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August 2, 2021

Pakistan Data Journalism Awards 2019 — The Winners

The Pakistan Data Journalism Awards 2019 received 76 entries in four categories. The entries showed diversity in terms of geography and the nature of publication. From major cities to districts, from local newspapers to national dailies, and from digital-only publications to large news media groups that publish across media, the stories submitted to the contest and the participating journalists used data to report on a wide array of issues of public importance.

We would like to thank our five-member jury that diligently read the stories and graded them according to separate rubrics that measured for public interest, quality of investigation, data sources, data analysis and presentation, reporting, writing, and overall impact.

The following are the winners and the shortlisted entries for the inaugural Pakistan Data Journalism Awards contest.

Note: We had originally announced prizes for the broadcast media in the categories of Best Use of Data in a News Report and Best Data Journalist Portfolio. We did not receive any entry from broadcast journalists in the portfolio category. The jury decided that the broadcast media entries in the Best Use of Data in a News Report category unfortunately did not demonstrate a quality or standard good enough to merit recognition. Therefore, we have not awarded any prizes in these two categories for broadcast media.

Best News Investigation of the Year

Winner: Niaz Ahmad Khan for his story Ghairat kay naam par qatl

Niaz Ahmad Khan’s investigation published in Daily Azadi Swat looked at the under-reporting of incidents of honour killing in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, specifically focussing on the Swat district. It exposed the police tactic of misreporting the murders of women to avoid scrutiny, and comprehensively reported on socio-cultural factors, legal issues, and advocacy efforts linked with honour killings.

Swat-based journalist Niaz Ahmad Khan has been working as a journalist since 2006 with different media organisations. He has worked as a bureau chief of Khyber News Swat from 2007 to 2012. In 2010, he also joined Mashaal radio as a reporter. He has been working with Mashriq TV as a bureau chief since 2016. He has also written columns and reports as a freelancer with several national and regional newspapers including daily Azadi Swat, and daily Naibaat Peshawar. He completed this award-winning story through an investigative reporting fellowship by the Pakistan Press Foundation.

Also on the shortlist:

Asim Bashir Khan — Two-part series on Pakistan’s economic performance (

Irfan Joiya — بچوں پر جنسی تشدد کے بڑھتے ہوئے واقعات (Humsub, Shaoor Media Network International)

Khalid Khattak — Mushrooming of private schools in Punjab – Numbers and more (

Ramsha Jahangir — How social media has become a war zone for competing narratives (Herald)

Best Use of Data in a News Report (Online)

Winner: Riazul Haq for his work on the story Mission Europe: ‘Donkeys’ and ‘dunkers’ fuel Punjab trafficking trade

This news story supplemented interviews with human traffickers and Pakistanis deported from European countries for illegal entry with data acquired from the Federal Investigation Agency, Supreme Court proceedings, and the European Border and Coast Guard Agency to describe the harrowing experiences of illegal immigrants and the extent of human trafficking to Europe from Pakistan. The multimedia story was produced by Shaheryar Popalzai and carried illustrations by Saadat Ali and Ibrahim Yahya.

Riaz has worked as a reporter covering education and national politics for The Express Tribune. He recently joined Hum News as a special correspondent where his focus is on investigative stories that are broadcast as segments of the prime-time show Barri Baat.

Also on the shortlist:

Asim Bashir Khan — زرعی ٹیکس اور دیہی اشرافیہ (Sujag)

Asim Bashir Khan — The PML-N made bold claims in its 2013 manifesto. How many of those promises
did it keep? (Dawn)

Irfan Joiya — بچوں پر جنسی تشدد کے بڑھتے ہوئے واقعات (Humsub, Shaoor Media Network International)

Muhammad Khalid Hussain — الیکشن 2018 : سیاسی جماعتوں کی مقبولیت کا گراف کیا رہا (

Best Use of Data in a News Report (Print)

Winner: Ramsha Jahangir for her series of stories on Pakistan’s online clampdown

Pakistan’s online clampdown

Pakistan reported 3,000 accounts in six months: Twitter

Pakistan’s Internet freedom ranking declined in election year: report

How political parties manipulate cyberspace for electioneering

With the help of data from Pakistan’s telecomm regulator, digital rights groups, the transparency reports of Internet companies, and social media activity analysis, Ramsha Jahangir’s series of news reports shed light on the efforts to control Internet content, especially online dissent, and the manipulation of online discourse for political ends in Pakistan.

Ramsha Jahangir is a staffer at the Dawn newspaper. Her work is focused on digital rights, limits to free speech, regulation and internet governance in Pakistan.

Also on the shortlist:

Hasban Ullah — باجوڑ میں 56 تعلیمی ادارے فعال نہ ہوسکے۔ باجو ڑکے 101 گاوں میں سکول نہیں
ہیں (Daily AAJ Peshawar)

Muhammad Rizwan Safdar, Ghulam Dastgir, and Sairah Zaidi — A look into the turnout of women voters for the 2018 elections (Herald)

Yousuf Abid — A series of stories on pending court cases in Punjab (Dunya Media Group) Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4

Best Data Journalist Portfolio (Online)

Winner: Hisham Sajid, Samaa TV

Hisham’s stories show his desire and ability to test hypotheses with the help of data to clear misconceptions and explain complex issues in simple terms.

Highest ever number of votes rejected in election 2018

Disqualified votes more than margin of victory—but that’s nothing new

Enter the Dragon: How invested is China in Pakistan?

Twitter Analysis: Imran Khan talks more about the Sharifs than his own party

Pakistan’s 60-year history with the IMF in one chart

Hisham Sajid graduated from IBA with a Bachelors in Computer Science in June 2018. During his time at SAMAA Digital where he was responsible for finding, scraping, analyzing, and visualizing data to write engaging news stories for the web. While at SAMAA he also helped with Digital Analytics, automated redundant workflows and built small internal web based tools to enhance the news reporting capacity of both Digital and TV newsrooms.

Also on the shortlist:

Alia Chughtai, Al Jazeera English for a series of data visualizations on the Pakistan Elections 2018

Khalid Khattak, for consistent data-driven news reporting on a variety of issues

Best Data Journalist Portfolio (Print)

Winner: Ramsha Jahangir, Dawn

Ramsha Jahangir’s tenacious and in-depth coverage of technology, online freedom of expression issues, political propaganda on social media, and digital rights has revealed to the public the non-transparent regulation and political manipulation of social media activity in Pakistan, supplying much-needed evidence for policy advocacy and debate.

How social media has become a war zone for competing narratives

How political parties manipulate cyberspace for electioneering

Pakistan’s online clampdown

Pakistan reported 3,000 accounts in six months: Twitter

Women, minorities have minor share of govt postings

Ramsha Jahangir is a staffer at the Dawn newspaper. Her work is focused on digital rights, limits to free speech, regulation and internet governance in Pakistan.

Also on the shortlist:

Deneb Submul for human-interest longform reporting that used data as supporting facts (Newsline) Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

Khalid Khattak for data-driven news reports that checked political claims and highlighted civic issues (The News) Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4

Shehzad Yousafzai for using data to report on problems faced by citizens in Rawalpindi (Daily Times, The News on Sunday) Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4

Best Data Visualization for News

Winner: Alia Chughtai and Asad Hashim for a series of data visualizations on Pakistan Elections 2018 for Al Jazeera English online

Alia Chughtai and Asad Hashim contributed to Al Jazeera English’s online coverage of the Pakistan general elections 2018 with a series of infographics that explained diverse aspects of the elections campaign and an impressive map-based live interactive visualization that relayed results clearly and effectively.

Results: Pakistan Elections 2018

Pakistan Elections 2018: All the latest updates

Pakistan Elections 2018: At a glance

Pakistan Elections 2018: How voting works

Pakistan Elections 2018: The major political parties

Pakistan’s new far right: Mainstreaming the hardliners

Alia Chughtai is a senior interactive producer at Al Jazeera English in Pakistan. She is an interactive journalist, specialising in visual journalism and infographics. Asad Hashim is the online correspondent for Al Jazeera English in Islamabad. He has covered stories in South Asia and the Middle East, and reports on extremism, security, politics and human rights, primarily focusing on Pakistan. He is the recipient of the 2018 AFP Kate Webb Prize.

Also on the shortlist:

Dawar Hameed — Surkhi Brief series of infographics on economy and current affairs (

Farooq Baloch and Samaa Digital team — Pac-man takes you through dollar’s upward journey in 2018 (

Honourable Mentions

Asim Bashir Khan for his freelance data analysis and commentary on Pakistan’s economic affairs in various publications.

Asim Bashir Khan is an economist, social scientist and has served the Government of Sindh on energy, investment, trade, public policy, and reforms. Khan is also master trainer of data journalism for national and international journalism institutes; Centre of Excellence in Journalism-IBA, Pakistan Press Foundation, Sri Lanka Press Institute, College of Journalism Sri Lanka. He has been associated with number of universities in Karachi and presently is at IBA-Karachi.

Khalid Khattak, founder, for persistent data-driven news reporting and contributions towards
promoting data journalism in Pakistan through his website.

Khalid Khattak, a journalist from Lahore launched Pakistan’s first data journalism initiative Data Stories in 2015 with an aim to promote data literacy and data journalism in Pakistan. He is a data journalism trainer and speaker and has also taught at Punjab University. Khalid is a 2013 Daniel Pearl fellow and has worked at the DC Bureau of the Wall Street Journal under the fellowship. He is also 2015 winner of the ICFJ Pakistan Alumni Reporting Contest for his data journalism related story.

We thank all participating journalists for their submissions and wish them all the best for the future. The Pakistan Data Journalism Awards contest hopes to return in 2020 with more recognition for Pakistani data-driven journalism.


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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

2 more down...

I decided to deviate from that one layout for my "assignment" to another go-to style I often use. I was going to make two of the same cards, but there were little things I didn't quite like with the first one. For instance, I would rather have River Rock ribbon on this one, but I do not have any. I went with a strip of river rock textured paper instead. The card works, but I just wasn't loving it.

So I made little changes for the second card. Instead of using the striped side of the DP, I used the floral side. It's busier and packs way more of a visual punch. I increased the ruby red mat by about 1/8''. I stamped the branch to make it seem as though it was growing onto the paper, instead of floating. I also went with a bigger, fancier sentiment. Instead of stamping the background with linen, then the bamboo, I went with textured guava paper. It's funny, they are almost the exact same card, but I really prefer the second one.
Stamps: Embrace Life, Faux Ribbon, It's Your Birthday, Linen
Ink: Stazon Timber Brown, Ruby Red, Groovy Guava
Paper: Very Vanilla, Groovy Guava, Ruby Red, River Rock
Accessories, etc.: pop dots, blender pen

  1. I think they are both fantastic! But who is to argue with you after reading your! Love the look!

  2. Cute cards, Natasha!! This is such a great layout, isn't it? :)

  3. They are both great...but I think I am with you...I like the second one the best too. Great card!! :0)

  4. Awesome "go to" layout! Love them both...wonderful colouring, and I think the 2nd is my favorite too! Love the double sided paper that you can just flip to get another look! Wonderfulcards.

  5. i like both cards... but the 2nd one best- i think the branch coming off the edge looks awesome!

  6. What great cards. Love how they turned out. jennie

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Scissor Sisters: Ta-Dah

Song: “Paul McCartney

Knocking “Amnesiac” off the shelf for most intricate packaging, the two-CD set of “Ta-Dah” (complete with mini-poster, just in case I still have some kind of locker), makes me happy.

There’s no “Filthy/Gorgeous” on this album, and by that I mean nothing got me out of my chair and jamming. Maybe it’s because I’m not in the right mood. I didn’t start my day off happy, and I figured this might help. And while I’m playing it at probably the right level of volume, only during “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin'” and “Kiss You Off” did I find myself with a case of the booty shakes.

They do make me want to put glitter on my face and slide on a pair of platform boots. And make me wish John Cameron Mitchell wanted to put me in his movies. I suppose that makes me wish I was cool enough to be in a John Cameron Mitchell movie.

Stream of consciousness writing doesn’t work when I haven’t finished a cup of coffee. Do I sound like a musical robot?


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We have a deer family that lives in the woods behind our house. Well, I don’t know if deer really live in one place. I think they travel a bit looking for food. But this one family keeps coming back. And the dogs can’t handle it. As I sit at my desk now, I can see the trees out my window. Many times I will see a dark body moving through those trees. It’s even easier to see when there is snow on the ground like today.

We woke up to a light dusting of snow and then it just kept on coming. We were all surprised at how much came down during the day. I’d say it ended up being about five inches here. Our town’s school superintendent was surprised too because she sent out an email explaining what goes into the decision to have a snow day.

The deer family is out there almost every day and the dogs love to sit at the edge of the woods and just bark and bark and bark. And the deer, they don’t change their pace one bit. They look up at the dogs, decide they’re not a threat, and then put their heads down and continue to eat.

I’ve been listening to the 1940’s channel on my car radio. Today, the music, combined with the snow, made it feel like December. It’s crazy because it was almost 70 degrees just two days ago.

Today I thought a lot about right brain/left brain, feminine/masculine energy, being/doing, yin/yang. These last few years have been a quieting of my left brain and an allowing of my right brain to do what it has always wanted to do. The whole world needs a quieting of the left brain, I think.

I read this today:
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
Albert Einstein

Thanks for reading today’s entry in my daily blog.  My goal here is to practice noticing. I try to write about small things and I try to keep it light. Sometimes I write about creativity or healing. And sometimes I write about my dogs or what I cooked for dinner. Writing daily here is a way for me to shine a light back on my life and help me see.

You can subscribe and follow along at

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Thursday, June 26, 2014

Kanaka Maoli to Feds: ‘Get Out of Our House! Go Home!’
Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii who
resisted the United States imperialist takeover of the
pacific nation in 1893.
Interior Department receives a resounding "no" to federal recognition of Native Hawaiians

JUNE 24, 2014

To help the U.S. Department of the Interior understand how some Native Hawaiians view federal recognition, DeMont R. D. Conner offered this analogy:

Your car is stolen. The person who stole the car later apologizes and offers you a bicycle.

The only proper response to such an offer, said Connor, is to insist that the stolen property be returned to its rightful owner.

“Go back and tell your boss, ‘Give ’em back da car!’” he told a panel of Interior officials as the audience that packed the Hawaii State Capitol Monday morning erupted into laughter and hearty applause.

Connor’s point was that the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 was a theft.

Leona Kalima shares her manao with the Department of Interior about a government-to-government relationship with Hawaiians, Hawaii State Capitol, June 23, 2014.

For federal officials to offer recognition, a 121 years later, to Kanaka Maoli as an indigenous people entitled to government-to-government status with the United States is like giving them a bike. Not just any bike, either, said Conner: a Schwinn.

He was one of 143 people who testified — and shouted, cried, pleaded, prayed, chanted and sang — for more than three hours Monday before Interior officials. It was the first of 15 public meetings in the islands scheduled over the next two weeks.

The hearings are part of a “listening tour” being conducted by Interior to solicit comments and feedback on “whether and how” the process of reestablishing a government-to-government relationship should proceed.

The answer from nearly everyone who testified Monday was that it should not. In their view, Hawaii is still a nation and the Americans are occupiers — like the U.S. military — who should leave.

“Get out of our house!” several speakers told the Interior panel, which included Esther Kiaaina, a senior adviser to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. “Go home!”

Many of the testifiers, some proudly identifying themselves as Hawaiian, said the U.S. government had no jurisdiction in the islands. They cited analyses of treaties, bills, acts, resolutions, petitions and law that led them to passionately believe that Hawaii is quite independent of the other 49 states.

They were the arguments cited by many of the same people who participated in a series of  public meetings held this spring by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which worked with the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission to sign up Hawaiians for a future government.

As at the OHA meetings, opponents of federal recognition said Monday that self-determination was their business and not that of the federal or state government.

Despite the anger, there was also a lot of aloha in the room, which surpassed the 200-person capacity and spilled out into the hallway and upstairs into the Rotunda. Conner, for example, told Kiaaina, “Come home, Sista, come home!”

Little Aloha for Recognition

Before the Interior’s first hearing even began there was talk that it was a rigged affair.

Word circulated on the web that the public would be shut out of the process and that only government officials and those sympathetic to OHA and the roll commission, which have worked toward nationhood, would be permitted to speak.

That was not the case.

Only a handful of government officials, such as OHA Chairwoman Colette Machado and Naalehu Anthony, vice chairman of the Roll Commission — set up by the Hawaii Legislature in 2011 to create a Hawaiian registry — spoke Monday. And they were among only a handful of people who favored federal recognition.

Dan Akaka, the former U.S. senator who spent a decade unsuccessfully fighting for federal recognition through the U.S. Congress, gave an opening pule (prayer).

Next, Rhea Suh, an Interior assistant secretary, explained that the department was continuing a process that began with the 1993 apology to Hawaiians by President Bill Clinton.

Sam Hirsch, an acting attorney general with the Department of Justice, then began to explain the “listening process.”

But the public address system was muddied and people complained.

“It”s hard to hear the propaganda!” one audience member cracked.

Hirsch moved the podium microphone closer and explained that neither the state nor the Interior secretary would be involved in deciding the structure of a Native Hawaiian government.

‘I Am Not an American’

Moderator Dawn Chang, an expert on land issues and regulatory requirements, then opened things up for questions before testimony was to start. Immediately the panel was challenged over its very legitimacy.

Protesters proclaimed support for the monarchy, insisted Hawaii was still sovereign, said they did not have to adhere to the laws of Congress and said they were insulted to be compared to American Indian tribes.

“I am not an American,” several people said.

In light of the hot remarks, Chang several times asked people to be respectful of others. Hirsch, meanwhile, did his best to provide answers, keeping his cool and saying things like, “Another wonderful question!”

Kiaaina also responded, telling “Uncle Joe” Tassel, a member of the Hawaiian Homes Commission, that federal recognition would not have an impact on the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

(Later, Tassel claimed that the entire Hawaiian archipelago should be returned to the indigenous population. “You need to pack your bag and leave,” he said to the Interior panel. “But before you leave, please pay the back rent and all the interest with that back rent.”)

At some point someone started singing “Hawaii Ponoi,” the state song and former Hawaiian national anthem, prompting most everyone else to rise from their seats and join along.

Not long after, Dennis “Bumpy” Kanahele told the panel that the federal government could be held liable for genocide committed against Hawaiians.

“I am against this process,” said Kanahele, a Hawaiian nationalist. “We don’t need you folks to come here and tell us. Let us figure out how to govern ourselves.”

Kanahele closed by telling the panel — almost with a knowing wink — that he would see them again Monday night in his own neighborhood in Waimanalo, where Interior had scheduled its second public hearing.

The formal comment process had not even begun and already things were pretty intense. The third hearing is scheduled Tuesday night in Waianae, another Oahu town with lots of Hawaiians.

‘One Pissing Match’

The first hearing illustrated what is already known to many: that there are strongly differing views within the Hawaii community.

That was obvious Monday when Machado testified — or tried to. She was booed by some in the audience, which led Machado, like Chang, to call for respect as well.

“Let’s not get into one pissing match, let’s have some aloha over here,” she said, urging that the government be allowed to move forward on a path toward recognition.

Anthony, of the roll commission, recalled that many of the things said in opposition to federal recognition Monday had been said 25 years ago.

“I’d like to move forward now,” he said.

But attorney Keoni Agard was one of many who said there was no pretext for such movement, arguing that it is unconstitutional even under American law.

“A massive fraud has been committed against our people and the Hawaiian Kingdom, and it is very upsetting to realize these facts,” said Agard.

Mililani Trask, a former OHA trustee who is seeking a seat again this year, said the roll commission had failed to sign up a sufficient number of Hawaiians to form a governing entity. The largest group to sign, she said, was 2,000 inmates in a federal penitentiary in Arizona.

“We are not Indians,” she said. “What was taken … was one nation, individual, under the Akua (God). We will never agree to accept bits and pieces of an Indian confederacy.”

Tempers were growing, and several people shouted profanities.

“This is all bullshit,” said Peter Kealoha, referring to the process.

Evoking the Queen

At times the swearing made things more intense, but at other times it served as a valve release that helped people laugh and blow off steam.

Kalani Asam, for example, referred to “intercourse” between the Hawaiian nation and the United States, meaning formal dealings between people. But sometimes the U.S., he said, had been guilty of the “wrong kind of intercourse,” meaning rape.

All of it was caught live on the cameras of Olelo Community Media.

There were surprisingly tender moments, too.

For their testimony, Laulani Teal and Liko Martin sang a song about Queen Liliuokalani and her “red-ribbon document” opposition to the 1893 annexation.

Palani Vaughan, a professional musician recognizable by his mutton chops, joined them midway, holding aloft a reproduction of the document and softly singing along.

For his part, Maurice Crabbe, who works at the Moana Surfrider in Waikiki, brought visual aids that he said modeled the relationship between the U.S. and Hawaiians.

The first was a Snickers bar, which he equated to candy being given to children. The second was cookies, which Hawaiians have eaten since statehood in 1959 but today are just crumbs.

“GMO crumbs!” someone yelled.

The third item or model, said Crabbe, was a homemade chocolate macadamia pie from Ted’s Bakery at Sunset Beach. What Hawaiians want today, he said, is the whole pie: monetary damages, claims against the government and a renewed nationhood status.

Crabbe said he uses the same props to “educate tourists.”

After the hearings conclude, Interior will take its finding back to Washington. If Monday’s hearing is any indication of what’s to come in the next 14 meetings, the panel should have quite a lot to share with Secretary Jewell.

No comments:


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Seven Months: Superstar of Airplanes, Restaurants (and the Internet)

My Delectable Little Munchkin!!!!!!

Today, you are seven magnificent months old!!! You’ve been quite the little traveler since last I wrote you a letter you will (hopefully) never read. We started the month back in upstate New York at your Babcia’s.

“Hello, Babcia! I miss you! But not the bed that was so small that it muscled Papa out onto the literal actual floor every night!”

DIGRESSION about your mama and her electronics: I spent our last days upstate taking a break from writing, courtesy of my computer giving up the ghost. I then very stupidly took it to some local chop-shop to try to get it fixed, with the instructions to wipe the hard drive and re-install the system software. I guess I should have specified “re-install somewhat recent system software,” because when I got the machine back it was running an OS from 2010. I shit you not, little baby who definitely cares about her mother’s system software. It took 20 minutes to boot up, and every keystroke had a lag time of like 45 seconds. It was like working on Windows 95. What the fuck? Ever since I had you, I have been relying on fifteen- and twenty-minute slices of time to write. That is how my articles and book are getting done. Suddenly that time was being spent trying to locate Word and type two sentences. Anyway, long story short I ended up dipping into my savings and buying a new computer, and your papa is going to get the old one reconditioned. I AM SURE YOU CARE. But you should because this is a life lesson, kid. People in rural computer clinics are dipshits, or play the most obnoxious pranks ever imaginable. The end.

After a grueling two-day car ride back to St. Louis, you spent a week delightedly reuniting with YOUR SHAPEYS!!!! Your dad and I spent the week sweating our literal (in his case) and metaphorical (in mine) balls off, unpacking all of the shit that we had packed up in anticipation of moving out of your house, which we allegedly sold but didn’t. It was kind of worth it, though, just to see you so happy with those shapeys again (or, more accurately, I probably have an emotional attachment to that condo, because it is where we brought you home from the hospital).

(On the road, you did love the king-sized bed in the motel, as well as the MOTEL CUPS, both cardboard and plastic. Holy shit, I could have saved about $150 on baby toys at this point and just bought a bulk pack of kegger-style Solos and you’d be the happiest Kid in the Western Hemisphere.)

(You’re naked here because you’d just taken a HUGE crap, and I kept yelling for your dad to come assist, and he didn’t answer, and I thought he was just dicking around in the bathroom ignoring me, but really he’d ducked out to use the tiny motel gym.)

The last two days of our time in St. Louis were spent with you having a perfectly decent time and me going totally fucking unhinged in anticipation of your first trip on a plane. I have been so conditioned to be ashamed of interrupting the US Weekly-reading bliss of your average economy-class traveler that the mere thought of being trapped on a flying e.coli-canister with you in a bad mood made me break down every day in shrieking, panicked sobs. Your dad basically had to take the reins in the house while I spent my days hyperventilating and crying it out.

(Also, with you taking baths in your new duckie tub, WHICH YOU LOVE. I don’t think you realize baths have any discernible purpose beyond HOORAY SPLASHETY PLAY PLAY PLAY. This is the only reason why you are anything approaching “clean” any of the time.)

AND THEN…the day came to get on a plane.

We got to the airport…

And you goofed off for a few minutes…

…and then, you fell asleep. You slept through boarding (which they make people with babbys do with the rest of the hoi polloi now, because Platinum Diamond Elite Polo-Playing Butt-Card Business Fuckos need more time to get settled into an airplane seat than a family with a little baby does. Everybody knows this).

You slept through the first two hours of the two-and-a-half our flight. You didn’t cry when the air pressure change got to your ears. You nursed, and you looked around the plane, and everybody in the neighboring rows made faces at you and told us how cute you were. Then, after a mad hurtle through the Denver airport (20 minutes to make a connection between two gates that literally COULD NOT HAVE BEEN FURTHER AWAY FROM EACH OTHER), which you thought was delightful fun, we settled into our second flight, which you spent bouncing off the walls, shoving every single filthy accoutrement from the seatback pocket into your mouth (Jeebus help us, you didn’t get sick), and generally charming the other passengers.

We finally arrived in Eugene approximately three hours past your normal bedtime, and you were surprisingly amenable to the car seat on the way home from the airport, by which I mean you only had a minor shit-fit, and not a major one.

Since then, we have been settled in to the spectacular new room your grandparents built on the end of their house, for the specific purpose of guilting your mother into spending as much time at said house with you as possible. IT’S WORKING. Every day, your grandparents act like it is the greatest gift in the world to babysit you for a few hours, while your mama writes her articles (more on that soon), finishes her book (less on that soon), and…get ready for it…GOES TO THE GYM.

Your grandma was kind enough to add our whole family to her Family Membership at the Y, and that includes babby swim classes that we will take soon! GET READY! But for now, it more importantly includes your mother finally, finally wresting herself off of her ginormous buttocks and getting some goddamned exercise for the first time since you were born. The Y is only two blocks away, so I can be beckoned back to the house anytime you start melting down. Yes, I am enjoying the possibility of shedding the twenty or so pounds of Mom Bod that have decided to take up semi-permanent residence since you arrived on the scene and I started eating my feelings. But more than that, I am enjoying the act of taking care of myself again. For the past seven months, all I have wanted to do is take care of you. When you were first born, I told your father I wished I could be awake for 24 hours, I wished I didn’t need to eat, I wished I could be the constant source of care you needed all the time. And more or less I was. But eventually, I realized that unless I took better care of myself (or, you know, any care of myself), I was going to keel over and die, and then where would your boob gravy train go?!?!? SO, the gym.

We love it here in your mama’s hometown, where you rock your spiffy new T-shirts and get carted around the neighborhood in the ludicrous ultra-deluxe Radio Flyer seat-belted, cup-holder-having wagon that your papa and I had shipped here because you loved the (decidedly more DIY) wagon setup at your babcia’s so much.

Last month, the two teeth that you grew were the cause of untold amounts of agonized crying, sleeplessness, drool-based pooptastrophes, and more than one occasion when you decided to treat your mother’s boobs like five feet of Bubble Tape. We’ve been terrified of teething ever since — and then last week, your papa brought you in from playing with you in the backyard and said: “Guess what’s going on with our daughter? She’s got another tooth.” And sure enough, one of your big fat top front teeth poked its way right through, and we didn’t even notice. It’s not big enough to show in pictures yet, but hopefully by your eight-month letter you’ll be looking like a little bunny rabbit.

You continue to explore the culinary delicacies of whatever region you happen to be in — here you have taken a particular liking to the ripe Oregon blackberry, which you like to enjoy in your first-class laundry basket accommodations while wearing another spiffy new T-shirt that makes you look like Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink.

You aren’t quite old enough to partake in most of the games and toys in the game/toy closet your grandma set up, preferring instead to get your maw around ping-pong balls, kitchen utensils, rocks, watches, and anything else that may potentially kill you. Your actual baby toys are mostly fodder for your new best friend Billy Budd, the idiot Cairn Terrier who doesn’t let his Cone of Shame stop him from patiently waiting by your side until you get a squeaky toy within his range, and then straight-up stealing it from you. So far you have only grabbed Billy Budd with your Not Gentle Hands a few times, and he hasn’t seemed to give a shit, but I am vigilant when he’s around and barely let him within three feet of you most of the time. Because, see, he’s an idiot.

Your babbling has more purpose now. Every once in awhile I think your BAH or GAH is actually, possibly, referring to an actual thing or person. You also have a more complex set of emotions (though they’re just as intense, bless you). Sometimes when your papa or grandparents take care of you for awhile and you don’t see me, and then I come back into the room, you crack a smile so big I think it’s going to bring the house down. And then, just as fast, you reach out to me and grab me and start to bawl. It’s like: OH, YOU!!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!! WAIT!!!!! WHERE WERE YOU?!??!?!?!?!?!?

We continue to dress you quasi-androgynously, and everyone continues to refer to you as he. “How old is he?” Sometimes I just go with it, other times I say: “Actually, he’s a non-gender-conforming she.” I realize this is obnoxious. But in the last week, I have never wanted to protect you more from the relentless gendering that plagues us from (before) birth.

It’s my fault, of course, because this week I embarrassed you in print YET AGAIN, by writing what I thought was a pretty funny think piece about why I sometimes flip you the (JOKING) bird after you fall asleep, if you’ve given me a hard time in that department. Of course I wait until you’re snuggled in next to me, sighing and content and fed and unconscious, and I only do it as a joke, and I thought this would be readily apparent in the piece, but it wasn’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I expected people to be offended. I expected, even, some threats to call CPS (and there were). Oh hell, I expected everything I got, but it still hurt. There were the usual insistences that I am far too ugly to have my visage displayed on the Internet at all:

— I’m not saying it was ALL bad, because it wasn’t. (I’m especially grateful for Mr. Pierce’s astute contribution):

  But there was certainly plenty of this:

And, of course, the expected intimations that I am abusive, and a superlative bestowed upon me with a lot of thought, even though I’m pretty sure Ted Bundy had a mother too.

Don’t misunderstand me, sweet perfect daughter of mine. I am so glad you are a girl (for now; you can choose your own gender identity when you’re older!). Because I’m a girl, and I like being a girl, and I wouldn’t want to be a man. But I also know that if I were a man writing with bluntness and humor about my life, I would not be getting this kind of seething, gendered crap about it. People say that because I am a writer for the Internet, I should just get used to this shit and grow a thicker skin, but that ONCE AGAIN puts all the responsibility (and most of the blame) on the person (THE WOMAN) getting stuff done to her, rather than the people (often, but not always men) doing the doing. Oh, dear daughter, even though you will probably be very intelligent, how many jerkoffs are going to fail to take you seriously, cut you off mid-sentence to mansplain your own area of expertise? How many assholes are going to demand you have sex with them, and then, when you refuse, tell you you were ugly and fat to begin with (if you’re lucky; if you’re not, they’ll just take the sex they were due in the first place). How many more assholes are going to blame you for being too slutty/too puritanical/too sensitive/too bold/too anything, if something awful happens to you in a frat-house basement in 2034? How many times, when you’re growing up, will you go HEY MAMA, WHY ARE YOU CRYING? only to hear, “OH, well, mama got called a ‘cunt’ in print again.” I cannot change any of this. I cannot protect you from any of this. I take only mild (and guilt-ridden!) comfort in the fact that because you’re a Caucasian you’ll still have it better than your sisters of color. All I can do is keep dressing you like James Spader for as long as you’ll let me.

Oh, my daughter. My daughter, my daughter, my daughter. You babbling, interactive, enthusiastic, exploration-mad, squealing, flapping, grinning, hugging, snuggling, TV-watching (not a lot! but you love Mr. Robot!), not-that-great-at-sleeping, tooth-growing, perfect little bean. I want to explode I love you so. I want to squeeze you until you pop, and then eat you whole.  My precious, precious daughter.

All my love,

27 thoughts on “Seven Months: Superstar of Airplanes, Restaurants (and the Internet)

  1. Oh precious little sister, I do love my monthly sightings of you!

    R, so sorry you are having to deal with so much hate, I thought your post was adorable. Have these people ever put a baby to sleep, don’t they know how hard it is?! Glad you are getting time to yourself. xo

    Liked by 1 person

  2. My baby (now 19) used to hate getting in/out of his car seat and I used to sing “I’m such a horrible mommy / I stick pins in my baby…” (to give him something to cry about, natch), until my husband made me stop singing it in public. So your column resonated with me. Love the AC/DC t shirt.

  3. I think the photos are hilarious!! I just had a baby boy (7 weeks old tomorrow!) who will only sleep on me or in bed with me. He refuses his crib, the bouncer where he used to nap, and anyone else’s attempts to comfort him. His battle cry is, “TOGETHER, OR NEVER!!!” A couple of weeks ago he decided that being peacefully nursed to sleep was for the birds; now most nights he power cries until he passes out in my arms, completely and utterly exhausted. So I can relate to the hard won victories that compelled you to take those fantastically appropriate pictures. I don’t know why some people think it’s acceptable to be such vile, repulsive human beings. At least know there are also people out there who think you are brilliant, beautiful, and a wonderful mother who so obviously loves her baby it makes all those haters who say otherwise look like complete idiots.

    • PS if you haven’t already I’d check out the book SWEET SLEEP. It teaches you how to bedshare safely. I didn’t discover it until last week but at least I had good instincts early on.

      • Thanks, I will. Always looking for something to read during feedings. God knows I’ve exhausted all the cryptozoology sites… (Who isn’t curious about Big Foot at two in the morning..?)

  4. I am loving these Babby posts. I have a seven week old baby myself, he’s my first and I stumbled on your flipping baby off post right when I needed it. I love the kid, love him more than I was prepared for and at the same time when I’ve got no sleep in my tank and he finally FINALLY goes to sleep, I feel like flipping him off too. I am really enjoying your blog and your baby is fricking adorable.

    Also, I promise that I will do everything I can in raising my son to make sure that when he is able to add his opinion to the world, get a job, be a grown up human he will do so without thinking he is more entitled to an opinion, respect and space than your daughter is just because he was born male.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Yes! B.M.E. (except for me and the rest of us). Don’t listen to that shit. You and little ACDC are the best. And pops, of course. Love this stuff.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. I also wanted to say thank you! I’m a stay at home mom of two with a 4 month old. My four month old can be such a sweet baby…until he’s tired, then all hell breaks lose, I nurse and he pinches, pulls, scratches and just gets crazy sometimes. Once he’s asleep I kiss him up, but he can be such a pain.

  7. You and your baby are SO CUTE.
    I am so ashamed of 80% of dads this week because so often when men with kids give you their opinion about parenting it is like, wow, you have actually never taken care of a baby.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Well, to be fair, the person who compared me to Lynndie England was a mom of some absurdly high number of kids. But yes. I imagine the many men who said I should die do not have any idea what it means to be the primary caregiver of an infant.

  8. Oh man. I love these so much. I dress Asher like a hipster college girl I realized the other day: crazy colored leggings and what amounts to a leotard. I figure he can decide for himself when he’s old enough what kind of boy he wants to be. In the meantime, I hope to expose him to as many different ways as possible. But mainly, the type of boy who wears mint colored leggings with a striped purple onesie.

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Santa gets a second job

A hilariously irreverent festive adventure about the true message of Christmas from Michele D’Ignazio, illustrated by Sergio Olivotti.

SKU: 9781529051520 Category:

Author Michele D’Ignazio Published by Macmillan Children’s Books ISBN 9781529051520 EAN 9781529051520 Bic Code Cover Hardback

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The Step by Step to starting your own business

There has really never been a better time to start your own business. Thanks to Government initiatives, start-up communities and entrepreneur networks there is plenty of information available to surf your way through.
Starting up your own business

Places such as your Local Enterprise Office (LEO), Skillnet Ireland, Chamber of Commerce have developed courses and programmes to take you from the ideas board to having your product on the shelf, you no longer need to have a background in business to set up your own, you can just learn as you go.

If you are committed to start and maybe created an innovation and feel that you want to put the business wheels into action, Park Chambers have set out a step-by-step strategy taking in the practicalities of getting your business up and running. We want to empower you to make big changes.

Company registration

First you must decide if you are registering as a sole trader, a partnership or a limited liability company. Registering as a sole trader means the business is completely in your hands, you are the decision-maker and this is often the choice if you intend trading as a small business. The bad news here is that you have no protection from Debts or Banks Lenders.

If your idea has much bigger potential, registering as a partnership or limited company is suggested.

“Legally the structure could be that one could start as a sole trader or later could form a limited company or if they are doing it in partnership it could be that there is a partnership formed and later change into a limited company of which the partners become directors and shareholders. That structure needs to be decided initially at the onset. If you are a sole trader it’s a case of registering that with Revenue and CRO, or if it’s a limited company it’s first forming a limited company and then registering this company with the Revenue Commissioners and having the various Companies Registration Office (CRO) and tax numbers that go with that.

A limited company means protection, your company has the Debts, not you personally.

The company is registered for tax via

Business name

Once the company has been registered, the business name needs to be registered with the CRO within a month of adopting the business name. All forms and information are on

Generally you wouldn’t register for VAT until you are starting to spend money or receive in money, normally you start to spend money first in a business. Once you start to spend, if you’ve got expenses or have VAT you want to reclaim, then you need to start looking at it at that stage.

You can register for VAT yourself through Revenue’s Online Services ( or you can enlist the help of a tax agent, someone who is registered to provide tax services to the public.

If you used a tax agent then you are more than likely already availing of the professional services of an accountant but if you did that stage alone then your next port of call is to get one in your sights – call Park Chambers today at 051-877965.

Legal advice

The legal advice is an important side – obviously, around Leases or patents and trademarks, you might need to talk to a specialist firm that looks after intellectual property.

If you have invented something you want to develop into a business, then getting the invention patented is a must. Protecting your intellectual property (IP) involves trademarks and registration of designs, so finding a law firm that will not only help you to protect your IP but also understands your type of business is imperative. Do look for assistance with appropriate Insurance cover/premiums.

Office space

Owning or renting office space is not a necessity. If you’re a start-up looking to move from the kitchen table or leave the solitude of a home office, this is possible to do at a relatively low cost.

You can register your business to your home address and avail of the many floating desks or hot desks that have been set up by business communities around the country.

Call Park Chambers to know how best to hire staff, contracts and please note we also provide the full PayRoll service. We also assist with staff issues.

Once you have registered your business and have been given a tax reference number you can register yourself as an employer through Depending on how many staff you are considering employing and how well you can deal with book-keeping, this would be the time to research payroll software, book-keepers and employers’ liability insurance.

The Revenue PayRoll system is called PAYE Modernisation and if you intend to employ somebody, or indeed pay yourself, the moment you pay somebody or yourself, whether it’s weekly or monthly, you need to upload the information immediately to Revenue. We can do this on your behalf.

We can set you up, register a Business Name, Form a new Company, and register for all Taxes.

We can help you on your journey, call Park Chambers today at 051-877965

Make an Appointment

Park Chambers are an expert team of experienced accountants, tax advisors and auditors, based in Waterford. We specialise in meeting the needs of private clients and their businesses.

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Photo of the Day – 2015-04-05

Redwood189020150404-_DSC0881_DxOYesterday’s lunar eclipse just as it prepares to drop behind the horizon off of Three Mile Point. The moon is about three quarters covered at this stage and it disappeared before it was completely shaded by the earth. Yup, that’s what it looked like, no image manipulation. (April 2015)

‘Clic on the Pic’ for a better view.

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Posts Tagged ‘Josephine Tey’

If you’re packing for a holiday trip, don’t forget a book or two — providing refuge from contentious family gatherings and weird relatives for lo these many years. Chances are your kin are not nearly as strange as some of the characters in Lisa Jewell’s twisty and twisted psychological thriller The Family Upstairs (Atria, digital galley). On her 25th birthday, Libby Jones learns not only the names of her birth parents but also that she has inherited their large London house, shut up since a murder-suicide when Libby was just a baby. Back then, police discovered a crying infant in a cradle and three dead adults dressed in black, but four older children had disappeared. Jewell shifts three narrative voices as Libby’s quest for her roots entwines with the story of a single mother living in France and that of a disturbed man shadowed by the events of his childhood. The book reminded me of one of Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine’s chilly suspense tales, which means it’s very good indeed.

By now you’ve no doubt heard that Kevin Wilson’s Nothing to See Here (HarperCollins, digital galley) features young twins who can spontaneously burst into flames without endangering themselves — if not their clothes and immediate surroundings. Narrator Lillian, a former schoolmate of twins Bessie and Roman’s stepmother Madison, is their summer caretaker, and she takes a pragmatic approach to their unusual condition — protective gel worn by firefighters, long sessions in the pool, limited contact with the outside world. But then the twins’ father decides to further pursue his political career, and Lillian fears he might send Bessie and Roman away. Nothing to See Here is really something to read — a whimsical, engaging story about friendship, family and the need  to belong.

Robert Harris’ The Second Sleep (Knopf Doubleday, digital galley) begins with young priest Christopher Fairfax riding through the 15th-century English landscape to conduct the funeral of a fellow priest, Thomas Lacy, in a remote parish. As usual with Harris’ historical fiction, the narrative is replete with detail and atmosphere. Medieval England is dreary and repressed, its people suspicious of strangers. Fairfax is suspicious, too, that Lacy’s death from a fall was not an accident, and when he finds heretical antiques and manuscripts among Lacy’s possessions, he keeps the information to himself as he begins an investigation. It’s at this point that Harris pulls a rabbit out of his hat, which wary readers will find both clever and confounding. The story remains interesting, even as it rambles downhill, caught up in its own conceit.

Fans of Martha Grimes’ Richard Jury mysteries will get a kick out of the 25th book in the series, The Old Success (Grove Atlantic, digital galley). After all, it’s old home week with so many favorite characters on the scene — Melrose Plant, Brian Macalvie, Aunt Agatha. But newcomers are well-advised to go back to the beginning, or at least to the middle, or risk being thoroughly confused. There are several mysterious deaths, and Jury’s the only one who can connect the dots. Witty writing and unpredictable plotting make for a lot of fun. along with some head-scratching. Really? Didn’t see that coming.

Fun is in the cards as well in Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May: The Lonely Hour (Random House, library e-book), No. 16 in the adventures of the elderly detectives of London’s Peculiar Crimes Unit. The unit is always on the verge of being shut down, and the case of a wily serial killer who strikes at 4 a.m. could be its undoing. Eccentric Arthur Bryant and suave John May are a formidable team, but May’s involvement with a suspect puts him at odds with Bryant even as it puts the case — and the unit — in jeopardy. There’s a heart-stopping climax, so be sure to read to the very last page.

Colorado police detective Gemma Monroe returns for her fourth outing in Emily Littlejohn’s assured Shatter the Night (St. Martin’s Press, digital galley). In the Halloween darkness, a car suddenly explodes, killing a retired judge who had been receiving threats.  Gemma, juggling child care for baby Grace with her fiance Brody, is all over the case because the judge was a family friend. The list of suspects is long and varied, with ties to an imprisoned serial killer and the town’s colorful past. Another murder ups the suspense, and, as the refurbished playhouse prepares to reopen with Macbeth, a vengeful killer targets his next victims.

Real-life Golden Age detective novelist Josephine Tey (A Shilling for Candles, The Daughter of Time) stars as a detective in an excellent series of novels by Nicola Upson. I’ve read them all, and the eighth, Sorry for the Dead (Crooked Lane Books, library e-book), is my new favorite. Like the others, it’s a seamless, atmospheric mix of fiction with fact. But the plot, flashing back from 1938 to World War I, pays homage to Tey’s The Franchise Affair, in which a mother and daughter are accused of kidnapping and imprisoning a young woman. What? You haven’t read The Franchise Affair, itself inspired by a sensational true crime? Well, do that first. Then read Sorry for the Dead. You won’t be sorry.

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Infamous Cambridge spy Guy Burgess had a cameo earlier this year in Joseph Kanon’s Cold War novel Defectors, but he practically steals the show in John Lawton’s excellent new Inspector Troy tale, Friends and Traitors (Grove/Atlantic, library e-book). It’s the eighth book in the crime series where history regularly meets mystery as Scotland Yard’s Frederick Troy dodges bombs in World War II London (Black Out), or protects Khruschev on a 1956 UK visit (Old Flames), or is tangled in the political scandals of the  early ’60s (A Little White Death).

In this entry, Lawton plays the long game, beginning with police cadet Troy first meeting Burgess at a family dinner in 1935. Both his Russian emigre/press baron father and his older brother warn him that the charming Burgess is bad news, “queer as a coot,” a notorious gossip, a possible spy. Still, Troy is intrigued by Burgess, who keeps showing up at various venues and times before, during and after the war. Then in 1951, Burgess and Donald MacLean defect to the Soviet Union, and their betrayal, along with that of Kim Philby, upends the British intelligence community for years. And that’s still the case in 1958 when a sad and pathetic Burgess approaches Troy during a family trip to Europe and says he wants to return to England. The ensuing imbroglio in Vienna results in the shooting of an MI5 agent, and Troy must defend himself against charges of murder and treason. All of this plays out in a string of atmospheric set pieces and charged exchanges of dialogue among the well-drawn cast of friends, family, lovers and spies.

The Troy books can be read out of order as stand-alone thrillers, but you run the risk of finding out the fate of characters and cases featured in other stories. Sudden death and reversals of fortune mark Troy’s complicated professional and private life, but that just makes the series all the more rewarding.

In 1939 Prague, with the Nazis on the doorstep, a woman named Otylie hopes to save her most treasured possession — an inherited musical manuscript of unknown authorship — by tearing it into three pieces. One movement of the sonata goes to her best friend Irena, the second goes to her husband in the Resistance, and the third she keeps for herself as she flees the country. Some 60 years later, Meta, a young musicologist who trained as a concert pianist, chances on one of the sonata’s movements and sets out to find the missing pieces and reunite them with their rightful owner. She also must prove the manuscript’s authenticity and perhaps discover who authored the haunting composition.  Bach? Beethoven? Maybe Mozart or Salieri?

Bradford Morrow details Meta’s daunting quest in his new historical novel The Prague Sonata (Grove Atlantic, digital galley), and I do mean details.  The premise is fascinating, the characters interesting, the plot hopscotches in time and place — Prague, London, New York, Nebraska. But the pace is uneven, the transitions often jarring, and the narrative so weighted with detail that it tested my will to read on. Students of music and history may well be enthralled, and I was at times because Morrow is an accomplished storyteller.  (I love Trinity Fields, thought The Forgers was clever and entertaining). But, at least in this case, too much of a good thing was still too much.

Nicola Upson’s detective series featuring real-life mystery writer Josephine Tey just keeps getting better as she artfully mixes history and fiction. Fear in the Sunlight played out against the set of an Alfred Hitchcock film, while London Rain‘s backdrop was the 1937 coronation of King George VI. In the seventh book, Nine Lessons (Crooked Lane Books, digital galley), Upson draws on the real-life crimes of the Cambridge Rapist, although she has him terrorizing women in 1937 Cambridge. Josephine is house-sitting for her lover, actress Marta Hallard, who is away on business. The tension and unease in town and at the colleges is palpable as the attacks on women escalate to include murder.

At the same time, Josephine’s great friend, Scotland Yard detective Archie Penrose, is investigating a gruesome murder in a London graveyard. The trail eventually leads him to Cambridge, a college choir and a long-ago death. What makes this second story especially chilling is the discovery that the London murder is tied to a series of ghost stories by M.R. James, who taught at Cambridge. The vengeful killer takes cruel delight in replicating disturbing details of James’ spooky tales. Then there’s the big secret that Josephine is keeping from Archie that could profoundly alter their relationship.

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murderofmaryYes, there’s a pool of blood. Yes, Mary Russell, the intrepid young wife of Sherlock Holmes, is missing. Yes, housekeeper Clara Hudson smells gunsmoke. No, I don’t believe that Mary is dead, despite the title of Laurie R. King’s latest installment in her long-running series, The Murder of Mary Russell (Bantam, digital galley).

Still, King leaves readers in suspense and Mary’s fate up in the air shortly after she confronts an Australian visitor to her farmhouse claiming to be Mrs. Hudson’s long-lost son. Mrs. Hudson returns home from shopping to discover an empty house, a broken cup, gunsmoke, blood and no Mary. From there, King jumps back to give us Mrs. Hudson’s complicated and surprising history, beginning with the unlikely romance between her Scottish mother and seafaring father. Said dad is a charming con man and grifter, and, growing up in Australia, little Clarissa is his most apt pupil. Her talent for disguises and playacting helps her in her quest to make something of herself, despite her father and spoiled younger sister. Eventually, too, she crosses paths in London with a young Sherlock Holmes and transforms into Mrs. Hudson. But what about Mary? Soon, back at the farm, Holmes is on the case with Mrs. Hudson’s help, and Mary herself is doing her cunning best to stay alive.

Longtime fans of the series will be especially entertained by King’s take on Mrs. Hudson, and a neat little twist near book’s end hints that she’s still keeping secrets.

londonrainNicola Upson has forged a nice career as a mystery writer with her series featuring real-life mystery writer and playwright Josephine Tey. Set in the 1930s and replete with period detail, they have the atmosphere of the Golden Age mysteries of Agatha Christie and Tey herself.

In London Rain (HarperCollins, digital galley), it’s the summer of 1937, and the capital city is readying for the coronation of King George VI. Tey is in London to sit in on rehearsals at Broadcast House for the BBC radio adaptation of one of her plays. She meets Vivienne Beresford, an editor at Radio Times, and soon witnesses her public humiliation when her husband, famed announcer Anthony Beresford, is revealed to be having an affair with a well-known actress. On air during the coronation, Beresford is felled by a gunshot, and his wife is the obvious suspect. Josephine’s friend, Scotland Yard detective Archie Penrose, is handling what appears to be an open-and-shut case. But then a jailed Vivienne asks to see Josephine, a second corpse is discovered and Josephine’s theatrical connections and detecting skills come into play. Throughout, too, Josephine’s private life is complicated by her lover, actress Marta Hallard.

Upson’s psychologically astute novels make me want to go back and reread my favorite Tey mysteries: The Daughter of Time, The Franchise Affair and Brat Farrar. Talk about some twists.

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biglittleYikes! I’ve been gone a month. Wish I could say I’d been to Fillory via Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land, but that enchanted journey still awaits. But, as in Fillory, time has passed differently for me ever since I had surgery four weeks ago. Either the anesthesia’s lingering effects have played havoc with my mind and/or it’s triggered lupus brain fog. I’m having trouble remembering both what I read before the surgery and the few books I’ve managed since then. Can’t seem to concentrate, or maybe I’ve just overdosed on middle-of-the-night reruns of Frasier.   “maybe I seem a bit confused . . . Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs!”

But it’s still summer, and the wave of books continues, more than enough to carry us into fall. Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies (Putnam, digital galley) is clever escapist entertainment, constructed like a good jigsaw puzzle. Readers know from the outset that Something Terrible happened at Piriwee elementary school’s annual fundraiser. But who fell off a balcony? And  is it an accident, suicide, murder?! Moriarty takes us back six months to detail the actions of several of the school’s mothers and their assorted partners and offspring. As secrets big and little come to light, they illuminate issues of bullying, domestic abuse, snobbery and violence. It’s all good dark fun.

silkworm“Fun” is not the word to describe J.K. Rowling’s The Silkworm (Little, Brown, purchased e-book), her second Comoran Strike detective novel under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym. I read and reviewed the first one, The Cuckoo’s Calling, without knowing it was Rowling’s work, and quite enjoyed it. This time, I recognized her fingerprints — the odd names, the many literary allusions, the grotesque touches to the crime scene.  Strike and his assistant Robin make for an appealing pair; he is large and grouchy and damaged, while she is pretty, eager and engaged to someone else. Investigating the murder of a pompous author trussed and gutted like a pig, they discover motives aplenty in the back-stabbing literary world. The plot is complicated enough that I’m happy I read it before my brain got so muddled. I might need to read it again as I didn’t see the killer coming. Then again, neither did Strike until almost too late.

latescholarHave you ever wished there were more books by your favorite dead author? Jill Paton Walsh has continued the investigative adventures of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane in a stylish, pitch-perfect series. The fourth entry, The Late Scholar (St. Martin’s Press, digital galley), finds Lord Peter, now the Duke of Denver, and his novelist wife returning to Oxford, which, in Sayers’ Gaudy Night, played such an important part in their lives.  So a certain nostalgia suffuses the leisurely tale as the couple meet up with old friends while trying to resolve the problem of the missing warden of St. Severin’s College, whose members are divided over the proposed sale of an ancient manuscript with ties to King Alfred. More than one visit to the Bodleian library and Blackwell’s bookstore are in order, as are apropos references to professors J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I think Sayers would approve.

lucykyteI’m not so sure how the very private Josephine Tey would feel about Nicola Upson’s series in which Tey herself turns detective, but these traditional British mysteries offer complex plots and vivid 1930s period detail. The fifth, The Death of Lucy Kyte (HarperCollins, digital galley), is set in the Suffolk countryside, where Tey has inherited a rundown cottage from her actress godmother, Hester Larkspur. Red Barn Cottage comes complete with a  nearby notorious murder, a possible ghost and Hester’s papers, which may well reveal more secrets about the author’s life and mysterious death. Speaking of mysterious, who is Lucy Kyte, who is also named in Hester’s will, and where on earth is she?

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poppetThis time last year Mo Hayder’s Gone picked up the Edgar award for best novel. Now comes the sixth in the Jack Caffery series, Poppet (Grove/Atlantic, digital galley), and it’s another winner — chilling, twisted, and oh-so-creepy. Caffery and the Bristol major crime unit are still searching for missing Misty Kitson when a series of patient suicides at the psychiatric hospital Beechwood arouses the suspicions of nurse supervisor AJ LeGrande. The deaths, several incidents of self-harming, and rumors of a terrifying apparition known as “the Maude” unsettle the staff and residents, and the hysteria extends to the community when a patient who killed his parents is mistakenly discharged. Hayder doesn’t spare graphic, gruesome details, but her demon-haunted characters, especially Caffery and diving expert Sgt. Flea Marley, drive the story.

toothCaffery’s turf isn’t far from the historic city of Bath, where Peter Lovesey’s astute, abrasive copper Peter Diamond gets a crash course in classical music in The Tooth Tattoo (Soho Press, digital galley). The body of a young Asian woman found in a Bath canal leads to a string quartet in residence. One of its former members mysteriously disappeared in Budapest four years ago, and the new violist is still adapting to his colleagues’ eccentricities when he is drawn into the police investigation of superfandom. Diamond may not know one note from another, but Lovesey obviously does, and the clever plot is enriched by the passions of its players.

perfectghostThe title of Linda Barnes’ adroit stand-alone The Perfect Ghost (St. Martin’s, digital galley) refers not to a supernatural phantom but to Em More, one-half of the successful ghost-writing team of T.E. Blakemore. When the other half, charismatic Teddy Blake, dies in a car wreck, timid-mouse Em fights her agarophobia to finish their current project, the “autobiography” of famous director Garrett Malcom. She braves Malcolm in his Cape Cod home where he is working on a new version of Hamlet, and soon falls for her charming subject even as she suspects he is harboring secrets. Replete with clever Shakespearean references, the narrative’s as tense as a tight-rope when Barnes gives it a sudden, head-spinning twist. Em’s a little bit Ophelia, a bit more Jane Eyre, and very much  herself.

fearFamous mystery writer Josephine Tey and famous movie director Alfred Hitchcock meet in Nicola Upson’s Fear in the Sunlight (HarperCollins, digital galley), the fourth in this excellent series featuring Tey as sleuth. In 1953, an American visitor’s surprise announcement forces former Chief Inspector detective Archie Penrose to recall the strange events of the summer of 1936 when Tey and her theatrical friends gathered at a resort in Wales to celebrate Tey’s 40th birthday. Hitchcock and his wife Alma arrange to meet Tey in hopes she’ll agree to a film of “A Shilling for Candles.” But Hitchcock, who delights in unsettling pranks, is upstaged by the real-life murder of a Hollywood actress in a nearby cemetery, and Penrose and Tey are left to sort out a bevy of suspects and motives. Upson neatly meshes fact and fiction, and her characterizations of Hitch and Alma appear delightfully spot-on.

parrotsCrime briefs:  The animals, including a profane parrot, a talkative tabby and a rebellious raccoon, steal the show in Clea Simon’s entertaining new Pet Noir mystery, Parrots Prove Deadly (Poisoned Pen Press, ARC), as Pru Marlowe detects misdeeds involving a nursing home, a shady doctor and horrible heirs.

                             gordonston                                                                                I would have liked to see more of the pampered pets in Duncan Whitehead’s The Gordonston Ladies’ Dogwalking Club (Dog Ear Publishing, digital galley), in which Savannah neighbors meet for afternoon cocktails and gossip. When one of their own, Thelma Miller, dies (bless her heart), the friends hone in on the widower, and jealousies, secrets and lies lead to an unmarked grave and an overheated mystery.

TuesdaygoneNicci French follows up Blue Monday with the twisty Tuesday’s Gone (Pamela Dorman/Viking, digital galley), another tale with an off-putting beginning. But psychotherapist Frieda Klein only seems detached when she agrees to help the police investigate the case of a mentally ill woman living with an unidentified corpse.

killowenThere are two bodies buried in the bog in Erin Hart’s layered The Book of Killowen (Scribner, digital galley). One is a well-preserved corpse from the ninth-century, the second that of a recently gone-missing TV personality with controversial views. Both present quite the puzzle for archaeologist Cormac Maguire and pathologist Nora Gavin, who are bunking at at nearby artists’ colony.

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I’ve hardly unpacked and I’m already getting itchy feet. Not today, nor tomorrow, but sometime soon I’ll want to go somewhere else for a bit. Considering the state of my budget and my health, I best be content with living in Florida (yeah, it’s tough this time of year!) and letting my fingers do the wandering, flipping through pages of books of faraway places.

And I have just the guidebook, librarian extraordinare Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers. It follows Book Lust, More Book Lust and Book Crush, which are musts for everyone wondering what to read or reread next.

I have never met Nancy Pearl, although I did interview her by phone when the Sentinel started its “One Book, One Community” reading program in 2002 with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web. When she was at the Seattle Public Library, Nancy developed the program, “If All of Seattle Read the Same Book,” which spread across the country. I remember her applauding our choice of Charlotte’s Web, and then we went off on a tangent about other books that had absolutely nothing to do with the story at hand.

Now I listen to her recommended reading on NPR’s Morning Edition and follow her at her website, on Facebook and Twitter. She was recently named Librarian of the Year and was the cover girl for Library Journal. And she has her own action figure. How cool is that?!

We have exchanged occasional e-mails on the virtues of various books — we are both fond of Josephine Tey’s Brat Farrar and The Franchise Affair — and periodically wonder why some favorite authors of yesteryear (Elizabeth Cadell, for instance)  have gone out of print.  I always smile when she singles out a book I adore (Robin McKinley’s vampire novel Sunshine), and when she tweets that she just loves Jo Walton’s new book, Among Others, I order it ASAP. I trust her.

Back to Book Lust to Go. It’s divided into short sections, “A is for Adventure” to “Zipping through Zimbabwe/Roaming Rhodesia,” and you can hop on and off at any spot, as if on a tour bus. The commentary is witty. On Ireland: “Let’s not start with James Joyce and just say we did, okay?”

Hong Kong is a place I’ve visited only via books and movies, and I’ve read several of Book Lust’s recommendations: Janice Y.K. Lee’s The Piano Teacher, Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax and the Hong Kong Buddha, John le Carre’s The Honourable Schoolboy. Up next for me, Gail Tsukiyami’s Night of Many Dreams. I’m also going to reread The Honourable Schoolboy, which Nancy loved on first reading but can’t bring herself to reread because of what she “perceived as its desperate sadness.” Yes, but it’s sooo good, and the middle book in the Smiley trilogy.

Off to Venice, where I once spent a solitary Sunday because my traveling companion had tummy trouble. After finding him some Gatorade (no translation needed), I wandered the city, keeping in mind Donna Leon’s series of mysteries starring Commissario Guido Brunetti, Henry James’ Wings of the Dove, and Salley Vickers’ charming Miss Garnet’s Angel. I even went in search of the church in Vickers’ novel only to find it covered in scaffolding and closed for restoration. If I ever get back, I’ll look for it again.

 Meanwhile, I’ve never read Mary McCarthy’s Venice Observed. And I’m going to shop my shelves for John Berendt’s The City of Falling Angels, Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy and the Great World, and Sarah Caudwell’s Thus was Adonis Murdered. I may need a map to find them, though.

But who needs a plane ticket? In my fabulous new armchair, and with Nancy Pearl as my guide, I’m off to see the world.

Open Book: I bought my copy of Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust to Go (Sasquatch Books), a handy paperback to take on your Grand Tour. The chair’s from Pier One.

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During my recent malaise, I happened on Joan Acocella’s excellent story in the August 16th edition of The New Yorker, “Queen of Crime,” about how Agatha Christie created the modern murder mystery. It reminded me how I went straight from Nancy Drew and The Dana Girls to Christie’s whodunits and never looked back. She ushered me into the so-called golden age of detective fiction and the works of Sayers, Marsh, Tey, Allingham; nourished the Anglophile in me; and gave me an enduring affection for her tea-cozy, sherry-sipping, body-in-the-library puzzles. (I must say I was truly disappointed when I first tasted sherry; what sounded delicious was sweetly vile.)

Acocella also reminded me of my frustration at trying to figure out those puzzles, not only because of Christie’s use of red herrings and double bluffs but also because she withheld vital information  revealed only at the end, usually by the detective who had gathered all the suspects together. And, as Acocella writes, “Christie’s novels crawl with imposters. Letty is not really Letty; she’s Lotty, the sister of Letty. And Hattie isn’t Hattie. She’s a piece of trash from Trieste, who, with her husband, Sir George, killed Hattie (who was also married to him) and assumed her identity.”

I remembered this most recently while watching a rerun of PBS’s Mystery! and one of the latest reincarnations of Miss Marple (a very good Julia McKenzie). I almost immediately spotted the imposter and identified the culprit, but that may be because I remembered reading the book years ago.

I decided to see if rereading a Christie would arouse me from my languid lupus stupor. Only I wanted one where I couldn’t remember the ending. So I went for her very famous And Then There Were None because  while I knew the conceit — 10 people on an island bumped off one-by-one — I’d forgotten the details, and it’s been ages since I’ve seen the movie.

Well, it’s still a corker! Clever, suspenseful, and carefully plotted with stereotypical Christie characters — the spinster, the old military gentleman, the young woman, the too-handsome young man, etc.) I had forgotten how funny she could be; also how racist and anti-Semitic (Acocella noted this as well). I also found quite lovely foreshadowing: “There was something magical about an island — the mere word suggested fantasy. You lost touch with the world — an island was a world of its own. A world, perhaps from which you might never return.”

After finishing Christie in one evening, I remembered that after reading The Franchise Affair earlier this summer, I was going to reread more Josephine Tey. Trying to decide which one I remembered the least about, I came upon the next best thing to a new  Tey mystery — Nicola Upson’s first two entries in a series set in 1930s Britain with Josephine Tey as the sleuth.

I devoured both An Expert in Murder and Angel with Two Faces. They’re a well-written, atmospheric mix of fact and fiction — the real Tey was one of the pseudonyms of the very private Elizabeth Mackintosh (1890-1952), who also wrote popular plays as Gordon Daviot. Both books use the theater world as backdrop (the West End in 1934, Cornwall in 1935), and I’m eagerly awaiting a third installment. But right now, I seem to have worked up quite a thirst. I’m positively longing, dear, for a nice cup of tea.

Open Book: I couldn’t find a copy of And Then There Were None in my paperback Christie collection, so I down-loaded an e-book version to my nook. Its cover is not the one pictured here because the title on the internet image is And Then There Where None (!). I bought the trade paperback copies of Nicola Upson’s An Expert in Murder and Angel with Two Faces (Harper) because I want to share them with my mother.

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I’m home in hot, sunny Florida. Did you miss me? It’s ok to say no because I wasn’t thinking about books  much while on vacation in western Canada. Too much gorgeous scenery to look at. And while the weather  felt blessedly cool to us Southerners, it was warm for residents. I had to resist the impulse to make a snow angel on the Athabasca Glacier because it was mushy/slushy in the sun. Still, the ancient ice beneath our feet measured somewhere between 300 and 1,000 feet deep. Pretty cool, eh?

So, I did have my nook — Nanook — with me, and it sure beat hauling a bunch of books along on the trip. But I overpacked even e-books, misled perhaps by the “Reading Woman” calendar from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts above my desk.  The painting for July is John George Brown’s wonderful “Reading on the Rocks.” What was I thinking? I can read on planes but not in cars or trains. At night, I was reading the back of my eyelids. It was still light when I fell asleep, and light again when I woke up.

But I did get through two books, one old, one new, both recommended. Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair is one of my favorite rereads because after a few years I always forget the neat trickery of the plot. Was young Betty Kane really kidnapped by two eccentric women living in an isolated English country house, or is she the original pretty little liar? The book was written in 1949, but the tabloid hysteria it depicts is similar to today’s cable TV coverage. Now I want to go back and reread the rest of Tey’s tales, especially Brat Farrar and The Daughter of Time

David Nicholls’ One Day has been hailed as a British When Harry Met Sally, and it is to a degree, with Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew hooking up in the early ’80s on their last day of university only to go their separate, intersecting ways. Nicholls catches up with them every July 15th — St. Swithin’s Day — as their youthful dreams melt in the big chill of real life and are then reshaped over the next 20 years. Growing up is hard to do. Funny, poignant, clever, heartbreaking — I bookmarked a dozen or more passages on the nook for rereading.  So it’s not as deep as a glacier. Pretty cool, though, for summer reading wherever.

Open Book: I have two copies of  Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair (Simon & Schuster), a mass market paperback here in Florida and a trade paperback at my mom’s in S.C. I picked up the latter the day before we left for Calgary and finished it a week later in Whistler. I purchased the e-book of David Nicholl’s One Day (Vintage Contemporaries) and read it on four planes from Vancouver to Orlando.

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text:
Fabricut Kunis Damask-Porcelain 1073801 Decor Fabric

This product has been discontinued by the manufacturer

In stock

Application Uses

  • Bedding
  • Drapery
Minimum quantity for this product is 1
Patio Lane introduces the Silk Nuances collection of fabrics by Fabricut. Kunis Damask-Porcelain 1073801 is made out of 59% Viscose 39% Silk 2% Polyester and is perfect for bedding and drapery applications. Patio Lane offers large volume discounts and to the trade fabric pricing as well as memo samples and design assistance. We also specialize in contract fabrics and can custom manufacture cushions, curtains, and pillows. If you cannot find a fabric you're looking for, you can visit our Clearwater, Florida showroom, or call us at 1-866-516-0934.
More Information
Width 50 inches (127.00 cm)
Width Range 50-59 inches
Application Bedding, Drapery, Multipurpose
Brand Fabricut
Fabric Collection Silk Nuances Collection
Pattern Name Kunis Damask
Pattern Number 1073801
Color Name Porcelain
Fabric Design Damask, Embroidery
Fabric Type Silk, Velvet
Contents 59% Viscose 39% Silk 2% Polyester
Marketing Colors Light Blue, Aqua, Teal
Horizontal Repeat 10.20 inches (25.91 cm)
Vertical Repeat 15.50 inches (39.37 cm)
Fabric Weight 5.89 oz. per Yard
Cleaning Code S (Solvent Cleaner)
Unit of Measure yard(s)


text:
International Protection Office letters to Asylum Seekers during COVID

One of the key inclusions in the Programme for Government is the commitment to ending the Direct Provision programme. While this is a hugely positive development we need to work to improve conditions for those living in the system until such time as it is abolished. In the context of the ongoing pandemic this relates to ending of deportation during this period.

I wrote to Minister McEntee on this matter today:

Dear Minister McEntee,

I am writing to you today in my capacity as TD and Justice spokesperson for the Green Party on the issue of International Protection Office letters being issued to asylum seekers.

It has come to my attention that these letters are still being issued to those in the direct provision system. Some of these letters inform the applicants their leave to remain has been rejected and that they must leave immediately or face a deportation order in the middle a pandemic. After up to five years in the Direct Provision system, asylum seekers are given 5 days to respond, even though HSE guidelines forbid them from travelling.

Given the highlighting of inhumane conditions in direct provision in St Patrick’s Centre in Monaghan this week, and considering the commitment to end direct provision in the Programme for Government, I would request the department to consider a more compassionate response in this matter.

The ongoing global pandemic is also one which must be accounted for. Comparatively a reintroduction of the ban on evictions was recently legislated for when the state was under increased restrictions. I am calling for your department to commit to similar measures barring the aforementioned letters while the state is at level 4 and 5. Indeed reviewing how we operate this system under level 3 may also be appropriate.

Thank you for your consideration of this important issue, it would be great if we can bring some positive change on this.

Is mise le meas,

Patrick Costello TD – Dublin South Central


text:
Crisis nips at the Benaki’s heels; what future for Paddy’s house?

Angelos Delivorias, director of the Benaki Museum.

Angelos Delivorias, director of one of the Greece’s foremost institutions, tells it like it is. These guys are the custodians of Paddy’s house. I can’t see conversion being on the top of their to do list for a while.

By Dimitris Rigopoulos

First published in Ekathimerini, 10 December 2012.

“How can you ask me if I’m well? Why would I be?” Dr Angelos Delivorias has no time for formalities on what promises to be another difficult day at the office. The director of the Benaki Museum is bitter and very, very angry. “I have to fire another 30 people by the end of December,” he practically spits.

In the three years since the onset of the crisis, it has all come tumbling down for the most dynamic museum in the Greek capital. During the boom of 2000 the Benaki opened its Pireos Street annex, the Museum of Islamic Art and the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika Gallery, but now it has had to reduce its opening hours, let personnel go, put the remaining staff on a four-day rather than a five-day week to reduce costs, and cut salaries by 40 percent.

“While I’m still feeling a modicum of optimism, I have just one goal: to keep the door open,” says Delivorias, letting out a long, troubled sigh.

Kathimerini spoke to Delivorias ahead of the upcoming publication of a book in which he lets all the skeletons out of the closet, fearlessly exposing politicians and providing a plausible answer for how the Benaki reached its current situation.

Titled, “An Account and an Apology,” the book, which is in Greek, goes over his own career as director of the Benaki for the last 40 years. The apology refers to “the degree of responsibility that lies with me and which I am not trying to shirk,” with him admitting that his biggest mistake was probably being overoptimistic.

Despite the sorry state of the Benaki today, Delivorias says that he would not take back some of his most important decisions if he had to do it all over again: not the huge boost to the preservation and research work carried out by the museum, not the main concept governing it, not the move to open new departments in other parts of the capital, not the independence of each individual department, and not the way he chose to administrate it.

“I never wanted to be the top dog; it is a matter of idiosyncrasy, family tradition and ideology,” Delivorias says.

“I have a very particular view on what Greece represents,” he continues. “A Greece that should not be just about its ancient past, if only in words… not just about Byzantium, nor the periods of foreign occupation. It should be about all this and about the present.”

Today, Delivorias has been accused of hiring when it was not absolutely necessary back when the museum was doing well. He doesn’t deny it. “I may not have needed all of them, but not hiring them wouldn’t have saved me,” he says. “And being kindhearted has never hurt.”

The worst part of his job today is having to go down lists of people who are up for the ax. “I just can’t take it,” says Delivorias. “I’m almost 80 after all.”

The Benaki’s financial woes are essentially due to the reduction of state subsidies, which went down from just over 2 million euros in 2010 to 842,000 last year. The changes this dramatic drop in funding caused sent shock waves through the institution that it may not be able to recover from, especially given that it is servicing a 15.3-million-euro bank loan worth.

“By law, the Benaki belongs to the state but it retains its administrative independence. The state has a legal obligation to cover the payroll as well as the museum’s operational costs. If you consider the payments we make in taxes and social security contributions, meanwhile, the state gets back what it gives and then some,” says Delivorias.

The Benaki Museum’s payroll currently stands at 5.3 million euros. State subsidies cover 6 percent of its expenses and the rest comes from sponsorships, ticket sales, the gift shop and bequests. The latter does not always go straight into the museum’s coffers as relations often contest the terms of bequests and drag the issue through the courts, a process that can take as long as 10 years, according to Delivorias.

As clouds continue to gather over the Benaki’s flagship in Kolonaki, Delivorias and his associates are now busy banging on doors asking for help. In one of his most recent initiatives, he asked a major charitable foundation to adopt one of the museum’s buildings for at least one year. He has also set up a committee of volunteers to try and drum up interest in sponsorships from Greeks in the US and Australia, though such initiatives normally take time to get results.

As far as private or corporate sponsorships are concerned, the crisis has seen many of them dry up.

“New money in Greece has never been renowned for its cultural and intellectual pursuits. There used to be a middle class that had a vision of modernization and of a different kind of Greece. This class is now gone,” says Delivorias. “What exceptions we have seen normally come with an unbearable quid pro quo.”

According to Delivorias, the Benaki desperately needs 2 million euros to stay afloat.

“I just a call from the accountant, who said we can cover the cost of November’s salaries from the gift shop revenues. But we can’t continue to operate this way,” explains an exasperated Delivorias, adding that he would like to see the institution change its legal status to that of a private entity that receives state funding.

“This is not a museum or an organization that expects everything from the state. I would say that a 50-50 split would be ideal, because this institution has potential,” he argues.

Despite its financial troubles, the Benaki is trying to stay active. It has several exhibitions organized and is planning to expand into new buildings with funding from the European Commission-backed National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF).

“Unfortunately, the NSRF can’t give me money to pay my staff’s salaries,” says Delivorias.

3 thoughts on “Crisis nips at the Benaki’s heels; what future for Paddy’s house?

  1. Diana Gilliland Wright

    Did PLF not leave any money along with the house, or was it only the house. I am all for private donations, and would gladly make one, but my confidence in Greek financial management at this stage is very low.

    1. proverbs6to10 Post author

      He and Joan left no momey for this project which is part of the problem. I am confident that there will be some form of private response in time, but nothing can happen with out the agreement of the Benaki. I can assure you that discussions are taking place with them. When the time is right we will certainly use this blog to seek assistance of all types.

  2. Hans Christian Bogstad

    Unfortunately, I believe the only way to ensure the preservation of Paddy’s house is by private contributions from people who care. The Greek museum can perhaps continue to manage the property, but we cannot expect the Greeks to finance the project. If the international “Paddy-community” remains inactive, I fear the house may eventually be beyond repair.

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text:
Event: The Cretan Legacy

The kidnap gang pose before the action (Courtesy of Estate of William Stanley Moss)

The kidnap gang pose before the action (Courtesy of Estate of William Stanley Moss)

Our good friend, ex-Coldstream Guards officer, sometime Pilgrim, and author of In the Dolphin’s Wake and Like a Tramp, Like a Pilgrim, Harry Bucknall has been busy over the summer arranging a very special event be held at Waterstones Piccadilly on Wednesday 26th October at 7pm. The Cretan Legacy, a panel discussion, will examine the SOE abduction of General Heinrich Kreipe carried out by Paddy Leigh Fermor, Billy Moss and men of the Greek Andantes on Crete in 1943.

The panel, chaired by former Irish Guards Officer and SAS Squadron Commander, James Lowther-Pinkerton, will include Alan Ogden, SOE expert and author of Sons of Odysseus; Chris White, contributing author to Abducting a General; Rick Stroud, author of Kidnap in Crete and Dr Klaus Schmider, military historian, senior lecturer at the Dept of War Studies, RMA Sandhurst and Wehrmacht expert. With audience questions, the panel will discuss whether “this Hussar Stunt” – as Kreipe referred to his capture – was worth the undertaking in both the short and long term and assess its achievement, legacy and place in the annals of military history, endeavour and folklore.

No doubt there will be wine and a chance to chat to friends old and new so do come along if you can to Waterstones Piccadilly on Wednesday 26th October at 7pm. All you have to do is reserve a £5 ticket in store or by emailing Piccadilly@waterstones.com

6 thoughts on “Event: The Cretan Legacy

  1. Terry Moyemont

    It is my fond hope that someday soon, before they are all gone, the citizens of the Amari Valley, particularly in the village of Vizari, where the radio shack was located. When I first went to live in Vizari so many people broke into vast smiles when I asked about whether they had known Paddy. As children they had brought him water, taken his batteries to be recharged at the old mill…he is still an almost mythic in their minds. What he did is a parallel for the Vizariotes to the legends of Mycenean and Minoan heroes…..

    1. Chris White

      Dear Terry I visited Vizari yesterday but couldn’t find anyone who knew of the radio shacks wherebouts. Is there anyone I might seek out who would be able to help me locate it?
      Best wishes
      Chris White

      1. Terry Moyemont

        Chris – Dora, the post mistress, had told me that she took either bread or recharged batteries
        to the place in the valley where they had the shack. I remember that I was told how someone would take the radio batteries into the old mill in Vizari and secretly recharge them. Dora was a very young girl then I may not have the story totally right. All of the older folks that new more details are gone now. I do know that Maria Vouskakis’ late husband, Mihali, knew quite a bit about what was going on….but I’m not at all sure of what Maria knew first-hand. I’ve been trying to reach George Vlastos here in Wyoming to see if he has other suggestions of folk to talk with…but I have had no call back…and he may already left for Kriti. But in case he’s still here, I’ve left a detailed message his answering machine. (In case he’s in Vizari already, just ask for him. Everyone knows George. His house is the next to last one on the left as you leave town headed north.) More soon, I hope….

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Report: Mike Gillislee dealing with hamstring injury

New England Patriots running back Mike Gillislee is dealing with a hamstring injury, according to the Boston Herald’s Jeff Howe.

Gillislee joined the Patriots as a restricted free agent. In his first season with the team, he’ll be the highest paid running back on the team with $4.2 million. He was previously the backup to LeSean McCoy with the Buffalo Bills, where Gillislee had 154 carries for 865 rushing yards and 11 touchdown rushes.

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