Veganism

In the early 2000s, when I first visited Plum Village, the mindfulness practice community near Bordeaux, it was vegetarian. In some of the meals they would include eggs and dairy products, then, as a response to climate change, Thich Nhat Hanh and the community members decided that Plum Village would observe a vegan diet. That was how the retreat I just attended was also conducted. As someone at the end of the retreat calculated, that was 360 delicious meals prepared without the use of animal products.

I learn from Greta Thunberg’s new book (“The Climate Book” that “shifting towards a plant-based diet could save us up to 8 billion tonnes of CO2 every year. The land requirements of meat and dairy production are equivalent to an area the size of North and South America combined.”

Thich Nhat Hanh was a little ahead of the mainstream in his understanding and adaptation to the climate emergency, but actually, the book that first turned me on to vegetarianism, after leaving my parents’ home in the ’70s, was “Diet for a Small Planet”, which was written in 1971 by Frances Moore Lappé. That was really far ahead in its promotion of a vegetarian diet for the good of the planet.

Cabinet reshuffle

Looking in from outside, it’s interesting to read how in post-colonial Britain, Sajid Javid has been replaced by Rishi Sunak and that Alok Sharma was promoted to business secretary.

The Sheltering Sky

Reading The Sheltering Sky of Paul Bowles. It’s interesting and well-written. The characters are racist and sexist, of course; I haven’t a clue whether that reflects the views of the author, because we aren’t intended to admire them.

Be careful with the WP plugin “Advanced Excerpt”

I wish I’d avoided this. It removed “read more” links on some posts with more to read, and created other problems. Disabling & deleting did not remove some of the mischief it had produced.

The Sea of Trees

Auroville has a movie theatre which seems to specialize in films no one ever heard of. But the screenings are free, the place is airconditioned, and sometimes there are real gems. Tonight’s offering was “A Sea of Trees”, which is about a man who goes to commit suicide in a Japanese forest that is a popular suicide spot. A special film.

Appam

Appam – They brought me this for breakfast and it was the first time I’d had it. It’s quite vegan (made from fermented rice flour and coconut milk. South India has a wide range of breakfast possibilities. (https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/appam-recipe-kerala-appam/)

Kindness

Most Indians are very kind. Like today I forgot my new phone at a tea house, and someone came calling after me to give it back to me.

Sometimes people will really go out of their way to be helpful. Once I arrived in a small town in a tribal area and hadn’t a clue how to get to a friend who lived somewhere in a nearby village. It was early morning and raining. So I sat down in a tea house and people started talking to me. Someone knew where my friend lived. He asked me to wait, went to borrow someone’s scooter, and took me there himself. It was about 20 minutes away. He wouldn’t accept any money either.

Libreoffice Endnotes

This book that I’m preparing for reprinting has two kinds of endnotes, one set goes at the end of each chapter and another is collected in an appendix. I’m not sure how to handle that second set in LibreOffice. There seem to be some third party extensions, but I don’t think this is their purpose. They are intended to help researchers in handling citations and bibliographies. They do seem interesting in themselves though. The one that I downloaded is called Zotero, and it is in the Debian repositories. I could imagine that this could be a powerful tool for writers and researchers.

But I’m still stuck with this problem of the endnotes. 🙁

The mosques are the biggest noise makers, in this particular place ( sometimes it’s the temples), blasting out their call to prayer, in a language no one here understands, now at 4:45 a.m. But sometimes I already sleep through it. So many centuries of reminding people, at all hours of the day and night, of their duties and responsibilities, and still there are beggars in the streets, corrupt governments, filth, either visible or unseen, wars, the destruction of the earth. Bas, bikafi, I’ll go back to sleep.