Animal Portraits

Old Portraits

Climate EduXchange

I went to Climate EduXchange a Dell TERI initiative organized a capacity building workshop for teachers at the TERI southern regional centre, Bangalore.

It all began with a tea and at 10:30 am, a welcome address by Ms Ranjana Saikia, Director – Environment Education and Youth Services, TERI. She then went on with her presentation on teachers training on teaching and the internet.

Learners are fast paced and easily bored. Thus the use of computer helps to keep them focused, engaged and excited about what they are learning.

She stressed teachers to foster meaningful learning experience using the internet. Teachers as knowledge facilitators through this rewarding instructional tool can be updated with a wealth of information at their fingertips as knowledge is fluid and ever changing.

She also talked about common internet terminologies and some useful websites through which teachers can improve and exchange knowledge.

At around 12:45 pm the presenter gave a presentation about local environmental concerns of Bangalore like open sewage system, air pollution, waste deposition, cutting of trees, industrial pollution, lake conservation and water shortage.

It was followed by a group activity in which teachers gave their insightful views on the following issues:

As teachers, the most effective ways of communicating to students the crucial linkage between climate change and biodiversity

As city dwellers, how can we change the way we deal with nature so that we can help restore it?

How does Bangalore shift from the current unsustainable development pattern to sustainable eco -development?

With the rapid loss in the floral and faunal biodiversity, is Bangalore prepared for the future environmental problems related to climate change.

Teachers representing each essential issue presented their perspectives with colourful and creative charts. They came up with solutions that can be achieved with education imparted by teachers to the future citizens and a little effort from each individual.

At around 2:00 pm following the open house discussion, all the teachers had a get together over lunch. After the lunch the program came to a close at 2:30 pm. It was an educational and soul stirring experience to all the teachers present there.

Burning Incense

From dusk till dawn

My own concept of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN

Silver streak

Silver

SLOWLY, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

This way, and that, she peers, and sees

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws and a silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter De La Mare

First Couplet

The first couplet sets the scene by letting the reader know that the time is night, and the moon is shining. But the speaker dramatizes the moon’s activity by claiming that the “moon / Walks the night.” Instead of merely shining, the moon is walking, and she is walking in silver slippers—he uses the quaint British dialect “shoon” for “shoes” which creates a marvelous rime with “moon.”

The moon in her silver slippers walks “slowly” and “silently.” Serenity and peace emanate from those two lines, and anyone who has had the pleasure of contemplatively observing such a moon-drenched scene will appreciate this recapturing of that experience.

Second Couplet

While in the introductory couplet, the moon is walking slowly and silently in her silver slippers, the second couplet finds her looking at the fruit trees, perhaps apple or peach trees, and observing that they appear to be silver—both the fruit and the trees.

The metaphor of the moon wearing silver slippers creates a far-reaching expansion in this night scene. The glow of those silver shoes adds a rich silver sheen to everything it touches.

Third Couplet

The speaker continues his drama in silver by remarking that the windows of the cottages one at time catch those silvery beams; the casements are silver, and the thatch roofs are silver. Just as the landscape with fruit trees are all swimming in silver, so are the very cottages, in which the speaker and his neighbors reside.

Fourth Couplet

The speaker then dramatizes the sleeping dog, who has not escaped this silver bathing, even though he is “[c]ouched in his kennel, like a log.” Because of this mystical act of Divine artistry, the dog’s paws are turned silver from the magical glow of the moon’s walking in silver slippers.

Fifth Couplet

The speaker now moves from the more domestic silver showering to one more out in nature. He sees that the “white breasts” of doves that are “peep[ing] out from “their shadowy coat” are also bathed in the silver glow.

Sixth Couplet

Continuing his observation of nature’s creatures, the speaker reports, “A harvest mouse goes scampering by, / With silver claws, and silver eye.” Even the tiny rodents of the field cannot escape the rinsing in silver that those omnipresent “shoon” splash.

Seventh Couplet

Finally, the speaker avers that even the fish in a stream submit to a silver soaking. As they seem to stand perfectly still, they “gleam” with the silver as do the “reeds” and the stream itself.

All three, fish, reeds, and stream are transformed with the rest of the landscape by the luminous blaze of silver