Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Corbett Court, Mitchelstown

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Dave Winer has been improving the New York Times for as long as I’ve known him. First he convinced them to put stories out in RSS–then to let bloggers “permalink” down into their archives.

Now he’s propagating their work in a skinnied-down format he calls a newsriver, where (to quote Dave), “The stories age, and are removed after 24 hours. After all this is news, not olds. “

Playing on this, Doc Searls says news organizations should “jump in the river”:

News is a river, not a lake. It is active, not static. It’s what’s happening, not what happened. Or not only what happened.

Yes, of course readers also want well-written stories with careful analysis. But when we’re anxious to know what’s happening now, we don’t want that information slowed down and jumbled up with lots of stuff we don’t care about.

When I’m starving for a hot quick Egg McMuffin, I don’t want to wait for some Oeuf au Jambon de Ronald.

1492 stairway

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Go out the door of your bedroom. If you cannot find the door of your bedroom because your room is too dark, fumble your way to the heavily curtained window and tug open one of the giant wooden shutters.

Go out the door of the bedroom and turn right–toward the humongous copper footbath (or holy water font?)–then turn left at the corner and walk down that long granite corridor.

Walk until you get to the huge oil painting of St. Peter–he’s the saint with keys. With a slight dogleg left , you’ll see the super-sized staircase. Wait–before you go down, you should check where you are.

Look out any window and notice the marble sculpture below. This will help you re-find the courtyard you want to get back to–in our case, one surrounding a carved domelike structure. Sadly (and this was to cause me much confusion) it turns out the hotel has two different enormous courtyards arranged around similar dome things. Our courtyard is the one whose topiary has simple geometric shapes, not the one with fancy green swirls and logos.

Walk down carpeted steps to the ground level, where you will find yourself in between the two domed-structure courtyards. Walk into the simpler-topiary domed-structure courtyard and look to your left, where you can see through a whole bunch of arches a fountain-like sculpture topped by an ornate, er, acanthus. (If you meet Sigmund Freud, don’t ask him what that sculpture looks like.)

On the other side of that courtyard are two different glass doors. Go through either of them, and you’ll find…a kind, helpful person who’ll show you the breakfast room.

Oh, oh, oh–shall we stop the presses?

Cranky DNA pioneer James Watson–who seems to have no clue that making oneself widely hated is not very clever–has worked out that headlines ensue when he says something rude enough about any random large group of human beings. (So far, he’s confined himself to insulting groups not male-plus-macho-plus-white, but probably only because that’s where the headlines are.)

I think headline writers should take a strong clue from my headline.

pilgrim path to Santiago de Compostela

Originally uploaded by Nós da Montanha

Like the medieval scholar on pilgrimage (“And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche”), Frank is spending time with a whole new group of scientists. And Chaucer would have loved our current location in one of Spain’s loveliest cities, Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela.

A long pilgrim path winds all the way from France to the plaza in front of its glorious Baroque cathedral, next to a hotel established by Ferdinand and Isabella as a refuge for needy pilgrims in 1492.

Our kind hosts are putting us up in that very hotel, where we have spent some time wandering semi-lost among various fountained courtyards and huge granite corridors. After a lonnngg day of travel yesterday (it began with a 3:45 a.m. wake-up call in Dublin), we especially enjoyed the silence and darkness made possible by granite walls and huge wooden shutters that let us sleep until almost 9 a.m. today.

Many thanks to you, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella!

Corbett Court, Mitchelstown

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

On the plane trip to Cork, I finally got around to reading my mother’s 1963 journal. She and my dad visited Ireland in mid-October of that year. 

Summary: They rented a car and took off to see–everything! That is, everything compatible with sleeping late, taking naps, picking up hitchhikers, and making stops to drink tea. They hadn’t made a single hotel reservation–something that on this trip they never regretted. They enjoyed everything they saw, every person they met.

Left Limerick 10 a.m. 10-14-63.
3 sheep or cows? in Croagh
Thatched roof with TV antenna in Adare
Ruined church and fortress
Gypsy carts
Hitcher to Abbeyfrale–peat smoke. No talker.
Farmers market — cows, horses, pigs (in ricks), boxes of cabbages and of apples
Spent 3 hours going 56 miles. Ferns like a miniature ferngully.
Lunch delicious fricasseed lamb. Castlerosse Hotel. JMD [my dad] bought an Arran sweater 6/13.
Looked at various hotels in Killarney. Some stuffy, others quite unappealing. Settled on Hotel Europe, out of town on “lower lake,” lovely neat new hotel (German) fabulous view and food. Nap.
Dinner — sole — wow!
After dinner went into town. Bought Irish coffee glasses 6 for Mary 6 for us–all sent to Mary. Also 6 charms for cousins.
To bed. Awoke to howling wind–but warm.

10 – 15. Too cloudy for Ring, so going to Cork. Left K 11 a.m.
Aghadve — ruined cathedral and towers.
Filled tank 14 shillings. Button for battery. Blue-tail sheep.
Picked up lady near Low Bridge who was on way to a funeral in Ballyvourney cemetery next to Ballymakeery.
Took picture of fortress outside Macroon.
“Anglers Reast” in Beamish, prop. R. P. Leary. “Road Up.” Slate roofs with moss.
Lunch of tea and sandwiches at The Four Seasons in Dripsey. Irish Sweepstakes man–
Road to Blarney. hunter with dog. School bus — no one over 7 got off.
Blarney Castle — no lighting on wellworn circular stairs. Rooks. Boiling oil. Trees along walk–vines have to be cut off lest they weigh down the turrets and topple them. Old man at Druid’s well. Blarney indeed!
Into Cork through the Blackpool area. Whellbarrows of steaming mash. Man lying directly in road to check underside of car.
“Garda” in re map — “You’ll get me all confused with this thing” i.e. map. “It won’t take you any time at all, at all.” He was right.
Imperial Hotel. Victorianism is a Johnny-come-lately here! Heated towel racks–double pulley windows. V. comfortable. Good food. Wandered around town in evening just looking. Called Kim and Grampa 1:30 our time.

10 – 16 Slept over. Had fine breakfast in our room. 11:45 a.m. left.
Called Dr. Atkins. Retiring.
Men secretaries, lady bartenders.
Mother’s Pride Bread–unwrapped bread.
Stables marked by horse’s head.
Aghada — miles of fortifications to protect Cork harbor. No Murrays there now.
Church in Soleen (?) hooked shut. Flock of sheep–blue tail, red tail. Fat lady singing.
Midletown–poppies and daisies wild by the side of road–Prosperous town.
Bought harp charm 6/3 ear rings pin 16/ pendant for hockey 7/6
“I’ll have to ask himself.”
Stopped for early tea at the Blue Dragon Inn and Bar 5 mi. outside Mitchelstown–down the road from the Glocca Maura.

Mitchelstown–talked to 3 men–story of Jack Devine the laboring man and the rosary. Talk with Mr. Barrett at the tax collector. Visit the grave year–lichen covered crosses — old church — a hollow shell for vines. No perpetual care. Nettles.

But what was the story of Jack Devine and the rosary? The fat lady singing? Who was the “Irish sweepstakes man”? I’ll never know.

Frank and I, tracing part of their path, stopped for a delicious lunch at the Corbett Court–which turned out to be their own Blue Dragon Inn.

More in some later blogpost–we’re in Dublin now.

“New leak shock,” says today’s Irish Independent.

Yesterday’s shock was a civil servant (male), who passed on private government data that got used for attempts at blackmail. Today’s story is a civil servant (female) who repeatedly accessed the files of prominent people–often just days before their “confidential” data showed up in newspaper reports about them.

According to the Independent, nine different newspaper stories revealed private details that this civil servant leaked to them from government files. She also “improperly accessed” the private files of many others.

Only by chance was this ongoing abuse discovered, while officials were investigating a separate matter. And the woman remained in her job for almost a year before offering her resignation and taking her departure.

If only the private data of Irish citizens were half as secure as the job of a civil servant “protecting” that data!

In other news from today’s Irish Independent.

There were only 12 people entitled to view the personal data of Dolores McNamara. After she won the lottery, 106 curious officials made a point of accessing all her “private” information.

Although a ‘digital fingerprint’ is created every time a worker accesses a file, the breach confirms that illegal activity is not detected until a third party brings it to the department’s attention.

Even more frightening is the fact that the illegal activity has occurred a number of times since the mole was sacked…

The lowest ranking workers in the department have access to everything — from your name to date of birth to how much you earn — which is kept on a file for your entire life.

Big companies and big governments would find their lives so much more convenient if you and I would just let them put all our personal data into one giant pile where they can sift through it.

For them and for all of us– just this morning in Ireland, the Irish Independent reports that Ireland’s national collection of personal data has been raided by various government employees for various reasons.

One “civil servant mole” (the Independent’s words) passed on private data that his brother used to burgle one businessman and try to blackmail others.

When confronted, the ‘mole’ told police that

it is a common practice amongst civil servants to check up on the financial status of friends, family, and acquaintances…Other records accessed out of ‘curiosity’ included those of a politician, pop star, and a ‘notorious criminal.’

The department was unaware of the breach until detectives..told them the criminal had sensitive information in his possession and he had received it from his civil servant sibling.

If you wonder why the “Data Protection Section of the Department of Family and Social Affairs” didn’t flag these ongoing abuses of personal data–that happens to be the department that employed the mole.

Inside the radio

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Modern technology is made up of pre-made “black boxes.” If you open an iPhone, for instance, most of the stuff inside is just high-tech mystery stuff that was created to put in iPhone and used nowhere else.

This is the inside of an old radio, technology cobbled together from readymade pieces–bits of wire, a plastic knob, a few condensers, etc.

Maybe today everybody is trying to think “outside the box” because the stuff that’s inside the box is just too darn confusing.

Doesn’t the landscape look timeless?

Limestone caves, under the hill I was standing on to take this picture, were carved out when Ireland sat near the earth’s equator, with my “timeless” hilltop lying under a shallow sea full of coral and other warmwater-type creatures.

But enough philosophy–just enjoy the greens on these fields and the blues on this sky.