Enjoy (what’s left of) Burns night:
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race!
Aboon them a’ yet tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’a grace
As lang’s my arm.
You could do worse than see it out listening to Late Junction, from Glasgow.
Dr Gordon Gillespie, a researcher at the Institute of Irish Studies at Queen’s University Belfast, gave a presentation on “Graphic Portrayals: Northern Ireland, Graphic Novels and the Peace Process”, at the Linen Hall Library. Gordon started with a clarification that he was going to talk about graphic novels/comic books, not cartoons, and material that was [...] read our review »
I share many of the concerns of Andy Pollak, whose recent post ‘My Response to the Slugger Begrudgers’ zeroed in on the ‘relentless flow of negativity’ of some Slugger commentators. Pollak’s post was largely concerned with the medium of the blog. Indeed, I think the anonymity of the online world encourages extreme discourse and allows [...] read our review »
Writer Christopher Hitchens has died aged 62. He was as contrary as he was brilliant. Here is a brief In Memoriam from Vanity Fair (his outlet of choice since 1992) and, here, a longer tribute from his friend Christopher Buckley Stanley in The New Yorker. Better, perhaps, though to post one of Hitchens’ own writings in [...] read our review »
Appropriately on Burns’ Night Kevin Kelbie scored our hat-trick in Ballymena’s demolition of Larne. So I had a fine Burns’ Night. Beat eating sheep brains and wearing a skirt any day.
These lines always remind me of that part of Ireland I left 30 years ago,for not much has changed sadly.
“O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us.”
Robert Burns, Poem “To a Louse” – verse 8
Scottish national poet (1759 – 1796)