Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Tomás Murray

@tomasjmurray.bsky.social

2K followers 60 following 8K posts

Lean left • Tom is fine • Far from the west of Ireland now • Fond of cats, jazz, old films, paintings, poetry, stout, & Sylvia • Sylvia most of all 🎷🧵 https://tinyurl.com/3bvnbyfb 🎬🧵 https://tinyurl.com/47stke59 • https://tinyurl.com/2jan4tzd

tinyurl.com

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · Jul 8

My wife, Sylvia, died this morning. 💔

“When the door
scraped shut, it was the end
of all the sounds there are.

You left me
beside the quietest fire in the world.”

Sylvia & Lily (Cork, Ireland, July 2007)

1 3 160

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 8h

(i’m not sure there is anything in this world quite as lovely as playoff baseball. It’s like God said “Here, here is something for your distracted soul. Pay attention now.” And I grew up thinking—and a part of me still does—that hurling is the greatest example of teamwork as art ever invented.)

1 2

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 9h

(One day, God willing, you & I will have a conversation.)

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 9h

(I cannot get over how much alike she & my Sophie are.)

Reposted by Tomás Murray

Levi Stahl @levistahl.bsky.social · 10h

Film noir Tanuki. Your fate has found you out.

Our cat Tanuki, a white cat with gray smudges on her head, seen in high-contrast black and white.

1 2 46

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 10h

#NowPlaying* #TMCC™

(*Heaven.)

‘In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning’: youtu.be/Z_MuyKjaEKU?...

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 10h

(. . . and I circle back around because that is what I do:)

1 2

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 11h

(. . . and since it’s also Harold’s birthday:)

1 3

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 11h

1 2

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 11h

(And also this young man:)

1 2

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 18h

Week in wildlife: a bumpy snailfish, a slow loris and a whistle pig

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

www.theguardian.com

1 3

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 21h

“Everything
on this shrinking planet favours the survival
of the small people, whose horizons
are large only because they are content to look at them
from their own hills.
I grow old,
bending to enter the promised
land that was here all the time.”

Charlie Brigden @filmsonwax.bsky.social · 1d

Thinking about this today, have always been obsessed with it.

A black and white picture of a picturesque isolated home. Hiraeth n. (Welsh) A spiritual longing for a home which maybe never was. Nostalgia for ancient places to which we cannot return. It is the echo of the lost places of our soul’s past and our grief for them. It’s in the wind, and the rocks, and the waves. It is nowhere and it is everywhere.

1 4

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

(My lame attempt at humour, D.)

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

#NowPlaying #TMCC™

‘You Go to My Head’: youtu.be/QAwSrAhlcMM?...

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

(And to the individual who, when I mentioned my first jazz purchase in That Other Place™, replied “Dave Brubeck is jazz for people who don’t really like jazz“:

I do still remember your reply, sir, but I don’t recall your name.)

1 3

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

Since I can’t recall a regret, Ms P., I am going to flip your q around. When I got my first job in Dublin way back in ’88 I, on a whim*, bought a copy of ‘At Carnegie Hall’ (The Dave Brubeck Quartet) that began a lifelong love affair w/ jazz.

(*Nobody in my family knew the first thing about jazz.)

1 5

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

Today is Mr Sim’s 125th birthday (excuse my lazy repost but there are some good photos).

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · Oct 9

Alastair Sim, Actor, #BornOnThisDay in 1900, in Edinburgh, Scotland

2 19

Reposted by Tomás Murray

Andrew Male @andrewmale.bsky.social · 1d

In autumn light. #Hildy

1 4 67

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

. . . Aloysius O’Kelly’s ‘Mass in a Connemara Cabin’ (1883), National Gallery of Ireland:

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

Yesterday's @frankie49.bsky.social diary entry on a quite extraordinary life.

Our Man in Havana – Frank McNally on a forgotten Irishman honoured in Cuba

James Joseph O’Kelly was also, for a brief period, a man of two wives

www.irishtimes.com

Reposted by Tomás Murray

Andrew Male @andrewmale.bsky.social · 1d

“It was about these two tramps waitin’ for this mate of theirs. I opened me programme and ‘is name’s not there. Y’ could wait a hundred years an’ he’d still never walk out on to the bloody stage. I slipped out to this café next door an’ read the paper.” Willy Russell, Breezeblock Park.

Breezeblock Park, Liverpool Everyman Theatre, 1975
The full text runs

Ted Don’t talk to me about theatres. I went to one once. ’Ey, John, what was the name of that play, that play I took you an’ y’ mother to see when it was rainin’ in town? Remember?
John (still absorbed in the television) Waitin’ for somethin’ wasn’t it?
Ted Waitin’ For Godot. That was it. I’ll tell y’ about theatres. We went in to see this thing, it was about these two tramps waitin’ for this mate of theirs. Well, I’m not kiddin’ you? All this audience were sittin’ there waitin’ for him as well. I could see straightaway what was gonna happen though. I’d been in there about five minutes an’ I knew. I opened me programme didn’t I, John? An’ I looked down the list, y’ know where it gives the names of the characters like? An’ straightaway I knew, didn’t I? His name’s not there in the programme y’ see, this Godot’s. Well, it’s common sense, if his name’s not in the programme he’s never gonna show up. Y’ could wait a hundred years an’ he’d still never walk on to the bloody stage. But all the rest of these stupid buggers in the place – they didn’t have the sense to look in the programme an’ work it out for themselves. I slipped out to this café next door an’ read the paper. I laughed meself silly at the rest of them next door. When our John come out with his mum, I said to him, didn’t I, John? I said to him – don’t tell me – the Godot feller didn’t turn up!

1 3 29

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

(I have no experience w/ editing someone else’s work—or w/ publishing my own, other than an academic thesis—but I imagine it might be very rewarding work, esp. if the writer is receptive.)

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 1d

(I’m glad to see your guys survived to fight at least one more day. And that Stacey got to see the drama. It was a fun game.)

Reposted by Tomás Murray

Miller on the Threshold @iammilliam.bsky.social · 3d

Just the latest way in which technology is enabling people who don’t actually like reading to diminish the cultural relevance of those who do.

The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 3d

Abridging has always been in vogue. Now, apps like Blinkist take entire books and crunch them down to a series of what are called Blinks—which amount to around 2,000 words. “Is that what books are coming to, a handy social lubricant?” Anthony Lane asks.

Can You Read a Book in a Quarter of an Hour?

Phone apps now offer to boil down entire books into micro-synopses. What they leave out is revealing.

www.newyorker.com

15 33 110

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 3d

(You are a first-rate romantic, Ms N. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.)

1 3

Tomás Murray @tomasjmurray.bsky.social · 4d

(Probably my second favourite volume of the 12.)