Various Anthropomorphised Vegetables

By North Utsire

Faculative Necrotrophism

You might be wondering what a faculative necrotroph is. Judging by MS Word spellcheck, Bill Gates doesn't know either. A necrotroph is a pathogen which lives on a dead body. A faculative necrotroph is a pathogen which can survive on a living body as a parasite, but waits until it has killed its host to devour it completely. Below are a few documentaries (now removed by censors) about the despicable nature of some well known corporations, which are bleeding humanity dry until such a day as there is nothing left but evaporated tears and ashes to merchandise to.

By North Utsire

Werner Herzog Documentaries

Two of my favourite & most entertaining Werner Herzog documentaries: Wheel of Time, a 2003 portrait of Tibetan Buddhism; and the 1989 Woodabe: Herdsmen of the Sun, about the customs of the nomadic Woodabe African Sahara/ Sahel community. Although these films may be considered to be ethnographic, Herzog commented that: "[My films] are anthropological only in as much as they try to explore the human condition at this particular time on this planet. I do not make films using images only of clouds and trees, I work with human beings because the way they function in different cultural groups interests me. If that makes me an anthropologist then so be it."

By North Utsire

Samhain

The eve of 1st November, when the Celtic Winter begins, is the dark counterpart of May Eve which greets the Summer. More than that, 1st November for the Celts was the beginning of the year itself, and the feast of Samhain was their New Year’s Eve, the mysterious moment which belonged to neither past nor present, to neither this world nor the Other. Samhain (pronounced ‘sow-in’, the ‘ow’ rhyming with ‘cow’) is Irish Gaelic for the month of November; Samhuin (pronounced ‘sat:-en’, with the ‘n’ like the ‘ni’ in ‘onion’) is Scottish Gaelic for All Hallows, 1st November.

Crops had all to be gathered in by 31st October, and ‘anything still unharvested was abandoned- because of the Pooka, a nocturnal, shape-Changing hobgoblln who delighted in tormenting humans, was believed to Spend Samhain night destroying or contaminating whatever remained unreaped. The Pooka’s favourite disguise seems to have been the shape of an ugly black horse.

Thus to economic uncertainty was added a sense of psychic eeriness, for at the turn of the year- the old dying, the new still unborn- the Veil was very thin. The doors of the sidh-mounds were open, and on this night neither human nor fairy needed any magical password to come and go. On this night, too, the spirits of dead friends sought the warmth of the Samhain fire and communion with their living kin. This was Féile na Marbh (pronounced ‘fayluh nuh mow’), the Feast of the Dead, and also Féile Moingfhinne (pronounced ‘fayluh mong-innuh’), the Feast of the White-Haired One, the Snow Goddess. It was “a partial return to primordial chaos . . . the dissolution of established order as a prelude to its recreation in a new period of time”, as Proinsias mac Cana says in Celtic Mythology.

So Samhain was on the one hand a time of propitiation, divination and communion with the dead, and on the other, an uninhibited feast of eating, drinking and the defiant affirmation of life and fertility in the very face of the closing dark.

Ireland’s bonfire-and-firework night is still Hallowe’en, and some of the unconscious survivals are remarkable. When we lived at Ferns in County Wexford, many of the children who ambushed us at Hallowe’en hoping for apples, nuts or “money for the King, money for the Queen” included one who was masked as ‘the Man in Black’. He would challenge us with “I am the Man in Black- do you know me?”- to which we had to reply “I know who you are, but you are the Man in Black.” We wonder if he realized that one of the significantly recurrent pieces of evidence in the witchcraft trials of the persecution period is that ‘the Man in Black’ was the coven’s High Priest, whose anonymity must be stubbornly protected.

Samhain, like the other pagan festivals, was so deeply rooted In popular tradition that Christianity had to try to take it over. The aspect of communion with the dead, and with other spirits, was Christianized as All Hallows, moved from its original date of 13th May to 1st November, and extended to the whole Church by Pope Gregory IV in 834. But its pagan overtones remained uncomfortably alive, and in England the Reformation abolished All Hallows. It was not formally restored by the Church of England until 1928, “on the assumption that the old pagan associations of Hallowe’en were at last really dead and forgotten; a supposition that was certainly premature” (Doreen Valiente, An ABC of Witchcraft).

One thing Samhain has always been, and still is: a lusty and wholehearted feast, a Mischief Night, the start of the reign of the Lord of Misrule, which traditionally lasts from now till Candlemas- yet with serious undertones. It is not that we surrender to disorder but, as Winter begins we look primordial chaos in the face so that we may discern in it the seeds of a new order. By challenging it, and even laughing with it, we proclaim our faith that the Goddess and the God cannot, by their very nature, allow it to sweep us away. 

From:

By North Utsire

The Holy Fire

Left panel from the triptych Holy Fire, by Alex Grey 1987
Oil on Linen, 90 X 216 in.

The soul-searching pilgrim arrives on the mountain top, and his kundalini energy, the serpent power, begins to ascend within him. The caduceus or healing staff is internalized. The eye of God in the form of an angelic presence channels heart-opening flames of divine grace into his center, sending his body/mind into a state of God intoxication and mystical shock.

From http://alexgrey.com/art/paintings/soul/holy-fire/
By North Utsire

Alexander Jansson

By North Utsire

Wes Jackson: Becoming Native to this Place

“Our task is to build cultural fortresses to protect our emerging nativeness. They must be strong enough to hold at bay the powers of consumerism, the powers of greed and envy and pride. One of the most effective ways for this to come about would be for our universities to assume the awesome responsibility to both validate and educate those who want to be homecomers -- not necessarily to go home but to go someplace and dig in and begin the long search and experiment to become native.”

“We have become a more juvenile culture. We have become a childish "me, me, me" culture with fifteen-second attention spans. The global village that television was supposed to bring is less a village than a playground... Little attempt is made to pass on our cultural inheritance, and our moral and religious traditions are neglected except in the shallow "family values" arguments.”

By North Utsire

Gerrard Winstanley, True Leveller

Gerrard Winstanley (1609 – 1676) was a Quaker reformer and political activist during The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. Winstanley was one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers or Diggers for their beliefs, and for their actions. The group occupied public lands that had been privatized by enclosures and dug them over, pulling down hedges and filling in ditches, to plant crops. True Levellers was the name they used to describe themselves, whereas the term Diggers was coined by contemporaries.

For libertarian socialist scholar Murray Bookchin there is a coincidence of political projects between German Protestant revolutionary Thomas Müntzer and Winstanley. For Bookchin "In the modern world, anarchism first appeared as a movement of the peasantry and yeomanry against declining feudal institutions. In Germany its foremost spokesman during the Peasant Wars was Thomas Muenzer; in England, Gerrard Winstanley, a leading participant in the Digger movement. The concepts held by Muenzer and Winstanley were superbly attuned to the needs of their time — a historical period when the majority of the population lived in the countryside and when the most militant revolutionary forces came from an agrarian world. It would be painfully academic to argue whether Muenzer and Winstanley could have achieved their ideals. What is of real importance is that they spoke to their time; their anarchist concepts followed naturally from the rural society that furnished the bands of the peasant armies in Germany and the New Model in England."

from "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" Lewis Herber. (Murray Bookchin).

Cover Design from the remastered 1976 film Winstanley

"So long as the earth is intagled and appropriated into particular hands and kept there by the power of the sword......so long the creation lies under bondage."

~ Gerrard Winstanley Fire in the Bush 1650

"England is a Prison; the variety of subtilties in the Laws preserved by the Sword, are bolts, bars, and doors of the prison; the Lawyers are Jaylors, and poor men are the prisoners; for let a man fall into the hands of any from the Bailiffe to the Judge, and he is either undone, or wearie of his life."

"Buying and Selling is an Art, whereby people endeavour to cheat one another of the Land.......and true Religion is, To let every one enjoy it."

~ Gerrard Winstanley A New-years Gift for the Parliament and Armie 1650

By North Utsire

The Therapeutic Garden

Research is increasingly showing the necessity of a daily connection with nature for public health. In his impassioned book The Therapeutic Garden, Donald Norfolk relates the history of therapeutic green spaces, mentioning that the term paradise comes from the Persian for ‘walled garden’. Norfolk also details the social value of Thomas More’s Utopia, and how town planners were influenced by Ebenezer Howard’s Garden Cities of Tomorrow in providing town parks and designs to make verdant livable towns such as Welwyn. Even the utilitarian Victorians were moved to make beautiful city parks for the urbanized masses, which not only served the purpose of ameliorating air pollution, but reduced crime and promoted wellbeing and social cohesion.

By North Utsire

Judee Sill

Note: this was a link to the 1971 Judee Sill song Jesus Was a Cross Maker, but it has been taken down by censors. 

Dusted magazine biography
"The Lost Child" from The Observer/ Guardian. 

by North Utsire

Narrowboats

By North Utsire

Buddhist Casserole

Take one Buddhist & slice them lengthways Julienne style. Oh no, sorry that’s a different recipe. This is an adaptation of a famous Buddhist dish. The original recipe calls for many obscure dried Chinese vegetables but this version uses vegetables which are readily available. You can add coriander which some Buddhists do not eat.

A deeply satisfying dish, this casserole is suitable for summer or winter, and can be varied with seasonal or home grown vegetables. It can be cooked in a traditional Chinese clay pot or a good small cast iron pot. Take care not to overcook the vegetables. The casserole may be made in advance & reheated very slowly (Remember the adage: “a boiled soup is a spoiled soup”). It is delicious with rice, noodles or fresh bread.

SERVES 4 225g (8oz) fresh beancurd 100g (4oz) broccoli 100g (4oz) Chinese leaves or white cabbage 100g (4oz) small courgettes 100g (4oz) red pepper (about 1) 100g (4oz) mangetout. washed and trimmed 450ml (15 fl oz) groundnut or vegetable oil 600ml (1 pint) Chicken Stock or water (could try miso) 2 tablespoons light soy sauce 3 tablespoons hoisin sauce 2 tablespoons whole yellow bean sauce 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh coriander Salt & black pepper 1 tablespoons sesame oil

Cut the beancurd into 2.5cm (1 in) cubes and drain them on kitchen paper. Next prepare all the vegetables. Separate the broccoli heads and break them into small florets. Peel and slice the broccoli stems. Cut the Chinese leaves or cabbage into 2.5cm (1 in) hunks. Slice the courgettes into rounds 0.5cm (1/4 in) thick, or roll-cut them. Thinly slice the pepper. Leave the mangetout whole, but trim the ends.Heat a wok over a high heat until it is very hot and add the oil. Alternatively heat the oil in a deep-fat fryer. When the oil is very hot and slightly smoking, deep-fry the beancurd cubes in 2 batches. Drain each cooked batch on kitchen paper. Put the chicken stock or water, soy sauce, hoisin sauce and whole yellow bean sauce into a large, cast-iron enamel pot or Chinese clay pot and bring it to the boil. Next add the broccoli and stir in the Chinese leaves or cabbage. Boil for 2 minutes. Add the courgettes and pepper and cook for another 2 minutes. Finally add the mangetout and the beancurd cubes. Cook for l minute more, then stir in the fresh coriander, teaspoon of salt and your own preference of black pepper. Finally stir in the sesame oil and the dish is ready to serve. To reheat, bring to a simmer on a very low heat until all the vegetables are hot.

“There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.” 

~ Gautama Buddha ~

By North Utsire

Farmageddon & the 7 Myths of Agriculture

By North Utsire

Alan Hardman Cartoons

By North Utsire

Red Fridays

Below is a recent correspondence I had with a friend after seeing a poster in Morrisons.

Me: 

Me:  I am going to wear my red g string
Mate: I'm gonna eat a f*ckload of beetroot  on Thursday, and do red poos all day Friday.
Me: I'd love to see the day in the interview cubicle when we had to prove to our UKIP inquisitors that we really do wear red on Fridays.
Mate:

Me: 

Mate: 

Me: That would have been the new Union Jack if Scotland had've left.

by North Utsire

Autumn Equinox - Alban Elfed

21st September

The name for the festival of the Autumn Equinox in Druidry is Alban Elfed, which means 'The Light of the Water'. The Wheel turns and the time of balance returns. Alban Elfed marks the balance of day and night before the darkness overtakes the light. It is also the time of the second harvest, usually of the fruit which has stayed on the trees and plants that have ripened under the summer sun. It is this final harvest which can take the central theme of the Alban Elfed ceremony - thanking the Earth, in her full abundance as Mother and Giver, for the great harvest, as Autumn begins.

From the Order of Bards Ovates & Druids (OBOD)

By North Utsire

Carl Jung: The Soul of Nature

"Through scientific understanding, our world has become dehumanised. Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos. He is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional participation in natural events, which hitherto had a symbolic meaning for him. Thunder is no longer the voice of a god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. No river contains a spirit, no tree makes a mans's life, no snake is the embodiment of wisdom and no mountain still harbours a great demon. Neither do things speak to him nor can he speak to things, like stones, springs, plants and animals."

~ Carl Jung ~

By North Utsire

The Universe in a Flower

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
Buddha

By North Utsire

Chief Seattle Speech

Though captivatingly beautiful, the Chief Settle speech is not actually authentic. Rather than issuing from the very real Chief Seattle in 1854, those moving words were written by a screenwriter in 1971.

"Chief Seattle is probably our greatest manufactured prophet," said David Buerge, a Northwest historian. The real Chief Seattle did give a speech in 1854, but he never said "The earth is our mother." Nor did he say "I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train." There were no bison within 600 miles of the chief's home on Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, and trains to the West were years away.

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of the Earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clear and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful Earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the Earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters, the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and the man, all belong to the same family.

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. The Great White Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He will be our father and we will be his children. So we will consider your offer to buy land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.

This shining water that moves in streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events in the life of my people. The waters murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers of our brothers they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember to teach your children that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness that you would give my brother. We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The Earth is not his brother, but his enemy and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father's graves behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the Earth from his children, and he does not care.

His father's grave, and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother, the Earth, and his brother, the same, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the Earth and leave behind only a desert. I do not know. Our ways are different from yours ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of a whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night. I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with the pinon pine.

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition - the white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. I am a savage and do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be made more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of the spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the Earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the Earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know - the Earth does not belong to man - man belongs to the Earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth - befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life - he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. Even the white man, whose God walks and talks with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see. One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover - Our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot. He is the God of man, and His compassion is equal for red man and the white. The Earth is precious to Him, and to harm the Earth is to heap contempt on its creator. The whites too shall pass, perhaps sooner than all other tribes.

But in your perishing you will shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this land and for some special purpose gave you dominion over this land and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are slaughtered, the wild horses tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the Eagle? Gone. The end of living and the beginning of survival.

By North Utsire

Rachel Carson: The Sense of Wonder

“Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?” 

~ Silent Spring

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later year…the alienation from the sources of our strength.” 

~ The Sense of Wonder

“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.” 

~ The Sea Around Us

By North Utsire

Murray Bookchin: Ecology & Revolutionary Thought

The point is that man is undoing the work of organic evolution. By creating vast urban agglomerations of concrete, metal, and glass, by overriding and undermining the complex, subtly organized ecosystems that constitute local differences in the natural world — in short, by replacing a highly complex organic environment with a simplified, inorganic one — man is disassembling the biotic pyramid that supported humanity for countless millennia. In the course of replacing the complex ecological relationships on which all advanced living things depend with more elementary relationships, man is steadily restoring the biosphere to a stage that will be able to support only simpler forms of life. If this great reversal of the evolutionary process continues, it is by no means fanciful to suppose that the preconditions for higher forms of life will be irreparably destroyed and the earth will become incapable of supporting man himself.

Lewis Herber (Murray Bookchin)
from Ecology and Revolutionary Thought
By North Utsire

Wendell Berry on Food

“The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality.”

“Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living in a mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.”

“A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has his mind precisely against what is wrong with us… What I am saying is that if we apply our minds directly and competently to the needs of the earth, then we will have begun to make fundamental and necessary changes in our minds. We will begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy, which markets not just the produce of earth, but also the earth’s ability to produce.”

“But even in the much-publicized rebellion of the young against the materialism of the affluent society, the consumer mentality is too often still intact: the standards of behavior are still those of kind and quantity, the security sought is still the security of numbers, and the chief motive is still the consumer’s anxiety that he is missing out on what is “in.” In this state of total consumerism – which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves – all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.

from The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

By North Utsire

Thoreau, from Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

 

~ Henry David Thoreau, from Walden: Or, Life in the Woods~

By North Utsire

Gandhi & The Ashram Experiment

A mere enumeration of the vows is enough to indicate that life in the ashram was austere. It was also busy. Everyone had to put in some manual work. There was a spinning and weaving department, a cowshed and a large farm. Every inmate of the ashram cleaned his own plates and washed his own clothes. There were no servants. The atmosphere was, however, not so much of a monastery but that of a large family under a kindly but exacting patriarch. Gandhi was Bapu, the father of the household, Kasturba was Ba, the mother. It was a motley group including little children and octogenarians, graduates of American and European universities and Sanskrit scholars, devout whole-hoggers, and thinly disguised sceptics. It was a human laboratory where Gandhi tested his moral and spiritual hypotheses. It was also to him what the family is to most people, a haven from the dust and din of the world. It was a family linked not by blood or property, but by allegiance to common ideals. Gandhi ruled the ashram but his authority in the ashram, as well as in the rest of the country, was moral. When things went wrong or a member of the ashram was guilty of a serious lapse, Gandhi would take the blame upon himself and atone for it by undertaking a fast.

By North Utsire

Sprouting for Health

Sprouting seeds, cereals grains, beans and nuts can be an ecological and healthful method of eating. The main sprouts I have used have been alfalfa, aduki, buckwheat, millet, broccoli, chickpeas (garbanzos) and lentils of all types. They are pretty easy to germinate (soak 12 hours, and rinse 3 times a day for 3- 4 days). I use Kilner jars and muslin cloth to facilitate the rinsing. Sprouts are a great source of proteins, live enzymes and micronutrients and add the considerable benefit of raw, live food to a diet. They can be seasoned using Japanese style sushi condiments, added to salads, soups, or to smoothies. They also reduce the cooking requirement in the diet and save on energy, cultivation costs, and are easy to store dry and transport. Watching the minute changes involved in germination has rekindled my interest in being able to develop a self sufficient habit in terms of plant propagation, and I am interested in growing some varieties mentioned above in the garden and using them in sprouting recipes.

By North Utsire