Baz O'Brien

Wednesdays in the Archive📜 It's a stormy day in Dublin today, but it's not quite as bad as January 1936, when a storm caused damages to the library's roof and outbuilding. This invoice records all the repairs that were required.

Public executions were not abolished out of tenderness towards the criminal. They were abolished because of the effect on the people watching, and the dangers of making human death a source of commercial entertainment. Here's Charles Dickens in The Times, after witnessing an execution in 1849.

A spider with a skull pattern on its abdomen, from Conrad Gessner's Historiae animalium (1621) #RareBooks #Specialcollections #Libraries #Halloween #Spiders #Woodcut

Riddle me this. If somebody donates £36 million to a political party and £5 million to its leader, how is the £5 million not political? Asking for a parliamentary standards commissioner.

The entire Epstein regime needs to be removed and thrown in prison where they belong.

Bertrand Russell's reply to Sir Oswald Mosley, Britain's most prominent fascist leader: I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us. Bertrand Russell

On the 91st anniversary of Social Security, these words from FDR are just as important today:

(Fa)rage against the dying of the Right.

A beautiful woodland view in warming morning light around 6:30am

Remember that Christopher Lee played: Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, Saruman, Darth Tyrannus, the Mummy, Mycroft Holmes, Rasputin, Count Rochefort, Scaramanga, Death, Treebeard, King Theoden, and the Jabberwocky. He fought Nazis in WW2, was knighted, and released a heavy metal album. Fuck Chuck Norris.

Cam of God

A slightly ferocious looking beaver, from a 1555 Spanish translation of Materia Medica, the compendium of medicinal plants by the ancient physician Dioscorides.

"When you have a library and a garden you have everything you need", said Cicero. Maybe nowadays that should be a library, a garden, and a plunge pool?

To feel the real essence of an Irish rainforest, go to one in the rain. You'll find yourself immersed in an alternate, magical realm of dripping, lush exuberance.

The attacks in Edinburgh, in which an armed bare-chested white man terrorised Muslims, leaving five people injured, don't feature on a single newspaper front page this morning. Two tier journalism

I absolutely hate military flyovers at sporting events. Four military helicopters just did flyover in Seattle at the #WorldCup US vs Australia match. Say NO to militarism. #NoWarButClassWar

Unfurling broad buckler fern makes a temporary home for a map-winged swift moth. (Great name!) A beautiful thing with rewilding is, you just never know what you'll find next, as life returns to the land: it's an endless magical mystery tour.

Bosnian fans chant and stand for Palestine in Toronto before their World Cup match vs Canada 🍉

Cyril Arapoff. Street scene in East End of London, 1930

#ForestFriday 📍Pennsylvania

The binder used a fragment of printed music to line the spine of the letters of Aldo Manuzio the younger, from 1592. Music was tricky to print & the page may have had an error, or perhaps it didn't sell. Whatever the reason, it ended up in the waste pile #Fragments #Bindings

A haze of flowering saxifrage... The magic of an Irish rainforest.🌍

It's been 16 months since I left X, and I feel so much better for it. I hadn't realised just how big an impact the daily tsunami of hate, trolling, sealioning and strategic incomprehension was having on my state of mind. I cannot understand why anyone who values their mental health is still there.

I was away for two days up in Dublin to attend the funeral of a very dear family friend, Eilish Byrne (Moore). This is the sight that greeted me when I got back yesterday afternoon. An Irish Atlantic rainforest. Home.

Tulips & sea daffodils, with bonus beetle, from Daniel Rabel's 'Theatrum florae' printed in Paris in 1622.

down south

Tonight the Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir perform Handel's Messiah in Dublin Castle, for the anniversary of its premiere in Dublin on 13th April 1742. Our manuscript was copied by John Mathews in 1761 & is full of information about variant settings & early performance

Meanwhile, on the moon...

Build child care centers. Build health centers. Build community centers. Not data centers. And not ICE detention centers.

💚 Burnside Bridge Portland, Oregon

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

An impassioned defence of the stage for #WorldTheatreDay : '...in maintaining the cause of the stage I am defending Poetry in general ... pleading for eloquence, for History and philosophy. I am pleading for the reasonable pleasures of mankind ... the nourishments of Youth & the delights of Age'

#StreetArt : Sojo Torrecillas de la Tiesa Spain- Titolo:No es no

#StreetArt in #Paris 11th

Money for our needs already exist…

A potted carnation from 1552, printed from woodblock and then hand-coloured.