POET SPEAKS
.................................................
ON FIRE WITH LOVE !
A man says; "Why write
songs, or poetry? Why not just talk?"
So I'd like to talk, if I may, about the Rhondda.
The Rhondda's soul - is a soul on fire with love:
by focussing that love on building a new economy
through Rhondda Records and other associated industries,
by using ideas and new technology in music,
tourism, the services and agriculture,
we can all now help to create an exciting future.
Building a beautiful future really CAN happen...
if we all give gladly one ounce (or gram)
of the love we hold for the Rhondda.
...you don't have to burst into flames
just join together, and sizzle a bit!
(I overheard a lady in Treorci say;
"When that cricketer - Ian Botham, came to
the Rhondda, men and women stood on their doorsteps
in thousands, so we KNOW the unity's still there.")
[actually, she said; "shame it took an Englishman !"]
Of course, planning and preparation are the key !
There's an old Japanese proverb;-
Vision without action is a daydream;
and Action without vision... is a nightmare.
We can see in Bridgend how our planners' love for
roads and concrete are met... yet planning
could move towards more harmonious settlements,
in harmony with nature and between people.
Planning could help to alleviate poverty
and reduce inequality...
That calls for higher requirements from planners.
A future well qualified planner will have the
journalist's capacity to be good at listening
to all kinds of views, an economist's capacity to
be skilled in calculating the input-output costs,
the social worker's capacity to work with communities,
and a politician's capacity to balance conflicting interests.
Not many planners have come to value their profession
this way, and the result is dissatisfying urban sprawls,
featuring inadequate services and inconvenient settings,
which are particularly cruel to low-income families.
A harmonious society could witness a narrowing
rather than expanding gap between different social groups.
It is obvious that planning could have a growing
role to play in getting every member of society
to benefit from "economic growth".
With a revaluation of their profession, planners
could enhance their links with other professionals,
communities, formal and informal sectors as well
as with the Welsh Assembly government, and choose
the best possible future for us and for future generations. Innit !!!
Politicians often say that the people of the valleys
are in need of a change in culture...
we say, that the leaders need a change in their vision too !
Why do we in Wales think that more factory investment
( and the disgrace of chasing after it ! )
is more noble than investing in a new agriculture?
Perhaps we could serve ourselves better if we all
saw that working the land is NOT inferior to selling
armaments and "financial services" like the UK,
and begging for factories in Wales.
Yet - why are our minds so stuck? The media could
and should be leading a great debate in Wales,
as to what we replace our heavy industry and mining WITH...
NOT hair-dressing, and other "services", while we live
off the "third world", but a new science-based horticulture
using strong branding and our own native strains.
BUT THERE IS NO MEDIA DEBATE !*!
Most of the news for Wales
often comes straight from a police-station.
HOW could that have happened? ...
By business people putting MONEY,
...before serving the needs of the community.
....THE WONDERFUL NEWS ?
THE RHONDDA IS POISED TO WORK AGAIN,
TO CREATE WEALTH through COMMUNITY and CARING...
and NOT just for MONEY..
(by intelligently working its land,
culture and creative genius !)
Yours in Truth,
Poet.
P.S. here's a prayer -
with the community
owning Rhondda Records -
let's make the valleys of Wales
rich and beautiful again... innit !
Hwyl Fawr !
POET IS MORE THAN ONE PERSON !!!
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL
Co-operative organiser, agrarian,
nationalist, writer, editor, poet,
painter and theosophist, is a poet
whose message for US, is as important today,
as it has EVER been. Enjoy - as we all can -
discovering more about this wonderful man !
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George Russell had an authentic message.
His was the voice of the inspired monitor,
warning a world which was wantonly
over-emphasizing the pursuit of luxury,
and sinking into the idolatry of mammonism.
His love of the countryside, his real sympathy
with the husbandman, laboring at his ordained task,
the cultivation of the soil, earning his living
"by the sweat of his face" - his determination
that greater justice should be done to the peasant
and that they should not be sacrificed
to the insatiable demands of the cities -
in these earnest efforts the Poet became the reformer,
which true poets always are.
For poetry is not merely a sweet acquiescence in things as they are,
but a Prophetic determination to make them better.
"The decay of civilization comes from the neglect of agriculture," he said;
"there is need to create, consciously, a rural civilization."
His was not the ordinary "back-to-the-land" mentality,
which condemned civilization and all its works;
but he would bring the benefits of urban life to the country;
his land workers would be instructed, cultured, people
in a completely congenial environment,
with no urge to forsake the farm for the city.
It is an ideal which is not impossible of fulfilment.
The results of planning and legislating for the development of cities,
instead of for the welfare of the farms,
are only too painfully manifest in these our modern times.
Unless something effective is done to promote the ideals
voiced by this great Irish poet,
to whom like the poets of classical times,
agriculture was of such vital import,
it is to be feared that the "decay of civilization,"
which he so greatly deplored, will be progressive.
(A. J. H., on his death, in Hamilton Spectator, July 19, 1935)
***********************************************
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FROM "CO-OPERATION AND NATIONALITY" (1912)
Russell's pamphlet, which is now out of print.
These paragraphs are taken almost at random: -
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Civilization in historical times has been
a flare-up on a few square miles of brick and mortar.
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In the New England States there are at the present time
about 26,000 derelict farms once held by freeholders.
They had everything and more than everything
we are trying to give our Irish farmers, and
where are they now? The cities nodded and
beckoned to the children of the farm and they went,
as they are going, and will go, in spite of small holdings,
land acts, laborers' plots, and the rest,
if the miracle is not wrought and the countryside
made a place where a man can enjoy the fullest
and freest development of his spiritual, intellectual
and social powers. Can this miracle be wrought?
It is this question I will try to answer.
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The organized industries, the organized communities,
are always wresting any surplus from the unorganized.
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In congested Ireland every job which can be filled
by the kith and kin of the gombeen kings and queens,
is filled accordingly, and you get every kind of inefficiency and jobbery.
They are all publicans, and their friends are all strong drinkers.
They beget people of their own character
and appoint them lieutenants, and non-
commissioned officers in their service.
All the local appointments are in their gift,
and hence you get drunken doctors, drunken rate-
collectors, drunken J.P.'s, drunken inspectors -
in fact round the gombeen system reels the whole
drunken, congested world, and underneath this
revelry and jobbery the unfortunate peasant labors
and gets no return for his labours.
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No country can marry any particular solution of
its problems and live happily ever afterwards.
Life is an endless struggle, and every nation
will have perpetually to adjust itself to new conditions.
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A man is not human in the true sense of the word
unless he fits into humanity. A disorganized
society is like a heap of bricks. Brief may be
made but there is no reason for their existence
unless they are to form part of a building...
The worst thing that can happen to a social
community is to have no social order at all;
where every man is for himself, and the devil
may take the hindmost. Generally in such a community
he takes the front rank as well as the stragglers.
The phrase "Every man for himself", is one of
the maxims in the gospel according to Beelzebub.
The devil's game with men is to divide and conquer them.
Isolate your man from obligations to a social order,
and in most cases his soul drops into the pit
like a rotten apple from the Tree of Life.
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About 100,000 Irish country people are already
members of co-operative societies and their
trade turnover this year will be close on three million pounds.
The total trade turnover of the movement from
its inception till the present, is over £25million.
The opposition to this work of agricultural organization
had its origin in the little country towns which,
for the most part, produce nothing and are mere social parasites.
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The Irish country towns only develop mental bogs about them.
We have grown so accustomed to these arid patches of humanity
that we accept them in a hopeless kind of way,
whereas we should rage and prophesy over them,
as the prophets of ancients Israel did over Tyre and Sidon.
And indeed, a lordly magnificence of wickedness
is not so hopeless a thing to contemplate
as a dead level of petty iniquity, the soul's
death in life, without ideas or aspirations.
The Chaldeans - they who built up the Tower of Heaven
in defiance of Heaven - had so much greatness of soul
that the next thing they might do would be to
turn it into a house of prayer;
but lives filled with everlasting littleness,
fill one with deep despair and madness of heart.
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Sometimes one feels as if there were some higher
mind in humanity which could not act through. individuals,
but only through brotherhoods and groups of men.
Anyhow, the civilization which is based on individualism
is mean, and the civilization based upon great guilds,
fraternities, communes and associations is of a higher order.
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A FEW MORE QUOTES:
" There is but one life, divided endlessly,
differing in degree, but not in kind.”
“I have realized most of my ambitions.
I have had an outstanding interest in life.
I have got friends. What more does a man want?”
"The decay of civilization comes from the neglect of agriculture.
There is need to create, consciously, a rural civilization.
You simply cannot aid the farmers in an economic way
and neglect the cultural and educational part of country life,
or else the children will continue to leave for the cities."
“Seek on earth what you have found in heaven.”
“We may fight against what is wrong,
but if we allow ourselves to hate,
that is to insure our spiritual defeat
and our likeness to what we hate.”
“A young man who had been troubling society
with impalpable doctrines of a new civilization
which he called "the Kingdom of Heaven"
had been put out of the way; and I can imagine
that believer in material power murmuring as he
went homeward, "it will all blow over now."
Yes. The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven
has blown over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.”
“Any relations in a social order will endure,
if there is infused into them some of that
spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.”
“Ah, to think how thin the veil that lies between the pain of hell and Paradise.”
“Forgive me, Spirit of my spirit, for this,
that I have found it easier to read the mystery
told in tears and understood Thee better
in sorrow than in joy.”
“Twilight, a timid, fawn, went glimmering by,
And Night, the dark-blue hunter, followed fast.”
“Our hearts were drunk with a beauty
our eyes could never see”
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Rhondda will win, not solely because its cause
is fought intelligently and with a sense of love -
but because it is based on the truth..
It's the enemies of Truth who stand on shifting sands.
Although Rhondda Records is "non-political"
in the sense that it is NOT blinded by Party
interests or ideology, it IS on the side of Peace and Truth.
(and can therefore unite ALL GOOD PEOPLE from ALL parties..)
People in The Rhondda and elsewhere know
that "our" media lie.
It is a PLEASURE, therefore,
to highlight the most important TRUTH....
Today sees the publication of figures which show
the most deprived areas in Wales....
http://www.dataunitwales.gov.uk/new_documents/
Info/WIMD/DDS22008_080700_ranks_2008_final_eng.xls
In the top one thousand - Rhondda Cynon Taff
has more than a TENTH (111).
Of those, FIFTY are in the Rhondda proper,
and - if you add those areas in the immediate
Rhondda surround, you will find another TWENTY TWO.
WE SAY THIS, NOT TO GET DEPRESSED, OR THROW A "PITY PARTY"
but to confirm people's suspicions as fact;
the Rhondda has been smashed down, and it takes
public acknowledgement of this TRUTH, to achieve
change...
We need a CHANGE - a new approach - AN ECONOMY,
and no sneaky plan to sit by and watch the Rhondda
turn middle-class.... this would be a denial of TRUTH,
and a pretence, that the majority of our children can,
or would even WANT to, become Guardian readers !
If you want an economy which draws on the Rhonddas' true genius,
and takes these youngsters forward - what BETTER way
could there be, than to use the joy youngsters find in physical work,
allied to a care for their land and life, than
AGRICULTURE.
I live on Pentyntyla (a corrupted form of the Welsh "tyle")
It means "The head of the way to the terraces",
and I'm not talking housing terraces, but the old,
intelligent way the Celts farmed;- using hillsides
which catch the sun and rain, fertilised and worked co-operatively.
A strong Brand name, science applied with care,
a resultant positive "sincere" culture, could
help REBUILD WALES' OLD MINING AREAS.
WE will be helped by all who care for The Rhondda....
and who choose to UNITE and support it in Truth and Peace.
THAT ... is why we will succeed !
Yours,
Poet
STOP PRESS !!!
ON THE 22ND OF AUGUST, WE PUT IN A BID
TO BUY THE BOILERHOUSE ON PENRHYS.
PENRHYS BOILERHOUSE COMMITTEE IS STRONG, NOW,
AND APPLYING TO COALFIELDS REGEN AND THE WAG,
(Welsh Assembly Government)
FOR A SMALL AMOUNT OF MONEY TO BUY IT AND CHANGE IT
TO PROVIDE A GOOD WAY FORWARD FOR THE KIDS OF THE RHONDDA.
NOW IT'S UP TO US !!!
COME FORWARD AND VOLUNTEER...
COME TO THE BENEFIT SHOWS AS THEY'RE LISTED
(ON THE EVENTS PAGE)
LET'S HELP RAISE THE MONEY OURSELVES...
JOIN WITH US !
WE'RE ON FIRE... WORKING TOGETHER...
TO HELP SAVE THE RHONDDAS' SOUL !!!
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