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Thursday 23 August 2018

Homelessness in Dublin

 “Homeless Jesus”  by sculptor, Timothy Schmalz of Canada at Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin.

Homelessness in Dublin

This is way off my usual posts (which have recently consisted mostly of silence, it has to be said). However I feel strongly about this subject so I'm going to put this out there.

The visit of the Pope to Dublin this weekend has brought attention to the homeless crisis in the city. The many families who rely on emergency accommodation in Hotels; B&B's and Guesthouses are possibly going to be moved out of the city to make way for the crowds attending the events over the weekend. Recent pictures of families sleeping in Garda (Police) Stations have recently brought this issue home to many in a powerfully visual way.

Sunday 15 April 2018

Liam O'Flaherty - Four Books

Liam O'Flaherty - Four Books
Skerrett / Return of the Brute / Famine / Insurrection

I have long been aware of Liam O'Flaherty and a huge admirer of what short stories I have read. Indeed, when picking four short stories to write about HERE I chose one by O'Flaherty. For some reason, however, I never moved on to reading any of his novels, until this year when, having read one, I ended up reading four.

Friday 2 March 2018

From snow covered Ireland.

From Snow Covered Ireland.

The weather, and the shortage of bread due to panic buying have dominated the news in Ireland for the last few days.

I've even taken to doing some reporting myself.

You can see my first news story here - https://www.facebook.com/seamus.duggan/videos/1861192673890909/

Friday 16 February 2018

Songs for Cities

Songs for Cities

Every so often I get the urge to make a mixtape and, having been long ago released from the constraints of the C-90 these have tended to become long sprawling beasts which, if released into the wild are too unwieldy to be of much interest to anybody else. Doesn't matter as long as I enjoy them though, so nothing changes this time.

I had started a playlist on the theme of cities and there were around ten songs and I decided to listen to it - but by the time I had played the ten songs I had added another 100. I've been messing around with the order and after a few attempts at finding thematic or musical links I moved to geography, focussing on Dublin, London and New York in a sort of anglophone ascending order of distance. After that there is whatever remained of my earlier attempts at organisation, in other words a mish-mash.