When the bullshit's done

In sickness there was only you 

light as a feather,

relieved of the weight

of position and pride;

neither bluff nor brashness

nor the strength

to be more than your dying self.

A Gathering of Famous People with Irish Roots

Tonight I decided to list famous people who have Irish roots, (it being the Irish time of year). I got tired of it quickly but had gone too far to stop. I did curtail it though, which wasn’t easy; there’s an awful lot of famous names that belong on this list. The Irish went in for big Catholic families and it shows; and truth is: politics, cinema, music, crime, literature would have been very different without them. 

I don’t expect anyone to read all these; just cast your eyes around and you’ll get the jist. Of course, the Irish family names often make the Irish connection obvious, but sometimes you're not thinking. 
  

So, in no order at all, Irish English,  Irish Scottish, Irish French, Irish American, Irish Austrailian,Irish Canadian: 

Iris Murdoch, Charles Laughton, Clint Eastwood, John Lennon, Georgia O’Keeffe, Johnny Depp, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert de Niro, Mohammed Ali,  Christina Aguilera, Drew Barrymore, Elvis Costello, Chuck Norris, Harrison Ford, Judy Garland, Woodrow Wilson, Kurt Cobain, Edgar Allen Poe, Errol Flynn, Joseph McCarthy, Sean Penn, Robert Redford, Ben Stiller, Walt Disney, Alicia Keys, Cheryl Cole, Isadora Duncan,  Andrew Jackson, Mandy Moore, Billy the Kid, Liam and Noel Gallagher, Bill Murray,  Jennifer Connelly, Paul McCartney, Tyrone Power, John F Kennedy and brothers of course, Mia Farrow,  Ann Hathaway, Greer Garson, Richard Nixon,  Michael Moore, Alfred Hitchcock, Ned Kelly,  Ant and Dec, Tori Amos, Robert Downey Jnr, Raymond Chandler, Bing Crosby, John Travolta, Ernest Shackleton, Bo Derek, Mickey Rourke, Jack Dempsey, Tom Keneally,  Jeremy Irons, Jules Holland, Rosemary Clooney, Henry Ford, Gregory Peck, Theodore Roosevelt, Conan O’Brien, Leonora Carrington, Lee Harvey Oswald, Bronte sisters, Danny Boyle, Henry James, John Huston, John Barry (composer), Rex Ingram, Boy George, Dusty Springfield,  Lance Armstrong, James Hennessy (cognac), Britney Spears, Jeanne Moreau, Mel Gibson,  John Berryman, Tom Clancy, Gene Kelly, Bill Clinton, Sean Connery, Macaulay Culkin, Jimmy Carter, Ulysses S  Grant, Rihanna, Wayne Rooney, John Daly, F Scott Fitgerald, Roger McGough, Brian Mulroney, Angela Lansbury, Eugene O’Neill, Kathy Bates,  John McEnroe, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Costner, Sharon Osbourne, Mickey Spillane, Frank O’Hara, Grace Kelly, Billy Connolly, James Cagney, Morrissey, Kylie Minogue,  John Wayne, Ralph Fiennes, Spencer Tracy, Harry S Truman, John Barry (navy), Ed Sullivan, Ronald Reagan, Mark Wahlberg, Sidney Nolan,  Tim Buckley, Charlie Sheen, Jeff Buckley, Elvis Presley, Mariah Carey, Shania Twain, Bruce Springsteen, Jim Morrison, Richard J Daley, Ben Hogan, Alan Rickman, Barrack Obama, Megan Fox, Lindsay Lohan, George Clooney, John Cusack, Peter Kay, Susan Sarandon, astronaut Michael Collins, Ben Affleck, George W Bush, George Harrison,  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Anthony Quinn, Minnie Driver, Michael Gambon, Eddie Murphy, Marlon Brando.

Yeah, I know; it looks like I don't have much to be doing. Some nights.........................

Different Time, Different Attitudes

In his book, Woodbrook, published in 1974, David Thomson writes of his memory of Douglas Hyde, then President of Ireland who used to be a frequent visitor in Lord de Freyne’s house in Frenchpark, Co Roscommon.

Thomson regrets that, on meeting him there, he did not listen more intently to the president whose conversation could have taught him more about Ireland than anyone else's; but the following passage is interesting, if only for the fact that if this was reported today the president would be a source of considerable scrutiny and serious doubt.

“And so it happens that my only memory of this great man is ludicrous………..It is of a game he played with the girls on all fours in the drawing room. He was over eighty but had no difficulty in getting down on to his hands and knees and as soon as they were ranged opposite him on theirs he would hold a bar of chocolate between his teeth like a cigar and they would crawl towards him and bite  off as much as they dared. It was somewhat messy because he had a bushy white moustache that drooped over the chocolate and his lower lip...”

On a slightly different note, I wonder if he ever used the elegant wash-stand that came from that house and is now my hall-table.

from Felos ainda serra

included in the chapbook published in Galicia in 2005

 

Go to bed, Michael,

or the monsters will come.

Say your prayers,

build yourself a wall.

Pull the blankets up

over your eyes.

Be silent down your burrow,

the night sky is stirring.

Go to sleep, Michael,

they will not disturb the dead.

-----------------------------------

“There is an owl in my head”

said Joseph. “I am wise,

wisest of all creatures”.

“There is a tiger in my head”

said Paul. “I am  fierce,

all creatures fear me”.

“A stag in mine”

said Thomas. “ I am majestic,

admired by all”.

“My head is empty”

said Jim. “ a space

for all creatures to come and go.”

The Cailleach

Clay in her mouth,

clothed in darkness, caged in stone.

She speaks in

the crumbling of mountains,

creeping of oceans across continents.

She pauses;

earthworms devour boulders.

(from Above Ground Below Ground)

Amazing footage from 1896

Who said "The cinema is an invention without a future"?

Frenchman Louis Lumiere, inventor of the Cinematographe, a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector. Though not the first to projected film, (Edison 1891), himself and his brother were the first to present projected movies (1895) to a paying audience and so are the inventors of cinema. Their invention popularised the medium and does mark the beginning of the motion picture era.

Anyway that's who said it; but as you can see below, they had an eye for the eye-catching and that must surely have helped kick-start the new craze. The first motion picture ever was made by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PmWqM5Mn9s

Lumiere Brothers Danse Serpentine 1896

Rollin Safari

I don’t normally include animations, but this is brilliant. Congratulations to the students involved.

Directors: A. Habermehl, K. Buschor, C. Päplow

Producers: P. Wolf, V. Brüning

Technical Directors: T. Hartmann, S. Langer,

M. Kranzler, C. Westphal, D. Kirchner

Music: Stephan Schelens

FMX trailers are created by students of the Institute of Animation, Effects and Digital Postproduction at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg.

How it goes - stages of decay

The Barracks, Cootehall

Time takes away. My own Roscommon home flattened, I don’t really want to go down the road I lived on; too many memories were flattened with it.

But sometimes time removes slowly and poignantly: the Barracks at Cootehall,Co Roscommon, immortalised  by John McGahern in “The Barracks” looks in good order today but the last garda gone, it now stands empty. What next?

Hanna Greally's Cottage

Hanna Greally as author of “Bird’s Nest Soup” recounted her almost 20 years incarceration in St Loman’s psychiatric hospital in Mullingar, “Mentally well, but unclaimed”. She eventually came to live in a cottage, "Sunny Acre", not far from Roscommon town. She died in 1987; her cottage is on its way back to oblivion.   

Ruins of Church, Kilgefin Graveyard

Bithia M Croker was the colossally successful author of books such as “The Road to Mandalay”, “Babes in the Wood”, “In Old Madras”. Born in Kilgefin, Co Roscommon, where her father was rector, she and her books are now almost forgotten in spite of huge popularity in the 40’s. The remains of her father’s ministry have all but disappeared and with them all marks that she ever had connections with this part of the world.

There are no indications that Croker or Greally ever existed at these sites, and that is a pity. 

Then

                              

It was the time of Afton and Albany,

Joe O’Neill’s band and the Adelaides,

hay forks sharing pub windows

with Daz and Persil; the Smithwicks sign

and the Harp sign, half-ones of Guinness.

It was a time of pipe-smoking

beneath naked bulbs and neon strips,

the priest in his cassock,

Hillman Hunters, Ford Corsairs,

Wilkinson Swords and Fruit Gums.

Of scarved heads at mass, berets,

the Messenger and the Far East,

dress makers and blacksmiths;

hollowed faces in the County Home,

yanks in the sitting room.

(previously pub in Cyphers)

Corrupting Religion

I saw this religious ceremony on the main evening news when  the first cruise missiles were being deployed in Europe.

Cruise Missiles          

Jesus, the padre prayed,

direct these missiles onto the heads

of our enemies.

Except that’s not what he said. He said

we pray that these missiles will be efficient

in their function.

Then. Up Jesus,

ride them clean down their throats.

Except, of course, he didn’t say that either;

but blessed them with holy water.

After that, the missiles were dispatched,

American missionaries to Europe.

A Worthy Cause And You Can Help

A friend of mine has sent this message to me. It's not an area I know much about but I have inquired and it is a cause that urgently needs to be redressed. The petition (link below) is genuine and the situation described is true.

A campaign against speculation with food prices is being circulated  in change.org. "After the real state bubble burst investors moved to speculate with raw materials and basic commodities. This is understood to significantly contribute to the spike in food prices that was behind the 2007-2008 and current food crisis. 450 economist worldwide petitioned G20 leaders to introduce stricter regulations in stock exchanges in order to curb the effect of speculation on food prices. A rise in prices is devastating to those in developing countries, as they spend between 50-80% of their income on food. There is cause for some optimism as some regulating measures have been introduced in the American and European markets. These are, however, understood not to be sufficient.

I believe this is an urgent matter and that we can put pressure on our governments and leaders to act decisively. At the very least it will serve to publicise this seldom mentioned factor in famines. That is why I am doing something rather uncharacteristic…….” I’m asking you to sign this petition and send it off to others, blog it or put it on Facebook."