Blue Wolf Reviews

Tag: plan

  • The Bushfire Book: How to Be Aware and Prepare

    The Bushfire Book: How to Be Aware and Prepare

    In the wake of the Australian summer on 2019/20 when bushfires, unprecedented in their fury blazed across Australia leaving tragedy and devastation in their wake, many children were left with a fear of bushfires, not understanding that bushfires are a natural part of life in Australia.

    Polly Marsden found her family and friends were left with emotional issues and realised that there was very little written for younger people to help them understand more about the nature of Bushfires, what everyone can do to be prepared, how to go about learning more and knowing what to do should a bushfire blaze near you or your friends and families homes.

    The text in The Bushfire Book: How To be Aware and Prepare has been carefully constructed to inform rather than create fear, with sufficient information on the many aspects of weather and fires in Australia, which encourages a great sense of understanding and acceptance of and on the vast, very different country in which we all live.

    Illustrations from Chris Nixon while muted in colour portray a scenario many are all too familiar with, but highlight the information on the pages. An excellent section deals with the three ingredients needed to start a bushfire and the history associated with the First Nations knowledge of how to control bushfires.

    The Bushfire Book: How To be Aware and Prepare is comprehensive, encouraging children of all ages, and their parents, to seek out further information, as well as the correct sites to go to when beginning to build a bushfire plan for your home and family

    A great poster is included on How To Be Bushfire Smart focusing on the three main steps: Be Aware, Prepare and Share, simple things but little things than can be of vital importance over the coming summer months.

  • Go Be Kind: 28 1/2 Adventures Guaranteed to Make You Happier

    Go Be Kind: 28 1/2 Adventures Guaranteed to Make You Happier

    Leon Logothetis is all about spreading kindness as far as he can throughout the sad, sad world in which we live, which is a truly delightful, wonderful thing, as kindness is something there is never enough off in everyday life.

    The real magic of kindness, which is free by the way, is that the giver feels a great sense of happiness in their lives and the receiver, well, that can mean so many things to many people, from a simple thanks, I needed that smile, to just about anything.

    Go be Kind is presented in a style which is pure Logothetis, zany, slightly bonkers and of course very, very kind, as he has created 28 1/2 adventures that he guarantees will make you happier. After having read through the book, I would have to agree, because even if you only read the introduction, then the ‘rules’ and then only do one of the 28 1/2adventures, you have already made a difference in your life as well as someone else’s: Pretty powerful, is it not!

    Of course, the adventures span a month, more or less, as it is a well-known and researched fact, that it takes 21 days to make and 21 days to break a habit. In this case there are a few extra days built in to make sure the new habit of kindness is there to stay.

    As a ‘journal’ into happiness and kindness, Go Be Kind is one book where you are encouraged to write on the pages, colour them in or even tear them out, but it also encourages you to take a look into yourself, your happiness levels and do something about improving them. Call it a health check for happiness which costs nothing and can be seriously life changing, for the better.

    The other side of the adventure is reaching out to people who are lonely, isolated and yet surrounded by everything life has to offer, a condition that is on the increase, which in today’s world of electronic everything, is so very important.

    Kindness is something that needs to be practiced, preferably on a daily basis but anytime will do, until it becomes a habit that is catching: a warm, happy feeling that once rediscovered becomes an intimate and wonderful part of the person we are, as we continue on our journey through the years of our lives.

    How to describe kindness, you can’t, as it is an ethereal something that comes from within, but when practiced, no holds barred, it is pure magic. So, in the words of the master himself, Leon Logothetes, ‘I created this journal for anyone who has ever felt alone. I see you’ which is of course, everyone!

    Give like the sun and the whole world grows tall. – Atticus

  • Part of a Kindly Plan

    Part of a Kindly Plan

    When poet Thomas Hardy wrote ‘On A Fine Morning’ in the early 1900s’, never would he have envisaged his poetry as providing the inspiration for Nathan Spiers latest album some hundred years later.

    The piece written by Hardy asks the time old question, ‘What is solace’? His conclusion is that solace is something made up of a little of this and that in the mix of life, which brings eventual contentment and happiness and is all a ‘part of the kindly plan……’

    As this collection of songs unfolds, Speirs has taken the metaphor of a little of this and that to create an album which touches on so very many aspects of what could loosely be referred to as ambient music in all its many faceted shades and colours.

    Mellow and entrancing Hued Embowment combines piano, cello and singing bowls as an introduction to the seduction to follow, as he adds electronic guitar, rain shakers and a touch of tympani to As We Turn, moving away from the almost hypnotic pull, and feel of the first track.

    A dreamy little piece, Good Seasons is paying tribute to yet another aspect of lie, that of the good to be found within the seasons of life. Simply played on acoustic guitar, with a dash of cello’, the music encourages  a sense of drifting, relaxing, moving into the total ambience of the moment, season, time or place, bringing with it a great sense of peace and healing.

    Shifting the pace up a notch with Passing Charcoal Clouds Speirs introduces a neo classical feel with what can easily be felt as a slightly chunky sound, changing rhythms to create a rather unusual melody which has a definite appeal.

    Adding a squeaky chair noise, wind chimes, a spinning piano stool and other selected household noises to a composition truly embraces the philosophy of ‘a little of this and that’ going to make up Serenity In This House which is once again played on piano and nylon stringed guitar, winding its way to a single, pure conclusion!

    Ethereal and transcendental notes of guitar and cello blends, underpinned with the haunting sounds of the Native American Flute played so very softly, heralds in the beautiful Praxis, a piece written to encourage listeners to choose a discipline in life and persevere, improve and enjoy the journey of the learning created.

    The finale Breathing On This Shore, has been written at ‘62 beats per minute’ as a deliberate aid to meditation to fit in with the ebb and flow of breath, the ebb and flow of the tides or the waves on the lapping at the shore.

    His music has as always a beautiful ambience, a delicate richness, creating a reflection on life, an element of choice as to how it is used: as a relaxation before retiring, a meditation on life and living or simply as music to waft in and out of the consciousness at any given time, allowing a munificence of solace to enter and remain in the soul.