Way Home

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From the very start a relaxed and engaging accounting of Mark Boyle’s adventure in living for one year without technology. Mixed in with digressions of interesting personal anecdotes are Boyle’s philosophies that are based on scientific fact and not at all self-righteous or pretentious.

Way Home | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education - CLPE

Let's get one thing straight: his life is NOT simple. It’s full of hard work, all day long, all seasons, one whole year where he left everything behind (all comforts of modern society so to speak), on which the book is based. He first started living at the property in 2013, after restoring the accessory-filled farmhouse in the three acre small-holding he bought during Recession of 2008. He moved out of that farmhouse, built an accessory-less cabin instead, and lived in it and on the property without ANY amenity, and did all sorts of self-sufficient work, to get by. This is his story, for that one year’s excursions. Honorable mention: "a friend…..met a small village-worth of women on the banks of remotest part of Pakistan, washing clothes together, laughing, talking, being playful." (I have to put a disclaimer here: clothes are washed like this IN EVERY PART OF PAKISTAN, not just remote areas, whether a community is together at it or just a help maid or single individual!) On the journey home, the duo walks past a pampered feline in a window. As Shane gazes in, he says, "[T]hat cat's a loser. Eats fancy mince, no kidding. Heaps of it....Disgusting. And get that collar. What a joke!" They see an auto showroom, lights shining brightly on red Jags. Wrong color, Shane claims as he fights off a sense of awe. Revise the language technique of personification and metaphor. Have students reflect and discuss the setting of Way Home (the city). Ask students to write a short creative writing piece in which they write from the perspective of the city (personification). This is quite a challenging activity but after several readings of this text the students will have a ‘feel’ for the city Hathorn has created. If necessary re-read the text before the writing commences.Way home follows a young boy called Shane and a stray cat that Shane has decided to home. During their journey home, Shane and the cat experience many dangerous encounters such as a gang of lads and a dog. Throughout this book, Shane is always telling the cat that they are close to home so the reader is left guessing as to where Shane lives. This provides children with the opportunity to imagine where Shane lives and what it looks like. When we find out where Shane lives, it is on the streets covered with newspapers and Shane's drawings of cats. Although Shane has very little, he wants to give everything he can to make sure that the cat has everything that he needs.

The Way Home by Mark Boyle | Waterstones

Boyle's life is a compromise - it has to be. He has given up a lot, but undoubtedly gained a lot, too. I didn't find him overly preachy - mostly I found him confused, conflicted, mournful, and a little lost as to how to connect with a society that had clearly thrown in the towel on his way of life. He may be right, though, that there will come a time when we will be forced - by our own mistakes and ignorance - to return to this way of life. Our plundering of the Earth can only last so long. And I sometimes feel myself growing frantic with my own reliance on abstract entities, corporations, and foreign governments. I loved reading The Way Home, but at the same time, I could see problems with it as a new environmental book in 2019, aside from those already repeated ad nauseam by Guardian CIFfers. Boyle is a little vague on some matters such as health - whether that's because he's taken note of earlier criticism of this aspect of his writing and/or is soft-pedalling (in contrast with, for example, chapter 13 in his earlier book The Moneyless Man) or just being a hippie. Frankly, I can't say I'm in the least bothered because I and other adult readers of a book like this know where to find detailed information, and it's clear from the first that The Way Home is a memoir written with awareness of subjectivity and doesn't pretend to be a definitive guide to off-grid life. He seems like someone who's probably good with individual interactions, but isn't suited to formulating large-scale policies (an exhausting enterprise, anyway). The author hates big business and Silicon Valley billionaires (Exhibit A: “Now I suspect that supporting a corporate football team is a sort of toxic substitute for our basic need to belong to a tribe who are all bound by the same common purpose. But when one player you roared on one season signs for a rival club the next, for 90 million Euros, the joke starts to wear thin.”)First of all, Mark Boyle's world view is the antithesis of my own. The Way Home was a free book on Audible read by an Irish voice I could understand. I was interested in the author's views on industrialization and technology and their influence on nations, communities, families, and individuals today. This book was easy to listen to and was almost poetical. It reminds me of On Walden Pond by Thoreau. I admire Boyle's willingness to put into practice the principles he taught for many years. There are many of his generation and younger who also have chosen to become more self-reliant and less dependent on technology. Boyle has taken it to the extreme. Despite all that Boyle has forsaken during this record of his first year of living off the grid, I don't believe he's found true reconciliation or lasting peace. He does not recognize the Great Creator and sees only the creation.

Way Home by Libby Hathorn | Goodreads

Why does he do this? He recites a number of ecological and socio-cultural reasons, but the most critical reasons are ones of existential meaning: The above quotation is so true. And simple. The older we get the more it resonates. Our past comes up to catch us and we see the error of our ways. Mark Boyle has produced a fine and interesting textbook as well as a memoir of life worth living. I am sure there will be more.

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Yet: There is something in Boyle's philosophy of the anti-human. He even wonders, quite seriously, if it is ethical or even useful for him to spend his time writing. For such a clear and concise writer, he seems to see no innate value in the arts - comparing the 'wasted time of writing' with the 'real work' of fishing, logging, gardening, etc. Summary: A narrative of a year without modern technology, and what it is like to live more directly and in rhythm with the immediate world of the author's smallholding and community.

Way Home - Reading Australia

Heartbreaking story of a genuine, caring little boy who wants to look after a scared stray kitten. Like ripped photos, the astonishing pictures convey the violence and darkness of the streets where the story is set. Furthermore, the language used, rich in slang words, also help readers enter in the character's life and feelings. Interspersed in his own narrative of the practicalities of his life and his reflections upon it is a narrative of Great Blasket Island, once a self-sufficient island but now deserted with the advent of modern technology. The island stands as a mute symbol of a former way of life. Can you find out about different types of snakes? What type might have wrapped itself around Claire in the story?I've been meaning to read this book for some time, as I've long been interested in the concepts of "slow living", living more simply, using less and liberating myself from the worst excesses of capitalism. Ultimately, modern life squeezes us into a mould of consumption, forcing us to work hard for companies that we feel very little in common with. Mark Boyle has previously spent three years living without money, but this experiment - living on a remote smallholding with virtually no services or technology - interested me more. I've long felt I've had an unhealthy relationship with technology, and I was keen to learn from Boyle's experiences of attempting to live without it in the twenty-first century. This book won't be for everyone, but I certainly found it fascinating. What he did was quite extreme and sounded like bloody hard work, but he successfully (for the most part) managed to keep himself fed, clothed and healthy with absolutely minimal involvement in the industrial capitalist economy. He communicated exclusively by mail, travelled to most places on foot or by bike, and didn't use any power tools as he grew his own food, or hunted or fished for it. He describes the changes he sees around him as rural Ireland is increasingly affected by the pressures of economic growth and technological change, and his efforts to return to a more integrated and simple life. Dan Jarvis is an MP and a Mayor, but this is not a book about politics. This is a book about service and family – specifically his time serving in the elite Parachute Regiment, and the tragic death of his wife Caroline. Revise with students the conventions of letter writing (correct layout, format, language use, etc.) for causes. Good examples come from various charities appealing for donations. These examples are highly persuasive. Have students write a letter to petition the RSPCA advocating for animal rights and why we should be protecting animals that might be homeless. Before beginning revise persuasive devices such as modality, logos and ethos. So, hearing that Boyle is now using a bit more modern technology and going into cities to do talks and book signings, I can imagine the frustration with standard sleep hours, the obtrusiveness of bizarrely emotive pop music in public places; the strange lacunae one has with news after a long time away from it. (I'm glad my years off from news were doldrum ones; now is a bad time not to be informed. I caught up on politics long ago, but occasionally I still become aware of other gaps from those years: a few weeks ago I saw a report about a crime from 2014 that read like it was a huge story at the time, but I'd never heard of it before; and until I read this a few days ago, I'd assumed "U ok hun?" was just a meme-based way to be bitchy.)