Disclosure day tomorrow?

The United States National Defense Authorization Act, passed late last year, stipulates that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence presents a report to Congress no later than October 31, 2022, about what the ODNI has learned about unidentified aerial phenomena. Previously known as unidentified flying objects, these terms (UAP and UFO) were created by the military to obfuscate the popularly used phrase 'flying saucer' in common use around the world.

So - tomorrow's the day. What will we learn? There are many scenarios. One is that the day will come and go without any announcement. [If there is one, it will appear on this site.] After all, the New York Times ran a story on Friday that 'many military UFO reports' are just aerial trash, foreign reconnaissance drones, or misidentifications of prosaic phenomena. Fair enough. Many - but all? We'd be worried if an unfriendly foreign power had drones that could fly at hypersonic speeds without visible means of propulsion, silently, without leaving vapour trails, do 90-degree turns imposing G-forces that would break apart any known earthly craft, and move effortlessly from space through air and into water. And cloak themselves effectively.

The New York Times story is not the ODNI's report that ufologists are waiting for. This seems to be a planted piece (it's not behind a paywall) that has a deeper purpose - the timing is not accidental. We shall see tomorrow if there will be some new disclosure coming from the US Government - though I doubt that there will be much. It's likely that there will be a few more revelations, maybe a video or two, some photos of craft of unknown origin, some hints of 'other worldly provenance' but nothing more.

The process of 'acclimation' - being accustomed, adapted or hardened to some new environment - will take decades longer. Current conditions - Russia's war in Ukraine, accelerating climate change, economic and political turmoil around the world - might make a bolder step toward disclosure a useful psy-ops play on the part of the US Government...

And so another scenario - a big announcement. Yes, there are craft, we have no idea where they come from, who pilots them, why they are here or what they want. But they have been reported by US military since the 1940s, and recorded on film, on radar and on multiple digital sensor platforms. The bigger one would be the above, plus "and we have in our possession crashed craft that we have unsuccessfully being trying to reverse engineer." The long-standing stories about the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico, would be acknowledged as true.

Being told from no less an authority than the US Government that mankind is not the only sentient and technological species of life form on this planet has the potential to freak people out. Are they friendly? Do they abduct humans? If so, why? Is there one species of alien on our planet or several? The 'who they are, why they are here, what they want - and how they got here' questions will not go away. Science, in particular will be keen to learn about anti-gravitic propulsion, zero-point energy, superluminal interstellar travel or indeed interdimensional travel. Religions will be keen to learn how their theology fits into a new understanding of the cosmos necessary to accommodate non-human technological sentience.

But hang on a second. Step back and apply Occam's Razor.

Individual cases of UFO sightings can be debunked, one by one, with rational explanations that sound way more plausible than the idea of craft piloted by intelligent beings from other worlds. But taken en mass, as a body of phenomena that has occurred worldwide over the past 80 years, phenomena displaying a large degree of commonality as to the characteristics of the craft - and in some cases their occupants - is impossible to dismiss lightly. When you hear hundreds of testimonies of eye witnesses speaking plausibly about what they have experienced, you begin to see the UFO issue differently. What do make of this, for example? Warminster, Wiltshire, 1965...

Are we reaching a tipping point in human history in which a new paradigm will open to us? We shall find out tomorrow. Personally - I don't think we'll get there tomorrow. Maybe a few new bits of information, but no bombshell. More tomorrow.

UPDATE 31 OCTOBER.

Here's the news; the Daily Mail runs this exclusive. A classified report was delivered to Congress. Rumours are that a redacted version will appear later this week.

This time last year:
Coping with time change (go to bed an hour earlier!)

This time two years ago:
A sustainable food system for rural Poland

This time three years ago:
Sifting through a life

This time five years ago:
Throwing It All Away

This time six| years ago:
Hammer of Darkness falls on us again

This time seven years ago:
The working week with the clocks gone back

This time nine years:
Slowly on the mend after calf injury

This time ten years ago:
Thorunium the Gothick

This time 11 years ago:
Łódź Widzew or Widź Łódzew 

This time 13 years ago:
A touch of frost in the garden

Autumn gold, Jakubowizna

Today, I went into the garden to pick raspberries. It was warm enough to go out wearing a shirt - no jumper or jacket; I picked over a third of a kilo of ripe berries. This is the tail-end of October. Most unusual. If you scroll down to the bottom of this post, you'll see  Jeziorki under a goodly amount of fresh snow ten years ago today, 29 October 2012. 

In the meantime, please enjoy - as I have done - the gorgeousness of golden autumn in Jakubowizna... The sky effect is the result of a circular polarising filter, which seems a bit artificial, but it gives a good representation of the view when wearing Polaroid sunglasses.

Below: the track from Jakubowizna towards Machcin II, as the asphalt and the houses end.

Below: further on along the same track, between the trees, and now looking north.

Below: looking west towards Jakubowizna.

Below: a row of silver birches turning gold across the track from an orchard, from which the apples have all been picked.

Below: the road passing a cherry orchard, between Machcin II and Jakubowizna.

Two days ago, coming home from the station, I saw a new sign on the end of my road, below. The no-through-road sign appeared during the summer, the street name sign has just been put up.

I mentioned this earlier this year - now it's official; the western end of my street (just the first 120m that's in Chynów rather than Jakubowizna) has been called ulica Owocowa, literally 'Fruity Street'.

Below: on the road to Nowe Grobice, sun peeking through clouds and coppiced willows. Right at the end of the road, the railway line.

Below: ul. Nawłocka, Jeziorki, Monday 29 October 2012. The climate is inexorably changing. You can help by driving less, flying less, and installing photovoltaic panels to cut down on coal-generated electricity consumption.

This time last year:
Two years without my father

This time two years ago:
Death of my father

This time five years ago
Recent Jeziorki update

This time six years ago:
Autumn in Jeziorki

This time seven years ago:
A driving ban for developers and architects

This time eight years ago:
Do you keep coming back, or do you seek the new?

This time nine years ago:
In praise of Retro design

This time ten years ago:
First snowfall in Warsaw 

This time 11 years ago:
Of cycles, economic and human 

This time 12 years ago:
Why didn't I read this before? Grapes of Wrath

This time 13 years ago:
Małopolska from the train

Public transport improvements

The smartphone is revolutionising public transport like no other technology. The recently introduced Koleje Mazowieckie app (below) is a huge leap forward; I can now buy my train ticket while walking to the station. No longer must I buy it on my laptop and send it to my phone. Or - as in older days - use the station ticket machine or booking office. Or buy ticket from the conductor and pay a surcharge for not having bought it at the station. Not only does mobile ticket purchase save time, it give me great flexibility. I buy my ticket once I know for definite which train I will catch (especially on return journeys from town). 

How it used to be: go to station, queue up in booking office, buy physical ticket. Payment in cash, later card.

Then along came the IT Revolution -

Stage 1: buy ticket online via desktop computer, print out ticket physically. 

Stage 2: buy ticket online via my desktop or laptop, and upload ticket digitally to my phone

Stage 3: buy ticket directly on my phone. Showing a piece of paper to the ticket inspector? Obciach, Panie!

[Stage X: think about buying ticket, think about payment, make the transaction happen telepathically. Ticket inspector looks at you and knows you've thought about - and paid for - your ticket.]

Since its launch last month, appeared a new iteration of the app with improved functionality has already appeared - no longer do I need to separately open my banking app to confirm payment - the Koleje Mazowieckie app will open it for me automatically. I just need to tap in the PIN once, and all is done.

Further improvements are on the way. Next month will see the launch of PKP InterCity's Pekapka app, giving the same flexibility for long-distance trains. It will also roll in the Wars app, which allows you to pre-purchase your in-train meal. (I notice you can't buy beer using this at present.)

Improvements are not only happening on the railways...

Son Eddie introduced me to Realbus.pl, a website (not yet an app) that allows you to see all of Warsaw's buses and trams in real time. Not quite perfect yet, but a huge advance, especially if your local bus timetable bears no resemblance to reality because of road works, detours or heavy traffic. Now, as I near W-wa Jeziorki station by train, I can check on Realbus.pl whether there's an eastbound 737 or 715 approaching ulica Karczunkowska (below: image from laptop - works as well on a phone).

Yes - it's running four minutes late. My train's on time. I'll catch the bus. Great!

More good bus news. FINALLY, after ten years of promises from Warsaw transport bosses, ulica Puławska finally gets a bus lane. Like a knife through butter, a 709 bus can now get me from Karczunkowska to Metro Wilanowska in 23 minutes in the morning rush hour, and from Metro Wilanowska to Karczunkowska in 23 minutes in the evening rush hour. 

If you're a motorist driving your sorry arse one-per-SUV into town along Puławska and now moan about how much longer it takes you - all I can say is HA HA HA HA, wozidupku! Take public transport!

Final improvement (and this is only the for the select few) - having reached 65 (is that right? It doesn't feel right...) I am now eligible for a Roczny Bilet Seniora (annual senior's ticket). It costs me all of 50 zł (£9.14) for 365 days' of travel on Warsaw's Zone 1 and 2 - buses, trams, metro, SKM trains and - most importantly - Koleje Mazowieckie trains. It is 20 times cheaper than four quarterly season tickets on my old Karta Warszawiaka. Which was cheap when used daily, but when the post-pandemic WFH model means irregular trips to the office, it's not so good. Anyway, having bought a Roczny Bilet Seniora means I can get all the way to Zalesie Górne on the edge of Zone 2 for free, so I only need to buy my over-60 discount ticket from Zalesie to Chynów (30% off) for 5.72zł. So getting into the centre of Warsaw and back costs me just 11.44zł (£2.09). For a round trip of 88km. Żyć i nie umierać! (to live and not to die!)

Car ownership is not for me. Help save the planet!

This time last year:
Sublime autumn, Jeziorki

This time three years ago:
New track from Chynów to Warka

This time four years ago:

The possibilities of a quantum universe

This time five years ago:
More about sleep

This time 10 years ago:
On behalf of the workshy community

This time 11 years ago:
Classic truck cavalcade

This time 12 years ago
Narrow back-roads clogged with commuters

This time 13 years ago:
Autumn gold, Łazienkowski Park

This time 15 years ago:
Of bishops and bands

Apple harvest reaches its end

My attempt to make a final 10 litres of cider yesterday was a disappointing but illuminating failure. I collected over a hundred windfall apples, picking up only the nicest, most recently fallen specimens. They were rinsed in rainwater, then taking the first 25 to wash properly in hot water. I took the first five - the nicest of the nicest - clean skins, no bruising. Cutting them in half, every one of them was internally bruised. Putting them into the juicer, the resulting liquid was dense - more mousse than juice - and passing it through a sieve, what came out lacked taste, sweetness or acidity.

Different apple varieties have different properties - my Antonówka apples are soft, not particularly resilient, bruise easily and do not store well. Hence they are only now found on small, private orchards. Commercial growers produce for supermarkets' needs - harder,

After a short (and cold!) motorbike ride before the winter lay-up, I went for a long walk around the local orchards. Most have been picked clean. Small groups of gleaners moved among the unfenced orchards, picking up from the ground nicer apples that were the discarded by the commercial pickers. Here and there, one finds smaller, non-commercial orchards, typically growing traditional varieties of apple, unfenced, unsprayed, unharvested, such as the one below.

Last week, the punkty skupu - the fruit collection/buying points - were besieged by long queues of tractors hauling trains of trailers piled high with wooden crates packed with apples. Today, Sunday, the punkty skupu are closed, but I guess the peak is over. Below: a solitary apple in a puddle across the road from the punkt skupu near Widok.

I came across a single pear tree, surrounded by apple trees on an unfenced orchard. There were a large number of pears lying under it; I took two yesterday, peeled and juiced them - they were amazing. Sweet, much juicier than my apples (350ml from just two, so around six to the litre, rather than ten apples). I went back today to collect another four - they'll probably start to spoil soon. This does tempt me to make a five-litre demijohn of perry next autumn as a trial.

When the sun pops out, autumn colours light up and everything is beautiful. Below: the track from Machin II towards Adamów Rososki.

This time last year:
Ignoring the UFO phenomenon?

This time two years ago:

A tipping point in history, but who's tipping it?

This time three years ago:
Poznań by night

This time five years ago:
West of Warsaw's central axis

This time nine years ago:
Plac Unii shopping centre opens

This time 11 years ago:
Visceral and Permanent, Part II 

This time 12 years ago:
Autumn colours, locally

This time 13 years ago:
Edinburgh

I dream of telepathy

Timeslide; it’s 1973 – I’m with my parents, in the back of my father’s mustard-yellow Mk III Ford Cortina GXL with black vinyl roof and Rostyle wheels [reality: he had a brown Mk III GL with normal wheels]. It’s 1973, yet I’m sitting in the back seat with my children, aged five and two, so more like 1998. But it’s today – all at the same time. My parents are out shopping. They return, put the bags in the boot; my mother’s in the front passenger seat and shows me the Sunday Times that she’s just bought. There’s a whole supplement, she tells me, carrying a most remarkable story…  She pulls it out and hands it back to me past the headrest.

I look at it. It's really weird. The supplement isn’t typeset – it’s handwritten, in the style of a cartoonist. I’m thinking Gerald Scarfe, Ralph Steadman or Marc Boxer – somewhere between the three. There’s a story here – a report – about the Sally, the wife of famous British philosopher, Bernard, and Africus – an elk. The story is set in an Oxbridge college, a new one – a post-war campus, though with its modern buildings set around a grassy square like a traditional Oxbridge quad. 

Sally is Bernard’s wife, she is 11 years his junior. He left his first wife for a phenomenally beautiful undergraduate student in the Swinging Sixties, a time when such practices weren’t frowned on. Now she’s in her mid-50s, still a beauty, but dying of an incurable wasting disease. Africus the elk, a living exhibit owned by the college, is also dying of an incurable wasting disease. Neither could be diagnosed; "of unknown aetiology", the specialists said.

Now here’s the thing. 

As both Sally and Africus reached a point in their mysterious disease, they both began to display an incredible trait – telepathy. People around the woman, and the elk, started reporting intrusive thoughts – sad thoughts, reflections on death and existence, strange memories, anomalous sensations of taste. Dwelling on these strange thoughts, it became clear to those in their near presence that they were picking up the sensations of awareness from another being. As this was a university, curiosities were piqued.

News spread, crowds began to gather around the small pasture within the quadrangle upon which Africus lived. He still had his magnificent antlers, but you could see the contours of his ribs on his flank. Though he was not old, he moved with a wobbly gait. There was not long to go… Yet people standing around the enclosure all experienced his thoughts – his experiences. Above all, what it was like to be a dying elk. 

At this time, Sally would go for short walks around the quadrangle; clutching a walking stick, she could not go far. But seeing Africus became a daily ritual for her. Yet as she’d approach the beast, people going the other way would look at her, say things to her, replying to what could only be her thoughts. Not saying anything to anyone, she felt she was the centre of human attention; people whom she looked at felt it, felt her disapproval at the way they were dressed, their behaviour. She always had the tendency to be critical of others.

Before long, it was clear that something strange was going on. Was it Africus, or was it Sally? Or both of them – word got round. Journalists latched onto the story. They too noted that the claimed telepathy was real; one claimed that standing in the right spot, he could pick up thoughts from both Sally and Africus. 

The Sunday Times dedicated an entire sixteen-page section to this, with specialist doctors and vets giving their opinions about the nature of the disease, neurosurgeons coming up with different explanations for the phenomenon. The newspaper’s proprietor himself took the decision to publish a hand-written account of the story of Sally and Africus. It took many days, working around the clock, for the cartoonist to prepare this unprecedented work of art. He too had been there to experience it for himself and knew that this was real. Never since the times of monks hand-writing illuminated bibles had such an artistic enterprise been undertaken.

Sally and her husband became media fixtures, appearing on all channels. Yet the telepathy that all those around Sally experienced didn’t work via TV. In the studio, however, it did; wheelchair-bound, Sally would read minds in the audience, and audience members would tell Sally what she was thinking. One experiment that amazed everyone was when she'd sing a song to herself - nothing obvious - no Rule Britannia - rather obscure pop tunes from the mid '60s or a nursery rhyme. Everyone in the audience felt it, some began to join in, aloud.

Sadly, it was clear that neither Sally nor Africus had long left to live. For both of them, the very act of moving became increasingly painful; the elk just sat upon one patch of grass, and ate the feed his keepers offered him with difficulty. Their decline was visible week by week - then day by day. Sally became bed-ridden, she steadfastly refused being moved to a hospital, thinking to her carers that she'd like to die in her own room. As they approached their end, the radius within which their thoughts were being encountered extended; as far as three miles away, people were reporting the experience of what it felt like to be an elk tasting freshly-cut hay, or supping Sally’s milky tea and Digestive biscuits. Bernard kept a scrupulous log of her meal-times and what she managed to swallow; people sensed her thoughts with an accuracy that could not be written off as coincidence or conjecture.

The Sunday Times supplement was published when Sally and Africus were still alive – both died, at exactly the same time, on the very next Tuesday. With their deaths, the phenomenon ceased, but ever since then, scientists have been at loggerheads about this well-documented case. Was it real? Or make-believe, or a dream?

This time two years ago:
S7 update, around what's now Węzeł Zamienie

This time three years ago:
Marchin' again

This time four years ago:

Ealing and West Ealing memories

This time seven years ago:
The autumn sublime in Jeziorki

This time nine years ago:
Enduring Ealing - Victorian and Edwardian klimats

This time ten years ago:
Krokowa, Poland's former northern borderlands

This time 15 years ago:
Aerial photograph of Central London

Cottagecore typology - a manifesto

[Third in a short series of posts, this one inspired by a conversation with Aga P]

Typology: "In planning and architecture, typology is the classification of characteristics found in buildings and places, according to their association with different categories, such as intensity of development (from natural or rural to highly urban), degrees of formality, and school of thought (for example, modernist or traditional). Individual characteristics form patterns. Patterns relate elements hierarchically across physical scales (from small details to large systems)" - from Wikipedia.

In writing about my ongoing move to a more rural environment, I would like to expand upon the 'why' and the 'where' and how this could be part of a trend that reshapes the way we live. A way of life that rebalances human priorities.

Where

I started looking for a place outside the capital's economic orbit. Beyond the exurbs, beyond what is normally considered commuterland. Two and only two criteria mattered, and mattered equally. One - I had to fall in love with the landscape, the spirit of place. Two - it had to be within easy reach by train to the centre of Warsaw.

Spirit of place is crucial to me - I am highly sensitive to it, to the lie of the land, how it changes across the seasons. I spent three years to November 2017 scouting for a place that would appeal to my emotions. I feel that suburban life in Jeziorki has reached a tipping point - traffic has become unacceptably heavy now that the S7 extension runs through, bisecting my rambles across fields that are in any case filling up with new housing developments and logistics centres. Yearning for peace and quiet beyond the farthest fringes of Warsaw, I began my search.

I found what I was after in Jakubowizna, surrounded by apple orchards and pine-and-beechwood forests, a gently undulating landscape on sandy soil that reminded me of two favourite places from childhood, Oxshott Common, Surrey, and Stella-Plage in northern France.

Proximity to the railway line is key. On Thursday, after our big gala dinner, I left the centre of Warsaw, catching the last train from W-wa Śródmieście to Chynów at 23:34 to be back on my działka at 00:45. An entirely acceptable witching hour. 

Now, W-wa Jeziorki is around halfway from the city centre and Chynów (nine stations from Śródmieście to Jeziorki, eight stations from Jeziorki to Chynów). My search for a działka began closer to home - around Ustanówek, four stations from Jeziorki. Yet the spirit of place at Ustanówek failed to click with me. It's a hugely personal thing, this. You can aesthetically prefer one road home to another, parallel road, choosing it even though it's slightly longer. The lie of the land, the effect a given landscape has on our consciousness, is hard to quantify - but I feel it. It's about wanting to be there. There is a spiritual aspect to this, metaphysical almost - that sense of atavistic familiarity and preference. And it was around Chynów that I deeply felt that sense of place. "All that's missing is the sea" - or indeed any water feature (the Vistula is 10km from my działka - too far for a casual stroll there and back, there are no lakes or even ponds nearby). That's the only aesthetic drawback for me - not a major one. Otherwise - here's a place I won't get bored of, and that's unlikely to be drowned by a wave of development as Warsaw inexorably spreads outward.

How

This is not a return to the land. This is not even the move of a suburban child to the countryside of his father - for my father grew up within a mile and half of the centre of Warsaw. If anything, this is a move to the countryside of my paternal grandmother, who was born some 20 miles south-west from Chynów. 

This is a move enabled by technology. Without the 'information superhighway' (as today's online world was first envisaged), I would not be here in Jakubowizna. In daily life, I am instantly connected to the global pulse; I do 90% of my work online (if I don't have to have a physical meeting I won't); I have typically around ten Teams or Zoom or Skype calls a week. I am in touch, up to date, despite being far from the urban centre. This is revolutionary; I have spent nearly all of my life (with the exception of four student years) within ten miles of a capital city, and have commuted into to its centre every working day for 40 years. Until the pandemic - and that sudden realisation that for many categories of work, physical presence is not a prerequisite. And now - time to take stock.

The online world has transformed many aspects of human life, but the geographic transformation effect will be enormous. Distance no longer has meaning. Full-remote workers take their laptops to the Canary Islands or Tenerife and work from there. For those not tied to a factory, building site or surgery, service-sector work has been liberated from the tyranny of having to show up at the office from nine to five, Monday to Friday.

A crucial aspect of life on the działka is my regular walk to Chynów and back to buy food. Shopping at Top Market means buying what I can carry (in practice up to 11kg in my rucksack). It's a five-kilometre round trip, so there's no food waste, as I don't like carrying stuff all that way that will end up as compost. This means planning meals, keeping tabs on what's in stock, what's about to run out and what's urgently needed. Yes, I could ride into town on one of my motorbikes - but that's not the point. Walking 10,000 paces a day is central to my way of life, and the 8,000 paces or so to buy food is an intrinsic part of my lifestyle.

What

The minimum of house, the maximum of land. A big house means big maintenance and heating costs. So the answer is a small house, powered exclusively by solar-generated electricity. The eight panels (maximum power 3.4kWh) have been calculated to balance out over the year, giving enough power for light, hot water, oven, fridge, laptop, device chargers across the year plus heating from late September to early May. No gas other than an 11kg propane-butane cylinder for cooking. My house is connected to the sewage system, so there's no septic tank. Also important is the fact that my street is paved - I have asphalt all the way to the station, freedom from muddy feet.

Finally, the aesthetics of the land. Here, I'm going wild - literally. I am opposed to the petrol-powered lawnmower, chainsaw or leaf-blower. An entirely organic approach to gardening - let it grow. With the exception of the lawn immediately surrounding the house, the rest of the grassland is returning to meadow; new trees are sowing themselves, giving me the chance to decide which to leave and which to prune back or remove. Meadow means meadow flowers which means bees and butterflies in profusion. Longer grass, greenery, means I am allowing more photosynthesis to occur than had I kept a neatly-mowed lawn. We will all have to get used to this - unkempt gardens will develop as an aesthetic unto themselves.

Surrounded by trees, by nature, I have rebalanced to a calmer existence where focus on spiritual matters can be achieved more readily.

This time last year:
Ego, Consciousness and Soul

This time two years ago:
Samopoczucie, Joy and the Sublime Aesthetic

This time four years ago:
Autumn, with a railway theme

This time five years ago:
A few words about coincidence

This time eight years ago:
Hello, pork pie [my week-long pork-pie diet]

This time ten years ago:
The meaning of class - in England, in Poland

This time 11 years ago: 
First frost 

This time 15 years ago:
First frost 
[no frost forecast for at least the next seven days]

A slower, drabber, greener, more local, way of life may yet save our planet.

It is increasingly clear, looking at the science, that many aspects of our current economic model are entirely unsustainable from the point of view of climate-change threat. Our patterns of consumption have led to a situation where the wealthiest 10% of households on our planet (that's you and me) generate between 34 and 43% of all greenhouse-gas emissions (depending on methodology used to calculate).

The current model is driven to a great extent by our mammalian desire to rise up the status hierarchy, buying objects that project our superior place in the pecking order. Be this over-sized cars or exotic holidays in distant destinations, the biggest emitters of emissions are people who have all their basic human needs in Maslow’s pyramid met – they are neither hungry nor homeless nor cold - but want to flatter their egos. Having attained a life of comfort, they now strive for a life of luxury. 

Passing through the shopping mall by Kraków’s main station the other day, the multiplicity of baubles on offer worried me. So much of what’s on sale in shops today is no longer there to cater for basic human needs, but rather to project status. Clothes to be worn once, gadgets and trinkets.

Had it not been for the escalating climate crisis, I probably would not have worried unduly and gone on my merry way consuming as most folks do, so as to say “look at me, I’m important and worthy of your respect, O lesser mortals!” I am not an enemy of consumerism and capitalism for ideological reasons – we are not born equal, and though equality of opportunity is vital to a healthy society, not everyone is equally hard-working and focused, and those in the workshy community should not expect the same status in society as those who do put in the hours, do add the value and generally contribute. And some people are more intelligent than others – and that’s just a fact.

I’m no egalitarian, but our planet is now in peril, and we are the reason. 

For several years I have been winding back my consumerist footprint. I've not been a car-owner since 2013; many of my clothes are second-hand, I’m a careful shopper; I recycle wherever possible and compost banana-skins, coffee grounds and everything I can't consume (food I don’t waste). I’ve not been on holiday since 2014, not flown since March 2020 (jet-zero). The pandemic has made remote work easier, so less travel (my media appearances are now exclusively remote, as I won’t waste taxi time travelling to studios any more).

At conferences I attend, I am getting the flavour from HR managers and corporate leaders that employees’ priorities (especially the youngest ones) are also changing. Poland’s demographic high was in 1982, with around 700,000 births; by 2002 this had fallen to 350,000. When Poland joined the EU in 2004, it had the highest unemployment among all member states (over 20%). Today it is the second lowest (2.7%). When today’s 40-year-olds entered the labour market, they had to have sharp elbows to get up the career ladder. Today’s graduate entrants are seen as spoilt, choosy and hard to motivate. Their parents are no longer poor; life’s not a struggle.

And yet depression is a bigger problem in society today than ever – even though communist repression ended more than three decades ago and everyone has access to the same range of consumer goods. Have we got too much? Having scaled the heights of Maslow’s pyramid, we’re all looking around and asking ourselves “what should we place at the very top of it?”

I’ve written many a time about the importance of living in comfort but not in luxury – knowing when to stop acquiring. Comfort means freedom from hunger, illness and fear – there is nothing noble about living in a freezing-cold house because you can’t afford to heat it. Or in ill-health because you can't afford doctors' fees or medication. If you can’t afford to eat properly or heat your home because you spend so much money on car that serves little more than a status symbol – then you need to sort out your priorities. Jewellry, flash watches, fancy clothes, things you buy yourself because you feel you 'deserve' them, merely put off the day you can be financially independent.

Cars are a massive contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions. Car ownership in itself is not the problem (even a car with a big engine that spends most of its time depreciating away in a garage) – it’s car use. And buying new cars - ordering one that hadn't yet been made - is not good environmentally, even if that new car is electric. Worst car-use of all is short-distance one-per-car commuting when perfectly good public transport alternatives exist.

My ongoing retreat to Jakubowizna is in part a reaction to all this, my statement; my attempt at living a life with a smaller carbon footprint. Contentment with small joys that are not bought – not flying around the world, ticking off landmarks from my bucket list. A daily walk, meditation, eating healthily, processing produce from my land, exercise. The cottagecore aesthetic, as I wrote yesterday.

But this modern age has its benefits. Above all, it is online access to unlimited resources of knowledge. Watching YouTube videos about science, philosophy and spirituality gives me plenty to contemplate as I go on my strolls. The existence of Wikipedia gives instant access to articles about almost any subject I wish to deepen my knowledge about. I believe that once our current crises have been overcome, we will find ourselves at the dawn of a new set of breakthroughs in human understanding of the Cosmos, of the fundamentals of physics and biology that will rival the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

A far richer inner life, surrounded by less of the gaudy baubles of consumerism. Things will be built to last longer, the wasteful and ever-changing nature of fashion (particularly in the automotive industry!) will be replaced by standards and classic designs that have stood the test of time, rather than novelties for one season or two and then disposed in landfill.

Capitalism (I don’t like that word – I prefer ‘the free market regulated by a democratic society’) will be battered into a new shape by new consumer behaviours and needs. Would you rather spend €40,000 on a car that will last you five years, which you then sell for €10,000, or €60,000 on a car that will last you fifty years, and will still have a lot of life and value in it when you (or your heirs!) finally come to sell it? 

Business needs to re-localise. Start with brewing. Let a million brewers flourish, each unique to its locality, catering to its own local market. If a product from one town proves to be good in another – excellent! But there's no sense in moving beer from one continent to another. I am delighted that Polish craft brewers are discovering brewing styles from other countries. Brew local - with global recipes, global know-how.

Clothing. Clothes should be practical and hard-wearing, well-designed, well-made and good for decades of use. Not for status display. Bespoke tailoring, alterations and repairs, classic styles, muted colours, dyes made from local natural ingredients. Moving two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen in half-litre bottles across continents, driven by slick advertising, is nuts. Drink what's local. (Today I made myself half a litre of juice from my own grapes, and half a litre of juice from my own apples. Satisfying.)

Moving from growth to de-growth without mass unemployment is feasible in the long run, the only question is whether we have enough time left.

{{ Food-shop consciously - walk more – travel less  – conserve water. }}

This time last year:
Warka's bi-weekly market

This time two years ago:
How's your samopoczucie?

This time three years ago:

Pavement for Karczunkowska? What's next?
[a local councillor's newsletter last week claimed we'll have one in 2025-26]

This time six years ago
On relevance and irrelevance

This time eight years ago:
Poland gets anglicised as Britain gets polonised

This time nine years ago:
Ale, architecture and city politics

This time ten years ago:
The pros and cons of roadside acoustic screens

This time 11 years ago:
Moaning about trains again

This time 12 years ago:
Warsaw street names - Dolna, Polna, Rolna, Wolna, Smolna. Lost?

This time 13 years ago:
Ditches, landscapes, autumn

This time 15 years ago:
Golden autumn in Łazienki park

Too busy running around and making cider!

On my 65th birthday, I woke at 4am to be in Gliwice for 9.30 for our HR workshop for the automotive cluster there; I was back in Jakubowizna at 7pm for supper and writing the previous blog post. On Friday I also woke at 4am to be in Kraków for 9.30 for the 3rd Carbon Footprint Summit and was back on the działka at 10pm. I spent all of yesterday engaged in making cider (a demijohn for Moni) and the same today - apples that aren't harvested now will rot by next weekend. Cider-making takes up much time, but hopefully it will all be worth it when bottled for secondary fermentation.

My first demijohn popped its cork some time today, leaving a frothy mess of apple pulp on the cellar floor, fortunately the apple juice hasn't spoiled or developed a vinegary taste. It's dry, and at present about 0.3% alcohol by volume. I have used copper wire to 'cage' the corks shut - all the CO₂ goes through the airlock tubes that passed through the corks, as you can see below. In total I've made 40 litres, plus another five litres with Moni, a total of 90 half-litre bottles-worth. And the cellar smells great!

There are still apples left on the trees, hopefully I'll find time to make another five litres. In the meanwhile, no walk today, only a short walk yesterday morning, little time for photography and writing. So - a few local snaps.

Below: path between the apple orchards that leads from Jakubowizna to Grobice. Fruit-picking is in full swing, the sound of apples going into pails is all around. Daytime highs have been around 18C when the sun is out, falling a bit next week.

A propos of sun - the tipping point in the year has been reached at which the shorter hours of daylight and colder temperatures mean that I am now using more electricity than my eight panels generate. I have a large surplus built up since the panels were connected to the grid in July, with August and September producing much more power than I consumed. This should keep me going until mid-winter, after that, I'll be drawing credit from the surplus generated in April, May and June. It's all calculated to balance out precisely over the year.

Below: late afternoon on my rear balcony. Leaves are starting to turn, by mid-November, they'll have all fallen. To the left of this shot is one of my two grapevines; I hesitate to try my hand at wine-making (cider being the main focus now), but I am juicing the grapes daily. They are the Concord variety, known in America in all manner of grape-flavored things. And the taste of Mogen David kosher wine. Not my favourite grape variety (central Poland's too far north for all but the most robust), but the juice is good when drunk fresh - sharp and sweet.

The cottagecore aesthetic is taking off as an antidote to the hectic city grind; a trend that I believe will pick up as more folks choose to cut their carbon emissions and adopt a simpler lifestyle.

Left: Is this Nevada? Are we at a nuclear test site? No. This is where the DK50 crosses the Warsaw-Radom railway line, the tower holding mobile telephony aerials (hence such good reception in Jakubowizna). Across the DK50, still Warsaw's de facto ring-road, despite the opening of the S2 tunnel under Ursynów and the new bridge across the Vistula, is Sułkowice, famous for its police-dog training school. I must say that I cannot discern any reduction in heavy goods-vehicle traffic along the DK50 - I thought that the S2 and sanctions on Russia and Belarus would have led to the road being noticeably quieter - it isn't.

Below: peak apple. By the end of next week, most of the apples will have been harvested, the collection points (punkty skupu) are piled high with large crates of apples. It turned out (after a dry spring) to be another good year for the farmers.

I owe you all, my readers, some photos of Kraków - I walked to the conference venue and back (21,000 paces in one day!) and the weather was perfect. Will post if there's time this week...

This time last year:
All together, saving our planet

This time four years ago:
W-wa Zachodnia Platform 8 to reopen

This time five years ago:
Learning to fly (swan pics)

This time seven years ago:
Scotland's answer to the Hoover Building

This time nine years ago:
In which I don't vote in the mayoral referendum, thus helping to save HG-W's job

This time ten years ago:
Gorgeous cars from Czechoslovakia

This time 11 years ago:
Donald Tusk and Co. get re-elected 

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's wonderful bread

This time 13 years ago:
An October Friday in Warsaw

In which I reach the Age of Maturity

Here we go - it had to happen sometime! 65 at last. The entry port for Old Age - or at least it was. Life expectancy has increased; at this age, my father still had over 31 years left. I certainly don't feel old (unless I chance upon my face in a reflective surface!). I am in age of contentment, founded on good health (for which I am always grateful and about which I am never complacent), financial security (previous caveats apply) and above all, an understanding of my purpose. I work because I want to work, not because I have to work, and intend to go on doing so as long as it continues to bring me fulfilment. 

But more important than my job is the spiritual side of life; an eternal quest for cause and reason - why we are, and to where the Cosmos is unfolding. Reconciling empirical science with spirituality, a deeper meaning to life than materialism and possessing possessions.

I am increasingly aware that I am Consciousness moving over the face of the earth in a muscle-and-bone bipedal form, observing with curiosity, gaining ever-higher degrees of understanding about the world around me.

The Ego - the vain, the boastful, the thoughtless Self is in retreat, beaten back by the Consciousness, the struggle to find the balance between biology and spirit.

In my ninth year of systematic exercising and watching what I eat and drink. And walking - elevated to a mystical level, especially when out of town, untroubled by traffic. Why do I persist with this? Clarity of mind, mental and bodily wellbeing that's aimed at prolonging active life. More focus, more reflection, more contact with the numinous, mystical and metaphysical, sharing ideas, learning, sharpening my vision, as I wrote the other day, achieving higher levels of detail when it comes to understanding the world around me.

This time last year:
Golden Autumn, Golden Years

This time two years ago:
Last embers of summer

This time three years ago:
It's that Day of the Year again!

This time four years ago:

Decline and growth

This time five years ago:
Health at 60

This time seven years ago:
In search of vectors for migrating consciousness

This time eight years ago:
Slipping from late summer to early autumn

This time nine years ago:
Turning 56

This time ten years ago: 
Turning 55 

This time 11 years ago:
Turning 54

This time 12 years ago:
Turning 53

This time 15 years ago:
Turning 50

Levels of Detail

We spend (or at least we should spend) our whole lives learning. Acquiring new knowledge, learning new facts, and hopefully, from internalising that, gaining new insights. It is from a succession of such small eureka! moments that we grow in overall wisdom - wisdom that can be passed on.

I written several times before about the generalists and specialists. I consider myself a generalist with a broad but shallow understanding of our world. I only need to stop and consider one specialist area in any kind of depth to realise how much knowledge I lack. Focus is key to specialism; my mind drifts off all too easily. But as life goes on, I am deepening it here and there, in particular in science, but all the time aware of how much there is still to know that only specialists know.

Maps are a good analogy. You can have a map of the world which will inform you about the position of Ellesmere Island (only slightly smaller than Britain) or whether Mauritius lies to the east or west of the Seychelles. And you can have a local map that gives you the height of Horsenden Hill or the distance between Gołków and Głosków. You can start with a world map and drill down, or start with a local map and add adjacent sheets-worth of knowledge.

Like the scale-models I wrote about the other day, level of detail is relative. You can make a kit straight out of the box and, assuming reasonable craft skills, it may turn out looking reasonably attractive from a few feet away. Or you can obsessively detail the cockpit interior, the wheel-wells, the exhaust pipes, the whole surface, and have something that is stunning when viewed close up - but then - so what?

The construction sector - building real buildings, not models - has taken to BIM (building information modelling) to create annotated 3D plans that architect, developer, civil engineer, contractor, sub-contractor, landlord, tenant and facility manager can all share. Do they all need these plans to the same level of detail - down to the texture of the door-handles? 

What levels of detail should we aspire to in our understanding of life? What can be considered sufficient to live a reasonably fulfilled life? 

My recent interest in mosses has opened a new area of inquiry for my mind. I have become far more observant of the forest floor and pavement cracks, looking different types of moss, where and how they grow, the soil underneath, the amount of light falling on it, the drainage. I suppose I can dive into numerous websites or buy a large book of Mosses and Lichens of the World - but I feel for now, this is all too much detail to digest in one go.

So coarse-grain or fine-grain? How is your worldview structured? Tiny areas of human knowledge, captured in obsessive detail, with many areas almost entirely unknown - or a general layperson's grasp of the basics of most things? Enough to get by?

Some areas of knowledge - electricity, for example, or mechanical engineering - are eminently practical. Others, such as history, have no direct impact on one's daily life, but give a broader picture of where we as a species are right now and the intricate timeline of factors leading up to the present day.

An infant will discern blocky shapes all around them, and with time, these shapes gain definition, context, meaning, like sculptures emerging from a lump of clay. As we grow older, the familiar shapes become parts of our lives - and here, observation and curiosity are what matter. What questions do you ask yourself of the things you see all around you every day? I often think of Copernicus, especially at sunset - the insight that looking at the sun dipping below the horizon it actually you, the observer, spinning back away from it. It took thousands of generations of Homo sapiens before one of the species worked out empirically that our sun does not orbit our earth. 

What will be the big breakthroughs in human knowledge in coming years, decades, centuries - millennia? I feel that our IQ as a species needs to continue to increase, memory accessible externally, and education increasingly focused on gaining insights rather than memorising facts. Armed with insights, we can easily acquire more information yielding ever-greater levels of detail which opens doors to the next levels of insight.

This time last year:
Droga donikąd by Józef Mackiewicz
[I'm struck by the similarities between the Soviet playbook of 1940 and Putin's actions in Ukraine today - propaganda, outright lies, terror, brutality, counterproductive stupidity and rigged elections.]

This time two years ago:
Words that pop into the mind, unbidden

This time four years ago:
Hops there for the taking
[Drinking hop extract right now!]

This time five years ago:
Two weeks and two days of travel

This time six years ago:
Final end to a local landmark

This time 11 years ago:
Independence Day

This time 12 years:
Out and about in Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Funeral of Lt. Cmdr. Tadeusz Lesisz

This time 14 years ago:
Puławska by night