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Cassandra warned Trojans to beware of Greek bearing gifts This site will be a forum for warnings that should be heeded.

29/09/2025

"So autumn, please, no fickle / promises of crisp cold days that don't/ materialise"
From 'September' a new poem by Lorely Forester.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full poem

https://cassandravoices.com/culture/literature/poetry/poem-september-is-here/

26/09/2025

"...When
Guinea first, and then the Parti Solidaire
demanded heartened soul, unstinting
dedication, day and night, I gave my all,
humming like a never-empty engine
of vivacity for Africa, my nation."

From a new The Revolutionary by Ciaran O'Rourke dedicated to Andrée Blouin, 1921-1986.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full poem

25/09/2025

"The last time I encountered Bono I was working student security at a gig by Welsh band The Alarm on the UCD Belfield campus, on 22 October 1983. My job was to guard their dressing room door. The ever-ebullient one arrived with an entourage, to offer moral support to a group who had toured with U2 as an opening act. He gave me a big wave and full-on smile as soon as he saw me (much to the jaw-dropping surprise of the too-cool-for-school Students’ Union social secretary and his crew, whom I sensed had pegged me as a bit of an nerd), told me how he really wanted to get down to doing some serious reading soon too, and inquired what time I’d be finished my doorman duties. I told him being a student was fine, except for the lack of money. ‘Sure, what do you need money for?’ was his reply. Later on he did a turn on stage with his Cymru friends, improvising lyrics to Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’, and then disappeared into the night.
..

An excerpt from Des Traynor's new article 'How Bono Nearly Ruined My Life in which he charts the course of a brief friendship that began in unlikely circumstances when the two attended the Shalom Christian prayer group in depressed 1980s Dublin.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full article.

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Image: Bono performing with U2 in 2011.

18/09/2025

Maldon days

by Deborah Mason

hēt þā hyssa hwæne    hors forlǣtan,
feorr āfȳsan,    and forð gangan,
hicgan tō handum,    and tō hige gōdum.
The Battle of Maldon (991 AD)

Galvanized into action,   my companion horses neighed
as they galloped to the woods,   riderless and rudderless.
I turned back to my liege lord,   reluctant to retreat,
but he waved me away from him,   although I was his steadfast steed
who had taken him into battle boldly before   on many occasions.

In the woods, we regrouped.   Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s proud hawk
circled and swooped overhead,   dismissed as we had been,
uneasy as we were.   We faced out towards the riverbank,
watching the fighting begin,   watching the ruthless invaders wreak havoc.
We waited for the command to return   but it never came.

I went down to the battlefield first,   saw my beloved ealdorman
bristling with spears,   slaughtered alongside his faithful warriors.
Leaving our heroes, our lords lying lifeless,   we trotted back to our stables,
knowing that our return would herald the defeat,   set off the lamentations
of the families left behind,   filling us all with sorrow for our great loss.

Feature Image: Battle of Maldon plains.

17/09/2025

In our new podcast Luke Sheehan interviews John Dillon, Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin, an Irish classicist and philosopher considered a world authority in ancient philosophy and Platonism. Born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1939, he returned to Ireland as a child and studied Classics at Oxford before earning a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. He taught at Berkeley from 1969 until his appointment at Trinity in 1980, where he remained until his retirement in 2006. Dillon is founder and Director Emeritus of the Dublin Plato Centre and a member of several prestigious academies, including the Royal Irish Academy and the Academy of Athens. A professor Emeritus of the British Academy. He has published over thirty books and numerous articles, focusing on the transmission of Platonic philosophy.

LINK IN BIO or STORY

https://cassandravoices.com/society-culture/podcast-he-bought-plato-a-conversation-with-john-dillon/

16/09/2025

"The title of this article ['The Birth of a Doctor] may seem somewhat prosaic, but given that it really is about birth after death it seems appropriate. For I really did die on July 25 2022, and that what came back to life was not the same person, and certainly not the same doctor.
..

Billy Ralph expands on what led him to attempt to take his own life, and the changes he has made to his medical practice.

LINK IN BIO or STORY

https://cassandravoices.com/science-environment/the-birth-of-a-doctor/

Image: Pixabay

15/09/2025

What makes for fine rhetoric in an age of disinformation? Clearly, this is distinct from the techniques employed by corporate motivational speakers, tele-evangelists or self-help gurus. A useful starting point is to examine Aristotle’s views on Rhetoric, who argued that speech can produce persuasion (pistis) either through the character (êthos) of the speaker, the emotional state (pathos) of the listener, or the argument (logos) itself. Artistotle divides rhetoric into three branches. Deliberative speech that sets out to persuade or dissuade. Judicial speech that accuses or defends, and Epideictic speech that praises or blames.
..

David Langwallner considers some of the great exponents of rhetoric, as well practitioners of the dark arts like

LINK IN BIO or STORY

https://cassandravoices.com/society-culture/on-rhetoric/

09/09/2025

"As the Israeli response unfolded after the October 7 attacks, Ireland’s canny neoliberal handlers would have observed the mounting fury being expressed, often by otherwise apolitical people, on platforms such as Instagram. This also became apparent in widely attended public protests. The Irish government’s faltering embrace of the cause of Palestine might be interpreted as a form of controlled opposition, wherein they stand as a placeholder for genuine supporters of Palestine. Such controlled opposition of a relatively malleable proxy (Ireland) may also, at times, act as a useful counterweight to the U.S. in its dealings with its Israeli ally.
..

An excerpt from Frank Armstrong's article exploring the nature of Irish government support for Palestine, and the importance of the forthcoming Presidential election.

Image: Daniele Idini

LINK IN BIO or STORY

https://cassandravoices.com/current-affairs/global/ireland-and-palestine-a-crucial-vote-awaits/

08/09/2025

JACK GILBERT WAS TOO H***Y TO BE A METAPHYSICAL POET

by Haley Hodges

not that s*x and metaphysics cancel each other out—
his was good news for Linda Gregg, until it wasn’t.

Interviewer:
Did you and Linda ever collaborate?

JG:
We were intertwined. We read each other’s poetry,
appreciated each other’s poetry,
discarded each other’s poetry.

(Quick shout-out to the procreative urge.
Are you gonna tell me the world doesn’t hinge
and turn on it? I don’t think you are.)

That desire is ungovernable produces—
or should I say begets—fear. Also verse; some good,
some not. Either way, learn to love that twinge
in your loins. I don’t mean make it lord, I just mean
bless it. Whatever else may be true,

it has plans to prosper you, wants
fruitfulness, wants multiplicity
at least as much as God does,
maybe more.

I’ve inherited Jack and Linda’s lettered
children. If you’re reading this,
you have too.

03/09/2025

He put on the yellow marigolds with some difficulty, while at the same time remembering something a wise Roman stoic had once written that went ‘dig inside yourself. Inside there is a well of goodness ready to gush at any moment, if you keep digging,’ and wondered if he had learned the line while studying for his PHD. Perhaps it was earlier when he sat long evenings in the library at Senate House attempting to become a master of arts. He couldn’t quite remember. His past was becoming a single entity, where once it had been fractured. He had woken up early that extremely cold winter morning to become a dish washer, or kitchen porter as it was advertised, and he wondered as he battled through the arctic weather, what had become of his long and arduous education. All those hours worrying about exams, all those times revising, researching, reading and editing and now at the age of forty-three he had seventy-three pounds to his name. He poured the washing up liquid into the large metallic sink under the instruction of the young Romanian woman and turned on the hot tap. “The water must be hot” she informed him. He looked into the mountainous bubbles as they slowly rose in the basin and in them, saw a galaxy emerge. Bliss came over him when he thought he could kill boredom with his imagination alone, and the silence of the universe out-manoeuvred by a simple playfulness of mind.
..

From the Dish Washer by Dominic Mallen

LINK IN BIO or STORY to read on

Feature Image: Gillian Gamboa

21/08/2025

"A Journalist-Public Intellectual must seek the truth, understand the nature of fact-gathering and vocationally support speech rights even at the outer limits. He or she must also form a bulwark against the degradation of language. In this respect the Promethean storm of social media opens the door to ever more unregulated and unfiltered opinions, often deliberately orchestrated by far right-wing or absurd woke viewpoints to enforce wrecking ball compliance and control."

David Langwallner chooses his five greatest Journalist-Public Intellectuals of all time, with an Irish man top of the pile.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full article

18/08/2025

"I'm currently working on my debut album, taking listeners through a very personal heroine’s journey that I’ve been on the last couple years. Losing myself, which was mirrored in the form of a challenging relationship, only to go deep within to find the parts of myself that needed love and tending to, and coming out the other side stronger than ever. This song, Learning to Love Me, and my album, are a celebration of self. All the parts of ourselves we may have not accepted, and realizing they’re all part of what makes us so special and unique. Most often it’s through our biggest challenges that we find our greatest strengths. Hopefully through this journey listeners can reflect on their own story, and this can be a little light on the path, with a few nuggets of wisdom that I’ve learned a long the way.
..

Pop artist finds that pain and pleasure can be alchemised into art to help us process this complicated and beautiful thing called Life.

LINK IN BIO or STORY for full article

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