It has not gone unnoticed

I recent­ly watched a few episodes of a Dutch tele­vi­sion pro­gram called The Hok­jes­man, trans­lat­ing to the Box­es Man. Dif­fer­ent groups of Dutch peo­ple are mild­ly iron­i­cal­ly scru­ti­nized in the pro­gram, and it always turns out that the box is much more colour­ful than you’d expect. In the episode about ‘Ani­mal Friends’ the Hok­jes­man visited …

Cows ethics

For me, a veg­e­tar­i­an diet is an impor­tant part of striv­ing for non­vi­o­lence. Writ­ing about this puts me in a vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion, because the great major­i­ty of peo­ple do not share this belief, while it is very cen­tral in my life. Veg­e­tar­i­ans can also make the impres­sion of being moral­is­tic; Thieme calls this the ‘accu­sa­tion …

The cow and the planet

After a rea­son­ably warm day I’m in the train, enjoy­ing the farm­land between Ede and Amers­foort. The orange evening sun slow­ly sinks towards the hori­zon. In the sky I see a lot of air bal­loons float­ing by. It must be nice to lit­er­al­ly tran­scent the every­day hus­tle and see your every­day envi­ron­ment from a different …

Rainy season

We are in the midst of the Christ­mas sea­son, a time that evokes warm feel­ings and brings peo­ple clos­er togeth­er. Last year at this time we lived in Eng­land, and in Lon­don we saw the christ­mas lights, the Nor­we­gian Christ­mas tree in Trafal­gar Square and the illu­mi­nat­ed shop­ping streets. We sang Car­ols in St Martin …