Ask not what trees can do for us, but what we can do for trees

Last weekend I walked through a wood. Sunlight filtered through the  leaves and made me think how medieval stonemasons must have been inspired by the branches of trees gathered in arching vaults above them when they imagined their cathedrals. In a modern reversal, in Italy, near Bergamo, there’s a tree cathedral:

Cattedrale Vegetale | © obliot/FlickrAnd, at the entrance to the particular wood where I was walking, this stands:

Some of the letters are worn away, but if you click on the image you’ll get to the Kipling Society’s site and their page for The Way Through The Woods.

These things made me think about the things trees do – apart from providing shade and solitude and places to think and dream. In Richard Powers’ wonderful novel The Overstory Patricia Westerford shows us how trees communicate. Her character was inspired by the life and work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Simard’s research into the way trees nurture each other, help the sick among them, promote growth and so much more is, literally, awe-inspiring. The things that go on beneath our feet about which we know so little. Simard’s book Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, is surely a must-read. Here’s a quote from her website:

Trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complex, interdependent circle of life; forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities. [They have] … communal lives not that different from our own.

How often we humans only think of trees as useful for us. How rarely we think about the lives of trees themselves, these days. But there’s a long association between innate wisdom and trees that’s filtered into our language, as Jay Griffiths writes, in Ancient Trees, Ancient Knowledge, here:

The English language recognizes an association between wisdom and trees: an idea ‘takes root’; a book has ‘leaves’; a small book is a ‘leaflet’; an avid reader is a ‘bookworm’; you ‘branch out’ into a new area of study … .

Some people make forest farms. Others categorise trees: here’s an alphabetical list of seventy-six types. Some people say that, when we’re about to judge the shape of another human, it would be better to think of that person as a tree: we never say a tree is too fat or too short or too thin or too tall, do we? Let alone too old. We admire trees, whatever their shape or age. And we all know by now what trees do to help fight climate change.

The Power of TreesSo it seems to me that we humans – the ones who don’t already – need to ask not what trees can do for us but what we can do for trees.

conserve-forests-vista-tour-save-tree

Posted in Books, Climate Change, Creativity, Fiction, Places, Poetry, Recycling, Trees, Walking | Leave a comment

The Good Ally by Nova Reid

When Claudia Rankine, a Black poet and playwright, was asked by a white man, after a reading from Citizen: An American Lyric (Rankine’s 2014 anthology about the collective effects of racism in our society) ‘What can I do for you? How can I help you?’ she replied ‘I think the question you should be asking is what you can do for you.’ The man said, ‘If that is how you answer questions, then no one will ask you anything.’

The originating impulse for Rankine’s play, The White Card, a distillation of racial divisions and an exploration of the invisibility of whiteness, came from this man’s question. (Words above from Rankin’s article in the Soho Theatre’s programme for a recent production of The White Card.)

What Rankine said here (and, more recently, here and here) is that the problem with the man’s question is that it assumed that she was the one with a problem:
As if [when] a white person is not in the room, I can experience racism by myself.Citizen: An American Lyric

For white people the question is not: How can we white people help Black people? It’s not: What can we white people do for Black people? The question is: What can we white people do to unearth and dismantle our own racism?

In her wise, clear, compassionate and comprehensive guide to white allyship, The Good Ally, Nova Reid shows us white people how we need to unlearn our racism. At the beginning of The Good Ally she sets out the four key stages to keep in our minds and our hearts as we aspire to become white allies. As we disrupt and dismantle our own racism we need to Listen. To Unlearn. To Re-Learn. And then, and only then, to take Responsive Action. And these stages will interconnect and recur throughout our antiracism work (which is, clearly, lifelong work).

The Good Ally by Nova Reid, out now

But, as soon as The Good Ally arrived, I leapt ahead to Chapter 11: Brokering Change, Action and Advocacy. I wanted to find out what I could do, just like the man who asked Claudia Rankine what he could do. But I hadn’t begun to understand my own racism and the impact it has on Black people. Thankfully, Nova was lightyears ahead of me. In the second sentence of Chapter 11 she writes:

If you’ve found your way here without reading the rest of the book, I see you. Please don’t undermine antiracism work or the labour it has taken to create this resource by trying to skip ahead. And please don’t underestimate the unintentional harm you will continue to inflict on others by not doing this work properly.

I went straight back to the beginning and began to read. And now I know The Good Ally will remain my guide to white allyship for the rest of my life. I’ll refer to it again and again and again. Its wise words will ring in my head and help me when I, inevitably, get it wrong. But now I’ve seen my own racism I can’t unsee it. Now I know that even though I’m not an overt, screaming-abuse racist, still I’m racist, because I was born with white skin, because I learned racism as a white child, because I have all the privileges that go with living inside white skin. (I read The Good Ally with a zoom group, and listening to other white people’s learnings and fears, recognitions and intentions enormously deepened the experience, helped us collectively take responsbility for our racism and we will remain accountable to each other for our responsive actions.)

There’s nothing in the least justified or natural or scientific or true or right about racism and anti-Blackness: they’re inventions of white people to maintain power, white supremacy. But these inventions, these lies, took hold and, over the centuries, racist attitudes and anti-Black behaviours have saturated the psyches of white people. Nova Reid’s book gives us white people much to listen to as we dismantle our racism. Much to question ourselves about and to unlearn. Much to discover and to re-learn and, at the end, many possible ways of and prompts for taking responsive action.

Resmaa Menakem says we live in a racial pigmentocracy. We do. But why on this good earth should the colour of a person’s skin give or refuse access to good housing, healthcare, education, financial security, work, mental welfare, emotional welfare … every single aspect of human life? Clearly it should not, and never should have. The Good Ally gracefully shows us white people just how urgent it is to unlearn our racism so everyone has a chance of living in an equitable society, side by side.

Posted in Allyship, Antiracism, Books, Climate Change, Democracy, Education, Equality, Health, Human Rights, Mental Health, Psychology, Racism, White Allies, White Fragility, Women | Leave a comment

Queenhood by Simon Armitage

I’m not a monarchist nor a royalist but I am – as Helen Mirren said, recently – a Queenist. This country’s Queen, Queen Elizabeth II, is an extraordinary woman whose seventy years as head of state was celebrated in the UK between 2 and 5 June 2022. Her example of dedication, faith, hard work, duty, leadership and an apparently inexhaustible interest in the many many people she meets is more than admirable, it is extraordinary. Who among us could manage that, even for ten, let alone for seventy, years?

I’m old enough to remember a time when portraying the Queen in fiction or song (apart from God Save the Queen) wasn’t much done (or approved of). This Guardian article, by Vanessa Thorpe, published on 5 June, remembers:

When Alan Bennett brought his version of the Queen to the stage in 1988, he was one of the first to take a parodic look at the woman who personifies the British national brand. His one-act play, A Question of Attribution, tackled Soviet espionage in the royal staff; Prunella Scales, stately and sardonic, caused a sensation in the role of the Queen.

Twenty years later, Bennett returned to the supposed inner life of the monarch in his novella, The Uncommon Reader. When the royal corgis chance upon a mobile library, the Queen borrows a book, prompting a broadening of perspective that upsets her worldview.

Now, as the Guardian article continues, it’s not an uncommon thing at all to portray the Queen in fiction. Here’s the Radio Times’ gallery of actresses who’ve portrayed her.

But the portrayal that touches me is our Poet Laureate’s Queenhood. I can’t print the whole poem here for obvious copyright reasons, but you can find it at the link above, you can buy it here or you can hear Simon Armitage reading some of it and talking about it here. Quite often, in the poem, Armitage juxtaposes the regal and the quotidian.I particularly like the song of the blackbird at the end of the extract below.

Under Faber’s Fair Use terms, here’s a verse (there are, appropriately, seven): this is the first, from Queenhood by Simon Armitage:

An old-fashioned word, coined in a bygone world.
It is a taking hold and a letting go,
girlhood left behind like a favourite toy,
irreversible step over invisible brink.
A new frock will be made, which is a country
hemmed with the white lace of its shores,
and here is a vast garden of weald and wold,
mountain and fell, lake, loch, cwm.
It is constancy and it is change:
the age of clockwork morphs into digital days,
but the song of the blackbird remains the same.

Posted in Books, Creativity, Democracy, Elizabeth II, Equality, Fiction, History, Women | Leave a comment

Reading Black Writers

Until George Floyd was murdered on 25 May 2020, I had not begun to acknowledge, let alone unearth, my inherent racism. That racism includes not reading or even thinking about the work of Black writers. But since that May I’ve been reading Black writers and my eyes, ears, heart and mind have been opened (about time, I know). Bernadine Evaristo has often been my guide and when I heard her talking about John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me on Radio 4 a while ago I began reading it. It is, as Evaristo said, to Penguin’s June 2020 request for recommendations for books to understand and then act on racial injustice at home and worldwide:

The account of John Griffin, a white journalist, who passes himself off as a dark-skinned Black man in the American Deep South in order to better understand racism. And better understand it he does, when he finds himself being treated despicably simply because he now looks Black.

‘Oh, but that was the 1950s’, I hear some people protest. Look, here’s the thing: it’s only when you walk in the shoes of a Black person, especially a Black man in a majority-white country, that you will ever really understand the pernicious prevalence of racism. To quote Griffin, “They could not see me or any other black man as a human individual because they buried us under the garbage of their stereotyped view of us.”

The same applies today, which is why Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd with the complicity of three other policemen. Everyone needs to read this book.

Evaristo wrote the Introduction to the republished 2019 edition (Black Like Me was first published in 1960). At the end there’s a piece Griffin wrote in 1979:

I tried to establish one simple fact, whch was to reveal the insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color, by his philosophical “accident”– rather than by who he is in his humanity.

The insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color …
rather than by who he is in his humanity.

The Reader, a wonderful charity which believes that:

everyone can experience and enjoy great literature, which we believe is a tool for helping humans survive and live well

took part in Liverpool Against Racism week at the end of April and curated a list of books for babies, young children and young adults written by people of colour. It’s here. They also curated a much longer list of extracts from books written by Black writers for adults. For copyright reasons that list of extracts is only available to those who took part in the Liverpool Against Racism / The Reader week, but I’ll be reading those books and writing about them in blogs to come.

Tomiwa Owolade, recently-appointed race and literature consultant at The Reader, has been asked to help the organisation find a way to read with sensitivity, nuance and openness on matters related to race and ethnic diversity. He writes, in the latest edition of The Reader’s biannual publication, The Reader:

I think this should be done not through a knee-jerk response to diversity, which analyses texts through the reductive lens of race, but by insisting on the power of literature to transcend racial barriers. Shakespeare, George Eliot and Charles Dickens can speak to anyone – and so too can Richard Wright, Toni Morrison and James Baldwin.

Posted in Allyship, Antiracism, Art, Creativity, Education, Equality, Fiction, History, Human Rights, Literary Prizes, Mental Health in Fiction, Morality, Psychology, Racism, reading, White Allies, Writing | Leave a comment

Stephen Lawrence Day 22 April 2022 #sldayfdn

This is from Stephen’s Story on the Stephen Lawrence Day website:

Stephen Lawrence was born and grew up in south-east London, where he lived with his parents Neville and Doreen, his brother Stuart and sister Georgina.

Like most young people, he juggled an active social life, school work, family commitments, and part-time employment. But he also had ambitions to use his talent for maths, art, and design to become an architect, and wanted to have a positive impact on his community.

Tragically, his dream of becoming an architect was never realised. On 22 April 1993, at the age of just 18, Stephen was murdered in an unprovoked racist attack. He didn’t know his killers and his killers didn’t know him.

An article in the Guardian, in 2019, reported on The Macpherson Report, an enquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder, completed more than four years after he was killed:

350-page report concluded that the investigation into the killing had been “marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership”. Specific officers in the Metropolitan police were named and the entire force was criticised.

A total of 70 recommendations designed to show “zero tolerance” for racism in society were made.

Some 67 of the report’s recommendations led to specific changes in practice or the law within two years of its publication. They included the introduction of detailed targets for the recruitment, retention and promotion of black and Asian officers, as well as the creation of the Independent Police Complaints Commission with the power to appoint its own investigators.

The abolition of the “double jeopardy rule” – which stated that people could not be tried for the same crime twice – eventually led to the 2012 conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for Lawrence’s murder.

But racism still exists in Britain. You can get involved in this year’s Stephen Lawrence Day, and beyond, here. And here. And here. And here. To help continue A Legacy of Change. And here’s a link to my 2021 post about Stephen Lawrence Day.

Posted in Allyship, Antiracism, History, Human Rights, Mental Health, White Allies | Leave a comment

Ukraine: & how we can help #StandWithUkraine

Ukraine flagUkraine flag. Credit: Ayhan Altun/Getty Images

click on the images below for links about where and how to donate money or supplies
and how to support people directly.

from the Guardian: Etsy websitefrom the BBC:
Ukrainian woman at refugee camp in Poland.

from the UK government page:
Image of Ukrainian flag with text that reads: Ukraine: how you can help overlaid.

and a woman playing the piano at Lviv Station as Ukrainians leave their country

Posted in Allyship, Democracy, Gifts, History, Human Rights, Love, Refugees, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Valentine’s Day Traditions

There are at least three different saints who answer to the name Valentine or Valentinus. One legend of St Valentine tells how, when in prison, he sent a letter to a young girl—possibly his jailor’s daughter. He signed it: ‘From your Valentine’.

Some countries dislike or actively ban Valentine’s Day celebrations, some countries celebrate a friendship day so everyone is included and many people in many countries celebrate Valentine’s Day, despite war or collapsing economies. Here are eight:

I

In Iceland, the traditional celebrations are Men’s Day (Bóndadagur) and Women’s Day (Konudagur), celebrated in the months of þorri (end-January to end-February) and Góa (end-February to end-March) according to the Old Norse Calendar. Traditions include husbands wearing only one trouser leg and hopping … in the cold.Iceland holiday, Valentine's Day special

L

In Liaoning Province in China they hold kissing competitions at the end of December. Kissing competition kicks off in NE China

O

In Ontario, Canada, Ontarians apparently spend the majority of their Valentine’s Day budget on jewellery, while many of their fellow Canadians spend it on flowers or sweets.Buy 925 Sterling Silver Filigree Canadian Maple Leaf Charm Open Heart Pendant Necklace Online in Indonesia. B01ASBPIM0

V

In Venezuela they celebrate the Day of Love and FriendshipEl Día de Amor y La Amistad – which includes everyone. And friendship is free, even if chocolate is expensive.

E

In Estonia they also celebrate Friends’ Day, a celebration of platonic love that includes those in all kinds of relationship: they call it Sõbrapäev.

Thanks for Great Friends

Y

In Yemen, where the war that began in 2015 still continues, fuel has become a gift of love. In 2020, on Valentine’s Day, people gave each other fuel for generators and cars.
One person said:

At terrible times like this, love is petrol.
It’s better than flowers or a gift on
Valentine’s Day.

O

The best things to do on Valentine’s Day in Oklahoma include (at least they were in 2014) eating chocolate, listening to spoken poetry and spotting bald eagles (February is, apparently, the peak month).

U

And in Ukraine, there’s a legend that if lovers walk together through this tunnel in Klevan, near Kiev, and make a wish, their wish will come true.

Posted in Flowers/Blossom, Food, Gifts, Jewellery, Love, Presents, Traditions, Valentine's Day | Leave a comment

Worldwide Ways of Welcoming New Year

Different peoples in different countries do different things to welcome a new year.

In SIBERIA, in Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, and in the River Lena nearby, a Christmas Tree is taken to the bottom on new year’s eve. It’s usually freezing. I’m not sure why they do this … .

In BLACK AMERICA, New Year’s Eve is Watch Night, a night that remembers how, in 1862, New Year’s Eve was Freedom’s Eve, the eve of the day when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the beginning of the ending of slavery.

In ECUADOR años viejos or monigotes are made. Old clothes are filled with sawdust, topped with masks and set on fire to banish the bad (people) and bring in the good.

In JAPAN, at Joya no kane, temple bells are rung 108 times, beginning in the old year and ending at midnight. 108 is the number of ‘excessive desires’ a human has.

In GREECE, at Kalo Podariko, a pomegranate is smashed against the front door and the more seeds that scatter the more luck that family will have in the coming year.Juicy pomegranates

In INDIA new year is celebrated on different days in different ways in different traditions and parts of the country. Poila Boisakh, the start of the harvest season, is one of them:Indian New Year Traditions - In West BengalIn CHINA front doors are painted red, for good luck. Chinese new years are lunar years. This year, the Year of the Tiger, begins on 1 February.Chinese New Year Spring Festival couplets

In DENMARK, dishes are broken on friends’ doorsteps. The more broken dishes you find on your doorstep on new year’s day, the greater your good fortune in the coming year.

In CHILE, especially in Talca, people spend new year’s eve at the cemeteries of their loved ones to bring peace to the souls of the dead and luck to the living for the coming year. An old cemetery in Chile. Photo Credit

In SPAIN, twelve grapes are eaten at midnight, one for each stroke of midnight, to bring twelve lucky months.Eating 12 Grapes at Midnight on New Year's Eve

In BALI, Nyepi Day, the spring equinox, is a day of silence and introspection. All lights, sounds and worldly activities stop while people vow to practise the qualities they value in the coming year.Nyepi 2020 - Bali Hindu New Year and Day of SilenceIn ETHIOPIA, not only is new year’s eve, as in India and Bali, a date celebrated elsewhere in the calendar, but the calendar itself is different. Enkutatash is celebrated in September and dates back to the Queen of Sheba’s return to her country from visiting King Solomon in Jerusalem. She was welcomed back with jewels, or enku. 17th-century AD painting of the Queen of Sheba from a church in Lalibela, Ethiopia and now in the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa

And, of course, there are many many other ways of welcoming the new year. Some of the ones above came from here. And here are some Black traditions. And several others are here including the Brazilian tradition of throwing white flowers or white candles into the sea to make offerings to Yemoja, the sea goddess, to ask for her blessing for the year.A faithful carries flowers as an offering for Yemanja, goddess of the sea, during a ceremony that is part of traditional New Year's celebrations on Co...

Happy New Year!

Posted in Allyship, Antiracism, Creativity, Flowers/Blossom, Food, Gifts, Human Rights, New Year Celebrations, Places, Racism | Leave a comment

Buy Black for Christmas (and beyond)

If you’re white, like me, perhaps you haven’t consciously thought about seeking out Black-owned businesses and shops to buy from. My own seeking-out was prompted by the marvellous Nova Reid (whose antiracism course has taught me so much about my own racism and how to unearth, interrogate and set about dismantling it). Here are some Black-owned businesses and a handful of Black writers (some of whom I found here):

Handmade soaps from Saboon Alee

Cards & printed mugs from Hood Greetings
Never Get Tek Fi EediatBeauty Products and Candles from Liha
Stocking fillers and all sorts of gorgeous goodies from Our Lovely Goods

Cushions and scrunchies and beautiful masks from The Cushion Maven

Incredible socks from Sock of a Kind

All kinds of Teddy Bears from Grin and Bear

 

Jewellery from AsaArtshop
Irregular Seashell Mother of Pearl Stud Drop Earrings, Birthday Gift, Present for Her, Gift for Her, Black Owned Business

Cards and wrapping paper and rubik’s cubes and more from Kazvare Made It
Wonder Women Rubik’s Cube | Puzzle

And then there’s poetry (and prose) from 4 Brown Girls Who Write

4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE are a poetry collective and sisterhood made up of Roshni Goyate, Sharan Hunjan, Sheena Patel and Sunnah Khan.

The collective was born on the waters of the Thames in 2017 where Sheena gathered friends on a boat to share in creativity and vulnerability. The four … formed a WhatsApp group that became a safe place to share and receive each other’s writing. They are a harbour and a sisterhood—each other’s biggest fans and fairest critics. This is their first collective offering of solo works.

And, finally, Nova Reid’s The Good Ally:
The Good Ally (Hardback)

Happy everything, and may 2022 be the year we learn to live with coronavirus the way we live with flu, as Chris Whitty said last April.

Posted in Allyship, Antiracism, Books, Christmas, Creativity, Gifts, Presents | Leave a comment

The Eleven, no, Twelve Days of COP26

When the Queen addressed world leaders at the beginning of COP26 she said:

Act for our children and our children’s children.

COP26, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties, follows The Paris Agreement, a 2015 international agreement on climate change. The aim of COP26 is to secure commitments from the world’s nations to cut global emissions by half and to keep 1.5 alive: to keep the earth’s temperature below 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial levels, by 2030.HOME - UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) at the SEC – Glasgow 2021 COP26’s intention is to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement (adopted in 2015, opened for signature in 2016, on 22 April, Earth Day). To date 192 parties have signed the Agreement (191 countries and the EU) which makes them accountable for keeping the world’s temperature below 1.5–2.0°C, by establishing climate-specific goals to reduce carbon footprint (known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs). Every five years, parties must submit updated NDCs.

Earth Day Flag.pngSo … on the first day of COP26, 1 November 2021, China & Russian were not represented, despite the fact that they emit large amounts of greenhouse gasses. Even so COP26 President Alok Sharma said:

The science is clear: the window of time left to keep the goal of 1.5℃ alive … to avoid the worst effects of climate change, is closing… . But with political will and commitment, we can, and must, deliver an outcome the world can be proud of.

Kenyan environment and climate activist Elizabeth Wathuti said:

We need you to respond with courage to the climate crisis … [this] is critical for our children, for our species, for so many living beings. Please open your hearts. And then act.

On the second day, 2 November 2021, 100 countries signed a Declaration on Forest and Land Use, to stop deforestation, to break the link between deforestation and agriculture by 2030 (trees are cut down to grow animal feed). This declaration includes funding. In 2014, there was little funding to replace income lost from growing animal feed. Brazil, Indonesia and Canada – countries with large forested areas – signed.

The third day, 3 November, 2021, was Finance Day: 450 financial institutions agreed to make sure their decisions were justified by and compliant with the pathway to 1.5C degrees. And that they’d help the developing world stop using coal.

On the fourth day, 4 November 2021, 40 countries signed to phase out coal-fired power. But NOT the USA, China or Australia.

On the fifth day, 5 November, 2021, young leaders demanded climate change action to protect their futures, led by YouNGO
Youthclimatemovement.pngOn the sixth day, 6 November 2021, 45 countries pledged urgent action and investment to protect nature and shift to more sustainable ways of farming.

The seventh day, 8 November, 2021, was Adaptation and Loss and Damage Day, the beginning of Implementation Week. Countries’ ministers began to work out how to cooperate to finance and implement agreements reached in the first week.

The eighth day, 9 November 2021, was Gender, Science and Innovation Day, on which Sir Patrick Vallance, the UK government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, said that climate change was a far bigger threat to the world than covid. But solutions could be found through technologies and people changing their behaviour. If the green choice becomes the easy choice, more people will change their behaviour.

On the ninth day, 10 November, 2021 the first draft decisions were published. A Rabbi, on Thought for the Day on this day, said: The world’s childrens’ futures are now at stake. Gordon Brown said that this first draft agreement included a phasing out of coal and fossil fuel subsidies. He said the draft agreement was the UN’s interpretation of the mood of the conference.

On the tenth day, 11 November 2021, China and the USA agreed to work together on climate change, despite being at odds over almost everything else. If these two countries can agree to cooperate on climate change, surely everyone else can? But, said Alok Sharma, ‘There is still a lot of work to do.’

On the eleventh day, 12 November 2021, the final scheduled day: despite the IPCC’s 6th Assessment report on Climate Change and its code-red warning for the earth, there was still a monumental challenge. At 7.15 this morning a second draft agreement was released: it included more ambitious targets towards 1.5C and more contrition about the failure to provide financial aid to poorer countries. But it wasn’t signed … .

On this day Elizabeth Wathuti said she wondered if any of the world’s leaders were actually listening to what the young climate activists were saying.

On the twelfth day, 13 November, 2021, the revised third draft agreement was, eventually, signed. Talks went through the night. Phasing down of fossil fuel subsidies and of coal itself remained in the agreement, but the original phrase had been phasing out. Countries must return with enhanced pledges for reducing greenhouse gasses to COP27 in Egypt, in 2022. And, on the big sticking point, finance, the transfer of money from developed to developing countries, a new paragraph was included that agreed to set up a continuing dialogue about – although not actual – financial reparations for the loss and damage suffered by developing countries.

As the talks continued into the afternoon, Frans Timmermans, speaking for the EU, said:

I wonder if we’re not at risk of stumbling in this marathon a couple of metres before the finish line … . For heavens’ sake don’t kill this moment … . This text allows us to act with the urgency that is essential for our survival … so I implore you to embrace this text so that we can bring hope to the hearts of our children and grandchildren who will not forgive us if we fail today.

When the agreement was adopted, late on this 12th day, Alok Sharma said:

The need for continual action and implementation, to match ambition, must continue throughout the decade. Today, we can say with credibility that we have kept 1.5 degrees within reach. But, its pulse is weak. And it will only survive if we keep our promises. If we translate commitments into rapid action.

The next crucial test will come in Egypt in 2022 where COP27 will he held. Will China, the USA and Brazil have enacted more ambitious plans to cut fossil fuels and the subsidies for them? And will discussions about reparations turn into realities? Will 1.5 be kept alive? Keep everything you’ve got crossed that they will, for the sake of all our children.Two children hugging in front of a wall.

Sources: are either linked to, or are from BBC Radio 4 & World Service news.

Posted in Climate Change, Equality | Leave a comment

Betty Campbell taught Black British history every month

On September 29, 2021, in Cardiff, a statue was unveiled to Betty Campbell, the first Black British headteacher in Wales, and the first to teach Black British History all the time (not just in Black History Monthwhich began in October 1987 in the UK, and is celebrated, in the UK, every October.)

This article, published when Betty Campbell died in 2017 (and partly reproduced here), appeared in the Independent. It tells the story of Campbell’s life and work. She was born Betty Johnson in 1934, and grew up in Butetown (also known as Tiger Bay, from the fierce currents on the River Severn) south Cardiff. She won a scholarship to Lady Margaret High School for Girls, where most of the other students were white. When Campbell told the headmistress she’d like to teach one day, she was told: ‘The problems would be insurmountable.’ She never forgot those words. ‘They made me more determined,’ she said. ‘I would become a teacher by hook or by crook.’

In 1960, Campbell went to Cardiff Teacher Training College, which had begun taking female students for the first time and, when a position opened up at Mount Stuart Primary School, in Butetown, she applied. ‘They hadn’t seen a black teacher before,’ she said. ‘It was as if you could do a job, but if you’re black you’re weren’t quite as good.’

Picture form the Independent article, here

Despite this, in the 1970s, Campbell became the first Black headteacher in Wales and promoted a diverse curriculum, one that included Black people’s experiences and their positive contribution to British society. Pupils have spoken of how every month was Black History Month. ‘Children,’ Campbell said, ‘should be made aware.’

Campbell taught a series of workshops for Black History Month to raise awareness of the role of Butetown’s citizens in the Second World War, and the involvement of their countries of origin, right up to her death. But Betty Campbell is a deplorable rarity in our education system. The numbers of Black headteachers in England (from a 2019 government School Teacher Workforce study) is a miserable 1% of the total in England (200 of 22,300). The numbers of Black teachers is not much better (2.5% of the total in England). And Black history is only taught during this month, October.

Josephine Namusisi-Riley, a Black woman I’ve recently met, tells a story about how, when she was Chair of Governors of a school in Lambeth, the school’s leadership was given the task of diversifying the teaching staff. But that task was changed to employing and retaining the best calibre staff. Obviously any school would and should do all it can to employ and retain the best calibre staff, but this change of wording dismissed the equally essential task of diversifying the teaching staff so that newly-recruited teachers would not only be well-qualified, but would represent their communities well. So that Black students would see someone who looked like them, leading them. And Black history might be taught, as Betty Campbell taught it, every month, not just in Black History Month.

{The last paragraph was edited at 15.30 on 14 October to include Josephine Namusisi-Riley’s name and more details of what happened when she was Chair of Governors of the school in Lambeth.}

Posted in Antiracism, Education, History, Human Rights, Racism | Leave a comment

White Allies Network, and Black British History

On 2 September, I joined the White Allies Network. They are, as they say on their website:

A network of people that are committed to learn and do what it takes to be counted true allies against racism. It consists of white people who aspire to be true allies and people of colour that are willing to journey with them towards that aim. The White Allies Network is open to all.

White Allies Network | Overview | Anti-racist education and action

At a Zoom meeting the ten qualities of Aspiring White Allies were named. They included being Ignorant, in the sense of saying, ‘I don’t understand,’ or, ‘I don’t know, but I want to learn.’ And Not Wallowing in White Guilt, but using white guilt as a prompt to apologise and take action. They also included being Courageous: being open to challenge and being challenged. And in one of Adrian Lock’s blogs, October 2020, he wrote:

To quote Black activist Angela Y. Davis: I’m no longer accepting the things I cannot change, I am changing the things I cannot accept.

Adrian Lock, a member of the White Allies Network Steering Group who has ‘Overall responsibility for maintaining the website and organising meetings’, showed us three short films. The first was made by Clive Myrie, called Who owns History?; the second by David Olusoga called The Alt History You Don’t Learn at School, and the third by Afua Hirsch called Where Are You From? All three films show aspects of, or are introductions to, Black British peoples’ history. They were all deeply moving. They showed Black British people not having access to their history or ancestry; people whose last names are the names of their ancestors’ slave owners not their true ancestors; people whom White British people have prevented from truly belonging; people whose history has been denied.

The Legacy of British Slavery centre (at Harvard), an educational and research project thats – among other things – documenting the lives of the enslaved to, ‘Recognise the humanity and individuality denied them by slavery,’ says its, A history which we have all been shaped by, albeit unequally: understanding that is a responsibility for all of us so that we may do things differently.’

I should have known about Black British history. But in my white privilege, my white supremacy, I have ignored it. (There’s no other word for it, Black people have lived in this country since Roman times: see the Alt History.) But I have ignored Black peoples’ desire – and their struggle – to belong here in the UK, to be as integral to this country’s history as any White person. As a young Black woman in David Olusoga’s Alt History said:

You can’t go forward without understanding your past.

Through the White Allies Network I’ve begun to learn about Black peoples’ history. I have much more to learn. But Black and White histories shouldn’t be kept separate. As Mercy Muroki, news presenter, says towards the end of Who Owns History?

No one race, no one group owns history. I’d like for us to start thinking about history in a collective sense. We should think of history as a British history. And that … will encourage people to feel British, to feel that they have a stake in British society.

Clive Myrie says:

British colonialism defines who we all are. It’s left a family album of different peoples and races. It is our story.

It is.

But, in this article, Patrick Vernon comments on the March 2021 Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities Report led by Tony Sewell. It concluded that there is no evidence that the UK is institutionally racist. Vernon writes that this is:

So out of step with our live experiences and our long history of campaigning for civil rights. [later on he writes]: What I found especially disturbing was the report’s efforts to play down the transatlantic slave trade and colonisation which caused injustice to millions of our people over 400 years. We are told that the Maafa or the Maangamizi was ‘character building’ and we ‘need to move on’ from this crime against humanity.

Clearly, there is a some way to go before our histories are collectively, jointly embraced. But I commit myself, as an Aspiring White Ally, to educate myself about our joint histories, to refuse to deny the reality of Black British peoples’ live experiences and to become a true ally to Black British people, against racism.

Posted in Allyship, Antiracism, Equality, History, Human Rights, Love, Morality, Psychology, Racism, White Allies | Leave a comment

Reading as a writer. Writing as a reader. And the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021

Last week a friend of mine and I talked about the six books shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. We’ve done it before and it’s always illuminating (and fun) but because we both write fiction, our conversations are often also about the nature of reading fiction as a writer. Neither of us read – at least at first – for the technical practicalities of writing (although you’d think we would). We both read for story first and foremost.

In preparation for our conversation we both wrote notes about the shortlisted books but I’d forgotten that my notes included remarks about some technicalities. (Perhaps because we both write we notice the technicalities without realising we do.) Anyway, what we agreed really matters is that no technicality, however sparkling or brilliant, should undermine, get in the way of or prevent us reading the story. Story is queen.

When we talked about Piranesi by Susanna Clarke I realised, as I was talking about the hypnotic effect the novel had on me, that Clarke had performed the same hypnosis on me as her protagonist undergoes. The language is simple, Clarke’s imagination is limitless but her glorious technical feat was one I didn’t recognise until my friend and I were talking. Which is exactly how it should be. I was absorbed by the story entirely. How it was written came later.

In my notes for How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House by Cherie Jones I wrote:

I was immediately engaged by The One-Armed Sister – and emotional engagement is what I long for in any art form. And I was immediately impressed by Jones’s ease in different voices, different persons (you, we) and the use of what I discover are known as modal verbs, verbs that express necessity or possibility (you can be … we could be). (And this is a first novel.) I was especially impressed because Jones employs all these textual tricks seamlessly (I didn’t notice until I’d read for at least a few paragraphs each time). But everything she does, grammatically, textually, technically, serves the story, is buried in the story. I didn’t notice the tricks, I noticed that my heart was beating faster, that I was suddenly inside a different person’s head, that I felt complicit in the harsh events of the story.

Which leads me to writing as a reader. George Saunders – in his book about writing fiction, A Swim in a Pond in The Rain – talks about the TICHN trolley. Into this trolley a reader will put the Things I (she) Couldn’t Help Noticing. And unless the writer returns to resolve or explain or at least acknowledge that she put these Things into her story in the first place the reader(s) will justifiably stop reading. These Things might include: why a man finds himself in a completely different world that he thinks is the only world (when it isn’t) in Piranesi, or why a man wakes up as a beetle. But whatever the writer puts into her reader’s TICHN trolley she has a duty to remember and return to these Things, if she wants to keep her reader(s) reading.

The Women’s Prize judges are going to have a hard time deciding on a winner. The result will be announced on 9 September.

Posted in Books, Creativity, Fiction, Literary Prizes, Psychology, reading, Writers, Writing, Writing Courses | Leave a comment

Black Minds Matter (BMM) : donations #BMMUK21K

I’ve been in therapy, but the reasons for my therapy have never included the trauma of racism, of living inside a black or brown skin in a white-supremacist society. Nor have I been misinterpreted because the colour of my therapist’s skin was different from my own. Which is why Black Minds Matter (BMM) is so necessary, so very important. Why Black therapists who won’t misinterpret a Black client’s experience (as a white therapist might) are essential; why Black Minds Matter provides free therapy (funded by donations) to clients.

Sarora Knots Supporting Black Mind's Matter U.K — Sarora KnotsBlack Minds Matter UK was founded in June, 2020 and, by December, 500 clients had begun therapy through the organisation, but BMM needs more funding for the 1,200 people on its waiting list.

Candice Carty-Williams, writer of the award-winning novel, Queenie, said in an interview with Stylist in 2019:

Young black women need to know that you can be vulnerable and ask for help. So I decided … to create this character who isn’t perfect, or strong, who can’t endure everything – because learning that is when I started to get better.

She gave Queenie, the young Black heroine of her novel, an experience that stops some Black people from going into therapy. Queenie and her Jamaican-born grandmother, Veronica, have this conversation (pages 283-284):

Queenie: I was the first person in this family to finish school, to go to college, to get a degree, to get a full-time job –
Veronica: Yes! And di firs’ person to go to psychotherapy. I am telling you. You are nat going. And dat is dat.

But when Queenie’s grandfather joins the conversation, he says:

Maybe if all ah we had learned to talk about our troubles we wouldn’t carry so much on our shoulders all the way to the grave. … Maybe we haffi learn from this new generation, Veronica.

There are testimonials from Black Minds Matter’s clients here and one of the Black therapists who works through BMM (and elsewhere) writes about the impact of George Floyd’s murder and coronavirus on Black mental health, here. Here’s an extract:

It has been my honour to witness my Black clients move away from what makes them unhappy, become more grounded, take back their autonomy, take better care of themselves and gain greater awareness and self-acceptance. I have seen my Black clients awaken and create beautiful lives where ‘everyday may not be joyful but they find joy in everyday’.

The mental health charity MIND is aware of the problem and there’s an American branch of Black Minds Matter. And, at the end of this link, from Sunshine Behaviourial Health, there’s a list of culturally competent mental health providers in America. Also, in September 2022, an American mental health clinician and Visiting Lecturer at Indiana University Northwest, Dr Mark Maluga, recommended a Chicago café that uses all proceeds to fund psychotherapy for individuals of color to access psychotherapy. The café also seeks to fight the stigma of psychotherapy in the Black community.

Here in the UK, the fictional Queenie’s therapy was through the NHS, but the waiting lists are long. I was lucky enough to be able to pay for my therapy but without it, my life would have remained an internally-frightening, unstable one. Please think about making a donation to Black Minds Matter. When I made mine just now, I saw they’ve reached 93% of their initial target. But this is an ongoing need. There will be more people needing therapy and more financial targets to reach, so please make a donation for the sake of those who badly need to talk to someone who’ll understand them, someone qualified to help them put their lives back together, someone who can give them, as one BMM client says here:

Help to get me out of the darkest space I found myself in, with a … secure path to remain out of it once our sessions finished.

I edited this post on 1 November 2021 to include resources for Black American men who suffer from trauma and depression and for whom mental health treatment is often difficult to access. Black Men Matter provides information about mental health issues among Black American men and places where help can be found in the US. Importantly, they say this: Admitting you need care is a sign of strength, not weakness. And here’s another resource for Black American Teenagers.

And from time to time I add resources that people send me. Today, 9 February 2022, I’m adding a resource that discusses the impact of a lack of financial literacy in the Black community and ways to change that. And today, 7th December 2022, I’m adding another link to mental health resources for black folk in the US, from Legacy Healthcare.

And, on World Mental Health Day, 10 October 2022, the Black Equity Organisation posted this on twitter (there aren’t any links behind the images, but at least the images name the organisations so you can search for them):ImageAnd, at the beginning of March, 2023, this resource, which is a guide to help and treat alcoholism and mental health among black men in the USA was sent to me.

Posted in Antiracism, Fiction, Health, Mental Health, Psychology, Racism, Writing | Leave a comment

Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021

This week is the week of the Women’s Prize Virtual Shortlist Festival. For the (almost invisible) amount of £12 you’ll have access to three evenings of readings by the shortlisted writers: there are some wonderful works to hear extracts from on Monday 14th, Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th.

I have loved Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: she hypnotised me into another world entirely. And both Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and Cherie Jones’s How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House took me into worlds that showed me how Black lives have been lived in hostile worlds.

The winning novel will be announced on Wednesday 7 July. And I would love any of these three attitude-altering, knowledge-and-mind-expanding truly great stories to win. With a possible preference for the last one in my list of three. But it’s a difficult call.

Posted in Antiracism, Books, Creativity, Equality, Human Rights, Literary Prizes, Psychology, Racism, White Fragility, Women, Writing | Leave a comment

Opening up set to blossom at home. But what about India (her vaccine generosity and her coronavirus surge)?

A beautiful blossom for our oh-so-close-to-lockdown-easing here in the UK.

The Wayfaring Tree (Virburnum lantana): a sign you’re homeward bound.

But spare a thought for India, home to the world’s largest coronavirus vaccine manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India (SII) but now also home to the worst surge in coronavirus since the pandemic began. It’s complicated, but this end-March Guardian article reports:

India’s foreign ministry and the Serum Institute of India … has partnerships with AstraZeneca, the Gates Foundation and the Gavi vaccine alliance to make up to 1bn doses for poorer countries … . India’s programme of “vaccine maitri” (vaccine friendship) in which it has sold or given away more coronavirus vaccines than it has administered at home, has been praised by some locally as a diplomatic success.

The National Geographic also reported, in late April, that:

India increased its oxygen exports to other countries by a 734 percent in January 2021 [but that] a briefing by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, says India’s daily COVID-19 cases are now double the number in the previous peak in September 2020.

The G7 needs to agree to make vaccines free to poorer countries and / or temporarily lift patents on vaccines, following Joe Biden’s lead, so they can be manufactured locally. This 6 May Guardian article unravels the knots, and writes:

The former British prime minister Gordon Brown, now a UN global ambassador and a leader of the campaign to equalise access to vaccines, said: “I welcome the US decision on temporary patent waivers, which makes the Covid-19 vaccine accessible. Now we must make the vaccine affordable. No one is safe until everyone is safe and on 11 June at the G7 leaders meeting, the richest countries should make the momentous decision to pay two-thirds of the $60bn (£43bn) cost of vaccinating the world.”

So now is surely the time to unite and make sure that poorer countries including India – the country that has exported so many vaccines and so much oxygen to help others – be allowed to keep (and manufacture) their own vaccines until all the world’s people are safe.

The Indian Flame Lily

Posted in Coronavirus, Death and Dying, Equality, Flowers/Blossom, vaccinations | Leave a comment

Stephen Lawrence Day, 22 April 2021

We will no longer ignore, the racism we all deplore.

We will never forget Stephen Lawrence.

Directed by Simon Frederick. Written by Simon Frederick, Marcus Jones & Max Cyrus. Narrated by Max Cyrus

And, from the Stephen Lawrence Day Foundation website:

Stephen Lawrence was born and grew up in south-east London, where he lived with his parents Neville and Doreen, his brother Stuart and sister Georgina.

Like most young people, he juggled an active social life, school work, family commitments, and part-time employment. But he also had ambitions to use his talent for maths, art, and design to become an architect, and wanted to have a positive impact on his community.

Tragically, his dream of becoming an architect was never realised. On 22 April 1993, at the age of just 18, Stephen was murdered in an unprovoked racist attack. He didn’t know his killers and his killers didn’t know him.

After the initial police investigation, five suspects were arrested but not convicted. A public inquiry into the handling of Stephen’s case was held in 1998, leading to the publication of the Macpherson Report, which has been called ‘one of the most important moments in the modern history of criminal justice in Britain’.

It led to profound cultural changes in attitudes to racism, to the law and to police practice. It also paved the way for a greater understanding of discrimination of all forms and new equalities legislation.

Get involved, here.

And read his brother, Stuart Lawrence’s, new book, Silence is not an Option.

Image
The book is aimed at children between the ages of 10 and 16, but as the publisher, Scholastic, writes:

Stuart’s aim with this book is to use his own experience to help young people – to help all people – harness the good in themselves and in the world around them, using that fire of positivity to create change in their lives.

Posted in Antiracism, Art, Books, Democracy, Equality, History, Human Rights, Morality | 1 Comment

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: Bill Gates (& Gordon Brown)

In this Guardian review of Bill Gates’s How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Gordon Brown writes:

Success [in combating climate change] will come by demonstrating that the real power countries can wield to create a better world is not the power they can exercise over others but the power they can exercise with others. [my bold]

Among other possibilities for global cooperation, Brown is talking about COP26, the 26th Conference of the Parties (on Climate Change) that should have been held at the end of 2020 but, for obvious reasons, wasn’t. It’s now planned for November this year, in Glasgow, and, because of agent orange’s departure from the White House, there will, thank goodness, be an American contingent there too.

Bill Gates advocates technological solutions, naturally:

Show me a problem and I’d look for a technology to fix it.

but he also says:

I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change.

And that’s the problem with both an agreed global climate change policy and agreed global action. Gordon Brown quotes John Maynard Keynes’ frustration when he couldn’t persuade the political leaders of the 1930s that his economic ideas offered a way out of world depression and mass unemployment. He said, of politics, that it promoted, “The survival of the unfittest”. And that, “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

May the world leaders and environmentalists who will meet in November in Glasgow, as Gordon Brown says, enlist:

Vested interests like big oil … . [And may] The populist nationalist and protectionist rhetoric of irresponsible demagogues … be taken head on … . Supporters of a stronger set of commitments [on reducing emissions] will have to show why sharing sovereignty is in every nation’s self-interest, and that coordinated global action is indeed the only way to end the mismatch between the scale of the environmental problems we face and our current capacity to solve them.

For the sake of our children and their children, for the sake of their children’s children and the generations to come, may the world’s politicians and climate change experts pull together for a cleaner, healthier, sustainably unpolluted world so that James Lovelock’s  2010 words:

If there were a billion people living on the planet, we could do whatever we please. But there are nearly seven [nearly eight now] billion. At this scale, life as we know it today is not sustainable.

don’t come true.

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A Valentine to the Earth: Terra Carta

On 11 January the Prince of Wales announced Terra Carta, Earth Charter, a Magna Carta for the twenty-first century: the basis of a recovery plan for nature, people and the planet. A valentine to the earth, I thought. He said:

Humanity has made incredible progress over the past century, yet the cost of this progress has caused immense destruction to the planet that sustains us. We simply cannot maintain this course indefinitely … . It is time to focus on the future we wish to build, and indeed leave, for generations to come.

Terra Carta sets out aims for combining the power of nature with the transformative power, innovation and resources of the private sector. Banks, oil companies, AstraZeneca and Unilever to name a few from a long list, have already signed up. Their aim:

To identify ways to set our planet on a fundamentally more sustainable trajectory. Together [they will] develop a charter of ambitious, but practical action … to put Nature, and the protection of Nature’s capital – from which we draw an annual return – at the heart of how we operate.

Here is the Summarium and here the full Terra Carta.

The fundamental principles set out in Magna Carta, that the King be subject to law and no free person be deprived of freedom without due process of law (Habeas Corpus) now finds, in its sister Charter, the intention that we be subject to the natural laws that sustain our Earth, and that no free planet should be deprived of the freedom to breathe.

Posted in Climate Change, Creativity, Equality, Good News, Health, Living Standards, One Green Thing, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Feeling Low? Try karunavirus. Seriously.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been feeling pretty low about the state of our corona-contaminated world (not to mention other depressing events) so I went looking for something uplifting. And I found karunavirus. Seriously. Nothing to do with that virus; all to do with kindness, compassion, good news, good things and full of opportunities to volunteer to broadcast good news, begin something good, join something good, read about something good, do something good. Karuna is a Sanskrit word for compassion.

This December 2020 article reports Japanese plans to build wooden satellites that burn up when they plunge back to Earth without releasing harmful substances into the atmosphere. And without filling space with junk.

In an effort to reduce space trash … Sumitomo Forestry, a Japan-based wood processing company, said they’ve begun research on the ideal wood for space and will partner with Kyoto University to test the material in an extreme environment on Earth. They say the satellite will be ready by 2023.


full story here

And much much more good news here, to read, to do and to be. To keep all our spirits up (for at least some of the time) until it really does become a happy new year.

Posted in Climate Change, Coronavirus, Creativity, Good News, Good Things, Love, News, Science, Uncategorized | 3 Comments