Robert Macfarlane
@RobGMacfarlane
Books: Is A River Alive? (WIP) Underland, The Lost Words, The Old Ways, etc. | Films: River, Mountain, Upstream | Nature, climate, people | Prof @Cambridge_uni
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https://linktr.ee/robmacfarlane 24-02-2017 22:17:51
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Sound-checking in the Alexandra Palace Theatre ahead of our show; what a space.
Left unused for a century—now reverberant, shadowed, a Pompeiian part-relic, full of mystery & echo.
Excited to perform here with Johnny Flynn & the River Band tonight.
Citizen-science meets rivers activism again (& filling the gap left by government): The Rivers Trust launches The Big River Watch, a monitoring scheme for local volunteers to report details of pollution.
Find out more below, participate, spread the word...
theguardian.com/environment/ar…
I've written on political dissent & violent policing for 15 years, particularly in NYC. Compared to Tuesday night, I have never witnessed, at the scene of a protest, the use of police power so disproportionate to the type of demonstration taking place. theintercept.com/2024/05/01/nyc…
Hello — Johnny Flynn & I start our ten-day “River Calls” tour tomorrow in Leeds; a song-story-journey-gig-show, with an amazing band.
Artist Jon Mackay has made this radiant screen-printed poster for the tour.
See you on the road!
Meanwhile back in the zany world of Thames Water 💧
'A third bottled water bank will be opened after parts of Oxford have been left with no running taps.'
We'll screw your bank account, screw your rivers and can't be bothered providing you with water. 🥸
oxfordmail.co.uk/news/24281770.…
Un grand merci à Montréal et metropolisbleu pour l’attribution aujourd’hui du prix Planète Litérrature pour un corpus d’oeuvre d’écrivain.
(ça a été un bonheur de dérouiller mon français éxécrable pendant quelques jours…)
“Our rivers have become disposal chutes not only for sewage & other pollutants, but also for political probity & the public interest.”
Flow-trimming, dividend-reaping: brilliant, terse George Monbiot analysis of why so many of our rivers are dying. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
🧵Yes, that’s right! The budget for cleaning up the illegal landfill waste to #rescuehoadswood is £10 million. 😲
c£3m of this is landfill tax (pocketed by the criminals) and VAT is c£1m. This cost doesn’t include the value of irreplaceable ancient woodland! 💔🌳🦌🦋🐦 (1/6)
22 yrs ago, while writing Mountains of the Mind, I studied George Mallory's original letters home from Everest in 1921, '22 & '24, in Magdalene College's archive.
Now they've digitised/published them all.
Fascinating, moving documents.
Open access here: magdalene.maxarchiveservices.co.uk/index.php/to-r…
'Something very interesting is happening in the UK to do with nature...': terrific to see this John Harris piece abt the emergence of a 'new kind of radical landscape politics', from land access campaigns to the Rights of Rivers movement. Yes!
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
This is (l to r) Sam, Reuben & Denzel of Elmhurst School in London.
They've learned the Jackdaw Spell from The Lost Spells by heart & here they are rocking it in the woods.
Poetry, outdoor learning, smiles, dance!
Will you give them a shout, tell them how awesome they are?
‘“It is an enormous scandal that many…in the industry know about, but nobody wants to talk about,” said the whistleblower.’
Flow-trimming, equipment-fixing, sewage-sloughing: the deeper we dive, the dirtier & less accountable the UK water industry gets. theguardian.com/environment/20…
Many of us feel furious about the state of the UK's rivers––but also powerless.
Now King's Legal Clinic have launched a 130-pp toolkit for change.
Citizen science, FOIs, reporting, legal remedies: it's all here.
It's brilliant.
Read it, share it, fight back!
kcl.ac.uk/legal-clinic/a…
'Here the delicate calls of marsh tits are becoming harder to find, as populations plummet. The story from this wood is being played out nationally, as human noise gets louder & the sounds of nature vanish.'
On the thinning & dimming of birdsong. Familiar?
theguardian.com/environment/20…