FEAST OR FAMINE

The Hidden Life of Trees: What they Feel, How they Communicate - Discoveries from a  Secret World (2015) is the tree version of the 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird – the book that started other ‘Secret Life of’ books. But this book is not part of that series.  The author Peter Wohlleben was a forester in the Eifel mountains of the Rhineland municipality in Germany for over 20 years. The forest he managed included spruce, beeches, oaks, and pines. In this book he includes other trees, such as birches and aspens. Wohlleben begins with the statement that trees are social beings. They share food with their own species, they communicate through scent, they register pain, and they have their own form of defence. He writes of reproduction, gender, age and aging, skin, soil, health, regeneration, hibernation, and a lot more. He writes about insects and birds and animals and humans – and how they all need trees. His theori...

Wise inspirational words from Chief White Eagle (Ponca): Go forward with courage When you are in doubt, Be still, and wait; When doubt no longer Exists for you, Then go forward with courage. So long as mists envelop you, Be still; Be still until the sunlight pours Through and dispels the mists -        as it surely will then act with courage. MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

World Philosophy Day is celebrated annually on the third Thursday of November – this year it’s 17 November 2016. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established World Philosophy Day in 2005 especially for young people. UNESCO announced that ‘philosophy is a discipline that encourages critical and independent thought and is capable of working towards a better understanding of the world and promoting tolerance and peace.’ It occurs a day after World Tolerance Day on 16 November. By celebrating World Philosophy Day UNESCO underlines the enduring value of philosophy for the development of human thought, for each culture and each individual. UNESCO director-general, Irina Bokova, said, ‘Faced with the complexity of today’s world, philosophical reflection is above all a call to humanity, to take a step back and engage in reasoned dialogue, to build together the solutions to challenges that are beyond our control. This is the best way to...