“No economic interest, under no circumstance, can be above the reverence of life.” – Manfred Max-Neef, Chilean economist, 1932 -2019 A national conversation has begun which is alarming, yet also familiar. It talks about costs and trade-offs, losses and accounts. It is a conversation about human lives framed in the language of economics. A recent…
Tag: culture
Playing for our lives
One sunny afternoon a few years ago, my then 9-year-old son uttered those words every parent or carer will be familiar with: “Mum, I am bored.” I gave him my usual response: “Go outside and find someone to play with.” He went out and returned five minutes later: “There is nobody out there.” I looked…
To never be forgotten
“He could reconstruct all his dreams, all his fancies. Two or three times he had reconstructed an entire day. He told me: I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world.” Funes the Memorious – Jorge Luis Borges 1942 ~~~ I am holding a photograph of…
Regarding the Land
“What I stand for is what I stand on.” ― Wendell Berry Several years ago I was invited to work on a ‘Soil and Story’ project for the Soil Association. It was a wonderful opportunity to do some research into different cultural approaches to soil and earth. Now that I am in the process of…
The long remembering
“We need to haunt the house of history and listen anew to the ancestors’ wisdom.” Maya Angelou Last week I was walking on Dartmoor when I stumbled upon The Mariners Way. The Mariners Way is said to be the track which sailors walked from Bideford in the north to Dartmouth in the south. As I…
The undivided self
I have a memory of how it started. I was visiting my Dad in New York and my big sister had taken me and a friend to the fairground. I was thirteen years old. It was summer. I was dressed in shorts and t-shirt. When our turn came for the Ferris wheel my friend and I…
Sleep like a river
“How we need another soul to cling to.” – Sylvia Plath Since my nine year old son watched a particularly scary episode of Dr Who we have started practising ‘kawa no ji mitai’. Kawa no ji mitai is not some ancient martial art designed to chase away the bogeymen from under the bed, but it…
Some Small Holding 