by Alice Bulmer | May 5, 2016 | Ecology, New Zealand culture
Mangroves aren’t one of nature’s cuddly or conventionally beautiful organisms. In New Zealand mangroves are both a protected native species and a pest. This is a post about appreciating our local mangroves: Avicennia marina subsp australasica, also called...
by Alice Bulmer | Mar 6, 2016 | Becoming Alice, Ecology, Life and death, Storytelling
“Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth.” – Eckhart Tolle. Last week I was writing about death; this week it’s birth. Two babies have recently arrived in my extended family. Tawari was born in December, to...
by Alice Bulmer | Feb 19, 2016 | Becoming Alice, Ecology, Life and death, Tools of resilience
This is a post about Linny the cat, Atul Gawande, and David Bowie. “Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth.” – Eckhart Tolle. “To the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure.”...
by Alice Bulmer | Feb 5, 2016 | Becoming Alice, New Zealand culture, Tools of resilience
Today is my 55th birthday. It’s also Waitangi Day, the New Zealand holiday that commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Waitangi Day is the closest thing we have to a national holiday. But for a whole bunch of reasons, it’s a day when many New...
by Alice Bulmer | Feb 1, 2016 | Becoming Alice, Music
The bass player is the unsung heart of a great band. They’re standing there on stage with a huge bass guitar, and an even bigger amplifier, but hardly anybody notices what they are playing. The impact of the bass is almost subliminal. Listening to recorded music, most...