My Late Father's Blog

My late father Peadar Kelly briefly wrote a blog. It only has three posts. Nevertheless, I've kept access to it and posted a placeholder blog post every now and again to keep it active. I might use it to post his other writngs.

I could have sworn I mentioned it (and linked to it) on this blog, but couldn't find it anywhere. Here it is-- more for my own sake of finding it when necessary than for anyone else. (But by all means, give a read of his posts, which are very good.)

https://amhergin.blogspot.com/

What Would You Call This Hat?

No facetious answers, please. I'm interested in what name you'd give it.

A Random Thought

The whole charm of the American personality lies in being right-wing. It finds its culmination in a salt-of-the-earth, Bible-bashing, flag-saluting Southerner.

Left-wing Americans can, of course, be charming and loveable. But they always seem to be playing against type, so to speak.

This doubtless applies to all nationalities, since leftism is (I believe) inherently opposed to healthy human impulses. But it seems especially true of Americans. I wince whenever I hear leftist slogans in a broad, zesty American accent. It seems all wrong.

Halloween Horrors

The website of Ireland's national broadcaster has been leading all last night and into lunch-time today with the number of fire brigade call-outs during Halloween night.

"Of the 585 calls Dublin Fire Brigade received, 470 were directly related to Halloween.

Chief Fire Officer Greg O'Dwyer described the call volume as "extremely high", but said there were no reports of any firework-related injuries."

So, nobody was actually hurt-- thank God. And yet it's presented as a night of chaos.

I grew up in Ballymun, the high-rise Dublin suburb, in the eighties. Every year there was not one but several massive bonfires. (This was easily possible as there were many green spaces in Ballymun.) The sparks at our local bonfire, in the field outside my apartment block, regularly reached up to our seventh-floor windows. These bonfires were organised entirely by local children, although adults always came for the lighting. The firewood was collected for months ahead of time. It was great. I never heard of anyone being injured. The fire would be surrounded by a huge ring of people of all ages.

This wasn't exactly legal, and I think the fire brigade often did come to put them out. But there was no great hullaballoo about it. Often they burned for hours.

Another story, last night, finished with these (to me) rather chilling words:

"Mr O'Dwyer urged parents to try to get their children to go to organised events around the city.

"He said: "They're fun organised events with lots of entertainment, and some with organised firework displays, licensed firework displays.

"Many with kind of funfair activities, food and entertainment. Much more fun than standing around a cold night, standing around a bonfire with toxic fumes coming off it." "

Well, it doesn't sound like more fun to me. Even as a kid, I took delight in the fact that these bonfires were completely devoid of any "official" input, that they were totally spontaneous.

The "coldest of cold monsters", as Nietzsche called the State, seems eager to either abolish or take over all family, community, and civic life-- always bringing its woke agenda along with it.

(Fireworks are another matter. I'm not saying they should be legal. I'm not even saying all bonfires should be legal. But surely there should be a lot more discretion, especially where adults are involved, and it shouldn't only be "organised events" that are permitted.)

Should I Watch Dr. Who?

Dr. Who has always been something of a terra incognita to me. I remember I had a Dr. Who comic book when I was a kid, back in the Tom Baker days. (I use the American term "comic book" because it was more like a hardback annual than a regular comic.) But all I can remember about the story is that Dr. Who liked jelly beans.

Much more recently, I bought a DVD of the Christopher Eccleston series, the first revival. I don't remember much of it except that mannequins featured in it.

Is everybody restricted to one science-fiction series they're really crazy about? I was born the year Star Wars came out and the merchandising was everywhere when I was a kid. I even had a Star Wars pillowcase, though not because I asked for it. And yet I've never particularly been a fan of the franchise. (Rogue One is the Star Wars film I enjoyed the most, to be honest.)

Star Trek has always been my sci-fi show. And not even Star Trek in general, since I've always found the original series quite ropey. No, it's specifically The Next Generation, Voyager, and (to some extent) Deep Space Nine. (Patrick Stewart, RIP.) Those shows have meant a lot to me over the years, even though I rarely rewatch them.

But I've barely dipped my toe into Dr. Who. Yet I've always had some interest in the phenomenon from the outside. I'm interested in it as a great British institution, like James Bond or Carry On films. 

I've encountered the stereotype of Dr. Who fans being smug liberals. But I've known at least one fairly conservative Catholic who is a big fan.

More recently, I've become interested in the TARDIS. There's something tremendously appealing in the idea of a vehicle that is entirely bonded to you and has indefinite capabilities. One of the images that has haunted me for my whole life is the idea of a secret room in your own home, especially one that is somehow uncanny or supernatural. What I've heard of the TARDIS suggests it might posses such illimitable inwardness. And, to my surprise, I'm not aware of any other fictional vehicles and/or homes of which you could say the same thing. (There's the Starship Enterprise, of course. But that's never portrayed as anything other than a machine without sentience or any kind of soul.)

So, are any of my readers Whovians? Should I give Dr. Who a go, and where should I start?

Cultural Degeneration

People used to sit around the fireside, telling each other stories and singing songs, mostly drawn from the folk tradition.

Then printing came along and people started to read books-- starting out with the Bible and stories drawn from folk tradition. But lots of poetry and literary classics.

Then came magazines and newspapers, increasingly filled with salacious content and consumerism. But at least people were reading.

Then came radio. Families sat around in the parlour listening to game shows and radio serials. But at least they were using their imaginations to conjure up the pictures.

Then came television, all the family sitting around watching the pictures on the screen. But at least they were together.

Then came televisions in bedrooms, and they weren't watching it together anymore.

Then came the internet, and smartphones, and social media, and everybody was glued to their phones and Facebook and Instagram. No longer talking to other human beings, except through a screen.

And then came artificial intelligence and chatbots, and people were no longer even interacting with human beings.

This narrative is a construct, of course. It leaves out a lot. (Personally, I think the internet was an advance on the mass media of TV and radio in many ways.)

But there's a sad amount of truth in it.

Of course, my pet hobbyhorse is that the switch from poetry to just prose was a huge step in this overall decline, and the revival of serious (meaning sustained) poetry reading would be a huge step in mitigating it. I don't believe it can be reversed, outside a catastrophe that brings us back to telling folklore around the fireside.

For the Spooky Season

You might like this old blog post I wrote about spooky opening credit sequences, from various horror TV shows.

That post is thirteen years old. It doesn't include what has become my favourite of all such sequences, which is that from Tales from the Darkside. Indeed, I wrote a whole blog post about it, four years later.