Blogs

Riverford, an organic food home delivery service, have created a project of PRACTICAL INSPIRATION.

They say – We have completed four years of fundraising for our charity partner Send a Cow and are delighted to report that, with your help, we’ve raised a huge £161,128.

It’s been a fantastic joint effort from customers and staff; fundraising activities have included sponsored mud runs, Three Peaks Challenge, quizzes and raffles, donations and selling garden fleece.

The donation supported the Going Organic project in Northern Uganda, successfully transforming the lives of a rural community by helping them to produce food sustainably. We are now supporting Project Migogoro, also focused on organic, sustainable agriculture in North Uganda. See how you can help.

Thank you so much to Riverford customers and staff for your support. We’re incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved.

To see video – https://youtu.be/S7ZzkO9f8PU

For more info – www.sendacow.org.uk

In her Story ‘Tales beyond the Pale’ Jennifer Leach writes of tunnelling, like a desert gopher, to find her Path. My tunnelling this week took me from an Ascot Labour Party meet’s talk of redistribution of wealth, to uploading George Orwell’s ‘ Road to Wigan Pier’, his description of 1936 coal mining, then woke up to the fact of this iPad’s dependency on the miners of DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) producing ‘conflict minerals’. Then on to the US ‘Enough Project’ and The Dodd-Frank Act 2010 to track & report conflict minerals in their products. Stopped tunnelling at George Clooney joint initiative ‘Satellite Surveillance  Project’. For more info – www.enoughproject.org and www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/gallery/conflict-minerals-people-drc-gallery-sec

In the Autumn, trees drop leaves to seal the spots where the leaves have been. Fluids cannot flow without leaves, which change colour & drop. If this did not happen, the tree would die from the cold. In the warmer weather the tree uses sunlight, water and air to make its food. Leaves sprout and the tree grows again. 

Living WITH Nature, let’s live her ways. Shedding. Hunkering down. Roots associating with nutrient-accessing fungi. 

The Sarajevo Red Line project  was launched in April 2012, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the siege of Sarajevo. The project – a collaboration between the city of Sarajevo and East West Theatre Company – served as a poignant reminder of the longest siege in modern history.

The main focus of the commemorative event remains a large chair installation; consisting of 11,541 empty red chair, arranged in 825 rows, the installation symbolised the 11,541 victims who were killed during the siege of Sarajevo.

The chairs, assembled to look like an audience, stretched for 800 metres and contained 643 small red chairs to represent the 643 children massacred during the siege.

(Photography UK in Bosnia & Herzegovina)

For further info –  https://www.srebrenica.org.uk/resources/research-resources/art-photography/sarajevo-red-line-project/

REQUIRE TENANTS .. so it’s fruitful that an IDEA descended on rising, Christmas Eve, is added to a collection of “WHAT TO DO WHEN OLD ‘N’ CREAKY” wizzo stuff.

Inspired by parental pride displayed in Christmas cards, at offsprings’ emergent life-interventions: late teens/ early 20’s. Realised there are 20 or so Second Cousins and GrandChildren who have scant, nay thread-bare, knowledge of each other’s lives… and yet ‘of the blood’.  I intend to email said PHALANX OF THE BEAUTIFUL, early 2017 .. and record,  with their cooperation , a FAMILY SCROLL OF FUTURE HOPE.

We were urged by CALM CAROLSTERS last Saturday in our cosy sitting-room… another £150 towards Jackson’s £1000 objective to aid THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST LIVING MISERABLY..the educational alert & support group, around the issue of male suicide. So come all us faithful to the strong HOPE that the soul of humanity will raise beyond Aleppo. ALLONS. VIVA!!

We have an 100 year Cedar at the end of the garden. When I was 80, the tree was reduced to a mere 45 feet. Some form of rot had started at its base. 50 years ago when we first came here, cutting the grass, you had to bend low under its sweeping boughs. Two trunks were carved; a birthday present from friends. A third was laid on the ground. Centre gouged out. Severed limbs at arm and leg level. The carving was completed  and named, on the day the British army vacated Helmund Province, Afghanistan.

I sit ( as it were) aloft the severed glory …..observing. 

Next Saturday, Jackson’s idea to raise money for CALM ( inspired by Reading Bus Co.’s annual charity) will see a dozen or so around the piano. Good vibes ! Three eleven year olds carolling away. Piano accompaniment on my long departed father’s sixty year old Baby- Grand. This he bought after finally winning a court- case following his disabling car crash… and which he played for hours, to the point of exhaustion. ‘A Nightingale sang, in Berkeley Square’ genre.

So present in the room will be young boys’ enthusiasm, an older man’s courage, and the men whom CALM calls on us to hear.

www.thecalmzone.net     www.reading-buses.co.uk

What has a DRAGON, DOUBLEDECKER BUS,

YURT and the OAK TREE have in common?

In Berkshire during the past 30 years, they 

have popped up waving the INNOVATION banner. 

Today’s encouraging-idea to myself.

Think of an open space near home. Totterable to…or no more than very short drive away. Line up self, or helpful other, to drive.

Pack  a sandwich & cuppa in a thermos. 

Buy small sketch book, on-line. Check graphite pencils. 

Once there, be determined to walk to a SEAT.. Essential bit of the PLAN.

Picnic, to rally strength ! Draw. Get back home !! Return SOON to the drawing, and come-what- may, FINISH and colour wash my pix.   First of the Christmas cards to send. It’ll be LOVED by all….