‘Bitter Pastoral’ – the voice of the land
28th, Sep 2012‘Bitter Pastoral – A Talk About the Cederberg’ is the title of an essay written by my friend Stephen Watson, a South African writer who died after a short illness in April 2011.
‘Bitter Pastoral – A Talk About the Cederberg’ is the title of an essay written by my friend Stephen Watson, a South African writer who died after a short illness in April 2011.
Recently I’ve been learning about birds, and can now identify over 70 African birds by their calls, and a similar number by sight. Bird life in Lewa in the Northern Rangelands of Kenya is prolific, with over 400 species recorded in the area.
Sunrise on the Indian Ocean creates a visual effect more moving than any other sunrise I have seen.
‘Only food runs, Jean.' This is what I was told when I first broached the subject with Corne van Schwalyk, the marketing director of Ecotraining, a training provider of safari and nature guide courses in South Africa.
Pursuit as conversation…
Conversation and conservation – switch a couple of consonants around and here we have the same word. What might be the linkages between them?
To start with conversation:
‘Academics go head to head in X Factor-like talent contest’ – this is the sort of headline that accompanied the inaugural year of the BBC/AHRC’s scheme to train academics to be mainstream radio and television commentators and programme makers, launched in 2011.
In the autumn of 2011 and into January 2012 I taught one of the workshops for the innovative Write Forward – Writing the City collaboration between Birkbeck College and the
‘Ok people! Take out your paper and pens,’ Stephanie calls. ‘What are you going to do to change your lives?
One of the enduring images of Apartheid is the signage of segregation; some of these, now housed in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, are reproduced in an elegantly analytical essay that accompanies photographer Steve Bloom’s exhibition of his street photography from the 1970s.