The idea of home is a recurring Irish preoccupation – níl aon tinteán mar do thinteán féin.[i] This can be traced to a history of Famine dispossession, and a subsequent Land War. The Irish Constitution still commits the State to supporting women as home-makers.[ii] It perhaps explains the vehemence of recent criticism, from across the … Read more
It was exciting to meet the enthusiasm at the inaugural meeting of Talamh Beo, a grassroots organisation of farmers, growers and land-based workers on the island of Ireland. It aims to ensure a living landscape, where people and ecosystems thrive together. Inspiration comes from the Landworkers’ Alliance (UK), which in the five years of its … Read more
The path of pollen: the lovers’ tale between bee and flower. Once upon a time, bees were carnivorous – entering into flowers to gain access to smaller insects as a means for protein food supply. After frequent visits to the opening of the flower, curiosity began to mount in the bee. The flower was so … Read more
How Irish Propaganda Operates Part I (HIPO I) identifies an ‘essential constituency’ of farmers, which offer an overwhelmingly preponderance of their support to representatives of the political duopoly in rural constituencies. Upsetting this cohort frays a brittle alliance maintaining the dominant consensus of steady economic growth, and rising rents. As a result the media and … Read more
There will ultimately occur conflagration of the whole world … nothing will remain but fire, by which, as a living being, and a god, once again a new world may be created and the ordered universe restored as before. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum ‘On the Nature of Gods’ (45BCE) I –Buddha in the … Read more
The possibility of an association existing between animal protein and cancer goes back at least to the 1960s. At that time in the Philippines, a slowly increasing incidence of liver cancer was taking place amongst children that carried a high mortality rate. Because such cancers were very rare in this age group, news of the … Read more
At a festival recently I fell into the company of an exuberant character in his early twenties. After a while this smiling extrovert revealed he was tripping on LSD. Between performing acro-aerobics, and welcoming lashes from a fly-swatter that generated a temporary tattoo, he declared he was going to take a further dose. I dutifully … Read more
During the 1990s the Irish state achieved economic lift-off, with almost double-digit growth each year. Outward migration flows not only halted, but actually reversed, leading to an unforeseen surge in demand for residential and commercial spaces. Notably, much of this pressure occurred in the Greater Dublin Area, where growth was most focused. A study at … Read more
We have not slain our enemy, the cancer cell, or figuratively torn the limbs from his body … In our adventures we have only seen our monster more clearly and described his scales and fangs in new ways – ways that reveal a cancer cell to be, like Grendel, a distorted version of our normal … Read more
W.B. Yeats’s poem, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’ retains an appeal more than a century after its publication in 1899. Musicians in particular – from Christy Moore to Mike Scott – have been drawn to its magical imagery and measured cadences. One cruel New Years’s morning a few years ago its opening lines: ‘I went … Read more