Yesterday, despite snow leading to a late start as some early public transport services were absent, by mid-morning, many buses and trains were running. Owain went to London and back for a job interview, and buses enabled me to get to and from work without difficulty, perhaps because there were far fewer cars than usual. There was little snow locally overnight, and this encouraged Clare to set off for Kenilworth by train to look after Rhiannon while Kath and Anto spend time in a recording studio.
Mid-morning, I had a phone call from a churchwarden up in Abercanaid to say it had been decided to cancel tomorrow morning's Eucharist. The village is still snowed in, so even if the A470 main road proved useable, the last mile would be impossible, and the congregation reluctant to risk venturing out to church. So now I have a sermon written and nowhere to preach it.
Finally I got around to archiving properly all the photos I took in Spain and Sicily. Nearly a thousand in the three months I spent on the Costa Azaha and over twelve hundred and fifty over five weeks spent in Taormina. Many of the latter are repeats of the same scene, over fifty of Mount Etna in different weather conditions for example, attempts to get the best out of very variable conditions of lighting and contrast at different times of day. I didn't move around much, the way I did in Spain, but that gave an opportunity to spend more time looking at the place in depth, following events over an afternoon or days, photographing people in addition to streets and landscapes as I usually do. The photos can be viewed on-line here
When I'd finished this little labour of love, I went into town for a look around the shops, and bumped into my friend Roy Thomas in the Grand Arcade. When I sent him birthday greetings from Sicily he replied to me whilst travelling in South Africa. It was great to catch up over coffee, and learn of his involvement in the new campaign to develop a new Severn Barrage project.
I was greatly disappointed when this was project ditched from government's plans, being convinced that it has much to offer, long term, not only in clean and sustainable energy, but also to offer a measure of protection against the complex and largely unforeseen risks emerging as global sea levels rise due to climate change. Sure, there'll be an ecological impact from such a huge engineering project, but global warming is already doing far worse. Compensatory conservation measures are vital to barrage design, but with so many contributory environmental factors changing at the same time, it would be mad to view conservation as a policy of 'no change' preservation, when it needs to be one of sustainable dynamic adaptation to unforeseen unavoidable changes which we may only be able to mitigate.
Finally I got around to archiving properly all the photos I took in Spain and Sicily. Nearly a thousand in the three months I spent on the Costa Azaha and over twelve hundred and fifty over five weeks spent in Taormina. Many of the latter are repeats of the same scene, over fifty of Mount Etna in different weather conditions for example, attempts to get the best out of very variable conditions of lighting and contrast at different times of day. I didn't move around much, the way I did in Spain, but that gave an opportunity to spend more time looking at the place in depth, following events over an afternoon or days, photographing people in addition to streets and landscapes as I usually do. The photos can be viewed on-line here
When I'd finished this little labour of love, I went into town for a look around the shops, and bumped into my friend Roy Thomas in the Grand Arcade. When I sent him birthday greetings from Sicily he replied to me whilst travelling in South Africa. It was great to catch up over coffee, and learn of his involvement in the new campaign to develop a new Severn Barrage project.
I was greatly disappointed when this was project ditched from government's plans, being convinced that it has much to offer, long term, not only in clean and sustainable energy, but also to offer a measure of protection against the complex and largely unforeseen risks emerging as global sea levels rise due to climate change. Sure, there'll be an ecological impact from such a huge engineering project, but global warming is already doing far worse. Compensatory conservation measures are vital to barrage design, but with so many contributory environmental factors changing at the same time, it would be mad to view conservation as a policy of 'no change' preservation, when it needs to be one of sustainable dynamic adaptation to unforeseen unavoidable changes which we may only be able to mitigate.
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