Anthony Cronin 1928-2016
Originally posted on Tales from the East Pier:
? (Above: The First Bloomsday Celebrations at Sandycove, Co. Dublin, June 16th, 1954. From l-r Anthony Cronin, Flann O’Brien and Patrick Kavanagh)…
Decomplexifying Society – Joseph Tainter, George Monbiot, Paul Arbair, John Harris
A while back I posted some thoughts on Joseph Tainter’s “The Collapse of Complex Societies”. which, coincidentally, I finished in the week of the Brexit poll. The French writer Paul Arbair…
Marilyn McEntyre on sleeplessness and the night vigil
I drift off happily at bedtime, but now wake between three and four in the morning. I like to wake early, but not quite that early. At that hour, I’m…
From “How Christianity Invented Modernity”, Rupert Shortt, TLS, December 14th 2016
News that we inhabit a post-secular world – thanks precisely to globalization and democratization, most societies now display high levels of religious practice – has also yet to permeate bien-pensant…
Thoughts on Silence From Augustinian Abbey, Fethard, Tipperary
I have blogged here and here and here and here and here about silence. I have, in more pretentious moments, contemplated essaying a philosophy of silence. How much have I actually sat in silence? How much have I actually…
Josef Pieper on silence and leisure
I came across this on the ever wonderful First Known When Lost blog: “Leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of…
The antithesis of anthropomorphism: Tarka the Otter
I have written here before on anthropomorphism, following John Lewis-Stempel’s musings as to whether it is such a dread conceptual offence as it often stated. Recently I read Henry Williamson’s “Tarka…
Tristan Gooley, observation and cognitive bias
Recently my brother gave me a present of Tristan Gooley‘s The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Tracks and Signs. I have read various Gooley books over the years, and to some…
Séamus Sweeney 