Norma Saunders: eco-socialist, eco-spirituality.

Climate/nature emergency communicator. CEO. Chaplain. Writer. Educator. Vegan. Pagan. Art. Ceramic history. Heritage. Mother. BA (Hons), Cert M. Dir., FRSA, FLS

[Norma Saunders: eco-socialist, eco-spirituality. @NormaSaunders]

The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. Take pressure off nature: promote natural regen biodiversity veganism adoption; lower population protect water/soil; ban chemicals/heavy plant/hedge flail in agri/forests; stop destructive development

[Historic Hub @HistoricHub]

One of the most breathtaking train rides in the world.
The Bernina Express travels from Chur, Switzerland to Tirano, Italy on the Rhaetian Railway. It crosses 196 bridges and 55 tunnels, climbs over the Bernina Pass, and then descends into Italy

[Prof Janina Ramirez @DrJaninaRamirez]

It was supposed to be a normal trip into London for meetings, but then I stumbled upon this gem!! Thirteenth-century church of Saint Etheldreda (who founded Ely Cathedral in 673) & a relic of her hand no less! It survived the Great Fire of London 1666 only to be bombed in WWII.

[pacoulmag @pacoulmag]

#MedievalMonday
Very special poppy heads, some grotesques or some with tragic faces,
Cley-next-the-Sea, St Margaret's Church, #Norfolk

[The Megalithic Portal Ancient Sites & Stones @megportal]

Holm of Papa Westray North: An Early Neolithic stalled chambered cairn at the northern tip of Holm of Papa Westray, the small islet lying east of Papa Westray, Orkney. Ancient DNA results published in 2026 by Prof.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

When the President of France visited the United States in April 1960, he asked the FBI to help him find a man.
The man he was looking for was an American citizen. He was sixty-four years old. He had been awarded fifteen French military decorations and — six months earlier, in a ceremony in Paris — had been made a Knight of the Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian honor France can give. The medal had been pinned to his chest by the President himself, who had publicly called him un véritable héros français. A true French hero.
The FBI located the man within a few days.
He was operating an elevator at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
The elevator operator's name was Eugene Bullard. He had been born in Columbus, Georgia, in 1895, the son of a man whose own father had been a slave.

He had run away from Columbus at the age of eleven, after watching a white mob nearly lynch his father.
He spent the next several years drifting through the American South. At sixteen, he stowed away on a German freighter at Norfolk, Virginia. He landed in Aberdeen, Scotland. From there he made his way to London, where he learned to box. By 1913, at eighteen, he was prizefighting in Paris.
When Germany invaded France in August 1914, Bullard was nineteen years old. He had no legal obligation to fight. He had no French citizenship.
He went to the recruiting office on October 19, 1914, and signed up for the French Foreign Legion.
He spent the next eighteen months as an infantryman in some of the worst fighting of the war — at the Somme, at Champagne, at Verdun. He was wounded three times. The third wound, on March 5, 1916, tore open his thigh and left him with permanent damage to his leg.
He was twenty years old. The doctors told him he would not return to the infantry.
He decided he wanted to fly.

In a Paris café in the spring of 1916, while he was recovering, Bullard mentioned to three white American friends that he was thinking of joining the French air service. A Mississippian named Jeff Dickson laughed.
Gene, Dickson said, you know damn well there aren't any Negroes in aviation.
Bullard answered: Sure do. That's why I want to get into it. There has to be a first to everything, and I'm going to be the first.
Dickson bet him two thousand dollars he would not make it.
Bullard took the bet. He earned his pilot's license on May 5, 1917. He won the bet.
He reported to the front in August 1917 and flew approximately twenty combat missions over the next three months in a SPAD VII. The fuselage was painted with a bleeding heart pierced by a knife and the French phrase Tout le Sang qui Coule est Rouge — All Blood that Flows is Red.
He carried, on every combat flight, a small capuchin monkey named Jimmy in the front of his flight jacket.
The French press began calling him L'Hirondelle Noire — the Black Swallow.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, Bullard immediately applied to transfer to the U.S. Army Air Service.
His application was rejected.
The U.S. Army Air Service had a policy, in 1917, of not accepting Black pilots. The other American pilots flying for France in his unit, all of them white, were transferred to the U.S. Air Service.
He was the only one who was not.

For the next twenty years, he was one of the most familiar faces in the Montmartre nightlife of Paris between the wars. He owned a nightclub called L'Escadrille. He spoke fluent French, English, and German. Hemingway drank there. Fitzgerald drank there. Langston Hughes drank there. Josephine Baker performed there. Louis Armstrong was a personal friend.
When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Bullard was forty-four. His fluent German and his ownership of a nightclub frequented by German officers made him useful to the French Resistance. He became an intelligence agent — eavesdropping in his own bar on conversations between German officers who did not know he understood every word.
When France fell in June 1940, friends in the Resistance smuggled him across the Spanish border before the Gestapo could arrest him.
He came back to the United States for the first time in twenty-eight years.
He arrived in New York with thirty dollars in his pocket and a permanent limp.

He did not return to a hero's welcome. He returned to a country that had no idea who he was.
He worked at a perfume counter. He worked as a security guard. He worked at the Staten Island shipyards. By the late 1940s, he had taken the job that he would hold for most of the rest of his life.
He operated the elevator at Rockefeller Center.
He was wearing the elevator uniform on the day a producer from NBC came down from the studios upstairs to ask if he was the man Charles de Gaulle had been looking for.
A few weeks later, NBC sent a film crew to interview him in the lobby. The studios where NBC produced The Today Show were on the floors above. He had operated the elevator that took the network executives up to those studios every morning for nearly ten years. He had not been recognized as he did it.
He went back to operating the elevator the following Monday.

He died of stomach cancer on October 12, 1961, three days after his sixty-sixth birthday.
He was buried in the French War Veterans' section of Flushing Cemetery, in Queens, in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion. The casket was draped with the French flag.
In 1994 — thirty-three years after his death — the United States Air Force formally commissioned Eugene Jacques Bullard as a Second Lieutenant, posthumously.
It was the first commission the U.S. military had ever offered him.
He had been the first Black combat pilot in American history.
The French had been calling him a hero since 1917.
The Americans got around to it in 1994.

[Sammi🦋 @StoriesBySammi]

There are only 236 of them left on Earth. Every single one has a name.

The kākāpō is the world's heaviest parrot - a mossy green, owl-faced bird the size of a small dog that cannot fly, may live to 90 years, and only breeds every 2 to 4 years when New Zealand's rimu trees produce enough fruit to trigger the urge.

Rats. Cats. Stoats. Humans clearing forests. The kākāpō never evolved to outrun any of them.

By 1995, 51 birds remained. Scientists, rangers, and Ngāi Tahu - the Māori people who have always known this bird as taonga, a treasure—evacuated every last one to predator-free islands.

Each bird got a transmitter. Each nest watched around the clock.

This past February 14th, the first kākāpō chick in four years hatched. They named her Tīwhiri. By spring, 59 chicks had been born.

236 birds. Every name known. Every nest watched.

Who's counting down the days until the rimu trees fruit again? 🦜

#DemsUnited #Nature

[Terence Kerr @TerenceKerr5]

#MedievalMonday #Shipley #Sussex

Bared tombstone teeth on grotesque face, sculpted 1100s. Decorates corbel in Norman church built by Knights Templar, the Church of St Mary the Virgin in Shipley, West Sussex, England.

[Cato Crane - Probate & Fine Objects Auctions @CatoCrane]

A Good Way to Start or End the #Day ! @heswallsquash @heswallmagazine @thesaleroom @shrewsmorris @CNNConservative @liverpoolphil @HCCS_music @HeswallFC_ @musichallsoc @Audefledis @we_never_tweet_ @EbayPremier @McrFinest @knutsford @CaldyGolfClub @RLGCHoylake @WillastonClub #GB

[victorshannock @victorshannock]

Poppies by the wayside

[David Pattison 💖 @DavidPa71415858]

Spare a thought (and some food) for the Pigeons - they are not "vermin" they are beautiful, special creatures that helped us win two World wars. We domesticated then abandoned them...

[Norma Saunders: eco-socialist, eco-spirituality. @NormaSaunders]

@pvs000 horrible, horrible people

[Urbanponds101 @urbanponds101]

Another day by the pond

[Barendina Smedley @fugitiveink]

Here's Claude, just being a cat

[The Green Party @TheGreenParty]

"Come on, government. Stop bottom trawling the way you promised you would."

Green Party peer Jenny Jones on World Ocean Day.

[Yvonne Ridley 4 Glasgow @yvonneridley]

Why would an adult male want to kidnap two bairns aged four and five? Look at the fear on these children's faces. This is Epstein ideology at play. This is the regime @Keir_Starmer and @AndyBurnhamGM give unconditional support to. Make sure you RT this and write to your MPs https://t.co/jp6BrTFN1o you might just save these children from being sodomised to death by an army which regards rape as an act of self defence.

[💙💛Mary Tidbury @Moominmamma7]

For #SmallBeautiesHour white peonies, like the moon, a source of light when the sun hits. 🤍

[Thread of Gold @ThreadofGold1]

Some bright colours and interesting shapes from this week in the garden #BecauseOfClem #ThreadOfGold💛 #SmallBeautiesHour

[Trackerm63 @backtrack0105]

Deep red poppies and a lovely little wall garden
#SmallBeautiesHour

[Norma Saunders: eco-socialist, eco-spirituality. @NormaSaunders]

@ThreadofGold1 lucky you

[Thread of Gold @ThreadofGold1]

A curlew appeared in the field behind the house, last week. I raced to get a photo and was lucky enough to get this shot #BecauseOfClem #ThreadOfGold💛 #SmallBeautiesHour
#RubbishBirdPics