summer

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

June

"(...) the power for growth comes from the reactivity of the environment,  wich fluxes continuously through living cells  (in the form of food and oxygen in our case, photons of light in the case of plants). Living cells couple this continuous energy flux to growth, (...) through ingenious structures, in part specified by genes. But whatever those structures may be (...), they are themselves the outcome of growth and replication, natural selection and evolution, none of which is possible in the absence of a continuous energy flux from somewhere in the environment." Nick Lane, 2016). The Vital Question: why is life the way it Is? Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

June

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

June

"The fact that something so fragile, so unbearably tender had survived, had been allowed to exist, was a miracle." Arundhati Roy, The God of small things. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

June

"After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?" Kazuo Ishiguro, 1989. The Remains of the Day. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

June

"Over time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background (...) It usually took strangers a while to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed at all" Arundhati Roy (2017). The God of small things. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

June

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

success

"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” Ralph Waldo Emerson. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Day

May 5, 2018. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

May

"Photographs were useful, but somehow always confirmed the memory rather than liberating it." Julian Barnes, 2018, The only story. May 15, 2018. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

smoothly overlaying

"(...) there are memories that seem to run like a film, smoothly overlaying all the others, that have such shape and form that you suspect that they are inventions and may have created themselves, and within them your own identity even begins to slide and fade, and is liable to change as in a dream." Georgina Harding, 2009, The spy game. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

time out

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Agency

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

A new cycle

"We are back to family, to the life cycle, to human fragility and experience (...) above all, the virtues of appreciating relationships with all their attendant conflict, ambivalence, and meaning." Sherry Turkle,  2005. The Second Self: computers and the human spirit. MIT, Twenty Anniversary Edition, 298. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC) 

living frame

Doing what I know, the best I can, with what I have, wherever I am. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

diversity

Edible forest: fire prevention, energy production (biomass), carbon storage, growth of local resources (less energy/fuel consumption for transportation of outside resources, conditions to attract workers/residents), earth conservation (reflorestation, soil conservation, increased species, better air quality), carbon negative, odorific, beautiful... Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

creative assemblages

"More than conversation at the interface, it is creative assemblages like these that explore and elaborate the particular dynamic capacities that digital media afford and the ways that through them humans and machines can perform interesting new effects (...) in uniquely particular ways." Lucy Suchman, Human-machine reconfigurations: plans and situated actions, 2009, 281. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

February in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

connectivity

"How many millions of other activities begin and end at the same time? How many other «facts» converge in just the right way, creating symbolic connectivity?" Noah Hawley, 2017. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Edifício L

"Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you. And then its over." Noah Hawley, 2017. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

February

How can we build a better world? Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

living

Life is a distraction from death. Save energy. Adapt fast. Diversity is key for survival. Take some, leave some. Share surplus. Live in harmony. Love. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

mindfulness

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

February in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

February

"Life is made of this moments - of one's physical being moving through time and space - and we string them together in a story, and that story becomes our life" but, "what if instead of a story told in consecutive order, life is a cacophony of moments we never leave? What if the most traumatic or the most beautiful experiences we have trap us in a kind of feedback loop, where at least some part of our minds remains obsessed, even as our bodies move on?" Noah Hawley, 2017, Before the Fall. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

January in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

January in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

January

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

January in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

January in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

January in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Stillness in a mobile world

Stillness:"an ethical choice between stillness as first aid for an overactive world, and stillness as a real slowing down". Bissell, David, and Gillian Fuller (2013). Stillness in a mobile world. London New York: Routledge. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

January in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

December

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

December in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

November

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

November in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Morning glory

日本語: Ukiyoe, Japanese wood block print by Utagawa Hiroshige. Morning Glory. 1866.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_glory#/media/File%3ATotoiriyaasagao_hiroshige.jpg

European atlas of forest Tree species

European Atlas of Forest Tree Species "is both a scientific publication, in which researchers and forest specialists can find rigorous and up-to-date information on the many tree species of our forests, and a publication suited for education and the dissemination of information about the richness of our forests to our generation and future generations. (...) Each chapter of the Atlas presents, in addition to the description of each tree species, high quality graphics and photographs showing the climatic preferences and singularities of the different species of trees." San-Miguel-Ayanz, J., de Rigo, D., Caudullo, G., Houston Durrant, T., Mauri, A. (Eds.), 2016. European Atlas of Forest Tree Species. Publication Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. Image by Alfonso San Miguel, 2006. Image: Holm oak (Quercus ilex) in spring, Despeñaperros Natural Park (Andalusia, Spain). 

 Updated link for publication 2021 12 29.

October in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Passaram 11 anos

... sobre a Resolução do Conselho de Ministros n.º 124/2006 (Diário da República, Série I, de 2006-10-03) onde se anunciava a reviravolta do sistema dos laboratórios do Estado. Entre outras entidades científicas a extinguir, lia-se no ponto 5, do anexo:

"É extinto o Instituto Nacional de Engenharia, Tecnologia e Inovação (INETI), sendo os seus recursos científicos e tecnológicos, humanos e materiais reorganizados e integrados noutros laboratórios, centros tecnológicos, instituições de ensino superior e consórcios a criar. Em particular, as infra-estruturas do INETI transformam-se em parque de ciência e tecnologia com a participação e gestão de universidades, laboratórios associados e laboratórios do Estado e alargam-se a parcerias com empresas, no quadro de projectos definidos, organizando-se ainda como espaço de acolhimento de programas europeus de I&D."

Para onde foram o que apelidam de "recursos científicos"? E os "recursos tecnológicos e materiais"? E os «recursos humanos»? Onde está o «parque de ciência e tecnologia com a participação e gestão de universidades, laboratórios associados e laboratórios do Estado»? 

Pelo meio, no decurso destes 11 longos anos, foram-se perdendo unidades, recursos científicos, tecnológicos e materiais. As cerca de 1000 pessoas na altura? Umas foram resistindo, outras cedendo, sucumbindo, caindo ou tombando... foram reconvertendo horizontes científicos em reformas antecipadas, em trabalho administrativo, em fragmentos profissionais, em alternativas à ciência. Foram-se esvaziando as competências, as capacidades. As equipas que outrora alimentavam e captavam recursos da UE para o país, foram extintas por uma resolução de quem nos governava. Ao mesmo tempo, acabavam com novas admissões ou valorização dos que ficaram.

O que ganhou o país com esta resolução? que tenha justificado a perda cientifica e tecnologica que existia no INETI, a perda de dezenas de unidades e mais de 750 pessoas? Quais os reflexos e impactos que provocaram (ou ainda provocam)? E na vida dessas pessoas que trabalhavam (trabalham) no INETI (actual LNEG, com cerca de 250 trabalhadores dos 1000 existentes aquando da resolução de extinção)? Quem beneficiou com o desmantelamento do INETI?

 

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

October in the garden

Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

fair/fear

Milan, after immersing myself in the second Resonances exhibition about Fair/Fear. "How can we build a fair world? Science and art (SciArt) meet to provoke conversation and inspire answers to this question". Exhibition by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), EU. Explanations by Curator Paul Heard very enriching, adding depth, and new layers of meaning. Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).

Layers

September in the garden, 2017. Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Do what you can,

with what you have, wherever you are.

See initial sketch from last year. Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

increasing diversity

Increasing plants diversity helps to attract other animals, including arthropods that seem to favor genetics-based interactions among plants, pathogens, and herbivores. See results from global synthesis of the effects of diversified farming systems on arthropod diversity within fields and across agricultural landscapes (2017, Global Change Biology). Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

seeds

Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

June

Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)

Aviation disruptions

"British Airways: Thousands disrupted as flights axed amid IT crash" in BBC news

"With a lack of technology, staff were using whiteboards in Heathrow" in BBC news

Ginko

Ginko Tree, the 'bearer of hope'. Amsterdam canals, June 2016. Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC)