Visit my Kickstarter page to support my project documenting the work of a Colombian public defender and 2011 IBJ JusticeMakers Fellow protecting youth rights and promoting active non-violence. The minimum pledge is only one dollar! Reblog and spread the word!
Saw this local band called Spring Offensive at The Bullingdon here in Oxford last week and got chills a few times.
“This lesson I have learned, lies like timber / Waiting to be burned, or built with”
Robert Capa, D-Day Landings, 6 June 1944.
“Every piece of our clothing had to be gasproofed, waterproofed, and camouflaged in the many various colors of our future landscape. Thus prepared, we were ready and waiting for the day called ‘D.’
If at this point my son should interrupt me, and ask, ‘What is the difference between the war correspondent and any other man in uniform?’ I would say that the war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay, and greater freedom than the soldier, but that at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture. The war correspondent has his stake–his life–in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute.
I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave.
At 4:00 AM we were assembled on the open deck. The invasion barges were swinging on the cranes, ready to be lowered. Waiting for the first ray of light, the two thousand men stood in perfect silence; whatever they were thinking, it was some kind of prayer.
I too stood very quietly. I was thinking a little bit of everything: of green fields, pink clouds, grazing sheep, all the good times, and very much of getting the best pictures of the day. None of us was at all impatient, and we wouldn’t have minded standing in the darkness for a very long time. But the sun had no way of knowing that this day was different from all others, and rose on its usual schedule. The first-wavers stumbled into their barges, and –as if on slow-moving elevators– we descended onto the sea.”
– Robert Capa, on photographing the invasion of Normandy; Slightly Out of Focus, 1947.
Ceredigion and Gwynedd, Wales; Mar 2011.
I spent some time early this month in Wales working as a wwoof-er, a labor volunteer, on a secluded conservation site in Furnace called Blaeneinion. Blaeneinion is one of the most beautiful and idyllic places I’ve ever been. The tidal hills and valleys of Wales are intoxicating, and Blaeneinion sits on 75 acres of land stretched over two such serene, sheep covered hills.
My work as one of the three wwoof-ers staying there at the time was to help plant trees. The site is in the process of receiving a grant towards a reforestation project for which over 4,000 trees native to the area are being planted in open pasture. In order to be eligible for the grant they need to be planted under a deadline, so we tried to keep a goal of 200 trees per person per day. Some days we met it, some days not quite, and other days we had lots of help, like on the Open Day when local residents were invited to enjoy an amazing Thai soup lunch and get their hands dirty helping out.
It was perfect. But that’s not to say it wasn’t without its shocks to my system: like getting back into physical labor after working as a teacher and a writer for over a year. And it was freezing at the time, for March at least, and every night I slept wearing two pairs of everything –pants, shirts, sweaters, socks– not to mention my winter coat. But something I think travelling can teach you is not how to live in the absence of routines but how to develop them faster. Learning to have hot tea before going to sleep, and learning what time warm sunlight would fill the rooms in the morning, and also just the simple passage of time, became part of adapting and getting comfortable.
I loved working and photographing there. And on one of our days off, I climbed Cadair Idris, a mountain about three towns away on the edge of Snowdonia National Park, with my friend from Liverpool who I worked with at the school in Indonesia. I doubt I’ll ever forget the generous people I met there: those who were working on developing Blaeneinion, and others just living there and calling it home.
(Source: siobhanriordan.com)
I wrote a blog post about our trip to Ireland in December– part travel writing, part photo journal: Wandering the Emerald Isle.
