Gwyneth's personal blog

Monday 18th June, cool and breezy, sun and cloud. I heard the swifts shrilling, above the blanketing cloud at 7am, and have been watching the juvenile starlings, chalky brown birds, with pale throats & starling beaks, feasting at the live worm feeder, overseen by a glossy black speckled parent... So has Ginger, but the starlings and the bluetits don't seem to mind. She's down on the grass, she cannot climb the pole...

I used never to feed birds in our garden. We have cats! And if we didn't, the enclosed gardens of the Crescent are full of other people's. Then I read on the RSPB site that if you are so inveterately evil as to host a cat, providing food for your bird population probably reduces the success of cat predation = birds are innately vigilant when feeding. If they are just hanging out, thinking what a nice day it is, having a bit of a sing, their firewall isn't turned on, so to speak.

So, Greece is back from the brink, for now, and I have to be relieved, because exciting and cleansing as utter disasters are, it's better if they don't happen. Next, I hope la lutte continue. I hope the Left Wing doesn't flounce off in a huff... This is the job of the Opposition: to haul in the other direction, even and nearly always knowing you can't "win". We win by losing, we win by worrying the people in power... You can't stop online snooping (on the contrary "you" out there, you seem to love handing over your entire lives!) , but you say no when you get the chance. You can't stop the usual business and wealth world from ignoring the devastation caused by global warming, but you can say no, whenever you get the chance.

Giving: Anyway, here's a grim and informative bulletin from South Sudan, courtesy of Medecins Sans Frontieres


http://www.msf.org.uk/

And a call for stories from Ann and Jeff Vandermeer; kindly forwarded to me by Gordon Van Gelder.

http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2012/06/12/open-call-for-submissions-feminist-speculative-fiction-anthology/

After some thought, and research, I've submitted Identifying The Object, Balinese Dancer and The Universe of Things; having felt obliged to avoid The Voyage Out (over-run by unfathomable East Asian spam); & The Fulcrum (as having been object of passionate and persistent right wing attack), and decided not to bother with those stories that might be deemed appropriate (Red Sonja And Lessingham et al) which have simply been made universally available for so-called free download by pirates. Isn't the Internet wonderful.

You are safe following the gwynethann site links. It won't bite you.

I think there was something else, but I've forgotten.