Events for Sustainable Food book

The Sustainable Food book will be promoted by In Conversation Events where I’ll be talking with gardeners, farmers and folk who are passionate about food and who are growing, buying and supporting local farmers.  I’d love to see you there, hear your story or answer your questions about how we can sustain our food in our cities and the country.  The list below doesn’t... Read More

Costa, gardeners and I talking about sustainable food

This week Costa, Transition Bondi, gardeners and I discussed Sustainable Food, gardening and how we love our Earth back to health.  It’s a twelve minute vid and shows us talking with each other. A longer one, one hour, is here. Great to share the space and ideas, M  Read More

Homer, the Iliad and a French woman’s view of his poem and ‘force’

A brief note here about force and poetry and what role we give to force in our human lives. In 1939 Simone Veil wrote an essay while living in Paris about Homer’s poem, the Iliad.  She wrote it just before the Nazi army took the city and she had to flee to London.  The essay had to be printed elsewhere, later.  It’s called, L’Iliade ou le Poeme de la Force’ and... Read More

Join the conversation about food at Booksplus, Bathurst

Lots of energy and action for local food and gardening at Bathurst, NSW, where one of the organisers for a conversation about food and sustaining our culture, Jenny, from the bookshop, BooksPlus, has sent me this note:   “Things are prett much organised, except for a lot more promotion, which I will get stuck into. We will be sending out our mailout next  week,... Read More

Reflections on Lombok

14 October 2012   Some observations made during my six weeks in Lombok, Indonesia, a tropical island – my first stay there.  I arrived at the end of August 2012 and left in the middle of October: Lombok has about 4 m people on an area about the size of the Sydney wider metropolitan area “villa’ is perhaps the most abused word in Lombok and Bali, especially... Read More

Sewage and more sewage

Several questions have come in about sewage. I like that.  We all excrete and the more of us who think about what to do with it the better, I hope, for our Earth’s water, soil and energy. Here’s one: “Hello Michael , A  very good book ………. a lot of information and I will try to do what you have done Yesterday  I  went  to  a home show ….... Read More

Come to launch of Sustainable Food by Senator Carr

Invite – Canberra launch of Sustainable Food If you’re around Canberra and would like to join us for the launch of the book, Sustainable Food, and a lunch afterwards of local food and the launch of the Cool Streets Campaign – it would be terrific to see you there,   M  Read More

Savouring another’s powers of observation

A  Sydney-living Aboriginal elder with powers of observation I can only dream of sent me this note today: ‘Had a wonderful thing happen a couple of days ago – the first really warm day we’ve had, and the lawn underneath the Empress tree was black,    When I looked down, each blade of grass had a little black native bee sunbaking on it.   They seemed to... Read More

An example of a Lombok villa going green

Yesterday I saw some villas in Lombok where the owners have done their best to make them sustainable. High on a hill looking out to the Lombok Straight and over the village of Senggigi and others below, the Studio Villas, have a range of materials and designs to sustain the use of timber, soil, energy and water.  The rainwater is harvested into a total of 130 thousand litre tanks... Read More

UNESCO recognises Bali’s subak rice farming system

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation has recognised Bali’s subak rice farming system. UNESCO registered the farming system on its World Heritage List during its annual meeting in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on June 29. As the Jakarta Post put it:   “UNESCO recognized subak as a Balinese cultural landscape of rice terraces and their... Read More