So now we are being told that London will have Barcelona weather in 2050 and we should look to having different plants species in our gardens if we want healthy gardens that don’t wither and die. The British tradition of individual gardens has always been fun to see but people are sheep and all do…
Changing Facts
I always wondered how two people can view the same set of facts and draw different conclusions. At college I learned that you can discern other facts from those presented and some people look deeper. And that process can be brilliant but mostly people view facts from their own perspective. A perspective learned in childhood…
Breadmaking
Breadmaking is an art and I am not sure the Panasonic bread maker qualifies me as a baker just yet. I tried sourdough. making the starter the traditional way was easy but the loaf though it did rise, is split and a bit heavy. However you don’t get anywhere without trying and experimenting so rye…
The Old World
I recently posted a poem by my mother, Shänne Sands, to an ezine. The poem, I am a Collector of Useless Things, is a beautiful rendering on what you go through when you move and have to pack and unpack your entire life. All the memories that flood back, sad and happy, all the mementos…
Genocide
In December 1948 the UN and her agencies and later many countries in their own legal frameworks, adopted a definition of genocide. They did this in the face of WW2 in which 50 million people died. They did not define the entire war as a genocide or the mass murders of 20, million Slavs, or…
Porridge
It is only in the past few months that I have learned how much birds enjoy eating porridge – which is obvious since they are oats, but I sprinkle them on the bird able and they punch – small and large. I had a small flock of Jays here and it is heartening to see…
She Walks in Beauty Like the Night
She walks in Beauty, like the Night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes; Thus mellowed to the tender light Which Heaven to gaudy day denies – One shade the more – one ray the less Had half impaired the nameless…
The Fearsome Legacy of Lying
We treat our children to the fairytale of Father Christmas and the the Tooth Fairy, to the myths of a world as it might have been with magicians and elves and dragons and having filled them with these fantasies for a decade we tell them this is the best time of their lives. Why? Because…
Atheism
The joy of being an atheist is to be wholly free in mind of any discussions that assert divinity. Once free you realise our ethics has to come from us, not diktat, tradition or history. You realise that every vile act that has been done in the name of religion is a human act devoid…
Funny Funny
I keep hearing people say they cannot be anti-Semitic as they have worked with and know a lot of Jewish people. I recall Upton Sinclair writing that Goerring had Jewish pilots in his Luftwaffe and he said ‘I choose who is and is not a Jew’. I also recall a TV host saying his racist…