Culture
Public Intellectuals: Hannah Arendt
A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1966) It is, perhaps, notable that as a … Read more
Toblerone
When you hear the phrase, “Subtropical paradise,” Longford is probably not what springs to mind. As children, we were taken to Center Parcs, over in the UK. Thirty-degree weather year-round, with palm trees, pools, slides and rides, all housed beneath a glass dome. There’d been great excitement in the family following an announcement of a … Read more
Featured Artist Michal Greenboim
Growing up in a small rural town in Israel, Pardes Hanna, has shaped me into who I am today. My grandparents were part of the hundreds of thousand people who fled Europe prior to the Holocaust and settled the land of Israel in the 1930s. It was important to them that we were raised as … Read more
Poetry: Marc Di Saverio
THE MAN WITH A MICRO-CHIP IN HIS RIGHT HAND Stopping wantless under cherry blossoms He hears a girl singing from the sewer, then harmonizes voices with some hums, then sings the final chorus like he knows her, their voices shaking red chrysanthemums – but now the crowds of fading stars are fewer and his voice … Read more
‘It’s not a case of men vs women’: Mise Fosta in Irish Trad
In a suburban Dublin pub ten men aged sixty and over have gathered in a circle each week to play traditional Irish tunes. I joined this weekly session when I moved back to Dublin and after initial bewilderment was embraced by the group. I was the only woman that had ever joined in the twenty … Read more
Ownership by Navlika Ramjee
Ownership You come into your own While words give hue and cry In the stillness that you own When you are on your own With solitude to pacify You come into your own And the silence is your own Though melodies will reply To the stillness that you own With the calm that you have … Read more
Back in the DDR
It’s like living in East Germany Nowhere let open at night Incarcerated by mediocrity Mad I’d love a RyanAir flight I’m back in the D.D.R. You don’t know how lucky you are, boy Back in the D.D.R. (Yeah!) Been locked down so long, I hardly know a place Gee, it’s grim to be stuck at … Read more
The Classical World in Video Games
Hollywood has a long history of portraying the Classical world in film, often with a large degree of artistic licence. One recent example is the film Gladiator, where a Roman general is reduced to the status of a gladiator. This could never have happened of course, as being a military commander in Rome was based … Read more
Poem: Note From The Organisers
Note From The Organisers Feel free to turn up (or not) wearing a full suit of armour, or a hat with a big feather in it and transparent trousers; or to come dressed as a future Bishop of Cork and Ross, or as the prophet Isaiah’s discredited older brother. But this march is no wild … Read more