Read a bus timetable? No chance ….
May 22, 2013
When I was an undergraduate a long time ago, it was the well-established habit of third and fourth year psychology students to pounce on unsuspecting innocents like myself and subject us to a battery of psychology tests, none of which we got paid for (just catch any of this happening these days!). However, the test measuring verbal versus spatial ability and scored on a percentile ranking, has been of revelatory value to me for my whole life since then.
Why? Because the researcher confirmed my dawning suspicion that I was never designed to be a homing pigeon, and gave me a lifelong excuse (explanation? Take your pick….) for getting myself lost at the drop of a map. He found that my verbal ability was above the 95th percentile, and exceptionally high. ( See! Born to be a writer….) HOWEVER, my spatial ability was exceptionally low: below the 5th percentile. I can still remember the baffled look on the budding psychologist’s face as he read off my results. “How on EARTH do you manage to get about?” he enquired, in a voice carrying equal measures of pity and incredulity. And, dear reader, I have been pondering that question ever since.
So I just loved this post….
Getting Found by Getting Lost
200 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2013
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Observer Ethical Awards nomination
May 13, 2013
We are delighted to learn today that Emily Cutts of the Children's Wood and Douglas Peacock of the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign have been jointly short-listed in the Observer newspaper's Ethical Awards "unsung local hero" category. This is a shortlist of around 5 out of 300 entries nationwide. It is a very welcome recognition of all the hard work they have put in.
Astrology – what Sun Sign columns CAN’T tell you….
April 26, 2013
Always being keen to demonstrate that the great and ancient art and science of astrology has much more to offer than its popular face in the sun sign columns would suggest, I thought I’d re-publish the following article which appears on this site on the “Not the Astrology Column” page, but which a number of new readers may not have come across. It is written for members of the general public with an open-minded interest in astrology.
Check it out, and let me know what you think!
11th Century Horoscope
My career as an astrologer began in a launderette in Bath, England, in the 1970s – although I didn’t realise that at the time ! Befriending a little girl who came to chat whilst I did my washing, I met her parents, Gloria and Seamus; they were astrologers, they said, and would I care to come back to their place for a cup of tea? They’d like to draw up my horoscope, to thank me for entertaining their child.
Well, I remember thinking, nothing better to do for the next hour…….at that stage I was scornful and dismissive of astrology, basing my judgement on the Sun Sign material in the media which struck me as general, banal and trivial. I did not know then that there was a subject of great depth and power beyond the Sun Signs.
I was puzzled by my new friends’ dismissal of the Sun Sign columns – wasn’t that what astrology was all about ?. “We’re proper astrologers” they said firmly. “ Your Star Sign (Leo, in my case) only puts one character on the stage of your life. It’s impossible to describe who you are from only one factor.”
They wrote down my date, place, and apparently vital TIME of birth, produced various reference books and did complex-looking calculations. Then they drew up my Birth Chart or Horoscope : this was a map of the heavens for the precise time I was born. It was apparently an unusual chart – lots of planets in the twelfth house, whatever that meant, and strong Pluto, Saturn and Uranus influences. So what, I thought.
Anne W’s Horoscope
Then came their interpretation into character analysis of the planetary symbols in my Birth Chart, in considerable depth and with a high level of accuracy. The experience shocked me to the core. How could they be so accurate about my career aspirations? How could they know what my deepest fears were ?How COULD they manage to describe my parents’ core characteristics and some of the key effects they’d had on me ? How could they describe so vividly the restless spirit which drove me ? I had met them less than an hour ago. They knew nothing of my personal history or life experience.
Worse was to come. “You tell me you’re a total sceptic,” Seamus chuckled . “But your Horoscope shows that you have a deeply sensitive, spiritual side to your nature which you’re currently refusing to acknowledge, preferring to identify with the intellectual and the rationalist in yourself. But I can see from your Chart, and where the planets will be in a few years, that in your early thirties the spiritual dimension will come calling. You are very likely to end up doing something like this yourself.”
What nonsense, I thought. But I had no acceptable way of explaining in rational terms what had happened. Uneasily, I filed the experience away in the pigeonhole reserved for the many incidents occurring in my twenties which did not fit my existentialist world view.
For my birthday that August, a friend gave me an odd present considering my scepticism – an astrology book. It was intelligently and sensitively written; I found myself compelled. My feelings were an uncomfortable mixture of attraction, rejection, fascination and embarrassment. What COULD I say to my friends and family?
Saying nothing, I carried on reading. After a year, astrology still fascinated me. By this time – and by a series of odd coincidences – I had found out about the Faculty of Astrological Studies, based in London. It offered a year-long correspondence course with some lengthy exams at the end of it, leading to a Certificate of the Faculty.
I embarked on my studies in an empirical spirit. If astrology WAS indeed merely superstitious nonsense of little value, at least I would have arrived at a conclusion based on knowledge and practice, rather than ignorance and prejudice. I had moved on sufficiently from intellectual arrogance to the awareness that it was very unscientific, and highly irrational, to dismiss a whole body of knowledge without ever having studied it. I obtained my Certificate in 1983, by which time my studies had demonstrated to me that the astrological model had worthwhile insights to offer.
(I was to further my studies much later on, at the Centre for Psychological Astrology, by commuting by plane from Glasgow to London from 1995-1998 to complete a three-year Diploma in Psychological Astrology with renowned teacher writer and astrologer Dr Liz Greene.)
The teaching and practice of astrology became a major strand in my self-employed career from 1985 until 2001 when, following a long health crisis, I gave up all work (except writing!) for seven years. In May 2012, after a very long sabbatical, I returned to my astrological work part time. It feels good to be back!
This wonderful universe
Working with the symbolic descriptions of collective and personal life provided by astrology was, and continues to be, a source of much insight. It offers a route towards integration of the rational dimensions with the intuitive, symbolic and spiritual. Time and time again my clients used to tell me that their Readings helped them to see and to accept who they were more clearly - and to make better use of the gifts they had been given.
Good astrological practice encourages people to take responsibility for their own lives, and supports their courage to be themselves.
We have not yet found anything which provides the ultimate answer to the puzzle of our existence on this earth. Astrology is no exception – although it is a fine way of asking intelligent questions about what life may mean. It is NOT a religion. The insights it offers do not interfere with whatever religious beliefs individuals may hold. But its perspective offers two very important things.
Firstly, a picture of an holistic universe in which our movement through space and time is not random, but meaningful. Astrology’s great insight is that the shaping forces or archetypes which govern all of life including human experience, are symbolically connected with the planets and their movements in the heavens as time unfolds.
Secondly, from the horoscope drawn up for the date, place and exact time of birth, astrology can give individuals very useful insights into the characters who are enacting the drama of their individual life story. But it cannot tell who the director is, what the exact details of the plot are, or what the outcome of the play will be. Astrology, like quantum physics, can only deal with ranges of probability. The rest is as it will probably remain – a profound mystery.
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Like to book a reading or some individual/small group tuition?
For a full brochure with details of my approach to astrology, qualifications, experience, supervision, memberships and fees, click anne-whitaker-astrologer.pdf
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1250 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2013 Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Watch this clip – feed your soul!
April 21, 2013
A core memory from my Hebridean childhood is located in winter’s depths. Whilst dashing out to play after our evening meal, running up the garden path, breath frosty on the clear cold air, a glance at the pitch dark sky stopped me dead. A magical swirling dance of colour was washing the Northern sky with translucent radiance. I held my breath, friends forgotten, gazing for a long time at the wonderful display. Gradually, inevitably, it faded and vanished. I remained entranced for a very long time afterwards.
Polar Spirits
Subsequent adult reading provided a scientific explanation for the phenomenon of the aurora borealis. But science cannot explain the sense of wonder and awe which the Northern Lights have evoked in countless numbers of us since our remote ancestors scanned the skies, seeing the Divine in natural beauty.
This first experience of awe has remained etched on memory. It imprinted on my soul, at a very young age, a deep intuitive sense that there is a sublime mystery at the core of the interplay between light and dark.
Several decades later, my ambition is to witness the Northern Lights again before I die. Perhaps I will, maybe not.
In the meantime, one can access and enjoy many, many film clips of this wonderful natural phenomenon via the internet. This morning on Twitter, thanks to Jeff Faria @PatriotsOfMars, I came across the finest film of the Northern Lights that I have ever seen. It is titled
Polar Spirits: An Epic Northern Lights Time-Lapse Video
Do treat your soul to an uplift by watching this clip. Forget the Measurers and the reductionists for a few minutes. Whatever they may do their best to tell us, there are and always will be sublimely mysterious dimensions to life for which materialist science with all its brilliance can provide only one dimension of the answer…..
I can see you.
The spray can of heavy duty industrial oven cleaner parked on the kitchen floor is a dead give away. Peel off those rubber gloves, stop pretending that your family will drop dead of food poisoning tonight if you don’t clean those charred meal residues insulating the inside of the oven right away. Follow me. Yes, just as I thought. The study door is ajar. I can see the laptop screen from here. Closer….yes, that’s it. Don’t die of embarrassment, it won’t help. A new document is open on screen. A title?
“ (NB – provisional ) Of authorship and toads….”
And ? I suspected this. One paragraph indentation, and the word “The”…...can that really be all ? Oh. There’s a new line.
“ F— this, I might as well be cleaning the oven!!!!”
I have two words to say to you. Pay attention, they really will help, I promise:
Natalie Goldberg.
A few months ago, I visited Glasgow Buddhist Centre in search of a meditation stool. Yes, you’ve guessed, I had an article which had to be in the post by 5pm. I was distracted from the article by the stool, then distracted from the stool by Natalie Goldberg. Her book “ Wild Mind : Living the Writer’s Life” drew me like a lure. What a wonderful writer! What an inspiring book! Did the article get to the postbox? I’m not telling you.
Natalie Goldberg is an American writer and creative writing teacher. She is sharp, witty, compassionate, lateral….and tough. She has bottom lines and is not afraid to state them. She has rules. My guess is, if you follow these rules on a regular basis, you’ll rarely be distracted by oven cleaning or any other form of housework ever again.
She is fanatical about writing practice. “ If you learn writing practice well, it is a good foundation for all other writing.” We need to do it as regularly as possible, she says.
“ When you sit down to write, whether it’s for ten minutes or an hour, once you begin, don’t stop. If an atom bomb drops at your feet eight minutes after you have begun and you were going to write for ten minutes, don’t budge. You’ll go out writing.”
In essence, writing practice is a technique for cracking open the confining grip of our conscious, rational mind – and flying free into the big blue sky of what Goldberg calls “ wild mind”.
Here, briefly, are Natalie’s rules:
(She also thinks they mostly work for hang gliding, tennis and sex.)
1. Keep your hand moving. If you stop your hand, you stop the creator’s flow and give the editor in you an opportunity to interrupt.
2. Lose control. Just say what you want no matter how inappropriate. Just go for it.
3. Be specific. Don’t write flower, write narcissus.
4. Don’t think. Stay with the first thing that flashes into your mind.
5. Don’t worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar.
6. You are free to write the worst junk in America ( or in your case, could be anywhere in the world ! )
7. Go for the jugular. Whatever comes up, no matter how frightening or disturbing, write it down.
There you are. Begin writing practice today. Next step, buy Goldberg’s books on the writers’ craft. They are a wonderful investment. I’m doing well with my writing practice, by the way. I’ve bought two new notebooks. Still can’t decide which one to start….
600 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2013
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Help save our Children’s Wood: support the protest any way you can, wherever you are….
April 2, 2013
“Wild spaces are invaluable to children, especially those growing up in
towns. They stimulate the imagination and nurture the spirit. Places
like the Children’s Wood within North Kelvin Meadow (Glasgow) are hard to come
by in urban settings and so should be preserved at all costs.”
Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo and U.K Children’s Laureate
Children’s Wood Protest 1
(photo: Anne Whitaker)
This is not just a local issue. This issue is one of the major challenges of our time right across the world.
As Dr Carol Craig, CEO of The Centre for Confidence and Well-being, has recently said:
“For decades we have restricted children’s freedom to play outdoors and there’s growing evidence that this trend is damaging their physical health and emotional well-being. We now have to take positive steps to ensure that children have easy access to wild spaces like the Children’s Wood in the North Kelvin Meadow. It would be a travesty if this special place for children disappeared under concrete.”
Our local North Kelvin Meadow campaign takes an important step forward on Thursday 4th April 2013 from 11.45 am until 12.30 pm with a second protest demonstration outside the City Chambers, George Square, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. Do come along and join us – if you can’t make it, do send this link to ANYONE you think can contribute to saving our meadow in any way: friends, community activists, bloggers, Twitterers, Facebookers, journos……it all helps!
BACKGROUND STORY:
May 2012 saw the start of The Children’ Wood – an offshoot of the sterling efforts of the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign, for the last few years the latest in several local initiatives, whose objective over a long period of time now has been to save a patch of local waste ground for community green space use, as opposed to its hosting yet another set of newbuild flats – in an already built up area – if Glasgow City Council’s plan for the space goes ahead.
To give you a wonderful ‘flavour’ of what this land means to our community, DO watch this brilliant short film Dear Green Place, made recently by film maker James Urquhart.
AND - to sign our on-line petition, go HERE. Thanks!!
The Children’s Wood
(photo: Anne Whitaker)
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NOTE: Blog/Twitter followers, Facebook friends, community activists and enthusiasts, please do what you can to pass this information around your networks. Thanks!
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400 words copyright /Anne Whitaker 2013
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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On Good Friday: Richard Holloway on Faith and Doubt
March 29, 2013
Along with most people in Scotland who have more than a passing interest in matters spiritual, religious and theological, I have known about Richard Holloway for a long time. (see below this quote for biographical details) However, until recently I had not got around to reading any of his writing.
I had, however, listened to a eulogy for my late mother-in-law, written by Richard Holloway for her funeral service over a decade ago. She had been a Samaritan volunteer and churchgoer in Edinburgh for many years and as such knew Richard Holloway, then Bishop of Edinburgh, quite well. I was struck by the straightforward fluency and honesty of what he wrote, delivering an admiring and affectionate word portrait, but not shirking mention of the more problematic aspects of her character.
I have always appreciated honesty which avoids unkindness, but values truth more than comfort. That is what came across during the eulogy, revealing itself again as I work my way through Holloway’s deep probing writing on questions of faith and doubt as they thread themselves though the ever-present gifts and frailties of humankind – admiring his blend of humour, erudition, compassionate feeling and dispassionate analysis.
If you appreciate and are challenged by this quote, join me in reading through his books!
Light – and Dark….
“Because there is such an intrinsic connection between faith and doubt, the Church ought to be big enough to contain both sympathetically.This is the kind of theological magnanimity that is important for itself, but it is also important for secondary reasons. Since it is possible to believe and to doubt for the wrong reasons as well as the right ones, and we don’t always know the one from the other, we need the constant challenge of the other tendency to keep us honest. This will make life uncomfortable, of course, but the work of our purgation demands it. Growth is painful, but no element in our nature is exempt from the process of sanctification. The Church….should be as inclusive as possible. It should be big enough to hold Thomas the empiricist, as well as John the mystic, and Peter, who was often baffled and confused…..the paradox of justification by faith is that it is God’s faith in us that ultimately matters, and not our faith in God. There is a faith beyond faith, which is deeper than trust in our own trustfulness and is an abandonment to the ultimate graciousness of the universe….This is the trust beyond trust that says ‘yes’ even to the night.It is close to the dereliction of Good Friday….“
(from Anger Sex Doubt & Death by Richard Holloway, SPCK Publications, 1992, UK, pp 81-82. I realise this is quite a lengthy extract! Should Richard Holloway or SSPK object, please let me know how many words I can quote and I will edit accordingly….)
Richard F. Holloway (born 26 November 1933) is a Scottish writer and broadcaster and was formerly Bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church. To read more about him and his writing, click HERE
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500 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Richard Holloway 2013
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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My “invincible summer”: on threat and opportunity
March 21, 2013
A long family crisis triggered my collapse with severe burnout at the end of 2001. I had to let go of a busy, creative life and rest for years. It took me until 2008 to recover my natural vitality. Five years on, I am still discovering in a variety of ways the benefits of that long period of enforced rest.
Some of you may have come across the Chinese ideogram for crisis which contains the two concepts of threat and opportunity. Energy collapse deprived me of the one constant which I had always relied on to get me through whatever life threw at me – my strong will. I discovered – and this was a brutal, frightening discovery – that my will had collapsed along with my energy.
Thus I had to learn, very slowly, the value of letting life shape me whilst lying on a couch much of the day, reading avidly and tapping my laptop. I discovered the virtues of passivity, and the creative space that opens up within when of necessity you do very little. I had to rely on the loving support of those closest – my husband, my brother and a small group of close friends, and remain full of gratitude for that constancy and care.
Fortunate to have a strong and rich inner life to draw on, a significant part of what sustained me was knowing that although this long ordeal was mine, it was also archetypal. As Stanislav Grof so vividly puts it, “the stormy journey of the soul” has been a central part of all human experience throughout the ages. I was not alone in my descent into the Underworld. It is a well-worn path.
I also knew that through the tests encountered in the Underworld, your soul grows into a shape which more closely fits the essence of who you are meant to be. So I hung on, called upon Spirit to guide me, survived, and grew.
Now I am reaping the rewards of that long crisis which was so threatening yet so full of opportunity. Able in a variety of ways to offer out some of the fruits of retreat, I hope that these offerings may inspire others. All my life I have loved and been inspired by quotes. Here are two which I pinned up in our kitchen, absorbing their energy and wisdom when my own energy was perilously low.
I do hope you find them of value!
“It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than with the idea of will.Too often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their lives into shape. If you work with a different rhythm, you will come easily and naturally home to yourself. Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go.”
John O’Donohue, pp 83-4 “Anam Cara“ Bantam Books 1999
(John O’Donohue 1956-2008 was an Irish poet turned priest, whose writing merged Celtic spirit and love of the natural world )
“In the midst of winter
I finally learned
That there was in me
An invincible summer”
This is a popular quote whose original source I have as yet not traced, but have come across a slight variation ie ‘within me there lay an invincible summer’ – different sites have different versions. Come on, detectives out there! Where in Camus’ writings does this quote appear? Let me know!
( Albert Camus 1913-1960 was a French philosopher best known for his book L’Etranger (The Outsider) whose existentialist philosophy influenced a whole post-war generation)
600 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2013
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Guest blogger Emily Cutts: Constructive criticism is a gift
February 28, 2013
I am happy to publish this thoughtful post by my friend and colleague Emily Cutts, an independent thinker whose studies and experience in the teaching, research and practice of Positive Psychology creatively and deeply inform her writing. Emily is also very much involved, along with her husband Quintin and many other community activists, with our campaign here in North Kelvin, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, to save our local Children’s Wood for community use.
Emily says: I was surprised recently when a close friend of mine told me her reason for leaving a secondary school teaching position in a prestigious private school in Scotland. One of the parents didn’t like the critical feedback she was giving their daughter, saying that it was damaging and un-motivating. In reality it was constructive feedback: factual, and given with the intention of improving performance.
Criticism is a gift: Carol Dweck pictures
http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/pp/tools.php?p=c2lkPTEz
The parent was blaming my friend for their daughter’s poor performance in this particular science subject. Another parent, a psychiatrist, was complaining for similar reasons, but also demanding to know why their son wasn’t doing well at science – blaming the teacher for their son not ‘getting it’. My friend was disciplined by the head of department. From then on, she was required to put less‘negative’ feedback comments on work and to be more positive.
I have heard that this type of behaviour from parents has been increasing in schools across Scotland – parents blaming teachers for their child not doing well or not getting what they want.
Why would parents put pressure on schools not to give a child accurate feedback during the learning process, instead wanting them to paper over the cracks in understanding with positive praise? Why would schools take them seriously?
The answer could have something to do with feelings:
(an argument most clearly put forward by Dr Carol Craig at The Centre for Confidence and Well-being(1))
We don’t want to hurt a child’s feelings because we falsely believe that doing so will undermine their confidence and consequently their learning. This causes teachers/parents to modify their behaviour in various ways to make sure that feelings are not damaged: restricting critical ‘negative’ feedback; reducing standards to make things easier; avoiding certain tasks for fear of hurting a child’s feelings should they fail – and unwarranted praise for tasks which the child can already do and for meaningless activities.
The problem with these behaviours is that they undermine the learning process, sending an important message to the child that they cannot cope with failure: failure is to be avoided. Another message is that they can’t handle challenging tasks. If we thought they could cope, then we would allow them to hear the constructive feedback.
How could anyone learn if they lived by this philosophy?
Think about learning something difficult, and receiving feedback after you didn’t do very well on the task. Would you rather someone told you what you wanted to hear eg ‘Well done you did really well, you are going to be the next Nobel Laureate’. In this case you would gain no useful information – only a good temporary feeling…and could you ever trust that person’s opinion again? Or, would you rather find out about where you went wrong and how you could rectify it? You might not like it at the time, but the feedback would help you to learn and do better in the future.
The first type of praise (currently widely applied) has been criticised by some psychologists because of its capacity to undermine learning (2,3). It is thought that people praise in this way when they want to boost a child’s self-esteem, and protect young people’s feelings (1).
However, if you praise a child for activities that they can already do well, this sets up behaviours which undermine learning and paradoxically decrease self-esteem. The other aspect of this is to praise young people for being clever or smart (85% of American parents think that it is good to do so).
Praising for talent in this way sends a message to the child that you, the adult, value intelligence – since children are very sensitive to the messages they receive – they then want to demonstrate their intelligence to prove they have the talent. The highly negative consequence of this is the avoidance of anything challenging which might show up weaknesses, or hiding/avoiding failures and sticking to things they do well.
In addition to this, people become more likely to blame others for failure, rather than taking ownership of their own setbacks and learning. This is salient in the example at the beginning of parents complaining about my friend’s teaching i.e If they believed their child to be smart, but yet they were not understanding science – then it must be the teaching at fault and not the child.
Our culture has an obsession with natural talent. However, there is a problem with this fascination:we cannot predict who will succeed and who won’t. Someone could start out seemingly talented at science, for example.This does not necessarily mean that they will always be successful – research demonstrates that people need to work at growing their talent or else they do not reach their full potential.
Other studies show the converse. Those who start off seemingly talentless can flourish later on– the late bloomers – exceeding all expectations and predictions about how well they will do in life. Some famous examples are: Einstein, Beethoven, Robin Williams, Magic Johnson,(4) – but I am sure you can think of examples of people who you went to school with (or other walks of life) who exceeded your or other peoples expectations?
Overwhelmingly, the research shows (e.g. 6) that talent is something which requires practice, perseverance and a lot of effort. For example, Malcolm Gladwell (5) says that to become an expert at something takes around 10,000 hours of practice. It takes thousands of failures and setbacks along the way and all of this activity changes the structure of the brain (e.g.6).
The brain is like a muscle: Carol Dweck pictures
http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/pp/tools.php?p=c2lkPTEz
Young people can develop all of these abilities, as well as resilience, through accurate, useful feedback, and praise for their hard work and effort. Not only will this increase motivation for learning, but by default, performance too. (6)
Going back to the example of my friend being told to restrict critical feedback and increase praise,this does not seem like a good long term learning strategy. A better method would be to encourage teachers to give students negative feedback, harnessed with the encouragement to take this feedback as a learning opportunity and not as a personal attack.
Learning takes time, it’s frustrating, hard work and effortful – these messages might be more important for the child to hear than more praise and little critical feedback (7). This may also provide hope for the future, to students such as those mentioned earlier who may not initially do very well at some subjects.
Parents need to stop blaming teachers for their children’s learning – it is not all their fault – and help their children to take responsibility for their own learning. One way to begin this is by cultivating a love of learning, valuing critical feedback, and treating failures and frustrations about learning as anormal and natural process in education and nothing to take personally.
Constructive criticism is a gift, we just need to view it that way more often.
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Links:
1. http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/projects.php?p=cGlkPTUz
2. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AmericanFamily/story?id=2877896&page=1
3. http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/
4. http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/OnFailingG.html
5. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316017922?ie=UTF8&tag=stormysblog-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0316017922
6. http://mindsetonline.com/ and http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/projects.php?p=cGlkPTU4
7. http://www.centreforconfidence.co.uk/projects.php?p=cGlkPTU3JmlkPTQ3OA==
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(First appearing on another of my blogs MoreBitsFallOff.com, this has proved to be its most frequently read post!Check it out to read more of Emily’s well-researched and thoughtful articles)
1200 words copyright Emily Cutts/Anne Whitaker 2010/2013
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Help save our local Children’s Wood!
February 21, 2013
I have written already about the battle to save our local Children’s Wood in North Kelvin, Maryhill, Glasgow, Scotland, UK. I’m happy to say that the campaign is gaining momentum by the day!
To get an up-to-date picture on what we are trying to achieve locally, do read this brilliant article in Glasgow’s ‘Herald’ newspaper a few days ago by Gerry Braiden, Local Government Correspondent.
As can be seen from the article, comedian Frankie Boyle, who hails from Glasgow, is the latest celebrity to have lent his support.
This is not just a local issue. This issue is one of the major challenges of our time right across the world.
Here are some vivid quotes which reveal a great deal about the perspectives, passion and commitment brought to the campaign by people who really care about the importance of contact with nature to children and parents:
Save Our Children’s Wood!
“It would clearly be counterproductive to build on commonly used land, in the face of a huge public protest. We have to stop at some point and ask how many shoebox flats does Glasgow need? The way the land is currently used is delivering on a lot of the council’s strategies. Why are they putting money before the life of the community?”
Frankie Boyle, Glaswegian comedian
“Wild spaces are invaluable to children, especially those growing up in
towns. They stimulate the imagination and nurture the spirit. Places
like the Children’s Wood within North Kelvin Meadow are hard to come
by in urban settings and so should be preserved at all costs.”
Julia Donaldson, author of The Gruffalo and Children’s Laureate
‘As one of our member groups, SPPA supports The Children’s Wood Playgroup and its provision of outdoor play. SPPA endorses outdoor play and recognises the value it holds for children. The children are very active and engaged in exploring their local surroundings, learning through a variety of activities and benefiting from being in a natural environment.’
“For decades we have restricted children’s freedom to play outdoors and there’s growing evidence that this trend is damaging their physical health and emotional well-being. We now have to take positive steps to ensure that children have easy access to wild spaces like the Children’s Wood in the North Kelvin Meadow. It would be a travesty if this special place for children disappeared under concrete.
Dr Carol Craig, CEO of The Centre for Confidence and Well-being
“North Kelvin Meadow is a magical oasis and the Children’s Wood offers a unique space loved by the local community and all who venture there.”
Tam Dean Burn, actor
“The Children’s Wood is a wee gem of natural wild space in the heart of the west-end. In it, children can connect to nature in a way that isn’t possible in most manicured areas; digging, den building and so on. As a parent of two young children I can appreciate how important it is for young children to connect to nature. Glasgow should be proud to have such a wilderness for the community to flourish in and should do all they can to save it!
Colin McCredie, Actor, Wolly and Tig CBeebies
“We’re keen to help people of all ages reconnect with nature. North Kelvin Meadow is a precious area of greenspace within Glasgow, a green and peaceful place in a crowded city. We’re fully supportive of the campaign to protect it and helping local people see the benefits of spending time surrounded by nature plays a big part in gaining support for its protection.”
Iain Moss, The Woodland Trust
“The availability of a woodland setting immediately accessible to our children and staff, on the doorstep of the school, is a real living experience. This naturally beautiful and exciting environment is alien to many city centre children and which is impossible for schools to replicate in their playground such that has taken decades to evolve naturally – a real wood.”
Gillian Kulwicki, Head Teacher at Belhaven Nursery School
Several short films have now been made celebrating our Children’s Wood. Please watch the latest one HERE, and do circulate it round your networks. We need your support!!
AND: last but not least, sign OUR ONLINE PETITION!
THANK YOU
700 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2013
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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