The demands of silence
On of the recurrent themes of this blog has been various writings – by others, by myself – on silence. Of course, all this verbal activity on silence carries with…
Category: the particular
Poem: Magheragallon
A while back I posted a link to Non-Binary Review’s call for submissions for pieces inspired directly by Dante’s Inferno. Unfortunately (or not) my own efforts in this line were…
Ricky Jay RIP
Ricky Jay, scholar of magic and mountebanks, “the greatest sleight of hand artist of his generation”, has died Here is a 1993 New Yorker profile of this extraordinary man. It…
Ritchie’s Milky Mints van
Made in Inchicore, Ritchie’s Milky Mints (and their other products) have a cheeringly straightforward design aesthetic which is blissfully immune, it seems, to rebranding. I was glad to recently see a van in…
Shrewstruck
From “The Naming of the Shrew: A Curious History of Latin Names” by John Wright It may sound extraordinary, but until recently the shrew had a most fearsome reputation.…
Nan Shepherd on going barehanded and barefooted
From “The Living Mountain”: The hands have an infinity of pleasure in them. When I was a girl, a charming old gentlewoman said something to me that I have…
The perils of double bluffs – Operation Ottrington
A while back I posted on the unintended consequences of too secret a secret codeword. Here’s a bit from Jonathan Gawne’s “Ghosts of the ETO: American Tactical Deception Units in the…
“silence is not sought for its own sake but, rather, for the space it makes.”
From The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, Cardinal Robert Sarah and Nicolas Diat: Silence for us is a form of asceticism and a desire. Asceticism…
Séamus Sweeney 