This is Leadership

Coronavirus: 'Many of you are feeling scared' - full text of Varadkar speech

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar made a special televised address to the nation on St Patrick’s Day, speaking about the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic on Ireland

Lá Fhéile Pádraig shona daoibh!

This is a Saint Patrick’s Day like no other.

A day that none of us will ever forget.

Today’s children will tell their own children and grandchildren about the national holiday in 2020 that had no parades or parties, but instead saw everyone staying at home to protect each other.

In years to come, let them say of us, when things were at their worst, we were at our best.

Our country is making big demands of our healthcare staff, big demands of every single one of us.

Tonight I want you to know why these actions are being taken and what more needs to be done.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/coronavirus-many-of-you-are-feeling-scared-full-text-of-varadkar-speech-1.4205405




and even Irvine Welsh is doing his bit on Twitter..

@IrvineWelsh

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"Before you chop up a line of toxic powder on a toilet cistern from a wrap of grubby paper that some mate got from a stranger and smash it up your hooter from a weeping, mass circulated twenty quid note...make sure you wash your hands for at least twenty seconds."

the peace of wild things

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
 The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
 Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
 Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
 and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction,
 while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
 Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!
Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight:
a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
 Is moving its slow thighs,
while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
 The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming.”

















 here's a response from director/producer/editor Laura Dunn as she speaks about her Wendell Berry documentary The Seer. It starts with Wendell talking about piecing things together.. 

90 min Guardian Debate post EU Referendum

Happy hefted Christmas y'all xxx

Hefted from Dreamtime Film on Vimeo.

Hefted -- a beautiful film

RIP

FROM Paris attacks- we all have our own ways of dealing with tragedy | First Dog on the Moon | Comment is free | The Guardian.

FOR AN EXTREME POLARITY VIEW TO ADJUST RE-ADDRESS OR BALANCE READ THIS

Your phone is seducing you, and you're paying the price

We all know that too much time with tech is bad for the mind, but even resisting temptation is taking its toll on us, argues Tom Chatfield in the Guardian. Those phantom messages, where you imagine your phone vibrating – that’s your body trying to tell you something. Over half of us now suffer from nomophobia – anxiety of being out of phone contact – and our willpower and attention are suffering as a result Live This Book! by Tom Chatfield is published by Penguin

also here is an excellent short audio snippet on the same subject + the audio from the above Guardian clip

pictures of walls

click here for wonderful pictures of walls