This is a miscellany of what I have found today, firstly are these two beautiful percherons pulling logs out of a wood. Over the last few years horses have been used more and more to drag out the logs from difficult places in the woods and forests of Britain, who could resist these beautiful blond giants......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/22/horse-power
My second photo is taken from the Resurgence magazine which arrived today, it is a print done by Francis Wishart, a monotype, the procedure is difficult to explain but at the end you only end up with one print, this one was created on a metal plate on the spot in the Brunswick's Arcadian Forest in Canada.
Wishart and his friend Jean Guy Comeau are environmental activists trying to stop the logging of this forest by two very large paper companies, the Finnish firm UPM-Kymmene and the Canadian Irving Company. Wishart and Comeau made a film about the destruction of the Arcadia forest Forbidden Forest, which chronicles the 'destructive nature of industrial wood-harvesting and its grim implication for water supplies' and also of course for the flora and fauna of the region.
Computers are bringing us to the paperless society, though of course, energy use by computers is set to go up, apparently the equivalent of the total amount of plane flight round the world. So perhaps we need to be less wasteful of paper, and use our computers less as well! or at least switch them off when not in use.
I love the photo of the Percherons, it's so good to have the heavy horses being put to work again. As for the forests - you have to wonder at the ignorance of both governments and large companies - they appear to have no conception of the importance of trees to the continued existence of this planet. As ever it's the dollar signs that count with them!
ReplyDeleteThe subject of the print is the Acadian forest - the indigenous forest of the Acadian area of Canada which once took in the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and part of northern Maine. This forest thrived before clearcutting and replanting of species selected as a money crop after said clearcuts. Very little true old growth or Acadian forest exists today.
ReplyDeleteThere are woodsmen who are stewards of the land and practice sustainability but they are still very much in the minority.
Janet in Nova Scotia