The Steadfast-Starry Sky in the Shannon Do you remember last year when the weather was nice for ages? Six weeks of sunshine and warmth. There hadn’t been a picture-book summer like it. Not since 1995. I wasn’t living in Ireland in 1995 but still I know all about that summer. Sometimes, during a relentlessly … Read more
What is it they say about going bankrupt? Slowly at first, and then all at once. As we crossed the precinct yard and I saw the scale of the operation in real terms, the vehicles crowded into rows, still more throbbing outside, as I heard all those boots, I knew the slow part was coming … Read more
The great English chemist James Lovelock conceived the Gaia (Gr. ‘goddess of earth’) Hypothesis in 1972, later developing this alongside American microbiologist Lynns Margulis. Later still, Lovelock, aged eighty-seven, was awarded the prestigious Wolston medal by the Geological Society of London for his pioneering concept. Now firmly embedded in the zeitgeist, the Gaia Hypothesis posits … Read more
George Orwell has never been unfashionable, and is in vogue now more than ever. His writing, best represented by his many essays on a variety of subjects, rather than the more celebrated novels, presage in myriad ways the problems we face today. Those famous novels 1984 (1949) and Animal Farm (1945) are visionary works depicting … Read more
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The future of a generation born during over eight years of conflict in Syria is under threat. More than half of all school-aged Syrian children living as refugees in neighbouring countries do not enjoy access to a formal education. In this two-part series humanitarian activist and author Bruna Kadletz addresses a global educational crisis for … Read more
Numinous Soup is an album I quietly made by myself in my spare room on child free evenings, releasing mp3s on Patreon as they became ready and eventually combining my favourite tracks into this collection. ‘Mindsomereve’ is something I made almost absentmindedly, and didn’t think was finished, but as I kept listening to it to … Read more
In a press release, the ‘Dublin Commuter Coalition’ has described proposals for electric vehicles to be permitted to use bus lanes[i] as a ‘slap in the face to bus users.’ This demonstrates, they claim: ‘a stunning lack of respect for overstretched users of sustainable transport.’ The civil society organisation reject: [I]n the strongest possible terms, … Read more
The Resistance I never knew what they really felt how they survived the one world we shared across layers of fear and indifference never grasped the bold grip of hatred that sears the eye and numbs the mind of the last shreds of decency never expected that the good would outlast all this in a … Read more
That summer of 1974 for the first time in my young life I felt proud of myself. For after one very hard week of sweat work, I stood admiring my big bank of black Tore bog turf drying in the hot sun. It was a great feeling and no one was mocking me now. Little … Read more