Spirit of Green

The other little corner of cyberspace that I paid a visit to this week was a lively, green site called 'Earth Pages'. Here, I talked about the experience of the astronauts who are the only ones fortunate enough actually to see, with their physical eyes, the planet we live on, in all its glorious roundness and wholeness. The rest of us, although we have seen photographs, will never have that opportunity. But we can still imagine it and feel an upwelling of love and caring for our lovely Earth.

My post on Earth Pages is entitled Getting Into the Spirit of Green. To read it, please come and visit me over there.

On Deck - and in community.

Today's stop on my 'virtual blog tour' is one of the online communities I belong to. This one is the Creation Spirituality Communities Network, a rapidly-growing community of people (currently just over 700) from all around the world whose spirituality is grounded in our lovely Planet Earth and the wonder and beauty of all Creation. I chose this as a way to introduce you to a lovely and interesting community of people.

Today's post, inspired, as my posts often are, by my morning walk along the lanes, is entitled 'On the Deck of the Earthship'.

If you want to leave a comment on this post, you won't be able to leave it there unless you register with the site, so you can simply leave it here.

Today’s topic: ‘Sacred Messiness’

As I said yesterday, this is a busy week, with two visits in quick succession. Today, thanks to my friend Tess Giles, I am making a guest appearance on a wonderful site called, ‘Anchors and Masts.’ This is a blog that focuses on learning and growth in the context of spirituality and creativity, and my post for today is entitled ‘Sacred Messiness’. You will find it at:
http://www.anchormast.com/2010/07/09/sacred-messiness-2/

Rainy Day Visit

My virtual book tour, up until now, has been proceeding at a leisurely pace. But suddenly, this week, all that has changed. I am making two stops in the same week—one today and another tomorrow.

Perhaps it is not surprising that I feel the pace picking up. For next Wednesday is the biggest and most exciting event so far: the London launch of the new book. It is a free event. And it will be taking place at St James’s Piccadilly at 6.00 p.m., with a talk by Jonathon Porritt entitled 'Growth, Prosperity and the Human Spirit'. (Click here for details.) If there are any London readers of this blog, I do hope you will join us there.

Meanwhile, today, a big thank you to veteran blogger Rain Truaux for hosting me on her attractive site, 'Rainy Day Thoughts.' As the name suggests, hers is a thoughtful, insightful blog that covers many interesting subjects and concepts. Rain lists her interests as: “… creativity, dreams, relationships, politics, photography, aging, country living, transitions, our senses (all 6), and spirituality.” Sounds a lot like me, as a matter of fact!

So come on over to the Pacific Northwest and join us. You’ll find me, and my ‘buttercup musings’ at:
http://rainydaythought.blogspot.com/2010/07/green-spirit.html

GreenSpirit Book Tour, Stop #3: 'The Madeleine Syndrome'

Alison Shaffer’s blog, ‘Meadowsweet and Myrrh’ is “…for the whispering poet and enchanted naturalist that dwells within each of us, jostling elbows with the anarchist, the skeptic, the cynic, the scientist, the self-deprecating intellectual and the humble, earnest seeker.”

Alison writes for a Druid Journal called 'Sky Earth Sea: A Journal of Practical Spirituality' and she is currently writing a book on paganism and peace.

She is kindly hosting me for the third visit on my ‘virtual book tour.’ I hope you will hop over there and read my latest post.

It is entitled ‘The Madeleine Syndrome’

Stop #2 - Seven Generational Ruminations

Getting to the second stop on my 'virtual book tour' took longer than expected because of a technical glitch in getting my post on to that site (they have such a problem with spammers that the software program they have set up to prevent it behaves like a rottweiler on steroids). But it is up there now and I hope you will visit. The site is called '7 Generational Ruminations'.

As they say in describing their site, "In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. That isn't just a marketing slogan from an excellent household products company. It can be a guiding principle leading us to low impact living for Sustainable Humanity so we can live in the garden paradise of our dreams."

It is an information-rich site, and as I visit there I find myself surrounded by dozens of posts about electric cars and motorcycles. But that's OK. We each do our part of The Great Work in our own way. Using renewable energy sources to create new forms of transport is an absolutely vital part of it. Changing our consciousness is another.

My post is called 'From Sunsets to Sustainability' and you will find it at:
http://www.7gen.com/blog/elderwoman/sunsets-sustainability

On the Road Again (sort of!)

When my book Elderwoman was first published, I spent several weeks touring around, giving talks and workshops and signing books. It was all very interesting and enjoyable. I met some great people and saw a lot of places I had never seen before. It was also rather tiring and I was glad to get home again. I am an introvert by nature, so frankly I am more comfortable sitting at home in my slippers and sweatpants than I am dressing up and socializing. (I also wondered whether all the effort and expense had really been worth it.)

But now, there is a much better way to tour around. In terms of spreading the word about a new book it is a lot more effective, as it enables an author to introduce the book to many more people than the old-fashioned book tour. It incurs no cost at all. And best of all, you don’t even have to get out of your old, comfy clothes to do it.

It’s called a blog tour.

So as a way of taking the new book GreenSpirit: Path to a New Consciousness out ‘on the road’, I am now embarking on a blog tour. The tour will take me to a number of interesting places over the next few weeks and I would be delighted if you could come along with me, read my blog posts and meet my hosts. In the process, you will, I am sure, discover blogs that are new to you, and if you like them, please bookmark them and come back to them often. I made the first stop today. So please come and meet my first host, Maddy Harland.
Maddy is the editor of Permaculture Magazine: Solutions for Sustainable Living and a co-founder of Permanent Publications, a publishing company specializing in developing our understanding of permaculture. www.permaculture.co.uk
She is also one of the contributors to the new book. Her chapter, which is one of my favourites as it is so comprehensive and practical and also very thought-provoking is entitled: ‘Permaculture: Bringing Wisdom Down to Earth.’
Here is my post on Maddy’s blog. It's called 'The Web of Connections.' And when you have read it, be sure and check out the rest of her blog and bookmark it. It is great.

Familiarity breeds ...

... no, not contempt. Just a dulling of the senses: a loss of awe and amazement: a gradual failure of the 'wow' response.

I was thinking about this as I got ready to set off on my walk this morning. It was a beautiful, sunny morning. The birds were singing. There are wildflowers everywhere you look at the moment and the trees are waking into their glorious flush of spring green. And yet I knew it was quite likely that I would walk the entire three miles wrapped up in my thoughts, preoccupied with my inner landscapes, oblivious to all the beauty around me.

People come to the Westcountry for the scenery because it is one of the most beautiful areas of England. Over the long weekend just past, our little corner of Devon was full of visitors, especially hikers. I could see their faces as they walked past our kitchen window. They had that same look of awareness and keen enjoyment as I had myself on our hikes in Spain a few weeks ago. But I am so used to living in these surroundings that quite often I find myself walking in them without really seeing them. After nearly eleven years, I take this beauty for granted. It is only when I go away and come back that I realize how blessed I am to live here.

So I made a point, this morning, of turning my hour of walking into an hour of meditative contemplation, opening my senses as fully as I could to the sights and sounds and smells of this familiar piece of countryside, letting it come into me and fill me with its beauty.

And I took the camera with me so that I could take you with me also as I set off down the lane...



... over the bridge ...



... into the woods...



...and up the path to where the bluebells are blooming...


... in all their quiet glory.

Slowly to Spain and Back

I took time out from the bustle and busyness of promoting the new GreenSpirit book and - together with my beloved partner and soulmate Sky of course - spent three quiet weeks in Spain. Click here for a description and details of where we went and where we stayed and what we saw.

The Man Who Was Not Green

I will not be wearing green today. I will NOT celebrate St Patrick’s Day, today or any other year. No way!!

Do you know why?

Because if the legend is true, then Patrick was a stupid, ignorant man who for some misguided and utterly wicked reason decided to wipe out all the snakes in his native Ireland. What a senseless, idiotic thing to do. And he got sainted for that?

I love snakes. I have had some wonderful encounters with snakes in my life and I treasure every one of them. I respect snakes. I admire them. I want my world always to have snakes in all their glory, their sinuous, undulating beauty, their quiet, mind-your-own business way of getting on with their lives and avoiding messing with mine.

I have only ever had one intimate encounter with a rattlesnake. The snake saw me and rattled its rattle in warning. I obeyed. And I watched as it moved away through the grass, marvelling that for the first time in my life a rattlesnake had spoken personally to me.

In my book, Elderwoman, I told the story of the brown snake (one of Australia’s deadliest creatures) who once lived underneath the floor of our cabin in the Aussie bush, and how that snake was my Zen master, reminding me every day to be mindful, to step with awareness, to stay in the moment.

Yes, snakes are amazing. I love them. Ireland is very much the poorer for not having any. That Patrick was a very, very stupid man. And for messing with the ecosystem he was a sinner, not a saint. I am glad he is long gone.

Balancing Act

I’ve become a bit unbalanced of late.
No, I don’t mean that I have been toppling over or that my mental health is any more precarious than it ever was, but that the ratio of time spent sitting at the computer to time spent moving around and doing other things has been steadily shrinking over these past few months. The result: some strong warning signals from my body, including eyestrain and a sore shoulder, forcing me away from my desk. Which is one of the reasons why my blog posts have been sparse (and they were never all that frequent to begin with, as you may have noticed).
I find myself feeling thinking back nostalgically, from time to time, to the early 1990s in Australia when Sky and I were building our own adobe house, making fifty bricks every morning, then turning yesterday’s bricks and stacking the week-old ones.

We planted trees all afternoon and spent almost every waking moment outside except when it was pouring with rain—which in that drought-prone area it very rarely did.
We ate outdoors, showered outdoors, came in only to sleep. Maybe we were unbalanced in the other direction, but it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. We felt fit and healthy and full of energy. And our little computer that drew its power from a solar panel could only run for an hour or two a day.Human bodies were not designed for a sedentary life. Our species was certainly not designed for a life spent indoors, in airless, climate-controlled houses with fitted carpets and double glazing, eating instant dinners defrosted in microwave ovens. And our children and grandchildren were certainly not meant to spend huge chunks of their days and evenings in front of screens, either passively soaking up commercial propaganda and mindless triviality or vanquishing armies of virtual enemies with their thumbs.

It seems as though we have removed ourselves further and further from any real contact with the Earth. Small wonder, then, that we have wreaked so much mindless havoc. I am not the only one who’s out of balance. Two thirds of us are. And many, worse than me. At least I walk miles every day in the fresh country air, chop wood, grow fruit and vegetables and cook from scratch.

Even so, I have some way to go to get back in balance the way I would really like to be. Which is difficult, since I am a writer and an editor and in this remote, rural area of England where we live it is the Internet that keeps me connected to the wider world. Plus we live in a cold climate and it rains a lot.

Anyone else out there wrestling with a similar dilemma?

Fear of Falling

The lanes have been icy and slick this past week and there have been some mornings that I missed my usual walk because I was fearful of slipping. Fear of falling makes me over-cautious. I find myself contracting my muscles, creeping along carefully, head down, shoulders hunched, watching for icy patches, looking at the ground instead of striding out confidently and gazing at the countryside around me. I start thinking about what can happen to people my age when they break hips and that thought makes me contract even more. On days like that, a walk is no fun. Better to come home, make a cup of tea and curl up with a good book.

But the image of that contracted self niggles at me. After a while, I have to put down my book and think about it.

The truth is, I believe, that at a psychic level most of us spend our whole lives in a similarly contracted state. Fear of falling makes us cautious. The possibility of calamity narrows our vision. It makes us shrivel up, huddle into ourselves, vainly seeking comfort by curling up in a ball, like a hedgehog, rather than remaining fully open to everything that is around us and open to all the uncertainties of the next moment.

When you think about it, most of us are afraid, most of the time, though often not consciously so. We fear illness, we fear death, we fear the unknown future. The great mystery that is life scares most of us rigid. So we huddle into the familiar—into our relationships, our work, our routines, our library books and movies: always seeking comfort. I’ve heard it called existential angst. Just to be alive is scary if you let yourself really face life—and death—full-on. So most of us, most of the time, distract ourselves from existential angst and our deep-seated fear of the unknown and what might happen in our personal—or planetary—future. We attempt to insulate ourselves in any way we can think of. Like seeking certainty where there really is none by following, blindly, the precepts and prescriptions of organized religion or other off-the-peg belief systems. In the same way that we seal up cracks in our houses so that no cold draught may enter, we fill up all the spaces in our consciousness into which fear may possibly creep. Thus we put iPods in our ears, jabber away on our cell phones, stay busy with our computers, our text messages, our social lives, our work, the TV…anything to stop ourselves from thinking too hard about all the unknowns that scare us and all the question marks hanging over us as individuals and as what may well be a doomed species.

The truth is that no matter how much we try to kid ourselves, there are no guarantees, no escapes and no safe places. I think that is what Christ meant when he said “The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head" (Matthew 8:20) We humans are stuck with our existential dilemma: the dilemma of knowing enough to be scared of the future but not enough to be able to unravel the Great Mystery. All we can do is take a deep breath, step forward and say "yes" to it.

Opening up to whatever may happen, opening up to the unknown future, saying "yes" to life—no matter what—is, I believe, the ultimate spiritual challenge. And it is every bit as difficult to do as striding confidently down an icy lane on a winter morning, looking up and out at the world instead of creeping along, staring anxiously down at one's boots.

My Life as a Squirrel

After several weeks of rain and overcast skies, the sun finally shone. And for a winter’s day, the temperature of the air was surprisingly balmy.

I suddenly noticed dozens upon dozens of tiny, moth-like insects, their wings silvery in the sunlight, dancing in the airspace just beyond my window—an unusual sight at this time of year, with all the swallows long since gone. At the risk of being anthropomorphic, I want to tell you that their dance seemed ecstatic.

I wondered where they came from. Did the warmth trigger an unseasonal hatching, luring these incautious creatures to the dance, only to consign them later to a frosty death? Or, like the squirrels, is their hibernation but a shallow one, a sometime sleep, allowing for opportunistic forays out of bed on any morning that happens to be fine and mild enough?

In my imagination, I am more bear than squirrel, myself. Burrowing deeply into my warm bed, I often fancy I could easily sleep right through till Spring and be the better for it.

Yet my truer squirrel-self responds, willy-nilly, when the sword of sunlight pierces the shallow crust of my winter sleep. Not only sunlight, either, but a new idea can do it: something noticed on a page: someone’s blog post: an item on the news: a message… Anything can awaken my resting mind and make my fingers itch to write.

However, come the darkening of the sky, the chill of evening, the winter somnolence returning early to my limbs and I am back in my nest, the nuts left strewn and only half unshelled, the paragraphs unfinished, the fickle flame of inspiration guttering and faltering yet again in the cold air.

There is much to be said for bear mode. And being a squirrel-type is frustrating, especially when one has not yet fully shaken off a lifetime’s conditioning by that darned old work ethic.

But problematic though it sometimes feels, on balance I am a happy squirrel. And I am glad I was awake to see the sunshine and observe those tiny creatures dancing joyfully in the ‘now’ moment with no dread of frost.

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.