Latest Blog Posts for Attempted Essays

• The Sum of All Fears
  on Dec 22, 2015 in fascism history politics society Trump
  “ … the only thing we have to fear is fear itself …”Franklin D. Roosevelt, Inaugural Address (1933) "There is always an easy solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong."H. L. Menken, The Divine Afflatus (1917)Let me begi...
• The Sad, Mad World we Live in
  on Jan 7, 2015 in current affairs human rights Islam politics society
  Do you know the feeling, that feeling of anger and disgust at the amount of fucked-up stupidity, evil and hopelessness in the world? Today a couple of (almost certainly) Islamicist fanatic terrorists attacked the offices of the French satirical paper...
• Ukraine: Conflicting Narratives
  on Jul 27, 2014 in current affairs Narratives politics Russia Ukraine
  “Narrative” has become one of those buzz-words or buzz-concepts which one cannot avoid nowadays. At its most basic, it simply means “story”; in the more precise cultural context in which it is generally used, it is a story told or sharedwithi...
• Complexity Meditation
  on Jan 27, 2014 in meditation personal psychology travel
  I was in an aeroplane, more than seven miles up, when I started thinking about the complexity of things.For people who do meditation, one of the major goals is to achieve simplicity, that sensation when all is one, when the constant ephemera of daily...
• Walking Slowly
  on Jan 17, 2014 in depression mental illness personal walking
  I have started to practice walking slowly.As a little boy, around fifty years ago now, I decided that there was something virtuous about walking quickly. I suspect that this is a common phenomenon among little boys who go walking with their fathers;...
• Back Home to Sligo
  on Mar 23, 2013 in personal memoir Ireland memory Sligo
  “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”(L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between)I had occasion recently to visit a part of my past, a period immensely important and formative for me, a place which was, for seven years, both focus...
• Family Histories 1: The Cowboy
  on Feb 23, 2013 in personal Hunts Smutternagh history
  It was a fine Sunday morning in early summer 1865. James Hunt opened the door of his new home and looked south over the road and the downward sloping land towards the lake. He gave a sigh of contentment and muttered a brief prayer of thanks in Irish...
• A Kind of Christmas Card ...
  on Dec 23, 2012 in personal friendship Christmas
  The (temporary) creative pause from posting regularly on this blog which I decided to acknowledge (or give myself – I’m not sure which is closer to the truth; probably both) is something that I’m actually finding very pleasant. Just tooling aro...
• Ireland's Abortion Legislation Mess
  on Nov 21, 2012 in women current affairs society Ireland abortion
  It is not an easy thing to say, particularly to say publicly in a forum like this for the whole world to read. But it is the way I have been feeling for the past week or so.At the moment, I am ashamed to be Irish.On November 14, the Irish Times publi...
• Listening
  on Nov 11, 2012 in personal writing
  It’s four in the morning and I’m on the night shift. Things are quiet; the five children who are my charges are all sleeping peacefully. I’ve just been outside for a cigarette, leaving the door slightly open so that I can hear the signal, shoul...

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