk art – decoy birds made for huntsmen in mid-19th-century Virginia by one Nathan Cobb Jnr.

The extensive Essex coastline, with

its creeks, channels and marshy tracts between great tidal estuaries, is (in Taplin’s words) “underwritten and overlooked”. Its empty, wide-skied backwaters are home to a fluctuating bird presence: cranes and egrets in the spring, terns and swallows breeding in summer, autumnal ducks, geese and swans, then shearwaters, gannets, puffins and little auks in deep winter. Collins sensitively evokes how Taplin makes sculptures “with an apparent artlessness which lies at the heart of his achievement.” He draws a bird’s profile first on paper or wood, cuts it out with an electric saw, files it down, burning it or scrubbing it to emphasise the wood grain. Wing definition may then be chiselled in, eye sockets drilled, glass eyes added, then extreme details such as a bill or wing sparingly added. Coats of white emulsion are applied to the bird form, with rigorously minimal colouring. Then comes the painstaking process of scouring the painted model with wire wool, and waxing it, to tone down the pigment and, as Taplin says,

“take the newness out of it… The actual wood I use with all its imperfections plays an important part… I use the grain to suggest the pattern of feathers and I go over the surface again and again.”

Taplin does not aim for pedantic realism or mere ornithological accuracy. Rather, through uncanny Brancusi-like simplification of form, he evokes the essential nature of a particular bird. And

with vivid immediacy and skilful scrutiny he describes actual birdlike appearance and movement. One sculpture subtly captures the undulating figure-of-eight of a swan’s neck; another shows a swan sinuously searching the waters as its neck reaches down, at once tentatively and surely; a third depicts a swan tautly arched in flight, its grainy white feathering pristine against a backdrop of boat-like planks of weathered blue and indigo paint. In a sculpture of a heron, the exquisitely elongated neck, and the head and bill narrowing imperceptibly together to a sharp point indicate, along with beady eyes, the bird’s sharp focus of shape and purpose. Spare and singular in form, or composed of groups whose intricate rhythms are intuitively choreographed, Taplin’s bird sculptures capture to the quick the wild grace of both still and soaring forms.

Philip Vann is the author of Cyril Power Linocuts: A Complete Catalogue and co-author of Joash Woodrow: Landscapes.

Philip Vann is enamoured with a trove of tidal treasures.

Bird on a WireIan CollinsStudio Fine Art Publications, 2007 ISBN 9781905883103

Guy Taplin sculpture

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64 May/June 2010

AGROFUELS ARE NOT THE ANSWER

There are some excellent books on climate change, fossil fuels and renewable energies. Still

others focus on the world economy and the detrimental role of the huge multinationals. But there are few, if any, that have featured agrofuels in the context of these major themes and, as this book does, presented them in a historical and geographical perspective.

So what, exactly, are agrofuels? In his preface, François Houtart explains why he has not used the more common term ‘biofuels’. ‘Bio’, of course, is from the Greek word for ‘life’, or ‘way of living’, and, as the author points out, this gives an overly optimistic ring to the term that is quite inappropriate.

Agrofuels, which are derived from plants usually grown under monoculture conditions, can supply energy that will be (mainly) used for transport. Some are based on crops – particularly sugar cane, maize and wheat – that are cultivated in large quantities in the United States and Brazil and produce ethanol. Others, derived from the African palm, produce the agrodiesel that is popular in Europe. However, palm oil has to be grown where both land and cheap labour are available – in other words, Asia, Latin America, and, increasingly, Africa.

All too often, agrofuels are presented as a positive solution to the double crisis of climate change and fossil-fuel depletion. In reality, says Houtart, they not only fail to diminish greenhouse-gas emissions but, because of the way they are produced, actually increase them. And their contribution to energy supplies is

very small indeed. Agrofuels must not be considered a

substitute for fossil energy. Although some renewables (such as solar, wind and hydrogen energy) do show considerable promise for the future, at a time when world hunger is on the increase, there is the adverse impact of biofuels on food production. In the United States, for example, many farmers are now finding it more profitable to cultivate crops for cars than for people.

There is already much evidence of the ecological devastation caused by agrofuel monoculture, in terms of massive deforestation, soil degradation, water contamination and also the appalling social consequences, through land concentration and the eviction of rural populations from their land.

So why are agrofuels being so enthusiastically promoted?

Houtart explains it is because this has become a highly promising sector for investors seeking new fields of profit. Besides agrobusiness, oil, automobile, chemical and pharmaceutical corp-orations are now all leaders in agrofuel investment, showing little concern for the damage to the environment and the resulting destitution of the peoples of the South as they make their ‘superprofits’. For the multinationals, these are just ‘externalities’ that do not enter into their economic calculations.

Nobody is more aware of this human catastrophe than Houtart, one of the co-founders of the World Social Forum

created at the end of the 1990s to give expression to the needs and aspirations of the peoples of the world. A Belgian priest and theologian and now eighty-five years old, he has spent his entire working life on behalf of the world’s oppressed peoples and it is gratifying to see that this was recently recognised by UNESCO in awarding him the Madanjeet Singh Prize for his work in promoting tolerance and nonviolence.

Houtart concludes his book with his vision of a new society in which the collective wellbeing of humankind will predominate over the narrow selfish interests of a minority. Such a society, he says, should be built on four major principles: the sustainable use of natural resources, requiring a new philosophy of the relationships between humankind and Nature; giving priority to the ‘use value’ of goods and services, rather than their ‘exchange value’, to curb speculation and consumerism; the generalisation of democracy, not only in political life but in all sectors of society including the workplace and the family; and multiculturalism, in which all cultures of the world can contribute to the development of the genuine wellbeing of humanity.

In spite of all the difficulties and sorrows that Houtart has seen and experienced, he remains optimistic that what he describes as “the Cries of the Earth” will join with “the Cries of the Oppressed” and become so loud that they can no longer be ignored.

Victoria Bawtree is co-editor of The Post-Development Reader, published by Zed Books.

Victoria Bawtree discovers the four principles of a new society.

Agrofuels: Big Profits, Ruined Lives and Ecological DestructionFrançois HoutartPluto Press, 2010 ISBN 9780745330129

Monocultures devastate soil

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REVIEWS

65Issue 260

Natural comb building

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A HEARTFELT PLEA

Barefoot is now synonymous with all things back to basics, and Phillip Chandler’s latest edition of

his book The Barefoot Beekeeper is essentially a down-to-earth ‘how-to’ manual, written to help new or established beekeepers in the creation and maintenance of the ingenious top bar hive: a beautifully simple, low-impact, low-cost alternative to the mass-produced framed hives we see in our countryside, towns and cities. Brilliant in its simplicity, the book also provides an explanation for and possible solution to the global Colony Collapse Disorder currently wreaking havoc on bee populations across the planet.

Chandler presents a compelling take on the declining bee populations. Pesticides, he suggests, are clearly a main culprit, along with the heavy-handed way in which so many bees are forced to produce honey for us. It seems we are now reaping the whirlwind of consequence.

“The primary aim in writing a book about ‘barefoot beekeeping’ is to challenge the status quo and to stimulate both actual and potential beekeepers to think for themselves and to ask more questions,” Chandler writes. He achieves this goal both thoughtfully and passionately, taking us through a brief but fascinating history of beekeeping and its complex local and global politics.

Chandler is clearly a man on a mission and not averse to challenging long-held, established views on the keeping and the farming of bees throughout the world. He does this with vigour, conviction and

clarity and I would be surprised to find a convincing counter to his argument for the urgent need for a radical shift in our approach to bees and beekeeping. (No sane mind could really believe that maintaining the current mass agricultural approach to beekeeping is a good idea.)

The Barefoot Beekeeper stresses the im-portance for beekeepers to keep searching for information on beekeeping methods using intelligence, intuition and absolute respect for the bees in finding the most sustainable way to keep them. It is now abundantly clear to me that ultimately we need to be in service to the bees and that in truth they keep us alive with their ceaseless pollination of so much of what we eat to survive.

There are few, if any, criticisms save the overall design of the book. The book itself would benefit from downsizing from the academic and unwieldy current A4 to closer to A5. This would no doubt reduce production and carbon footprint costs too. And while there were diagrams for some of the more complex hive construction techniques, these were too few for my liking. More instructive pictures in the next edition, please!

It strikes me this is an important work and one that, with a redesign, could be reproduced on a commercial scale as a fresh, inspiring approach to beekeeping and as one possible solution to the current bee crisis.

Chandler has laid down an emotive and practical gauntlet to the conventional ‘wisdom’ on beekeeping. He doesn’t claim to be an expert, but he has clearly done

his homework. He is a man captivated by the ecology, psychology and essential nature of bees and is a strident champion of their current dilemma and their right to be left to do what they have done so successfully for millennia with minimal interference from us.

He offers commonsense alternatives to the current systems upheld by many beekeepers (both commercial and non-commercial) and encourages us to question everything we hear and see about current beekeeping practice. He believes we can gain great insight and pleasure from studying, respecting and working with bees to develop a fruitful, symbiotic relationship with these remarkable creatures. And if we’re lucky, if we work hard enough, long enough and with great respect, we just might earn the ultimate bonus in the shape of a jar of prized, and much loved, organic honey.

If like me, you sometimes feel powerless in the face of the sheer scale of humankind’s destructive impact on our planet, wondering how on earth you could make a difference, then The Barefoot Beekeeper may provide you with one inspiring, practical solution to nourish the bees and help rekindle our damaged local ecosystems. I imagine in the near future this heartfelt and practical book will be seen as essential reading.

It already is for this reader.

Caspar Walsh is a journalist, author and artistic director of the Write to Freedom wilderness education programme.

Caspar Walsh relishes a simple, sustainable approach to natural beekeeping.

The Barefoot BeekeeperPhilip ChandlerLulu, 2009 ISBN 9781409271147

66 May/June 2010

Bluebell woods in Oxfordshire

LIVING POETRY

Jay Ramsay recommends a book that will give us back our eyes so we can truly see.

The Secret Life of the Universe: The Quest for the Soul of ScienceAmy CorzineWatkins, 2008 ISBN 9781905857654

reached, collectively. Amy Corzine quotes Fritjof Capra: “[Most] academics subscribe to narrow perceptions of reality which are inadequate for dealing with the major problems of our time… They cannot be understood within the fragmented methodology characteristic of our academic disciplines and government agencies.”

To remedy this, we have to get to the bigger picture which, by definition, means the holistic picture with its analogy in unconditional love, as opposed to love dominated by the ego. Corzine quotes a wealth of Buddhist and Tibetan inspiration towards expanded thinking and relating in this context and celebrates Satish Kumar and the genesis of this magazine, as she moves towards an evocation of the sense of community and connectedness that is now an imperative and no longer an ‘alternative’.

At the same time she explores consciousness itself, quoting Colin Wilson’s pointed observations on the danger of boredom, passivity and excessive introspection. This takes her into the creative and psychic mind that is consistent with intuition and expansion, increasingly seen as ‘natural’. As Corzine herself says, “if you try to work with the gifts you’ve been given, you will be given the knowledge you need to work with them”.

And the will to meditate, with the expansion it brings, is not only vital in achieving an inner synthesis (balance of left and right hemispheres) but also allows us to understand that what we do to others, we do to ourselves. The Dalai Lama goes further by asserting that

compassion itself is biological, linked as it is with our initial contact with our mother. It is, therefore, profoundly human and not something we have to ‘ascend’ to. Another way of saying this is that the body itself is intrinsically spiritual and that our separation from it is as much the issue as anything else.

This is reflected in our wider separation from the planet, an issue illuminated so brilliantly in the film The Age of Stupid at the point where the archivist, sitting in his mid-21st-century post-holocaust library tower, states simply that the real problem of our time was “we didn’t really believe we were worth it”.

From here, Corzine takes a deep dive into ‘The Universe of the Human Body’, revealing its intrinsically non-separate nature originally espoused by native traditions and by Chinese Taoism, and how an overly stressful and addictive lifestyle actually makes self-reflective awareness impossible. The recent emergence of animal healing, and animals themselves as healers, exists in specific juxtaposition with our supposed superiority to them. The irony is that in striving to be superior, it is we who have forgotten our true animal nature. This opens an exploration of healing itself as an expression of deep ecology (healing and self-healing, being innate).

The centre part of the book is then a meditation on ecology (gardening, community, food and farming) and how this relates to architecture within the concepts of biomimicry and the harmony between organisms and their

This excellent book is a holistic education in itself and a primer that should be available in schools

everywhere. Starting from the physics we know, it moves into the new territory of our time where, increasingly, the mystical vision of Oneness is being realised in scientific terms. At the same time, the book is a meditation on our ecological situation and the new lifestyle that we will all have to become open to.

The end result is a work of feminine science so welcome among a literature dominated by male bravado and conceptualisation. It quivers like a web alive with correspondence, association, cross-reference and (since it’s written by a poet) lyrical analogy and metaphor.

We are introduced to the secret life of our relationship to this planet. What we were once ‘part of’, we began – through increasing separation – to rise above with grandiose self-inflation (during the post-medieval Renaissance). At the same time, the so-called Enlightenment then brought us to deflated self-abandonment: we were, after all, only tiny specks in an indifferent cosmic machine (Newtonian mechanics). The further sense that God was, after all, “dead” (Nietzsche) then gave us a terrible freedom. Our unconscious rage at Divine Abandonment has resulted in de-sacralisation and outright manipulation (and genetic interference). Creation itself is no longer sacred.

Here we can see a clear parallel between our own history and the psychology of the narcissistic child and adolescent. Full adulthood is a stage we have not yet

REVIEWS

67Issue 260

WALKING ALLOWED

In a recent interview, the poet Lee Harwood defends his Welsh landscape poems against the charge of pastoral

sentimentality. “It’s not in any sense an escape,” he says. “It’s a real place and the rocks are there and the trees are there… Most of us do live in an urban setting, but that doesn’t mean you can deny what’s outside the cities or that that hasn’t got an immense presence in our lives.”

Kim Taplin has been writing about the reality of that ‘immense presence’ for over thirty years, although the forms she has utilised – poems, fiction, essays, and a full-length history of footpaths in literature – have been impressively varied. In her new book, her skill and experience have shaped something special.

Walking Aloud is about ‘ambling’, which is rural walking without the pressure of a fixed destination, because we’re already there; or will be, if we allow it. And what we find there is what our ‘souls’ thirst for. Starting from the ancient hamlet that has been Taplin’s home for forty years, we accompany her through a “small rough diamond” of Oxfordshire, usually in the early morning, “a time for being solitary, for slipping out of the house to find something that by 8 o’clock will have vanished”.

The life of the book is in its perfectly managed prose style. The small geographical area doesn’t limit the stream of observations, memories, histories and emotions which flow through the words. We are what we attend to; and walking encourages attention. The attention here is on the natural world, but also on the responses of a mind moving, recorded so seamlessly, so lightly that we

feel no jarring at all. Taplin writes out of a British tradition of

visionary Nature writers and walkers: Blake, Clare, Hardy, Edward Thomas. The discursive nature of her prose, plus the ability to observe and describe directly, shows some influence from Richard Jefferies. Like Jefferies in his time (but without his occasional alienated bitterness) she also has a contemporary political agenda. Ecologically, she perceives that damage to our natural environment is damage to ourselves, physically, emotionally and spiritually. There’s also the right of women to walk unmolested, allied to a more general concern about violence and aggression, personified by a persistent teenage vandal called Darren. Home and family sustain and motivate her sense of the value of community. But again, paradoxically, she has that poetic need of the soul to create, to amble, to be, alone.

Walking Aloud is also an accessible sociological description of the oddities and contradictions of modern English rural life. And it’s often great fun, celebrating the fact that here and now we can increase our awareness, and thereby enlarge our selves. Seeing the world in a grain of sand – or a small rough diamond of Oxfordshire – confirms that the joys and pains of life, personal and communal, are all present at any given point, exactly where we are, if we can but see it.

Lee Harwood’s interview is in Not the Full Story by Kelvin Corcoran (Shearsman Books, 2008).

Phil Maillard is a poet and writer; recently retired from the NHS, he lives in South Wales.

Phil Maillard praises the joys of ambling.

Walking Aloud: Rambles in the Cherwell ValleyKim Taplin. Illustrations by Rachael Sherlaw-Johnson Wychwood Press, 2008 ISBN 9781902279336

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environments. As the Kuan Yin quatrain in my co-translation has it, “The scent of the forest flowers comes from the right conditions.” And so it is for us. “Spiritual peace is essential for good health,” as Corzine reflects.

Increasingly, what emerges as one reads this book is the awareness that Creation itself, in all its miraculous and still unknown nature, is the closest we can get to the Divine because it is itself Divine. Perhaps a new religion of immanence that picks up where the defeated Celtic Church left off is now the only way forward in a sacred/worshipping context.

At the same time as the natural world is under threat, so is any profoundly natural way of looking at it. A Native American elder quoted by Jamake Highwater in his book Dance said, “You must learn to look at the world twice … First you must bring your eyes together in front so you can see each droplet of rain on the grass, so you can see the smoke rising from an anthill in the sunshine. Nothing should escape your notice. But you must learn to look again, with your eyes at the very edge of what is visible.” This is as much a prescription for poetry, and we can see this for what it is: an attitude deeper than words that is itself living poetry. That is what our civilisation now needs to be capable of, even as we lose what is traditional to technology.

Corzine quotes Professor David Orr: “Let children fall in love with the world first before teaching them anything. Then free them so they can do what their idealism leads them to do.” She reflects too on the possibilities of a new technology that arises from environmental and spiritual awareness where both are revealed as the same thing.

For me, her final chapter, ‘Listen, the Universe Is Singing’, is the best. Here, she confronts the reality and transparency of death in a superb piece of sustained writing, as clear as it is uplifting. She lifts the veil too, through her description of Near Death Experience research, to the reality of light that our hearts yearn for, releasing love flooding back into the fabric of our existence – and infusing our choice to be here, because we have been given back our eyes. I cannot recommend this book too highly.

Jay Ramsay is a poet and psychosynthesis psychotherapist. His most recent books are Places of Truth and The Poet in You.

68 May/June 2010

REGULARS COMMUNITY PAGE

We’ve created a resource pack that contains everything you need to know about starting a Resurgence

Readers’ Group in your community. These groups provide the perfect opportunity for Resurgence readers to get together, unwind, enjoy seasonal food, and share ideas about how to encourage a more ecologically sound and equitable world.

If you would like one of these beautifully illustrated packs or if you would like to know how to start a new group, please contact us by phone on 01237 441293, email: readersgroups@resurgence.org or visit: www.resurgence.org.

Remember, there may already be a group near you. Look under Events in our Classifieds section or on the website for a list of groups.

Start a Resurgence Readers’ Group

Taking Sunday Slowly

“Most of our Sundays are slow Sundays. Early in the morning, I push my bicycle up a rough

steep path leading to a quiet road high on the South Downs. Having enjoyed the sounds from a rookery and, depending on the season, seen a variety of birds, butterflies and flowers, I ride mainly downhill with beautiful views of the sea ahead and hills around. Skylarks and other birds may be singing.

At Shoreham, I attend a small Quaker Meeting with my friends before returning home via a footbridge over the wide river and a beautiful twisty lane up the valley to a little old bridge leading back to our village.

My husband, Jim, has been out for a walk and we exchange notes on what we’ve seen before enjoying lunch. In the afternoon, we may be in the garden, writing a letter or just relaxing with a book, the paper - or Resurgence perhaps! In the evening, music often takes us over, either just listening or, in my case, practising the violin, piano or flute.

How blessed we are to live in such a beautiful place and to have the good health and time to enjoy it so much. Slow Sundays make such a good start to the week. They help to put life’s problems into perspective and help refresh the body, mind and spirit.”

Reader Judith Steedman shares how she winds down at the weekend…

The next Slow Sunday will take place on 30th May and is dedicated to Slow Health and Wellbeing. For more information: www.resurgence.org/take-action/slow-sunday.html

69Issue 260

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70 May/June 2010

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71Issue 260

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73Issue 260

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We are a co-educational international boarding school in the Hampshire countryside, offering a diverse and personalised programme of study including pre-AS, AS and A level subjects.

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74 May/June 2010

Resurgence Readers’ Weekend & Camp

75Issue 260

RESURGENCE CLASSIFIED

ADVERTISINGCOPY DATESIssue 261 Jul/Aug - 2nd MayIssue 262 Sep/Oct - 1st JulyIssue 263 Nov/Dec - 1st Sept

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By submitting any advert for publication you are agreeing to our terms and conditions available atwww.resurgence.org/advertise or on request.

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Walking with GandhiEcology, Education, Energy and Equity22 November – 4 December 2010

This two week course will explore sustainability through Gandhi’s vision of a civilization where the wellbeing of the whole planet is ensured. This is only possible with the presence of all the elements that contribute to wellbeing : non-violence, equity in sharing resources, spiritual values, sustainability, balance and harmony.

Week one: Ecology, Education & Equity22 – 27 November

Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence, will introduce participants to the key Gandhian concepts through interactive sessions enabling students to explore their relevance in their life. Madhu Suri Prakash, Professor of Education at the Penn State University, USA, will introduce Gandhian approach to Education.

Week two: Ethics, Energy & Equity29 November – 4 December

Venerable Samdhong Rinpoche, The Prime Minister in Exile of the Tibetan Government, will share with the participants the principles of non-violent governance based on spirituality.Vandana Shiva, Gandhian environmental activist, writer and founder of the Navdanya movement, will deconstruct the violence of today’s ego-economics and offer alternative solutions steeped in non-violence and the spirit of service to the community.Aruna Roy, right to information campaigner, will be sharing her experience in ensuring equity through access to information for all members of Civil Society so as to achieve a truly democratic governance.Bunker Roy, development activist, will talk of his initiatives, such as the Barefoot College, where communities have evolved a sustainable way of living in harmony with the local conditions.

The course includes daily yoga classes, meditation, temple visits and work on the farm.

77Issue 260

www.healingvoice.com • T: 020 7435 2467

The Healing VoiceThe Healing VoiceMagical Voice Techniques • Mantra & SonicMeditations • Mongolian Overtone Chanting

Jill PurceJill Purce

The Humanistic Psychology Earth Festival

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Limited to only 120 delegates (tickets from £160 - all veggie meals

supplied and paid for) - book nowthrough AHPB website

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Macy's work, dreams, sound healing,mindfulness, ecopsychology,

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78 May/June 2010

79Issue 260

bringing a psychological eye to bear on green matters and agreen eye to the psychological

For those in the helping professions wanting to re-vision their role and integrate ecological awareness in practice.Themes are

Consuming the earth: unconscious processes and crisisCollective denial or initiation: cultural narcissismEcological unconscious and envisaging the futureOracular dreams of the non-human world.

Course structure: 1 residential weekend (15-17 Oct) plus 6 monthly Fri/Sat tutorial, seminars & workshops.Intro wknd: For the Love of the Earth 26/27 JuneFor details: http://www.re-vision.co.uk/ecopsychologyor call re-vision on 02083578881

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81Issue 260

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The Resurgence Trust, in collaboration with likeminded individuals and organisations, works for the realisation of a vision of society at ease with itself and in harmony with the earth itself. We believe that urgent action is needed to bring about social transformation, environ-mental sustainability and spiritual revival.

We need your support. You can be part of the change you want to see in the world by leaving a legacy, however modest, to The Resurgence Trust.

As we develop our vision to embrace a wider community with the fundamental message Resurgence magazine has championed for the last forty two years, we are filled with hope and passion that together with our writers, artists, photographers and our supporters, we can really make the world a better place.

Fore more information on what your legacy can achieve, contact …

Satish KumarResurgence TrustRegistered office: Ford House, Hartland, Bideford, Devon EX39 6EE

Tel. 01237 441 293Fax 01237 441 203Email satish@resurgence.orgRegistered Charity No. 1120414Web www.resurgence.org/trust

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82 May/June 2010

Inspirational Mind, Body & Spirit Weekend18th - 20th June 2010

Silsoe Conference Centre, Bedfordshire

Robert Holden Timothy Freke

Nick Williams

David Hamilton

Steve Nobel Dr Jude Currivan

Janey Lee Grace

Elizabeth WhiterDavina Mackail

Stephanie J. King

Simon Parke

Steve Taylor

Over 80 FREE inspiring talks & workshops Many vibrant holistic exhibitors

daily ticket £9/£7 concs (Fri evening £5) advanced 3 day ticket £15/£11 concs

available until 14 JuneA wide range of accommodation

available and free parking

For full Festival details and on-line bookings visit:

www.mindbodyandspirit.euemail info@mindbodyandspirit.eu or call 0121 449 4086

Out of the ordinary venue for group events with large workshop space. Residential / non-residential (sleeps up to 36); self catering / catered. Comfortable, elegant, welcoming environment in a newly renovated, ecologically sound barn in peaceful Su!olk countryside. Hosting life enhancing activities of an expressive, therapeutic and celebratory nature.

Visit www.bullocksley.co.uk for more information, email mark@bullocksley.co.uk or call Mark on 07803 611653Bullocks Ley, Li"le Green, Burgate, Diss IP22 1QE

Free Book Launch Event with talk by:

Jonathon Porritt

‘Growth, Prosperity and the Human Spirit’

6:00pm on Wed 14th July At St James's Church, 197 Piccadilly,

London. W1J 9LL

Launching the book:

‘GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness’

Full details at: www.greenspirit.org.uk Tel: 020 8552 2096

GreenSpirit Events

Walking Retreat in Forest of Bowland: 25th - 28th May 2010

Connecting with Nature at Cae Mabon, Snowdonia 15th - 21st August 2010

Tuning into the magic at the GreenSpirit Annual Gathering

22nd - 24th October 2010

www.greenspirit.org.uk (see events) E: info@greenspirit.org.uk

T: 020 8552 2096

www.theartofhealing.com.au

AUST. $8.95NZ $9.95

Are You Willing To Be A CONSCIOUS SPIRITUAL BEING?Food for GOOD MOODwhat does it really mean... TO LOSE ONE’S HEALTH?

Osteopathy - a philosophy of health

The LIFE Of An UNBORN Child

FEATURE: Sustaining Mental Wellness- Alternative Approaches

to Mental Healthcare And Depression

- Weathering The Storm

- Making a Difference with Dementia

- Accepting Who We Are

www.theartofhealing.com.au

AUST. $7.95NZ $8.95

craving SUGAR?..find out why

BEAUTIFUL SKIN- without BOTOX!

EX-HOODOO GURU launches CD for drug rehab

The root ofADDICTION..from DOCTORto ‘PATIENT’

Why have we lost The Art of Relaxation? Includes Tales of Energy, Massage, Creating Synergy with Yoga and Mandala Healing

FEATURE: Rejuvenating Relaxation

EDITORIAL OFFICE Editor-in-Chief Satish KumarPA to Satish KumarElaine Green

Editor Susan ClarkArt DirectorRachel MarshWebsite EditorAngie BurkeContributing EditorLorna HowarthSub-editorHelen Banks

Art AdviserSandy BrownPoetry Editor Peter Abbs

Trust ManagerIan Tennant Office ManagerLynn Batteninfo@resurgence.org

Ford House, Hartland, Bideford,Devon EX39 6EE, UKTel: + 44 (0) 1237 441293Fax: + 44 (0) 1237 441203

ADVERTISING Advertising ManagerGwydion BattenAdvertising SalesAndrea Thomas Tel: + 44 (0)208 771 9650andrea@resurgence.org

TRUSTEESChair James SainsburySandy Brown, Rebecca Hossack, Nick Robins

ASSOCIATE EDITORSHerbert Girardet, Hazel Henderson, David Kingsley, June Mitchell, Sophie Poklewski Koziell, Jonathan Robinson, Andrew Simms, Martin Wright

ADVISORY PANELRamesh Agrawal, Rosie Boycott, Ros Coward, Oliver James, Annie Lennox, Philip Marsden, Geoff Mulgan, Jonathon Porritt, Gordon Roddick, Sam Roddick, William Sieghart

MEMBERSHIPMembership OfficeJeanette Gill,Rocksea Farmhouse,St Mabyn, Bodmin,Cornwall PL30 3BR, UKTel: + 44 (0) 1208 841824Fax: + 44 (0) 1208 841256members@resurgence.org

Membership RatesOne year :UK: £30Non UK airmail: £40Non UK surface mail: £35

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EVENTSPeter Lang Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8809 2391peterlang@resurgence.org

RESURGENCE SUPPORTERSPatrons (£5,000)Anthony and Carole Bamford, Roger Franklin, Kim Samuel-Johnson, Doug Tompkins, Michael Watt, Louise White

Life Members (£1,000)Klaas and Lise Berkeley, Peter and Mimi Buckley, Anisa Caine, Mrs Moira Campbell, Anne Clements, Mary Davidson, Liz Dean, Craig Charles Dobson, , John Doyle, John and Liz Duncan, Rosemary Fitzpatrick, Hermann Graf-Hatzfelt, Brenda Lealman, Michael Livni, Mill Millichap, Mrs O. Oppenheimer, Vinod Patel & Rashmi Shukla CBE, John Pontin, Colin Redpath, Jane Rowse, Gabriel Scally, Penelope Schmidt, Philip Strong

Sustainer Members (£500)Marcela de Montes

PRODUCTION PrinterKingfisher Print, Totnes, Devon

ISSN 0034-5970 Printed on Evolution paper: (75% recycled fibre/25% FSC certified virgin pulp), using soya-based inks.

The Resurgence Trust is a registered educational charity (no. 1120414). The magazine and its associated network of individuals and groups are dedicated to the service of the soil, soul and society. Our aim is to help create a world based on justice, equity and respect for all beings.

Resurgence (ISSN 0034-5970) is published bi-monthly by The Resurgence Trust and is distributed in the US by SPP, 95 Aberdeen Road, Emigsville PA. Periodicals postage paid at Emigsville PA POSTMASTER: send address changes to c/o Resurgence, PO Box 437, Emigsville PA, 17318-0437

at the heart of earth, art and spirit

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of Nobelprize winning Poet, Painter, Playwright, and Visionary Rabindranath Tagore, Resurgence in association with Dartington Hall, and Temenos Academy is organising the first Festival of Arts and Culture. We are calling it “GITANJALI Tagore 150”.Gitanjali means song offerings.

The Festival will take place from the 1st – 7th of May 2011 at Dartington Hall, nearTotnes in Devon. The Festival will present poetry, music, dance, films, lectures and ofcourse wholesome Indian cuisine!

Andrew Motion, Alice and Peter Oswald, William Radice, Mark Tully and Deepak Chopraare just some of the names who have already agreed to share their work during the Festival.

In order to make the Festival a success and accessible to as wide an audience as possible,we are looking for financial support, including event sponsors, as well as volunteers. For such help, you will be offered discounts for events during the Festival.

If you would like to be involved and help, please contact Minni Jain at the following:

Email: tagorefestival@resurgence.org

Mailing address: Tagore Festival, Schumacher College, The Old Postern, Dartington,Totnes TQ9 6EA, Devon, UK

Telephone: 0044-(0)1803 869946

CelebratesRabindranath Tagore’s

150th birth anniversary in association with

The Dartington Hall Trust