The home garden supplier, Yates, advertises a handy spray-can of pesticide as ‘low toxic to beneficial insects’ and ‘soft on beneficial insects’. Lies. The pesticide is extremely toxic to the world’s most beneficial insect, the honey bee – a nerve poison 7000 times more lethal than DDT. The pesticide (Confidor) contains nicotine-based poisons which are now banned in France, Italy, Germany, and Slovenia, because of links to massive bee deaths.

These nicotine pesticides (‘neonicotinoids’) are widely used on NZ crops and are now available to the public. Labelling them ‘soft’ on pollinators is biting the hand the feeds us. Bees have been our partners for ages– our important foods need bee pollination. Neonicotinoid pesticides are systemic – the whole plant remains toxic right through to flowering. If spray drift doesn’t kill them, bees could be poisoned by pollen, nectar, and drinking water. Even sub-lethal doses weaken bees’ reproduction, immune systems, navigation, and memory.

Government agencies are not restricting neonicotinoids, so we all need to act: suppliers can label honestly; garden shops can warn customers; and gardeners can avoid ‘handy’ poisons.  Neonicotinoids are in these products: Confidor, Advantage, Merit and Admire (what shameless names).

Evidence: Scientific studies/reports; Nicotine Bees (movie); UN Bee Report; EPA Memo;  student journalist challenges Yates.

The world didn’t end yesterday as predicted, but one thing is for sure, we’ll all die one day.  Of Gods and Men is a powerful movie about facing death and questioning one’s purpose. This story of monks  caught in the Algerian civil war has 2 stunning scenes: the monks facing down the guns of extremists armed only with their convictions about peace; and a meal where they agree to face death together.  Peter Bradshaw says this scene  ‘is an overwhelming fusion of portraiture and drama, and perhaps one of the most sensational things I have seen on the big screen’ (read review). I agree, it’s a riveting moment of film-making. (I’m biased – the monks were beekeepers).

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.

Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.

Peace is not the silent revolt of violent repression.

Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.

Peace is dynamism.

Peace is generosity.

Bishop Oscar Romero (1917–1980)

Beautiful Tiritiri Matangi island: choirs of birds — some I’ve never seen before — and the bush as it was before humans came. I loved meeting the iridescent takahe (photo), thought to be extinct until a few were found in the Fiordland mountains in 1948. A farmer saved them by training his bantams to foster the takahe chicks: see the sweet picture book, Elwyn’s Dream, by Ali Foster of course. There are now 240 in the world. The takahe’s song sounds a lot like a baby crying for its mother (listen: takahe-song).

Writer Dorothy Sayers (in The Mind of the Maker, 1941) suggested every creative act has three elements: Idea, Energy and Power. The Idea remains intangible until the story writing begins. The Energy is the activity of writing the book. The Power is the response the book produces in the reader – ‘The thing that flows back to the writer’.

I’m amazed when starting a new story how a shapeless idea in my head generates a story. As the characters are given energy they help me create the story; and by the end it’s as if they always existed. Then each reader has a unique response to the book.

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast – John Gunther

I’m on holiday.

Photo: me at Akaroa, age 2?

As we dig deeper and deeper using scientific methods, we continue to find rational and meaningful order Paul Davies

Still pondering the ‘mindful’ universe. It is ‘finely tuned’ to support life — indeed, it seems to be geared towards the creation of ‘mind’. Then there’s the question of meaning. Twelve leading scientists and thinkers were asked, Does the universe have a purpose? Five of them answered ‘Yes’, two said ‘No’, and the others were everywhere in-between (including one ‘I hope so’). Read their fascinating responses here. Jane Goodall’s personal response recalls a transcendent moment in a cathedral.

How could I believe that blind chance had led to that moment in time — the cathedral, the collective faith of those who had prayed and worshiped within, the genius of Bach, the emergence of a conscious mind that could, as mine did then, question the purpose of life on Earth Jane Goodall

I once heard the beautiful Monteverdi Choir in Pisa Cathedral (photo) – quite by chance, but hopefully not blind chance! It was a ‘moment in time’ for me, the voices lingering in the air long after the singing stopped…

A link to an excellent reflection by Penelope Todd.

Emma Neale’s new novel Fosterling, is about a yeti living in Dunedin. No, it’s not a children’s book or a fantasy but a realistic, compassionate treatment of what it’s like to be an outsider. The writing is elegant. Original similes abound: one confused young man looks like ‘a 16 year old whose name has been called in class when he’d been happily thinking about the pie he’d ordered for lunch; and subtle feelings are described with precision. I  wanted a more upbeat ending, but that’s my bent (and one reason I like writing for children). The yeti, Bu, is a sensitive soul – a reminder of that other misunderstood Boo in To Kill a Mockingbird. And I thought of my favourite yeti tale, Tintin in Tibet , in which the creature also shows his ‘humanity’, but is treated as a beast. Fosterling reminded me that there are Bu’s in every city, often hidden in ‘half-way’ houses.  I can see this multi-character story being made into an Altman-style movie.

I was writing a story on an iPad near Christchurch last week. Writing tools such as computers have become flexible, but perhaps less intimate, and I wonder if it affects my writing.  When Ted Hughes began writing on a typewriter he noticed he became less concise. Writing by hand had made him invest more in each word:

every year of your life is right there, wired into the communication between your brain and your writing hand… things become automatically more compressed, and, perhaps, psychologically denser.

The Shallows, by Nicholas Carr, brilliantly examines how our brains react to computer use ( read a great essay about the book here). He says that working on computers can be distracting (rather than reflective) for the brain — so it stays in the shallows, barely engaging with the myriad connections at deeper levels. In that case the iPad might be okay for writing because you can fade out all but the sentence you’re on. But my iPad trial was interrupted by the earthquake — which came from the shallows with terrifying force.

Photo: Allen Carbon

• my 87 year old father who rushed into a madly shaking house to save his wife of 56 years (happy anniversary parents!)
• the doctors, nurses and volunteers who nursed my mother (and her broken arm) with such thoughtfulness under stress
• the neighbours who gave us drinks and food
• the shopkeeper who trusted me with credit
• the motorists who behaved impeccably without traffic lights.

This is my growing list; each of the 400,000 plus residents of Christchurch will have their own heroes.

Hero Update: the neighbour who saved Dad when the house burned down 2 days later (electrical fault caused by the quake).

Click here for ways you can help support the people of Christchurch.

ERMA  is the authority that manages the poisons sprayed on our food crops. ‘Manages’ is the weasel word – meaning ‘we tell you the risk, but the choice is yours’. A powerful chemical (clothianidin) that ERMA approves for NZ crops is banned in Europe, and even the US authority was recently warned – by its own scientists – that the chemical is ‘highly toxic to beneficial insects such as honey bees’. Problem is, it’s so persistent it remains in plants through to the pollen stage (especially corn), and in meat and milk.

When I asked ERMA if they would review the chemical in NZ they said they already ‘managed’ the use of it (they tend to be slow to ban poisons). In the end it’s up to us whether we accept pesticide residues in our food (yes, clothianidin is there). But while we have some choice to eat organic, honey bees don’t, and they are already in decline.

Full article: The authority that kicked the beehive (download – pdf)

Bee photo by Sarah Anderson who also writes a beautiful blog.

Tim Wilson takes risks with his first novel, Their Faces Were Shining, and that’s the way it should be. The story: a sizable chunk of the human race floats up to Heaven on page 60 but a believer named Hope is left behind. The wider implications of the Rapture are barely explored; it’s really a device to expose the main character; this is a Rupture novel. It’s gripping, but be warned that it’s also grim in places (though not as apocalyptic as The Road). I appreciated Wilson’s precise observation of human relationships even if he avoids the afterlife.

Few writers go to Heaven (in their novels). M. Scott Peck’s In Heaven As On Earth has a rather clinical psychotherapist’s afterlife, and The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis has a nice take on the physicality of Heaven. My favourite Heavenly stories are the wonderful  A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes which describes the consequences of being perfected; and Elsewhere, by Gabrielle Zevin, a thoughtful teenage novel about a Heaven where people age in reverse. The best movie about Heaven is A Matter of Life and Death, a gorgeous 1946 romance that ends with words by Walter Scott,

‘for love is heaven and heaven is love.’

Photo: Mysterious cosmic egg (supernova): NASA Images

I love a good mystery: in my 20s it was the search for God; then family mysteriously absorbed 30 years; and now questions rise again: What is the purpose of life? What is quantum physics? Consciousness? And why am I always the one on the spot when the loo paper runs out?

I’ve cobbled together the following Great Mysteries (with much help from pop-science books):

Around 14 billion years ago (for motives which are unclear) matter gained an advantage over anti-matter and the universe became slightly biased towards life. But only a ‘mere- smear’ of the universe is ordinary matter – galaxies, elephants, us – the bulk is ‘dark stuff’ which is mysteriously connected to the rest. Matter is made of atoms, which are energetic, enigmatic little tykes. An electron inside an atom behaves like a two-year old – it seems to be everywhere at all times – but when humans give it some attention, its behaviour changes. Intriguing. The little grey cells (our brains) enfold another mystery: consciousness. So we’re able to find meaning in life: we can make up our own minds.

And now the story takes a twist, from science towards soul. Mystical biologist Charles Birch reckoned that the whole universe is made of ‘mind stuff’. He suggested that even electrons have a whiff of consciousness:

We exist only because of subtle connections between the very small and the very large.

It seems to be all about connection and meaning, and I admit I’m biased towards finding both – hopefully without scrambling the cosmic egg. But I’ll leave you with a more appealing metaphor, by poet Muriel Rukeyser (I’m off to buy loo paper).

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.

I admire the courage of the people power movements in Egypt and Tunisia in facing their military rulers. As Tolstoy said,

‘For us to struggle (the forces being so unequal) must appear insane. They have millions of money and millions of obedient soldiers. We have only one thing, but that is the most powerful thing in the world: Truth.’

The ‘truth’ here refers to peace and non-violent protest. Non-violent action has been successful in bringing political change. It even worked briefly against Hitler when much of the population of Denmark resisted the Nazi occupiers. Danish workers organised large-scale strikes and succeeded in slowing the supply of war materials to the German army.

People power has blossomed over the past fifty years. In the 1970s the military rulers of Argentina were confronted by a group of mothers who’d lost children in the ‘dirty war’. Their protest drew the attention of the world and the government fell. And don’t forget the massive strike by Solidarity workers in 1980 leading to  democracy in Poland; and tens of thousands of civilians who deposed a dictator the Philippines; the wonderfully named ‘Singing Revolution’ (1987–1990) restored independence in the Baltic States; peaceful protests in Chile in 1988 helped to remove Pinochet; and 100 000 people gathered in Wenceslas Sq to end communist rule in Czechoslovakia in 1989. There’s been social change too, such as civil rights movements in the US and South Africa.

But any confrontations between civilians and the military state are a ‘slippery zone’. So to quote our Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, I hope that Egyptians continue to ‘express their views non-violently’; and ‘the authorities exercise restraint’.