Geraghty's

Shrine security guard tells teen to stop wearing her shorts...

What's worse than taking candy from a baby? How about stealing money from a nun:

"The incident occurred on the Pontoon Road in Castlebar when the defendant asked the nun to look for his football in the back garden. When they could not find the ball, the youngster left but the nun noticed that her handbag was missing."

You'd think the kid was a Muslim or an illegal immigrant or something...

Matt Molloy's

A barstool at Matt Molloy's pub, the day's first customers, sipping a Guinness while reading Rubicon, Tom Holland's literate and evocative account of the fall of the Republic of Rome. It begins:

January 10, the seven-hundred-and-fifth year since the founding of Rome, the forty-ninth before the birth of Christ. The sun had long set behind the Apennine Mountains. Lined up in full marching order, soldiers from the 13th Legion stood massed in the dark. Bitter the night may have been, but they were well used to extremes. For eight years they had been following the governor of Gaul on campaign after bloody campaign, through snow, through summer heat, t0 the margins of the world. Now, returned from the barbarous wilds of the north, they found themselves poised on a very different frontier. Ahead of them flowed a narrow stream...

Carrowholly in the Gloaming

Shot with the iPhone Hipstomatic app, which simulates lenses and films from the 50s and 60s (in the this case, the John S lens and Blanko film).

We arrived in Shannon this morning in good shape after a lengthy layover in Newark International (which, compared with JFK, is the Trump Towers). These highlights of the trip over (also courtesy various Hipstomatic lenses and films) make Carrowholly all the more transcendent:

And now we're about to have a late dinner while listening to the great Kevin Burke:

Sunday Funnies & Arts

As always, click to enlarge.

This above comic was called Academia Waltz, by Berke Breathed, who went on to create Bloom County and Opus. Academia Waltz appeared in The Daily Texan, the student newspaper at the University of Texas (known to some as The Daily Pravda, a badge it wore with honor.) This strip appeared some time in the early 80s; it remains sadly relevant today.

(Thanks, S&C)

This Sunday's blog is mercifully brief, as Premium T. and I are winging our way to Ireland as you read. It's been a hectic month, but I finished online courses in Quantitative Methods (statistics, which might as well be a brew of Arabic and Mandarin) and Financial Accounting (where fair is foul and foul is fair). So, on to Intro to Health Care Services and Managing Health Care Organizations!...

I suppose that the right could sink lower than yesterday's obscenity at the base of the Lincoln Memorial, but it would take Rush Limbaugh broadcasting anti-Muslim hate speech from Martin Luther King's grave to pull it off. They'll have a thousand rationalizations about how Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are MLK's natural heirs, but the bald truth remains that their cauldron of hate was a deliberate affront to millions of people around the world. I could think of a hundred good reasons to defecate in Beck's front yard -- it wouldn't be that difficult to come up with them -- but he wouldn't like it no matter how many times I explained that it was a righteous expression of liberty and that his whining was a typical conservative play of the Shit Card. We've been asking this of the right for nearly 60 years. I imagine that we'll be asking it for another 160...

A Howling in the Wires: An Anthology of Writing from Postdiluvian New Orleans includes a contribution from Cliff, who also read at last week's reading...

PHOTO GALLERY

Sussah at angels and people/life in New Orleans takes consistently wonderful pictures of quotidian NOLA. Don't miss our big word, the burden of trauma, and Ora-Vista Baptist Church...

On the Run...

I went to Hawaii and got lei'd...

The sun is back and Roy is glad of it...

Sky over Harding Middle School...

Irish scarecrow...

Quiet time with Gregory Peck...

FROM THE JUKEBOX

Come on, sweet cream, don't forget to flash/We're all gonna meet at that million dollar bash. (Words and music by Bob Dylan; vocals and all instruments by Citizen K. III)...

Ryan Adams and Emmylou Harris perform a gorgeous, elegiac rendition of "Return of the Grievous Angel"...

My 2o1o NOLA jukebox:

Backatown, Trombone Shorty

Lighthouse, Susan Cowsill

An Album to Benefit Preservation Hall & the Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program, Preservation Hall Jazz Band

Bridging the Gap, Paul Sanchez and Shamarr Allen

Starve a Fever, Happy Talk Band

Tribal, Dr. John & the Lower 911

Happy Go Lucky, D. L. Menard

King of the Party, Big Sam's Funky Nation

American Patchwork, Anders Osborne

Between Rest and Motion, Eric Lindell

ya-ka-may, Galactic

For New Orleans -- you are His own:

I Need You Girl, By My Side

I feel depressed, I feel so bad
'Cause you're the best girl that I've ever had
I can't get your love, I can't get a fraction
Oh, little girl, psychotic reaction
And it feels like this!

I feel so lonely night and day
I can't get your love, I must stay away
Well, I need you, girl, by my side
Oh, little girl, would you like to take a ride now?
I can't get your love, I can't get satisfaction
Oh, little girl, psychotic reaction

We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and damn it, we will reclaim the Civil Rights movement. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place!

So speaks Glenn Beck, and Leonard Pitts isn't having any of it. Beck and his ilk did something all right, but one doubts that any of their predecessors were standing on the right side of the Pettus Bridge at Selma. Even so, his diatribe was just too much for some:

King was not the man of peace Beck claims he was, and I'm not sure why he panders to him so much. King was a troublemaker...where King went -- racial riots followed.

Some of the riots that followed Martin Luther King:

Read It and Weep

What do witchcraft, the seven dwarfs, the Three Stooges, Darwin, and Copernicus have in common? It's all here. What isn't hear, sadly, is reason.

What If the Tea Party Was Black?