| Author | Message | ||
     Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7186 Registered: 05-2005 |
Peter Bagge - Sweatshop | ||
| Lewisdhead Member Username: Lewisdhead Post Number: 129 Registered: 01-2007 |
Just read To Kill A Mockingbird. I guess with all the talk of a new Harper Lee novel, it spurred me on to reading it. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3469 Registered: 03-2005 |
Lewisdhead, if you haven't already I recommend you see the film with Gregory Peck. It's truly one of the greatest U.S. films of all time and probably one of the most successful cinematic interpretations of a novel. | ||
| Lewisdhead Member Username: Lewisdhead Post Number: 130 Registered: 01-2007 |
I have Randy,and I agree it is splendid. Thanks. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7200 Registered: 05-2005 |
I'll also vote for To Kill A Mockingbird, both book and film. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7203 Registered: 05-2005 |
I just got given Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7221 Registered: 05-2005 |
Costello’s 500. Elvis picks his favourite records. http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2000/1 1/elvis-costello-500-favorite-albums | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7226 Registered: 05-2005 |
Very interesting article about human evolution. http://www.bbc.com/earth/bespoke/story/2 0150311-the-15-tweaks-that-made-us-human /index.html | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7239 Registered: 05-2005 |
Courtney Barnett interview in the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/15/arts/m usic/courtney-barnett-prepares-her-debut -album.html?emc=edit_th_20150315&nl=toda ysheadlines&nlid=33795071&_r=0 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7246 Registered: 05-2005 |
Adrian McKinty - Gun Street Girl | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 966 Registered: 04-2005 |
Interesting piece about the origins of "Astral Weeks" http://www.bostonmagazine.com/arts-enter tainment/article/2015/03/24/van-morrison -astral-weeks/ I think I first heard that record in 1980 and I can still hear new things in it today. A wonderful recording. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 974 Registered: 04-2005 |
Michael Nimmo - Around Serie A in 20 Days A self published account of Italian football by the son of some Scottish friends. Very entertaining and also very informative about Italian society in general. Details http://www.michaelnimmo.com/ I found myself back in 2004 (?) in the café in our French village, with Michael and a friend (both sporting Scotland tops) watching France beat England. There was an Irish family cheering for France too and the locals were completely baffled as to why all these English speakers were supporting France. A.B.E. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3489 Registered: 03-2005 |
Taking advantage of the fact that my new digs allows more bookcases, I've been on a tear buying books. I'm partly replacing old softcovers with hardcovers--it's amazing how cheap some first edition HC's are!--and also exploring seams of pre-existing interest. There's quite a heap on my living room coffee table and I seem to keep buying faster than I can read them. I finished reading Richard Wright's "Native Son" a couple weeks back. I'd always overlooked it assuming that it would be a relatively namby pamby parable for social justice. Wrong! It's quite a daring masterwork. Until I settled into its vibe I could only read about 15 pages in a sitting as it careened from one disaster to the next. Currently I'm reading Stephen Spender's Journals 1939 - 1983. Very smoking jacket. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7336 Registered: 05-2005 |
A fascinating article on California governor Jerry Brown and his father. I had no idea Brown senior had also been governor. Some of the stuff about the father's time in office sounds like it inspired the script for Chinatown. Randy, if you haven't already seen this, you need to read it. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/jer ry-browns-arid-california-thanks-partly- to-his-father.html?_r=0 | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3505 Registered: 03-2005 |
Yes, Padraig, the Browns are an old California family. Pat Brown is remembered as a great builder of the state's infrastructure: a classic "can-do" guy. The Republicans beat him the same way they knocked out Gray Davis a generation later: they ran a movie star as candidate. The NYT loves a nice easy narrative so they wrote this article. It's simplistic and silly. In percentage terms, California had been growing incredibly fast since the beginning of the 20th Century. The population doubled from 1920 to 1940. It doubled again from 1940 to 1960. Chinatown, of course, is set during those earlier decades of growth. Pat Brown was elected in 1958, near the end of this period. Obviously he was going to be busy investing to catch up with this growth. People were tired of the old cities in colder climates. They were also tired of what they perceived to be hidebound social and economic networks offering limited opportunity. And California has a massively long coastline; proximity to the ocean has always been attractive everywhere. People poured out of the older East into California. Since they were citizens of the same nation there was no question of stopping them. And the state IS physically large; it didn't seem such a stretch to take in all these people. Today, it's the suburban sprawl that's the problem rather than the population. Yes, even with the drought, California can accommodate its almost 40 million people but they must be pulled into tighter living formations and resource use must be modernized--which means more efficient. In the funny way things work, this is tending to happen organically with a younger generation relatively uninterested in their parents' suburban lifestyles. Urban populations use far less water per capita than suburban or agricultural populations. The real story is the dramatic difference in perspective of the two generations. Both of them are pre-Post WWII Baby Boom. Jerry Brown was honestly a bit ahead of his time in the 1970s. That's why he was the only person to consider electing when the global economic meltdown happened. He's a good choice for the drought also. While he was controversial in the 70's, in spite of his advanced age he is universally approved in this state now. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7337 Registered: 05-2005 |
Thanks, Randy. You broader perspective is appreciated. I must read more about that whole era. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 985 Registered: 04-2005 |
Raymond Carver - The Stories of Raymond Carver His 3 collections of short stories in one volume. I come back to it every 5 years or so and never fail to be moved by his writing. And also always find something new in it. A quote on the back sums it up best : "Carver's fiction is so spare in manner that it takes a time before one realizes how completely a whole culture and a whole moral condition is represented by even the most seemingly slight sketch..." | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1150 Registered: 10-2006 |
Nicholson Baker - the Anthologist & Travelling sprinkler I have always avoided Nicholson Baker: reviews just made him sound too damn prissily clever clever for my liking. But the Anthologist & its sequel turned out to be great fun, especially if you are around the same mid-50s age as the writer - some of the references made me laugh out loud just by themselves - and love poetry and music – there’s a lot of stuff you’ll be checking up on as you read. I didn’t think I’d find another excuse to watch the Bourne Identity, for instance, but comments on the soundtrack here have made this absolutely essential.Narrator Paul Chowder is great company, a mixture of lyricism, whimsy, ineffectuality and ambition, a little bit irritating in the way some people you're fond of can be: Anthologist is mainly his worries over an introduction to a poetry anthology he has to write and whether he can win back his ex-girlfriend, Sprinkler his worries over drone warfare and whether he can win back his ex-girlfriend. Lots of interesting ponderings over the nature of rhyme, song, computer-based music composition and the exotic world of American foodstuffs. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7345 Registered: 05-2005 |
Sounds very interesting, Stuart. I got his debut, The Mezzanine, when it came out in 1988 and loved it. But the follow up got some pretty harsh reviews, so I've never read anything by him since. Maybe it's time to get reacquainted. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7346 Registered: 05-2005 |
Just saw your review on Amazon, Stuart. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1151 Registered: 10-2006 |
Just finished Sprinkler and have that sad empty feeling you get when a good book has gone out of your life and you've no idea what you can read next... | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7348 Registered: 05-2005 |
My tuppenceworth on today's marriage equality referendum in Ireland. http://www.irishecho.com.au/2015/05/22/y es-vote-will-confirm-how-irelands-change d/34592 | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7358 Registered: 05-2005 |
Sepp Blatter resigns. Music to my football loving ears. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 259 Registered: 08-2005 |
Ditto re Sepp (not sure it fits in this thread, but hey!). Not that I'm too hopeful about his replacement. Sports bodies really are nest of vipers: FIFA, the IOC, the UCI (cycling's governing body), the list goes on... I've just finished reading Benjamin's Black 'A Death in April'. I'm a big fan of noir/crime fiction, and his books are an odd part of the genre; sometimes slim, character-based plots but he's a very good writer (as John Banville he's won numerous literary awards, including the Man Booker). | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7360 Registered: 05-2005 |
An article in the Guardian some of you might enjoy. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree /2015/jun/04/when-it-comes-to-smearing-t he-irish-australia-is-the-worlds-serial- offender | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7364 Registered: 05-2005 |
Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, vote rigging and ticket scandal, by Andrew Jennings. I've had this book for years, but am finally reading it now everything Jennings wrote about has been borne out in the past two weeks. I imagine the book will start reappearing in book shops as soon any time now. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1164 Registered: 08-2004 |
That sounds like a hefty tome, Padraig. One worth a new edition in years to come. I'm reading: The Trials & Triumphs Of Les Dawson by Louis Barfe. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 278 Registered: 08-2005 |
FIFA? Corrupt? Hard to believe... I'm presently rereading the Matt Scudder novels of Lawrence Block. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7445 Registered: 05-2005 |
A Guardian article involving 20% of the regulars on this board. http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/a ug/25/sydney-australia-bike-lane-skeptic -cycling-duncan-gay-cycleways | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1168 Registered: 08-2004 |
'Turned Out Nice Again - The Story Of British Light Entertainment' by Louis Barfe. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 288 Registered: 08-2005 |
Not at all biased then, Pádraig?! That British cycling journo knows his stuff!! | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7451 Registered: 05-2005 |
He does! | ||
| C Gull Member Username: C_gull Post Number: 298 Registered: 05-2005 |
Just finished David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. Like many others I loved Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, I struggled with Jacob De Zoet and have not got round to Black Swan Green yet. This seems like a real return to form for me - a fantastic read except...not sure about the sci fi/fantasy chapter but the rest of it was outstanding. Anyone else read it? Now onto David Nicholls ' Us. Hits more than a few raw nerves but is also hilarious. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7517 Registered: 05-2005 |
Those We Left Behind by Stuart Neville. | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 300 Registered: 08-2005 |
Georges Simenon's The Madman of Bergerac. Odd. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3577 Registered: 03-2005 |
Stuart Wilson's Amazon review of Dominique A's "Vers les Lueurs". I was poking around, looking for affordable vinyl copies of albums I love and stumbled onto this: "First, if you're not sure about buying this album, check out the video of Rendez-nous la lumiere on Youtube. If you don't like that, throw yourself off the nearest tall building because, really, you're already comotose, my dear. Dominique is the freshest, most prolific talent on the French scene at the moment, with a touch for melody and imagination which many artists would give their right hand for. Here the instrumentation is a stunningly intoxicating mix of wind quintet and guitars offering a truly absorbing palate of tonal colours. Ok, the lyrics are in French, but with a bit of high school learning and Word reference nothing that you can't surmount. His voice is a pitch-perfect tenor that should enrapture even the most obstinate. Oh for god's sake, just buy it, ok? There was Brel, there was Gainsbourg, there was Bashung, and now there's, er, A. He's a genial genius, the French Morrissey perhaps - "Tous les jours c'est dimanche" - but with his own Johnny Marr fortunately incorporated. Album of the year already, and it's in French. Live with it. It's glorious." Much delighted laughter. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1218 Registered: 10-2006 |
Ha ha! Well, I'm glad somebody reads them...I have also wordily reviewed the complete works of Focus & Jan Akkerman, but I suspect, Randy, these you will never get around to! | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1219 Registered: 10-2006 |
Karl Ove Knausgaard - A death in the family Every damn literary article I poke my nose into these days, the chap Knausgaard and his six volume autobiographical epic pops up: half-way through book one, not so much textured Proustian meditation on time, death & memory (though that creeps in here and there) as the fairly straightforward recounting of the teenage Karl Ove, proving that adolescent life on the southern coast of Norway not so different from east coast Scotland: the long search for a hip New Year party to get invited to, the desperate obtaining & hiding of alcohol, the long hike through biting snow and sleet & then ending up in the wrong place with a bunch of boring geeks and the girl you really wanted to be there somewhere much cooler… in the background, familiar family tensions, scrappy attempts at getting a group together, a devoted soundtrack of 80s music with some (unfamiliar) Norwegian entries that will be fun to check out. And, good lord, he’s just bought Genet’s the Thief’s Journal… | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7541 Registered: 05-2005 |
I'm reading about the atrocities in Paris and hoping none of our regulars or their families or friends were in the affected cafes, at the football stadium or at the concert. Beyond that I'm lost for words. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 1039 Registered: 04-2005 |
Me too Pádraig. And the truly scary thing is that it is not possible to see a solution (short term or long term) to these insane fanatics. I went to see a showing of the film 'Timbuktu' two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, which was presented by an expert on the Arab world. He said that these jihadists have absolutely nothing positive or constructive to offer or say. Everything is based on negation and banning of activities. I honestly cannot begin to understand what goes on in the head of someone that is prepared to carry out such an act. To convince yourself that to slaughter people like that is a brave action ? That your god will be happy ? The words of Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris "What happened last night goes beyond anything we could have imagined, such is the horror. The targets are places we love, in this popular and open city of Paris which is happy to share the world’s culture because Paris is a city strengthened by its diversity. It is this Paris which has been targeted because this model of togetherness is unbearable for fanatics, for those who want to reduce all humanity to silence. The message that we want to give them, alongside other politicians, is that we will be stronger than those who would to reduce us to silence. We love to debate, we love to disagree, that’s democracy." | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3578 Registered: 03-2005 |
Thanks for the Anne Hidalgo quote Andrew. I had my little moment of reactionary anger when first reading about the attacks yesterday. I'm over it and Mme Hidalgo's statement sums it up better than anything I've yet read elsewhere. Paris is a stunningly beautiful and well-managed city of course. But for me the essential point of Paris is its diversity. The city has been a major crossroads of culture for at least a couple centuries and at times was THE crossroads of culture. If we were to suddenly eliminate all of the artistic, cultural and technological achievements that first bloomed in Paris we'd be pretty shocked at the result. This only happens in an environment of diversity, complete with its inevitable friction. Mme. Hidalgo's comment is exactly on target. The mayor of Paris is named Anne Hidalgo! Whatever you might think of him, the previous President is named Nicholas Sarkozy. Paris and France in general are all about the strength of combination. Nowadays I think of my "home" cities in Europe as Paris and London. This is mostly because of their diversity (though the handy Eurostar link doesn't hurt). I never feel as at ease in places with more homogenous populations. It wasn't always so. When I moved from my nowhereville small city in central California to Los Angeles to attend university I was decidedly disconcerted by the huge immigrant populations here. I remember being pretty xenophobic for at least my first half decade here if not longer. But something happened over my 37 years so far as a Los Angeleno. The influxes of Armenians, Iranians, Koreans, Filipinos, Russians and other former Soviets, Chinese, Indians & Pakistanis and, of course, Central Americans, and our now nearly indigenous descendants of the African diaspora simply became the normal attributes of home. At times there are definite tensions and conflicts but there's also undeniable dynamism. I wouldn't trade it away for anything. So Paris and London feel like homes away from home to me. That very thing that makes them particularly easy targets for terrorists is what makes them most attractive. I usually stay in east London. In Paris I always stay on the Right Bank and am sure to hoof it up to Belleville. All of these places are gentrifying pretty aggressively now and I suppose I'm a minuscule part of it simply by going there but it's that stirred-up thing that draws me. I assume that the people still bogged down in their own xenophobia--or at least disoriented by this dynamic world--will be clamoring on both sides of the Channel for a shutdown of immigration. I know folks of that sort in the States will intensify their resistance to the U.S. inviting refugees from the middle east here, even though my country is obviously to blame for triggering much of what has set these hordes of refugees in flight. I hope they get over that soon. We need to double down on our modern 21st Century culture of diversity and inclusion. Rant over. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7550 Registered: 05-2005 |
Very interesting article about why blue states are turning red. It's more complicated than other theses have it. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/opinio n/sunday/who-turned-my-blue-state-red.ht ml?emc=edit_th_20151122&nl=todaysheadlin es&nlid=33795071&_r=0 | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1178 Registered: 08-2004 |
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind | ||
| Simon Withers Member Username: Sfwithers Post Number: 317 Registered: 08-2005 |
Re-reading the 10 Martin Beck novels of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö. Superb. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3586 Registered: 03-2005 |
Graham Nash -- Wild Tales Reading this book really makes me eager to read Robert's book when it's finished. Robert is university-educated and can write. Graham Nash? Well, he can write a song. Sometimes I can't help cringing when he uses painfully dated expressions. A ghostwriter or strong editor would have cut a lot of them out. I'm still in the first third when he's in the Hollies which is the reason I bought the book in the first place. I do appreciate that Graham waited long enough to write the book to have recovered balance in his viewpoint. He no longer needs to distance himself from their uncool image and is able to celebrate their virtues, including those of lead guitarist Tony Hicks who was probably Nash' chief obstacle in his efforts to pull the Hollies away from their hit machine career. As he moves into his American years it'll get really challenging for me. I've never at any time had much patience for the Woodstock-era mentality; it was so utterly lacking in genuine introspection or intellectual rigor. In this respect I think I benefit from being a gay man. Way back then, when I was only 12 or 13 I already knew instinctively that these folks' liberal postures were shallow and unprincipled. I knew that when it came to my kind they'd all turn and say "well, not YOU pal." And that's largely exactly how it played out. One of the Laurel Canyon music set's favorite West Hollywood hangouts just off Santa Monica Boulevard, Barney's Beanery, famously posted the sign "fagots stay out." Misspelled, natch. But the hardest thing of all for me will be enduring Nash's adoration of David Crosby, who can never be forgiven for his efforts to drive the incomparably superior Gene Clark from the Byrds. | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1232 Registered: 10-2006 |
David Cavanagh - Good night & good riddance A surprise Christmas present which demonstrates that the wife actually listens to me sometimes when I'm prattling on about musical details she has absolutely no interest in. A sort of alternative history of Britain through 35 years of John Peel shows, vividly and wittily described. I am trying to pinpoint the first one I might have heard, not easy, having till then listened mainly to Bob Harris and thinking, rightly, that Peel played too much weird stuff. But at some point the weird stuff must have got more interesting, along with Peel's bolshier attitude and sly wit. April 30 1974 sounds a pretty good bet though. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7601 Registered: 05-2005 |
Those we left behind by Stuart Neville. I started it weeks ago but didn't take it on my recent trip as it's a hardback and I was trying to travel light. I picked it up again last night and read about a hundred pages. His descriptions of simple things and actions is superb, but that wouldn't matter if the plot didn't stand up. It does. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7650 Registered: 05-2005 |
The hunt for Ratko Mladić http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/ja n/21/14-years-fugitive-hunt-for-ratko-ml adic-butcher-of-bosnia | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7651 Registered: 05-2005 |
That was supposed to say Ratko Mladic. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7656 Registered: 05-2005 |
Adrian McKinty – Rain Dogs | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 1252 Registered: 10-2006 |
Dennis O’Driscoll – Stepping stones (interviews with Seamus Heaney) As a young man I carried Field Work around with me like a sort of talisman, hoping perhaps that some of its magic might somehow seep across into my own notebooks leant up against it. This is a kind of oral autobiography, very suitable for a man who talks so well. Many great poets have been a long way from being fine as people, but here, as his reputation suggests, Heaney comes across as both. Delivered at a very reasonable price from Kenny’s bookshop in Galway, which I hope to visit one day. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1180 Registered: 08-2004 |
The KLF: Chaos, Magic And The Band That Burned A Million Pounds by John Higgs. The first of 3 olde fashioned analogue books I happily received for Xmas. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7681 Registered: 05-2005 |
Very interesting New York Times piece on how our brain responds to music. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/scienc e/new-ways-into-the-brains-music-room.ht ml?emc=edit_th_20160209&nl=todaysheadlin es&nlid=33795071&_r=0 | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 1185 Registered: 08-2004 |
The Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson Also looking at this: http://www.fredperry.com/subculture/arti cle-lost-destination?utm_source=Twitter& utm_medium=Subculture%20Social&utm_campa ign=Lost%20Destination | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3628 Registered: 03-2005 |
The news today. Jean (TROU) I'm thinking of you. I am thinking of all of you over there in your respective countries and how you must manage the conflicting responses and reactions to this challenge. My personal hope is that it draws all of you closer together but I know how difficult human nature can be. (Look at the campaigns going on in my country.) It is clear that my upcoming visit with its April 7 Dominique A concert in Paris will carry a symbolic weight it would not otherwise have. | ||
| TROU Member Username: Trou Post Number: 386 Registered: 05-2005 |
Hello, thanks for the comment Randy. I was in Brussels the day before the events for the Natalie Merchant concert. I stayed the night there because I had to pick up my girlfriend coming back from Vietnam early morning at the airport. Luckily, she was delayed, due to a control of her bags at the customs. That's when the two bombs exploded on the floor above us (the departures one. The first one I thought it was a plane that crashed the airport. The second explosion, some seconds after, was so powerful that it destroyed everything 20-30 meters from me. At this time everybody understood it was isis. There was a panic and everyone dispersed and runned away outside the building , there could have been a third bomb... I phoned to Kim, she was in tears with her relatives, but alive in a safe place with the customers. I think her delay could have saved us because we would have eventualy been for a coffie where it exploded. There was an incredible chaos with heavely wounded persons brought to the numerous ambulances. All the time I had the feeling that all these things were not for real. When I saw the first photos of the hall of departures, I couldn't believe it. I used to joke and say that this place is my favorite of Belgium, because it means travel, holidays,.. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7731 Registered: 05-2005 |
Jean, what an escape you and Kim and her relatives had. Thank you for giving us a first hand account of how ordinary lives are affected and shattered by these vile, murdering bastards. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 3629 Registered: 03-2005 |
Jean, I'm shocked to learn that you were actually at the airport at that time! You were indeed very fortunate. Like you I associate the chaos upon entering an airport's departure area with adventure. On this trip I suppose I will have to contend with a background consciousness every time I find myself in a big transportation hub like Liverpool Street or King's Cross/St. Pancras in London or Gare du Nord or CDG in Paris that I'm turning it over to the fates. Of course we're always turning it over to the fates each day we go out and about in our lives but this does bring it into sharper focus. On one level I wish I could understand the mentality of people who blow themselves up in order to disrupt a stable community. On the other hand I suppose if I could understand it I would go out of my mind, like these people have done. | ||
| Pádraig Collins Member Username: Pádraig_collins Post Number: 7737 Registered: 05-2005 |
A brilliant poem called Refugees. Read it both ways. http://brianbilston.com |