Connection - Windmill
 

Thesis     Statement     Concepts     inspirations     connection       introduction       sundial       windmill       waterwheel       a planted tree       footbridges       dragon       the path       conclusion     vocabulary     Precedents     Site     Programme     Scratch Pad EcoResearch Bibliography Portfolio				The wind tells us stories as it whistles through the trees and brings news of weather patterns.  Culture is about human stories that are passed from one generation to the other through the wind of our words, the breath of our spirits. The telling of stories, like singing and praying, would seem to be an almost ceremonial act, an ancient and necessary mode of speech that tends the earthly rootedness of human language.  For narrated events, as Basso reminds us, always happen somewhere.  And for an oral culture, that locus is never merely incidental to those occurrences.  The events belong, as it were, to the place, and to tell the story of those events is to let the place itself speak through the telling. (Abram, pg. 163)     Stories connect us to our history and where we are in the world.  The windmill shows us weather and its movement.  It metaphorically connects us to our voices and the air we breath.  The air contains the first scents of spring and the smells of a neighbourhood bakery.  Quite often a certain smell will evoke vivid memories of a place, time, or event.  Once in a while, the smell of autumn will bring back my memories of sweaters and woolen scarves in a Belgian country town and the recollection of ‘S’il vous plaît’ as a shopkeeper hands me my order.     Healthy air in an urban environment keeps us healthy and encourages us to be outside.  Air pollution disconnects us from the world as we avoid being outdoors and loose sight of the wonderful smells that the wind can bring us.  Clean air lets us see the brilliant blue of the sky rather than the grey-brown smog that most cities are now accustomed to.  Air quality informs many urban issues such as locations and emissions of industries, transportation, and garbage processing.  If we cannot smell the wonders of each season, how can we appreciate the change in seasons and remain connected to the earthly cycles? Tell me the story of the river and the valley and the streams and woodlands and wetlands, of shellfish and finfish.  A story of where we are and how we got here and the characters and roles that we play.  Tell me a story, a story that will be my story as well as the story of everyone and everything about me, the story that brings us together in a valley community, a story that brings together the human community with every living being in the valley, a story that brings us together under the arc of the great blue sky in the day and the starry heavens at night….  (Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth.  Quoted in The Sacred Balance by David Suzuki)   advance

owen.rose@mail.mcgill.ca