Great article this!
The Society’s architect, David Gaunt, has prepared a detailed map of the proposed demolition zone as well as renderings showing South Molton Street and Berkeley Square as watercourses. Bowdidge has descended into the sewer itself in order to report on the river’s condition (“Members were concerned by my reports on the poor level of fish stocks and the Honorary Ghillie was taken to task.”).
The second article today that reinforces the thinking that the slide towards ebooks is starting to become unstoppable!
The new library is set to open in August with 10,000 engineering books on the shelves — a decrease of more than 85 percent from the old library. Stanford library director Michael Keller says the librarians determined which books to keep on the shelf by looking at how frequently a book was checked out. They found that the vast majority of the collection hadn’t been taken off the shelf in five years.
via Stanford Ushers In The Age Of Bookless Libraries : NPR.
And via Teleread!
Very interesting article on the connection between Ireland and the Choctaw Indians, by way of the famine:
White Deer has just spent two days traipsing around the city with a filmmaker from Dublin, working on a documentary about the Choctaw-Irish connection. Among other places, they have visited the Irish hunger memorial garden in lower Manhattan, a quarter-acre grassy hill with the remnants of a famine-era stone cottage imported from Mayo. Etched into the stone base is a reference to the generous donation by “the Children of the Forest, our Red Brethern of the Choctaw nation.”
In between, a remarkable life that carried Meagher to four of the world’s seven continents, earned him hero status from the Irish and a sentence of death from the British, then a last-second reprieve and lifetime banishment to Tasmania, which was followed by his escape to New York City, and American careers that ran the gamut from newspaper editor, to South American adventurer, to lecturer, to brave brigadier general who led his troops into some of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles.
via Man of distinction.
Blood & Thunder: Inside An Ulster Protestant Band was one of the books I commissioned towards the end of my time at Mercier Press. It sounded like it was going to be a cracker and the author Darrach MacDonald was great.
Since release, the book has attracted a lot of attention which I’m really pleased to see. It deserves it.
The allusion to blood and thunder, by the way, refers to the decibel levels and to the zeal of drummers playing until their wrists bleed and their drumsticks are stumps.
MacDonald concludes that marching bands are a vibrant manifestation of 21st Century loyalist culture. The Orange Order’s membership is dwindling in an increasingly secular society (it has fewer than 36,000 members in Ireland compared with more than 93,000 in 1968), but these bands offer an outlet to loyalist youths to celebrate their heritage.
If full reconciliation within the North’s divided society is to happen, MacDonald suggests that respect for loyalist traditions must be part of it. “Choosing to be entertained. . . rather than offended is the secret to a shared future,” he says.
Eoin Purcell's Blog 