In the UK if you live by a stream or river, most times you become responsible for the bank to the stream or river. There is even a riparian society for those who own such pieces of ground and of course, laws governing their use. The rivers themselves are usually governed in concert with the…
Month: March 2011
Grooming
My rough collie loves to be brushed. If we are playing and I pick up her brush she knows exactly how it feels and though she will wag her tail and shake her head she enjoys every minute of it. I like to think she feels the way I do when someone does something nice…
Give Me A Title
We love to categorise. I have heard scientists describe human beings as pattern-makers. It is, is would seem, the fundamental way we make sense of the world around us but of course it is ‘a way of thinking’ and, as in all things, that makes me wonder if it is either the best way of…
Volunteer
‘If everything costs money there will come a time when nothing is affordable.’ This statement, said to me by an artist several years ago, has played in my mind on many occasions and sometimes resonates with the things people say in discussions on economics and society. In particular one comment that society itself functions because…
Waiting For Spring
In almost every field of activity human beings are pulled more than one way intellectually, emotionally and socially. The rest of the animal kingdom on the surface, would appear to be simpler but even there the tensions of interacting with other animals are constant. We make traditions from these tensions, winding them tighter by binding…
The Willingness To Concede
We know there are dictators. We know there are gang leaders and tribal leaders and revolting people who lord it over others. There has been a huge amount written about what makes a tyrant and why most of them have been men, but what makes a follower? These men are kept in power by those…
The Necessity Of God
Many years ago when I started to study divinity as a teenager at school there was a conceit amongst religious people that went something like; ‘If god did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.’ Leaving aside the strange irony obvious to atheists, hidden within the statement, it is one of those very…
Medicinal Rights
I have had occasion to visit hospitals quite a bit in the last five years in the UK. Whilst we can always pick holes in services offered, and even services purchased, it is overlooked by those who complain just how amazing are in historical terms, free health care actually is, even in America the fountain…
History And Future
We know an increasing amount about how human beings work as groups, the kinds of stresses they face as individuals and how reason and nature play off together. We know enough to counsel people and help them through trauma and loss, we know enough to write books that they read to help them understand ‘themselves’….
Beyond The Physical
I was recently arranging to purchase some letterpress items, from fonts to composing sticks, in order to look at making some elements of the printing process by hand. At the same time I have on my shelf an old DVD burner kept because inside it somewhere is a laser, and old hard disc with a…