1000 miles in 1000 hours: the athletic feat of 1809
Walking a mile in a hour sounds straightforward. Walking ten miles in ten hours sounds reasonably doable, even leisurely. How about walking a mile in each of one thousand successive…
Category: virtue
“Shakespeare was the NASCAR of its day” : 5 greatest bar brawls in American history
A while ago there seemed to be a vogue for rather pompously titled (albeit often quite entertaining) books on various drinks / foods / animals / trees / whatever that…
This Be The Best
In 2013 I entered this in one of the Spectator’s poetry competitions, if memory serves a version of a well-known poem endeavouring to convey the precisely opposite message. With apologies…
Ember Days and nature connection
Today, Friday and Saturday are Ember Days. I had never heard of these (though “embertide” rings a faint bell) until I came across this tweet In a way Fr Schrenk…
New Geneva, a (failed) Genevan colony in Waterford, designed by James Gandon
Recently I came across the placename Geneva Barracks, near Passage East in Waterford. Obviously a slightly unusual name, I wondered was it an Anglicisation of something – but in fact…
From Lee Watkins’s blog – Henry Miller’s Christmas
One of the nice things about growing older is that you lose some of the inhibitions about admitting you haven’t read a particular writer. One of the less nice things…
A first hand account of being in the eye of an online shame hurricane – “Shame Storm”, Helen Andrews |
At First Things, a highly thought-provoking essay by Helen Andrews on online shaming, and specifically her own experience. One of the most repellent features of online and social media discourse,…
“A Ceremony Of Carols”, Benjamin Britten, presented by Clontempo, St Mary’s Church, Irishtown, Clonmel, Dec 14th 2018
Here’s a poster for this event in one of the most beautiful (and atmospheric) churches in Clonmel: Here’s a video of the Vilnius Municipal Choir performing the piece. Although obviously…
Séamus Sweeney 