As Alfred E. Newman said, What, me worry?

I wish there was something that would worry me. There are so many things mankind is doing wrong in the world that one thinks worry should be the main preoccupation with what's happening. In truth, it will be the human race which erases itself from the crust of the planet, and though it won't be the first extinct species humans are responsible for removing from this world, and certainly not the most important, it will be critical, just like every other species before it. Because humanity places itself at the top rung on the ladder of importance, on top of all things in the world, but by its own judgement. Maybe it is the most important species, because if it's gone what other species will destroy as much? Everything must give way.

The humble honey bee is starting to vanish, and that's another of the things that, if one was to worry, would be a serious reason for doing so. It is reputed that Albert Einstein said something about the honey bees demise. That if the honey bee was ever extinct that humans would only have four years to live. It has never been firmly attached to him, because it can't be found in any of his writings or was ever heard as an utterance from his lips. So where does this come from? Someone might have thought, then said it ad thinking that they would not be believed, said they heard Albert say it? It matters not because though the time line and the result might not be quite correct, there will be serious problems if bees are gone.

Bees have been described as the miners canary of the planet and that is correct, but we can't discount any animal as being just as important as an indicator of some section of the environments health. In fact every animal on the planet is a miners canary of the health of the environment. Our environment appears to be in good shape, though not perfect now. Yeah right, who believes that? The elements that we're unable to measure and are therefore unknown, are like insect species that have been made extinct before they were even recorded. Just because we didn't know they were there, we don't miss them and of course, they all had a role to play. The domino effect is already running away ahead of science who still think they can fix what they have destroyed, and we don't yet seem know it.

So why bees which are no more important than the frog, earthworm, wood louse or elephant? Because it's a direct link to our ability to feed ourselves and to colour our world. That's why those who worry, should be. There is a chemical agent [NEONICOTINOIDS] being used, which shows that human beings never learn. People say we should learn from our mistakes, but that's like reading the directions on the bottle but never taking the medicine. DDT didn't teach us anything except not to use it, so something else was invented that is not the same compound but has the ability to do enormous damage, and of course it's science and its greedy followers that have come up with the chemical, celebrated the way it works and turned a blind eye to what it kills on either side of the target species and the flow on effects. Neonicotinoids are evil, and not only the greedy would invent and use them. Many use these substances because they follow science blindly.

One would imagine that science would have made the connection, that if it creates an insecticide the works, that the compound kills insects. The second thing you would imagine the science might have got a handle on is that all insects are beneficial, just not to certain crops. But because of the greed factor, they categorise insects into good and bad by listening to farmers and other even greedier people and this justifies the existence of science and those who make money from it. Further along the food chain, this is also what makes those who subscribe to the scientific view make money from destroying the environment with monoculture systems and tearing everything down and then bulldozing it before they reform it into something they think is better than what millions of years of evolution has already perfected by making it an adaptable living environment, slowly evolving as conditions change. Unable to keep up when conditions change to quickly. Like an over population of a stupid species that thinks only of its supremacy.

The honey bee, like so many other species which are slowly being killed off, is vanishing. Elephants are suddenly valued because they are rare, and that's what will be the case with many other species, and then the gene pool will be to small and then more problems will arise. For those who have a tendency to do so and those who want this planet to sustain human life, maybe it's too late to worry? Maybe were I one who worried, I would be seriously concerned. But were I to own up to a worry it would be that mankind will destroy all other lifeforms and sentient beings on the planet before it destroys itself.

So is there really anything to worry about?

There are people being tortured and animals being killed, the koalas and Orang-utans of the world, the elephants that are to some just so much money hanging from the mouth of a creature that has no relevance in the world, other than to satisfy their greed.

Those of us who protest about this are never going to be heard or for that matter make a difference that can be calibrated or even imagined. We just do it, because that's what we do. In situations that others are suffering we would be shot and never get a chance to do anything at all. People don't rise up against those who persecute them. People don't band together any more than do animals. All creatures who are going to be killed walk meekly to their death.

The freedom fighters fight alone and the casualties are amongst those who don't want to get involved don't worry about being downtrodden or being persecuted. The majority, the innocent bystander, though no one is innocent. Those who do nothing against the wrong are their friends and accessories.

Bullying is a worry in our schools. Why? Because there are people who can't do anything else except be victims? Why is that? Fear of death, fear of life? The way to remove any oppressor, be it a bully or a government gone mad, is to join with others who are being oppressed and confront the bullies. What is maddening is that usually one person with a gun can herd a hundred to a place where they will be killed. When only ten could rush that one gun and maybe a couple would be shot, wounded or even killed, but the herder, the killer would be overpowered and the rest of the people could go free.

So what are we worried about? Will bees become extinct? Maybe, but then the flowers that need bees will suffer as will the animals and other creatures that feed upon the fruit and nuts and eventually it will all start to break down and the world will change, people will rely on artificial means to do everything. Some may think that's desirable. It will certainly give another group of people control. It won't be better, but it will be different.

Holiday time...........

The Internet connection is slow at the community centre today and the excuse is that it's holiday time. What does that matter really? The contract by the ISP is unfulfilled. That appears to be an accepted thing, and this is because users/customers have been brain washed to accept this. There is a plethora of reasons why this should not be the case.

Anyway, we have to put up with it when we can't actually access the details of this service and the volume using it. I suppose that we are a victim of what we have allowed. That being people who can and do create damage and not being found, charged and held to account. If everything was transparent, then we would all be able to see what is happening and know where we get good service or value for money.

Just my gripe of the moment trying to download a large file that should be moving onto the hard drive a lot faster than it is.

Autumn showing off....

The summer has been mild, as if the autumn was in the background, already looking to enter our hemisphere but unsure of the welcome it would receive and by it's presence holding the summer season in check, cramping it so the hot weather couldn't grow and play havoc. Though it was different in different states and some were very hot and dry.

The birds drank at the baths placed out for them and the sheep did as well, depleting the bird baths several times a day when the sun was strongest. Water was scarce, but not so scarce that we couldn't share it with those who came into the garden area expecting to find a little to drink and wet their plumage.

The autumn is true to form, wonderful in light and temperature and as yet it doesn't appear to be getting cooler, though I imagine the first rain from now will deliver the cooler weather as well and it'll be resident from that point on. However, we have no complaint, the world is greener than we are accustomed to seeing it at this time of year and we rejoice.

Light and Dark

I have just come in from the night but it wasn't dark. Here, on the edge of a northern city, street lamps outshine the moon on pavements packed hard with over three weeks of unmelted snow, tonight crunchy and everywhere peppered with the patterns of a thousand soles. A few years ago, in deep country, it was my pleasure to venture out in the moonlight to make tunnels for my cat through a thick blanket only occasionally crisscrossed by the pads of badger and fox.

Two of our older neighbours are still waiting to leave their front doors. I bring them milk and bread, brussels sprouts and papers and eggs and they tell me in low tones of all their friends and relatives who have somehow lost their lives in the past few months. I feel that in this long winter spell knowledge of their own frailty has crept very close.

Our granddaughters bounce in and then out again like two great puppies now, with flying hair and long shaggy-fringed coats. Their laughter fills the little garden as they leap on heaps of snow and slither along the paths. I hope the neighbours are smiling behind half-open blinds.

Tonight ...

...They turn away now,

Bow heads through snow falling on

Tomorrow's footsteps.

.... and authors writing to authors

It is certain that from her teens Louisa May Alcott had to earn money to help support her family but she had always written stories and kept a journal, so the drive to write must have come first. Quoted in the The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography is the story that when looking through Emerson's library as a girl and coming across Goethe's 'Correspondence with a Child", she began to write letters to Emerson. She didn't give them to him but years later confessed to him, and to his amusement, of her youthful adoration. She wrote that he did more for her " - as for many another - than he knew, by the simple beauty of his life, the truth and wisdom of his books, the example of a great, good man."

Tonight, the day after Obama received his Nobel Peace prize, Mark Lawson on Radio 4's Front Row was talking about playwright Harold Pinter, conscientious objector and political activist, and recipient of the 2005 Nobel Literature prize who died almost exactly a year ago. Just discovered amongst his library of 2,000 books is a novel by Samuel Beckett which Pinter 'liberated' from a library in 1950 because he found it so moving he couldn't part with it. Beckett became a major influence on Pinter's work and the two men sent each other drafts of the manuscripts of the plays they were working on for comments. Prolific letter writers, they corresponded with each other regularly, 'perceptively and affectionately' according to Pinter's archivist - and sometimes about their shared passion for cricket!

Writing and authors............

That is really interesting about Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott.


It's alluded to, in various forms that writers of the earlier age were tied together in some way, knew of one another and conversed by mail or came into each others presence and company at various venues or places and exchanged conversation and/or acknowledged recognition of each others work. Did they just talk shop or did they also investigate each others interests? One has to wonder, because can there be other interests than writing? There must be, but writing for many who love it is like a life blood, it feeds not only the skeleton, but all the tissue attached to it. Thoreau was a naturalist, and yet I'm uncertain if he was a herbalist and yet both these interests dovetail with writing. Different people, different ideas and different visions and reasons for writing or anything else they undertook. Was it mainly for money, or was the writing to appease the drive that so many writers appear to understand? To record thoughts and ideas, in print in those days.


In this day and age writers can meet and congregate on the Internet. They can brainstorm ideas and describe visions while actually doing what they love, writing. Writing, for anyone who enjoys it, is always thoughtful conversation. We live we learn, we share the experience and remove some of the exaggeration, the Chinese whispers effect, by referring people to the source if it's written text. That's not quite as easy with the spoken word, though older cultures have managed it they say, and yet when we hear the tales of older cultures, are they or have they have been “embellished” over millennium, and that's why they are so strange? It would not have been so had the word been written, even if the language was obscure, forgotten, it would have had a problem with interpretation, but we imagine the deviation would not have been very large. Dare we think that? The bible was written down, or parts of it were written down, and yet translation and interpretation is constantly being questioned, Thoreau's work is being used as a record of the plants that grew around Walden Pond when he was living there. Writing is a many faceted jewel.