#Dublin Julian Day

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 1 January (Eanáir):

The Dublin Julian Day (DJD) is the number of days that has elapsed since the epoch of the solar and lunar ephemerides used from 1900 through 1983, Newcomb’s Tables of the Sun and Ernest W. Brown’s Tables of the Motion of the Moon (1919). This epoch was noon UT on 0 January 1900, which is the same as noon UT on 31 December 1899. The DJD was defined by the International Astronomical Union at their…

[bttrflyblu]

Julian Lage - "Day and Age" (Live In Dublin)

[duffylin]

the chicago resident, doreen “duffy” lin, was heard blaring don’t delete the kisses / wolf alice this morning . the twenty six year old is a bartender / veterinary student in the city & has lived the west tower for nine months. since being here, they have been told to be stubborn, but also devoted, i guess we'll find out soon !

tw: parental death

BASICS.

name: doreen 'duffy' lin.

nickname: duffy. duff. dove. anything except doreen. whos that? don't know her.

gender: cis woman

pronouns: she / her.

age: 26.

date of birth: november 25th

place of birth: donegal, ireland.

spoken languages: english, cantonese, irish.

occupation: bartender / veterinary student.

education: zoology degree, currently a grad student

romantic orientation: bisexual.

sexual orientation: bisexual.

relationship status: single.

FAMILY.

parents: enya lin (50), flynn duffy (deceased).

siblings: daria lin (23), julian (half brother), some ex step-siblings.

maternal extended: sylvie lin (aunt), sebastian jelley (uncle-in-law), joy jelley (cousin), leo jelley (cousin), connor jelley (cousin).

paternal extended: ciaran duffy (uncle), maeve duffy (aunt) + cousins, doreen duffy (grandmother), keith duffy (grandmother).

pets: juzi + dubh (her two cats) - would love more.

PHYSICAL.

faceclaim: havana rose liu.

accent: mix between a donegal + dublin accent, softened since moving to the states

height: 5'5.

build: slim, muscular.

eye colour: jade green

hair: reddish - brown, wavy and cascading down to her back. very rarely puts it up outside of work.

tattoos: a couple scattered about.

piercings: ears.

distinctive features: freckles across her cheeks, more noticeable in the summer.

BACKGROUND.

star crossed lovers are often bound by tragedy. and, enya lin and flynn duffy were no exception. from the moment the lin family moved in across the duffy's, flynn was smitten. enya was utterly oblivious to his affection, but they quickly became inseparable friends. they always seemed to find their way back to each other, even after endless ups and downs. it wasn't until university that enya reciprocated his feelings, following a string of toxic relationships. but, once all their cards were on the table, that was it.  

marriage was never in their plans. it was one of the many things they always agreed on; money was better spent on their future. instead, they opened a small music venue in the heart of donegal. it was something they'd always talked about, but never imagined actually going.

a year after opening, enya discovered she was pregnant. her family were far more enthusiastic about the prospect than flynn's. his mother was still in hysterics over their decision not to marry, but mellowed after she found out the child was named after her. they welcomed doreen lin nine months later.

donegal is where she spent the three years of her life, surrounded by people who loved her. it's all a blur to her now, a distant memory, but they were some of the best days of her life. she was a tad spoilt, both sides of her family were to blame for that, and she adored being in nature. she was always bringing home little 'gifts' for the family, which typically included a newt or mouse or whatever little critter she stumbled on.

a trip to dublin is where disaster struck. since it's inception, the business had been thriving and they were even talking about expanding elsewhere in the country. flynn had gone down to meet an old university friend about potentially helming a new venue for them in the city. everything had been going smoothly until a wayward driver crashed into their car. a few hours later enya received the call that would change everything.

flynn's death broken enya - her mind, her soul, anything that held so tightly together by his presence shattered in an instance. he was her soulmate, a ribbon sewn into her very being that was slowly being undone and thrown into an abyss so dark it nearly consumed her. a darkness save one for one small light - doreen. so much of him was in her, so much that it almost pained her to look, and yet she couldn't look away. everything he had left, he'd left in her, from the locks he'd sworn weren't really ginger to the freckles that danced across her cheeks and impossibly emerald eyes.

to then discover she had a second child on the way, she would have burst into flames if it wasn't for her family. her younger sister was born, and the world became even heavier. she was named her daria, after the titular character, and she grew to be very much like her namesake as she got older.

for enya the business, as important as it had been to her, became background noise. it was now a painful reminder of everything she had accomplished with flynn, one she couldn't bare for much longer. she tried to keep afloat, for those around her and herself, but she was starting to drown. so, she sold up. she'd always hoped that the venue would stay as it was, but not long after she'd heard it'd been turned into some worker men's club.

duffy, as she now went by, was five years old when her mother packed up their stuff and moved them to dublin. her jobs frequently changed, so they often found themselves moving from town to city - it was a rather nomadic childhood from then. it was just the three of them, and it was perfect. until her mother had to ruin it by dating again. men that would steal all their money and leave them penniless, or would just treat them both like garbage. or worst of all, try and act like her dad. there was the rare instance of a good one slipping through the cracks, but they didn't last long.

she was fifteen when the promise of a job brought them to new york. her aunt, sylvia, had moved there to start up a magazine, and needed some help getting it off the ground. it was the change they needed. the three of them got a small apartment and settled into life there. the work paid enough to cover cost of the apartment, but to support themselves better, duffy ended up getting a job at the local zoo where she found her passion for animals grew.

duffy planned to go to university in new york, study zoology and stay home to save on accommodation (and because she'd miss them too much). after that, get a job working in animal rescue and get a place close by. the plan changed when her mother got married, which had come as an absolute shock. her mother had always been so anti--marriage and she just assumed dale was another failed relationship waiting to happen. when she'd been told of their engagement, she almost laughed. surely, he must have pushed her into it, she always thought - he always seemed like a walking pile of red flags to her. kids included. and, now she had a new baby brother. it was like a fever dream.

after graduating, she and her sister got a place together and she started working back at the zoo. finding rescue shelter jobs that weren't volunteer was extremely difficult, and as much as she wanted to take a step away from that area of the animal industry, she needed the money. so she decided to go to save up and go to veterinary school. chicago seemed like a viable option - it did help that her mother had just relocated there with her husband.

being near her mother again, it was like coming home. being near her step-dad, was not. they often clashed when she visited on weekends. and she always picked up on little things he did, and the way her mum changed around him. not a good change. and it wasn't just her noticing this, but her sister, and even enya herself - despite getting defensive when anyone said anything remotely close to the subject. but, she couldn't lie to herself. she was unhappy. she wasn't herself. his children hated her. her children weren't fond of him.

after one fateful chat (after one too many wines) with duffy and her sister, they all came to the conclusion that the reason she wasn't happy in many of her relationships was because she was gay. it was a truth accepted so easily, just like she had accepted duffy all those years ago. and, it explained so much, but it didn't change the love she had for a number of men in her life, including duffy's father - it was just not quite the love she thought.

both duffy and daria pushed their mother to tell dale. he may have been an absolute leech with terrible children, but surely he'd be understand. and in truth, duffy would never forgive her mother for not being true to herself. they had not expected dale to explode the way he had. he felt lied to, is something he kept repeating. the divorce, still ongoing, has been messy to say the least. mostly the custody of duffy's little brother.

nine months ago, duffy moved in with her enya at marina towers to support her through the divorce. it also happened to coincide with duffy's eviction notice after their partner destroyed their apartment during a party whilst she was away, not that she's going to let anyone know that. it's not something that she needs people worrying about. she recently got a job bartending to help out with extra cash on the weekends, whilst trying not to worry about what she's going to do after graduating in a couple years. she's doing too much, and it's starting to take a toll - she's trying not to let the cracks show.

PERONSALITY.

duffy, for as long as anyone can remember, has always been a devoted daughter and friend - to the point of perhaps being overbearing, especially in regards her family. she would drop anything for the people she cares about, even if it means sometimes neglecting her own needs. though, that can be a good excuse for ignoring problems in her own life, like breakups. why deal with your own problems, when you can deal with others? she's always fine even when she isn't basically. she's got a habit of putting way too much on her plate. working, studying, taking care of her family, trying to juggle a social life. she has a schedule and she likes to stick to it to manage it all, but lately it's becoming too much even for her. she's quite good at hiding her struggles but she's not been great - sleeping late, waking early. deep down, she doesn't know how much longer she can keep this up. she's outgoing but burns out after a while. she's always needed quite time, but she's been needing it more lately - just a place to escape, even if it means just sitting in silence with someone. her room is an organised mess which she prefers, so people touching her things is a no. if she believes she's right, it will take a lot of convincing to change her opinion.

MISC.

she wants to open her own veterinary clinic or go work as a nature reserve after graduating. she hasn't made her mind up yet.

has 2 cats, dubh and juzi.

she and her family travel to ireland twice a year. on her dad's birthday and the anniversary of his death. her mother had to skip his last birthday because of dale. boo. we hate dale.

lactose intolerant queen

hates to shop at lush in person - it's so utterly overwhelming in there for her so she just avoids it at all cost, which really sucks cause she loves their bath bombs.

barely ever sleeps and then wakes up super early - either from working late on weekends or studying late - it's starting to have a massive effect but she refuses to believe it and would rather people didn't worry. coffee / redbull fuels her at this point.

really wants to live on a houseboat like she did briefly as a kid.

became vegetarian after watching a documentary when she was eleven.

grows herbs and veg on the balcony of their apartment. she thought it'd be a good idea for her and her mother to do together when she's not working or studying.

pinterest (will add link soon)

WANTED CON.

mother dearest! - she and her mum are insanely close. and i'm going to be putting a wc out for her.

ex (really bad) - she's had two recent break ups. she got out of a relationship around the time she moved in with her mother. quite a bad breakup. the person they were dating had a party whilst they were away and pretty much destroyed their place and led to them getting evicted - she's avoided mentioning this to her mother for nine months.

ex (sorta bad) - this was in the last nine months, but quite short relationship. it ended because she wasn't investing enough into the relationship. they had a blast together, but they noticed she'd been putting to much on her plate with her family and school and work, and neglecting what they had as a result.

friends! i would love her to have some friends. whether that's surface level that she just sees around the building or something deeper. her mother is quite affable, so maybe people who she's met through her.

people who come into the bar she works at on weekends

friends to lovers - i'm a sucker for it. like, so much. her mother always taught her the basis for love should be friendship - not that she ever set a great example with that her dad.

if i think of anything else, i'll add it, but honestly, i'm down to listen to anyone else's ideas too!

[mumblingsage]

Another batch of terrible opening sentences for our shock and delectation!

Some of my favorites:

If there’s a snake in your boot, you dump it out by the creek, and if it’s got feathers, you dump it out in the creek, and if it’s talkin’ at you, you dump it out gently and apologize and keep an eye out for the mama dragon, and tarnation these city slickers don’t know the first thing about stayin’ alive out here. Mara Lynn Johnstone, Santa Rose, CA

(I'd actually read a book that started like this, even!)

After the unfortunate events involving the wicked stepmothers of Cinderella, Snow White, and Hansel and Gretel, the city council set out to ban all men from remarrying until further notice. Ezra Greenhill, Portland, OR

***

The tall, slender seductress had Tom Pauley wrapped around her little finger, and she had James McGee hanging from a necklace, but the police were still waiting for the lab results to determine whose body parts she had used to make her earrings and that stunning tennis bracelet. Julian Calvin, Atlanta, GA

***

The second she stepped into my office I knew she was Trubble, Sarah Trubble, she was wearing a name tag and I’m a detective Phil Saunders, Barrie, Canada

***

It was a dark and stormy day easily confused as night (for it is December in Svalbard that our story lies) and probably not helped by all the Julebokk we had drunk, but when in Svalbard . . . Bill Anderson, Dublin, Ireland

(I swear I've heard Svalbard name-dropped more often this year than ever before in my life, but I digress...)

Draxyl’s breathing quickened—finally, in his hands he held the Sacred Jewel of Grondor, the key to the legendary Chamber of Secrets, the icon that so many had died for, and the perfect gift to win the heart of his beloved; the question now was how to fit all those things into his pockets without the shopkeeper noticing. Dave Agans, Wilton, NH

***

Buford The Bold was the last descendant of the proud Bold family and was particularly proud of how he chose to keep “The,” his father’s middle name. Marc Luban, Chicago, IL

***

The clouds drifted lazily through the crystal blue sky like cotton candy from last summer's county fair except that if a plane flew cotton candy the engine would ingest so much sugar that it would lock up the engine and force the pilot to make an emergency landing, perhaps in the river below where the body of a white male in his mid 50's with no identification floated face down, which is where our story begins. Ken Hill, Elkville, IL

***

It was love at first sight—he was tall and broad-shouldered, with a dimpled smile, twinkling green eyes, and in keeping with his combination of statistically unlikely but deeply alluring features, type AB blood, and that condition where cilantro tastes like soap. Ananya Benegal, St. Louis, MO

***

They had gone through fire and ice to be together, but the general mood of the wedding would have been improved if he wasn't suffering from second-degree burns and she hadn't lost several toes to frostbite. Eliza Frost, Bellingham, WA

(is "Eliza Frost" her real name or a nom de plume? Either way...)

There are many, many more through the link, some of them very silly.

[whatsemilyreading]

To Be Read: Nine literary fiction books I can’t wait to read this summer

And by “can’t wait to read,” obviously I mean “hope to God I actually pick up.”

tiktok | instagram | storygraph

Summer, to me, feels like literary fiction by the pool, at the park, and on the patio of your favorite coffeeshop, an iced latte in hand. The freakier, the better. The book, I mean, not the coffee.

If the book I’m reading isn’t just a little uncanny, I genuinely do not want to read it. If there isn’t at the very least one teensy thing about it that’s hard to look at, or that makes me want to turn on every light in my house just in case, I lose interest! Give me all the books with non-male protagonists who desperately need to find God, in a non-religious sense.

1. Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. She spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she’s tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past. One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice at the dog park. In a panic, she introduces herself with a fake name and they quickly become enmeshed. Although Big Swiss is unaware of Greta’s true identity, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Bold, outlandish, and filled with irresistible characters, Big Swiss is both a love story and also a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more—from an amazingly talented, one-of-a-kind voice in contemporary fiction.

Why it's on my TBR: Honestly, the buzz from friends whose taste in books I trust with my life is enough for me. I have not heard a single bad thing about it from anyone.

2. The Swimmers by Chloe Lane

Erin’s mother has motor neurone disease and has decided to take her fate into her own hands. As Erin looks back at her twenty-six-year-old self, she can finally tell the story of the unimaginable task she faced one winter.

Why it's on my TBR: I’m a glutton for pain and I looooove to read about grieving protagonists. The only way out is through, baby!!!

3. Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan

Ava moved to Hong Kong to find happiness, but so far, it isn’t working out. Since she left Dublin, she’s been spending her days teaching English to rich children—she’s been assigned the grammar classes because she lacks warmth—and her nights avoiding petulant roommates in her cramped apartment.  When Ava befriends Julian, a witty British banker, he offers a shortcut into a lavish life her meager salary could never allow. Ignoring her feminist leanings and her better instincts, Ava finds herself moving into Julian’s apartment, letting him buy her clothes, and, eventually, striking up a sexual relationship with him. When Julian’s job takes him back to London, she stays put, unsure where their relationship stands.  Enter Edith. A Hong Kong–born lawyer, striking and ambitious, Edith takes Ava to the theater and leaves her tulips in the hallway. Ava wants to be her—and wants her. Ava has been carefully pretending that Julian is nothing more than an absentee roommate, so when Julian announces that he’s returning to Hong Kong, she faces a fork in the road. Should she return to the easy compatibility of her life with Julian or take a leap into the unknown with Edith?

Why it's on my TBR: I’ve been putting this one off for far too long! I think I’ve had a copy for two years and have said I’d read it almost every month since I bought it. I’m determined to get to it this summer because this is another one I’ve never heard a bad thing about. Time to find out for myself!

4. The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna

Lauren Cress teaches writing at a small college outside of Washington, DC. In the classroom, she is poised, smart, and kind, well-liked by her students and colleagues. But in her personal life, Lauren is troubled and isolated, still grappling with the sudden death of her parents ten years earlier. She seems to exist at a remove from everyone around her until a new student joins her class: charming, magnetic Siri, who appears to be everything Lauren wishes she could be.  They fall headlong into an all-consuming friendship that feels to Lauren like she is reclaiming her lost adolescence. When Siri invites her along on a trip home to Sweden for the summer, Lauren impulsively accepts, intrigued by how Siri describes it: “Everything will be green, fresh, new, just thawing out.” But once there, Lauren finds herself drawn to Siri’s enigmatic, brooding brother Magnus. Siri is resentful, and Lauren starts to see a new side of her friend: selfish, reckless, self-destructive, even cruel. On the last night of her trip, Lauren accompanies Siri and her friends on a seaside camping trip to celebrate Midsommar’s Eve, a night when no one sleeps, boundaries blur, and under the light of the unsetting sun, things take a dark turn. Ultimately Lauren must acknowledge the truth of what happened with Siri and come to terms with her own tragic past in this gorgeously written, deeply felt debut about the relationships that come to us when things feel darkest–and the transformative power of female friendship.

Why it's on my TBR: I found this one in McKay’s and despite the fun, flirty cover, it actually seems super dark? So, you know, right up my alley.

5. Rouge by Mona Awad

For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.  Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, Rouge explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, Rouge holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.

Why it's on my TBR: I have read both Bunny and All's Well and have decided Mona Awad is one of those authors whose grocery lists I would read without question.

6. Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Twenty-nine-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet Xiao-Wen Chou and never read about “Chinese-y” things again. But after years of grueling research, all she has to show for her efforts are junk food addiction and stomach pain. When she accidentally stumbles upon a curious note in the Chou archives one afternoon, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell. But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, upending not only her sheltered life within academia but her entire world beyond it. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a roller coaster of mishaps and misadventures, from book burnings and OTC drug hallucinations, to hot-button protests and Yellow Peril 2.0 propaganda. In the aftermath, nothing looks the same to Ingrid—including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene. When he embarks on a book tour with the super kawaii Japanese author he’s translated, doubts and insecurities creep in for the first time… As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she’ll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions—and, most of all, herself.

Why it's on my TBR: The cover? Gorgeous. One of the booksellers at my favorite bookstore in Nashville, Novelette, recommended this one to me and I trust them with my life, so!

7. The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind, too. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, a number of people now reside quietly, looking for ways to live in a dying city. Apartment C2 is lonely and detached. C6 is aging and stuck. C8 harbors an extraordinary fear. But C4 is of particular interest. Here live four teenagers who have recently aged out of the state foster-care system: three boys and one girl, Blandine. Hauntingly beautiful and unnervingly bright, Blandine is plagued by the structures, people, and places that not only failed her but actively harmed her. Now all Blandine wants is an escape, a true bodily escape like the mystics describe in the books she reads. Set across one week and culminating in a shocking act of violence, The Rabbit Hutch chronicles a town on the brink, desperate for rebirth. How far will its residents—especially Blandine—go to achieve it? Does one person’s gain always come at another’s expense? Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch is a gorgeous and provocative tale of loneliness and community, entrapment and freedom. It announces a major new voice in American fiction, one bristling with intelligence and vulnerability.

Why it's on my TBR: I feel like it’s gonna make me cry and give me an entirely new outlook on my own life. And I think that’s exactly what I need this summer.

8. Matrix by Lauren Gross

Cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine, deemed too coarse and rough-hewn for marriage or courtly life, 17-year-old Marie de France is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease. At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie finds focus and love in collective life with her singular and mercurial sisters. In this crucible, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions. Marie, born the last in a long line of women warriors and crusaders, is determined to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects. But in a world that is shifting and corroding in frightening ways, one that can never reconcile itself with her existence, will the sheer force of Marie's vision be bulwark enough?

Why it's on my TBR: This one kind of seems like it might quell my red-hot desire to only read books like The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix. E Harrow, minus the fantasy. Seems like similar vibes! I’ve heard tons of good things from trusted pals, so I’d love to pick this up this summer. I found this at McKay’s, too, with the UK cover, which I think is leagues cuter than the US one.

9. Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants. Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing—a teenage ghost pining for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality, in George’s case, literally on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death (which involved an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training).

Why it's on my TBR: I have heard nothing but incredible things, and it sounds like it's just weird enough to be right up my alley. Plus, that cover is so gorgeous, it’s practically asking to be read in public for everyone to ogle at.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.8

453 BC – Spring and Autumn period: The house of Zhao defeats the house of Zhi, ending the Battle of Jinyang, a military conflict between the elite families of the State of Jin. 413 – Emperor Honorius signs an edict providing tax relief for the Italian provinces Tuscia, Campania, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Lucania and Calabria, which were plundered by the Visigoths. 589 – Reccared I opens the Third Council of Toledo, marking the entry of Visigothic Spain into the Catholic Church. 1360 – Treaty of Brétigny drafted between King Edward III of England and King John II of France (the Good). 1373 – Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic and anchoress, experiences the deathbed visions described in her Revelations of Divine Love. 1429 – Joan of Arc lifts the Siege of Orléans, turning the tide of the Hundred Years' War. 1450 – Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI. 1516 – A group of imperial guards, led by Trịnh Duy Sản, murdered Emperor Lê Tương Dực and fled, leaving the capital Thăng Long undefended. 1541 – Hernando de Soto stops near present-day Walls, Mississippi, and sees the Mississippi River (then known by the Spanish as Río de Espíritu Santo, the name given to it by Alonso Álvarez de Pineda in 1519). 1608 – A newly nationalized silver mine in Scotland at Hilderston, West Lothian is re-opened by Bevis Bulmer. 1639 – William Coddington founds Newport, Rhode Island. 1758 – The Maratha Empire captures Peshawar from the Durrani Empire in the Battle of Peshawar. The Maratha Empire was extended to its farthest distance away from Pune that it ever reached, over 2,000 km (1,200 mi), almost to the borders of Afghanistan. 1788 – King Louis XVI of France attempts to impose the reforms of Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne by abolishing the parlements. 1794 – Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme générale, is tried, convicted and guillotined in one day in Paris. 1821 – Greek War of Independence: The Greeks defeat the Turks at the Battle of Gravia Inn. 1842 – A train derails and catches fire in Paris, killing between 52 and 200 people. 1846 – Mexican–American War: American forces led by Zachary Taylor defeat a Mexican force north of the Rio Grande in the first major battle of the war. 1877 – At Gilmore's Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens. 1886 – Pharmacist John Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine. 1898 – The first games of the Italian football league system are played. 1899 – The Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin produced its first play. 1902 – In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast. 1912 – Paramount Pictures is founded. 1919 – Edward George Honey proposes the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate the Armistice of 11 November 1918 which ended World War I. 1921 – The creation of the Communist Party of Romania. 1924 – The Klaipėda Convention is signed formally incorporating Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory) into Lithuania. 1927 – Attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, French war heroes Charles Nungesser and François Coli disappear after taking off aboard The White Bird biplane. 1933 – Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast of self-purification and launched a one-year campaign to help the Harijan movement. 1941 – World War II: The German Luftwaffe launches a bombing raid on Nottingham and Derby. 1942 – World War II: The German 11th Army begins Operation Trappenjagd (Bustard Hunt) and destroys the bridgehead of the three Soviet armies defending the Kerch Peninsula. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea comes to an end with Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attacking and sinking the United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Lexington. 1942 – World War II: Gunners of the Ceylon Garrison Artillery on Horsburgh Island in the Cocos Islands rebel in the Cocos Islands Mutiny. Their mutiny is crushed and three of them are executed, the only British Commonwealth soldiers to be executed for mutiny during the Second World War. 1945 – World War II: The German Instrument of Surrender signed at Berlin-Karlshorst comes into effect. 1945 – End of the Prague uprising, celebrated now as a national holiday in the Czech Republic. 1945 – Hundreds of Algerian civilians are killed by French Army soldiers in the Sétif massacre. 1945 – The Halifax riot starts when thousands of civilians and servicemen rampage through Halifax, Nova Scotia. 1946 – Estonian schoolgirls Aili Jõgi and Ageeda Paavel blow up the Soviet memorial which preceded the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn. 1950 – The Tollund Man was discovered in a peat bog near Silkeborg, Denmark. 1957 – South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem began a state visit to the United States, his regime's main sponsor. 1963 – South Vietnamese soldiers under the Roman Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem open fire on Buddhists defying a ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Vesak, killing nine and sparking the Buddhist crisis. 1967 – The Philippine province of Davao is split into three: Davao del Norte, Davao del Sur, and Davao Oriental. 1970 – The Beatles release their 12th and final studio album Let It Be. 1972 – Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his order to place naval mines in major North Vietnamese ports in order to stem the flow of weapons and other goods to that nation. 1973 – A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota ends with the surrender of the militants. 1976 – The rollercoaster The New Revolution, the first steel coaster with a vertical loop, opens at Six Flags Magic Mountain. 1978 – The first ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, by Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler. 1980 – The World Health Organization confirms the eradication of smallpox. 1984 – Corporal Denis Lortie enters the Quebec National Assembly and opens fire, killing three people and wounding 13. René Jalbert, Sergeant-at-Arms of the Assembly, succeeds in calming him, for which he will later receive the Cross of Valour. 1984 – The USSR announces a boycott upon the Summer Olympics at Los Angeles, later joined by 14 other countries. 1984 – The Thames Barrier is officially opened, preventing the floodplain of most of Greater London from being flooded except under extreme circumstances. 1987 – The SAS kills eight Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers and a civilian during an ambush in Loughgall, Northern Ireland. 1988 – A fire at Illinois Bell's Hinsdale Central Office triggers an extended 1AESS network outage once considered to be the "worst telecommunications disaster in US telephone industry history". 1997 – China Southern Airlines Flight 3456 crashes on approach into Bao'an International Airport, killing 35 people. 2019 – British 17-year-old Isabelle Holdaway is reported to be the first patient ever to receive a genetically modified phage therapy to treat a drug-resistant infection. 2021 – A car bomb explodes in front of a school in Kabul, capital city of Afghanistan killing at least 55 people and wounding over 150.

[mightyflamethrower]

Julian Lage - "Day and Age" (Live In Dublin)

[juliansiegel]

UPCOMING DATES

2024

JANUARY 31ST PAUL BOOTH'S BANDSANGU ORCHESTRA SPICE OF LIFE, SOHO, LONDON

FEBRUARY 3rd DESCHANEL GORDON QUARTET with JULIAN SIEGEL 606 CLUB, CHELSEA, LONDON

FEBRUARY 6th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET EAST SIDE JAZZ CLUB LEYTONSTONE, LONDON

MARCH 16th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET VORTEX JAZZ CLUB, LONDON

APRIL 25th LAUREN KINSELLA TRIO with LIAM NOBLE AND JULIAN SIEGEL VORTEX JAZZ CLUB

JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET UK/IRELAND TOUR SPRING 2024 DATES

APRIL 27th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET MAGYS FARM, DROMARA, Co.DOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND

APRIL 28th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET WESTPORT JAZZ, CLEW BAY HOTEL, Co MAYO, IRELAND

APRIL 29th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET CRANE LANE THEATRE , CORK, Co CORK, IRELAND

MAY 1st JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET CAMDEN STUDIOS, ' 'SPEAKEASY SESSIONS', DUBLIN, IRELAND

MAY 2nd JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET CITY OF DERRY JAZZ AND BIG BAND FESTIVAL, BENNIGANS, DERRY Co. LONDONDERRY, NORTHERN IRELAND

MAY 3rd JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET UNESCO & CV Jazz World Jazz Celebration 2024 SpArC Theatre Bishop's Castle, Shropshire

MAY 6th NIKKI ILES BIG BAND Ribble Valley Jazz festival, UK

MAY 12th NIKKI ILES BIG BAND Pizza Express Jazz Club, Soho, London

MAY 17th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET RONNIE SCOTTS JAZZ CLUB, SOHO, LONDON

MAY 18th NIKKI ILES BIG BAND Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester

JUNE 7th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET Verdict Jazz Club, Brighton

JUNE 20th NIKKI ILES BIG BAND Y THEATRE, HARBOROUGH JAZZ AND LEICESTER JAZZ HOUSE

JULY 23 - 28th SLIGO INTERNATIONAL JAZZ SUMMER SCHOOL

JULY 24th Double Bill: SUN MI HONG TRIO + GARETH LOCKRANE & JULIAN SIEGEL + SPECIAL GUESTS Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo

JULY 25th ELIO VILLAFRANCA’S SLIGO AFRO-LATIN & JAZZ ORCHESTRA Hawk's Well Theatre, Sligo

AUGUST 10 - 17th and 18 - 25th INTERNATIONAL JAZZ SUMMER SCHOOL , Shropshire, UK

SEPTEMBER 1ST NIKKI ILES MINI BIG BAND Ambleside Days, Lake District, UK

SEPTEMBER 28TH NIKKI ILES 'SMALL PRINT' with NORMA WINSTONE, JULIAN SIEGEL and STEVE WATTS Derby Museum of Making, Derby, UK

OCTOBER 25th + 26th JULIAN SIEGEL and ROB LUFT meets ENZO ZIRILLI 'ZIROBOP' Alexanderplatz Jazz Club Rome, Italy

2023

April 12th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET VORTEX JAZZ CLUB, LONDON

April 20th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET ATTENBOROUGH ARTS CENTRE - LEICESTER JAZZ HOUSE

May 9th NIKKI ILES BIG BAND - WATERMILL JAZZ CLUB, DORKING

May 14th NIKKI ILES BIG BAND - RONNIE SCOTTS JAZZ CLUB LONDON

MAY 16TH EMPIRICAL WITH SPECIAL GUESTS JASON REBELLO AND JULIAN SIEGEL VORTEX JAZZ CLUB, DALSTON

JUNE 17th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET VORTEX JAZZ CLUB, LONDON

JULY 13th SONGLINES featuring LIANE CARROLL, SIMON PURCELL, JULIAN SIEGEL, LOZ GARRATT and WILL GLASER ROPETACKLE ARTS CENTRE, SHOREHAM BY SEA

AUGUST 5th - 20th INTERNATIONAL JAZZ SUMMER SCHOOL MORETON HALL SCHOOL, UK

SEPTEMBER 12th RICHARD FAIRHURST QUINTET, EASTSIDE JAZZ CLUB, LONDON

SEPTEMBER 28th SHANTI JAZZ , EASTSIDE JAZZ CLUB, ROYAL BIRMINGHAM CONSERVATOIRE

SEPTEMBER 30th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET VORTEX JAZZ CLUB, LONDON

OCTOBER 5th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET JAZZ LEEDS, SEVEN ARTS CENTRE, LEEDS

OCTOBER 6th JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET WORKSHOP AT LEEDS CONSERVATOIRE OF MUSIC

OCTOBER 11th NINA SIMONE LEGACY with JOSETTE BUSHELL-MINGO OBE MILTON COURT, BARBICAN CENTRE, LONDON

OCTOBER 12th JULIAN SIEGEL & THE SPIN BAND (feat LIAM DUNACHIE) THE SPIN, OXFORD

OCTOBER 15th GARETH LOCKRANE BIG BAND 606 CLUB CHELSEA 1.30 to 4pm

OCTOBER 22nd TRISTAN BANKS BAND Peggys Skylight Nottingham

OCTOBER 23rd JULIAN SIEGEL with SIMON PURCELL TRIO Jazz at the Fox N13

NOVEMBER 2nd TINDERSTICKS/ CLAIRE DENIS AUDITORIUM DE LYON, FRANCE

NOVEMBER 5th TINDERSTICKS/CLAIRE DENIS PHILHARMONIE DE PARIS, FRANCE

NOVEMBER 10th LAUREN KINSELLA TRIO WITH LIAM NOBLE AND JULIAN SIEGEL KILDARE JAZZ FESTIVAL

NOVEMBER 11th LAUREN KINSELLA TRIO WITH LIAM NOBLE AND JULIAN SIEGEL TOWN HALL STUDIO, GALWAY 1pm

NOVEMBER 12th LAUREN KINSELLA TRIO WITH LIAM NOBLE AND JULIAN SIEGEL SUNDAYS AT NOON, HUGH LANE GALLERY, DUBLIN

NOVEMBER 17th LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL - JULIAN SIEGEL QUARTET VORTEX JAZZ CLUB, LONDON

NOVEMBER 19th LONDON JAZZ FESTIVAL - NIKKI ILES FEATURING THE NDR BIGBAND CADOGAN HALL, LONDON

NOVEMBER 30th SONGLINES with LIANE CARROLL, SIMON PURCELL, JULIAN SIEGEL, LOZ GARRATT and WILL GLASER RONNIE SCOTTS JAZZ CLUB, LONDON

[greensparty]

Album Reviews: Shonen Knife / Inhaler

This week I got to review not one but two eagerly awaited albums:

Shonen Knife Our Best Place

Since forming in 1981, Osaka, Japan’s Shonen Knife have been tearing it up in their corner of the punk sandbox. A band that can draw equal comparisons to both The Ramones and the 1960s girl groups. What a testament it is that they’ve been doing their own thing for over four decades. Since I began this blog, one of the cool things I’ve gotten to do is cover some of the band’s recent activity: their 2016 concert the day after the U.S. presidential election, my 2017 interview with the band’s singer/guitarist Noako Yamano, my review of their 2018 DVD Shonen Knife ALIVE in Osaka! (which the band actually retweeted on Twitter!), and my review of the band’s 2019 album Sweet Candy Power. The band’s first album since the pandemic Our Best Place is being released this week on Good Charamel Records.

album cover

There’s a timelessness to this new album that is kind of comforting in a way. It could’ve been released in the mid-90s after their album Rock Animals (one of my favorites of theirs) or sometime in the 00s. They have a punk edge, but serious pop tendencies, much like The Ramones and a lot like Nirvana, who sung the praises of Shonen Knife and toured with them. Bands that have fun sing-along sounds intermixed with the energy of punk and do it really really well are few and far between as you need to master both. Shonen Knife is definitely one of the masters and all hail them for still doing it into their late 50s and 60s. The band is still continuing their songs about food on tracks like “Spicy Veggie Curry” and “Afternoon Tea”, but then you have song like “Better” which is one of their finest pop moments. All hail Shonen Knife!

Atsuko Yamano, Naoko Yamano, and Risa Kawano

For info on Our Best Place: http://www.shonenknife.net/

3.5 out of 5 stars

Inhaler Cuts & Bruises

Dublin, Ireland alt-rock quartet Inhaler have been on my radar for a few years now. I named the band’s song “Falling In” my #6 Song of 2020. The band’s debut It Won’t Always Be Like This was impressive. I named it my #9 Album of 2021. Before the sophomore album was even announced they began dropping some singles and just last week I named “These are the Days” my #4 Song of 2022. Now the band’s second album Cuts & Bruises is being released this week on Polydor.

album cover

I’m going to address the elephant in the room with Inhaler right away just to get it out of the way: singer / guitarist Elijah Hewson is the son of Bono. I bring this up because that is what a lot of the attention for the band has been about. Any child of a much-loved musician has had to live up to their parent’s musicianship, just ask Julian Lennon, Jakob Dylan, or Jason Bonham, all of whom are great musicians on their own, but had to live up to their legendary parents, which set the bar so unrealistically high. But here is the secret with Inhaler: they actually are a really great band! I listened to this new album Cuts & Bruises and specifically tried to not compare this to U2 in any way, shape or form, because that’s just unfair to the entire band to say “you need to live up to U2′s discography”. 

Jenkinson, Keating, Hewson and McMahon

There is a real grandiosity to this music. It’s like they are performing songs they already know are going to play well in an arena or a stadium, but the entire band - not just Hewson but also bassist Robert Keating, drummer Ryan McMahon, and guitarist Josh Jenkinson are a tight unit. These songs are melodic and infectious. The band just keeps getting better and better with each album and song! Here’s to the first great album of 2023!

For info on Inhaler: https://www.inhaler.band/

4.5 out of 5 stars

[thisdayinwwi]

Dec 5 1917 OTD A Press Agency photographer takes this image, IWM Q 54252, of four soldiers who were awarded the Victoria Cross standing in front of a touring Mark IV Male Tank (s/n 113) "Julian"

Left to Right:

  Private Michael James O'Rourke of the 7th (1st British Columbia) Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force, awarded the Victoria Cross for actions in France during Arpil 15/17 1917. For three days, under heavy fire, he worked as a stretcher-bearer bringing in many wounded.

Sergeant James Ockendon of the 1st Battalion, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, awarded the Victoria Cross for actions in Belgium on Oct 4 1917. He rushed a machine gun nest killing and capturing its Germans.

Private William Boynton Butler of the 17th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, awarded the Victoria Cross in France for action on Aug 6 1917. He took a live shell away from his comrades and was able to just barely throw it into a trench.

Corporal Ernest Alfred Egerton of the 16th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters, awarded the Victoria Cross in Belgium on 20 September 1917. He charged dugouts under heavy fire forcing the surrender of 29 of the enemy. 

[stairnaheireann]

#OTD in Irish History | 1 January (Eanáir):

#OTD in Irish History | 1 January (Eanáir):

The Dublin Julian Day (DJD) is the number of days that has elapsed since the epoch of the solar and lunar ephemerides used from 1900 through 1983, Newcomb’s Tables of the Sun and Ernest W. Brown’s Tables of the Motion of the Moon (1919). This epoch was noon UT on 0 January 1900, which is the same as noon UT on 31 December 1899. The DJD was defined by the International Astronomical Union at their…

[musiconanironingboard]

1 June 2022: Tima Mansió Dumps the Dead, The Fatima Mansions. (Radioactive, 1992)

This bizarrely titled item is one I knew in college, while working at the radio station there, and it’s come back into my consciousness because Fatima Mansions frontman Cathal Coughlan died just a few weeks ago. Coughlan fronted the band Microdisney for the bulk of the Eighties, shifting to his Fatima Mansions project in 1989. I have no experience with Microdisney other than the usual exposure in record stores and magazines, but Fatima Mansions, named after a Dublin public-housing estate, always struck me as an outrageous, chaotic band. Our radio station was serviced with copies of the second Fatima Mansions album Viva Dead Ponies (1990), and most of us on the music staff couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I don’t remember who wound up reviewing it for airplay, but I know we played it in light rotation. When Tima Mansió Dumps the Dead surfaced, it was even more baffling, and I don’t recall if we even played it. These extreme reactions seem laughable to me today; this isn’t any more insane than plenty of fringe things that I listen to, and if we didn’t play the likes of the fantastic “Only Losers Take the Bus,” then we were really dumb. I remember when their fourth album Lost in the Former West (1994) came out, the band still on a major label but the album seemingly sent straight to cut-out bins, and I couldn’t believe the group was still going, let alone still on a major. I always toyed with buying that one, simply because I saw it everywhere for a pittance, but I never bought any Fatima Mansions. I very well may have a promo cassette of Tima Mansió Dumps the Dead from the station in my closet, but then again I may have taped over it. Cathal Coughlan reappeared in my consciousness in 2012 when he and Luke Haines released the collaborative album The North Sea Scrolls. I tend to buy everything Haines releases, and I didn’t even realize his partner on the album was the man from Fatima Mansions, but Coughlan’s singing voice—very much like Julian Cope’s, another favorite singer of mine—was appealing to me and I wound up buying his 2000 solo album Black River Falls. When he died this year, I started thinking about all of this again, and listened to some Fatima Mansions material and realized how strong some of it was. I thought back to that strange release Tima Mansió Dumps the Dead from my college days and decided I wanted a copy. 

In trying to reconstruct the chronology of the two recordings we had at the station, things get confusing quickly and I wonder if part of our bafflement at the time had to do with trying to understand all of these odd releases. Viva Dead Ponies came out a year later in the US than in the UK (1991), with a different track sequence and, in some cases, completely different tracks. The US edition adds “Only Losers Take the Bus” and “Blues for Ceausescu,” the two songs that came closest to being hits for the band. Tima Mansió Dumps the Dead arrived in 1992, and at the time it seemed as if it were issued to promote Viva Dead Ponies, but issuing a strange “single” with ten tracks to promote a year-old album seemed like a bizarre strategy. What we didn’t know at the time is, in 1991, the band released a stopgap EP in the UK called Bertie’s Brochures and this Tima Mansió release compiled five of that EP’s eight tracks, added a couple of covers (”Stigmata” by Ministry and a take-the-piss version of R.E.M.’s “Shiny Happy People,” another thing we thought was outrageous at the time), a remix of “Only Losers Take the Bus,” and two LP cuts from Viva Dead Ponies. Even if we understood all of that, this release still cuts an odd figure and that inscrutable title makes it even more strange. (The cover art doesn’t help, either.)

Complicating matters, there are three versions of this release. The commercial US edition has a red cover and only five tracks; there is also a promo-only single, with two versions of “Bus,” that has a yellow cover. This ten-track promotional “EP” (it actually runs over thirty minutes) has, obviously, a blue cover. Radioactive was never the greatest label, but man, they really poured a lot of promotion work into The Fatima Mansions for a while there. 

Above I’ve got the front and back covers, removed from the jewel case. Below I show what it looked like when it arrived in the mail. There are a couple of schools of thought when it comes to people who deal in used CDs: those who take pride in their presentation, and those who would sell you a disc with food smeared on it. This item wasn’t quite as bad as that, but it was in such lousy shape that I barely wanted to touch it. You can’t see all the grime and filth in this picture, but it is there. And all the price tags; Jesus. Couldn’t any of the obviously multiple people who tried to sell this thing over the years just put their tag on top of one that was already there? There’s no getting that giant bar-code label off without a lot of labor. The orange ones look like they might peel off with less hassle than the big one, but that ancient tag in the upper right is also going to take serious work. Then there is the scrubbing of the case itself; it’s filthy. I’m only considering cleaning it at all because it’s a heavyweight ’90s jewel case and I like to preserve those as possible instead of swapping the parts into a flimsy, thin ’20s jewel case. Amazingly, the disc itself is not in very bad condition.

Last, here is a shot of the disc. You may be able to tell from this photo that the reverse of the front cover is blank. 

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

🎪 Wed 22 July ♾

Anniversary madness!! Crazy times!! Oh wait, uhhhhh, not really lol... Let's see, the One Direction accounts posted, the tweet instantly shooting above a million notes to break a record and the instagram account gaining over a million followers. Always the most! Good thing they had plenty of time to take that into account with their promised website! Although Sony still don't own the actual OneDirection dot com url and didn't bother to correct that even for this occasion they did put up a site, I guess? Is it really new? Anyway just as predicted, it crashed instantly, lmao, and then when loaded it appeared to be the same old site but if you dig into the "streaming partners" content you can eventually find some unseen content in the form of vertical videos on Spotify, but not like new vertical videos for each song just like a tiny few second clip for each song. If, on the other hand, you follow the merch links you end up on ETSY looking at fan merch LMAOOOOO it's so janky WHY ARE THEY LIKE THIS. Oh but wait THERE IS MORE there's... a playlist of One Direction songs. Huhhhhh okay but also unreleased songs...? No just ones that weren't on Spotify before, like for example three versions of You and I, including the "You and I duet version" which is some kind of y/n karaoke thing?! OKAY I guess???? In short: not only is the website content as underwhelming as predicted tbh it doesn't even live up to the jokes about it being not much! BUT as we saw yesterday one picture can truly yield a thousand clues so it may not be much but those Spotify pics are already being combed through and contextualized with interesting results, including that the single 'unseen' photo had, in fact, been seen.

Rolling Stone published an article talking to early 1D songwriters (but not the band.) Savan Kotecha has apparently finally realized he was on the wrong side of history and ignores his (major) role in trying to shut Louis up and talking shit about him back in the day to now praise the way Louis successfully prevailed over his, Savan's, best efforts to shut him down, going on to preside over the renowned 1D sound of their later years. In "hindsight, that was the right thing to do," he admits. MHMM. Julian Bulian on the other hand comes through with the acknowledgement that "a lot of the songs were double- like somebody might be singing about their girlfriend, but there was another meaning that applied to the group as well."

A twitter user claimed that a radio announcer said the Infinity video would drop at midnight EST tonight; that turned out to be incorrect but "unseen tour moments" are going live at midnight from iHeartRadio.

Meanwhile, a current picture of Harry in Italy (unmasked) in a restaurant kitchen pressed in close to the entire restaurant staff (mostly unmasked) for a photo was posted, and Niall posted about sports.

But let's be real, tomorrow's the big day we're looking at. It's the actual anniversary, plus if the theory that what the label is up to (so far: inexplicably squandering the opportunity to make giant piles of money off merch, and sucking Spotify's dick) and what the band themselves might get up are separate is correct we could still have some exciting content in store... right? LOL. So far that we know of we have Liam on the Capital FM breakfast show, Niall on the FM104 (Dublin) breakfast show, Niall and Liam both on another Irish breakfast show, and Liam on Radio One later. If you're noticing a trend here, well... yes. Louis and Harry, always the elephant in the room! Very on brand.

[marcloveskylie]

I’ll never forget the excitement of writing #LoveAtFirstSight with @biffco, Ash, Julian and Martin. We were in Dublin and we dived into pop, dance and dream landscapes. (Hello ‘Light Years’) ✨ Take Us To The Pop Stars On The Moon!!! To this day this songs fills me with JOY!!! 💖 Happy 19th!

-Kylie

[yndigot]

Question: do you have any headcanons/a personal favorite explanation for how Branson could have possibly wanted to return to Downton after being in America? I've been going in circles with his character and what is/isn't shown on screen, but I feel like something major must have happened for him to travel back after being away.

I wish I had really good thoughts instead of just long, rambly thoughts. But my best idea that isn't re-writing the stuff I wish Julian had done with more care is to over-analyze what Tom says and try to wrestle it into something that makes sense!

Like, the straightforward answer is that I think NOTHING Julian gives us justifies this. I'm kind of not sure why he brought Tom back. Don't get me wrong. I want Tom there because I like him and I like the way he interacts with the rest of the family, but Julian didn't seem to write him very consistently re: what he wants out of life, especially after Sybil dies. And not in a way that reads to me like a "grief is making him directionless" deliberate choice. More like "idk what to do with a character like this if he's not shit-stirring, so now that I've integrated him into the family, I don't know where to go next."

I think Julian has a real problem writing working class characters and showing them having desires that don't either a) serve to uphold the aristocracy or b) get painted as sinister in some way. Thomas vacillates wildly between the two -- his ambition to have a life outside of service is often cast as sinister, and then his "redemption" is being the good servant. (Don't get me wrong -- I think if Thomas has to stay in service, he's probably much happier running the place than taking orders, but he gets "rewarded" by having his place in correct order confirmed.) See also: the way Julian seems to treat Anna's "friendship" with Mary as though it's entirely sincere and devoted and uncomplicated by the fact that she depends on Mary and the family for her salary, her husband's salary, housing, and childcare. (I don't have trouble believing Anna would have a certain fondness for Mary after many years, but I find things about the way their relationship is portrayed as though it's uncomplicated and transcends class to be uncomfortable.) And Daisy's ideas about wanting better rights and questioning the monarchy are played for laughs and come across kind of childish. Basically, I do not trust Julian for one second to try to get into the head of someone who, the first couple series establish, is an Irish republican and socialist. Because as much as I enjoy it, I believe Julian writes Downton to glorify institutions that early Tom would want to dismantle, which means he's either a source of trouble, or he needs to be watered down and neutered. We get the first for the first three series and the second going forward from there.

Tom going to Boston feels to me like Patrick Gordon and the endless murder trials -- a storyline that I think got away from Julian and then had to be wrapped up without changing the status quo, even if it was a waste of our time in the process. (I swear I really enjoy the show, I just think it has a lot of flaws!) I just don't think there's a lot there to build on. I went back to check, and the stated reason is that he didn't like starting over again in a new country and didn't like taking Sybbie so far away from family. That's fine? I guess. I loathe that he comes back saying that American capitalism is somehow better than European capitalism and he's kind of digging it now. That's just uncalled for. (I do appreciate that the greater social mobility of the US might appeal to him in that it strips the absolute top layer of society in the UK which is determined exclusively by birth, but I prefer a Tom who wants to dismantle the class system, not just escape the aristocracy and live in a class system that is slightly more permeable to people who get lucky. Julian's bullshit about "American capitalism is all down to hard work so that's why it appeals to someone like Tom!" makes my skin crawl.)

I can think of some things I wish happened in Boston! I don't think they're headcanons in the sense that I think they almost certainly having nothing to do with what we're actually given (and may in fact lowkey contradict some of it), but I'd love to see (or write, if I ever get off my ass) fic that actually deals with what it's like for Tom to be in a job and a life that isn't tied up in the aristocracy anymore for the first time in years (even when he was in Ireland with Sybil, I feel like it would have hovered over them) and confronts what he likes about being in business with his cousin -- and what he doesn't. I know it's 0% supported by canon and even contradicted by it and his new love of sucking capitalist dick, but I like to think of Tom seeing his cousin's purely capitalist enterprise and beginning to form the idea of starting his own business based on a cooperative model. Is it believable that Talbot & Branson has any elements of the cooperative model in the way it's run? Probably not, but I like to pretend. I think, despite the fact that he says he gets on great with his cousin and there wasn't any bad blood between them when he left, it would be interesting if there were some ideological differences about the business.

The absolute most interesting thing that could have happened to him in Boston would have been to see him re-introduced to radical politics, but canon pretty clearly contradicts that and in fact has him become less and less radical as time goes on. Unfortunately. But I'd read the hell out of a fic that explored the way the Irish in the US were funding radical movements back in Ireland and Tom getting sucked into that. I'd also love to see him involved with the GAA or Gaelic League in Boston (or in Yorkshire, tbh -- I want more Tom and the expat community in general). /tangent

Genuinely, working with what we're given, my actual headcanon is super boring. Again, I do think that Tom's life/career drift after Sybil's death is at least as much a product of Julian not knowing what to do with the character as it is a conscious choice to show him lost and grieving (though we do get hints of that), BUT let's go ahead and interpret it as Tom feeling lost and directionless after he's lost his wife and the life the two of them planned together in Dublin. (Let's also set aside whether he'd actually be able to return to Ireland following the establishment of the Free State -- he's working under the assumption that he's lost his wife and his country in the space of a few months and can't get either back.) That's a huge loss and a lot of grief, and the two are compounding each other, and he gets into kind of a rut at Downton over the next few years. I think it's reasonable for him to think "Maybe I can just move and start over, and it will shake up my life, and this lost, listless feeling will be fixed!" And then it turns out that, actually, depression and grief and mourning for your wife and the life you planned together doesn't go away when you go to a new country! It doesn't fix things, it just takes away a lot of the support system he had in Yorkshire (the family generally, but mostly Mary tbh, and Isobel a bit, and maybe people at his church if we look outside what Julian lets us see). I think when he says that starting over in a new country all over again was too much, maybe that's what he's getting at. He may be writing to his cousins and keeping in touch, but presumably he hasn't seen this cousin face to face in years. He may have a few other contacts in Boston in the immigrant community. He can find a church and a community with the GAA and/or Gaelic League and other organizations like that. But these aren't people who've been in his life in a meaningful, daily way for a long, long time. He relied really heavily on Mary (and Matthew for the first year or so) and whatever the rest of his community in Yorkshire looked like at a very vulnerable time in his life, and I think maybe he underestimated how hard it would be to leave that and start over. For all that I whine about the way Tom's written later on in the series, I actually really like his friendship with Mary and Matthew and the way he and Mary seem to drift together after Sybil and Matthew die. I think it works very well and is very believable that, despite the fact that Mary wasn't jumping to welcome him into the family, they would become incredibly close.

Starting over is hard. He's probably trusting Sybbie to someone like his cousin's wife or a woman recommended to him by the local church while he's at work in Boston, and at Downton he was leaving her with the nanny while he worked, but she was in the family home, with her grandparents and aunts in and out of the house all day, and being with a stranger in Boston may have been hard on Sybbie. Also, to go from having a relationship with George that was probably more like siblings than cousins to being separated was probably difficult. Part of the problem could be that Sybbie was having trouble adjusting. And he fell into being the agent because the position was open, and he was drifting after Sybil died, and he needed an occupation, and it feels like he fell into the thing with the cousin because he felt like he was in a rut and wanted something different, and that's what was offered. I'm not sure stumbling between things that are available is the same as making conscious choices about what you really want out of life. Looking at it that way, maybe it's not so surprising that whatever he had going on in Boston never quite gelled. That doesn't necessarily make me think it makes tons of sense for him to come straight back to Downton -- I can think of other choices I'd make for him if the initial plan with the cousin doesn't work -- but for all that he disapproves of aristocracy, I do think he loves the Crawleys and regards them as family by the time he tries moving to Boston.

All that feels unsatisfying. I'd love a good take that had something big happen in Boston, though. Old girlfriend from back in Ireland has also immigrated? Old boyfriend? Is he lying when he says he and his cousin didn't have a falling out? Did he manage to get himself into politically related legal trouble again? (I can't quite make that last one work in my head because while he doesn't seem to mind destruction of property, he seems disinclined to participate in anything that might lead to people getting hurt, and I think he'd be very hesitant to put his neck out in a big way once he's Sybbie's only living parent, but it would be interesting if someone could come up with something. Labor organizing goes sideways, maybe? Even though he seems to be leaning into capitalism more than I like...?) You definitely make me want to come up with something better than the hints we get.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.8 (before 1940)

453 BC – Spring and Autumn period: The house of Zhao defeats the house of Zhi, ending the Battle of Jinyang, a military conflict between the elite families of the State of Jin. 413 – Emperor Honorius signs an edict providing tax relief for the Italian provinces Tuscia, Campania, Picenum, Samnium, Apulia, Lucania and Calabria, which were plundered by the Visigoths. 589 – Reccared I opens the Third Council of Toledo, marking the entry of Visigothic Spain into the Catholic Church. 1360 – Treaty of Brétigny drafted between King Edward III of England and King John II of France (the Good). 1373 – Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic and anchoress, experiences the deathbed visions described in her Revelations of Divine Love. 1429 – Joan of Arc lifts the Siege of Orléans, turning the tide of the Hundred Years' War. 1450 – Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI. 1516 – A group of imperial guards, led by Trịnh Duy Sản, murdered Emperor Lê Tương Dực and fled, leaving the capital Thăng Long undefended. 1541 – Hernando de Soto stops near present-day Walls, Mississippi, and sees the Mississippi River (then known by the Spanish as Río de Espíritu Santo, the name given to it by Alonso Álvarez de Pineda in 1519). 1608 – A newly nationalized silver mine in Scotland at Hilderston, West Lothian is re-opened by Bevis Bulmer. 1639 – William Coddington founds Newport, Rhode Island. 1758 – The Maratha Empire captures Peshawar from the Durrani Empire in the Battle of Peshawar. The Maratha Empire was extended to its farthest distance away from Pune that it ever reached, over 2,000 km (1,200 mi), almost to the borders of Afghanistan. 1788 – King Louis XVI of France attempts to impose the reforms of Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne by abolishing the parlements. 1794 – Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme générale, is tried, convicted and guillotined in one day in Paris. 1821 – Greek War of Independence: The Greeks defeat the Turks at the Battle of Gravia Inn. 1842 – A train derails and catches fire in Paris, killing between 52 and 200 people. 1846 – Mexican–American War: American forces led by Zachary Taylor defeat a Mexican force north of the Rio Grande in the first major battle of the war. 1877 – At Gilmore's Gardens in New York City, the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opens. 1886 – Pharmacist John Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named "Coca-Cola" as a patent medicine. 1898 – The first games of the Italian football league system are played. 1899 – The Irish Literary Theatre in Dublin produced its first play. 1902 – In Martinique, Mount Pelée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people. Only a handful of residents survive the blast. 1919 – Edward George Honey proposes the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate the Armistice of 11 November 1918 which ended World War I. 1921 – The creation of the Communist Party of Romania. 1924 – The Klaipėda Convention is signed formally incorporating Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory) into Lithuania. 1927 – Attempting to make the first non-stop transatlantic flight from Paris to New York, French war heroes Charles Nungesser and François Coli disappear after taking off aboard The White Bird biplane. 1933 – Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast of self-purification and launched a one-year campaign to help the Harijan movement.