Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 11
August 21, 2017
Cutthroats and Murderers
Place names can be endlessly fascinating, particular for the insight they give you to where you live and its history. Happily, the district I live in is the oldest part of the city of Dublin, called The Liberties and it’s packed full of evocative names like Marrowbone Lane, Winetavern Street and Fishamble Street, to name a few. But the two most extraordinary names are those of two laneways, long since renamed. They are Murdering Lane and Cutthroat Lane.
City maps of the late 18th century record a Cutthroat Lane East and a Cutthroat Lane West, in case you were unsure where the murderous deed occurred. It now has the more decorous name of Brookfield Road although, for a time, it was called Roundhead Row. More on that later.
Close to Cutthroat Lane, there’s another laneway, a steep, stepped climb from the Camac River and Bow Lane to James’s St. A city map from 1603 records this lane’s name as Murding Lane which later became Murdering Lane.
If old city streets referred to the chosen profession of its inhabitants, then Cutthroat Lane and Murdering Lane were hardly hot tourist spots of their time. Indeed, there was another lane in the same district known as Cutpurse Lane which, one hopes, was not a well trod shortcut.
That named was changed again to Cromwell’s Quarters at a Municipal Council meeting of December 28, 1876, following the recommendations of a council committee to change the names of both Cutthroat Lane and Murdering Lane. The change was proposed by an Alderman McSwiney who suggested the names be replaced by Roundhead Row and Cromwell’s Quarter’s, respectfully.
When asked to explain his proposed changes, Alderman McSwiney is reported to have replied, ‘to preserve historical continuity.’ This, according to contemporary reports, was greeted with laughter as Oliver Cromwell’s sojourn in Ireland from 1649 to 1653, accompanied by his New Model Army, distinctive for their round shaped helmets, was both brutal and bloody.
Ironically, the Cromwell’s Quarters referred to in the street name was a reference to his fourth son, Henry Cromwell, whom Oliver left behind him as Lord Lieutenant and who served as seventh chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin from 1653 to 1660. As Lord Lieutenant he resided in the Vice-Regal Lodge, Phoenix House which then could be viewed across the river Liffey from Murdering Lane and is now the home of the President of Ireland.
August 16, 2017
Tosca’s Tale
As true and relevant today (maybe more)
Seventy years since the survivors’ of Auschwitz were liberated, I was watching a tv documentary where six of them recounted their stories of survival and the terrible aftermath they’ve endured, of nightmares and tragedies. One Polish man, Dr Tadeusz Smreczynski, who became a doctor and practiced general medicine within ten minutes of the camp gates, has been forever haunted, not just by the memories but by his own physical proximity to the camps. One other thing that horrifies him, is an aria from Puccini’s opera, Tosca, itself a tale told against a backdrop of tyranny and oppression. He heard an inmate singing the aria. He said it was strange to hear such a thing in the surroundings of the camp. An S.S. guard heard it, too and ran to find its source. Our survivor asked someone, what happened? The singer was killed. His story moved me to write this poem.
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GRAINY
Grainy? No, nebulous, neither, not at a stretch, nothing even remotely textural. In fact, there was nothing even marginally equivocal about what happened in Charlottesville apart from the sitting US president’s ambiguous interpretation. White supremacists, white nationalists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klanners banded in protest and struck terror. Leader? Ha.
August 15, 2017
WILLY-NILLY, I KID YOU, NOT
So it was ‘on all sides’, he said, but no-one believed him. I mean you can’t smell roses when you’re standing in shit, can you? Then, amid much clamour even he said what everyone expected but then, straightaway, the jackboot shuffle and it was his way or the highway, willy-nilly.
August 14, 2017
Elon Musk: AI ‘vastly more risky than North Korea’
Tesla head warns of dangers of AI and pushes for regulation as OpenAI he backed beats best human players in online DotA 2 championship.
Elon Musk has warned again about the dangers of artificial intelligence, saying that it poses “vastly more risk” than the apparent nuclear capabilities of North Korea does.
SPHERE OF INFLUENCE: HOW AMERICAN LIBERTARIANS ARE REMAKING LATIN AMERICAN POLITICS
By Lee Fang,
FOR ALEJANDRO CHAFUEN, the gathering this spring at the Brick Hotel in Buenos Aires was as much a homecoming as it was a victory lap. Chafuen, a lanky Argentine-American, had spent his adult life working to undermine left-wing social movements and governments in South and Central America, and boost a business-friendly version of libertarianism instead.
JUST WRITE
First of all, a confession. In the past I have posted articles on writing despite not believing you can teach or motivate someone to write, at least not write good material. So the articles I’ve posted relate to my personal experience which is not entirely successful, at all or articles which give some practical guidance to people who write. Then I found this article, Just Write by Giulia Blasi in The Writing Cooperative and thought, this is it.
Enough with the bullshit gurus.
August 13, 2017
Six Word Speech
Blah, Hillary, Obama, bad, sad, bigly.
Big brother is here, and his name is Facebook
In his book 1984, George Orwell detailed a dystopian world wherein a person or persona called “Big Brother” saw everything that people did and where the central government pushed its agenda through propaganda, spying, monitoring, and thought controls.
by DAAN PEPIJN
Here’s the Memo That Blew Up the NSC
BY JANA WINTER, ELIAS GROLL
Fired White House staffer argued “deep state” attacked Trump administration because the president represents a threat to cultural Marxist memes, globalists, and bankers.
Postcard from a Pigeon
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