THE EARTHRISE DIARY (Summer 2016)
DON DIESPECKER
© Text, Don
Diespecker (2016); guest writers retain their ©
The cottage goes round
the curved creek,
Bamboos follow the
bend of the mountain;
Streams and mountains
are still there
In the midst of white
clouds;
Come to the creek and
free the skiff;
Sit here with your
back to the mountain.
With the river birds
and mountain flowers,
Share my leisure.
WANG AN-SHIH 1021-1086 A D
When moods come I
follow them alone,
To no purpose learning
fine things for myself,
Going till I come to
where the river ends
Sitting and watching
when clouds rise up
By chance I meet an
old man of the woods;
We talk and laugh—we
have no “going-home” time.
WANG WEI
[The above two poems are from: Of All Things Most Yielding (David Brower, Ed) and with selections
from Oriental literature by Marc Lappé. San Francisco: Friends of the Earth]
The water has poisoned
an entire city and has probably irreparably damaged a significant share of
Flint’s children.
JESSICA TROUNSTINE
Article in the Washington
Post (February 8 2016); (referenced in “Great Reads: The best of the web from Griffith
Review writers and editors” (February 12 2016)
This edition of The
Earthrise Diary includes reflections and implications as to how we might better
address the universal concern for clean, safe, non-toxic, potable water.
*
CHARIVARI
The summer river;
There is a bridge,
But the horse goes through the water.
SHIKI
[RH Blyth (1950), Haiku
Vol 3: “Summer-Autumn.” Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press]
I’m happy to note that my novel, EXCESS is “live” in the Kindle store. This is the third Martha
Haley story; thus it completes a trilogy and it follows HAPPINESS and SUCCESS (see
my booklist below). The 98-k words story is set largely in California and
partly in France and Australia. And with special thanks to Kerry Smith.
February 11 2016. This
has been and continues a steamy summer: everything that grows and is alive has
apparently been doing its utmost to be an extremist
grower. Late at night I hear twigs and hard seed casings falling on my steel
roof: unseen creatures high in the dark are visiting the flowering bloodwoods.
Perhaps they’re bats that are comfortably high in the canopy or possibly they
might be very cautious possums. The old bloodwood cheek by jowl with the house
is distinguished by a very high canopy and huge as well as tiny branches. I’m
reminded that falling branches are also a danger to me.
I used
regularly to include a brisk daily walk usually from the house down to and then
along Darkwood Road, strolling the concrete-surfaced Plain’s Crossing Bridge
(where adjacent there also are the flood-battered remains of the old concrete
crossing, a concreted ford allegedly made by some old-timers during the 1930s
Depression), then continue the walk along the roadside or verges as far as the
Richardson’s Bridge before turning and walking back again. The walk took about
20-minutes each way. I no longer do that at all regularly because the road is
increasingly dangerous.
Darkwood Road’s river bridges are low-level timber
structures that become submerged by high rises or by flooding of the river,
i.e., like many other such bridges in Australia they’re outmoded in this era;
however, replacing these now almost obsolete structures requires the
expenditure of huge sums of money that local Councils cannot easily access.
I’ve abandoned my brisk walks for the summer partly because the roadside growth
is so profuse (roadside grasses that are two to three metres high) that the way
ahead for pedestrians, drivers and riders is dangerously limited or obscured.
Darkwood Road is allegedly a so-called rural
road. The first half of the road (the ‘Paris boulevard’ end), from the
Trunk Road (Waterfall Way) is bitumen-surfaced from grass verge to grass verge
and reasonably safe for pedestrians and also is just wide enough for two
vehicles to pass. This upper half of the road (the ‘Dakar Rally’ end) is a
poorly maintained metal or dirt road and dangerous not only to all traffic, but
extremely so in many locations to pedestrians, particularly those who might be
pushing a stroller with a child on board or to those who walk dogs on leads.
This middle section (from my location) of the road’s upper reaches in the
Valley is impressively potholed when dry and becomes more notable as muddied
puddles when wet. There is no discernable speed limit and vehicle-drivers swing
from one side of the road to the other marking their way with pothole-avoiding
tracks. Avoiding potholes by driving illegally on the incorrect side of the
road is a common practice. This negative
description is not made as complaint but simply as factual observation. The
local Council has the task of mowing or slashing verges and cutting back more
resistant roadside growth by bank profiling with tractor-mounted equipment.
Grading and compacting this road (and other roads) is also a Council task.
In this summer of excessive growth such tasks are made more
necessary and also perhaps more difficult and in some ways likely also more
costly: rural roads and outmoded timber bridges are the reality in rural areas
and finding ways to change that reality requires innovations, the best planning
and the means to access very large sums of money. Similarly, road maintenance
may be increasingly costly. Profuse growth, damaged roads and obsolete timber bridges
are all water-related concerns
reflecting governmental inertia and helplessness amplified by global warming
and climate change. My hand-made pole house is presently a mere fifty metres or
so above sea level: the expected rise of the ocean that the melting of polar
ice will aggravate maintenance and replacement difficulties for roads and
bridges if we fail to legislate appropriately against such global warming. Everything changes: our awareness of
climate change and global warming, our commonsense, our politics, careless
attitudes toward the proper maintenance of roads and bridges: even the rates of
change are changing.
Abandoning this summer’s brisk walks coincides with my
changed and changing lifestyle. Having opted out of a diet of ‘anything goes’
I’m exploring a fat or fatty diet that excludes sugar, one that also benefits
me when hard physical work and/or vigorous exercise is beneficial. I mention
this because some of my relatives and friends are now combating varied
illnesses such as cancers, for example. Fatty or meaty diets compelled our primitive ancestors, the
cave dwellers of Neolithic times: essentially we are still meat eaters and fat burners. We’re fuelled by animal products
and by some derived sugars in honey and by some fresh fruits that aren’t
excessively sugary. We also require fresh vegetables and may benefit from some
seeds and nuts. We risk our lives when we use refined sugar (cancer cells, e.g., thrive on sugar). Thus my program of sit-ups and push-ups, some
running on the spot (and especially when taking necessary breaks from the
keyboard, some skipping without a rope) serve me well. Push-ups for old
scribblers like me can be difficult. Sit-ups are more satisfying. Just between
you and me, the feeling, the experience of wellbeing that follows
such exercising (brisk walking and jogging, too) is very much like the positive
experience that follows the writing of a thousand satisfying words as intended
parts of any narrative that I’m drafting. The reader may find it instructive to
examine diets that are accessible via information technology: the ketogenic
diet and the so-called paleo diet (from Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (see
Pleistocene epoch). However we now might spell these words, paleo is a learned borrowing from Greek,
meaning “old.”
Lifestyle choices, like diets, must necessarily include the
water we drink and also use for cooking. Fresh water in the natural world
contains everything imaginable and requires some cleaning or improving. At
Earthrise I pump and store water in a concrete tank on high ground well away
from the river; it’s then reticulated through the house via a paper filter and
finally passes either through an alkaloid chemical filter or is first boiled
before drinking.
Here’s an indication of my water-drinking life to which I’ve
added some water-related or water-associated history. I was born in Victoria,
British Columbia in 1929 and drank what presumably was the local tap water
(without knowing anything at all about the source(s) of the water or its having
been appropriately ‘treated’ or cleaned). Some of the early (1930s) waters that
I drank came from a creek in the forest adjoining the Cowichan River on
Vancouver Island. In 1937 and together with my family (they having been born in
South Africa) I journeyed from Canada to Panama to Cape Town, Port Elizabeth,
Durban and Lourenço Marques. I have no idea whether or not the water I then
drank was safe and free of toxins. Also, from 1937 to 1942 I drank rainwater
(at my maternal grandfather’s house in Pilgrim’s Rest (then in the Transvaal)
and at several other houses in the same mining village, I drank ‘tap water.’
I mention here that my late mother’s father, Leslie Singer
(1869-1942), was a building contractor and stonemason. LD was the mason who set
monumental stone lions in place on the front stoep (veranda) of President
Kruger’s house in Pretoria. When I first met him in 1937 he was chiselling
inscriptions on large slate tablets that later were mortared into the so-called
Voortrekker Monument (1938) adjacent to the Joubert’s Bridge (Pilgrim’s Rest):
the monument commemorates the place where ‘trekkers crossed the Blyde River in
1838. My paternal grandfather, Rudolph aka Louis Diespecker (1858-1920), was a
gold prospector and miner and the building contractor who surveyed and built
the steel plated flumes and water races that transported fresh water from the
upstream Blyde through Pilgrim’s Rest and beyond to drive a (downstream)
turbine at Pilgrims’ first electricity generating station (the ‘used’ water was
then returned to the Blyde River). RD, earlier and as contractor, had also
engineered and constructed the mountain road that enabled the transportation of
heavy equipment and machinery to the Central Reduction Works in Pilgrim’s Rest
(if that seems inconsequential, Pilgrim’s, as we used to call the village, in
its early days was served by stage coach; there was no rail link when I lived
there and there is none today. RD and his brother, Jules, earlier had also been
sub contractors on the Selati Railway in the Transvaal Lowveld (aka Bushveld);
much later, RD was also Special Intelligence Officer during the Guerrilla War,
Sept 1900-May 1902, that ended the Second Anglo Boer War and that’s another
story. (The modern Afrikaans word, veld,
is pronounced as in the English “felt”).
In 1937 the water in the Blyde River (blyde meaning ‘joy’) upstream of the Central Reduction Works was, I think, the probable source of the ‘tap
water’ used domestically in Pilgrim’s Rest. I don’t know what chemicals may
have been used to clean the water supply. The Blyde River downstream from the
Central Reduction Works at Pilgrim’s Rest was polluted by reduction works
tailings that included cyanide and was discharged directly into the river (near
the mine company’s constructed “swimming pool” that was used by all the
residents of the village). Pilgrim’s Rest is (or was) the centre of the oldest
continuously operated gold mines in South Africa. The Blyde is a tributary of
the Olifants and then the Limpopo aka Crocodile River that discharges into the
Indian Ocean in Mozambique.
From 1942 I lived with my family in Durban until 1950 when I
travelled by sea to Europe. Since that time I’ve made journeys to many
countries including the UK and Europe, the Middle East, India, Sri Lanka and
Kashmir, the Far East, North and South America, Pacific islands, New Zealand
and Indonesia. Australia has been my permanent home since 1960. Although I’ve
always been careful concerning potable water I’ve rarely enquired into either
the sources or the treatments of ‘domestic’ or ‘tap water’: my fault entirely.
For readers curious about the so-called tailings that were discharged into the
river at Pilgrim’s Rest (as well as having at other times been dumped on land
where many of us when children played on the then very big hill of bleached
white sand), this information:
Remember potassium
cyanide is one of the deadliest poisons known to science. If the fowls drink
any cyanide water from the battery, they won’t lay any more eggs. If children
play about the battery where that water is, there may be a funeral. Always wash
your hands carefully after using cyanide or anything that has touched it; and
keep your cyanide under lock and key.
Ion Idriess (1931/1979 editions) Prospecting For Gold Other Minerals and Precious Stones. Sydney:
Angus & Robertson Publishers.
The battery
referred to above is a stamp battery.
Cams on a long driving shaft lift a series of heavy steel stamps that drop and crush the ore. This raising and dropping
stamps on ore efficiently reduces the ore feed to a slurry. A ‘five stamp mill’
isolated in the bush or countryside (but near water) is relatively small; a
‘thirty stamp mill’ is a relatively large mill and its noise will be heard for
miles (as in the Pilgrim’s Rest district) and requires workers to wear hearing
protectors (in 1937, damp cotton wool jammed in the ears). Thus, big mills also
generate continuous noise pollution. I sometimes carried meals in panniers to
my father who worked in the Central Reduction Works. His job included ‘dressing
the plates’. Inclined metal amalgam plates required mercury to be added before
scraping to collect the amalgam of gold, mercury and other metals for later
processing. Mercury too is toxic and also is yet another pollutant. The medium
on which all of such mill operations depend is of course an ample supply of
water. Tailings leave the mill and the reduction works as sludge.
February 12 2016.
This small space enables a self-indulged monologue comprising my asides (that
generally and universally go unanswered). Interior monologues are benign and
generally mild hallucinations and are perfectly natural. Perhaps, dear readers,
you also monologue in the interesting interiors of your minds?
A WINSOME MONOLOGUE
DD
At breakfast time the brown fruit pigeon shakes the
bleeding-heart leafed tree outside my window. Pigeon antics look like fun at
least they do to me. The food-seeking pigeon has no time to lose. Seeds like
tiny green bullets fuel its quest. More fuel is for further questing: the using
of energy to find further energy. Earlier I’d opened the curtains. The sun has
now arrived. I like to sit down for this. Here’s a favoured early morning
breakfast outlook place that feels uniquely mine. This is where I listen
closely to music from afar and hear too radio news and where I also may see
pigeon-inspired moving light and shade project to dance across my worktable.
Light pictures, chiaroscuro shadowgraphs: real moving picture shows. Such
perhaps aren’t pictographs though they’re like movies sometimes. Here I relish
black coffee, true coffee mercifully free of sugar. And I mustn’t forget the
elixir the panacea of buttered toast. Privileged from here I see the river
sliding by. The river today sounds and looks well. The coffee flavour is good.
How much is caffeine, how much is water? What else is in the water? The news is
all as bad if not worse than yesterday’s. The now completed novel I’ve been writing still wants its very own say.
That story’s already published, it’s time to move on. Yet the characters bob up
and down craving further capers. They
have more to offer, or so they insist. Where ought my muses and characters go
once I sort my thoughts and why are they not
yet gone? They love to busy
themselves with my thoughts; they
anticipate they hang around. Give me a break, dear characters for I have yet to
do chores and duly mow the unruly lawn. The way to work on new-imagined
narratives is not to work on any at all but to do physical work instead on
Other Stuff. Only then will come the new writing’s pristine words champing at the
bit, hollering full cry. Wait and be patient noble characters. Don’t expect me
to write while I mow. On Big Lawn now there’s one of the tough-guy insurgent
crows sauntering the seized overlong plain of hopeful grass. Part tamed lawn
grass loves growing upward when it can: verticality its goal. It’s this same
grass where you bullying crows pick off tardy tiny green frogs. Has this been a
long thought or a bunch of moments tailored to a monologue passage? What’s seen
in the crow’s moments takes longer to wander my mind. What’s going through the
crow’s mind? Why does this one disdain my nutritious mix of kitchen scraps
nearby? Compost usually satisfies crows but not this one not today. Is this a
crow that’s a closet composer or a raucous singer or rapturous writer? Can
imagine seeing crow book titled The Crow’s Story. Of course I can. I could
write a novel about the secret life of novelist crows bluffing merely as
opportunist frog eating pretenders pacing the lawn planning three and four-deck
novels. Who or which shall compose An Earthrise Trilogy or perhaps The Crow’s
Black Quartet? Cutting through all thoughts and through what I see repeated the
final words of EXCESS as they wag
their cut-short lines to me. For the EXCESS
book nearly a hundred thousand words seem scarcely enough: either the story
itself or one of the excessive protagonists has more to say and that’s too bad
because that story’s now out of play though I loved writing it at pace. The
characters the protagonists always forever have more to say and hope they’ll
never need to stop. What if that story were true? Now there comes that small
dragon the one that climbs like a goanna when I wander about down here. Dragons
play endearing games. Why here in the grass so water-dragon distant from the
water? Because there are jewelled dewdrops in the seeding grass to sip, that’s
why. Reminds me now of the wallaby I’ve seen recently: so big seen from the house that it’s probably not a wallaby at all but
rather, a kangaroo. Here for such feeders is a Western Grass Plain. There was
never more grazing to be had than right here right now. And when I stroll the
longer lawn the native violets are up again unfazed like the now seeding
grasses of various kinds. Time soon now that I’m between books to mow them all
again, even the tiny violets. There’s so much summertime growth here now but a
quite dry day just this once. In to each life some rain must fall. I remember
the lines well. Much too much is falling in mine. Ella was it who sang? I
remember it was raining in Pilgrim’s Rest the day we arrived 1937 so long ago.
Grandpa met us at Graskop in the big Chevrolet Tourer, its canvas top not
entirely wintertime-proof. And yet the car looked a bit like a sports car. I’d
never seen till then such rain. Down the slope from Grandpa’s house the one
he’d built for his family now all gone the muddied Blyde roared by. I’d not
ever seen a river flooded till then. Here I’ve seen more floods than you might
believe. The Cowichan the Blyde now the Bellinger, each of a size that I might
think them merely medium streams but bigger roaring rivers when they wanted to
be. Do their waters ever meet and where might they do such? Is each dewdrop on
the Earthrise grass uniquely new? Reconstituted water looks like new seen
shining in the grass.
February 13 2016. Summer
is waning now. Perhaps because the season has been so wet or perhaps because
there’s tacit agreement, much of the road traffic has diminished; new school
terms have begun or are beginning across Australia and even locals up here in
the Darkwood appear less frequently or not at all, particularly anglers and
swimmers, their almost eerie disappearing also almost sudden. ‘Here’ is the
river at my doorstep, the usually tinkling rapids not quite visible from inside
the house, the pool (as popular swimming hole) and the soothing downstream view
of glints and ripples. Earthrise is at a bend in the Bellinger River Valley, a
flood-prone place where the river is urged into serpentine twists and turns.
Shaving in the dark each morning I’m soon able to watch the upstream river’s
pale advancing at first light. (Much later I’ll see her slide beneath the
bridge at midnight, the house again not quite entirely quiet).
Many who read this Diary will know that I enjoy having been
here for almost thirty-two years: I’m in a remarkable environment where I write
fiction or non-fiction every day. Writing is my pleasure. The Bellinger River
is often like another protagonist in what I write because it’s scarcely a
glance away shining and glimmering on its way through the Valley. Sometimes
when it rains there appears downstream to be a second river that’s contained
within the first: the extra one’s surface is always smooth and flat. Nearby
confluent creek water downstream probably influences what I see. Sometimes in
heavy rain the river runs chocolate brown stained by yet another torrent that’s
otherwise Darkwood Road in front of the house and that extra river runs a metre deep and can’t be safely crossed.
Because I’m a hopeless romantic some of my stories are about
a time when the Bellinger all but disappears because of droughty climate
change. Some of my novels, like The
Darkwood or The Summer River are
fantasies indicating foreign invasions made here by enemies wanting to learn
Australian strategies and techniques for saving and restoring depleted rivers
(those strategies to be used in their own countries). In these fictional
stories the Australian Defence Force deploys military personnel in the forests
to combat the invaders; the ADF and Police also protect the forests, rivers and
all water sources: they use extreme prejudice against all who steal or attempt
to steal water; rivers and the
forests are locked up. It gets worse: the Australian Government is compelled
toward ruling the country by decree… Fortunately for us all, the novels are
merely fictions.
The more I think about such novels the more likely it seems
that such tales may in the future come true. Such fantasies or fictions perhaps
are presently unlikely or improbable. However, there is perhaps the remote
possibility of there being some truth in such phenomena in the future if we
aren’t able to persuade governments to legislate against global greenhouse
warming. And the more I think about all of that, I also realize the critical
importance of all countries managing healthy rivers running full and running
clean. Because most of Australia is such a dry place, clean water for drinking
and cooking and irrigation is essential.
February 15 2016.
*
A MERCIFULLY BRIEF EDITORIAL
DD
I wonder how we’ll
all find ways and means to manage and protect and preserve the potable water of
the world? And that’s what presently
encourages me to suggest to readers of The
Earthrise Diary wherever you live to write your understanding, your views
and suggestions, your ideas concerning the provision of clean water worldwide.
Do we know, for example, where our ‘domestic water’ has been obtained and what
then is done to clean it prior to its being made available to us? Wherever you
are in the world and if you are a Diary reader who shares these concerns,
please write for possible publication in The
Earthrise Diary about your experience and knowledge
concerning your potable water.
E: don883@bigpond.com
[Please attach
documents, preferably in Word and in Times New Roman, 12-pt, 1.5 spacing. An
essay or a memoir or even a paragraph or two of postcard length might enable
your writing? Thank you].
February 20 2016.
*
A GENTLE ASIDE ON LAWN RESILIENCE
DD
…Lawns seemed to live
continually for many years and they generally looked pleasantly green unless
there was drought or a fire and not forgetting rare floods that not only buried
lawns, they buried them alive, killed them and left them permanently dead.
DD. ‘The Partial
Lawn,’(essay) is in my anthology of essays: IDLING.
I like to think that the lawn that I enjoy seeing is nothing
more than the lawn I enjoy being there to be seen, but there’s plenty of
evidence suggesting otherwise. I know of some who control the lives of lawns as if for the singular pleasure of the
lawn owner: the lawn only exists so
that its master may excessively mow and diminish it. Some lawn owners, despite
enjoying seeing their lawns, alas cut and trim with such ruthless intent that
they subdue the green sward to pallid helplessness and despair by preventing through
excessive mowing the ability of lawn grass to simply be itself and to joyously
grow vertically. Lawn stewards and
those who enjoy seeing lawns may
become unsettled and anxious seeing lawns being badly treated (although a
little stress is good perhaps for our encouraging the development of lawn and
grass resilience). “Resilience” is a
fancy word that means to rebound or
to bounce back rather like rubber. Our own human resilience is a healthy and
healing ability that benefits from extra attention coming from hard physical
work and exercise. Some of what’s good for me might also be good for the
livelihood and wellbeing of the typical grass lawn. Excessive physical work and endless exercise probably isn’t entirely
good for me and pruning lawns to within millimetres of their lives probably isn’t
good for lawn grass, either.
A close-trimmed lawn will often look fine, but a lawn
doesn’t have to be shorn to its roots; it doesn’t require to be trained into
flatness: it doesn’t need continually to be mutilated to become something that
it naturally is not. Well before our Pleistocene ancestors started to exploit
the seeds and grains for food that grasses could supply, there were oceanic
grasslands and prairies on Earth and the grasslands always grew upward because
like trees they will have enjoyed the power to be vertical. Animals and birds
and perhaps a myriad other creatures made partial use of grasslands without any
need of pressing the grasses into service: grass knows perfectly well how to
grow on its own. And when we look more closely at grasses being themselves we
may see (if we choose to and are willing), we may then more easily see that grass, whatever might
happen subsequently to it, is both adventurous and resilient simply because of its striving toward verticality. Of what
use would a prairie be were it to be mown flat?
If you are a mower of grass lawns you may be very well aware
of this striving and the resilience that grass and its roots depend upon and if
you are unfortunately not aware of the purpose
of grass you may be cruelly punishing your lawns for their courageous
attempts to simply be themselves.
I am as a lawn viewer and lawn watcher so unashamedly
slipshod in my viewing that I openly enjoy seeing grasses freely growing upward
because the grass exists in collaboration and cooperation not only with other
grasses, with the soil and its many microbes, but also with other species of plants. Thus, what may have
begun as broadcast mixes (composed and then flung by human hands) of selected
lawn grass seeds germinating and growing toward a lawn of sorts, soon or later
may be modified by other ambitious
species programmed by Nature to be a composite prairie or a plain, a
multi-species grassland, or even a lawn!
When we consider grasses in this way it becomes clear that
the simple human act of planting a lawn and encouraging its growth will sooner
or later become the focus for both health and for pathology. Grasses want to be
communities of grasses and whatever other sympathetic living organisms might fit
in. What best will fit in is going to include (whether the lawn owner likes it
or not) animals like field mice and crickets and even small frogs. Constantly
mowing the developing grassland so that it becomes humiliated, tamed and
frustrated implies lawn therapy. Lawn therapy, fortunately, is so simple that
even the most intelligent and best educated humans on the Planet may apply it
because it requires the intending mower to do nothing more overt than to stop
mowing for increasingly unsettling periods of time. This stopping is one of the
only techniques known to us that will enable awareness for the mower or
operator.
Big Lawn at Earthrise is the consequence of minor and major
floods that always bring surprising gifts of varied species: floods replenish
grass lawns with imported new seeds. The original Big Lawn here still exists in
places less than a meter below the present lawn level but unfortunately those
places are now purely archaeological and dead. There are places where the contemporary
lawn is almost always damp and shady and other parts where the sun is almost
relentless. Most of this unique lawn is overshadowed by eucalypts and by other
trees. The eucalypts are so-called flooded gums, E. grandis (the tallest tree in NSW is a flooded gum). These beautiful
great trees have creamy trunks and they rise to 50- and 60-m. Similarly, some
white cedars and tamarind trees also rise here to considerable heights. The
high trees together make it easier for grass lawns to realize themselves and
when there are abundant falls of rain and heavy showers (as now are being
experienced) the grass or grasses remain wet for long periods. Such wetness
encourages the grass lawn to be its abundant self and affords the hitherto
unaware mower or operator salvation, a splendid new level of awareness and
possibilities of redemption. The grass lawn will happily be itself and delight
everybody who cares to see The Real Thing.
Shaded lawns and excessively wet seasons practically
guarantee stressful times for the human mower of lawns who has chosen to become
habituated to mowing closely. Psychotherapy is then required for those worst
afflicted. As much as the present Lawn Steward enjoys the verticality of the
wild and untamed grasses he also appreciates that an occasional mow or trim is
appropriate. There are, however, surprises. It becomes essential in certain
areas of my lawn to go slowly and
carefully. There are small frogs whose livelihoods are suddenly at risk from
the whirring mower’s blades. There is a risk-taking water dragon that dogs the
mowers tracks and that comes so close to the machine that he or she is only
centimetres from bloodily being minced. Dragons on the belvedere are tame
enough to swing from my boot (when I sit cross-legged in a chair because the
boot is a partially elevated platform from where the hunter is enabled to see
and locate biting flies). I have frequently to slow and stop mowing and then
chide the dragons but they take no heed. And if it’s not plump little frogs
that so stimulate the dragon appetite, it’s the green as grass chubby crickets.
The midday mow with the sun high and drying my prairie lawn
causes longer grasses to stop the machine in its tracks: such actions enable
the operator to bend and pull the starter cord more frequently. Bending too, to
pick up twigs and sticks that the high trees have let go or that nightly nectar
feeders in the canopy have cut and dropped will also exercise the mower’s
muscles. All of the dragons’ death-defying accompanying during mowing (to say
nothing of spiders running with their eggs and crickets dodging both the
lawnmower and the dragon) is more than enough to encourage the mower operator
to sit more frequently and to rest in the shade.
Give a little and take a little: quid pro quo. Everything is connected to everything else.
(Afterthoughts: close cropping or daily
mowing or even mowing two or three times each week is a not very strenuous exercise for the mower because it’s a mere
stroll in the park; therefore very frequent mowing by the owner or operator is
not a particularly healthy pursuit. For mowers such as I who operates these
days on a fat or fatty diet, frequent vigorous exercise and hard physical work
is appropriate if only to burn fat (as did our Palaeolithic ancestors who
hunted and killed their food) (and never dreamed of mowing lawns). Thus a more strenuous mowing in grass that’s long
and wet requires more muscle power and frequent pushing and pulling makes
mowing here at Earthrise an exercise of
inestimable value. I’m tempted to inaugurate an International College of
Paleo Mowing here at Earthrise where I’d also be pleased to supervise, from my
chair in the deep shade, training courses on suitable partly shaded, ultra
long, very wet Earthrise Big Lawn Grass. Advanced training groups would be
required to avoid the mowing of frogs, crickets and over-enthusiastic water
dragons that normally live carefree lives on these Special College Lawns).
*
THE ENVIRONMENT AND OUR BEING IN THE WORLD
Quietening the mind,
Deep in the forest
Water drips down.
HOSHA (date unknown)
[In RH Blyth (1981),
Haiku Vol 1: Eastern Culture. Tokyo:
The Hokuseido Press]
I’ve always
been partial to and fond of rivers, especially rivers within forests. I’ve been
less fond of the ocean. The water in rivers like the water in the ocean is both
awesome and powerful when it’s compelled to be. What I like about the river in
the forest is that I can potter about, reptiles permitting, on the riverbank,
watch the river’s moods and movements from different places, see what it’s up
to at most times of the day or night. The ocean is a different matter entirely:
I can see it constantly and be on it or in it, but I’m always subject to its
apparent whims: oceanic may also be overwhelming. Being close to creeks and
rivers and chinking streams and also close to the greens of vegetation that
includes big trees is always a gratifying experience. That’s not much of an
explanation but it continues preeminently in my mind as the principle reason
for my having lived here in the Bellinger River Valley for so much of my life.
I was born on
an island and have always lived close to rivers. When I was a youngster I
imagined one day building my own house, perhaps in the mountains in South
Africa (which is where I spent much of my childhood, following my first eight
years on Vancouver Island). Instead, I’ve built the house in New South Wales,
Australia, having lived in this country now for nearly two thirds of my life.
One of my best experiences was being at sea for two months on the voyage from
Canada to South Africa and I’ve written about that elsewhere (“1937” in one of
my anthologies of essays, HERE AND THERE).
In 1937 I saw a river in flood for the first time and it was an exciting
surprise. In 1937 I wasn’t aware of the likelihood of the polar ice sheets one
day melting and inundating much of the world; perhaps there weren’t many
scientists then, either, who pondered the likely melting of that ice and the
subsequent rising of the ocean. That likelihood has more credence now. Now we
may increase our awareness of what will come if we fail to address global
warming and climate change.
Recently I
listened to a radio program about the melting of the polar ice sheets and the
ice and glaciers melting in, e.g., Greenland. It seems that even quite small
temperature rises are having surprisingly big consequences for the weather
(especially the changes of temperatures in the ocean). Without being unduly
technical: there are huge quantities of water in the ice sheets and now the ice is melting faster. The melting ice is raising the
level of the ocean faster than has previously been predicted.
My selfish
notion is that I’m not alone in wanting to live near water. I know that living
in a flood-prone location is dangerous. What nobody yet knows is the relative
danger of the ocean rising dramatically faster now than has been predicted. The
rapid rising of the ocean will have dramatic and disastrous consequences for
everybody, for all living creatures on Earth.
*
At this point
I re-introduce my friend, Peter Thompson who writes and thinks about water:
mostly the potable kind. One of Pete’s aims is to being self-sufficient. He
enjoys building, carpentry and restoration. He and his partner Dee are also
experienced travelers (including in S-E Asia) and are 4-WD explorers of the Australian
Outback.
WE ARE WATER!
Peter Thompson
We must look into unknown dimensions, into
Nature, into that incalculable and imponderable life, whose carrier and
mediator, the blood of the Earth that accompanies us steadfastly from the
cradle to the grave, is water.
Viktor Schauberger
For as long as I can
remember I’ve been fascinated by water from the ocean, creeks, lakes, rain,
storms, clouds, hail and by water symbolism: in fact, by anything at all that’s
to do with water.
Growing up in the
Australian bushland was a wonderful series of adventures for a child with
Mother Nature as my teacher. As children we spent most of our playtime in the
bushland opposite the family home and in the small creek where we’d sail small
rafts of sticks and leaves before setting them off on the gentle flow. There
were frogs and tadpoles and small fish (most likely gudgeon) to keep us company.
Sometimes after rain we made small dams of branches and mud and waited for the
dam to break. As I became more adventurous I followed the small creeks downstream
via small falls to the larger waterfalls: it was slippery and quite dangerous
to some and just plain awesome to us kids. At school at the tender age of eight
I completed my first project on water: a comprehensive childlike view of our
watery world.
Water is our most precious and interconnected
natural resource. It sustains all ecosystems, communities, and economies from
local watersheds to the seas. It's vital to sustaining our health, safety, and
the environments in which we live and work. Simply put, water is life. (Alexandra Cousteau)
My family moved to
the inner west of Sydney when I was ten years old. In this new landscape
concrete canals had replaced streams; and the bushland had been replaced by
huge stormwater pipes complete with trickles of foul-smelling polluted water
running through them. We explored these underground tunnels for miles but there
was never a sign of a clean natural watercourse anywhere. Occasionally we’d
fish in the upper reaches of the then polluted Sydney harbour but we never ate
the catch. Then I met a surfing family and I spent the following years surfing
some of the best breaks in Australia. It was at Sydney’s famous Manly beach
that I almost lost my life to the ocean. I clearly remember floating out to sea
exhausted and battered by the monstrous seas at that time. The words; “born in
Manly, died in Manly,” went around and around in my head as I gulped salty
water into my lungs and then out of the blue a helicopter and a rescue boat
appeared.
Water was playing a
big role in my life back then but there was much more to experience and to learn.
For about seven years of almost continuous travelling in the 1980s my life
partner and I surfed, canoed, fished, swam, and explored the Australian
coastline. We also visited and explored inland billabongs, creeks, canyons,
ravines, gorges, beaches, estuaries, inlets and underground streams.
The teacher appears when the student is
ready. (Lao Tzu (600-531BC)
It was at about this
time some thirty years ago that I came across a small book that described the
quality of drinking water. I don’t recall the book’s title or the author’s name
or even why this small book came into my life. Looking back now I’m sure that
the book about water had come my way for a reason. The book was an eye-opener
that sparked my interest, perhaps even my passion to learn all that I could
about the most precious of all our most precious resources. My little book
explained some of the processes that were commonplace in the treatment of
household water such as disinfection and fluoridation and the addition, for
various reasons, of a variety of additives.
I was shocked at the
number of ‘extras’ added to a typical town or city water supply. The ‘extras’ was
like a shopping list of chemical substances and I remember asking myself why
are all these substances were being added to my drinking water and what effects
all of these chemicals could have on my health and on the health of my young
family. The seed was sown. I set out to learn all that I possibly could on
water health, water quality and the health impacts of water additives. My research led me to the personal conclusion that
health risks to drinking, cooking, bathing and swimming in treated town water
were far greater than I was willing to take. I could possibly filter out these
unwanted components in my drinking water and continue to bathe with the treated
water or I could make some lifestyle choices that could potentially improve the
quality of the water that my family was exposed to and thereby improve the
quality of our lives.
And with water we have made all living things
(The Koran, Sura XXI (Al
Anbiya): 30)
It wasn’t a
difficult decision to move out of suburbia and away from our total dependency
on town water and all its additives. We soon found a small acreage that was
largely rainforest with a permanent creek, a seasonal creek and as bonus, a
22,000-litres rainwater tank that was brimming with pure, fresh, additive-free
rainwater. My family grew and we all thrived in our new and improved natural
water lifestyle, complete with extensive permaculture food gardens watered by
our permanent freshwater creek. As time passed and the children grew I began to
notice more and more aircraft passing overhead and that got me thinking of the
possible airborne pollutants that could be landing on my roof and running into
my rainwater tank. Local industry was growing and even though we were thirteen
kilometres from the nearest highway I was starting to hear the drone of distant
traffic that was increasing in association with population growth. Herbicides and
chemical fertilizers that my neighbours were using were also a concern and I wondered
if perhaps my permanent creek could become contaminated and how would that affect
our food gardens. Although I took further precautions, that wasn’t enough.
Water is life's matter and matrix, mother and
medium. There is no life without water (Albert Szent-Gyorgi)
We started to look further afield for a
pristine piece of land with a pure clean uncontaminated water supply, perhaps
even our very own spring. After several years of searching we found our water
paradise on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, Australia and yes we also
got our spring water, rainforest and river frontage of pure spring-fed water.
Our new spring-fed water supply is gravity fed to our small acreage by a series
of food-grade water pipes to a lined concrete tank and then gravity fed to the
house and gardens. Our spring water is sourced from a series of pure springs in
an ancient rainforest (a protected forest area with no farming activities
running into its catchment). We drank, we cooked, we bathed, we swam and we
watered our vegetable gardens and fruit trees with our very own spring water.
Eighteen years later we still drink that very same water although now we run it
through an alkalising and ionizing water filter.
Special care should be taken of the health of
the inhabitants, which will depend chiefly on the healthiness of the locality
and of the quarter to which they are exposed, and secondly on the use of pure
water; this latter point is by no means a secondary consideration. For the
elements which we use the most and oftenest for the support of the body
contribute most to health, and among those are water and air. Wherefore, in all
wise states, if there is want of pure water, and the supply is not all equally
good, the drinking water ought to be separated from that which is used for
other purposes (Aristotle (383-322 BC)
I think it fair to
assume that most people living on Planet Earth today have some idea that our
beautiful blue planet, when seen from outer space, is largely covered by water;
indeed, a visitor from another galaxy would likely call our planet, Water, not
Earth. An astounding 70.8 per cent of Earth’s surface is ocean having an
average depth of 3.73 kilometres. In fact if we were to level all the Earth’s
landforms, a single ocean would cover the entire globe to a depth of 2.7
kilometres. Human beings are landlubbers and almost totally dependent on fresh
water for our survival. Ancient civilizations understood the sacredness of
water and even now almost all of the world’s great religions use water
symbolically.
He sends the springs into the valleys, which
run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild
asses quench their thirst (Psalm
104:10, 11)
Yet how many of us
have any idea that our fresh drinking water is but a tiny fraction of the total
water on Planet Earth? Water covers approximately 70% of the planet and our
bodies coincidentally are about 70% water! Recent estimates put the fresh water
percentage at just 3% of the total, of which two thirds is frozen in the Polar
Regions, leaving just 1% fresh water
available to support all living things on Earth.
Sadly much of this
tiny 1% is now polluted by our thoughtless efforts at modern living and
lifestyles. Agriculture uses most of the fresh water on Earth often
inefficiently, wastefully and in polluting ways. Interestingly it takes more
than 36,000 litres of water to produce just 1 kilogram of rice. Fresh clean readily available water is a
tiny 100th of 1% of the total water on Planet Earth.
Of course all this
water has always been here, it just goes round and round. We are actually
drinking the very same water that our ancestors drank, indeed the very same
water that the dinosaurs drank. The hydrologic cycle of evaporation,
condensation, and rain ensures that water cartwheels around the planet. We humans
are part of this endless cycle and there is more water in the atmosphere than
in all the world’s rivers combined. But how many of us have any idea where our drinking, cooking and general
household water comes from? More importantly what has been added to
our water and what undesirables could we expect to find in our household
drinking water?
We turn on our taps,
step into our showers and fill our kettles and give little or no thought at all
as to where our household water comes from and how it is used. Do we ever consider just how much water
we use as individuals? Recent estimates put daily use in Australia and North
America at more than 400 litres per person per day. Europeans are more frugal
at 200 litres per day compared to a typical resident of sub-Saharan Africa (20
litres per day) of which much is carried great distances by women and children
who may spend as much as 25% of their day carrying water for family use (as do
many others in developing nations all over the world). Our bodies are
predominately water. The brain is 75% water, the heart 75%, muscles 75%, and
kidneys are 83% water. When we are born we are as much as 90% water and when we
die we are still 58-68% water.
We are water and whatever we do to water we
do to ourselves (David
Suzuki)
A typical town water sample in most
developed countries may well contain up to 300 different extras, including some
or all of the following;
Lead: although water usually leaves the water works with levels of heavy
metals far below the permitted levels, by the time it reaches the consumer it
often contains more than five times the limit. Most of the lead in drinking
water comes from old lead pipes or from the lead-solder used in joining copper
pipes that now are used in most modern houses. Lead-contaminated water is a
serious health risk, particularly to children and pregnant women. Adults with
excessive levels of lead in their bodies can suffer from hypertension, strokes
and heart disease.
Aluminium:
is the most bountiful metal on Earth: it is used, as aluminium sulphate, as a
form of modern water treatment. There are clear links between high levels of
aluminium and Alzheimer’s disease.
Cadmium: can be found in the water of houses having zinc-plated pipes. Like
lead, it accumulates in the body leading to kidney failure and liver damage.
Mercury: is always removed at the water works, but people who have a private
well or spring, especially in areas of intensive farming may however be at risk
from mercury poisoning which causes internal bleeding, skin problems, as well
as liver and kidney damage. Mercury exposure at high levels can harm the brain,
kidneys, heart and the immune system.
Nitrate: is usually traced to the extensive use of nitrate fertilizers or to
sewage contamination. By itself Nitrate
is not so dangerous in drinking water until it reacts with other chemicals to
form Nitrite. When Nitrate is converted to Nitrite within the digestive tract it
may then form carcinogenic nitrosamines. Nitrates are also used in preserved
meats such as ham and bacon.
Medication. There is growing concern at
the levels of painkillers, antibiotics and oestrogen (from the contraceptive
pill) to be found in drinking water. A nationwide study performed by the US
Geological Survey found that 80% of streams and rivers (sources of drinking
water) had significant levels of antibiotics, contraceptives and steroids.
Chlorine: In the Western World chlorine is the principal chemical added to
drinking water as a disinfectant. It creates many health risks to humans. When
chlorine enters the body as a result of swallowing, breathing (as in the
shower) or direct skin contact, it reacts with our bodies to produce acids. The
acids are corrosive and they damage cells in the body on contact. Most
dangerously chlorines react with other chemicals in water to produce
Trihalomethanes.
Trihalomethanes: are powerful, poisonous compounds formed
when chlorine reacts with dissolved organic chemicals (chloroform is a
trihalomethane). They are carcinogenic and can damage cell structures in living
organisms. The American Journal of Public
Health estimates that about 9 percent of bladder cancers and 15 percent of
rectal cancers are caused by long-term consumption of drinking water that has
been treated with chlorine.
Organic chemicals: many of these originate in pesticides and
herbicides or in factory and urban waste. As streams, rivers and lakes become
contaminated, the chemicals make their ways down into the water table and from
there into our water supplies. Glyphoste
is one example of a widely used herbicide that is finding its way into water
tables all over the world. According to six published medical studies, even at
extremely low levels Glyphosate may
stimulate hormone-dependant cancers.
Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs): originate mainly from asphalt or bitumen
coatings placed on the inside of cast-iron or mild-steel pipelines to prevent
corrosion. They are strongly suspected of being carcinogenic. Levels have been
found at alarming rates of (4,000 nanograms) in Britain, where the EC limit is
200 nanograms.
Fluoride: In some countries fluoride is added to drinking water in an attempt to
reduce tooth cavities in children. Many countries have now banned its use in
this way including most European countries, Japan and China whereas North
America and Australia have close to 70% fluoridated water available to water
consumers. Fluoride toxicity has been linked to genetic damage in plants and
animals, to birth defects in humans (possibly including Down’s syndrome). There
is also growing evidence that it can interfere with the metabolism of calcium,
magnesium, manganese and vitamin C within the body. There is enough fluoride in
a tube of fluoridated toothpaste to kill a small child.
To understand water is to understand the
cosmos, the marvels of nature and life itself (Masiro Emoto)
We believe that we
have come a long way from the days when water was drawn from village wells,
creeks, rivers and dams; but do we really need to add all these chemical
compounds in order to make our household water safe to use and what might be
the long-term health effects of daily consumption and inhalation of these
substances? World Health Organisation figures indicate 14 million cancer-related
deaths were recorded in 2012. Hospital beds are in short supply worldwide and
it seems that we are now living longer than ever before, yet some say that the
quality of our lives is deteriorating. Is it possible that some of our
deteriorating health problems are related to water quality? Globally, bottled water now occupies
larger sections of grocery store shelves than ever before and bottled water is
increasing by 10,000 billion litres per year. Thus, it’s no coincidence that
bottled water sales have skyrocketed in recent years. According to recent news
reports much of this bottled water is no
better than ordinary tap water.
If you do nothing there will be no results (Mahatma Gandhi)
What then can we do
to improve the quality of drinking water and therefore the quality of our
lives? The first step is to become conscious of the quality of the water that
we put into our bodies and consider what contaminants might be in this water
and where does our water come from? We can contact our local water authority
and ask for a copy of the annual report on local water (water analysis) or we
can have our water tested at a reputable water testing facility. Should we buy quality filtered water or
filter it ourselves? One option is
to filter our drinking and cooking water and perhaps even our household water
for washing and bathing within a whole house system. There is a multitude of
water filtering systems in the marketplace, from simple and inexpensive gravity
units suitable for kitchen use, to whole of house systems that filter all water
for house and gardens.
Water
is life. We are the people who live by the water. Pray by these waters. Travel
by the waters. Eat and drink from these waters. We are related to those who
live in the water. To poison the waters is to show disrespect for creation. To
honour and protect the waters is our responsibility as people of the land (Winona LaDuke)
Could our most
important element, H2O that makes up almost 70% of our bodies, be
the key to a brighter and healthier future?
References
Aristotle. (1954). The complete works of Aristotle.
Google Books.
Bragg, P. (2014). Water: the shocking truth. Health
science.
Cousteau, A. (2011). The Water Book. Amazon Books.
Cunah, J. P. (2014). Mercury Poisoning.
Medicinenet.com
Hilleman, B. (2000). Fluoride Statistics.
Gandhi, M. (1962). The Essential Gandhi. Vintage
books.
La-Duke, W. (1999). All Our Relations. Google Books.
New York State Department of Health. (2004). The facts
About Chlorine.
Sales Volumes of Bottled Water. www.statitica.com
Schauberger, V. (1999). The Water Wizard. Amazon Books.
Selby, A. (2000). Healing Water for Mind and Body.
Szent-Gyorgi, A. (1972). The Living State. Google
Books
Suzuki, D. (2010). The Legacy. Greystone Books
Suzuki, D (1999). The Sacred Balance. Greystone Books.
Wikipedia article. (2012). Water Fluoridation in
Australia.
World Health Organization. (2015). Cancer Fact Sheet
No. 297.
Peter Thompson.
E: petede1961@outlook.com
APPENDIX
Don Diespecker’s
Ebooks:
One of my novels, The Selati Line, is a South African railway
story, a mobile or even picaresque story and also a road story. Several of my
novels start as if in the minds of
fictive characters in airplanes (usually a Tiger Moth): somewhere up in the
clouds above the Bellinger River.
The imagined flyer (usually a quite elderly person who once was a
teenage young woman in the Air Transport Auxiliary) imagines the story unfolding in a place beneath. Happiness, for example, begins on the nearby Trunk Road
between Bellingen and Thora and soon makes a second start on Darkwood Road
(right outside the house where I’m now writing this). The Overview (a novella) starts in the air (directly above my
house). The new sequel to Happiness,
Success starts in the air, too. That
most distinguished American writer, the late James Salter (who once was a
Korean War flier) uses the device of ‘the unnamed narrator’) to tell some of
his stories: I like the notion and also employ a variation of that.
(1) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel to my two print novels (now also available
as eBooks) published in one volume as The
Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço
Marques). Finding Drina is
written in three parts and in three different styles that also are intended
homage pieces (to GG Marquez, Ernest Hemingway and Lawrence Durrell); thus this
little book is also meta-fiction (novella, about 30-k words).
(2) The Earthrise Visits is an Australian
long story set at Earthrise (about 20-k words): an old psychologist meets a
young literary ghost from the 1920s (his girlfriend meets her, too) before a
second old literary ghost, unaware of his spectral state, arrives unexpectedly.
(3) Farewelling Luis Silva is an Australian
dystopian long story partly set in Australia, Portugal and France (about 23-k
words). A sniper meets an Australian Prime Minister, an old lover and a
celebrity journalist; three of them meet a terrorist in Lisbon where there is a
bloody assassination.
(4) The Selati Line is an early 20th
century Transvaal train story, road story, flying story, a caper story and also
a love story sequel to The Agreement
and Lourenço Marques, lightly
written and containing some magical realism. A scene-stealing child prodigy keeps the characters in order
(novel, about 150-k words).
(5) The Summer River is a dystopian novel
(about 70-k words) set at Earthrise. A General, the déjà vu sniper, the
Australian Prime Minister and the celebrity journalist witness the murder of a
guerrilla who had also been an Australian university student; they discuss how
best to write an appropriate book about ‘foreign invasions’ (novel, about 70-k
words).
(6) The Annotated “Elizabeth.” I examine
and offer likely explanations as to why my uncle published a mixed prose and
verse novel in which his mother is portrayed as the principal protagonist and I
suggest why the book Elizabeth
(published by Dick Diespecker in 1950) is a novel and not a biography, memoir
or history (non-fiction, about 24-k words).
(7) The Overview is a short Australian
novel set at Earthrise (about 32.5-k words) and is also a sequel to The Summer River.
(8) Scribbles from Earthrise, is an
anthology of selected essays and caprice written at Earthrise (about 32-k
words). Topics are: family and friends, history of the Earthrise house, the
river, the forest, stream of consciousness writing and the Earthrise dogs.
(9) Here and There is a selection of Home
and Away essays (about 39-k words). (‘Away’ includes Cowichan (Vancouver
Island), 1937 (my cabin-boy year), The Embassy Ball (Iran), At Brindavan
(meeting Sai Baba in India). ‘Home’ essays are set at Earthrise and include as
topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some light-hearted caprices.
(10) The Agreement is a novel set in
Mozambique and Natal during December 1899 and the Second Anglo-Boer War: an
espionage yarn written around the historical Secret Anglo Portuguese Agreement
(1899). Louis Dorman and his brother, Jules, feature together with Drina de
Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for the Portuguese Government. British
Intelligence Officers, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police socialize at
the Estrela Café (about 62-k words).
(11) Lourenço Marques is the sequel to The Agreement. Mozambique in September
1910. The Estrela café-bar is much frequented and now provides music: Elvira
Tomes returns to LM from Portugal and is troubled by an old ghost; Drina and
her companion return with an unexpected new member of the family; Louis faints.
Joshua becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to
film a fiesta and hundreds of tourists visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays
piano for music lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate
(novel: about 75-k words).
(12) The Midge Toccata, a caprice about
talking insects (inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories). This book has a
splendid new cover designed by my cousin, Katie Diespecker (fiction, caprice,
about 26-k words).
(13) Happiness is a short novel set at
Earthrise. The ‘narrator’ is again the very elderly ex-ATA flier who
unexpectedly meets and rescues a bridge engineer requiring urgent hospitalisation:
she gets him safely to hospital in his own plane. She also ‘imagines’ an
extension to her own story, one about a small family living partly in the
forest and on the riverbank: the theme is happiness. Principal protagonist is a
13-years old schoolgirl, apparently a prodigy: she befriends a wounded Army
officer and encourages his plans. Her parents are a university teacher and a
retired concert pianist. The family pets can’t resist being scene-stealers in
this happy family (novel, about 65-k words).
(14) The Special Intelligence Officer is
part family history as well as a military history and describes the roles of my
late grandfather in the Guerrilla War (1901-1902) in Cape Colony. The Guerrilla
War was the last phase of the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The title of
the book is taken from Cape newspapers of the time: Capt Rudolph Diespecker was
a District Commandant; his responsibilities included intelligence gathering
that led to the capture, trial and execution of a Boer Commandant who was
wrongly framed as a ‘Cape rebel,’ when he was legally a POW (Gideon Scheepers
was never a Cape rebel, having been born in the Transvaal (the South African
Republic,) one of the two Boer Republics (non-fiction, about 33-k words).
(15) The Letters From Earthrise, an
anthology of my columns and other essays and articles written for the Australian Gestalt Journal between 1997
and 2005 (fiction and some non-fiction, about 70-k words).
(16) The Darkwood
is a dystopian novel set at Earthrise in the not too distant future (about 80-k
words). Earthrise is again central to other themes.
(17) Bellinger; Along
The River is an anthology of personal essays relative to my home and the
property, Earthrise, and the river at my doorstep (aspects and descriptions of
the river, including flooding) (nonfiction, about 28-k words)
(18) Reflecting:
an anthology of personal essays about the gardens, butterflies, a caprice, and
other motivating factors at my home, Earthrise: mostly non-fiction (20-k words)
(19) Idling: is a
collection of personal essays about seeing; a military history essay; a
speculation about lawns; a working visit to Griffith University; periods of
enforced idleness as “Don’s Days Out” in Coffs Harbour (mostly non-fiction;
about 36-k words).
(20) Bear Fat A
Memoir by Durbyn C Diespecker (1896-1977) with
Notes and a Biography Edited by Don Diespecker. (This partial memoir that I’d invited in 1950
was written by my father between 1950 and 1969 and describes aspects of his
life in South Africa, the UK and British Columbia, Canada; non-fiction; about
48-k words).
(21) Love. Selected Stories is an anthology of short stories old and
new. Of these narratives three are set or partly set in Bellingen, Dorrigo, and
the Bellinger River Valley; others are set in Africa, Greece, France, Iran and
Spain. “The Bellinger Protocol;” is a (magic reality) caprice. ‘Dragonfly’ is
an interior monologue set in an imagined Vietnam; ‘Season of Love’ is largely
interior monologue and set in the mountains surrounding Pilgrim’s Rest (then in
the Transvaal. Several stories are fictionalized non-fiction (e.g., ‘A Circuit
of Fields’ is excerpted from a non-fiction essay and set in pre-Revolutionary
Iran) and most of the narratives derive from real people and real locales
(about 36-k words).
(22) Success, a novel, begins in the air,
gets under way in the familiar house on the Bellinger River, moves to Vienna
and Paris and is apparently narrated by several writers including one or two
who appear unnamed or unidentified. The story develops around Martha Haley, now
in her seventeenth years and her new friend, Tom Pearce, a musical prodigy,
aged seventeen: their parents are also in Paris (about 107-k words).
(23) Excess, a novel, begins at Earthrise in
NSW, moves to San Francisco, where 22-years old blue stocking Martha Haley
meets the 24-yerars old look-alike French journalist Melissa Bonnard. The pair
join entrepreneur publisher Avra Palin in La Jolla where the trio avoid
kidnapping and work together to document some violent history. Martha, before
returning home at a slower pace rests briefly in Paris and changes her life’s
plan in Montignac (about 98-k words); Happiness
(13), Success (22) and Excess complete the trilogy.
*
My thanks and
appreciation: to Peter Thompson for his water memoir.
With best wishes to all
Diary readers: from Don.
don883@bigpond.com
Riverside
DD
Fewer
water
dragons
these days
Fat biting flies seem rare
Midges
cloud the damp
air
A black
snake sleeps
lazily
The climbing goanna stares
down
Old
man sees
the changes
Burnt out summer slips
away
