Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Saints Row IV still number one in UK top 10 – Games charts 31 August
Posted: September 2, 2013 in Uncategorized
I’ve been thinking for quite a while of doing a very occasional series of posts here on stuff you should do. Places you should visit, TV you should watch, books you should read, food you should eat.
The only thing stopping me these days is the quality of other people’s blog posts in the same vein and my increasingly short attention span when I’m sitting at my desk during the day (that damned “work” gets in the way!)
Just be aware – I’m not a professional reviewer, this is just about pointing to things I think are great and that I think are very much worth your time…
So, to begin:
You should… try The Marker Hotel, just opposite the Bord Gais Energy Theatre in Dublin.
Went in for dinner on Saturday night and met the head chef Gareth (always strange meeting someone in real life that you know…
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Photo Credit: RTE Player
It is with great sadness that I have let it be known that -Seamus Heaney,Nobel laureate,poet, translator, and playwright has passed away at the age of 74.The Nobel literature laureate recently suffered from ill health, and was reported to have collapsed earlier this week.
Tributes are pouring in for the 74-year-old, who leaves behind his wife Marie and three children. President Michael D Higgins has led tributes to his friend and fellow poet Seamus Heaney. The pair have been friends for decades and Mr Higgins and his wife Sabina attended the Nobel Prize winning ceremony in Oslo in 1995. Mr Higgins said the greeted the news this morning with the “greatest sadness”.Mr Higgins, himself a published poet, described Heaney as warm, humourous, caring and courteous. He praised Heaney’s “extraordinary depth and warmth of personality” and his “grace and generosity”. In a statement Mr Higgins said: “As tributes flow in from around the world, as people recall the extraordinary occasions of the readings and the lectures, we in Ireland will once again get a sense of the depth and range of the contribution of Seamus Heaney to our contemporary world. “The presence of Seamus was a warm one, full of humour, care and courtesy – a courtesy that enabled him to carry with such wry Northern Irish dignity so many well-deserved honours from all over the world. “His careful delving, translation and attention to the work of other poets in different languages and often in conditions of unfreedom, meant that he provided them with an audience of a global kind. And we in Ireland gained from his scholarship and the breath of his reference. “Generations of Irish people will have been familiar with Seamus’s poems. Scholars all over the world will have gained from the depth of the critical essays, and so many rights organisations will want to thank him for all the solidarity he gave to the struggles within the republic of conscience.
He was one of Ireland’s best known and best-loved poets, often compared to W.B. Yeats.Beautiful post Catherine Cronin lecturer in Information Technology at NUI Galway here
Heaney had been awarded numerous prizes and received many honours for his work, most notably winning the Nobel prize for literature in 1995 “for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past”. The writer and lecturer also received the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread prizes (1996 and 1999). He was both the Harvard and the Oxford Professor of Poetry and was made a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1996.
Many of his works deal with Ireland, particularly the Troubles in Northern Ireland, where he was born. As an Irish Catholic from Derry he came under pressure to takes sides but expressed a reservation to become a spokesperson for the 25 years of violence.
Born April 13, 1939, the oldest of nine children, Heaney first lived at Mossbawn between Castledawson and Toomebridge, Derry in Northern Ireland. In 1953, his family moved to Bellaghy, a few miles away. In 1957, Heaney traveled to Belfast to study English Language and Literature at Queen’s University Belfast. After lecturing for some time at Queen’s University and also at the University of California, Berkeley, he decided to move to Dublin and worked as a teacher at Carysfort College.He lived in Dublin until his death.
Photo Credit: Michael Collins Adventures on Facebook
sadness I am sad today because Seamus Heaney’ is one of my favorite poets.He had a way with words and a style that could not match any other poet.His great friend Brian Friel will miss him terribly. Heaney’s fellow poet Eavan Boland professor of creative writing at Stanford said that he was an ”an extraordinarily good poet” and said that his death is “a tremendous, tremendous loss.” On the day that this blog was established, the tropical nature of my firist post wasHeaney and Longley read in Galway at this year’s Cúirt International Festival of Literature.I really wanted to go to that public reading so alas i had blog about it from afar as it was sold out. I regret it today on hearing the shocking news today but in hindsite there was nothing i could have done it was booked out for months. Seamus Heaney 1939 – 2013 RIP 
Seamus Heaney in June at the Kennedy homecoming for JFK50. (Pic: Laura Hutton/ Photocall)
A screenshoot of 1st post
Related articles
- Seamus Heaney ~ Weaving Words within my Heart (thesilvervoice.wordpress.com)
- Irish Poet Seamus Heaney Dies : NPR (joshuakeiter.com)
- Heaney’s pen was to be his spade (belfasttelegraph.co.uk)
- Nobel prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney dies (cyprus-mail.com)
- Irish poet, Nobel winner Seamus Heaney dies at 74 (onlineathens.com)
- Postscript (augenblickblog.wordpress.com)
- Another Bard gone to the Other Side (loghyrt.wordpress.com)
- Farewell, Seamus Heaney (isidorocgomezofficial.wordpress.com)
- Seamus Heaney ~ Weaving Words within my Heart (socialbridge.wordpress.com)
- A Vocation in Poetry (placelore.typepad.com)
The Volvo Ocean Race is in town! As I write this, the boats are due into Galway (the finishing point of the race) after midnight tonight. The last time “the Volvo” was in Galway in 2009, an estimated 10,000 people crowded into Galway city to greet the boats arriving — at 3:00 in the morning — and enjoyed sunshine and a festival atmosphere for the next 10 days. Such is the spirit of Galway. [03/07/12 Update: huge crowds attended the race finish in Galway in the early hours of this morning.]
The event is about much more than the race. For the 2012 Volvo Ocean Race event, Galway has been transformed. We have a Race Village and a Global Village where you can find food stalls, musical entertainment, comedy, sports and adventure activities, crafts and fashion, as well as science, technology and education events. There is a great programme of
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We haven’t seen an original play by Frank McGuinness in Ireland since 2002 according to Patrick Lonergan
So it’s great to see the Abbey staging his new play The Hanging Gardens – . It reunites McGuinness with his long-time collaborator Patrick Mason, whose version of Observe the Sons of Ulster that made Mason’s tenure as Abbey Artistic Director so important.
And it’s a great cast also. Marty Rea gave the best performance I saw l in DruidMurphy 2012 and he’s joined by Niall Buggy his fellow DruidMurphy 2012 cast mate
penguin is delighted to announce the acquisition of Eamon Dunphy’s autobiography The Rocky Road. The book was acquired from Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White Literary Agency and will be published in October 2013.
For more than thirty years, no commentator on Irish sport, politics and culture has been the object of so much love, hatred and fascination as Eamon Dunphy. Now, for the first time, Dunphy tells the remarkable story of his life.
Eamon Dunphy said, “I’m delighted that Penguin is publishing a book that I’ve spent a long time working on.”
Tony Lacey, Publishing Director, Penguin said, “Eamon’s autobiography has been long-awaited, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint. The Rocky Road moves seamlessly between the private and the public, with extraordinary stories from the worlds of football, politics and journalism, describing a life that has been anything but prosaic.”
Michael McLoughlin, MD, Penguin Ireland, said “Since Eamon’s return to Ireland after his retirement from football nearly thirty years ago he has been a feature of Irish life. It is a privilege to be given the honour of publishing this wonderful autobiography.”
For media enquiries, please contact Cormac Kinsella, Repforce Publicity, on 01-6349924
or email cormac.kinsella@gmail.com
For serialisation, please contact Michael McLoughlin, Penguin Ireland
on 01-6617695 or email michael.mcloughlin@penguin.ie
Penguin Random House is the world’s first truly global trade book publisher. It was formed on July 1, 2013, upon the completion of an agreement between Bertelsmann and Pearson to merge their respective trade publishing companies, Random House and Penguin, with the parent companies, owning 53% and 47% respectively. Penguin Random House comprises the adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction print and digital trade book publishing businesses of Penguin and Random House in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India, Penguin’s trade publishing activity in Asia, and South Africa; as well as Dorling Kindersley worldwide; and Random House’s companies in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, and Chile. Penguin Random House employs more than 10,000 people globally across almost 250 editorially and creatively independent imprints and publishing houses that collectively publish more than 15,000 new titles annually. Its publishing lists include more than 70 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors.
One of the most experienced voices on national radio, Jenny Huston presented her own music show on RTÉ 2fm for more than nine years, and made regular TV and daytime talk radio appearances. She was nominated twice for Best Irish DJ at the Meteor Awards.
Canadian-born Jenny has also hosted Liveline, was a weekly contributor and regular fill-in presenter for the Gerry Ryan Show, as well as guesting on RTÉ Radio 1 programmes such as Drivetime with Mary Wilson, The Tubridy Show, Rattlebag and The Pat Kenny Show. She has also contributed to the BBC, CBC and CFOX, Canada and DRS Virus, Switzerland.
Before working at RTÉ, she had stints on CVUF-FM (the campus radio station at University of Victoria in Canada), Radio Kilkenny and Phantom FM.
In 2009, she wrote In Bloom: Irish Bands Now, which examined the impact of Irish artists on the international music scene.
Jenny has a degree in psychology and a higher diploma in arts administration. She is also a certified trainer (FETAC Level 6).
Along with her love of music, Jenny is an avid traveller, fascinated by social psychology and mildly addicted to cooking programmes. When she isn’t at a gig or cooking for friends, she can found struggling to get her fitness back at the gym.
Draft Copies: Books About Drink
The drink has claimed many a poor author – Dylan Thomas, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kingsley Amis, Truman Capote, and Charles Bukowski to name just a few. Many writers embraced the bottle and wove drinking themes in their writing – Amis alone published On Drink and Everyday Drinking. Evelyn Waugh, a contemporary of Amis, once wrote: “Wine is a bride who brings a great dowry to the man who woos her persistently and gracefully.”
Things have changed. Today, there seems to be an unlimited supply of memoirs about how people beat the booze and conquer their addiction. A number of non-fiction writers are keen to understand how alcohol has shaped society with books about how booze “changed the world.” That’s fair enough but books celebrating bars, beer, wine, and the hard stuff used to be commonplace but they now appear to belong to another generation.
Perhaps the greatest bookish irony of alcohol is that the first edition of Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most collectible literary items of the 20th century – it’s the tome that single-handedly created a genre and launched a hundred thousand self-help books.
We have selected 20 books, mostly from the dim and distant past, on drinking. Ale, wine, gin, inns, bars, cocktails, drinking songs, beer cans, bartending and staying off the stuff – it’s all there.
Twenty Drinking Books
Old Waldorf Bar Days
by Albert Stevens Crockett
A piece of history from 1931 that reveals how posh folks drank before Prohibition.
The Savoy Cocktail Book
A highly collectible example of 1930 Art Deco but affordable reprints are available.
The Tale of John Barleycorn or, From Barley to Beer
by Mary Azarian
Printed in 1982, a beautiful version of this folksong illustrated with woodcuts.
The Class Book of U.S. Beer Cans
Homer Simpson would love this one from 1982 – photos of 2000+ beer cans from 1930 to 1980.
Born in a Beer Garden or, She Troupes to Conquer
by Christopher Morley
The story of the resurrection of the Old Rialto Theatre in Hoboken, New Jersey to stage a Morley play.
The Curiosities of Ale & Beer
by John Bickerdyke
Published in 1886, an eccentric history of beerlore from Leadenhall Press.Reprinted in 1965.
Ardent Spirits: The Rise & Fall of Prohibition
by John Kobler
Printed in 1973 and reprinted in ’93, this book also looks at America’s early temperance ideals.
Wine in War and Peace
by Evelyn Waugh
Waugh’s 1947 tribute to his beloved vino with illustrations by Rex Whistler.
Drinks-man-ship
by Len Deighton
This 1964 collection of essays were culled from Town Magazine. Very scarce.
The Common Sense of Drinking
by Richard R Peabody
Very collectible, this 1931 book influenced AA creator Bill Wilson. Peabody was a recovering alcoholic.
The Stork Club Bar Book
by Lucius Beebe
First published in 1946, this cocktail recipe book also offers an insight into saloon society.
Bar Room Ballads
by Robert Service
First published in 1940, a lusty collection of poems and ballads from frontier saloons.
The Blood of the Grape: The Wine Trade Textbook
by Simon L. Andre
Published in 1920, this book contains a series of Andre’s lectures to the Wine Trade Club.
Inns, Ales and Drinking Customs of Old England
by Frederick W. Hackwood
First published in 1909, this covers the lot – pub signs, drunkenness, breweries, songs etc.
The Guinness Book of Guinness 1935-1985
by Edward Guinness
Self-published in 1988, this book concerns the firm’s Park Royal brewery in Northwest London
Bass & Co. Limited
by Alfred Barnard
These are 1977 reprints (100 copies) of an 1889 edition about this Burton-on-Trent brewer.
The Broom is Out
by Dick Wall
A memoir from an Anheuser-Busch executive – details pre-WWII life in St Louis, Missouri
Mother’s Ruin: The Story of Gin
by John Watney
A long forgotten gem from 1976 – details how gin drinking became a political hot potato.
Old Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartender’s Guide
by Mr. Boston
First printed in 1935 and still going strong – more than 1,400 recipes
Straight Up or on the Rocks
by William Grimes
The author investigates 350 years of American drinking in this 1993 book.
2014 ASECS Annual Meeting in Williamsburg, VA, March 20-22, 2014.
Posted: August 28, 2013 in UncategorizedGoing Rogue: The Merits and Perils of Breaking with Professional Conventions
Graduate students often worry about toeing the academic line and keeping an eye on the market. Countless articles and blogs proffer advice to graduate students for shaping oneself and one’s project for the tenure track. However, with the market’s shifting demands and opportunities, the tenure track is not the only nor the best professional course. This panel, a roundtable format, will include brief and informal presentations from professionals (i.e. faculty, administrators, editors/publishers, archivists, curators, secondary educators, etc.) on alternative career paths to the tenure track. Proposals of 250 words that address different professional options and provide practical ideas for preparing for this path in graduate school will be considered. In thinking about alternative professional paths for academics, presenters might address how students’ approach to dissertation research and writing or other aspects of graduate study might shift in consideration of a wider field of employment. Presentations that discuss the merits and perils of other unconventional or experimental approaches to professionalization will also be included. Please submit proposals to Sarah Schuetze at sarah.schuetze@uky.edu.
Books Behind Bars: The Best Prison Literature
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| 20,000 Years in Sing Sing by Lewis E. Lawes |
With notorious rare book thief William Jacques jailed once again, AbeBooks is showcasing some of the finest prison literature ever published.
Call it the Slammer, the Big House, the Pokey or the Clink, prison remains a place no-one wishes to go but everyone wants to read about. The vast majority of people will never step inside one but everyone can imagine what jailbird life must be like.
Authors, both fiction and non-fiction writers, have considered almost every aspect of imprisonment – the solitude of a life sentence, the culture and the contraband, the escapes, the torture, the miscarriages of justice and the innocent souls, the warders, the political and war-time prison camps, and the letters and visits. Even the slang, the tattoos and the last meals of those on Death Row have been documented.
Countless books, from The Count of Monte Cristo to Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun, have touched upon prison life but our selection of 25 books highlights novels and real-life accounts where doing time is at the absolute heart of the story.
Fictional Prison Literature
Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Manuel Puig
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Hocus Pocus
Kurt Vonnegut
Invitation to a Beheading
Vladimir Nabokov
The 25th Hour
David Benioff
Upstate
Kalisha Buckhanon
Falconer
John Cheever
Affinity
Sarah Waters
The Brethren
John Grisham
Non Fiction Prison Literature
Papillon
Henri Charrière
Birdman of Alcatraz
Thomas E. Gaddis
The Executioner’s Song
Norman Mailer
Dead Man Walking
Sister Helen Prejean
Midnight Express
Billy Hayes & William Hoffer
One Day in My Life
Bobby Sands
Borstal Boy
Brendan Behan
Meals to Die For
Brian Price
The Great Escape
Paul Brickhill
Discipline & Punish
Michel Foucault
In the Belly of the Beast
Jack Henry Abbott
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
Malika Oufkir
King Rat
James Clavell
People’s Prison
Geoffrey Jackson
Manslaughter United
Chris Hulme
The View from The DJ booth 