Still here
Sorry - remiss in my duties! Back soon :)
posted by Anthony at
2:54 PM
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0 comments
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Disney, Casino Capitalism and the Exploitation of Young Boys: Beyond the Politics of Innocence
posted by Anthony at
1:40 AM
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0 comments
Monday, March 30, 2009
PEACE MEDIA Clearinghouse
PEACE MEDIA Online Clearinghouse for Conflict Management-Related Multimedia
http://peacemedia.usip.org/
Georgetown University’s Conflict Resolution Program and USIP have created an online database of multimedia resources related to conflict management, as well as best practices for designing and using them. The resources include films, radio and TV programs, video games, music, and more. Many of these materials are accompanied by teaching guides that help educators and conflict management practitioners facilitate discussion or community action.
The goal of this clearinghouse is to provide a central site where individuals and organizations working in the conflict management field can access materials that support conflict analysis and prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. At the same time, the site will encourage development of the field itself by distilling best practices for creating and using multimedia in support of conflict management activities.
The multimedia tools in the database are drawn from conflict management activities around the world, developed by a wide range of talent from non-governmental organizations, academia, and the private sector. Some were generated specifically for peacemaking purposes, while others are simply explorations of conflicts or issues that we believe can be useful to those trying to understand or manage conflict.
http://peacemedia.usip.org/
Georgetown University’s Conflict Resolution Program and USIP have created an online database of multimedia resources related to conflict management, as well as best practices for designing and using them. The resources include films, radio and TV programs, video games, music, and more. Many of these materials are accompanied by teaching guides that help educators and conflict management practitioners facilitate discussion or community action.
The goal of this clearinghouse is to provide a central site where individuals and organizations working in the conflict management field can access materials that support conflict analysis and prevention, conflict resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction and reconciliation. At the same time, the site will encourage development of the field itself by distilling best practices for creating and using multimedia in support of conflict management activities.
The multimedia tools in the database are drawn from conflict management activities around the world, developed by a wide range of talent from non-governmental organizations, academia, and the private sector. Some were generated specifically for peacemaking purposes, while others are simply explorations of conflicts or issues that we believe can be useful to those trying to understand or manage conflict.
posted by Anthony at
3:44 AM
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0 comments
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
MLK, India, Gandhi
A rare clip of Martin Luther King addressing Indians via All India Radio in 1959 is available here along with transcript. The speech is about violence and the role of US and what India could do about it:
http://subalternmedia.com/?p=2579
(from Kishore Budha via a media studies list)
http://subalternmedia.com/?p=2579
(from Kishore Budha via a media studies list)
posted by Anthony at
1:53 AM
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0 comments
Scything
I must thank my friend Lawrence for the following ...
IF YOU WISH TO SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE TO THIS MAIL OUT PLEASE EMAIL ME, SIMON FAIRLIE,
at chapter7@tlio.org.uk; tel 01460 249204
CONTENTS
1. The Scythe Festival and S Somerset Green Fair 2009
2. The Grib Forest Gathering, Denmark
3. Course in Ireland
4. Other Scythe Courses
Somerset, Devon, Notts, Bristol, Hackney, Anywhere Else?
5. World Championships (in Germany?)
6. Haymaking Festival in the Serbian Mountains
7. Coppicing Weekend
8. The Recession and the Price of Snaths
9. Poem The Scythe, by Stanley Snaith
1. The Scythe Festival and S Somerset Green Fair 2009 will take place on Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 June at the same place as last year:
Thorney Lakes, Muchelney, Near Langport, Somerset .
On the 13th there will be courses for both beginners and for mowers with some experience.
On Sunday, which is the festival proper, there will be a wider range of events than we have held previously. More details will be given in the next mail-out, and posted on the website, but if you want to pencil in a place on the course, please contact me [Simon].
For the results of last years festival see http://www.thescytheshop.co.uk/festival.html and for information about the Green Fair side of the event see http://www.greenfair.org.uk/
If anybody is interested in helping organize events for the festival, we are holding a meeting on 21 February in Oxford. Contact me [Simon] for details.
2. The Gribskov Forest Gathering
Last July Ray Lister and Simon Fairlie visited the Grib Forest Gathering deep in the woods north of Copenhagen where a group of Danish scythesmen have been mowing a 12 acre (or was it hectares?) clearing in the forest for the last 10 years. We were part of the “rest of the world team” (together with a Swede and a Belgian), who competed in a gang mowing contest with a Canadian team (the Vido family) an Austrian team, and a Danish team. In the spirit of Eddie “the Eagle” Edwards we came a glorious last, and made up for the unseemly obsession with medals that so marred the UK performance at Beijing.
This year, just prior to mowing their meadow on 4 July, the Danes are holding an informal instruction course for “improvers” with some experience of mowing. They have places for a limited number from England. We highly recommend this course as the Danes are good mowers, most hospitable, and the venue is lovely. It can be reached easily from Copenhagen by public transport — the single track railway stops in the middle of the forest at Gribskov Halt where there is nothing, not even a paved road. The Grib mowers are also astonishingly knowledgeable about single malt Scotch whisky. To find out more about the event contact Henrik Jorgensen at HJG@sns.dk
3. Course in Ireland
Simon will be holding a two day scything and hand haymaking course at a farm near Mullingar, Co Westmeath, Ireland on 20 - 21 of June. Two days gives more time for practising different peening and mowing techniques — and also allows time to cover haymaking and grassland management techniques.
The event takes place at Porterstown Lodge Farm, Killucan, on the banks of the Royal Canal in Co Westmeath, Ireland’s lakeland. Food is provided and camping, or else you can lodge at a B and B nearby.
For more details contact Jo Dalton on +353 (0) 44 9358916 or jodaltonuk@yahoo.com
If anybody has an opportunity to e-mail this information out to other people in Ireland, or even better to an appropriate e-mail list in Ireland, we’d be very grateful.
4. Other Scythe Courses
Somerset
Simon will be giving courses at South Petherton on Saturday May 2 and Saturday May 23
For information about these courses see http://www.thescytheshop.co.uk/courses.html
To register e-mail chapter7@tlio.org.uk
Devon
I [Simon] will also be giving a two-day course in Devon on 4-5 July. Ring Gill Westcott on 01647 24789
Bristol and Hackney
LILI (the Low Impact Living Initiative are holding two courses this year, run by Simon (again!) on April 18 at Windmill Hill City Farm, Bristol (let’s hope its an early Spring) and on 15 August at Hackney City Farm. See http://www.lowimpact.org/courses.htm LILI also provide lots of other practical courses.
Notts
Ray Lister will be giving his courses in Nottinghamshire.
Raymond Lister, 22 Hind Street, Retford, Notts DN22 7EN; 01777 710091.
Anyone Else?
Is anyone else out there doing courses? If so, if you want to advertise them there will put them in the next mail out, round about April.
Anywhere Else?
If you are interested in organizing a scything course in another part of Britain, I might be able to do it. Please contact Simon to enquire about rates, dates etc.
5. World Championships
Martin Hierstetter writes:
Ichteile ihnen mit wir veranstalten am 1./2.August 2009 die Weltmeisterschaften im Mannschaftsmähen.
Wenn interesse besteht dann geben Sie mir bitte die Adresse und ich sende die Unterlagen.
Herzliche Grüße Martin Hierstetter Sensle2@aol.com
1.Sensenmähverein BaWü 1999 e.V.
I think this means that the world mowing championships are taking place, presumably in Germany, on 1-2 August, and if you want more information contact Martin Hierstetter at Sensle2@aol.com
6. Haymaking Festival and Walking Holiday in the Serbian Mountains (7-8 Nights)
British couple Rob and Trish MacCurrach will take you to the annual haymaking festival on Rajac Mountain. This is both a festival of mountain culture with grass scything events and a colourful homecoming for Serbs. Plus 3 days walking in the little visited and remote flowered meadows of the Western Serbia mountains.
Accommodation is authentically simple and rural; the food traditional and tasty. It is an opportunity to visit places few foreigners have had the privilege to experience.
For more information contact Trish at trish@maccurrach.com
7. Coppicing Weekend
If you want to keep yourself in trim until the grass grows, how about going to Tinker’s Bubble’s coppicing weekend, on 21 and 22 February? Two days in a Somerset wood with billhook and saw, picnics and cider. Free. Telephone 01935 881975.
8. The Recession and the Price of Snaths
The volatility of the pound has meant that anyone who imports goods from Europe has to become a currency speculator, which I am not very good at, so virtually all the scythe equipment I sell will become more expensive. Most worryingly the Swiss snaths will be well over £50 unless there is a complete reverse in the rate of exchange in the near future. However I am unwilling to stock cheaper snaths as they are all so inferior to the Swiss model (designed by Peter Vido and the Schroeckenfux technicians), and I have had almost no-one who has tried the adjustable wooden snaths telling me I should stock a cheaper kind. The snaths arriving this Spring will have new handgrips angled slightly outwards (ie as if having to make space for a pair of very wide hips).
I am still open to any proposals from UK woodworkers interested in producing adjustable wooden snaths in this country and happy to co-operate on design. Many have thought about it, but nobody yet has come up with anything.
9. Poem
The scythe maybe more elegant than the spade, but the following poem is not quite as elegant as Seamus Heaney’s “Digging”, though it shares the same message.
THE SCYTHE by Stanley Snaith
This morning as the scythe swung in my grasp
I thought of the sinewy craft my fathers plied,
Those men whose hedgerow name has come to me,
Those soil-bred Yorkshiremen who fashioned snathes.
They lopped and barked and seasoned the leafy staff
To bear the blade with balance. There is a stern
Puritan cleanness in a true-made scythe.
A scythe purges the hands of awkwardness.
It has its own instinct, a subtle weighting
That pulls it round in a rich curve of motion;
And when the steel, fined to a creepy edge,
Rips and rings through the stalks, and the swath sighs over,
And the cropped circle widens at each stroke,
What a singing power flows from the hands!
The old rhythm came smoothly to my wrist.
I seemed to feel my ancestry move within me.
For though I left their soil, I found a craft
Nourished with a tradition choice as theirs:
They toiled in wood, I curb the grain of words,
Both winning grace and service from what's wild,
Scythe and sentence share one craftsmanship.
If anybody has an opportunity to e-mail this information out to other people in Ireland, or even better to an appropriate e-mail list in Ireland, we’d be very grateful.
4. Other Scythe Courses
Somerset
Simon will be giving courses at South Petherton on Saturday May 2 and Saturday May 23
For information about these courses see http://www.thescytheshop.co.uk/courses.html
To register e-mail chapter7@tlio.org.uk
Devon
I [Simon] will also be giving a two-day course in Devon on 4-5 July. Ring Gill Westcott on 01647 24789
Bristol and Hackney
LILI (the Low Impact Living Initiative are holding two courses this year, run by Simon (again!) on April 18 at Windmill Hill City Farm, Bristol (let’s hope its an early Spring) and on 15 August at Hackney City Farm. See http://www.lowimpact.org/courses.htm LILI also provide lots of other practical courses.
Notts
Ray Lister will be giving his courses in Nottinghamshire.
Raymond Lister, 22 Hind Street, Retford, Notts DN22 7EN; 01777 710091.
Anyone Else?
Is anyone else out there doing courses? If so, if you want to advertise them there will put them in the next mail out, round about April.
Anywhere Else?
If you are interested in organizing a scything course in another part of Britain, I might be able to do it. Please contact Simon to enquire about rates, dates etc.
5. World Championships
Martin Hierstetter writes:
Ichteile ihnen mit wir veranstalten am 1./2.August 2009 die Weltmeisterschaften im Mannschaftsmähen.
Wenn interesse besteht dann geben Sie mir bitte die Adresse und ich sende die Unterlagen.
Herzliche Grüße Martin Hierstetter Sensle2@aol.com
1.Sensenmähverein BaWü 1999 e.V.
I think this means that the world mowing championships are taking place, presumably in Germany, on 1-2 August, and if you want more information contact Martin Hierstetter at Sensle2@aol.com
6. Haymaking Festival and Walking Holiday in the Serbian Mountains (7-8 Nights)
British couple Rob and Trish MacCurrach will take you to the annual haymaking festival on Rajac Mountain. This is both a festival of mountain culture with grass scything events and a colourful homecoming for Serbs. Plus 3 days walking in the little visited and remote flowered meadows of the Western Serbia mountains.
Accommodation is authentically simple and rural; the food traditional and tasty. It is an opportunity to visit places few foreigners have had the privilege to experience.
For more information contact Trish at trish@maccurrach.com
7. Coppicing Weekend
If you want to keep yourself in trim until the grass grows, how about going to Tinker’s Bubble’s coppicing weekend, on 21 and 22 February? Two days in a Somerset wood with billhook and saw, picnics and cider. Free. Telephone 01935 881975.
8. The Recession and the Price of Snaths
The volatility of the pound has meant that anyone who imports goods from Europe has to become a currency speculator, which I am not very good at, so virtually all the scythe equipment I sell will become more expensive. Most worryingly the Swiss snaths will be well over £50 unless there is a complete reverse in the rate of exchange in the near future. However I am unwilling to stock cheaper snaths as they are all so inferior to the Swiss model (designed by Peter Vido and the Schroeckenfux technicians), and I have had almost no-one who has tried the adjustable wooden snaths telling me I should stock a cheaper kind. The snaths arriving this Spring will have new handgrips angled slightly outwards (ie as if having to make space for a pair of very wide hips).
I am still open to any proposals from UK woodworkers interested in producing adjustable wooden snaths in this country and happy to co-operate on design. Many have thought about it, but nobody yet has come up with anything.
9. Poem
The scythe maybe more elegant than the spade, but the following poem is not quite as elegant as Seamus Heaney’s “Digging”, though it shares the same message.
THE SCYTHE by Stanley Snaith
This morning as the scythe swung in my grasp
I thought of the sinewy craft my fathers plied,
Those men whose hedgerow name has come to me,
Those soil-bred Yorkshiremen who fashioned snathes.
They lopped and barked and seasoned the leafy staff
To bear the blade with balance. There is a stern
Puritan cleanness in a true-made scythe.
A scythe purges the hands of awkwardness.
It has its own instinct, a subtle weighting
That pulls it round in a rich curve of motion;
And when the steel, fined to a creepy edge,
Rips and rings through the stalks, and the swath sighs over,
And the cropped circle widens at each stroke,
What a singing power flows from the hands!
The old rhythm came smoothly to my wrist.
I seemed to feel my ancestry move within me.
For though I left their soil, I found a craft
Nourished with a tradition choice as theirs:
They toiled in wood, I curb the grain of words,
Both winning grace and service from what's wild,
Scythe and sentence share one craftsmanship.
posted by Anthony at
1:25 AM
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0 comments
Back
Hi,
To be honest, I really don't mind when technology takes a back seat to real life. What seems like silence on this blog is anything but silence in my everyday life. Life has been good for me in the last few weeks, and also sad.
The violence in Gaza has been horrific, and the cold, lame rhetoric that has been used to justify slaughter has been despicable, heinous, and mechanical, in ways that cannot but remind me of other rhetorics and slaughters throughout our histories. And some of them not so far from Israeli imaginaries.
While the killing continued in Gaza, there were small, hidden reports in the media of the continuing tragedies within the Congo:
Or the death toll of 'civilians' in Iraq, which is reaching the 1,00,000 mark.
People die every day. Violence of various sorts continues to be generated and perpetuated within our lives. What are we doing about it? To what extent do we even understand it?
posted by Anthony at
1:03 AM
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0 comments
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Christmas
It's going to be a little bit of a strange Christmas this year. Not having Dad around is an obvious reason. Another, though, is that this is the first time I have felt properly uncanny in the midst of the celebrations - uncanny in the psychological (Freudian) sense of feeling out-of-place-at-home. I talked about this somewhat on my Strule FM radio show last week with my guest Kerill Winters, the way that being an untheist (not an agnostic - I just don't engage with the question) has me reflecting on the habits of a lifetime - the religious ceremonies, the money spent on presents, the hypercorporatism, the Christmas lights that fly in the face of the calls for us all to be more circumspect in our use of electricity, the branding saturation of our everyday with Christian symbolism completely disregarding that there are plenty of people out there who aren't Christians.
I like that we get an excuse to think more about family and relationship. I like that we get an excuse to speak more openly about listening out for people who might (but might not) like our help. But I would like it more if we didn't need the excuse in the first place.
This was the year I found out that many Quakers don't celebrate Christmas like other Christians tend to. It was the excellent BBC drama on Eddington and Einstein that let me into the open secret.
Quakers, Christmas and worship
http://www.newstatesman.com/200612190001
Candles in the Window: A Quaker Christmas Story
http://www.kimopress.com/candles.html
Friends (Quakers) and Christmas
http://www.quakerinfo.com/quakxmas.shtml
Quaker Open Christmas
http://www.thefriend.org/articledisplay.asp?articleid=1748
This resonates very strongly with me, a return to notions of simplicity. In my own terms, perhaps a commitment to a predominantly uncommodifying quality of relationship.
How is it helpful if I buy someone a present yet do not work at being loving with them during the coming year?
There are a few writings out there for a more thoughtful Christmas ...
Reasoning Through the Season
http://thepublicsphere.com/2008/12/reasoning-through-the-season/
Stan Freberg's "Green Christmas"
http://www.wepsite.de/Freberg,%20GREEN%20CHRI$TMA$.htm
What Would Jesus Buy?
http://wwjbmovie.com/trailer.html
The Battle for Christmas, by Steve Nissenbaum
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780679740384.html
Christmas, consumerism, and climate change
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/christmas_4201.jsp
Christmas Consumerism
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/consumer_culture/54854
Gene Halton from Notre Dame Sociology Department speaking on Christmas (Youtube)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I0QFrWR49uE
A Charlie Brown Christmas
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=icB7_Lh_M-w&feature=related
I like that we get an excuse to think more about family and relationship. I like that we get an excuse to speak more openly about listening out for people who might (but might not) like our help. But I would like it more if we didn't need the excuse in the first place.
This was the year I found out that many Quakers don't celebrate Christmas like other Christians tend to. It was the excellent BBC drama on Eddington and Einstein that let me into the open secret.
Quakers, Christmas and worship
http://www.newstatesman.com/200612190001
Candles in the Window: A Quaker Christmas Story
http://www.kimopress.com/candles.html
Friends (Quakers) and Christmas
http://www.quakerinfo.com/quakxmas.shtml
Quaker Open Christmas
http://www.thefriend.org/articledisplay.asp?articleid=1748
This resonates very strongly with me, a return to notions of simplicity. In my own terms, perhaps a commitment to a predominantly uncommodifying quality of relationship.
How is it helpful if I buy someone a present yet do not work at being loving with them during the coming year?
There are a few writings out there for a more thoughtful Christmas ...
Reasoning Through the Season
http://thepublicsphere.com/2008/12/reasoning-through-the-season/
Stan Freberg's "Green Christmas"
http://www.wepsite.de/Freberg,%20GREEN%20CHRI$TMA$.htm
What Would Jesus Buy?
http://wwjbmovie.com/trailer.html
The Battle for Christmas, by Steve Nissenbaum
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9780679740384.html
Christmas, consumerism, and climate change
http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-vision_reflections/christmas_4201.jsp
Christmas Consumerism
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/consumer_culture/54854
Gene Halton from Notre Dame Sociology Department speaking on Christmas (Youtube)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I0QFrWR49uE
A Charlie Brown Christmas
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=icB7_Lh_M-w&feature=related
posted by Anthony at
1:43 AM
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0 comments
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Words Can Heal
I thought that this site/campaign had gone by the wayside, but I'm glad to see that it's still up and running ...
http://www.wordscanheal.org/
"Words Can Heal is a national campaign to eliminate verbal violence, curb gossip and promote the healing power of words to enhance relationships at every level."
"At a time when so many feel that outside events are beyond their control, we offer concrete tools and know-how to dramatically rebuild our communities and relationships through the words we speak and the way we communicate."
http://www.wordscanheal.org/
"Words Can Heal is a national campaign to eliminate verbal violence, curb gossip and promote the healing power of words to enhance relationships at every level."
"At a time when so many feel that outside events are beyond their control, we offer concrete tools and know-how to dramatically rebuild our communities and relationships through the words we speak and the way we communicate."
posted by Anthony at
8:03 AM
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2 comments
You are sufficient!
Quite a while ago I mentioned an Inside the Actors Studio interview with William H. Macy in which he states "You are sufficient!" Here it is:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma-lB2NR1vg
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma-lB2NR1vg
posted by Anthony at
2:58 AM
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1 comments
Thursday, December 18, 2008
New School in Exile
http://www.newschoolinexile.com/
"The original idea of the University in Exile, and the New School in general, was to be a safe-haven for academic freedom and scholarship free of oppressive political regimes, be they in Europe or America, and to be a center for critical engagement with important issues of our times. It was known for its deep thinkers, its innovative academics, and its committment to social and political justice as a bedrock of all other scholarship. The New School, under its current administration, is no longer able to fulfill that role of critical engagement and dissent. This continued betryal of our founding principles cannot be tolerated any longer, and the time has come to revive the University in Exile. This is a call for student action!"
"The original idea of the University in Exile, and the New School in general, was to be a safe-haven for academic freedom and scholarship free of oppressive political regimes, be they in Europe or America, and to be a center for critical engagement with important issues of our times. It was known for its deep thinkers, its innovative academics, and its committment to social and political justice as a bedrock of all other scholarship. The New School, under its current administration, is no longer able to fulfill that role of critical engagement and dissent. This continued betryal of our founding principles cannot be tolerated any longer, and the time has come to revive the University in Exile. This is a call for student action!"
posted by Anthony at
2:31 AM
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0 comments
