Greg Daly

Probably not. People can rationalise away anything.

Very reasonable behaviour by The Lord in the first reading at Mass today, persuaded as he is by Abraham that just people shouldn’t be killed alongside sinners, and saying he won’t wipe out whole cities if there are even ten good people there. I feel there might be a lesson worth heeding in this.

It probably depends on which tiny Irish woman.

Not a bad day. Superb, challenging homily at Mass. Glorious weather with boats on the Boyne. Cinematic temptations resisted and enjoyed. Gentle afternoon views over the river. And an absolutely stunning book - a heartbreaking, heartwarming, imprecatory psalm of a book - finished.

I have long thought the Rock would be a solid and appropriate choice for Peter.

Happy birthday, you!

Useful passage that. Would that it weren’t so.

They forget and suppress their own actions in Ireland and use Ireland as a blank slate on which to protect their own failings.

Ignorance is rife: I’ve seen Nick Cohen share an article he wrote a few years ago claiming the last pogrom in these islands wasn’t in the Middle Ages, but was in Limerick in 1904, ignoring those in several British cities in 1947: www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2... and www.thejc.com/news/propose...

Today I learned that a dear friend and the best lecturer I’ve ever had has died: rip.ie/death-notice... Vic Connerty shaped me as he did countless others, and regular coffee and other meetings with him over the decades since his retirement was always a joy. The world is so much poorer now. RIP.

We’ll do that. It had been the plan today but we didn’t get round to it. There’s an exhibition on too there about the tail end of World War Two.

Wise words here, well worth keeping in mind: “Today we are felled by destiny - tomorrow this could be your destiny.”

I’ve consistently felt a popular library of this stuff - like a kind of Penguin Classics set - could help bolster genuine historical understanding, serious evangelisation, and the sustaining of a healthy national identity that people can embrace.

Settling in for an evening at the (amphi)theatre. Looking forward to the gladiators most of all.

It’s my own giant bumper fun anthology of fifteen centuries of Irish Catholic writing, stitched together from loads of books and articles. I’ve done a *lot* of transcribing! I had an idea once when I was in publishing about building a modern popular library of this, but, well… life.

I’ve enjoyed reading their texts of late - among others, and in a general immersion into Irish Catholic writing over the centuries. It’s amazing how much is out there, but bizarrely not in popular editions. And yes: it’s very much neither Pagan nor Protestant!

That’s particularly good. “Beware the invading hordes of Muslims” seems to be the line being taken.

This is a remarkably agile article, leaping as it does with aplomb from one false premise to another and another and another, nonchalantly pirouetting on points of logic to argue two contrary things simultaneously. It’s a case study on how it’s worth reading slowly with a pen in your hand.

Right, so. Enough of this madness. Avanti!

My dad’s not much of a man for Father’s Day stuff - he deems it nonsense - but still, days like today are useful occasions to underline how lucky we are to have had him all these years.

Why do you think Tolkien was the founder of a genre, though? Lord Dunsany and E.R. Eddison were doing the same sort of stuff in the early 1920s. I’m not saying he’s not better than them, but they were definitely ahead of him time wise.

Heaven.

What’s wrong, hon? You’ve hardly touched your souvenir traditional Irish gummy eggs.

Well, yes: there’s only so much paper in the world, after all.

That’s how it works. Honestly, I think my favourite bit about my master’s, and the book that came out of it, was writing the acknowledgements.

Took a selfie on the way to work this morning. It felt appropriate.

@mariafarrell.bsky.social I keep thinking of questions I want to bore you with. But for now, here’s one, if I may. Any tips of how to extricate ourselves from the AI aspects of our online lives? It seems harder and harder to use anything now without “suggestions” on how to improve it.

I still miss Google Reader. But surely all of this should have us thinking that cloud computing etc is bunk, and anything we want to keep we should have stored in wt least two very different places.

Enjoyed my pre-work stroll this morning. The birds seemed to be having a good time.