Like other members of Quaker Concern for Animals, I have been distressed by the recent reports of animals being slaughtered in barbaric ways in the name of religious or cultural practice. 

See, for example http://quaker-animals.co.uk/?p=1738 reporting on the recent Gadhimai Jatra festival in Nepal.

 And here http://www.animalrightsafrica.org/ where Animal Rights Africa report on the Ukweshwana First Fruits Festiva, a rite of passage for young men, recently revived and involving ritual bull killing ‘where 20 to 40 young men push the bull onto the ground, stab its eyes, yank out its tongue, twist its genitals and then beat it to death’.

 These things need naming as barbaric; whatever the culture, religion or tradition, there is no way to rationalise this. It is quite simply a degradation – inhumanity on a gross scale.

 It seems to me that if any country or state wants to be taken seriously on the world stage in the 21st century, then it needs to outlaw, with immediate effect, such stone-age practices.

Superstitious sacrifices and blood-letting were how ancient people used to try to appease ‘the gods’ and thus win personal favour. We have to accept such inhumanity in the context of our ‘history’ but we don’t have to accept it as part of our modern world – and nor should we.

These disgraceful acts have nothing to do with what ‘religion’ is actually about and everything to do with delusion and misuse of power: might expressed as right.

 Unless a ‘religion’ leads to maturity of spirit, compassion, the impulse toward liberation for all, non-violence, the urge toward love, kindness and a sense of interconnectedness and care for the world and its creatures (human and non-human), then it doesn’t seem to me to be up to much; and it certainly seems legitimate to question religious and cultural practices that involve harm and the kinds of violence in evidence here.

This kind of savagery damages the perpetrators, the onlookers and of course inflicts unimaginable suffering on the animals. It should in my view be our human responsibility to take care of our animal kin, just as we need to take care of the human members of society, including the vulnerable ones. These kinds of acts are a betrayal of our humanity.

We can be so much better than this!

With thanks to all those who bear witness and speak out.

‘A miracle is a change in perception’ – from the film The Witness.

Ann Johnson – Paintings

GATHERING

 Pam Hughes, Fiona Owen – Poems

 6 – 21 November

Star Brewery, Castle Ditch Lane, Lewes BN7 1YJ. T: 01273 487744 www.hopgallery.com

Daily 10.30am-5pm (closed 1.30-2.15pm) Sunday 12noon-4pm 

The writer Graham Carey has asked if I would post up the ’declaration’ he has written on nonviolence. Since Gorwel and I try to live according to nonviolent principles and practices, I have agreed to do this, in support of a way of being in the world that counters the usual ’strong-arm’ approaches to problem-solving. I am particularly in support of this statement : ‘We take nonviolence primarily to mean the fullest intention not to cause physical or psychological harm to another person’. This reflects the idea that nonviolent approaches begin right at the heart of our ordinary lives. It makes sense that if individuals change, then so does society. Growth from the roots up. The word ‘intention’ is important, I think. Nonviolence is an orientation – often very challenging. It is, as Graham says below, an active rather than passive position to take. Failing at times is inevitable. Nonviolence is not a stick to beat ourselves with. It is a path to walk. I personally would broaden this statement by saying: ‘We take nonviolence primarily to mean the fullest intention not to cause physical or psychological harm to any other creature, human or non-human‘. This reflects my own position on nonviolence, based on what my life has shown me about being part of an extended community of sentient subjects who all show signs of feeling pain and fear and of wanting to live out a natural life-span. I find myself in accord with Buddhist values and the Bodhisattva ideal (‘May all beings be happy! May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering!’) and Gandhian ahimsa.

So what follows is Graham Carey’s document and vision. Though we may vary slightly in our emphases, I can unequivocally declare, with him, that I am FOR NONVIOLENCE.

*

Henceforth, the only honourable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions …

This is the great political question of our times, and before dealing with other issues one must take a position on it. Before anything can be done, two questions must be put: ‘Do you or do you not, directly or indirectly, want to be killed or assaulted? Do you or do you not, directly or indirectly, want to kill or assault?’ Albert Camus (1946)
1. We are not all pacifists, but we declare ourselves as individuals dedicated to personal and institutional nonviolence.

2. Millions recognise the long-term futility of war. Powerful armies fail to subjugate determined small populations. The operation of human love, the most urgent requirement for the continuation of life on earth, cannot achieve its revolutionary potential where there is intimidation and threat. It is useful publicly to make this declaration as set out here. And the time to do this is now.

3. We honour all struggles for justice within a libertarian feminist agenda. To commit to a nonviolent life-style is to identify with the greatest of causes, because it can infuse into every parental, sexual, educational and political context an entirely new approach to social problems. We take nonviolence to mean the fullest intention not to cause physical or psychological harm to another person, either by armed conflict or by abuse of wealth. To be nonviolent does not mean to be unassertive. Loving physical restraint may be necessary. Jesus angrily overturned the money-changers’ tables.

4. Legislative majorities for nonviolence may be impossible – but it is ennobling for individuals, of any religion or none, to make this declaration with integrity. We especially challenge Christians to make this choice. To love everyone without exception is our true calling.

5. ‘Pacifism’ suggests passivity. The word ‘peace’ is susceptible to misuse; nonviolence is clearer. It takes courage to fight, as well as to declare for nonviolence. Nonviolence can have a high cost: we recall the courageous Gandhi-led salt marchers; we know how the Peace Community of San Jose in Colombia is incurring brutality and loss of life through its passive, dignified resistance to armed force. The choice of nonviolence resulted in many years of imprisonment for Nelson Mandela and others of the African National Congress; Mandela had previously inspired the younger ANC members to ‘throw away your guns’.

6. We question the political usefulness of war and find it ethically and ecologically unsustainable. Human propensity for military action fails to take account of the massive environmental and economic cost of preparing for war. Sophisticated technology can pioneer wholly educational, cultural and economic resistance to aggression and make political nonviolence a new priority.

7. Nonviolence is simple: it can be understood across all linguistic and political barriers; it can be communicated by body language – even with the eyes. It suggests an opposition to certain dangerous civil technologies such as nuclear power, and the untested technologies which disperse electro-magnetic fields into human and animal settlements and bring about mutations at the biological molecular level. Nonviolence is also not simple: we cannot promise never to violate with language or otherwise harm others close to us or distant. There are medical conditions which cause rage and killing. Nevertheless, we remain dedicated.

8. The judicial ‘punishment’ of capital execution is spiritually worse than acts of war, promo-ting a spurious legitimacy specific to an individual person using the full force of law, popular agreement, and democracy. It excludes the possibility of redemption; it assumes the infallibility of the legal process. We harm foetuses and babies in their gestation and birthing through non-essential caesarian and also electronic and other interventions.

9. We continually celebrate the revolutionary nonviolent lives and works of Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, the Buddha and Martin Luther King – and countless others – in Jewish, Islamic and Hindu religious traditions and in non-religious traditions. The detailed records of these lives are of unsurpassed value to the development of human sustainability and hope.
10. All forms of communication are useful to propagate this ideal, especially email and websites. This Declaration has no copyright; passing it on is a significant political and religious act. Front doors and tee-shirts can display two words: FOR NON-VIOLENCE.

11. In common with organisations such as the Peace Pledge Union, Pax Christi and Peace News, we face a daunting task in overcoming the fascination with violent behaviour found at every level of society. We differ from simple pacifism: beyond the political and economic structures to do with war and militarism lie the deeper psychological and domestic origins of violence; divorce courts remind us of the almost ‘natural’ extent of abuse that takes place in our homes which, every evening of the year, are flooded by an immense quantity of televised killing and unremitting brutal harm; rude, aggressive, power-driven personalities; and an almost total absence of reflective, mature material from the great wisdom traditions. Fifty years of British television has not produced a single soap or documentary feature based on a community successfully organised on the rule of nonviolence – of which there are hundreds.

12. We do not rely upon a mass decision in this matter; we seek individual, personal commit-ments, which might be revoked in exceptional circumstances. We declare ourselves as a universal sister / brotherhood of intent. The United Nations has passed a resolution declaring October 2nd as an international day that reaffirms the universal relevance of the principle of nonviolence and the desire to secure a culture of peace, tolerance and nonviolence.
Initially:
ROSELLE ANGWIN Buddhist Writer
KAREN ARMSTRONG Non-church Historian of Religion The Great Transformation (2006)
DAI-EN BENNAGE Abbess, Mt Equity Zendo Soto Zen Buddhist Monastery, USA
NORA BARNES Non-church Mother Earth Connections Sustainability Centre, Isle of Eigg
GRAHAM CAREY Anglican, Bradford Diocesan Synod, Main author of this document; 6 Granville BD16 4HW UK Proposal for a New College: a Radical Alternative for Higher Education (with Peter Abbs) (1977)
EMILY JOHNS Atheist Editor Peace News, Artist
A. L. KENNEDY Quaker attender, Costa Book of the Year 2007, Day
BRUCE KENT Roman Catholic, Pax Christi, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
MARK KURLANSKY Jew, Dayton Literary Peace Prize, Nonviolence: the History of a Dangerous Idea (2007)
ERVIN LASZLO Three times Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Macroshift: Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World (2000)
ALASTAIR MCINTOSH Quaker Visiting Speaker on Nonviolence at Sanhdurst Miliary Academy, Professor of Human Ecology, Strathclyde University Soil and Soul: People versus Corporate Power (2004)
PATSY MCKIE Pentecostal New Testament Church of God Mothers against Violence
MARY MIDGLEY Non-church, Philosopher, The Ethical Primate (1994), Wickedness (2001)
DENISE MOLL Anglican, Multifaith spirituality; denise.gandhifdn@phonecoop.coop
MOST REVD DR JOHN NEILL Anglican Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland (Church of Ireland)
RT REVD DANIEL NGORU Anglican Bishop of Kirinyaga, Kenya
MICHEL ODENT Roman Catholic Revolutionary obstetrician and polemicist of the ingathering of love: The Scientification of Love (1999) Dr Miriam Stoppard (Foreword): I found it an irresistible thesis… His teachings became the lynchpin of my writing on pregnancy and birth and I have included a passage about them in every book I have written on the subject since… He holds out the… promise that a study of how we learn to love, starting at the breast a few seconds after birth, may hold a clue to the cause of violence in our society.
DIARMUID O’MURCHU MSC Roman Catholic Theologian Religion in Exile (2000) Transformation of Desire (2007)
FIONA OWEN Quaker Buddhist Musician and poet
SIR GHILLEAN PRANCE FRS VMH Anglican Professor of Biological Sciences, Former Director Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Science Director, the Eden Project
VERONIKA SOPHIA ROBINSON Spiritually based life Mother Founder and Editor The Mother
MERYL ROWLINSON Quaker
ALAN RUSSELL Quaker Second author of this document
ANDREW W SAUL Baptist Editor Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine
JONATHAN SCHELL The Fate of the Earth (1982)
STANLEY SWITALA PhD Roman Catholic /Taoist Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner and teacher
VENERABLE TENZIN PALMO Buddhist, Dongyu Gatsal Ling Nunnery, Malaysia
DESMOND TUTU Formerly Archbishop of Cape Town Anglican Nobel Peace Prize Chair Truth & Reconciliation Commission 1996-8
PENNY VINE Non-church Certified Trainer in Non-Violent Communication; penny@vine16.freeserve.co.uk
BOB WALLACE Non-church Earth Connections Sustainability Centre, Isle of Eigg
IN MEMORY OF CHARLES ANTHONY NEALY, EXECUTED BY LETHAL INJECTION BY THE STATE OF TEXAS ON 20 MARCH 2007, DURING THE COMPILATION OF THIS DOCUMENT. AND IN MEMORY OF PAT REGAN, INSPIRATIONAL WORKER FOR MOTHERS AGAINST VIOLENCE, DOUBLE VICTIM, MURDERED ON 1 JUNE 2008 SIX YEARS AFTER THE SHOOTING OF HER SON.
 Signatories have signed on their own behalf, not on that of any organisation. Peace News is the leading English language newspaper dedicated to radical nonviolence: 0207 278 3344 admin@peacenews.info  Graham Carey can be contacted electronically: andrewclarkebd@aol.com  www.nonviolence.morozzo.co.uk  There is no copyright on this precise text  Single-sided A3/A2 poster version available  Offers to email to appropriate organisations welcome  See also The Power of Love by Alastair McIntosh, Resurgence 219 July 2003  Small donations welcome: 01274 568973  Make the Declaration as a personal intention, and on your own initiative gain new cohorts of signatories by any means, eg photocopies, email, new websites, blogs.  Add your own views – shown separate from the original – and inform GC.  Good luck!

Beryl Baigent, Welsh-born Canadian poet, has sent a review of my first collection of poems Imagining the Full Hundred. I am very grateful to her. What follows is the review. Thank you very much, Beryl.

Owen, Fiona. IMAGINING THE FULL HUNDRED. Caernarfon, North Wales: Gwasg Pantycelyn (2003). ISBN 1-903314-60-7. Cover Illustration: Malcolm Strongetharm.

Fiona Owen is a poet who resides in Llanfaelog, Anglesey. This beautiful green book with a meditative face of a head-covered woman, sets the tone for her first published volume. The book’s title originates in David Hart’s poem “The snail sets out up the steps.” Fiona’s book title also graces her five-part poem sequence (40) which conveys the deeper message of her work by using an epigrammatic quotation from Gandhi: “I want to realize identity with all life,/ even with such things as crawl upon the earth.” The poet is affirming her own affinity with all living creatures and one may understand the “full hundred” as the Wan Wu, or Ten Thousand Things, of Taoist philosophy. Here we find insects tumbling out of petals during the making of elderflower cordial; bees and ladybirds, a brown mongrel dog, all experience annihilation when a child is treated to ” pictures of Armageddon, when God/ punishes the sinners; ” slugs, worms, wood lice, beetles, and snails are “a community in crisis.”

This central sequence is enfolded by poems which journey from sandy images of the Middle East, where the poet lived from the age of three to sixteen, to the green mountains of North Wales. Fear and dread, where lives of humans and animals coalesce in importance, whether it as a non-swimming mother in the ocean, or a old oil drum full of “not quite dead” dogs, or a scorpion “making its clinging way across the ceiling,” fill the earlier poems with emotion and trauma as the transience of life is explored. The poet identifies with Earth itself in order to empathizes with the suffering of nature. In the form of Rock, which/who expresses how it “fancies the movement of bird,” that is, until an earthquakes puts in an appearance. This poem, along with others, attests to the innocence of nature and to the writer as an integral part of it. Pablo’s incident in the shallows when he was stung by a stonefish (14) demonstrates the impartiality of nature. The poet accepts the natural way, as nature does what it is intended to do and nothing more or nothing less, and life continues to flow.

The unassuming simplicity of Fiona’s language in these poems makes her work accessible to all. Some will no doubt read the ‘stories’ and enjoy the narrative, and others will delve deeper and unearth the philosophy of one who writes because this is her ‘nature.’ And by her writing she blesses all things, from insects to people, from plants to moons, and accordingly she salutes the sacredness of the universe. Her poems are love poems in the mystical tradition. The divine is present in all things, she is reminding us. It is because of this divine energy that one may transmute and take on the characteristic of other aspects of nature. Thus, “When you shave / you make / your top lip shape / into a beak.” The shaver can apparently make a “bird-face” at will but it is not often that one gets to understand why or how (22). In another incident the beard becomes “a forest / [she] loses herself in” while the protagonist is “lunar / lying among roots / and leaves” (23).

Fiona shares with her readers the mysteries of the universe. The moon, for example, can do anything that humans can do and in a poem titled “Moondance” lightens the incredibly serious philosophy the writer is expounding, with unpretentious and original humour. We are aware of the moon dancing and trailing “fingers along the banister” and becoming the Peeping Tom and listening to the private encounter (24). This poem also expresses the alchemical and Hermetic dictum “As above so below,” so none of the significance is lost in the humour.

Fiona Owen demonstrates clarity in her thoughts, uniqueness in her metaphors, and humour and freshness in her poetic imagery. In the penultimate poem of Imagining the Full Hundred, the poet fits it all into a nutshell: “All forms are possible / at every instance. / No shape is an outcast / the mind need only accept” (60). Life ‘just is’ and one could say the same about these poems. Each is complete in itself, each is doing its own work, each poem is a fragile and transcendent moment in an impartial universe.

Beryl Baigent October 1, 2007

Here are two photos of some food Gorwel and our garden and our hens have grown – to remind us of the season of fruitfulness, the hope of ripening, the breathing air outside and the soil under our feet, on which we depend. The melons and bananas are the only thing here not home-grown.

Poor Shambo and how sad to see such a beautiful, healthy creature carted off to be ’slaughtered’. Who could not fail to feel moved when this animal, who had never known harm – had only received care and love – was loaded into a trailer and carted off to his death? That final look over the top of the trailer as it drove away was heart-breaking. And how typical that Shambo, as ‘just a bullock’, is treated in this way, in a world where cattle are bred on an industrial scale and have no intrinsic value. A bullock is simply meat-to-be, a commodity. But how wonderful that the monks and nuns of Skanda Vale did what they could to save him, stood up for the sanctity of his life. And how interesting, the media interest. I, like many others on Thursday 26th July 2007, felt very connected to the events taking place over there in West Wales, in the Community of the Many Names of God, Skanda Vale, Carmarthen.

I have no wish to propound the idea of there being, in any simplistic sense, ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in this sorry and complex episode. What is clear though is that this is a clash of world views. On the one hand, we have the state siding with its farming industry, where animals are reared with a price on their (dead) heads. They are fed and cared for purely for instrumental reasons. The state, in protecting the livelihoods of its farmers, has no thought for the intrinsic value of the animals involved in the industry. These animals are nameless, background numbers, worth x amount, destined for ‘the table’ and this is taken by the state and its farmers as an unquestioned ‘given’.

On the other hand, we have, as exemplified by the monks and nuns of Skanda Vale, an attitude and orientation towards the general sanctity of life, where a cow, along with all other life forms, has intrinsic value as a sentient being. Each animal is seen as an individual. Though the cow is an especially sacred symbol in the Hindu tradition, all life is considered sacred to them. This is an important point. As Marian Hussenbux of Quaker Concern for Animals writes, ‘We have campaigned to defend Shambo and the rights of the temple to keep him and remain undesecrated, but Shambo is a powerful symbol of what happens to a myriad animals every day world wide – they die unnoticed, in most cases, unmourned, defenceless victims slaughtered on the altar of human greed’.

What I have also discovered over this week is MP for Newport West Paul Flynn’s blog, which I would heartily recommend for its lucid, witty and compassionate voice. Paul’s messages about Shambo and the Skanda Vale community have been incredibly refreshing, offering a sense of vision in the face of a heavy-booted pragmatism that seems unable to imagine other possibilities, other ways to live. One thing I do know is that we could do with more MPs like Paul Flynn – they are few and far between. With any luck, Shambo and the monks and nuns at Skanda Vale have opened up the whole area and shone a bright light into an area of great darkness. The Skanda Vale community have exemplified the kind of dignity and non-violence espoused by Mahatma Gandhi. This is not a passive stance in the world but an active one that takes great courage and heart.

Hindu theologian and teacher Akhandadhi Das said on a recent BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day, ‘We don’t cull infected humans to protect other people, we treat them. Same with zoo animals. So, can there not be an option within DEFRA’s law on TB for those who want to cure rather than kill? Mahatma Gandhi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.” So, it seems odd that we should require anyone, whether farmer or religious community, to destroy life rather than follow their commitment to nurture it’.

My dad had an amazing memory for poems and one snippet has kept coming back to me recently: ‘goodness only knowses/The Noselessness of Man’. Googling it, I find that it belongs to a poem by G.K.Chesterton, some of which I have quoted below. Written from the perspective of a dog called Quoodle, the poem’s amusing and light-hearted approach actually packs a profound punch. Maybe this is a really famous poem that everyone knows, but it’s new to me and a discovery. It sets those two familiar lines in context, deepening them.

Google has served as Dad’s ‘hand from beyond’. Finding the poem feels like finding a bit of his voice.

The Song of Quoodle

They haven’t got no noses,
The fallen sons of Eve;
Even the smell of roses
Is not what they supposes;
But more than mind discloses
And more than men believe.

[...]

The brilliant smell of water,
The brave smell of a stone,
The smell of dew and thunder,
The old bones buried under,
Are things in which they blunder
And err, if left alone.

The wind from winter forests,
The scent of scentless flowers,
The breath of brides’ adorning,
The smell of snare and warning,
The smell of Sunday morning,
God gave to us for ours

* * *

And Quoodle here discloses
All things that Quoodle can,
They haven’t got no noses,
They haven’t got no noses,
And goodness only knowses
The Noselessness of Man.

I became properly vegetarian in the early 1980s, after an earlier attempt which aborted largely because my dad, bless him, persuaded me of the ‘unnaturalness’ of not eating meat. I remember I had a cold at the time and my dad sat at my bedside and, with patient and loving gentleness, explained that my cold was clearly due to my new (only days old) diet.

Much later in his life – with all three of his children grown up and confirmed vegetarians – he too ate less meat, especially with all the modern emphasis on ‘five portions of fruit and veg a day’ and concerns about obesity, heart disease and so on. He never gave up meat – liked it too much – but did come to see the ‘spin’ involved in the ‘because it’s natural’ argument.

Back in the eighties, it was still rare and odd to be a vegetarian – and hard to eat out (‘Oh, it’s not meat. It’s just ham/fish’). Now, of course, it is becoming normal – at least in certain zones. And Quorn has been invented as a tasty ‘meat substitute’, and it is getting tastier and more inventive as time goes by. What sometimes makes me uneasy, though, is the way our dogs and our cat – when he was alive – love it, as if ‘the real thing’. I refused to eat Quorn for ages on the grounds that I didn’t want a ‘meat substitute’, which simply feeds into the ‘idea’ of meat. There is, after all, so much to eat anyway. But nowadays, Quorn is part of our diets, though our diets are not Quorn-centric by any means. As I say, there is so much else to eat. And right now, we are feasting on veg and fruit that Gorwel is growing in our garden. He keeps a Welsh language garden blog here: http://llysiau.wordpress.com/

You will see there photographs too of some of the food that he and the garden are growing. For instance, you can see some of our beans above. Such simple and delicious pleasures.

We were in London last week. I was taking part in a poetry reading at Lauderdale House to celebrate the launch of the anthology Into The Further Reaches, edited by poet Jay Ramsay. It was lovely to see Anne Cluysenaar there – I think that she and I were the only two from Wales – and also Paul Matthews and Jay. The evening seemed to go very well and had been organised by Shanta Acharya, one of the other poets in the anthology.

In London, we seemed to be in almost perpetual motion: the train, the tube, buses, a taxi (once), and a lot of walking in between. We visited The National Gallery and felt overwhelmed. You need much more time there to really see the paintings. My head was spinning by the end of our visit, but I do feel that I at least had a meaningful encounter with several works and I came away feeling infused with the ultramarine blue used to depict the Virgin in so many of the early works we looked at. Paul Matthews told us that when he visits The National Gallery, he always goes to see a Dutch painting of a woman peeling a parsnip. I can imagine that. Like visiting an old friend. The following day, we went to The British Museum and felt similarly that sense of ‘overload’. So much stuff. But seeing the Roman Empire works – statues of discrete historical figures all seeming to promote the Triumph of Man and his power over the ‘other’ – and then going into the Asia exhibition and seeing all those Buddha, Hindu and Jain figures promoting the Fearless and Compassionate Path towards unity with ‘other’ (as an aspect of ’self’) just helped to further clarify a few things for me.

On the way home in the train, Gorwel and I passed the time by doing some collaborative writing. This is the best of the ‘diamond poems’:

plum
white blossom
falling like snow
onto upturned rock
tomorrow, it will be gone
and I will wait
all summer until
I slowly
ripen

Gorwel’s haiku were far better than mine. Here they are, to my ‘trigger titles’:

In the British Museum

There were many stairs
statues, bowls, tablets, coins, chairs -
I got quite tired.

Holy Happiness

It takes nerve to use
the word ‘holy’ in a long poem
let alone a short one

Making it Real

How will I know that
this is my authentic voice
unless I let go?

Hello. Just entering blog-land. My friend poet Meredith Andrea and I were talking last weekend about blogging – the dangers. It’s ironic then that I decide to begin a blog today. If it looks like freezing and becoming yet another dead blog, I will pull it down. The attractions to me are the way it links us up and builds community. I feel like a mouth-almighty, broadcasting to ‘the world’ – but really, it will still be a very small part of the world that will ever find its way here and read these entries, so I think I can quietly and legitimately get on with it over here in my little corner of things.