Category: Ethic

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Woodlice, Slighting, and the Bore of Evil

A cascade of bright yellow cylindrical flowers on a kōwhai tree, seen from below against green foliage and a blue sky.

This is our kōwhai in what I’m fairly sure is only its second year in bloom. As you can see, this lovely legume pushed the boat out – so much so, in fact, that we had frequent visits from tūī, which was delightful.

Interesting Times

Slighting a castle sounds like peering over your glasses at it and saying “well I don’t think much of that”. The actual process of slighting a castle, however, is much more…vigorous. To translate it into Kiwi English, it is the munting of the castle. To translate it into more cosmopolitan English, it is the partial destruction of the castle to a) make it unusable for castley purposes, and b) make it plain that whoever’s castle this was, they lost.

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Delectable Stationery Alert!

Behold:

A small book covered in a red fabric with quantities of stylized floral ornamentation in gold and silver. Next to it, a fountain pen in brown wood.

This delectable morsel of stationeryhood is a silk sari journal made by Love Calcutta Arts, a business which exists to provide women with the option of employment that isn’t the sex trade. A lot of LCA’s products involve what is popularly known as upcycling: turning old saris into kitchen trivets, quilted coverlets, or book upholstery.

The sari-covered journals come in two sizes (small: 11cm x 13.5cm x 40 leaves; large: 15cm x 18.5cm x 60 leaves) and a range of colour groups: red, green, purple, orange, black, and pink. And because they aren’t mass-produced in a factory, but instead made by carefully trained craftswomen in a workshop, they are all different.

My one (let’s be honest: my first one) is Small and Red.

A small fabric-covered book sitting slightly open on its open edge. The near part of the spine appears red, but the further part and the covers appear to be a mix of green tones.

OR IS IT??

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How to Live Without TV (a Past Post)

This post was originally published over five years ago, but it echoes a book I am currently reading (or possibly the book echoes the post – they were published in the same year). In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport writes, “you’re more likely to succeed in reducing the role of digital tools in your life if you cultivate high-quality alternatives to the easy distraction they provide. For many people, their compulsive phone use papers over a void created by a lack of a well-developed leisure life.”
Oof.
I feel Past Me provided some good advice here for Present Me on how to not get sucked into the small screen. So, bearing in mind that we’re not just talking about TV here, how do you live without TV?

  1. Remove TV from house; delete all TV-related tabs, apps etc.
  2. Ta-da! You are living without TV.
black and white drawing of a TV dumped in a rubbish bin


Except what we really want to know is not how to live without TV, but how to thrive without TV. (Side note: if English was a more sensible language, that would have rhymed and been an all-around more catchy sentence.)

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