Small Finds - Chapter One

 It's up!

The first instalment of my novel Small Finds

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Small Finds (Part One)

Small Finds - the blurb

 Small Finds

The archaeology of a life

Is it time to stop digging?

Life has never been better. 

He has a job he loves, a wife he loves and a family he loves. 

What went wrong? 

He is an archaeologist and he is running the summer dig for the university. He has a great team and there will be plenty of good things for the students to find in the excavation. Everything should be good. But events leave him depressed and unwittingly entangled in a criminal network, and ready to resign.

Until, miraculously, it is all explained by a song.

Twelve years

I've just realised that if I publish Small Finds now, I can do it exactly twelve years after the events portrayed in the novel; i.e twelve years after I started writing it. 

That is such a good idea. 

I'll do it

Publish and be damned

I'm seriously contemplating publishing a novel here on this web site.

Shall I?

I shall.

I'll publish Small Finds here in instalments  

Starting soon

THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN

This is a fascinating book. 

• It unpacks preconceptions about how we relate to the natural world and to each other. 

• From knowing and sharing in hunter-gatherer societies, Hugh Brody has had to re-examine our cultural myths and he explores the links between agrarian culture and our expectations and behaviour. 

THE OTHER SIDE OF EDEN HUNTER-

GATHERERS, FARMERS AND THE SHAPING OF THE WORLD

HUGH BRODY

 
First published in the United Kingdom in 2001 
Faber and Faber Limited 
ISBN 0-571-20596-8

(Blog post transferred from Aeos Random Readings; 20/06/22)

The Dawn of Everything

I've just finished reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. There is a lot to think about. The things that stick in my mind at the moment are the three basic freedoms that the two Davids derive from a study of societies at various times and in various places particularly, perhaps, the North American societies encountered by Europeans in the sixteenth / seventeenth centuries:

To walk away

To not obey (i.e. make your own choices and decisions)

To imagine new ways of doing things, in concert with other like-minded people

These three freedoms are underpinned by what you might call 'the reasonable expectation of care'

The two Davids ask the question "What went wrong?"

One of the things that went wrong was the subversion of 'the reasonable expectation of care' into something that might be called  'the divine right to be cared for'.

I need more time to think about this

God's love

Some thoughts from Pope Francis collated

https://blog.franciscanmedia.org/franciscan-spirit/choose-love-a-message-from-pope-francis?utm_campaign=Believe%20in%20Love%3A%20Inspiring%20Words%20from%20Pope%20Francis&utm_content=93743550&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-18640935