Apartment house in Baku 2007
Arab Dhow Persian Gulf 1987
Aqueduct at Segovia Spain 1982
Printing
Printing.
Written in Crescent Beach Hotel June 2013
In any worldview, printing has to be second only to the creation of writing in the top ten of humanities pivotal cultural milestones.
Can we possibly imagine a world without printing? Even in this day of instant media, e books, i pads and smart phones, could our culture have developed to the point where these innovations would have been possible without books? I doubt it; certainly our World would be a very different place without the printed word.
Continue reading “Printing”A Theory of Homo Sapiens
Theory of Everything
12th March 2003 Rocky 1 North Sea.
Jims Theory on the Evolution and Development of Homo Sapiens
I will write this as if I am speaking directly to you. Of course, this gives me the writer, the advantage over you, the reader (listener) because I can just keep talking without interruption on contentious points, of which there will be a few (many) I can only leave you the option to stop reading or listening.
Continue reading “A Theory of Homo Sapiens”The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral.
It was like a kick in the stomach when I received a BBC alert on my phone last year in April, telling of the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
The Great Rose
I felt physically sick watching the news reports as the spire collapsed and the fire consumed those ancient timbers and who knows how much irreplaceable artwork. The drone shot of the entire cathedral roofless and blazing from end to end filled me with despair. I thought it was a total loss.
Continue reading “The Rose Window in Notre Dame Cathedral.”Tommy O’Brien Opera for the masses. .
The other day, I heard the song ‘Only a Rose’, sung by the Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling and while I listened, I was transported backwards in time to the early 1970’s, when my mother and I would listen to ‘Your Choice and Mine’, a weekly half hour Opera show on RTE radio, presented by the incomparable Tommy O’Brien.
Continue reading “Tommy O’Brien Opera for the masses. .”A Surprise Trip to Paris.
It was in October 1979, that over a foggy winter weekend I drove my bosses, 80% seatless Peugeot 604, crammed to the roof with dress jewellery from an important customer to their European head office in Rantigny France, about 60 km north of Paris.
I was the manager of the Ro-Ro and Deep Sea Export Department for the shipping company based in South West Dublin.
The shipment of urgently required high-end costume jewellery had to be in Rantigny first thing on Monday morning, and would normally have been shipped air freight from Dublin on Saturday via our Air Freight office at the airport, but due to the fog which was expected to prevail all day Saturday and into Sunday, there were no flights leaving Dublin airport.
Continue reading “A Surprise Trip to Paris.”Sandymount Strand.
Sandymount Strand
Sandymount in Dublin Ireland is where I grew up and lived for the first 30 years of my life.
It is a seaside district on the south side of Dublin Bay, with the greatest expanse of open sand imaginable at low tide.
It’s been a while but I thought that I’d go down recently to visit my childhood.
Continue reading “Sandymount Strand.”A history of my families on Dublin’s Quays.
Dublin’s Quays
Introduction
Ever since the early Viking settlers built wooden quays at the dark pool on the river Liffey, Dublin’s future as an important trading city, of the Norse empire, the native Irish and then the Norman and British empires, and now for the Irish again, seemed assured.
The river was straight and navigable for several miles inland, making it an ideal artery, first for carrying raiding parties and then for trade.
After the expulsion of the Norse men in the eleventh century, Dublin while not yet the capital, was the east coasts most important trading hub.
Continue reading “A history of my families on Dublin’s Quays.”