Month: November 2005
River Slaney: Environment Under Threat
The River Slaney, Wexford, seen from Crossabeg, above, Killurn Bridge A beautiful Irish environment under constant threat. Dave reports from his home turf. Back in 2004, I mentioned the EU Pollutant Emissions Register and the Slaney Valley. At the time, I was unhappy about the fact that out of 153 top registered polluters in Ireland, two of them - the disastrous county dump and a massive pig farm - were very close to where I grew up, in the beautiful Slaney Valley. At the time, I had no idea that things could get worse. According to the website for the Crossabeg Killurin Local Environment Group, NRGE Limited / Reenard Farms, one of Ireland's biggest pig fattening companies, have proposed the construction of a huge waste processing Anaerobic Digester at the historic and beautiful rural Killurin area in the River Slaney valley in County Wexford. The company, which produces many thousands...
Sue Walsh’s Underground Art in Clare
Long lost Blather correspondent Sue, resurfaces in Clare with some rather strange paintings... An exhibition called 'Hidden Depths' can be found in the basement of Byrnes Restaurant in Ennistymon, County Clare, in the West of Ireland. It runs from the 24th of November to the 7th of December and is open Monday to Saturday, from 11am to 5pm. The exhibition has been organised by a local art collective known as Trading Spaces. I had barely arrived in Clare before I was kidnapped and drawn into this sinister group. I hope to be seeing daylight for the first time soon, when the doors of the basement are opened... My 'Artist's Statement' goes something like this: "I arrived here on a steam train in an early morning in 1905. There was a mist rolling in from the sea, and the colours hurt my eyes. I had tired of the Vaudeville scene in...
Wonderful Web: the Theban mapping project
Tomb by tomb, pharoah by pharoah the Theban mapping project is an online guide to the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens and a little known tomb called KV5... Initially conceived and built by egyptologist Kent Weeks, the Theban Mapping project website is a fast-growing portal of information on New Kingdom Egyptology - that's the period including the Ramesean kings and the ever popular Tutankhamun (whose possible mother/aunt Nefertiti is pictured). 'Since its inception in 1978, the Theban Mapping Project (TMP, now based at the American University in Cairo) has been working to prepare a comprehensive archaeological database of Thebes. With its thousands of tombs and temples, Thebes is one of the world's most important archaeological zones. Sadly, however, it has not fared well over the years. Treasure-hunters and curio-seekers plundered it in the past; pollution, rising ground water, and mass-tourism threaten it in the present. Even...
The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell by John Crawford
"I have too many stories to tell, and if just a few of them get read, the ones that real people will understand, then maybe someone will know what we did here". Amber Brown gives us the lowdown on an important book. "I have too many stories to tell, and if just a few of them get read, the ones that real people will understand, then maybe someone will know what we did here. It won't assuage the suffering inside me, inside all of us. It won't bring back anyone's son or brother or wife. It will simply make people aware, if only for one glimmering moment, of what war is really like." So starts the non-fiction book by John Crawford, aptly titled "The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldiers Account of the War in Iraq". I spotted it in the bookstore the other day. I was...
The Avebury Expedition
Recently, a joint Blather-Strange Attractor-3rd Stone group went on a trek around the ancient megalithic landscape of Avebury, in Wiltshire. And Dave, as usual, took a silly amount of photographs. The Avebury reminds me a lot of the Newgrange area in Co. Meath, Ireland. The two places are, in themselves, not that spectacular - but the sheer scale of megalith construction has changed the rolling, fertile farmland into a ritual landscape. About two hours drive out of the horrendous labyrinth of London, the tiny village of Avebury is a National Trust site, besieged by a constant stream of visitors. Even the local pub, the Red Lion, has a queuing system in order to deliver surprisingly edible food to the hordes of hungry passersby from Swindon and farther afield. Over Guinness and pies, we discuss our hatred of the term 'thus fortified' as a potential introduction of our hike around Avebury....
Bonfire Night In Lewes
Blather goes to Bonfire Night in Lewes - complete with exploding government ministers, some fine-anti-popery, fireworks-dodging and general weirdness... November 5th 2005 was the 400th anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot - when Catholic extremist had a go at blowing up Westminster (now part of London, in England) in an attempt to kill James I, but were thwarted before the big bang. Strange as it may seem, the denizens of Albion celebrate this non-event. As a baptised but (col)lapsed catholic, and an Irishmen too, I felt it my duty to partake in the madness, and find out what all thisfine anti-popery was about. It was with a charabanc full of intrepid bonfire hunters that I arrived in Lewes, Sussex, where traditional 'celebrations' are held to commemorate both the Gunpowder plot and 17 Protestant martyrs who were burnt at the stake in the town during the Marian persecutions of...
Photographs: Return to the Hellfire Club, Dublin
We've written loads about the Irish Hellfire Club on blather.net, of ghosts and black cats and satanism... But now we've got photographs too.... The Blather team keep returning to this spooky place in the Dublin mountains. On Halloween 2005 I returned, with great light and a beautiful sky. I'm not going to go on at length here about satanic orgies or ghosts or giant black cats - I'll point you to my earlier articles on the Hellfire Club for that. Find the Hellfire Club on Google Maps » Get high resolution versions of these photographs from davewalshphoto.com »
Waking the Dead: the Battle of Glasnevin Graveyard
Take one angry mob (half-naked), a dead body (two days old), a gang of grave robbers, trigger-happy watchmen (possibly drunk), the cops (also possibly drunk), an arsenal of assorted weaponry, stir violently and serve in a freezing cold graveyard. Dr. John Fleetwood's wonderful book 'The Irish Body Snatchers', published by Tomar in 1988 now seems, sadly, to be out of print and rather hard to get. It's a brilliantly written book: at times grim and scientific and at others hysterically funny and eye-opening. In his book, Fleetwood extensively quotes from Saunders' Newsletter. Published between 1746 and 1879, it's a wealth of contemporary information relating to Sack 'em Up's and Resurrection Men: a subject which never seems to have failed to sell newspapers. Grab yer pitchforks! One of the most remarkable incidents chronicled in Saunders' Newsletter is the 'Battle of Glasnevin Graveyard' (also known as Prospect Cemetery) which took place in January...