August, 2016

  The great Monaghan poet, Patrick Kavanagh, spoke about the presence of God ‘in the scattered fragments of life’. Patrick from Iniskeen was indeed a kind of a saint, a mystic, odd in his ways, we are told, but close to the earth and the sacred with a distinctive way of seeing and observing people […]

So. The GAA club Oisin Glenariffe are to get their £180,000 of council funding after all. It was a tight vote – 19 to 18 – but like Glasgow Celtic stumbling into the European Champions’ League, the most important thing was that the council voted as it did and the matter was concluded in a […]

THE TIMES, on August 4 1916, carried an Editorial which, as part of its continuing commemoration of the First World War, it reprinted on August 4 this year. I reproduce its heading and opening paragraph below.   “THE EXECUTION OF CASEMENT Casement paid the last penalty for the greatest crime that it is possible for […]

Martin Luther King preaching at the Ebenezer Church in Atlanta in 4 February 1968 shortly before he was shot dead in Memphis, Tennessee, referred to what he would like said at his funeral. He said :“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the […]

  “THE WRITING ON THE WALL” BY STUART BORTHWICK Large Paperback: 240 pages square format Publisher: The Bluecoat Press (20 Oct. 2015) ISBN-10: 1908457279 ISBN-13: 978-1908457271 R.S.Price : £18.00 or thereabouts… In the cities and towns of Northern Ireland, perhaps uniquely in all of the world, the citizens have found the need over several generations […]

The Good Friday Agreement removed the territorial claim over 6 of Irelands counties, ending the territorial dispute with England. To end a bloody and futile conflict, the Irish citizens in the north east of the country had to face the prospect of being dropped from the Irish constitution until such time as there was a democratic […]

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” an exasperated Rex Harrison used to demand in My Fair Lady. Well, then as now, one major reason would be because they get paid less. A report released by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)shows that on average, women earn 18% less than men. How do […]

I find Wikipedia useful, although it needs to be handled with great care. I recently consulted it on Frank Aiken and on Piaras Beaslai, who were long prominent in Irish affairs, and found a number of  schoolboy howlers in each entry which I may  write about in detail another time. ,But I’ve just consulted Wikipedia on […]

Is it merely a coincidence that those who in 1916 spread the story that Roger Casement was homosexual had, in 1915  declared to the world that Edith Cavell, the nurse shot by the Germans in Belgium, was merely a nurse, and not involved in activities, which, in wartime. carried that penalty amongst all the belligerents? Is it […]