I thought it fitting to take a moment this Easter Sunday to remember three noted poets who gave their life in a struggle against British rule. Patrick Pearse (Pádraic Anraà Mac Piarais) — called the “embodiment of the rebellion” and credited with proclaiming a Republic — Joseph Mary Plunkett and Thomas MacDonagh. After the British quickly routed the Irish rebellion in 1916, all three were executed by firing squad.
It is no coincidence that the Irish rising was led by men who practiced poetry, as they surely relied upon it as the most natural way to help persuade the public to resist the authority of the Kingdom and achieve political independence. Poetry in Irish is considered the oldest form of verse in Europe that specifically emphasized accessibility to a “common person”, or in other words poetry not written or spoken in Latin. This earns it the title of “vernacular”.
This heritage to the race of kings
by Joseph Plunkett
This heritage to the race of kings-
Their children and their children’s seed
Have wrought their prophecies in deed
Of terrible and splendid things.
The hands that fought, the hearts that broke
In old immortal tragedies,
Theses have not failed beneath the skies,
Their children’s heads refuse the yoke.
And still their hands shall guard the sod
That holds their father’s funeral urn,
Still shall their hearts volcanic burn
With anger of the sons of God.
No alien sword shall earn as wage
The entail of their blood and tears,
No shameful price for peaceful years
Shall ever part this heritage.
I haven’t read this book by Sam Apple yet, but it certainly looks interesting. The following quote by Honor Moore caught my attention:
“[A]s self-deprecating as a poetic version of Woody Allen.”
And here’s the synopsis on the website, which indicates that a shepherd used a form of rhyming verses to help fight ignorance in Austria after WWII:
Hans Breuer, Austria’s only wandering shepherd, is also a Yiddish folksinger. He walks the Alps, shepherd’s stick in hand, singing lullabies to his 625 sheep. Sometimes he even gives concerts in historically anti-Semitic towns, showing slides of the flock as he belts out Yiddish ditties. Born in 1954, Breuer spent his childhood in Vienna fighting the lingering Nazism in Austrian society. His performances are an attempt to educate his fellow citizens on the people their parents and grandparents had helped to wipe out of Europe.
I always said rhymes were the best way to help educate, since they are memorable and often contagious. “Ctrl-Alt-Delete when you leave your seat” has been the most successful I’ve found so far…
The BBC reported today that mobile phones are being used as a form of intimidation and threat in sectarian violence in Iraq. They suggest a direct link can be found between these methods and the number of Iraqis who are fleeing their homes:
Reports of people leaving their homes because of violence or intimidation, or simply because they no longer feel safe, are becoming more and more common.
[…]
People have been receiving threatening text messages and gruesome videos filmed on mobile phone cameras.
In one, a Sunni Iraqi man who entered a mainly Shia neighbourhood of Baghdad is seen being beaten and killed by men in black clothes.
The video was then sent out with the warning that this is what would happen to any other Sunni who came to the area.
The Iraqi Ministry for Displacement and Migration told the BBC almost 11,000 families had left their homes – equivalent to about 65,000, based on the average Iraqi family size.
This report begs the question of how messages are sent people in “the area”, which reminds me that cell phones typically all go dead just before US forces arrive on a scene…
Just in case you were thinking “satellite images are so hard to navigate with, I need to see a race-car driver’s view of the world”, Microsoft has launched a preview of their Virtual Earth. I am really curious about the archive challenges of this, as well as the privacy implications. Let’s say the city government wants to see what your house looked like at 6pm last Saturday night to verify a code violation. How many cameras are going to gather data and how often? Haven’t seen any online traffic about it yet…