My girl Mimi developed the cutest eating habit. No wonder she prefers tinned food over kibbles. A friend of mine was recently so fascinated when she saw Mimi doing this, she said I MUST upload a video to YouTube. Done.
She does make a bit of a mess sometimes—I wonder if she’d ever consider using utensils?
Yes, there is plenty of talk about sex in The Global Forest by Diana Beresford-Kroeger, a book I read recently which is obviously a labour of love and carries a message that needs to be truly heard: the planet vitally needs trees; human beings need trees to survive, animal life needs trees to exist; we must stop killing the trees before it’s too late—and proceeds to tell us why in a series of essays which come straight from the heart.
The Global Forest
by Diana Beresford-Kroeger ★★★½
There is no question that Beresford-Kroeger, a botanist and medical biochemist who is an expert on the medicinal, environmental, and nutritional properties of trees set out with all the right intentions with this series of essays on the many reasons—both known and obscure—as to why trees are essential to the planet and to humanity. With essay titles like A Suit for Sustainability; The Paranormal; The Forest, the Fairy, and the Child; Two-Tier Agriculture; Medicinal Wood, and Green Sex and the Affairs of the Heart (yes, this one graphically depicts the sex life of trees), two things become clear: that this woman is passionate about trees, and that while she makes sound scientific and climactic arguments, her more esoteric ideas can’t be an easy sale for the average reader. Which might explain why this book hasn’t made any best-seller lists, even though it carries an important message. It might have worked better with stronger editing to structure Beresford-Krogerer’s ideas; I found that some notions kept being repeated from one essay to the other, while others were a bit too far-fetched for me, even though I have claimed in the past to be a Forest Fairy myself… But there was interesting information about the habits of the First Nations people, who depended on trees and forests for sustenance and to avoid starvation. I badly wanted to love this book, because I too passionately love trees (my name means “tree” in Hebrew, and I’ve often felt myself to be one too). Also, this book was a gift from a beloved aunt whose opinions matter to me (and who took the time to have the author dedicate it in my name). But really, it left me feeling mostly quite dejected. I can’t fault the author for that, but like most other appeals for conservancy, one can’t help but root for the cause while knowing there are more powerful capitalist interests killing animal and plant life on a daily basis who aren’t going to be stopping anytime soon. This doesn’t keep me from trying to make responsible choices and supporting the good fight, but sometimes my lack of optimism gets in the way and I feel like my only real contribution is the guilt of the world I carry on my shoulders.
Obviously, I’m not alone in feeling this way. When I posted this review on LibraryThing, a member responded by providing a link to an article in The Guardian about how the pessimism on environmental topics sparked a movement called the Dark Mountain Project which posits that we’ve done too little too late to avert “Ecocide”.
What do you think? Too little too late, or are there still reasons to hope for a positive outcome after more than fifty years of environmental activism?
Photo by Smiler
I just read the following quote from A Passion for Books, posted by a LibraryThing pal (thanks Donna!). This book of essays is by Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), who was an American Congregational minister, author, and lecturer.
“Books are the windows through which the soul looks out. A home without books is like a room without windows. No man has the right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. And the love of knowledge in a young mind is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.
Let us pity these poor rich men who live barrenly in great bookless houses! Let us congratulate the poor that, in our day, books are so cheap that a man may every year add a hundred volumes to his library for the price which his tobacco and his beer would cost him. Among the earliest ambitions…among all that are struggling up in life from nothing to something, is that of forming and continually adding to a library of good books. A little library, growing larger every year, is an honourable part of a man’s history. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessities of life.”
As Donna said, the language here is dated and sexist, but the thinking behind it is worth sharing.
First, I found these two images above, from a blog called Catnip Studio Collage, while hunting around for cheerful flower images, and got pretty excited about them. Gorgeous seed packet circa 1893, wouldn’t you say? So of course, I had to continue investigating a little bit, just to see what this “Mayflower” publication was all about… Continue reading
No connection to this post, but a preview of something I've been working on for a good long while—that's my dad visiting at last year's student show.
My latest bout of the blues was set off by a night spent fighting the bedclothes, and insomnia always leaves me feeling very sick the next day. So I took a “sick day” today and slept till I could sleep no more and feel better for it now. This means I missed my art class, but I don’t even feel badly about it, though I should, I guess. All I know is I didn’t want to be in the same room as that irritating woman. My bruises from last week have gone from blue to greenish-yellow and cover a good portion of my upper and lower right arm as graphic reminders of just how badly I handle stress. Continue reading
Sunday evening falls
All that’s left undone; a weight
Darkness closes in
By Smiler
For the third night in a row, the helicopters are circling the night skies. This may be completely normal in a city like New York or Los Angeles, but unusual enough here in Montreal to seem really strange and completely disruptive. Like most every year, the students have been boycotting classes to oppose tuition hikes, and to keep things interesting, they’ve taken to protesting in the downtown streets—at night. There’s some live reporting streaming on the Montreal Gazette website, with lots of blurry night photos and captions that are obviously dashed off from mobile phones, which makes for some pretty amusing stuff sometimes, as evidenced with the latest stream which says: “Let’s stay peaceful says crowd. Vandals chastised, flea on foot”.
These protests are apparently fuelled by the latest offer by the Charest government, which they deem unacceptable. One of their chants is “It’s not an offer, it’s an insult”.
From the live stream:
“Police declared march illegal.”
“Chant: An illegal march, that doesn’t exist.”
“Unclear what has become of masked vandal but police are making presence known ”
But what has become of the flea?
"Riot cops moving in at bleury ste cath"
The riot cops are on the scene, and this is where I tune out. And that’s been the news tonight, from the comfort of my living room.
My first watercolour class of the session was today and it was… interesting. It’s a full class, whereas last term we had a very small group, so I needed to adjust to having so many people there. This one woman showed up and her appearance dismayed several of those who had had the bad luck of having her as a classmate before. She criticizes absolutely everything in a very loud, strident voice, when she’s barely even gotten through the door. I’ve had words with her in the past, so I have to really keep my temper and attitude in check because she has a way of driving me crazy. She thinks nothing of putting down a person’s work, which is completely unacceptable behaviour in this school, where they really strive to create a nurturing environment. But then—anybody who thinks they don’t have artistic talent? should see this woman’s work. This woman apparently thinks she has a gift though. The stuff she showed today literally made me feel sick. Yes, that bad. The teacher usually finds the loveliest things to say about everybody’s work—it’s a real talent she has—no matter how much or how little talent a person has, and she was more or less rendered speechless, along with everyone else. She pleaded the fifth after class when I asked her about it, and that told me everything I needed to know. Continue reading
This video made me laugh like an idiot. Good fun. Enjoy!
