Dermott Hayes's Blog: Postcard from a Pigeon, page 15

The death of reading is threatening the soul

By Philip Yancey

The Internet and social media have trained my brain to read a paragraph or two, and then start looking around. When I read an online article from the Atlantic or the New Yorker, after a few paragraphs I glance over at the slide bar to judge the article’s length. My mind strays, and I find myself clicking on the sidebars and the underlined links. Soon I’m over at CNN.com reading Donald Trump’s latest tweets and details of the latest terrorist attack, or perhaps checking tomorrow’s weather.

Chomsky: Trump is a Distraction, Used by the Deep State to ‘Systematically Destroy’ America

Smashing the two party paradigm Noam Chomsky called out deep state democrats and republicans alike for using Trump as a distraction to destroy America.ByJay Syrmopoulos

World-renowned intellectual giant and respected academic, MIT professor Noam Chomsky recently sat down for an interview called ‘A Continuing Conversation with Geographers’. In the interview, he clearly makes his thoughts known regarding the Trump administration’s ongoing media driven pseudo-scandal involving Russia, and specifically concerning Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer.

THE MONEY MAN BEHIND THE ALT RIGHT

He Spent Almost 20 Years Funding The Racist Right. It Finally Paid Off.

William Regnery II, a man who inherited millions but struggled in business, tried for 15 years to ignite a racist political movement — and failed. Then an unforeseen phenomenon named Donald Trump gave legitimacy to what Regnery had seeded long before: the alt-right. Now, the press-shy white separatist breaks his silence.

Posted on July 23, 2017, at 4:10 p.m.



Aram Roston
BuzzFeed News Reporter




Joel Anderson
BuzzFeed News Reporter

FRAGRANCE

via Daily Prompt: Fragrance

The dramatic sunset, the sky’s colours swirled from dark blue through aquamarine pale to saffron yellow before an explosion of crimson and scarlet. Her head felt like she was swimming in a rainbow but the real intoxication came from the night-blossoming fragrance of jessamine. Was she drunk or in love?

The Bells of St Patrick’s

The bells, the bells,

not Quasimodo’s old Dame,
St Patrick’s on a Sunday morning,
the bell ringers gather,
 to chime and clang,
layer upon layer,
a resounding Dublin breakfast
for a city waking
to repent the night’s excesses.
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What joy, what horror,
shut the bleeding window,
have they no respect
for the self afflicted?
Bellicose bubbling boings,
a clangour resonating
in an inner ear
 of repentant pain.
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No ding, no dong,
a cacophonous clamour,
no soothing chime,
but crash and clash,
awake now, repent,
sing out, don’t shout,
they take their toll,
a cup of tea,
then a quiet stroll.
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And then, on cue,
the bell ringing crew
of her sister cathedral,
Christchurch, you scream,
like competing gunfighters
in a noontime throw down,
joins the tumult,
no rest for the wicked,
taking liberties.
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On the eve of a millennium,
you climbed those steps,
on Christmas eve,
jobless and penniless,
to give a priceless gift
to a wealthy friend.
Sing out, sweet bells,
harbinger of time
for generations.
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https://www.stpatrickscathedral.ie/learn/our-community/bell-ringing/
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GATE

 

The gate was always shut. To leave it open was a sin, a crime against humanity, an act of negligence so awful it struck his father wordless, silent, dancing a short step jig of anger, face flushed, eyes bulging, fit to burst. He left it swinging and never came back.

That Dutch Documentary they said was ‘fake news’.

“Set aside Putin and follow the money”: a Russia expert’s theory of the Trump scandal

Why the collusion story begins with money, not politics.
Updated by Sean Illing

“To understand the roots of the collusion, set aside Putin and follow the money.”

That’s what Seva Gunitsky, a politics professor at the University of Toronto and the author of Aftershocks, told me in a recent interview. I reached out to Gunitsky on Monday after he posted a short but incisive thread on Twitter about the financial roots of the Trump-Russia collusion case.

LOLLIPOP

 

Everyone knows them, sees them daily; checking their hair or hairline, never making eye contact, too busy with their phone or checking themselves out in the reflection of the shop window or the mirror behind your ear, over your shoulder. People say, ‘if they were a lollipop, they’d lick themselves.

The Abstract Beauty of One of the World’s Harshest Climates

The desert, as you’ve never seen it before.
by Anika Burgess

Humans are not built to withstand extreme heat: sunburn, heatstroke, dehydration. All indications are that heatwaves, of the kind that recently grounded flights in Arizona, damaged fisheries off Tasmania, and resulted in the highest temperature ever recorded, in Iran, are going to become more intense and frequent. Even deserts, already among the hottest and most inhospitable places on the planet, will feel the impact. The remorselessness of deserts seems somehow more symbolic and urgent today than ever before.

In these regions—some of the most sparsely populated in the world—it’s essential to be prepared. Otherwise, says photographer Luca Tombolini, “you just aren’t in the condition to photograph because you’re probably thinking about how to save yourself.” Tombolini photographs deserts with an eye for “plays of symmetries and purity.” His large format images show pastel-hued dunes that form sweeping, abstract shapes, and endless horizons under bleached blue skies.

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