Russell and Carol - hayle and hearty

Seamus Heaney On Suffering, Self-healing, and Hope for a Great Sea Change

To mark Joe Biden's President-elect status, RTE put together a piece on his history and voiced by him reading an excerpt from the Seamus Heaney poem “The Cure at Troy” written in 1991 - his version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes written in the fifth century BC. 

As though Heaney wrote it for this exact time as we navigate a mighty sea-change.

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

“My mission is to seek beauty, find humour, and bring joy.”

As I spoke that aloud, I woke up.

It was as if a huge stone had rolled off my chest.

I had a mission statement!

Who knew, now that my hair’s turned white, to finally have a mission statement?  Let alone such a mission!

So simple, so delightful to fulfill. One that is not transactional; that does not include commodification. 

Your sea change has stimulated a sea change in me.

“Whither leads the voyage?

Word of the day is 'podsnappery' (19th century, from Dickens): 'insular complacency and blinkered self-satisfaction'.

November 1 marked as All Saints' Day, and in the pre-Reformation calendars the last day of October was marked All Hallow Eve, and the 2nd of November as All Souls'; indicating clearly a three days' festival of the dead, commencing in the evening, and originally regulated by the Pleiades—an emphatic testimony how much astronomy has been mixed up with the rites and customs even of the English of[Pg 125] to-day. In former days the relics were more numerous, in the Hallowe'en torches of the Irish, the bonfires of the Scotch, the coel-coeth fires of the Welsh, and the tindle fires of Cornwall, all lighted on Hallowe'en. In France it still lingers more than here, for to this very day the Parisians at this festival repair to the cemeteries, and lunch at the graves of their ancestors.

Today is the Tomorrow you Worried about Yesterday and All is Well
- attributed to Dale Carnegie

Seen on a wooden plaque repaired on BBC The Repair Shop

BBC iPlayer - The Repair Shop - 60-Minute Versions: Episode 19

Wood wizard Will Kirk repairs a hand-carved wooden plaque, the remarkable work of Carol Bolton’s father, in 1937 when he was just 12 years old

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0007znp/the-repair-shop-60minute-versions-episode-19

It is the Feast Day of St Bugga of Thanet. pic.twitter.com/iaMjunWSnL

— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) December 12, 2018

It is the Feast of St Magloire of Dol, a 6th C Breton who became Abbot of Sark. He struggled so terribly with abstinence that an angel visited and gave him permission to have wine and beer. He is patron of those who abandon diets. pic.twitter.com/TJOAXlcTOr

— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) October 24, 2020

pic.twitter.com/RNMlBMD3UE

— Richard Coles (@RevRichardColes) October 24, 2020

Word of the day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a wooden puppet whose limbs jerk at the whim of the puppet master and, by extension, a politician whose strings of action are pulled by somebody else.

First five episodes in articular were up there with the amazing Shadow Line great snappy and witty writing by Joe Barton great performances from all the cast but especially Rodney

Will Sharpe

Rodney

I did not know him before his rush to power, but
what I saw in him then was a man overhorsed by the glory
fate had handed him, riding by sheer force of will, knowing
he must be thrown sometime, and that it would hurt.

In my experience, men who find themselves in receipt of
unasked-for luck become either benign, believing themselves
unworthy, or dangerous, believing everyone else sees them as
unfit.

An excerpt from