Fiona McCann
|
Love is all around
The Animal Story Page I got this feature in an email, but the story and photos are on the net, so I am going to give you the link. It will warm your heart if you are an animal lover (and if you're NOT an animal lover, then you have no heart!). It's the story of Finnegan the Squirrel, so I hope Locotes sees this. In a nutshell, so to speak, it's the story of a baby orphan squirrel who bonds with a pregnant Papillion chihuahua-type dog named Giselle. You gotta see the pics of Finnegan nestled in with the puppies. They are really sweet!  Click on the photo to be taken to Finnegan's webpage |
|
|
1.5.06 17:21 |
|
|
Happy birthday to the Empire State Building
BN.ie 01/05/2006 - 14:49:05  The Empire State Building celebrates its 75th birthday today. Click on the pic to take a virtual tour of the Empire State Building The iconic skyscraper is New York’s tallest building, soaring more than a quarter of a mile above the heart of Manhattan. Since opening in 1931 during America’s Great Depression after being constructed in just 13 months, it has seen almost 110 million visitors. In all, it has 102 floors, but tourists stop at the 86th floor observation deck, at 1,050 feet, to marvel at the panoramic views across the city and beyond. The tower, which was in the headlines last week after a stuntman attempted to parachute from it, has a total of 1,860 steps and is struck by lightning 100 times a year. It has been immortalised on the big screen numerous times, famously being captured on celluloid in the 1933 King Kong film. The observation deck was also the location where Cary Grant waited in vain for Deborah Kerr in An Affair To Remember, and where Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had their fateful meeting in Sleepless In Seattle. It was the world’s tallest building for 40 years, until the World Trade Centre was built. Since the destruction of the twin towers in the September 11 attacks, it is New York City’s highest structure again. The Empire State Building’s construction provided jobs for more than 3,000 workers during a time of great unemployment, although 14 immigrant workers were killed during the operation. Its spire was originally planned as a mooring point for airships, an idea which was swiftly branded dangerous and abandoned. Different multicoloured lighting schemes are often used on the upper tier of the building to celebrate events such as Valentine’s Day and July 4. Today the floodlights will be plain white in a recreation of the tower’s appearance on the day it first opened for business. |
|
|
1.5.06 18:37 |
|
|
More awesome ESB pics
Here are some more interesting photos about the Empire State Building which I got from >>here. But here is the scariest one:  |
|
|
1.5.06 21:14 |
|
Alritey!! Alan has DONE it!!
You gotta go see Alan's impressionistic shot of the Empire State Building! It's gorgeous!!
|
|
|
1.5.06 23:11 |
|
|
Stop the slaughter
|
|
|
2.5.06 05:12 |
|
|
Cracking Rosslyn's musical code
Scotsman GEORGE MAIR 2 May 2006  AN ORCHESTRA is being recreated to play in its original form a musical code hidden in the ceiling of Rosslyn Chapel.Photo from >>here The 500-year-old code was discovered last year, hidden in 213 cubes in the medieval chapel in Midlothian. Scottish composer Stuart Mitchell was hailed a genius after unravelling the complex sequence, which had mystified historians for generations. But the piece, named The Rosslyn Canon of Proportions by Mr Mitchell, has never been heard as it was intended. Of the 13 medieval instruments depicted on pillars by the chapel's architect, William Sinclair, two no longer exist. Now a team is building all 13 instruments - including bagpipes, whistles, a trumpet, a medieval mouth piano and a guitar - so that the piece can be played as it was in the 15th century. Mr Mitchell, who has already arranged the notes in an authentic 15th-century manner, says in a BBC Radio Scotland interview to be broadcast today: "Ultimately, I just want a musical result as authentic as William Sinclair intended. "The challenge was to arrange the harmonies to the instruments and orchestration that William Sinclair has pointed out on the ceiling." • The Rosslyn Code was broadcast today on BBC Radio Scotland at 11:30am. |
|
|
2.5.06 17:18 |
|
|
God Save Ireland
Digital Library A GAELIC SONG  A murmurous tangle of voices,Laughter to left and right, We waited the curtain's rising, In a dazing glare of light; When down through the din came, slowly, Softly, then clear and strong, The mournful minor cadence Of a sweet old Gaelic song. Like the trill of a lark new-risen, It trembled upon the air, And wondering eyes were lifted To seek for the singer there; Some dreamed of the thrush at noontide, Some fancied a linnet's wail, While the notes went sobbing, sighing, O'er the heartstrings of the Gael. The lights grew blurred, and a vision Fell upon all who heard– The purple of moorland heather By a wonderful wind was stirred; Green rings of rushes went swaying, Gaunt boughs of Winter made moan; One saw the glory of Life go by, And one saw Death alone. A river twined through its shallows, Cool waves crept up on a strand, Or fierce, like a mighty army, Swept wide on a conquered land; The Dead left cairn and barrow, And passed in noble train, With sheltering shield, and slender spear, Ere the curtain rose again. The four great seas of Éire Heaved under fierce ships of war, The God of Battles befriended, We saw the Star! the Star! We nerved us for deeds of daring, For Right we stood against Wrong; We heard the prayer of our mothers, In that sweet old Gaelic song. It was the soul of Éire Awaking in speech she knew When the clans held the glens and the mountains, And the hearts of her chiefs were true: She hath stirred at last in her sleeping, She is folding her dreams away, The hour of her destiny neareth– And it may be to-day–to-day! ~ Ethna Carbery ~ **Today marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands. Ethna Carbery was one of Bobby's favourite poets. Bobby was, himself, a poet and writer. CAIN WEEPING WINDS Oh! cold March winds your cruel laments Are hard on prisoners’ hearts, For you bring my mother’s pleading cries From whom I have to part. I hear her weeping lonely sobs Her sorrows sweep me by, And in the dark of prison cell A tear has warmed my eye. Oh! whistling winds why do you weep When roaming free you are, Oh! is it that your poor heart’s broke And scattered off afar? Or is it that you bear the cries Of people born unfree, Who like your way have no control Or sovereign destiny? Oh! lonely winds that walk the night To haunt the sinner’s soul, Pray pity me a wretched lad Who never will grow old. Pray pity those who lie in pain The bondsman and the slave, And whisper sweet the breath of God Upon my humble grave. Oh! cold March winds that pierce the dark You cry in aged tones For souls of folk you’ve brought to God But still you bear the moans. Oh! weeping wind this lonely night My mother’s heart is sore Oh! Lord of all breathe freedom’s breath That she may weep no more. ~ Bobby Sands ~ 1954 - 1981 |
|
|
5.5.06 05:38 |
|
|
The publishing revolution: from Caxton to cyberspace
Telegraph.co.uk **This post is dedicated to the discouraged writers in my life 07/05/2006) Not since the first book was printed on a movable-type press has the publishing world undergone such seismic change - from the profound impact of the internet and self-publishing to digital libraries, poseurs having their reading done for them and literary ATMs. Elizabeth Day reports...  John Howard received 38 rejection slips! >>Read article |
|
|
7.5.06 03:25 |
|
|
NOTHING FROM CHINA - EVER AGAIN!
heathermillsmccartney.com I happened upon this horrifying article on dog and cat fur trade from China by accident. I was looking for some information on Paul McCartney's wife Heather. I started reading this from her website and looking at the photographs, which I would not have done had I known what I was in for. It tells and shows how they, despite repeated denials to the authorities, skin animals alive for their fur. I have read some disgusting things about China, but after looking at this, I can honestly say that from now on, I will NEVER ever buy anything made in China again. I will boycott everything to come out of that hell hole. I will also spend some time wishing in my heart for the people who do those things to have the same done to them some day. Bastards. |
|
|
8.5.06 20:16 |
|
|
Information, please!
I don't know why, but I was looking at some old entries, and I found the one about LJ Abuse which I made on 19 April 2006. It has a little 'thingie' by the title. I didn't put it there, nor is it in the HTML of the entry.  What is it??? |
|
|
8.5.06 21:16 |
|
Yikes!
 I dunno about you, but I think 12 degrees is a bit chilly to be wearing the outfit that my 'Weather Pixie' has on at this time. I think she is just showing off! |
|
|
8.5.06 21:28 |
|
|
Car window sticker
Anyone you know?  |
|
|
12.5.06 12:33 |
|
|
Sick children in Eurodisney trip
BreakingNews.ie 13/05/2006 - 09:05:55  Some 42 sick youngsters from the south west were today heading to EuroDisney Paris on a trip organisers say is just what the doctor ordered.The children from Kerry, Cork city and county and Tipperary, many of whom have spent time in hospital this year, will travel to France for the weekend. Breda Chandler, chairwoman for the Cork city hospitals children’s club, revealed around 5,000 children are treated each year at Cork University Hospital. “While their stay is usually relatively short – two-and-a-half-days on average – children are usually only brought to hospital when they are very sick,” she said. “Going to EuroDisney is just what the doctor ordered for many of them, especially those who have had a particularly difficult year. “A trip like this is a real boost for them, a chance to show them that although they’ve been sick, that they can still have lots of fun.” The money for the break was raised by the children’s Club and the Kinsale & District Lion’s Club. This annual EuroDisney trip will include not only sick children from Cork University Hospital, but also from the Cork Association for the Deaf, the Mercy University Hospital and the South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital. “We’re delighted that this event is expanding to include more children than in previous years,” said event co-ordinator John Looney. |
|
|
13.5.06 16:36 |
|
|
Mistaken Identity
Today I received this as a comment: Dear Fiona McCann, I have noticed this same thing many times myself. I didn't realise how commonplace my name was until I started googling myself. I mean, there is even a cat named Fiona32 (and she's quite cute and talented!) Unfortunately, there is also a porno star named the same thing (I suppose she is cute and talented too!) I plan to definitely email this Fiona McCann immediately and ask her some pertinent questions about her life and if I like what I hear, I will offer to exchange identities with her so that people looking for her who end up here will be in the right place. I could use a change, anyway. |
|
|
19.5.06 22:48 |
|
|
With all certainty
|
|
|
21.5.06 01:15 |
|
|
Another one bites the dust
|
|
|
21.5.06 05:27 |
|
|
The beautiful Fiona McCann
You think I'm being self-congratulatory? No! I am speaking of the person who wrote to me last week to tell me that people come to my blog here expecting to find her. I had no idea she was THE writer for the Irish Times who now lives in Argentina because she has a mad passionate thing for Maradona. I'm not making this up. Here is a >>photo of the affair in case you don't believe me! You can read more about this blue-eyed Irish lass at her Blogspot blog The Buenos Aires Experience. Me? I'm going to go have a cry in my Guinness. Oh wait! I have to get back to work :p |
|
|
24.5.06 13:12 |
|
Blind Faith
 Those of you who are not music connasewers, connaisseurs--screw it--music enthusiasts will probably not know the group about which I am imminently to speak...or write. Click photo to view - image from the Blind Faith website They are called 'Blind Faith' and they consisted of, when they consisted of anyone, Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Ric Grech, and Stevie Winwood. You have to like to dig around in old music in order to know about some of these groups and their stuff. Of couse, any idiot knows who Eric Clapton is. You might also know Stevie Winwood. You might think that Ginger Baker OD'd a long time ago, but you would be wrong. He is still extant. I know these things because as I mentioned on 'fuise' the other day, my da was big into music and played it morning, noon and night. There was no genre he wasn't interested in, and I grew up listening to it all. Sometimes it drove me crazy because of the clash between the different kinds, but I'm really glad that it happened this way because now when someone mentions this or that, I at least have an inkling of what they are talking about--although I never became a specialist in any of it. I just knew what I liked. Now that I am a working woman and perpetually poor, I can't afford to buy it either, so I catch it where I can. That's one reason I think the net is so awesome. Every once in awhile you find a site that has a lot of goodies on it you can listen to. I don't make a habit of downloading music because I really have no desire to have the men in black coming to my room to lift me for:
I mean, a person can only live just so dangerously before they draw the line somewhere. So imagine my joy when I found this sweet site where you just click a link for a certain song and BANG, there it is playing. I think it is Real Player, but it happens so fast on my computer at work that I'm not quite sure. Of course, it doesn't happen at home at all. That's precisely why I have to move into my classroom. Really, there are several computers there, a humongously big and fast connection, lots of airy windows, great heat and air, proximity to vending machines with something similar to food and drink and not many people around at night and on weekends. What more could you ask for? I think the cats would like it. I know the bird might be freaked out at first because she dislikes anything new. She suffers from PTSD, having been abused as a child in the pet store. But I digress. I want to share this song with you, which you have probably never heard before, but which is one of my favourites. I could listen to it over and over, which is possible now, although for some reason, the students are starting to complain. It's called: CAN'T FIND MY WAY HOME (**Click on that title to listen to it - actual music is from Ray's site) {Winwood} Alamo Music, Inc. 1969 Come down off your throne And leave your body alone Somebody must change You are the reason I've been waiting so long Somebody holds the key Well, I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time Well, I'm wasted and I can't find my way home Come down on your own And leave your money at home Somebody must change You are the reason I've been waiting all these years Somebody holds the key I'm near the end, and I just ain't got the time Oh, and I'm wasted, and I can't find my way home But I can't find my way home But I can't find my way home But I can't find my way home But I can't find my way home Still, I can't find my way home And, I ain't done nothing wrong But, I can't find my way home |
|
|
24.5.06 18:24 |
|
|
At 65, Dylan Remains the Voice of Conscience
Indymedia.ie By Danny Morrison Daily Ireland - 24 May 2006 It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall  One day Bob Dylan poured a bottle of whiskey over his head and walked into a department store pretending to be drunk so that he would get some bad press. He found that being thrust into the role of ‘the conscience of a nation’ encroached on his privacy and interfered with his creativity and he wanted his freedom back.Those involved in political struggle in the USA placed an onerous responsibility on Dylan, demanding of him his talent, his time, his total commitment. Regardless of how he later revised his stance, the early songs which shot him to fame were the work of an artist responding to injustice and oppression and the politics of the day. He was heavily influenced by, of course, Woodie Guthrie, but was also open to the songs of Brecht and Weill as well as Irish rebel music. “All through the night they [the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem] would sing drinking songs, country ballads and rousing rebel songs that would lift the roof. The rebellion songs were a really serious thing. The language was flashy and provocative – a lot of action in the words, all sung with great gusto… I loved these songs and could still hear them in my head long after and into the next day. They weren’t protest songs, though, they were rebel ballads … even in a simple, melodic wooing ballad there’d be rebellion waiting around the corner.” That quote, describing the early 1960s, is from Dylan’s extraordinary autobiography, ‘Chronicles’, published in 2004. I think I heard my first Dylan song in late 1963, around about the time of the assassination of President Kennedy. It was ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ covered by Peter, Paul and Mary. The song made great sense against the scenes on television of blacks being beaten in the USA, but still taking to the streets demanding civil rights; blacks being cut down in South Africa, but still marching against apartheid, villagers being strafed and napalmed in Vietnam, but still heroically fighting back. Dylan sings it best in that smoky, hurt voice of his: How many roads must a man walk down Before they call him a man?... How many times must the cannon balls fly Before they’re forever banned?... How many years can some people exist Before they’re allowed to be free?... How many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry? How many deaths will it take till he knows That too many people have died? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind The answer is blowin’ in the wind. A year later he released his rallying call ‘to the nation’, so to speak, a recruiting address to writers and critics, and a warning to Congressmen and Senators: There’s a battle outside And it is ragin’. It’ll soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin’. His songs became anthems of the civil rights and anti-war movements and he was often at marches alongside people like Joan Baez and Harry Belafonte. I love most of his early material which was often dark and foreboding, and his love songs such as the sensually delectable ‘Lay, Lady Lay’, but little from 1973 until his re-emergence with the short-lived Travellin Wilburys in 1988. I saw him a few years ago playing to a very small audience and thought, what a comedown, how sad. But reading ‘Chronicles’ one realises how he actually despised all the attention that came with fame and is probably now more content. Unlike the majority of artists who have nuclear-fuelled egos, Dylan actually comes across as humble though morose, learned, philosophical, flawed, scarily self-possessed, a reticent and private person, all at odds with the artist who has something to say. He is a phenomenon certainly at odds besides someone like the extrovert Bruce Springsteen – once called the ‘new Dylan’ - whose current tour is around “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions”. That tour consists of covers of folk songs popularised by one of Dylan’s mentors, Pete Seeger, and it has a contemporary resonance given the US war on Iraq. One of the songs Springsteen sang in Dublin recently is the nineteenth century Irish anti-war/anti-recruitment song, ‘Mrs McGrath’. It was once recorded by Makem and the Clancys, and was also popular with republicans after 1916 when the British government threatened to introduce conscription. One would be tempted to charge Dylan with deliberate naivety for not realising the demands that his powerful ballads would unleash and the hopes they raised. But in last year’s Scorsese’s film, ‘No Direction Home’, which covered his life from 1961-66, Dylan says that he learned early on “not to give away too easily anything that was dear to me,” which included surrendering the personal life which fame inevitably consumes. In ‘Chronicles’ he writes: “All I ever done was sing songs that were dead straight and expressed powerful new realities. I had very little in common with and knew even less about a generation that I was supposed to be the voice of.” He said fame and riches did not translate into happiness and describes how he and his wife and three children sought anonymity and normality. However, “demonstrators found our house and paraded up and down in front of it chanting and shouting, demanding for me to come out and lead them somewhere – stop shirking my duties as the conscience of a generation.” His former lover, Joan Baez, even wrote a song challenging him to lead the masses. In restaurants he would be pointed out: “That’s him over there.” Necks would stretch and people would stop eating. “I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as… High Priest of Protest, the Czar of Dissent…” It was around this time that he poured the whiskey over his head and went shopping. He even went to Jerusalem and got himself photographed at the Wailing Wall wearing a skullcap. The papers called him a Zionist. “This helped a little,” he said. He made what appeared to be a country and western record to throw his fans off. “I had assumed that when critics dismissed my work, the same thing would happen to me, that the public would forget about me.” In the late 1970s he became a born-again Christian but in the mid-80s it was rumoured that he was affiliated to a branch of Hasidic Judaism. In 1997 he performed before Pope John Paul II. Who or what is Bob Dylan, indeed! Today is his 65th birthday. But at the age of 22, when he wrote the following about the cost of struggle, he showed that he was a witness, a poet and a man of deep conscience: I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest, Where the people are many and their hands are all empty, Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters, Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison, Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden, Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten, Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’, But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’, And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall. |
|
|
25.5.06 17:08 |
|
|
Freeflux.net
If anyone is interested, you can go over to freeflux.net and sign up for a CMS. Now don't tell me you don't know what a CMS is. It's like all those other things like mySql or php or drupal or any number of strange-sounding things that were only ever invented to make the common person feel like an idiot. It's a content management system'. When something says I can sign up for it and it's wonderful and it's FREE, I don't waste any time. I'm over >>here on it, and you will know, because of course it's bright green. I have also made a gravatar. Now don't tell me you don't know what a gravatar is! (like I didn't) It's a wee pic that follows you around the net wherever you sign in. If you comment on someone's blog, your wee gravatar shows up too. Then of course, all over the net, people can see you coming, and they say, oh god, there is that annoying Fiona and her stupid gravatar again! I also have made a friend at Freeflux named 'chegru' who helped me sort out a lot of stuff I couldn't understand. I'm sure he was one of the first to think the phrase 'annoying Fiona' over there. The site is in 2 different languages as well. I still don't have the hang of most of it, but it's been fun playing with it. I'm positive that now that I have a CMS, my life will get sorted and be in perfect order. I'm sure that's what was missing from my existence heretofore. Now that my content is managed, all I will have to worry about is getting some actual...content, but as we all know, this has always been a problem. But at least now I will be managed! |
|
|
26.5.06 05:44 |
|
[next page]
 |
| Admin |
| 20six front page |
Blogroll of favourites  |
| >>fuise<< |
 |
| Search 20six |
| Belfast weather pixie |
| email me |
 |
| 20six news |
Category:
| my gaff |
Design & © by
freiken douhl