A Sense of Purpose

Five tiny fingers, each but an inch long. I remember how they used to curl around one of mine, gripping with all the prehensile power of that old monkey gene. The rosebud mouth, in sucking movements. Eyes tightly closed. What was she seeing in her dream state? I often used to wonder that.

Later she would open, expand, uncurl those curved limbs and learn to move along the carpet, hand over hand, foot behind foot, tasting the carpet fluff, peering, inquisitive, reaching, grabbing. Quivering with a sense of purpose.

For the purpose of a baby, of a child is to learn, to explore to discover to venture forth to push the boundaries of the known, incorporating more and more of the outer world into the convolutions of the evolved cortex. In order to live in that world successfully.

In the Spring, I watched the blackbird in the tree outside my window. She was feeding her young. Little, feather-fluffing balls, squeaking, demanding, beaks agape. She had a purpose too, a single-minded, dedicated purpose. Every atom of her being was concentrated in that one, unifying purpose—to fill that gaping yellow hole until the chirping stopped. And then to fill it again, and again, and again.

What about later? When the babies had flown. What was her purpose then? Was it to sing, for the delight of human ears or for delight in the sunny morning—or as a call sign that speaks of territory, ownership, belonging?

It’s a strange and slippery concept, purpose. Scientists avoid it if they can. They study the what and the how, the when and the where and the who. But they avoid the why. Because nobody really knows. We just do our best. And usually, purpose is a fuzzy thing, like it might be for my friend the blackbird now, as winter draws near. (Though I guess her purpose now is simply to stay alive, stay fed and stay warm, to breed again next Spring.)

But then there are other times that purpose feels clear and strong and burns brightly in the human psyche.

Thomas Berry spoke of 'The Great Work.' All the work you and I and everyone need to do to bring our species back into balance and harmony with Gaia before it is too late and She sloughs us off as a failed experiment. The ‘green revolution’that we need to have and are finally beginning to have. Right now, there’s no better or more important purpose I can think of than that one. To keep right on learning and growing, just like a baby does. To push the boundaries of the known, incorporating more and more of the outer world into our inner being until we know—really know—that we and the planet are one. And start acting out of that knowledge at last. Then we shall finally have learned how to live in the world successfully.

All Aboard ... The Amphibian Ark

I don't often do 'commercials' on this blog, but I guess you could call today's post a kind of commercial. You see, one third of all the royalties from my book The Lilypad List are pledged to an organization called Amphibian Ark. And Amphibian Ark has just opened its doors to membership by the general public. Which is why I wanted to say a bit more about it today in the hope that some of my readers will be inspired to come on board this special ark.

Did you know?

Nearly one third of the world’s 6,000 amphibian species are threatened and nearly one half are experiencing population declines. These figures represent more threatened amphibians (frogs, salamanders and caecilians) than birds, fishes or mammals, making them the most threatened class of vertebrates on the planet.

In the past few decades, as many as 159 amphibian species may have gone extinct, and all experts involved know that this is an underestimate.

Amphibians are more than cultural icons or simply the creatures we grew up with as kids. They are an important component of the global ecosystem, act as indicators of condition of the environment and contribute to human health. They survived on this planet for millions of years yet now, largely as a result of our own reckless activities, find themselves threatened with extinction.

Addressing this crisis represents the greatest species conservation challenge in the history of humanity. The global conservation community has formulated a response in the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan (ACAP), and an integral part of this response is the Amphibian Ark, in which select species that would otherwise go extinct will be safeguarded in breeding programs as a stopgap until they can be secured in the wild.

The successful Amphibian Ark 2008 Year of the Frog campaign brought news of the amphibian crisis to the masses and began to catalyze an organized, global response.

Scientists and conservationists around the world learned a great deal about the state of amphibians on a global level and are organizing to attack the threats facing these very important and diverse creatures. This is only the beginning and there is much to do!

Amphibian Ark is now a formal membership organization open to ANYONE interested in keeping amphibians on the planet. Boarding the Ark does not require that you work at a zoo, hold a PhD or bring in a six-figure income. Anyone can be a part! Join us in helping to save amphibians, a challenge that will ultimately be quite important to all!

Your support is critical to help the organization reach its goals and protect species on the brink

Please visit www.amphibianark.org/membership.htm and join today!
For more information please contact Kevin Johnson, Communications Director, Amphibian Ark at kevinj@amphibianark.org



And remember, if you buy a copy of The Lilypad List, that will be helping the frogs as well.

It would make a great gift for anyone you know who has been thinking about 'downshifting' to a simpler, less stressful lifestyle.

Oh and by the way, I thought you might be interested to learn that the book has now been translated into both Korean and Chinese. The Chinese edition (see below)is really beautiful, with some splendid colour plates.

Turning Green - Another Look

Last year I wrote several posts about ‘turning green’ and why not everybody is doing it yet. But I really believe that more and more people are turning green.

One small indication is that the number of green blogs and websites on the Internet is multiplying so fast, now, that no one person can even attempt to keep up with them all any more.

It is a very good sign indeed. It is as though the revolution we have all been yearning for is finally getting going in earnest.

Mind you, every now and then I still find myself being sucked back into feeling disheartened about things. Things like the rapidly-melting polar ice caps, our lack of progress in curbing CO2 emissions and our corporate culture’s seeming inability to let go of its fantasy of eternal, economic growth and to embrace the goal of global sustainability instead. (If only governments would be bold enough to level the playing field for corporations by imposing limits, then I think a lot of them would start competing to be green. Right now they are all too afraid of losing their market share.)

But whenever I am tempted back into pessimism, I take another look at this wonderfully inspirational video clip of Paul Hawken addressing a Bioneers Conference.



I just love to watch that endlessly scrolling list of organizations working for a green world, for social justice and all the other causes that we ‘Cultural Creatives’ care so much about. There are millions of us. It is important to remember that. We don’t all necessarily care equally about exactly the same things. And we don’t all agree on priorities. But if you were to interview every one of us I am sure you would find a surprisingly huge degree of consensus about the sort of world we are hoping to create. And we are all beavering away, each in his or her own little patch, working in one way or another to bring that about. We are all envisioning a cleaner, greener, more peaceful planet where resources are fairly shared and co-operation is the ruling paradigm.

And I still believe it can and will happen. The signs are everywhere.

(Thanks to Pam Gallagher for the beautiful photo of a regular green visitor to her garden)

Setting the Record Straight about Health Care

I have lived in the USA and in England (and in Australia too). I am 73, I have a lot of experience and I know what I’m talking about. So this is a message to the US Congress and the people of America about health care.

Our British health care system isn't perfect, but we would never trade it for the one in the US.
Yet conservative US politicians and greedy insurance companies are pushing lies about our National Health Service as a way to scare the American public off universal health care - risking Obama's whole movement for change and threatening his majority in Congress.

Please ignore the lies about health systems in our country and others that are being pushed by US healthcare companies. Our national system of public healthcare works very well and enjoys extremely high levels of public support. Yes, there is room for improvement. Sure, for some non-urgent procedures there are waiting lists. But our system ensures that treatment is available for every man, woman and child in this entire country, and that nobody ever gets turned away when they need medical help. Anyone over 60 gets medication free of charge. We have reciprocal agreements with the rest of Europe so that we don’t have to fear falling ill on vacation on the European mainland. We even have a phone-in line for instant medical advice which is free and available to everyone.

We wish you a healthy and honest debate about healthcare in the US. And I for one am crossing my fingers that you will one day soon have the kind of universal health care that we, over here, have long since taken for granted.

(And for my UK compatriots – please click on the title of this post to sign the AVAAZ petition, if you haven’t already. We must refute the lies that are being told to our brothers and sisters across the pond by greedy insurance companies.)

My Life in the Slow Lane

I love the concept of ‘slow travel’ and I’ve written about it myself. We don't run a car, so most of the travel we do in an ordinary week certainly is slow. Sitting for an hour on our little bus as it lumbers all around the winding country lanes to get to town (which often involves backing up for tractors) is certainly not a speedy way to get around. But with a bare two hours to do a whole week’s worth of shopping plus choose library books, the whole outing sometimes feels just a little rushed.

I love the concept of ‘slow food’ too. Everything I eat is slow food, I suppose, since we don’t have a microwave, never go into fast food outlets, never buy ready-made meals. Then again, how long does it take to steam a bunch of broccoli or kale? How long does it take to boil an egg? Or to pick salad from the garden, wash it, pat it dry and put it in a bowl with some cold-pressed virgin olive oil, some balsamic vinegar and some seasonings? How many minutes does it take me to pull a carrot, scrub it, slice it into strips and spoon out a little dish of tahini to dip the strips in? I can have my sort of meal on the table in under ten minutes. I do eat slowly though. So maybe it is slow food after all.

Since retirement – which is sixteen years ago now – my time has been my own. With no employer to answer to and nobody else’s agenda to follow, I am now living in the slow lane at last. What bliss! I can have lovely, lazy mornings, deliciously unhurried afternoons, slow, quiet evenings. I can spend the day however I like.

So in retirement, I do all the things I enjoy. I take long walks every morning – walking as fast as I can, of course, in order to get my aerobic exercise. I have always loved to read, so now I read six or seven library books every week as well as the books I’ve been sent for reviewing. I love to connect with friends and relations and acquaintances all over the world and now, in retirement, I have time to do that, so I have dozens of emails per day and I’m on eight social networks. And since I no longer have to earn my living and I can do whatever I want to do with my day, I have a zillion projects on the go at any one time because there are so many things I love to do and so many fascinating things to get involved in and I am totally in love with my life By bedtime, I am usually exhausted.

Mind you, it is a happy, contented sort of exhaustion. The sort of exhaustion you get after a day of slow travel and slow food and...er...living in the slow lane.

A Novel Piece of News

It is ready at last. My new book!

This one is a novel. Set in Italy, England and Australia, it is a ‘love story with a difference’. Its title is The Bird Menders.

The Bird Menders is a POD (‘print on demand’) book. The price of PODs is slightly higher than that of conventionally published books, but the cost of publishing them is much less and the royalties are a lot higher.

This means that once the first 53 copies of The Bird Menders have been sold, I shall have earned back the publishing costs. From that moment onwards, every penny of the royalties will be donated to an organization that is dear to my heart, the Italian League for the Protection of Birds (LIPU).

Every year, in Italy, millions of wild birds—including songbirds like thrushes, nightingales, wrens and robins—are caught in the illegal traps of poachers, where they hang by their broken legs, waiting to be strangled and sold to restaurants. Many more thousands of birds, particularly birds of prey, are shot every year for ‘sport’.
LIPU’s hundreds of members, mostly volunteers, work tirelessly to foil the trappers and shooters, maintain reserves and rescue centers and improve the welfare of the precious and beautiful wild birds of Italy. And many hundreds of others, both within Italy and beyond, raise money to support these efforts. (To read more about this organization and its work, in English, see http://www.lipu-uk.org )

Despite its title, this book is not about the slaughter of birds, though one of its main characters is involved in the battle to end this despicable practice. For this book is, of course, a novel. It is a tender love story, a story of healing, the mending of broken wings and the wisdom of women in the second half of their lives.

On order to maximize royalties and thus generate $5.58 per book for LIPU, I would like to ask that anyone in the USA who would care to buy a copy of The Bird Menders does so by clicking on this link. Here, you can read the first chapter for free and see whether you would like to buy a print copy. Or, if you prefer, you can download it as an e-book for $8.95 and $6.26 of that will go to LIPU

Readers in the UK who would like to buy a print copy will pay about £5 less by getting it through Amazon UK (click here for that) especially if they use one of the Marketplace offers. Print copies purchased through Amazon UK or other channels will generate approximately £1.53 per copy for LIPU. E-book downloads (see above) will cost UK readers approximately £5.49, £3.84 of which will go to LIPU.

The Bird Menders was only launched two days ago. I am looking forward to hearing back from the first readers. If you decide to buy or download a copy and you enjoy the book, please spread the word. And please consider leaving a customer review on one of the online sites like Amazon or B&N. Favourable customer reviews are a great way of encouraging others to buy the book.

Midsummer…and the fullness thereof.

Have you noticed that there comes a point in every growing season at which everything suddenly seems to take off? One minute, there is space between plants and the next minute there is a mini-jungle happening. In the gardens, in the hedgerows, everywhere, there is a burgeoning of fertility that leaves one breathless.

The Devon lanes I walk along each morning seem to have become dark, green, growing canyons overnight, their high walls a tangle of brambles and nettles, grass and wildflowers. There are grass heads drooping heavily with seed, swirls of pollen in the honeysuckle-scented air, wild strawberries ripening, foxgloves surfing the white waves of cow parsley, insects buzzing to and fro, butterflies dancing, wrens quivering with song. Only the robins have fallen silent, hidden now in this vast greenness.

So much growth is happening around me that I feel almost breathless. I am drowning in those waves of white and green. I am being strangled by vines and trampled by trees. I find myself gasping at the sheer hugeness of the life force that is moving through the land—and through me—at an amperage so great it could burn me out like a light bulb.

Many people re-package Nature in their minds into a pretty, decorative concept—something to admire through a window, in a vase or on TV. Others, seeking direct contact with Nature’s raw reality, climb the mountains, raft the rapids, hike the trails and pitch their tents in the back country, the domain of bears or rattlesnakes.

I have done both. I, too, have ‘loved’ Nature as brought to you by Hallmark. And I, too, have laced up my walking boots and set off into the wilderness. Right now, in the warm, fecund fullness of this midsummer, I just went for my morning walk with all the doors of my senses wide open, and feared I might die from it.