Why I Went To Take The Flour Back

On Sunday 27th May our family travelled to Harpenden, Herts to join around 400 others at the protest at Rothamsted Research Centre, where an open air field trial of GM wheat is currently growing.

We listened to some inspiring speakers: farmers, activists, charity workers.

Gathuru Mburu who travelled from Kenya, representing the African Biodiversity Network

We met lots of people who care about a food supply uncontaminated by GM. Some of us ate scrummy food supplied by the lovely Veggies http://www.veggies.org.uk/

We listened to discussions about how instead of reducing the amount of pesticides used on crops as is claimed by the GM supporters, the reverse is often true and in many cases the use of GM crops have actually increased the need for pesticides. Just as the arguments that GM technology will solve the world hunger problems are a way of attempting to cast a benign PR front over the profit driven motives of the industry.

These issues were highlighted several months ago when the Global Citizens Report On the State of GMOs was released:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/19/gm-crops-insecurity-superweeds-pesticides

Even regardless of the harmful impact on our environment, on food sovereignty (people's right to control and shape food policy, as opposed to companies and corporations) there is also huge concern about the impacts on future human and animal health from the consumption of these products.

The fact that this particular crop of GM wheat contains a synthesised chemical enzyme which 'has most similarity to that from cow (Bos taurus)', but is not actually from a cow does nothing to reassure me.

It doesn't make me feel any more confident when I read it contains a synthesised gene 'similar to that found in peppermint (Mentha x piperita)' because what concerns me is that biotechnology is attempting to move us ever closer to food composed of laboratory created chemicals which in Rothamsted Research's words 'are not found naturally' (application document) and ever further away from food produced naturally from the Earth and by organic, diverse and sustainable farming methods.

If they want to genuinely solve the world's food crisis they could do better by reading a few basic permaculture books and challenging the inequalities in our social structures which sees much of the world's people lacking access to adequate food and clean water, while the rest of the world are creating vast monocrop deserts, logging forests, wasting land and resources on animal agriculture, and gorging themselves on literally sickening crap (think McDonalds etc)... The production and distribution of food on this planet is rife with exploitation, murder, suppression and inequality which favours Western industrial nations and corporate powers. This is of little concern to those wanting to pull the strings, supported by the lies and unstated agendas of those such as the biotech industry and  organisations with highly dubious interests such as 'Sense About Science'. 

Gathuru Mburu talked at 'Take The Flour Back' about the move of GM into Africa as being like a 'second colonialism', a 'second enslavement' attempting to create dependency on Western Corporations rather than supporting the development of diverse small scale farming (as has been feeding African people for centuries) which would place African people in control of their own food production.

This is an enslavement where if we don't resist now and hold onto the ownership of one of our most basic necessities in life... that of food and the seeds by which it is grown, we will be forever at the mercy of corporations. This has nothing to do with progressive science.

As the environmental writer Graham Harvey writes, referring to the director of Rothamsted Research Maurice Maloney, he is 'in the business of privatising nature and bringing the world's food supply under the control of large corporations'.

Due to the huge police and security presence protecting the trial field there was no opportunity for us to breach the fences and reach the crop. Led by the French group of GM activists  Faucheurs Volontaires (Volunteer Reapers), we all linked arms and walked as far as we could until stopped by police lines. Here we sat and a statement was read out.

The GM wheat trials can be protected by fences, police, security and High Court injunctions, but what is protecting the diversity, integrity and safety of our food and environment, our farmers and growers, our children? As always, it is us, with all our diversity and integrity and our courage to not feel defeated when taking whatever steps we can towards environmental and social justice.

I tend to agree with Graham Harvey when he says that 'Rothamsted scientists seem content to gamble our food security on an unproven and potentially unstable technology... the current tide of indignation over the Take The Flour Back protest is in reality part of a cynical agribusiness campaign to get this unnecessary technology accepted in Britain' (from an article by Jonathan Matthews in The Ecologist, May 25th 2012).

And as with many things, confronting such giants as agribusiness with it's State protection can be tiring work and we need to make sure we take a well-earned break so we can be up and at 'em all the stronger the next time!

Finally, here's an account of the day from the Take The Flour Back Website:

http://taketheflourback.org/

European activists link up to draw the line against GM

More than 400 growers, bakers and families from across England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Belgium marched against the return of open air GM field testing today. Take the Flour Back linked arms with their European counterparts, notably France’s Volunteer Reapers and walked calmly towards the site, before being stopped by police lines.


Kate Bell from Take the Flour Back stated that “In the past, kids, grannies, and everyone in between has decontaminated GM trial sites together. Here at the beginning of a new resistance to this obsolete technology, we see GM hidden behind a fortress. We wanted to do the responsible thing and remove the threat of GM contamination, sadly it wasn’t possible to do that effectively today. However, we stand arm in arm with farmers and growers from around the world, who are prepared to risk their freedom to stop the imposition of GM crops.”
People enjoyed a GM free picnic whilst listening to a range of speakers opposing the trial, including Graciela Romero, International Programmes Director of UK development charity War on Want. Lawrence Woodward, previously Director of Elm Farm Organic Research Centre, former head of standards at the Soil Association, and now involved in Citizens concerned about GM. Plus several British farmers including Peter Lundgren, a conventional wheat farmer from Lincolnshire.

Gathuru Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network, spoke on the global fight for control of our food supply.


Mburu explained that:
“Experimenting with staple crops is a serious threat to food security. Our resilience comes from diversity, not the monocultures of GM. Beneath the rhetoric that GM is the key to feeding a hungry world, there is a very different story – a story of control and profit. The fact is that we need a diversity of genetic traits in food crops in order to survive worsening climates. Above all, people need to have control over their seeds”
This statement is released amongst growing calls for the scientists to demonstrate sensitivity to public concern by harvesting the crop before pollination, removing any risk of contamination with non-GM plants.














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Hagthorn Crafts!

One of the ways I decided to celebrate Beltane this year was to open an Etsy shop!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/HagthornCrafts

With the blossoming of the May would come the blossoming of a new project and a committment to spending more of my time being creative and practical. It's already proving to be very practical in therapeutic ways. How practical it turns out to be in financially viable ways awaits to be seen!

At the moment it feels far from that, since the hours I'm spending creating (enjoyable as they are) can nowhere near be reflected in the financial value I have to try and fix on the finished items. I expect many people handmaking individual crafts, however professional they are, feel this way. But I struggle with the concept personally too. I think this whole area is why I've never got very far with establishing 'work' out of the various skills I've trained for. Passionate and competent as I felt about practicing iridology and reflexology and promoting natural health, when I tried to focus on setting up and promoting a 'business', that is exchanging a service or a product for MONEY, all sorts of obstacles seemed to pop up and get in the way. The lack of a focussed business attitude was not the only obstacle of course... life has a habit of throwing spokes in the wheels of well-laid plans!

I know that being fairly paid for your work, having control of your work conditions and choices, and being able to make a living out of work you enjoy, is vital to the health of a community and of society as well as of the individual. It's worlds away from the exploitation inherent in the profit-driven corporate, capitalist business model that is so damaging our planet and people right now.

So, yeah, it's important that we get to grips with how we can turn what we love doing into what can feed and house us. There's no way I have any expectations of Etsy doing this for me! However, the important thing it has already done is to kickstart me in a new direction. It's helped me to let go of those strands of intentions which have been draining my energy for so long because they always remained stuck in the list of 'things I should be doing' but which I never managed to shape into something real that worked for me. It's helped me to get back in touch with being artistically creative - making stuff! Interestingly, it's given me the sense of *legitimising* using my time in this way. Which brings up a whole new load of questions about what the 'value' and the 'permission' which we attribute to our lives is all about and what the influences on these are. About what 'work' is and within this context, even within a relatively 'free' society, what FREEDOM really means.

It also throws up questions of how I balance my creative desires with my ethical and environmental values. At the moment I'm working through the stocks of acrylic paints and materials that I currently have, but when these run out, how can I continue to paint if I can't afford to buy the eco-acrylics which will not contribute to the pollution of our planet? So, while I'm figuring out some answers I'll also continue visiting bins on windy days for the stockpiling of fabrics from broken umbrellas. I'll keep picking up interesting sticks on walks and keeping an observant eye for the many other quite randomly acquired materials I seem to be amassing in the hugely inadequate space of my home. All of which I hope to turn into suitable items for the shelves of Hagthorn Crafts!

So, while we could really do with more money coming into our household, if I end up making any pennies from my Etsy shop, it'll come as a bonus because I'm grateful for the inspiration it's provided me with - enough maybe to try out a stall sometime at a local craft market, and to remember how good it feels to be moving in a direction I feel more comfortable with.

"A better remedy...than all the things sold at the chemists shop"

Coming across a card of a painting by Vincent Van Gogh called Almond Blossoms, somehow made me much more observant this April and May of the blossom trees and the way they really do uplift the spirit. There are so many, always so beautiful around in the hedges and parks where I live and their whites and pinks against a bright blue sky are like a huge declaration of hope and trust in the renewal of new life.  

Almond Blossoms ~ Vincent Van Gogh

I decided to research a little into Vincent's blossom paintings and found that this was one of his favourite subjects. The sight of blossoming branches against a blue sky was a symbol of new life to him, and because of that he painted 'Almond Blossoms' as a gift to his brother for the birth of his son. As well as painting them himself, he collected paintings of them too, mainly Japanese blossom paintings, and they brought him a sense of peace.

Blossom tree in hedge on my street

I kind of got obsessed one day in April with trying to capture that perfect picture of blossom against sky, but soon found that it was an impossible thing for me to do. The sky was never deep enough, the pink was never bright enough. The downloaded photo was never enough to satisfy because it could never bring that feeling of serenity felt in the heart which Vincent talked about. Or the way it feels when you look up at the sky and you just can't open your eyes wide enough to take it all in. Maybe painting it like he did brought him a bit closer to that experience? 

Or maybe, all that's needed is to lay back, gaze up and do nothing! Just absorb it all through skin, eyes, smell... That's clearly not what Vincent chose to do! He wrote in a letter: "I am up to my ears in work for the trees are in blossom..."

Wild Cherry tree blossom in my garden

St Mary's Church Park, Portsmouth.

After a windy morning!

I certainly found myself agreeing about the healing powers he writes of in this letter to his sister:

"Having as much of this serenity as possible, even though one knows little - nothing - for certain, is perhaps a better remedy for all diseases than all the things that are sold at the chemist's shop".

I was noticing today how most of these blossoms are now blown to the ground and the trees are showing their new green leaves more clearly. But it's not over yet... walking the dog this morning, I found the Hawthorn is coming into blossom - the Hagthorn!

Hawthorn ~ Hagthorn

My most beautiful thing

Yesterday, there was a blogsplash organised by Fiona Robyn of Writing Our Way Home in celebration of the release of her new book 'The Most Beautiful Thing'. Bloggers all over the world were invited to write about their 'most beautiful thing'.

I kind of planned to join in, but the day got a bit gritty and a bit stressed and then a bit busy. Then I had a lovely visit from a friend which led to tea and cake and dinner and hectic kids jumping off the furniture and generally no space for writing anything. However, I found lots of beauty in the day anyway.

First off, when I went to brush my teeth in the morning, I found that there was no water coming out of the tap. This is an annoying thing that happens in our house quite regularly. Maybe the plumbing's so rigged up with the neighbours that when they're using their taps ours don't work? I don't know, but we've got used to a slightly unpredictable water supply in our bathroom. Yesterday, in my attentive search for beauty, I decided not to get irritated by this and appreciate the way that it reminds me how amazing it is that I can expect to be provided with clean water at the turn of a tap in my home! The injustice which this brings to mind certainly isn't a beautiful thing - the statistics stating that over 3 and a half million people die each year from a water related disease, including the equivalent of one child every 20 seconds and that 884 million people lack access to clean water. So, I think about these things and the luxury of having clean running water in my home and decide that I won't worry too much about calling a plumber to sort out our temporary inconvenience, because it's important to be reminded of how precious and valuable water is, and how we can never take it for granted. Then, after several minutes, it starts flowing again and I can truly see and feel and taste it's beauty!

Later, I'm trying to do five things at once. Hanging washing out, trying to stop the dog digging up cat poo and dragging muddy sticks through the house, making porridge, planning a home education activity, supervising my son with his penknife as he whittles an old piece of wood he just found into what I think is a long-necked goose but he tells me is a knife. In the midst of me stressing about the way he's handling the penknife and my heart pounding that he'll slice off a finger, he says "I love turning something that's rotten into something that's beautiful". And there it is, another beautiful thing, and I relax a little and just look at it, the moment with all it's risk and worry softening into love and gratitude. (With the added bonus of all fingers still attached when he puts the knife away and goes inside to do something else!)

When we're walking the dog, I pick up a fallen stick from under a willow tree and take it home just in case. Later on I manage a sneaky moment out in the garden with one of my son's recent birthday presents. I used to enjoy whittling spoons but haven't used my knife for a couple of years. Chris Lubkemann's 'Little Book of Whittling' reinspired me in a couple of minutes.

This led to my picked up stick evolving into a dog (howling up at the moon perhaps) which can also be a knife /athame / letter opener. It was whittled mostly in moments during the evening when it became a retreat from some shouty, stressy stuff happening. By the time I was ready to go to bed, it was finished but for a bit of sanding, some eyes and oiling, which I finished it off with this morning. Despite the little crack which appeared across its nose overnight as it was drying out, I look at it and feel my son's joy at the transformation which can happen under our own hands.

I still can't really say what my one most beautiful thing is. I think it's deeper than one person or one thing, even though on the surface I might immediately name those things. I think it's more in that sentiment expressed by my son yesterday - the ability to and the love of turning 'something that's rotten into something that's beautiful'. As long as we can do this, we can still find meaning and motivation to stay engaged with the world, to never tire of searching out its beauty, and not feel defeated by its rottenness.  

  

Playing with the camera!

I've always enjoyed taking photo's and felt quite a bit of satisfaction when taking a picture that appeared to capture the moment or subject in a special way. I've been aware of trying to make the best use of light and camera angles but within the bounds of an automatic point and shoot.

When I've used my 'big' camera (a 5 year old Canon DSLR) I've mostly used its automatic settings and when venturing outside the 'green square' into the manual modes, it's been largely stepping into the unknown where any resulting good photo's have been more like happy accidents than a result of knowledge based skills.

Never even having made the time to sit down and read the handbook properly, I barely knew what most of the buttons and dials did. So, when I received the offer of a good deal on a 3-hour course in getting to know my camera, I decided this was the time!

Thanks to the Rose Studio in Southsea, I spent a fun afternoon this week with a lovely class, boggling my brain with shutter speeds, apertures, ISO's and experimenting with all those buttons and dials. By the end of it, although we'd barely scratched the surface, we were all eager to be getting out there and playing with our toys!

Today, my son and I were on a train coming back from Southampton where we'd been looking at an exhibition of paintings and photographs by surrealist artists in Southampton Art Gallery:
 

The Road is Wider than Long: Roland Penrose and British SurrealismUntil 13 May 2012
Galleries 5-8

"This exhibition explores the weird and wonderful world of Roland Penrose and British Surrealism. The show looks at British Surrealism from its origins to the present day and brings together over one hundred significant artworks.
Image credit: Roland Penrose Night and Day (oil on canvas) 1937 © Roland Penrose Estate, England 2011. All rights reserved". ~ From Art Gallery publicity.

We decided to do a bit of experimentation with my camera which made the journey home a lot of fun and presented us with the opportunity for our own bit of surrealism! Here are a few of the results:

My son loves magic tricks and enjoyed the way that we could turn him into a ghost, make him almost invisible or give him two heads so he could look in two directions at once - and the 'magic' was all the more exciting because it could all happen without the help of Photoshop!

We got off the train just as the sun was setting and couldn't resist taking one last photo...

This last month, some words and pictures

Shortly after I signed up to an online writing group, I felt lost for words. I could blame it on being too busy or not having enough time to myself or not having anything worth saying. I could blame it on feeling overwhelmed by so much to say and not knowing where to begin.

I could blame it on all the other more important things I should be doing, the same things that I'm convinced stop me from doing yoga or meditating or going swimming or calling friends.

I could blame it on the effects on my spirit of everything that's compressing this world into a corporate, polluted, packaged, exploited, war-torn, synthetic box of ugly cruelty dressed up in pretty lies and with a price tag which attempts to sell all that I love down the line.

I could blame it on my own personal reasons for sinking into an unmotivated pit of anxiety and falling silent. But.

I like words. Despite their potential for misrepresentation, manipulation, making things worse. The words shared in the writing group were supportive, beautiful, inspiring. The questions that were being posed were around exploring what our presence is all about in the world and to live with awareness, week by week, day by day, or ideally, moment by moment, valuing life. Our words make us vulnerable but also provide us with an opportunity for being courageous and making real connections and creating change.

While I was feeling blocked from writing, I came across two books which felt like a bit of a revelation and freed me from the struggle for words and from thought.

I could just draw. I could take my book and my pencils or paint and just bring to the paper what emerged. Creativity felt like it was flowing in from the margins of my life to a central place where I've never fully acknowledged or allowed it to be, although in reality, it has usually influenced whatever else I've been doing. It was exciting to start taking a journal everywhere and experience a new way of being fully engaged in the moment and a deeper observation of what was there. And words could come in too, but they didn't have to be in sentences or carefully constucted paragraphs. They could just flow around with the images in this personal space without being judged by the internal (or external) critics which try to cut too many of us down because we're not an acknowledged 'artist' or a 'writer'. Acknowledged by who? The media? The market? The 'experts' and 'professionals'? We can all be artists and writers, or singers or dancers, or whatever else helps us feel alive in a culture that tries to dampen and rob our natural born spark and sell it back to us as a shiny wrapper which we'll always need to be searching to fill up from their shelves or screens, leaving us ever more empty, ever more alienated from our own creativity, imagination and joy. 

'Everything is it's own reward' - These words were going round my head a lot. This is it. Just this. Freed from expectations, hopes, things which went wrong. I began moulding clay, painting, deciding to start letting go of the plans that haven't been leading me anywhere useful and heading into a new direction... doing more of the things I love.

 Being together with good company.

Being in nature.

Recognising how memories hang around and get in the way of experiencing the fullness of where I am.

Realising how different media feels different - how photo's feel like they don't belong in the sketchbook because they capture instantly instead of absorbing slowly and the experience is not felt so deeply afterwards.

The pleasures of sitting amongst crows!

Just scribbling and doodling and noticing what comes to mind.

The stuff that fills our days, so that when we ask where did they go, we can peek back and remember.

Remembering also, that these pages only tell a tiny part of the story, but that it doesn't matter.

The empty page is a portal, always waiting, without censure, without need of correction, a door opening, a place to go to that's free. At least for now!

Thinking of my brother

I just came home from the seafront, from walking along the sand and shingle watching the sun go down and the stars appear. Walking along as the day became a beautiful clear night, accompanied by my little jumpy dog and the soothing lapping waves. Thinking of my brother.

I knew this would be a difficult week. The anniversary of my brother's death. This will be three years though time plays weird games with the mind and in some thoughts it is as if I saw him just yesterday and it's unbelievable that he has gone from the world. In other thoughts, it feels lifetimes ago and a distant universe. It is an anniversary not just of his death, but of my entire life, my family and relationship with the world, changing completely. "She changes everything she touches and everything she touches changes" - God/Goddess, Mystery, Spirit, whatever we call the thing that is bigger than all of this... works in ways that are so far outside the perimeter of our language, or at times, our ability to cope, yet words, art, music, breath... can be a thread thrown across the chasm to connect us to what is strong enough to carry us through. 

Last year, it was writing that helped me to get through that anniversary night of the 19th. I wrote a poem to him, which was a piece of magic to carry my love to him. I threw it like a thread back to that night, to weave it around him so that he would not be so alone. It will help me this year too because it says what will always need to be said. I find that writing and creativity is a means of survival, of sanity, of affirmation in life, and all week I’ve been working on a picture made out of fabric, grief, love, remembrance, images and words. Infusing it with music and song while I sewed. And silence.

It is a process which will never end. It’s a process to fill a little, the hollow aching absence which breaks my heart, with something tangible, anchoring, knowable.

I wish I could know more about why and how and whether all the ‘what ifs’ that torture us would have made any difference. It is a daily spiritual practice to make peace with not knowing, to never having all the answers and to be compassionate, particularly towards myself.

I throw all this out there, to toss on the winds of the www. cosmos, not minding really who reads, because I do it as an offering for my brother Paul on this night. I do it for myself alive in this moment still opening my heart to life, and for anyone else who knows grief and may find some solidarity and brother/sisterhood as I have found many times in the words of others.

And, as has become an essential act of empowerment on nights like this, I light a candle.    

   I light a candle and close my eyes.

   Memory brings you

   so achingly close

   and the world

   could almost be

   normal again...

   ...For all the words

   we never said

   and the ones we did,

   I hold you in love.

   For all the times

   we never shared

   and the ones we did,

   I hold you in love.

   For all the reasons

   for feeling guilt

   and forgiveness,

   I hold you in love.

   For all the reasons why

   which we’ll never know

   and the ones we do,

   I hold you in love.

   You opened the gate between the worlds

   and stepped right through –

   now it is always open

   and it has changed everything.

   May we all be held

   together

   in love. 

   (from the poem written for my brother this day last year) 

   The words in the picture were inspired by a song by Bliss - 'Say Goodbye'.

   http://youtu.be/7RoIAIcZC_8