A paper co-written by CHE graduate Chriss Bull, CHE fellow Alastair McIntosh, and Colin Clark from Strathclyde's Department of Geography and Sociology has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Oral History later this year. The paper, entitled Land, Identity, School: Exploring Women’s Identity with Land in Scotland Through The Experience Of Boarding School, arose from Chriss' work for her MSc thesis, which was partly funded with a Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) International research scholarship. According to Alastair McIntosh, the collaboration "is a fine example of the way in which the kind of insights that CHE brings can be balanced by wider skills in the Department of Geography and Sociology to bring about a result that reflects to the credit of us all." CHE director and department lecturer Isobel Lindsay also contributed.

In a unique guest commentary, the mother of CHE graduate Emily Hunter shares her experience of being an interfaith chaplain at a hospital in Vancouver, Canada.

Joy Hunter writes: This afternoon I conducted a Memorial Service for a wonderful woman who passed away in our Palliative Care Unit last week. I first met Valerie 2 months ago. She had a broad Yorkshire accent, which gave us a connection right away. She also had the Northern down to earth approach to life and a brilliant sense of humor. Valerie knew that she was close to the end of her life and she lived every minute fully, getting out on day trips with her husband as often as possible. Sometimes she invited me to say a prayer for her, but most of the time she preferred to talk about her grandchildren, her son who had returned to England and had built a successful business and her concerns about her husband’s health and how visiting her in hospital every day was wearing him out. Maybe that concern influenced her to let go of life sooner than she might have done, because her deterioration was sudden and rapid. Before that decline our visits were short and fairly relaxed. Valerie was a strong woman and kept her feelings about her dying under wraps. Whatever she was going through, she had the gift of making me, and all her other caregivers feel good, which was a great gift to give at the end of her life. She was devoted to her family and they were with her when she passed away. At her Service, it was apparent to all of us that she had found meaning in her life in building a strong, loving family unit.

Walking into the storm
at Sìdean Dubh
rain crackling off my waterproof
the force of each
droplet
piercing
through heavy skeleton
enfleshing
enlivening
filling my cup

Sam Harrison completed the MSc in 2005. He currently runs Open Ground, developing personal, community and ecological connections through outdoor experiences.

The CHE is pleased to host two speakers from Philadelphia's BuildaBridge International, who will present a public forum on using the arts for social transformation, Friday 11 April.

NEW VENUE: Strathclyde University, McCance Building, Lecture Theatre 1, Richmond St, Glasgow
Time: 18:00 - 20:00 (followed by an informal reception)

The forum is free and open to the public.

More information is available here -- and to RSVP, please Jason Nicholas: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Emily Hunter (pictured on left) shares her experience since leaving CHE.

Almost immediately after submitting my thesis in December 2005, I said goodbye to Edinburgh, which had been my home for 5 years, and headed to the unknown wild shores of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, where my family was living. I traveled light in terms of physical belongings but I felt rich in terms of what the CHE had given me: a new passion for human ecology, a renewed passion for creative writing and friendships which would hold me across the oceans. Due to lack of work on the island and a high school friend’s offer of employment, I moved from the island to the city of Vancouver, where I began tutoring Korean high school students in the evenings. During the day I wrote and found a women’s writing group.

A recent article in the Independent took an excessively condescending tone towards people's anxieties and fears about the state of the planet, provoking many letters of protest from the international Ecopsychology community. Mary-Jayne Rust, who co-teaches the CHE Ecopsychology option module, was quoted extensively in the article. While she was relieved to have been quoted correctly, she was "very dismayed by the tabloid tone of the piece."

Current MSc student James Taylor is spreading the beauty of permaculture -- the philosophy of working with nature to create sustainable abundance -- through an online photo gallery.

James writes: About a year ago I set up a site on the photo sharing service Flickr to store and share images of permaculture and other sustainability focused activity around London that I was photographing and engaged in:  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturewise/
 
It has now moved slightly away from its initial remit, and I have been taking pictures outside London and have also featured photographs taken by friends. So there are currently images from Essex, Glasgow, Manchester, Reading, the Big Green Gathering festival in Devon and photographs from “holding actions”, protests and demonstrations, as well as the “alternative structures” it was already depicting. There are now about 1,800 photos in total.

CHE Graduate Gerri Smyth was one of the lucky attendees at Findhorn's recent Positive Energy conference...

Gerri writes: Recently I was one of over 150 folk gathered together at the Findhorn community in Moray, to spend a week seeking “community responses to the challenges of climate change and peak oil.” My personal highlights follow but for those who would like a fuller day by day account of the conference it can be found on the Findhorn Foundation website.

After the usual coming together and introductions, Joanna Macy, now 78 but with no visible loss of vigour, spent the best part of two days cycling through the 'work that reconnects.' A particularly poignant moment was a ritual called 'the bowl of tears.' We  named and grieved our losses, then washed our tears in symbolic water. We passed the bowls through a human chain to rejoin the water of the pond at Findhorn, accompanied by a wild snow storm.