A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.
Time
On Being
For my late Uncle Denis, who passed away 10 years ago, for his loved ones, and for yours. Now, while we still have the time - i.e. now - we just have to "Be, as a page that aches for a word, which speaks on a theme that is timeless".
On Craft
The Tinkering School allows children to build, experiment, become deeply immersed in and committed to projects (decoration has a special and surprising role to play).
Do many mainstream schools (still) offer such opportunities? If not, how can we help them do so?
Imagine too how many adults remain short of confidence about their own practical skills, and how such an approach might help them too.
On Stardust
Every atom in our bodies was fused in the body of an ancient star. NASA astronomer Dr. Michelle Thaller explains how the iron in our blood connects us to one of the most violent acts in the universe- a supernova explosion - and what the universe might look like when all the stars die out.
On The Great Gatsby
Can we ever escape - do we even really wish to escape - our own green lights flashing across the bay of memory, across the sound of time?
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man can store up in his ghostly heart.
The too obstrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing.
They were gone, without a word, snapped out, made accidental, isolated, like ghosts, even from our pity.
The rhythm of the year, summing up and sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes.
It took me - at least - half my life to pick up and read such a slim volume, but now I find myself entranced by the clarity, craftsmanship and compassion permeating The Great Gatsby.
On Echoes
Researchers have unearthed what are probably the only surviving recordings of the voices of Virginia Woolf, from 50 years earlier, of Alexander Graham Bell (below) and from a quarter of a century earlier still, perhaps the oldest sound recording of all, French schoolchildren singing Au clair de la lune.
Quote 2956
To achieve great things, two things are needed- a plan, and not quite enough time – Leonard Bernstein
Quote 2941
A favourite concept of mine is the 200-year present, a way of thinking about change. The 200-year present began 100 years ago with the year of birth of the people who have reach their hundredth birthday today. The other boundary of the 200-year present, 100 years from now, is the hundredth birthday of the babies born today. If you take that span, you and I will have had contact with a lot of people from different parts of that span. So think in terms of events over that span and realise how long change takes. You can see how difficult it has been to create these bodies and new ways and how in many ways we are slipping backward- but in other ways we are not. I take comfort to know that super-power hegemony has a very limited lifespan (decline and fall of Rome, the Ottoman Empire) - - Elise Boulding Interviewed by Julian Portilla — 2003
Quote 2958
You may delay, but time will not - Benjamin Franklin
Quote 2957
What may be done at any time will be done at no time - Scottish proverb