The O'Shea brothers, enormously talented, and insuppressibly unconventional

The museum Building at Trinity College, Dublin was designed by architects, Deane & Woodward however the stone carvings on doors, windows and capitals were carried out by the brothers John and James O’Shea along with their nephew Edward Whelan from Cork. These stone masons were of considerable talent and the building with its Gothic revival style is impressive even to this day.  It seems the brothers were trusted to be creative and given a degree of freedom in how they worked.

 “Woodward allowed the brothers considerable flexibility and they carved their designs in situ. It is said that they worked from material gathered from the College Botanic Gardens, in Ballsbridge. The keen-eyed may spot cats, snakes, frogs, squirrels and birds, lurking among shamrock, daffodils, oak, ivy, lilies, and acanthus.”

Patrick Wyse Jackson’s ‘A Victorian Landmark: Trinity College’s Museum Building’ in the Irish Arts Review Yearbook 1995, p.151 

Their realism in the stonework is impressive in its detail and the use of depth and negative space is particularly stunning. In places the leaves appear as if curled back to reveal berries behind them.  The usual practise was to carve at ground level and have the work inspected for accuracy and skill before being lifted into situ. However, such was skill of the O’Shea’s they were allowed to carve unworked blocks of stone already lifted high into their final position in the building. The brothers achieved some reknown after their work on Trinity College and on Kildare Street Club.  This later club was described by George Moore in contemptuous terms, 

“The Kildare Street Club is one of the most important institutions in Dublin. … it represents all that is respectable, that is to say, those who are gifted with an oyster-like capacity for understanding this one thing: that they should continue to get fat in the bed in which they were born. This club is a sort of oyster bed into which all the eldest sons of the landed gentry fall as a matter of course…”

The O’Shea brothers incorporated a rather creative criticism of their own in the Kildare Street Club window piece which presents the club members as monkeys playing billiards.  It was clear that these brothers had not only creative ability but also a sense of humour that they freely expressed in their beautiful stone work.

Another example of their creative skills is to be found in Oxford Museum which was opened in 1860.  Henry Acland, a Reader in Anatomy at Christ Church campaigned to have a new museum for both research and teaching purposes.  In particular, he wanted to bring together in one place all the extensive collections that Oxford University had accumulated over the years.  In the open competition for architects for the new museum, Deane and Woodward, of Dublin won with their neo-Gothic design.  Their success was in part due to their earlier success in designing Trinity College Museum in Dublin.  The Oxford Museum was heavily influenced by the ideas of John Ruskin who felt that architecture should be shaped by the natural world. This museum has its place in history as within a year of it being completed it was the venue for the famous debate on Darwin’s Origin of the Species. 

Each column surrounding the court is made of a different British rock while the capitals and corbels are carved into a range of plants.

These carvings took two years to complete (1858-1860) and James and John O’Shea with their nephew Edward Whelan once again demonstrated their exceptional talent as stonemasons of both high quality and creativity.  They used living specimens from the botanic garden to inform their work.  The brothers started working on carvings around the outer windows but a shortage of funds and the constant interference of University officials (the Members of Convocation) meant that the project was never completed.

O’Shea was said to be so incensed he carved owls and parrots as a parody of the University Convocation and was immediately sacked.  He had been heard shouting from high up on the scaffolding,  "Parrhots and Owwls! Parrhots and Owwls! Members of Convocation!" University officials were so angry about this parody that they accused the O’Sheas of "defacing" the building with unauthorised work.

These unfinished carvings are still visible today over the main entrance of the museum. The remaining capitals, which had to be subsequently finished in 1910 by other stonemasons, are easily identifiable as they are so evidently beneath the standard of the work of the O’Shea brothers.

The O'Sheas and Whelan would later work with Woolner and the architect Alfred Waterhouse in the design of the Manchester assize courts. 

They produced a series of capitals depicting gruesome forms of punishment in history for this building, an unusual choice for a court building! The original building was demolished following bomb damage in World War Two however some of the brother’s carvings survive in the replacement building.

These enormously talented, and insuppressibly unconventional, mason sculptors, the O'Sheas have certainly left their mark on memorable historical buildings.  Twenty years after working at the Oxford Museum James O’Shea, left his family in Manchester to return to Oxford. However, by this time he was homeless, an alcoholic and he would tragically die here.  It feels perverse that a talent that had beautified one of the most historic buildings of Oxford would find himself living destitute and die alone on those very same streets.

Bob Dylan, poet, singer, metalworker - making us think

_{I remember the furore when Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature some time ago. There was some outrage that}

_{1)  he had been given such a prestigious award and}

_{2) that he didn’t bother to appear in Stockholm to accept the prize in person.}

_{I don’t remember the details of the article I read but the gist of it was to suggest that Bob Dylan did not deserve this award and his disdain of the Nobel Prize Committee emphasized his being not an appropriate person to receive it.  So, it was with some amusement I read of how popular Bob Dylan’s acceptance speech for the Nobel prize was.} 

_{It turns out Bob Dylan wrote a rather wonderful acceptance speech which although not given in person was presented in Stockholm. I wasn’t surprised that the fact of this affair different so totally from the fiction by which it was portrayed in the media. We have become used to the dichotomy of the age we live in. Things are rarely how they are portrayed. Strangely, Bob Dylan always managed to be himself a genuine article. So, it’s not surprising that even in the case of this prestigious award his words and act actions ring true to form.}

_{I remember being shocked at one of his early performances where he introduced an electric guitar into his act. His Folk Festival} audience hated it and viewed it as a betrayal of everything he had produced before. He was actually booed by a large crowd of his fans. His response was unique. He just turned his back on the audience and continue to play. An artist that is not swayed by publicity, agents, music industry or even his fans is a unique creature indeed.  I love the fact that he makes weird metal stuff too.  It pleases me no end that when he’s not creating music or singing he likes to weld metal into amazing sculpture. 

Bob Dylans metalwork

_{Humility is rare in an artist. I like the fact that his song “All Along the Watchtower” which Dylan released was later covered by another singer Hendrix.  Dylan announced that it was Hendrix’s version that was the definitive one.  Too few modern artists could or would be so generous with praise.} 

_{In his acceptance speech, Dylan expresses an appreciation for the prize he has been awarded. He comes across as self-depreciating and admits that he had never even asked himself if his songs are literature.  Here is a short quote from that Nobel prize acceptance speech.}

_{“If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon. In fact, during the year I was born and for a few years after, there wasn’t anyone in the world who was considered good enough to win this Nobel Prize.”}

_{In lieu of his presence at the Nobel prize award ceremony, the singer Patti Smith sang his song “It’s a Hard Day’s Night”.  Because it was this song that someone chose to represent his work, I wanted to take a closer look at its lyrics.  I have to confess I listen to songs and rarely hear the words. I know it is sacrilege but I tend to get caught up in the tune and the words are sort of ‘blah blah blah’ in the background. Given this tendency, I wanted to actually print out the lyrics of this song and also give it a bit of thought.}  

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall  by Bob Dylan

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?

I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains

_{For some reason the song track of Misty Mountains from Tolkien’s Book came to my mind.}

I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways

_{I think we have all experienced those highways in our lives, places you find yourself asking how you ever ended up here.  The fact that we sometimes don’t walk these but end up crawling them says a lot about how hard they are to navigate.}

I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests

I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans

_{There are dead zones in the sea suffering from hypoxia (low oxygen) due to excessive pollution from man.  In the 1960s ( Dylan wrote this song in 1962) there were roughly 49 such dead zones by 2008 the number had grown to 405.  A recent publication entitled Climate Change and Dead Zones suggests that the news could be bleaker still as climate change could have a dramatic and worrying interaction with dead zones (Altieri AH1, Gedan KB. 2015).  Talk about your worst enemies ganging up on you?}

I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it

_{The world has made valuable progress under the United Nations Millenium goals to reduce deaths in under-fives. It is a real achievement that globally under-five deaths have dropped from 12.5 million in 1990 to less than 9 million in 2008.  But heart-stopping that still 25,000 under-five year old children die every day in our world.  Those wild wolves are getting past us!}

I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it

I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'

I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'

_{This gruesome imagery conjures up violence against other races that has blighted nations.  Some musicians have been unusually effective in drawing attention to these atrocities.  Dylan’s song ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ focused attention on the death of a 51-year-old black barmaid, mother of ten, who died after being struck by the cane of a 24-year-old white customer (who was released from prison after only six months).  There have been more emotive songs like Billie Holiday's - Strange fruit addressing these issues but it heartening to hear real musicians letting their craft speak truth to power.}

I saw a white ladder all covered with water

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken

I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children

_{These lines conjured up for me, social media, all those talkers. There are 3.48 billion social media users in 2019, a big multiplication from 10,000 but his observation of broken tongues nicely predicts the misinformation that floods minds young and old around our world.} 

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?

And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'

Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world

_{Floods were, in my mind, somehow almost mythical events far from present life or relevance.  Then in 2004 on Boxing Day, the 26th of December an Indian Ocean tsunami killed almost a quarter of a million people and floods became horrifically real.  Japan’s tsunami in 2011 reinforced this reality.}

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'

_{Hunger is a blight and we know where it is most found and how much of the populations are impacted by it.} 

• Sub-Saharan Africa: 22.7 percent
• Caribbean: 17.7 percent
• Southern Asia: 14.4 percent
• Southeastern Asia: 11.5 percent
• Western Asia: 10.6 percent

_{We may not be laughing but until we address this problem effectively we might as well be for those in this world of ours who go hungry to bed tonight.}

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter

_{Here are some who died before they were discovered and some examples of their words.  We should celebrate their ‘songs’ and their suffering.}

 _{“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”}

_{― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, the Whale}

_{“Man cannot live without a permanent trust in something indestructible within himself, though both that indestructible something and his own trust in it may remain permanently concealed from him. “}

_{― Franz Kafka}

_{“Success is counted sweetest}

_{By those who ne'er succeed.}

_{To comprehend a nectar}

_{Requires sorest need.”}

_{― Emily Dickinson}

_{“I don't want to throw these characters away. In other words, I'm going to work on the book again. I haven't been able to look at the manuscript since I got it back, but since something of my soul is in the thing, I can't let it rot without trying.”}

_{― John Kennedy Toole, on receiving a rejection for his book which would, after his death, lead to him getting a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction}

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?

Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony

I met a white man who walked a black dog

I met a young woman whose body was burning

_{This last line on a young woman with a burning body strikes a chord. Who would have thought that throwing acid on young women would become so common?  Thousands of women in countries such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and India etc have had acid thrown on them in revenge attacks.  These women have usually refused either sexual advances or wedding proposals from men who feel that an acid attack on their victims sends the  message,}

_{“If I can’t have you no one shall!”}

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

I met one man who was wounded in love

I met another man who was wounded with hatred

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?

Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?

I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'

I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest

Where the people are many and their hands are all empty

Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters

_{This has echoes of the Flint water crisis in the US which began in 2014, when the drinking water source for the city of Flint, Michigan was diverted from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to a cheaper source the Flint River. Because of insufficient water treatment, lead leached from water pipes into the drinking water, exposing over 100,000 residents to elevated lead levels.  The water was coloured orange or brown, smelt strange and caused skin rashes and hair loss.  A sip of it was said to taste as if you had a metal coin on your tongue.  It took 18 months of delay and cover-up by city, state and federal government officials before the issue was corrected.  For the previous fifty years prior to 2014, the water had been fine.  In trying to save money big mistakes were made.  Lessons need to be learned here surely?  But recent studies have shown that Flint is no aberration. In fact, it doesn't even rank among the most dangerous lead hotspots in America. A recent study found nearly 3,000 areas in the US with recently recorded lead poisoning rates at least double those in Flint during the peak of that city's contamination crisis. Mistakes can be good when we learn from them but tortuous when we refuse to.}

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison

Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden

Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten

Where black is the color, where none is the number

And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it

And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it

Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'

But I'll know my song well before I start singin'

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard

It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

_{This is the first time I have really read one of Bob Dylan’s lyrics line by line and I reckon he deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature.  I like this poet, I like his metal work and most of all I love the fact that he does his art to please himself and not us.}

"....singing and music are the spiritual food of the hearts and souls"      Bahá'í Writings

Libraries - the oldest and the most beautiful

I have always loved libraries.  There is something wonderful about them.  Our house was always filled with books and I can remember picking up books and pretending to read them from a young age.  So today I explored the National Library of Malta in Valletta.  It was built to house the books and valuables of the Order of St John including items belonging to  knights who had died in 1766.  A decree in 1555 had decreed that the property of the knights should be preserved.  You can visit this by handing in a passport or ID at the desk, in exchange you will be given a visitors badge.  It is worth doing as the library has an atmosphere like a scene out of Indiana Jones.  This is an old image of the library.

Here is how it looks more recently.  Unfortunately, since this recent photo was taken they have removed the lovely trees which used to be in front of the building and which were filled with hundreds of birds.

Inside the building used to look like this.

Here is how it looks today.

It does have a lovely atmosphere and is well worth a visit.  I have several libraries that I love and have included them below.  Starting one of the oldest, the National Library of Czech Republic, built in 1366.

The National Library of Austria comes a close second dating from 1368.

Another favourite is the Marciana National Library of Italy which was built in 1468.

The National Library of France is exceptional, built in 1480.

Another library I personally love, though not so old as those above, is Trinity Library in Dublin.

Mind you, if we really wanted to look at the oldest existing library we'd probably have to put St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt up there ahead of all of them.  Built in 565 AD this has been a running library since its establishment.  Only open to monks and invited scholars this gem of a library was constructed, it is claimed, on the site where Moses saw the burning bush.  The monastery library preserves the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library. It contains Greek, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Hebrew, Georgian, and Aramaic texts.  It also contains the oldest icons in the world.  Much of its treasures avoided destruction due to the monastery’s remote position in the Sinai desert.  However, it was also protected throughout the centuries by popes, sultans, queens and kings. Napoleon and even Muhammad provided documents of protection for St Catherine's which are themselves still in existence in this unique library.  Which only goes to show, that while it can take only one fool to burn down a priceless library, it takes over a millennium of careful, constant, protection to preserve such a gem.