Saturday, January 28, 2017

"The Silent Ulster Vote" - a podcast from 2012

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I am thankful to Bruce Carlson of My History Can Beat Up Your Politics for posting this on Twitter earlier. I’m only 15 minutes into it and it’s really excellent - detailed, packed with content, a lot of which I had never heard before. Listen to it here: 

Friday, January 27, 2017

Ulster Historical Foundation - "The Northern Muse" - 60th anniversary

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This event next Saturday evening promises to be truly excellent. I'm especially looking forward to seeing inside historic First Presbyterian Church in Rosemary Street in Belfast, and to hearing Nigel and Dianna Boullier playing authentic old-time County Down fiddle tunes. Nigel is the author of the remarkable Handed Down: Country Fiddling and Dancing in East and Central Down (available here).

• Book your ticket online; the Foundation is a charity and donations are suggested at £25 per person. Click here.

"You're Scotch-Irish, aren't you?" - Michael Stipe of REM

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I had expected some of this. I had met Stipe before, in Athens, Georgia, at the time when R.E.M. had just signed with Warner Brothers and was about to release Green. At the end of the conversation, he began studying my face. "You're Scotch-Irish, aren't you?" he said.

"No," I said. "I'm not."

"You have a very Scotch-Irish face."

"I'm not Scotch-Irish."

He reached out his hand and touched the back of it to my face. "You have Scotch-Irish cheekbones," he said. "I'll bet you have that somewhere in your background. I'm very good at figuring out where people came from."

(from this 2003 interview in Esquire magazine)

Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Niall Ferguson on the plantation of Ulster, Virginia, Canada and Australia

There are some drawbacks in the script, but the general approach is pretty good.