Fiachra Garvey: From sheep dipping to Shostakovich Pianist and farmer talks about agriculture, classical music and protecting his hands
about 4 hours ago
Fiachra Garvey is not just a musician and a farmer. He’s a talker, too. When I catch up with him at home in London, it’s he who gets the first question in, about the day’s weather in Dublin. Somehow we end up chatting about some of the worst downpours we’ve been caught out in.
He’s in an upbeat mood. As he later says of himself, “I’m no doomer and gloomer.” This is a serious understatement. He comes across as someone with the kind of skill to find the positives in the worst of situations. And, although we spend time mulling over the problems we’ve all been living with for 13 months, his takeaways are almost always positive.
“The Royal Irish Academy has commissioned a diversity review in a bid to boost female participation in the prestigious academic body which was established in 1785 to promote science and the humanities. The review, led by former University of Edinburgh vice-principal Lesley Yellowlees, also aims to increase ethnic diversity in the RIA in line with Irish society at large …” (more)
[Arthur Beesley,
A famous Laoisman and his legacy
Reporter:
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Friday, April 30th, was the bicentenary of one of the O’Moore County’s most prolific and distinguished writers and historians. John Canon O’Hanlon, parish priest of Sandymount in Dublin, was born in Stradbally in 1821 and is probably best known in Laois for his History of the Queen’s County, which remains the most authoritative and informative work of its kind on the county’s past, even though it was completed by others and was published posthumously.
The digitisation of the History of the Queen’s County by the Laois Library services to mark the bi-centenary of his birth, will be welcomed by all students, local historians and researchers who have an interest in Laois’ historic past.
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âWe want to have a momentum in our lives,â he says, âand I love hearing the musicians when they speak of transience in their lives because I think we need to talk about the evanescence of things too. As we found ourselves locked down, we talked about the project of this album. Then I started my own journey within this, because thatâs what collaboration creates: a kind of drive to look in and out, and that became my book: A Whole New Plan for Living.
âIt seemed absolutely natural to me that this whole new exciting venture would become the outcome of that plan,â Lucey continues. âWe talked about what it is to be individual, what it is to be authentic, to be hopeful, to be political, and I found myself allowing the experience of collaboration to take me from consciousness, and the volatility, complexity and uncertainty in so many parts of our lives, to this point where each of us has revealed themselves to each other, in lots of very interesting way