Ibuki Taiko

Specials album cover: seven suited men look up at the camera

46th anniversary this weekend.

It is just the worst!!

"Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat to at any time and be yourself."
~ Hermann Hesse

Ocean Meadow Cottage
🎨 Jo Grundy

A beautiful way to end the day...

• Seamus Heaney •

Screenshot of the first two questions in the survey - there's only six to answer. #SpéirGorm #SpéirGhorm #Ireland #Art

There's a REALLY quick and easy survey for the public consultation on the Basic Income for the Arts scheme - it only takes a few seconds, anyone can fill it in, and it could make a huge difference to arts workers in Ireland. Take a few ticks to places a few ticks here: ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/run...

Here is a letter from E.B. White to a man who wrote to him in despair over the bleakness of the human race. I've been thinking about this lately, so I thought I'd share it.

Mary Oliver:

Take a moment, and read...

• Norman MacCaig •

Rounding off the month with...

"Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Sunset on the Coast
🎨 Frederick Judd Waugh

The swifts are departing...

• Edward Thomas •

"Time flows in a strange way on Sundays."
~ Haruki Murakami

The Thames with Hampton Church
🎨 Alfred Sisley (1874)

O'Donnell saves choking woman at Dublin restaurant American comedian and actress Rosie O'Donnell has shared how she sprang into action to assist "a 90-year-old woman" who started choking during dinner in Dublin.

Well, Rosie has already become a hero in Ireland | Rosie O'Donnell saves choking woman at Dublin restaurant

Love this

Breathe in, breathe out...

In the @irishtimes.com magazine today!! So proud of everyone on this class project, Taiko For Carers is the best!

No need, no need for that carry on

At the end of the day, don’t we all just want to read books, drink tea, and eat pastries in a humble seaside cottage during a raging storm?

Ezra Collective are class!!! #glastonbury

This morning marked the final session (for now!) of our Taiko for Carers group, supported by @radiushousing

We were also delighted to be joined by journalist Jeannanne Craig, who is writing a piece about this wonderful group of people. We look forward to sharing it soon.

#taikolove #TaikoForCarers

Austria took the stigma out of social housing. Here's what Canada could learn | CBC News While Europe struggles with similar trends to Canada of rising rents and skyrocketing home prices, experts say social housing models like Austria’s are among the best defence against a growing afforda...

We should be doing this here.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/e...

Dad raised 11 kids alone. How will I cope with one? | Séamas O'Reilly Séamas O’Reilly’s father brought up a huge brood of children on his own. He also built their house and filled it with love, laughter and DIY catalogues. So how does that make Séamas feel now that he’s...

This week marks 7 years of my weekly parenting column.

I got the gig from this Father's Day piece I wrote, 2 weeks before my son was born.

It's about my dad, who brought up 11 kids by himself after my mum died. I promise it's funnier than that makes it sound.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Those Winter Sundays Sundays too my father got up early and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, then with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. When the rooms were warm, he’d call, and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, speaking indifferently to him, who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices? —Robert Hayden

Perhaps the ultimate poem for Father's Day—

No words

The majority of protests were without incident and ALL were peaceful. This BS in Los Angeles. Why do the police keep starting $H!T in LA! #nokings #protests #arresttrump #arrestrepublicans #losangeles

Bridget with The Beatles on Abbey Road.

Bridget hanging out in Grant Wood's American Gothic.

Bridget in Bruegel's Hunters In The Snow (with a freshly caught mouse).

The Cat With The Pearl Earring.

A little while ago, my parents' cat Bridget went missing. As the weeks dragged on, they became extremely worried. My dad devised a way to distract himself: he began to paint Bridget's adventures, imagining her travelling through time and popping up in some of art and music's most iconic scenes.

Séamas O’Reilly: Ballymena violence is the result of politics based on scapegoating any ‘other’ "The central perversity of treating these people as anything other than racist thugs is only more transparent in Ballymena because they have so few migrants that any other excuse is patently absurd."

Referring to events in Ballymena as "disturbances" is a euphemism too far. We are witnesses to a pogrom. And it behoves us to say so, loud and clear.

www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle-co...

It’s worth pointing out that bombing a people into changing their minds doesn’t work. It didn’t for London in the Blitz etc. All it does is give dissenters a common enemy, & ensures more & more children die. Brave ppl talk, cowards bomb. Children suffer.

Tonight I’m thinking of scared kids. Peace❤️

In celebration of Father’s Day, Faber has chosen Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Digging’ as this week’s Poem of the Week! 🎉

Read the full poem here > tinyurl.com/4avdzss8

#SeamusHeaney #DeathOfANaturalist #FathersDay

@faberbooks.bsky.social