KW-23 Plenty hard work, not a lot of progress

your Monday dose of Doom

I think I spent a lot of last week talking to people. This is, of course, both exhausting and not-gardening. As a result, I believe that I worked hard last week, but can’t quite recall much of it. The apparent inability to make new memories kicking in hard, I don’t really remember what I did, but I definitely feel tired.

Two nice chaps from ORF flying drones around the skies above the barracks

Two thoroughly nice chaps from the Austrian national broadcaster - ORF - came to see the barracks and have a chat. I think this is going to be the last time I do TV. It’s definitely the last time I do a “biographic” piece. It’s too exhausting, and too frustrating to have to constantly explain the extent to which we, the humans, have scorched our home.

This week, The Scientists decided that we had indeed hit the first of the 9 climate tipping points. This wasn’t a surprise to anyone other than the wilfully ignorant, and it’s abundantly clear that most of the others will tumble pretty quickly. I’m betting that the Boreal Forests and the Permafrost get similar declarations in the next 18 months.

The boreal forests (the forests of the north - if you view the globe from the top, centered on the warm, summery waters of the north pole, the forests you can see from there. Those are the boreal forests) they have made the news this week by burning down so violently that the smoke blotted out the sky in New York, and has now reached Norway. But the “death” of boreal forests does not always end in their burning to the ground. It is rather the fact that they just stop growing.

Anyway, this sort of joyous news belongs in blog posts, not the newsletter. Maybe I shall try to write one this week. Maybe someone out there want to interview me on it (talk to me about it), and turn that into a blog post we write together?

water containers

This is the Whats Happening At the Barracks. Well, much the same as last week, I guess. I’m still waiting for the cultivator to come back. I might have managed to speed this along a bit by finding the spare part that it needs. The man in the shop apparently didn’t manage it. I’m still digging, still putting things into the garden, still getting behind on everything else.

And this newsletter is going to be late out, and short of photos, for a single reason. I can’t find my damn phone. No early morning photos, and an hour wasted trying to find it.

The “in the garden” portion of “what’s happening at the barracks” this week is much the same as last week. At the weekend, though, the longest-serving volunteer is coming back for his third year (for a weekend!), so we are hopefully going to be also installing a whole bunch of the rain collectors. I’ve not told him yet, but he does read this newsletter! Looking forward to you coming, R (and R)!

So, until next week, be lovely

your Pirate Ben

xoxo

Links and Notices!

My good friend, and long time supporter of the barracks, feminist, artist, photographer, founder of the first feminist art residency in Europe, is looking for someone to live in and help out at the residency. If you can cook a bit and clean a bit and mend things a bit and are generally a Useful Person (couple, family, team), then you might well want to get in touch with Michaela for The Best Job in Europe

That very nice chap who wrote a very good book in which he attempts to understand climate change so that he can explain it to his curious son is doing the official Book Launch in Berlin. In a second-hand furniture shop. Because it’s Berlin, of course. It’s Wednesday, and if you tell him that I sent you, he will buy you a drink :)

Read about Boreal Forests, and note with incredulity the accuracy of every word. This study was written in 2009.