How do you separate the personal from the professional? We are taught to deal in the ‘objective’, in measured things. But the whole idea of reimagining how we look at landscapes – our so-called ‘working lands’ of farms and forests … Continue reading
The current government is claiming a rockstar economy – never mind that most of the activity is a bubble (immigration, earthquake rebuilds & house price rises raising aggregate demand, while we still aim for 3rd world production systems producing cheap … Continue reading
I read this line from a multicultural anthology of how we relate to the places within which we live. “… helping us move toward a new sanity and an old wisdom in our relationship with nature.” Barnhill, D.L. (ed) 1999, … Continue reading
I have stood on hilltops in the south and felt the bone-biting blast of Antarctic winds. I have felt the difference between that and the relief you get when you shift to a space three to four tree heights out … Continue reading
Reblogging because this article is far less about the Ruataniwha Dam than it is about shifting our gaze away from the idea that we cannot change the paradigm of land use, and so we demand more dams, more fertiliser, more … Continue reading
Remember Geoffrey Palmer suggesting we need an inquiry into the public service in 2014? Low morale and the fear culture which gets in the way of “free and frank advice without fear or favour” were some of the issues. There … Continue reading
This is a paper in two parts, or perhaps three. This first part looks to some of the mechanical assumptions within New Zealand’s colonial land management, and a glimpse at the potential by shifting that view. There is so much … Continue reading
What is it to belong? This came back to me last night in a conversation about the world and its future. We are taught to distance ourselves, as if that is some virtue. I no longer believe that any more. … Continue reading
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I’m reposting this old post The Wisdom of Intimacy because I am working on something about the shifting of perspective from one place to another. We move from the intimacy of the field to the office and make our decisions there. … Continue reading
Regional Councillor Debbie Hewitt is quite right that should the Ruataniwha Dam go ahead it will be “absolutely transformational” (quoted in Hawke’s Bay Today April 2017). You need only look to Mid-West rural America, whose communities were also sold the … Continue reading
Historical Footnote: Homo sapiens Once, on the ex-planet Earth, there was a species Homo sapiens – who were ironically not very sapiens (wise) at all. They became extinct after about 80,000 years in existence, which is pretty dumb. Homo erectus … Continue reading
I have Tom Wessels’ The Myth of Progress on a shelf. Tom has produced some wonderful books on historically continuous change across our wider landscapes. He sees patterns in that place where people and landscapes meet. He takes to task what we mean by … Continue reading
More evidence has come out that tax cuts don’t lead to economic growth, and let’s not go into how people ought to measure progress or growth. But isn’t small government, and commensurately low tax rates, what the Neoliberal economists have … Continue reading
Where will science be in the future? If we argue against the excesses and anomalies of Modernity – the metaphor of the reducible machine, knowable by breaking everything into soulless bits – and we also argue that many of the philosophical … Continue reading
To know something, really *know* something, do you have to have a deeper connection? Do you have to love it, belong to it, to know it? Or do you do the opposite, and sit outside? We have presumed that objectifying … Continue reading
I am fascinated by our propensity to tilt toward authoritarianism in certain times. They provide a delusion of hope. Someone promises to make it all better, and something in us is attracted to the personality cult of bullies and what … Continue reading
Why don’t we teach our kids to think like this – in feedbacks and multiple effects, not simple lines of one thing’s effect on only one other thing? It’s idiotic. You never do one thing. Especially not those things … Continue reading
There are so many examples both past and present where taking a decentralised approach to managing water in dry landscapes provides multiple benefits. Such examples tend to be low capital as well as suited to a particular people and place – … Continue reading
Musings from an old blog about how a forest flows. It is a metaphor on life. Is thinking the way AN Whitehead argued – The Flux of Things as the essence of it all, with the observer a part … Continue reading
This is inspired by a conversation with a dear friend who doesn’t hug much. I have a question … well, two. First one. Do we make room for creativity anymore – for the synthesisers? (My friend was one of the … Continue reading
I have a copy of James Rebank’s A Shepherd’s Life. It was where I first came across the word “Hefted” – of animals or humans embedded in a place – intuitively in sync and harmony with … Source: The Future … Continue reading
I have a copy of James Rebank’s A Shepherd’s Life. It was where I first came across the word “Hefted” – of animals or humans embedded in a place – intuitively in sync and harmony with place – of it … Continue reading
I end up getting buried in arguments with technologists about GE vs no-GE and it really is pointless unless we can go a step deeper into the *context* of how and where we apply science and technology. I am accused … Continue reading
Edward Abbey – he of Desert Solitaire, one of the classics questioning the values of our modern world – wrote a short and scathing essay of a laboratory scientist intent on studying dog behaviour because “no one had done it … Continue reading
If we could only see the landscapes and our cities and towns as multifunctional systems rather than machines of single function silos, we could achieve so much. Low impact design. Soft systems. Rebuild landscape function. Agroecological. But we were taught … Continue reading
These are the sentiments of a husbandman, a farmer, a forester. You can teach all the agronomic head stuff you want, pile on the degrees; but if you don’t have the heart to see more in land, plants, animals and … Continue reading
Written when Donald Trump was elected President. And now he is there and it isn’t just a dream. And he hasn’t stopped the knee jerk, foolish rhetoric. He really is that unsuited to preside.
Reblogging because we are in the grip of another drought in Hawke’s Bay, and nothing much has changed. Yet there are all the examples in the world from which to learn, and beautifully written books by some of the minds … Continue reading
I’m curious about how we lose empathy – in self or as a whole culture – toward people, or life, or land. How we lose that sense that we are all connected, that we belong to each other. How do … Continue reading
I recall some time in the distant past having to put up with Wordsworth going on a bit about ‘golden’ daffodils. Saccharine sweet. They’re not even golden. More yellow really – similar to broom. Now for the colour of deep, … Continue reading
The argument for GM Food is supported by those taking a number of positions: 1. That GM will increase food production and we need to feed the world (false on both counts); 2. that GM will provide business opportunities for our … Continue reading
Part of my healing was to get to the end of that wharf. I’d come almost six hours, with a night a little to the north of middle. I’d started with a feeling of elation that is hard to explain. … Continue reading
I’ve been reading David James Duncan’s The River Why. The movie does absolutely no justice to this book. I suppose big philosophy books like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or Catch 22, will always struggle to get the questions … Continue reading
Reblogging because of a conversation with a High School teacher at Lake Karapiro today, recovering from a couple of Waka Ama races. We talked of the rise of the administrative and mechanical minds destroying effectiveness in pursuit of various charades … Continue reading
Tactic one for changing our political environment. Hmmmmm….. How about, as the first one, we refocus on strategy, not technocratic analysis? Strategy requires thinking qualitatively – long and broad through connections. Where are we wanting to go? What are the … Continue reading
The South Island West Coast of New Zealand is a colony of its eastern neighbour Canterbury. Think of all the gold, the beautiful timber, the coal, the fish. Think of the tourism dollars flowing from that extraordinary raised coastal road … Continue reading
Here lie so many interesting questions – the idea of land ‘ownership’. Is it a modern social construct? We used to live in tribal common lands – in much of Europe as well as in Aotearoa; in land referred to … Continue reading
In the late 1940s my father came down from the East Coast to be a shepherd on Omakere Station in Central Hawke’s Bay. Part of the work was removing regenerated shrublands of manuka and kanuka and turning them into pasture … Continue reading
Why do we manage land the way we do? Why does New Zealand focus on ever-more gross production over a great scale of sameness? Why do we talk of “feeding the world” when we can at best feed 40 million … Continue reading
I was going to write something about how to create a better economy … and society … and culture … and environment – because they all go together, because they are all connected, and you cannot know, understand or make … Continue reading
Yesterday, a Monday, I saw my first Red Admiral since a day in April 2015. You will say I am not observant. I would say I am …. at least for land and the things in the scape of land. Don’t … Continue reading
I had an interesting conversation today heading into the beauty of the Eastern Wairarapa on the road to Castlepoint and Riversdale. The question was put, why do you even care about the future? The planet will be fine. People are … Continue reading
John Key has resigned. Some of the media is trumpeting the myth that New Zealanders has been well looked after under his term. This rankles. Just because a deal maker and spin doctor in a suit tells us that we … Continue reading
I keep notes, in a black Moleskine notebook with its history and paper, Bruce Chatwin and all that. They come in various sizes and lie in a drawer. Some on a shelf. I’ve been writing less in them since I … Continue reading
There is a part of me – that part steeped in my education – that seeks to dig deep into knowing, and from there, solution. I think I try to dig deeper than most – and depth comes from synthesis … Continue reading
I published this over a year ago, and it still gets a lot of traffic. The Ruataniwha Dam is now under review, and the new Hawke’s Bay Regional Council is doing quite frankly an excellent job of peeling back the … Continue reading
What does stability mean? How do you provide for it? If you are student of ecology you see patterns of disturbance everywhere. Stability comes from dancing through the inevitable disturbance. Functional integrity comes from a position of accepting change … Continue reading
I drove home from the Otaki Gorge this afternoon. Stopped on the one lane suspension bridge thirty metres over the gorge. Wanted to just sit there, in the car. Own it. Just breathe it in. But a car was behind … Continue reading
