I came across this Mahatma Gandhi quote for the first time in the last ever printed edition of The Ecologist magazine yesterday. I like it a lot as it helps to quell the sense of  helplessness and ‘this problem is too big and too complex for little old me to do anything about’.

Even the smallest things get noticed and have an impact in their own way so by my buying eggs from the local lady with hens and our drastically reducing consumption of meat (and never eating cheap meat produced in hellish animal factories) and our decision to not fly and to drive only when necessary and to spend our money on food which has not had petrochemical fertilisers and pesticides used on them and by turning away from all household chemicals which are not derived from natural plant sources ARE actually all having an impact.

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Ever since I started my beginner’s cabinet making course I’ve been intrgiued by the differences between modern woodworking techniques and the the more traditional methods such as Green Woodworking (like chair bodging).

Why use green wood?

Well Mike Abbott who is, as you’ll read, the guy that ended up teaching me explains in his article of the Summer 2009 edition of Permaculture Magazine that:

Green wood is wood that has not dried or seasoned. Green woodworkers usually start with a fresh log rather than a dry plank for a host of very good reasons. They can be categorised as follows:

• Enhanced strength and quality.
• Better workability.
• Simpler and faster seasoning.
• Much lower cost.
• Numerous advanteges to society.
• Many environmental advantages.

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I finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy last week – an amazing novel for the ‘globally warmed generation’ – very dark and bleak tale of a man and his young son walking though a world destroyed by humans (I presumed a nasty combination of resource depletion + climatic change resulting in a global nuclear war scenario). The book was spellbindingly well written in very poetic prose but now I am left with terrible images and even more fear about the future of our species doing everything it can to ensure we destroy the environment which supports us.

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