Finally
There will be another newsletter later this month, towards the end of May. With luck and a lot of hard work, there may well be news on release dates and/or Advance Retail Copies of the above-mentioned Tales. I am also working hard to ensure my website is up and running very soon too. A lot of things to do.
Today, the 6th of May, is national Scottish parliament election day. I cannot vote, which is frustrating, but I am hopeful that the result will be a good one for democracy and, indeed, Scottish independence. For those of you who do not take an interest in UK politics, essentially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is in the throes of breaking up into its national parts. It will not be an easy or swift process, but it is one which I would suggest cannot now be stopped, increasingly since the idiocy of the Brexit vote. History is turning, times are changing. Whenever you can vote, do so.
The world we live in is at a point of similar change. All too often, people assume things will continue along the same path they have in recent history, but recent history is just that, a snapshot in time. Move the scale a little and it is hard not to notice how we as a species are still relatively new. All of civilisation itself has occurred within a tiny timeframe, the portion since the industrial revolution even more microscopic. Yet, it is this portion which is altering our planet at a ridiculously fast rate.
It is easy to place our heads in the sand and ignore the damage, ignore the issues. It is easy to overlook the changes, to simply focus on the day-to-day, the simple acts of making a living, eating, sleeping, rinse and repeat. And this is how you can be controlled, how you can lose a sense of your own individual power.
Some people think about the changes in the world and then give in to despair, they do not see how they can make a difference. It is all too easy to lose hope.
However, remember the refugia? Those small mountain valleys where trees rested, biding their time, to once more spread out across a continent?
I would suggest we all take some time to acknowledge the good things in our lives: good food, the connection we feel to a powerful story, those lateral shifts our brains when we play a game and, above all, perhaps, that sense of belonging we can achieve through the study of the nature around us.
Take these things and consider yourself a mountain valley, a refuge of one — and reach out, spread your joy at a movie, your delight at identifying a species of fungi for the very first time, or the fact you can vote peacefully and safely in your country. Share it. Show others who may either have their heads buried in the proverbial sand, or may have given in to despair, to ‘I’m one person, what can I do?’; show them, and offer them something powerful.
We are all refugia, we all carry the potential of hope, the potential of joy and rebirth and love. Times are perilous, times are changing — but I wholeheartedly believe we can all make a positive difference, nevertheless.