Please see below selected recent culture-related change.
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July 2021
In the 1840s Henry David Thoreau swapped his busy schedule in Concord, Massachusetts, for a wooden hut he built himself near Walden Pond. We had the privilege to visit Walden in July 2012; it exceeded expectations in its tranquility and beauty - and the swim in the pond itself was unforgettable.
Writing in the winter of 1843, shortly after Margaret Fuller’s mentorship made him a writer, the twenty-five-year-old Thoreau awakened to a snow-covered wonderland and marvelled at the splendour of a world reborn.
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"I thought I saw a swallow land, upon my hand, on summer day" - Roy Harper
For the sensitive gardener, this is the peak of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, and the weekend following Midsummer Day is the time of quietness, and of flower festivals and of fragrant old roses around mildewed old church doors and of wandering among indecipherable gravestones and of coming hollyhocks and of lemon balm and of long, long ago memories, but always, "history is now, and England".
Please see selected recent isolation-related change below.
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June 2021
Would you travel across the land, in the hour of the summer solstice?
- from Ancient Dream, by Aeolian Songspell
A time for the half-remembered inner pagan to re-emerge, dancing widdershins in the pre-dawn dew around the celebrity stones, or the authentic stones, or wherever one finds oneself this solstice-time.
Please see below selected recent language-related change.
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April 2021
Way back in 1999 I registered the internet domain name silburyhill.com and paid to maintain it for several years, without ever really doing anything with it. I eventually let the registration lapse, but even now, new developments at Silbury continue to resonate with me in a way that I can't easily put into words.
Why I felt compelled - no other word will do - to acquire silburyhill.com as my first personal URL and why I paid a not inconsiderable sum to hold onto it a few years, despite being far from ready to launch my own website back then, I'm still far from certain.
T.S. Eliot died over 50 years ago now, His legacy remains profound and his poetry moves me deeply.
In 2016 I had the privilege of visiting his final resting place, East Coker.
I read or listen to the peerless Little Gidding often, and almost every line entrances, as if peering through a veil at something once known, but half-forgotten because not looked-for.
Please see below selected Europe-related change from 2015 and earlier, For change from 2016 onwards, please see What's Changing? - Economics.
December 2015
We can be at our most reflective, and perhaps society could be at its most reflexive, around St John's Eve and the other, similar seven calendar points...
Goin' ridin' down by Avalon
Would you meet me in the country
In the summertime in England
Would you meet me?
In the Church of St. John . . .
Down by Avalon . . . .
- from Summertime in England, by Van Morrison