I was there to see
the results of Mladic’s
handiwork
John Cameron
The mystery of AF 447
When they said they
worked in the oil industry,
I knew I was in trouble
The Cafe
Another view of sectarianism
Transform
every death
into a birth
Rear Window
Jock Gallagher on brollies
Rear Window
Jock Gallagher
SR, July 2008
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Today’s banner
Choppy waters, Oban
by Islay McLeod
Transform
every death
into a birth
Tessa Ransford
It was heartbreaking to read Kenneth Roy’s description (18 May) of the dereliction that is Kilmarnock. It made me think about what can be done to restore and revive such communities.
It seems to me that they were once – say 200 years ago – rural areas for farming and cultivation, before they became industrialised. Perhaps old factory sites could be reclaimed as land for cultivating. Trees in particular, also fruit and vegetables could be grown, perhaps as ‘businesses’, employing people locally, giving them skills and self-esteem and self-reliance. (Only today there was reported a prediction of severe world food shortages and that one remedy would be to support small farmers.) There might well be other businesses processing the produce grown and making the wood-fuel stoves or other forms of renewable energy.
When the oil runs out, so will the cars and planes and ships which bring us produce from overseas. We will need to grow our own food, and trees can be grown for fuel. Communities can become self-sufficient even as islands sometimes succeed in doing. It means learning to collaborate rather than compete, to have cooperative banking and a land tax, allowing more people to own and work the land and preventing moneyed people from anywhere in the world buying up Scotland’s land for unproductive private purposes.
Nothing here suggested is pie in the sky. It is all eminently achievable without huge investment such as is likely to be put into nuclear energy and Trident. I believe such schemes are being tried in Chicago. We could lift our eyes to how other places have transformed the dereliction of small communities left with no employers from what has rapidly become a displaced former way of life.
Poised Equilibrium
By Tessa Ransford
(written to complement George Wyllie’s sculpture, The Cosmic Tree)
Lithosphere
Earth’s cover
frail protector
rock hard stone crust shield
test and feel
base and heel
is it real?
Matter takes the weight, magnetic field,
Earth, our spinning planet
whirling gases
meteor trailing comet
gravity amasses
dependable
physical
mineral
daily stuff we knock against, about
stability
visibility
solidity
what we all can know and never doubt
Biosphere
creature
water
living forms and flesh of every kind
animal
vegetable
renewable
regeneration spread upon the wind
never just the same
interchanging
life a dance, a game
rearranging
dynamic
systemic
totemic
only relationship is real
temporal
exchangeable
excitable
it takes more than one to make a whole
Noossphere
here and there
in the air
made of mind and making mindfulness
reflection
attraction
interaction
inestimable thoughtful playfulness.
We see what we imagine
capture an idea
transfiguration
we fail we aspire
make special
perform ritual
this is spiritual
holy ground we tread on sacred earth.
Archangel
save and heal
make real
transform every death into a birth
Transform every death into a birth
It takes more than one to make a whole
What we all can know and never doubt
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