Journal Entries
The page three controversy
Posted Jan 25, 2015
Women are rightly offended at being treated as sex objects. But there's an elephant shuffling about here.
A few memories of things that set me thinking:
When I was about eleven, I heard the announcement that female police were to be introduced. I was fascinated, expecting to see these women with short-back-and-sides, the regulation police haircut. I felt cheated when it turned out that they could keep their long hair.
I grew up in the fifties, when all women, even my aunts and grandaunts, wore skirts, stockings, makeup. On most women it was pretty incongruous, but that was the spirit of the age and you can't escape that.
I once did door-to-door canvassing and heard objections to my candidate's plan to free up the Irish anti-contraceptive laws (yes, in the seventies). A late-middle-aged man said it would lead to women going round with bunches of these things in their handbags and behaving like animals. I didn't ask him was he thinking of his wife, who was peeping around the door. His image of 'women' did not seem to include her at that moment.
Some people (both men and women) enjoy dressing up and looking ravishing. They are an entertaining minority. Some also enjoy undressing in public and looking ravishing, a smaller minority.
The fact that they are (knownst to themselves) going to be treated as sex objects doesn't really say anything about the majority, who dress to look fairly ordinary.
I look forward to a future when men and women are equally free to look as dowdy or ravishing as they choose, without prejudice.
Discuss this Journal entry [5]
Latest reply: Jan 25, 2015
A song for a Winter Evening
Posted Dec 3, 2014
I teach ukulele in St Finian's Primary School, Newcastle Co Dublin. I see the fifth classes (there are two of them) for half an hour each, then the two sixth classes for half an hour each. After that, the thirty ukuleles get carefully packed away in their cardboard boxes and stored in the staff room till next week's class.
You might think that they wouldn't get far without having the instruments to practise on, but they do!
I've written a song for the sixth classes to sing (half of them singing, half of them playing, though I think there are a good few that will be able to sing and play as well). We are booked for the school carol service in two weeks' time.
Here it is. They are to combine the choruses ('Winter Evening" and "All November") at the end, as I've kind of sketched in on the recording. I haven't got as far as double-tracking on YouTube uploads yet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut6rywNxyag
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: Dec 3, 2014
The enemies of education
Posted Nov 29, 2014
The enemies of education are boredom and distraction.
So what do we do?
What do we do?
What do we do?
Attack!
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Nov 29, 2014
When did green become the colour of Irish Nationalism?
Posted May 10, 2014
Thinking about the early nineteenth-century song 'The Wearing of the Green', especially the lines
Saint Patrick's Day no more we'll keep, his colour can't be seen
For there's a cruel law against the wearing of the green.
I wondered, when did green become St Patrick's colour? When I graduated as a Bachelor of Music from Trinity College (The University of Dublin), my hood was a delicate duck-egg blue which was officially called 'St Patrick's blue'. It is the colour worn by the choristers and various officials of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
Ireland had a national flag, as far back as the thirteenth century: the coat of arms of the king of Ireland, described as Azure a harp Or, stringed Argent--that is, a gold harp with silver strings on a blue background.
In heraldry azure is generally the colour of lapis lazuli, a rich deep blue. The flag of Ireland in the seventeenth century would have been a golden harp with a female figurehead facing left, with silver strings, on a background of deep blue. That deep blue is now associated in Ireland mostly with Guinness, though it is also the colour of the presidential flag, which has the gold harp without the female features. The image of the harp is taken from Metcalf's 1928 coinage design, still used on Irish euro coins. The iconic Guinness harp is facing left, but otherwise indistinguishable from the presidential/coinage harp; both are copied from the fifteenth-century harp in Trinity College, misleadingly called the Brian Boru harp.
When did pale blue begin to stand for St Patrick? It seems to have been when the Order of St. Patrick—an Anglo-Irish chivalric order—was founded in 1783. These were revolutionary times; Dublin still had its own Parliament, where nationalists such as Grattan and Flood swam against the tide of their mostly unionist peers (only landowners could become members of Parliament--in any country--then) who were about to sell Ireland into the United Kingdom (1801).
One group of nationalists, the United Irishmen, chose the colour green when they were founded in the 1790s. In 1798, inspired by the French Revolution, they led a doomed rebellion, which led to much blood being spilt in various parts of Ireland, and many stirring songs being composed. The leader of the rebellion, General napper Tandy, is commemorated in 'The Wearing of the Green':
I spoke with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand
And he said 'How's dear old Ireland and how does she stand?'
She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women for the wearing of the green.
Discuss this Journal entry [11]
Latest reply: May 10, 2014
No NaJoPoMo 2013 here
Posted Nov 3, 2013
I let the beginning of the month go by; I should have known there would be another NaJoPoMo this year but it slipped my mind. Pity, I did find it stimulating. Might slip in a few posts, unofficially. If I do I'll append them here.
Discuss this Journal entry [12]
Latest reply: Nov 3, 2013
Recumbentman
Researcher U208656
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."