• The I and the We

    The I and the We

    For this week’s post I wanted to share this poem by Adrienne Rich which came to me via Nora Bateson’s facebook timeline (thank you Nora), and speaks to me about one of the tragedies of modernity- the fixation on the individual. In Those Years In those years, people will say, we lost trackof the meaning…

  • Democracy: An Appropriate Scale?

    Democracy: An Appropriate Scale?

    I’m very grateful to live in a democracy , but its clear that democracy is struggling to deliver for everyone, everywhere, right now. Could that be because it has an appropriate scale? There is something about our culture in the Globalized North that we tip our hats to hierarchies of power, and expect the most…

  • Good Neighbours

    Good Neighbours

    I am pleased to say I had a good few ideas for this week’s short blog (again Thursday not Wednesday, sorry), but after attending an excellent webinar from the University of Guelph’s History Roundtable yesterday, i had to get a few lines down about it. As a researcher who often looks backwards to go forwards,…

  • Sustainability: The Really Long View

    Sustainability: The Really Long View

    This Tuesday I started back as a Teaching Assistant at the University of Waterloo on the undergraduate course ‘Sustainability: The Really Long View’, taught by Prof. Stephen Quilley. It’s the third time I have TA-ed this course and I love it! The course is designed to bring a sense of perspective on the problems we…

  • Singing My Way Back Home

    Singing My Way Back Home

    I’m preparing a Spanish tortilla in my folks kitchen. I can only describe the sounds coming out of my phone as “fluid landscape”. The Reeling by Brighde Chaimbeul, the award-winning young piper from Skye. We had a family holiday on Skye in September 1998 that I will never forget, and the Reelings are bringing back…