| Yellow Suns Mice and Minnie Witch
Yellow Sun
Yellow Suns |
ENEL This from The Guardian, Oct 22 1999. "Residents of a remote mountain valley in Tuscany are fighting plans for high-voltage power lines whose giant pylons could disfigure a national Park, wrecking a landscape little changed since the Middle Ages. Italy’s Green environment minister, Edo Ronchi, is powerless to intervene in the battle, which is part of a nation-wide campaign against power lines by hundreds of pressure groups all over Italy. Campaigners say scientific studies show the lines' electromagnetic fields cause a wide range of illnesses including damage to the central nervous system and cancers such as leukemia in people living near them." Couple with this the mushrooming of mobile phone masts and their link with epilepsy, not to mention the risks in the phones themselves (and I'm sure you wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the newer digital systems emit pulses of radiation 217 times every second) and it seems we have a problem. You might remember our promised feature on Hay Bale Houses,
which never saw the light of day. Now this is by no way an attempt at an excuse but the
fact is it never got even started - why? We had been given permission by the owner of the land to do
what we liked on it. And we went there (You'll have to pay attention here because I am attempting to draw parallels and conclusions.) Then one day, one of us, I forget who, thought to look upwards - and it all became clear. Across the old monastery gardens, Enel (The Italian Electricity Board) have put up high voltage cables, as thick as an elephant's trunk, and they appear perilously low to us, approximately 20 ft above the ground. We thought then that we could make nothing constructive in this place. Minnie threw one of her tantrums and stormed off, the rest following dejectedly. However, back home, we thought again - maybe we could make a gesture towards the land which would, at least, make us feel a bit better. (This was back in the summer and we didn't know at the time about the growing protest movement across Italy or that Enel is littering the countryside, not just our small piece of it, with these power lines - because of course it's cheaper than burying them underground). So we consulted our roving Feng Shui expert, who suggested placing yellow circles on the ground under the power-line. This would counteract the negative energy emanating from it - in Feng Shui terms, electricity is a combination of Fire and Water, which are both curbed by the Earth element, the colour of which is Yellow, and the circle disrupts the straight line, the cable itself. We got a bit messy with the yellow paint, and Minnie lost one of the circles, (counting never having been one of her strengths), and of course we couldn't fix the circles to the ground permanently, so the whole thing had a very ephemeral feel to it, but we did feel slightly eased by the process and took some pictures to commemorate the event. So it's not only a 'How could they do that?' in terms of aesthetics and lack of respect for history, but it's also clearly a health hazard to wild boar, deer, porcupines and the likes of we intrepid researchers. Needless to say, our hay bale project has had to be abandoned, for the time being, but we can refer you to web sites... For info on this exciting prospect. The Rock Garden will hopefully be made in the not too distant future. Watch The Zen Garden section of the Physik Garden for further developments. Our images are not just an excuse for Minnie the Witch to get 20 seconds of stardom. They are a peaceful protest against a practice that is insidiously desecrating a beautiful part of the world which we love. There you are, our first entry in the Greenhouse and, hopefully, an encouragement for you to contribute too. Mice and Minnie Witch January 2000
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