Notes from the creator.Creating Bonus Joules and the Knowledge Economy is a labour of love. I live on an income that is minimal by New Zealand standards. For the first two years of the creation of this website I lived in the converted garage of my good friends, Rene and Claudia, and I rented my cottage out to sustain the mortgage on it. I am at present back in my cottage, sharing it with my tenant. This website is created and maintained with the donated expertise and computer facilities of kind friends. It could not happen without their continuing kindness and support. You will soon understand reading my commentary on Greenwash etc why no agency supports this work.
Another life.
In another life with other talents, I would love to have been one of the animators in Walt Disney’s studios in the 1920s. They set fun, movement and music in inked lines dancing in magical display of energy. That is not my life - as of April 2005 I am a school cleaner/janitor. However I still remain entranced with cartoons and with energy in its myriad forms. One day I will learn to cartoon.My childhood
I was born and raised on a large sheep farm called Waiorongomai just north of the Cook Strait in New Zealand. Its lakes, creeks (streams), hills, forests and winds and skies were my playground. Bending with the trees in the wild winds in the day and listening to the music of the creek echoing in the stillness of the night against the forested hills and Milky Way overhead formed my sense of the nature of energy. It is a sense of something truly majestic and awesome and intimate. This sense fills me with a desire to promote the use of symbols and the engagement of images that reveal the majesty of this universal force.My ‘adult’ world
A degree in Psychology over 30 years ago and a recent Diploma in Primary Teaching prepared me for a world in which universities are as fallible as any group in our society. At the same time the Diploma only enhanced my admiration of true teachers.I still see the energy of the universe through the eyes of a ten year old. I now also can see it through the eyes of the layperson. If I am qualified at anything, it is at being a layperson. For a decade I was a postman, a stevedore and a storeman. For two decades I visited thousands of households and businesses to read their electricity meters. In recent years I have laboured on building sites with the tradespeople. I know what the layperson hears and sees when our teachers and “energy experts” speak. What and wherefore is the yawning gap between the preached and the practiced? The ten year old in me enables me to ask questions that few others seem able to.
My vision
I work to generate images that most fully reflect the majesty of energy and that sustain our children as we would be sustained. My hope is that Bonus Joules and the Knowledge Economy will reveal insights so we can feel our Thermodynamic Beings, acknowledge our Trace Beings and know best how to care for the exquisite energy balances of Earth that enable us to live.
My belief is we each can learn to generate bonus joules so all may experience the health and wealth in the abundance of energy.
Amended May 2005
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