Remember: not just Who and When, but also understand Why — babbitman

This makes so much sense to me. I hope it may make you think beyond the ceremony of remembrance!

Wars kill people. They devastate families. Wars should be a politician’s absolute last resort and they are an admission that they have failed their people.

via Remember: not just Who and When, but also understand Why — babbitman

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Twittering Tales #104 – 2 October 2018

It’s time again for Kat Myrman’s wonderful challenge to tax our creative souls. Just take her photo prompt and write a story, inspired by it, in 280 characters or fewer.

Photo by fotoerich at Pixabay.com

Here is this week’s prompt and my contribution. Check out all the fabulous entries here.

Those new contraceptive tablets were great.
The instructions were really clear.
I just had to make a sheath out of the intestine of a goat and stretch it over my organ, before ravishing all the handmaidens I desired.
I didn’t have an organ, or a piano, so I stretched it over my lyre!

(280 characters)

 

Four days in North Yorkshire

If you want to learn a little Yorkshire dialect, here’s your chance! You never know when it may come in handy. Apart from that there is a very interesting bit of history too.

Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces

Entrance to the Boar’s Head public house and country hotel, Ripley, North Yorkshire

You can catch a bus to Ripley, from Leeds Bus station. Number 36.  It takes you all across the dales to North Yorkshire and drops you off right outside the Boars Head in Ripley, which was where I was staying for a four-day Yorkshire Break.  Ripley is one of those handsome stone built Yorkshire villages set in rolling dales, which round there are steeped in the blood and the history of religious and civil wars.   Not too far away was Marston Moor where Oliver Cromwell destroyed the Northern army of Charles the 1^st.    And at Ripley castle, on the edge of the village, lived the Ingleby’s, heavily related to and implicated with those involved in the 1605 Guy Fawkes gunpowder conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament.  There’s some good people round here!

The…

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The wise and foolish Wicklow Virgins

A wonderful account, by John McGuiggan, of some beautiful murals in Edinburgh.

John’s blog is a hidden gem, just like the pictures he describes.

via The wise and foolish Wicklow Virgins

July 4, 2018

Margo, “That little voice“, has a few very pertinent questions for the American people on this, their Independence Day. The same questions apply to all countries, to all societies, to all peoples, and it is the people who must decide the answers. I do so hope that they get it right!

that little voice

July 4, 2018

Can I celebrate this day the way I have past Independence Days: without thought, concern, doubt, fear, disgust, or alarm?

The question plagues me as I watch the sun rise on this two hundred and forty-second birthday of the United States of America. On this day more than two centuries ago a group of men signed a paper declaring America would no longer be ruled by another nation. Our country would be independent of and from outside dominance. Henceforth we would determine our own fate, decide how we would be governed, guided by a Constitution that promised equality.

Not a perfect document, but one filled with hope, determination, and belief that individual voices can better chart the future of this new democracy, not one person.

So I wonder if we, the people of this fragile yet strong, and relatively new nation, can weather the storm of today’s internal…

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Sunday sayings #36

On the wedding day, yesterday, of TRH The Duke and Duchess of Sussex

Just because #2

This is a song by Frank Turner.  It has a beautiful tune and lyrics that I think are particularly relevant today.

I don’t think that we bloggers have any difficulty with trying to be more kind. I hope, and pray, that our leaders, and those in power who fail to lead, will take heed and act for the good of the world rather than for the few. I fear it may be a vain hope!

Be More Kind

History’s been leaning on me lately;
I can feel the future breathing down my neck
And all the things I thought were true
When I was young, and you were too
Turned out to be broken
And I don’t know what comes next

In a world that has decided
That it’s going to lose its mind
Be more kind, my friends, try to be more kind

They’ve started raising walls around the world now
Like hackles raised upon a cornered cat
On the borders, in our heads
Between things that can and can’t be said
We’ve stopped talking to each other
And there’s something wrong with that

So before you go out searching
Don’t decide what you will find
Be more kind, my friends, try to be more kind

You should know you’re not alone
And that trouble comes, and trouble goes
How this ends, no one knows
So hold on tight when the wind blows

The wind blew both of us to sand and sea
And where the dry land stands is hard to say
As the current drags us by the shore
We can no longer say for sure
Who’s drowning, or if they can be saved

But when you’re out there floundering

Like a lighthouse I will shine

Be more kind, my friends, try to be more kind

Like a beacon reaching out
To you and yours from me and mine
Be more kind, my friends, try to be more kind

In a world that has decided
That it’s going to lose its mind
Be more kind, my friends, try to be more kind

Songwriter: Frank Turner

I was so impressed on first hearing this that I went and purchased the album, the first music I’ve purchased in a very long time!

50 Yards of Florence;

Join John on his tour of 50 yards of Florence. It is beautiful, and totally missed by all the crocodiles of tourist groups

Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces

The medieval lanes and streets and alleys provide welcome breaks of shade from the heat and the sun, and occasionally from the crocodile lines of tourist groups faithfully following their guides.  But you tire easily for you are not so young now, the back hurts a bit, the legs ache,  the sun is hot, you need to pause, to sit down, recover a little and you look for a pavement bar or café. But they can be intimidating these Italian bars and cafés,  and you pass that one and avoid this one and then you come across a rough looking bar in a little rough looking space, a small scruffy square; there is graffiti on the walls and a few battered tables and chairs clustered outside the very ordinary and un-prepossessing door of the bar “Mingo”  There is a van, and a motor cycle lazily  parked across the small square…

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Twittering Tales #78 – 3 April 2018

It’s time again for Kat Myrman’s wonderful challenge to tax our creative souls. Just take her photo prompt and write a story, inspired by it, in 280 characters or fewer.

I’ve been absent for a few weeks and have missed not taking part.

Here is this week’s prompt and my contribution. Check out all the fabulous entries here.

Meet me after the battle he said.

Just have to dash to Bosworth Field he said.

Then ZAP!…..I find myself transported in time to this deserted car park in Leicester.

The local paper says it is 2012. I left Richard in 1485. How can that be?

And just where is my Sovereign Liege?

(277 characters)

A Corkman dies on the Somme

John McGuiggan, on his site Broadsides, writes brilliantly on all sorts of matters. History, reviews, interesting tales about life in general, and his life in particular. Born into a military family, serving in the army, then transforming into a union organiser, he then somehow ended up as a barrister. He has tales to tell, funny ones, sad ones, reflective ones, but always interesting ones. Do read, and enjoy!

Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces

The Pencil portrait of Private Christopher Coleman, from Cobh, County Cork, made by his wife.

The first week of September 1916 and the 16th Irish Division are engaged in the bloody advance across theSomme. At the village of Guillemont , men of the 7th Leinster Regiment manage to pass through the shattered village and secure and hold enemy trenches on the far side, but at terrible cost, losing some fifty percent of the soldiers engaged in the advance.  But in the bizarre ethics of war, it was a victory

Following the ‘victorious’ advance, non-combatant labour battalions are sent into the killing fields to clear up the mess left by the fighting soldiers. They clear away abandoned trenching tools, wire cutters, discarded equipment and bits and pieces of dead soldiers. It is gruesome and arduous work.

Among their number is an Englishman, Private George Wiles of the Royal Engineers. As…

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