GREENLEAF MAGAZINE
LETTER TO THE AMERICAS
This is a letter I wrote in response to Julia Winkler, who is a pagan and a schoolteacher in Las Vegas. Well, things are pretty blasted on this side of the Atlantic, what with most of the countryside closed off by foot-and-mouth disease, and the appalling weather. Actually the Sun has just appeared briefly, on this Easter Sunday, after days of depressing wall-to-wall cold grey cloud. The remaining oak trees in my back yard are just beginning to unfurl their leaves, so spring's up! I don't have time to publish GREENLEAF magazine as a hard copy any more, but [this] website has some information (mostly Stonehenge information) that may keep you in touch. A guy called Paul here in Bristol is using a piece of land at the back of some council allottments (these are gardens people can let for growing food etc.) and has permission to put up Celtic Round Houses as an educational resource. The bit of land slopes steeply down to a bend of the river Avon, and there is a curious little cave, with a spring rising in it, and I can imagine prehistoric man, and prehistoric woman, sheltering in this nook and exploiting the hunting and fishing there. Anyway it's a special place. Badgers have an ancestral home there, and there are roe deer. Because of the deer the allottment growers have given up growing corn, says Paul, it's too popular with them. And there were seven very large trees in my back yard here, ash, sweet chestnut, and an oak, that had to find homes, so we planted them there on April 1st, that was Paul and me, and Tree Dave and Caroline, who are long time Robin's Greenwood Gang people from Bristol. It was a perfect tree planting day, as we didn't need to water the trees, Mother did that, but before we rushed off home to the dry I sang them the Goddess song. The bit that goes "Hoof and Horn, Hoof and Horn, All that dies shall be reborn" has a special resonance at the moment, as pyres and pits and landfills of megatombs, now over 1 million and still rising, animals are killed by government officials as a preventative measure. This of course will pass, in time. So, yes, we're still in touch with the earth. The 10 year national census is underway in this country, and we are informed that the Home Office will be counting "Pagan religions" from anyone filling in "Pagan" "Druid" or "Wiccan" in the "Other" category of the religious question. Shamans, Heathens and Goddess worshippers will have to choose between individual integrity and political expediency. The result being we shall be enumerated, or our numbers at least estimated, for the first time! Meanwhile the write in question is getting an interest from a dissident minority who are urging people to write "Jedi" in as a religion and by campaigners who are urging a write in of "Cannabis" so that the Home Office has to count it. Knowing our Home Office they will try to avoid doing any such thing. Even though the Home Office representative who attended several TRC meetings said they stand for a "fair and just society". I blinked a couple of times at this, surely not quite the same as it was 15 years ago when there was a civil war going on in this country with police launching physical attacks on anyone who didn't conform. How are you enjoying the new political climate where you are? Readers here might be interested in any news, indeed there's a lot of fear about the prospects for the World, from the reneging on the Kyoto agreement. And possibly increased risk of a threatened US invasion of Colombia which would bring disaster to that already damaged country. That reminded me of Jenny James, and her family, and tribe of activists who went to Colombia as part of the Atlantis Community, to build organic farms and teach the green way to the local peasants, who not knowing how to feed themselves, were tragically felling the forests. Now she's following a very principled road through the tortured factional politics and random murder that is the pattern of life there. Her Green Letters are riveting reading and by keeping in touch with these releases you would be perhaps a vital witness to the tragedies there, and might, by writing official letters, help. In any case it's a marvellously dramatic story that will keep you hanging in for more! Well that's what readers of GREENLEAF magazine would have known as my "PigBag" and while pigs in this country are no longer to be fed on swill we'll have to change the name to something more appetizing like "CornCob" which continues the theme of "granulated information". -- George Firsoff April 15th 2001 "Honour be to those who Honour give"
Click here to go to PADRAS/Stonehenge site Click for information about Robin's Greenwood Gang Click here to return to RGG home page

GREENLEAF MAGAZINE

LETTER TO THE AMERICAS

This is a letter I wrote in response to Julia Winkler, who is a pagan and a schoolteacher in Las Vegas.

Well, things are pretty blasted on this side of the Atlantic, what with most of the countryside closed off by foot-and-mouth disease, and the appalling weather. Actually the Sun has just appeared briefly, on this Easter Sunday, after days of depressing wall-to-wall cold grey cloud. The remaining oak trees in my back yard are just beginning to unfurl their leaves, so spring's up!

I don't have time to publish GREENLEAF magazine as a hard copy any more, but [this] website has some information (mostly Stonehenge information) that may keep you in touch.

A guy called Paul here in Bristol is using a piece of land at the back of some council allottments (these are gardens people can let for growing food etc.) and has permission to put up Celtic Round Houses as an educational resource. The bit of land slopes steeply down to a bend of the river Avon, and there is a curious little cave, with a spring rising in it, and I can imagine prehistoric man, and prehistoric woman, sheltering in this nook and exploiting the hunting and fishing there. Anyway it's a special place. Badgers have an ancestral home there, and there are roe deer. Because of the deer the allottment growers have given up growing corn, says Paul, it's too popular with them.

And there were seven very large trees in my back yard here, ash, sweet chestnut, and an oak, that had to find homes, so we planted them there on April 1st, that was Paul and me, and Tree Dave and Caroline, who are long time Robin's Greenwood Gang people from Bristol. It was a perfect tree planting day, as we didn't need to water the trees, Mother did that, but before we rushed off home to the dry I sang them the Goddess song. The bit that goes "Hoof and Horn, Hoof and Horn, All that dies shall be reborn" has a special resonance at the moment, as pyres and pits and landfills of megatombs, now over 1 million and still rising, animals are killed by government officials as a preventative measure. This of course will pass, in time.

So, yes, we're still in touch with the earth.

The 10 year national census is underway in this country, and we are informed that the Home Office will be counting "Pagan religions" from anyone filling in "Pagan" "Druid" or "Wiccan" in the "Other" category of the religious question. Shamans, Heathens and Goddess worshippers will have to choose between individual integrity and political expediency. The result being we shall be enumerated, or our numbers at least estimated, for the first time!

Meanwhile the write in question is getting an interest from a dissident minority who are urging people to write "Jedi" in as a religion and by campaigners who are urging a write in of "Cannabis" so that the Home Office has to count it. Knowing our Home Office they will try to avoid doing any such thing. Even though the Home Office representative who attended several TRC meetings said they stand for a "fair and just society". I blinked a couple of times at this, surely not quite the same as it was 15 years ago when there was a civil war going on in this country with police launching physical attacks on anyone who didn't conform.

How are you enjoying the new political climate where you are? Readers here might be interested in any news, indeed there's a lot of fear about the prospects for the World, from the reneging on the Kyoto agreement. And possibly increased risk of a threatened US invasion of Colombia which would bring disaster to that already damaged country.

That reminded me of Jenny James, and her family, and tribe of activists who went to Colombia as part of the Atlantis Community, to build organic farms and teach the green way to the local peasants, who not knowing how to feed themselves, were tragically felling the forests. Now she's following a very principled road through the tortured factional politics and random murder that is the pattern of life there. Her Green Letters are riveting reading and by keeping in touch with these releases you would be perhaps a vital witness to the tragedies there, and might, by writing official letters, help. In any case it's a marvellously dramatic story that will keep you hanging in for more!

Well that's what readers of GREENLEAF magazine would have known as my "PigBag" and while pigs in this country are no longer to be fed on swill we'll have to change the name to something more appetizing like "CornCob" which continues the theme of "granulated information".

--
George Firsoff
April 15th 2001

"Honour be to those who Honour give"

Click here to go to PADRAS/Stonehenge site

Click for information about Robin's Greenwood Gang

Click here to return to RGG home page