Human beings love to communicate. It will be one of the great discoveries to find out which came first the voice or the brain. Through stele, scrolls and printing presses to the internet, telephone and radio phone we will develop our ability to communicate easily with each other anywhere in the world and one day…
Category: Quotidial
Bone Flutes
There were, anthropologists tell us, small flutes made of the bones of animals which our distant ancestors used. Along with some kind of drum which seems to be a universal early instrument. But it was a long road from those to Haydn. Like all roads, to Science, to Art, to Society itself, human endeavours are…
If I Could Write . . .
I would of course be brilliant. I would be Zola reborn, I would be deep yet brief like Chekhov, I would be passionate and sparse like Steinbeck, I would be wide-ranging and evocative like Fast. There would be a hint of Byron in my irony and humour, the politics of Mary Ann Evans in my…
Rivers Come And Go
There is great beauty around a tidal river. I grew up with one and getting to know the hours of its high and low tides gives one a knowledge of the phases of the moon. Gives one an appreciation of how boats rise and fall and tip gently when they hit the bottom of the…
History Is Long, Memory Is Short
If a generation is 25 years there have been 80 generations since Jesus lived and 104 since the Buddha. I am sure someone could work out the days and I am certain some church somewhere has a sign ‘XXXX Days since Calvary How Many More To Go?’ These are not huge numbers. They are not…
If The World Only Knew
We lack empathy. Long ago when I was a student the traditional question was to ask what the implications of the statement ‘I have a pain in your leg’ meant. Apart from the obvious implications for identity there is also for me, the residual understanding of empathy and why we lack so much of it….
Camp Fire
In the history of what we lose as we develop societies, and in addition to those people who have already said the ‘family’ meal and interactions of playing parlor games have become a thing of the past for nearly everyone in the developed world, I would add story telling. When those first lamps were lit…
The High Places
Religiosity is on the increase in every part of the world apart from Western Europe. Many years ago I thought of making a series about ‘The High Places’ and why so many religions across the world went ‘up’ mountains to worship their gods. If this had been the only thing religious people did it would…
The Old, Old Song
by Charles Kingsley When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen,— Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away; Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day. When all the world…
Flowers That Matter
The first crocus is out (purple in my garden) and the snowdrops have lasted a long time this year probably because just as they wanted to come out it got a bit colder again. Still they have made a pleasant show next to my mother’s sick bed. The daffodils are growing tall and the bushes…