Building Wellbeing Together: debrief

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Oct 012018
 
Building Wellbeing Together: debrief

In September 2017, I was part of the delivery team for a major gathering on this theme, hosted by the Network of Wellbeing and Hawkwood College. This quasi-conference aimed to provide an overview of the wellbeing sector in the UK, and it’s a vibrant and encouraging picture. Among daily bad news, it’s great to hear […]

WHAT MAKES A WILD BOAR WILD?

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Dec 092017
 
WHAT MAKES A WILD BOAR WILD?

  This true tale of animal passion comes from a showpiece of sustainable forestry in the Scottish Highlands, a project which I visited on a trip last year. Boar and pigs were part of many traditional forestry systems all over Britain.         Alan feeding the so-called wild boar In this case, the […]

Bello Bolzano – Schöne Bozen: Cross-cultural delights of Austrian Italy

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Oct 182017
 
Bello Bolzano – Schöne Bozen: Cross-cultural delights of Austrian Italy

Alan Heeks writes… I’ve been keen to visit Bolzano for many years: perhaps because of Sudtirol’s cross-cultural history, perhaps because I have a friend whose German-speaking mother emigrated to England from here. Anyway, my first visit delighted me: Bolzano has charm, history, and lots more. Bolzano streets Bolzano’s location is magnificent: in a deep Alpine […]

Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain

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Sep 172017
 
Thomas Mann – The Magic Mountain

Thomas Mann is an author who deserves to be taken seriously. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 and is one of Germany’s greatest twentieth-century writers. You may know him through the beautiful film of his novel, Death in Venice. However, The Magic Mountain is not an easy read. It’s over 700 pages […]

Getting happy about President Trump

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Jul 062017
 
Getting happy about President Trump

“We’ve got to stop acting out hate” Charles Eisenstein A recent article by the young American writer Charles Eisenstein offers the best insight I’ve found into the upside of the Trump era. For a start, he points out that no one can pretend anymore that the status quo is basically intact. This period of intensifying […]

Donald Trump and the Second Coming

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Jan 102017
 
Donald Trump and the Second Coming

This guest blog was written by Maria Trap, and is reproduced with her permission.               by Matt Wuerker, Politico After more than 2000 years since the birth of his son God felt that it was more than time to stage the second coming. He felt it was actually getting […]

Face-offs with cows, and flying chickens. Lessons in community from Ethiopian roads

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Jan 012017
 
Face-offs with cows, and flying chickens. Lessons in community from Ethiopian roads

It happens so often, you suspect the animals must enjoy it: why else do they spread the full width of the tarmac, instead of using the broad gravel verges?  The cows are the worst: they glower balefully as if they might charge, and only turn aside from our approaching vehicle at the very last minute.  […]

Why African Fact is Happier Than Fiction

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Jan 012017
 
Why African Fact is Happier Than Fiction

Recently I’ve been reading The Granta Book of the African Short Story.  When I travel, I like to read something connected with my destination, so this book went with me on a recent trip to Kenya to see the work of Farm Africa: a UK Charity who enable peasant farms in East Africa to adapt […]

FOURTEEN GENERATIONS OF WISDOM AND WINE – Viniculture in Alsace

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Nov 132016
 
FOURTEEN GENERATIONS OF WISDOM AND WINE - Viniculture in Alsace

One of many highlights on my recent holiday in Alsace was a wine tasting at Emile Beyer, one of the region’s long established wine producers. It was guided by Christian Beyer, the fourteenth generation of the clan, and it was the most eloquent exposition of the wine-maker’s craft I’ve ever heard. He commented that the […]