Sunbelt Celt

Ancient Celtic kings and dancing fairies protect this blog and all who read it.

[theparisreview]

“When I finish a sentence, after much labor, it’s finished. A certain point comes at which you can’t do any more work on it because you know it will kill the sentence.”

—John Banville

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

The life and works of Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh are to be celebrated during a two-week festival in his home city. Theatre, music and exhibitions will feature in the inaugural Creative Mackintosh Festival, which runs in Glasgow from 15 to 28 October.

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Allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in the Scottish independence referendum will not lead to them voting in all UK elections, the UK government has said. Westminster appears to have conceded the measure to ensure there is a deal with the Scottish government for a simple yes or no question in 2014. ... It is likely to be held in the autumn of 2014 with voters given a straight choice between independence or remaining in the United Kingdom. It is also expected that 16- and 17-year-olds will be allowed to take part in the ballot.

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Scottish Premier League chief executive Neil Doncaster believes member clubs have "adapted remarkably well" to Rangers' absence from the top flight.

Rangers were relaunched by a new company after the former incarnation could not be saved from liquidation.

The club was subsequently placed in Division Three, making SPL season 2012-13 the first without Rangers.

"We've had to re-invent ourselves but that's happened pretty quickly and clubs have adapted," said Doncaster.

Seems a bit unlikely but perhaps true.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

Emigration from Ireland increased by 8 percent in the year to April, with almost 250 mostly young people a day leaving a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe. Ireland's long and painful history of emigration, from the million or so who left during the Great Famine of the 1800s to those who escaped recession in the 1980s, has added a fresh chapter since the financial crisis that triggered an EU/IMF bailout almost two years ago. The number of departures in the 12 months to April rose to 87,100 from 80,600 a year earlier, the Central Statistics Office said on its website on Thursday, meaning almost two percent of the population left the country. The emigration rate was almost four times higher than during the "Celtic Tiger" boom years of the 2000s.

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ICTU assistant general secretary Peter Bunting said: "The right to free assembly is precious and essential for all citizens, one that the trade union movement both supports and enjoys, as we will be marching next month against the austerity measures of the Westminster Government.

"It is a fact that most inter-communal conflict affects working class areas and involves working class communities. Appreciative of the sensitivities of the main communities on how they view parading, it is crucial to remember that we have more in common in these times of economic depressions than we have in difference."

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

Standing before a green screen and slideshows depicting images of Ireland, the Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore launched The Gathering Ireland 2013 in New York last night. “There’s probably nowhere more appropriate to launch this event,” he told an audience of about 400 at the Consulate General of Ireland in New York. The Gathering Ireland is an initiative to bring diaspora across the world together – and hopefully back to Ireland. Billed as “a spectacular, year-long celebration of all things Irish,” it is an open invitation to visit home (there is also an artistic aspect – the Gathering sponsors cultural events such as Irish Film New York and the First Irish Theatre Festival). Mr Gilmore explained the sentiment behind it. “I know that my own family, very often we get together on sad occasions. One of the things that people talk about is that ‘Wouldn’t it be great to get together on a happier occasion?’”

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

Chelsea captain John Terry has been been hit with a four-match ban and a $356,000 fine after being found guilty of racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand. The incident occurred during Chelsea's English Premier League game against London rivals Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road last October. In July the 31-year-old had been found not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence at Westminster Magistrates' Court. But the FA requires a lower burden of proof than an English court and after four-day hearing the Chelsea skipper was found guilty "with using abusive and/or insulting words and/or behavior towards" Ferdinand.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

In the prologue to this book, Alasdair Gray, a celebrated author who describes himself as "an elderly Glasgow pedestrian," writes:

I am the descendant of a race whose stolid unimaginative decency has, at all times, rendered them the dependable tools of others; yet from my earliest infancy I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, a prey to the most ungovernable passions until bound and weary I thought best to sulk upon my mother's breast. Too romantic.

His most famous books are "Lanark" (1981) and "Poor Things" (1992). The jacket for this book, published in New York by Harcourt Brace in 1993, includes only two blurbs:

One from Newsweek describes Gray as "a glorious one-man band." The other, from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says he "may be the most interesting and extraordinary author writing in English today."

I leave you with only one other quotation from Gray in this book:

"Whatever the future of the human race it is not likely to dispense with dentists."

Having gone to the dentist yesterday and now facing a return visit on Monday, I have to believe that Alasdair Gray is a very wise, even prescient, man.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

Jonny Lee Miller, whom some will remember from "Trainspotting," being interviewed by David Letterman about the new television show "Elementary," based on the Sherlock Holmes saga.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

David Cameron’s decision to brave one of America’s most-watched chat shows left the Prime Minister red-faced as he struggled to answer David Letterman’s questions about British history. The Prime Minister was caught out on the Late Show when Mr Letterman asked him to name the author of Rule Britannia and he answered incorrectly. He also failed to explain the meaning of “Magna Carta”. After his errors, Mr Cameron - educated at Eton and Oxford - joked: “That is bad, I have ended my career on your show tonight.” Mr Cameron also faced jibes about his social background and public school accent and admitted he is “not very popular at the moment.”

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Archaeologists working at the site of the world's most northerly Roman fort may have found the remains of a key location in Scottish history. The team at Stracathro believe they may have discovered the church where John Balliol abdicated his throne to Edward I in 1296. Medieval ruins were found near a roman fort on the Gask Frontier in Angus. Balliol's ceremonial disrobing has been described as one of the saddest hours in Scottish history.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

Amid Curiosity's latest adventures — getting its wheels dirty, extending its robotic arm to grab hold of a rock — back on Earth, Glenelg, Scotland, is doing some celebrating. The rover is currently making its way toward the tiny hamlet's Martian namesake, Glenelg, Mars. Folks in Glenelg (note the palindrome) were thrilled to hear that a piece of Martian soil would be named after their town, population "less than 300," area development officer Emma Maclean told the Los Angeles Times. Consequently, a party is in the works, and they have lured a NASA astronaut with Scottish roots to help them mark the occasion. "This does not happen to us everyday!" Maclean said by email Tuesday. "We are hosting a party to mark the occasion and plan to have Bonnie Dunbar unveil an interpretational astronomical-themed sign for our community, 'Twinned with MARS.' " Dunbar, whose paternal grandparents hailed from Scotland, has taken part in five space flights, according to NASA, and logged more than 1,208 hours in space.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

For the Irish, the collapse of a housing bubble in 2008 brought on a deep recession, toppled the government and introduced international financial control. The crisis has touched almost every aspect of daily life — even the pub. Found almost anyplace in the world where glasses are lifted, the Irish pub is this nation's most famous export and, according to the Lonely Planet travel guide, its No. 1 tourist attraction. But the recession along with a confluence of other changes threaten the pub's venerable monopoly on Irish social life. The pub's woes predate the euro crisis. Irish bar sales have dropped by about 25% over the past decade — 5% last year alone — and the number of pubs has fallen from more than 10,000 to 8,300.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

JK ROWLING, the author of the Harry Potter novels, has criticised the growing gulf of inequality in modern Britain on the eve of the publication of her new novel. The world’s wealthiest ­author, who began her career as an unemployed single mother writing in Edinburgh cafes, criticised politicians’ inability to appreciate the many reasons behind poverty in Britain today. Rowling, whose books have sold more than 450 million copies, said the theme of new crime novel, The Casual Vacancy, which she started writing five years ago and which tackles rural poverty, has become more relevant since the election of the coalition government and the cuts in social security benefits.

[sunbeltcelt-blog]

Harry Chambers, who has died aged 75, was the founder and director of the publisher Peterloo Poets, and described by his friend Seamus Heaney as being one of the great "hearers and hearteners" of British and Irish poetry.