A Taiwanese youth who had worked in Shanghai for four years once told me that, when she read books in the bookstore during her leisure time, she would often find herself thinking: these books were abridged; when going to the movies, she thought: these were cuts. With incomplete content and no information about its validity, […]
China So here we are heading into July 2021 and much of our Irish summer so far has been dismal. I gave up on hope for our Irish weather and built myself a greenhouse. Today I was planting my tomatoes as I thought about China and grumbled about the price of wood to build said greenhouse. […]
The fourth season of the multiple award-winning series The Handmaid’s Tale recently commenced on SBS. Loosely based (by this season, at least) on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, the series presents a dystopian picture of a country known as Gilead, based in the north-east of America and ruled by a patriarchal and totalitarian theocratic government. The premise is that […]
Peter O’Neill was born in Coona, Cork, a descendant of the O’Neil clan of Co. Tyrone. He attended a hedge school in Inch, studied classics at Kilworth, and then began ecclesiastical studies at the Irish College in Paris, eventually teaching Celtic language and literature there. An exceedingly popular curate, he was appointed Parish Priest of […]
Sometimes historical anniversaries throw up interesting items. Examples of irony perhaps, or maybe indications as to how much things have altered over the course of time. On Friday evening, Sinn Féin was the main political party which took part in what was effectively a picket of a Catholic Church in Ballyfermot. They and others may […]
The car has left the highway. We are close to our house. Using our mobile phone, we send a message; the porch and entrance lights come on and the heating starts up so that when we arrive the temperature is adequate, which the device itself has learned is the one we prefer. The house is […]
When I was pregnant with my baby girl, Líadán, we were advised at a scan that there might be an issue and sent to Dublin to have her checked out. At 24 weeks gestation, she was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, the same condition that doctors mistakenly believed was the prognosis for Baby Christopher Kiely whose […]
The Road Safety Authority has been accused of victim-blaming by hosting a campaign to encourage cyclists and pedestrians to wear hi-vis gear when out on the road. According to the Irish Independent, the agency said that it had received 25 formal complaints about its Seatbelt Sheriff and Hi-Glo Silver campaigns, with complainants claiming the campaign […]
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My teacher friend says that younger children – those in junior and senior infants – had fallen way behind on their motor skills when they returned after the Covid lockdown in spring. Their handwriting had been neglected and is still a good bit behind where it should normally be at this point. Face-to-face mentoring is […]
As we all know, the impact of Covid-19 on the delivery of health services in the State has been catastrophic. We also know that waiting lists across nearly all medical specialties have increased significantly and that it will be years before we can finally determine the real magnitude of the crisis that has been […]
Can animals be victims of hate speech? Yes, according to a recent article in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. Two academics from Sheffield University, in England, invoke heavy-hitting hate-speech theorists to argue that arguments which apply to humans must also apply to animals. “There is no in-principle reason to support the censure of racist hate […]