The Ironist

ISSN 2817-7363

Differing Perspectives

Smile!

Smile!

We need more humor. It is hard keeping paper money dry when you live in the water.  That is why I always kept my lari¹ in coins. Coins don’t get soggy. I think that is why American sturgeons switched to credit cards and then many got themselves into so problems with...

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Ramblings #1 – At the Limehouse Cut

Ramblings #1 – At the Limehouse Cut

 William Morris, Eleanor Marx, George Bernard Shaw et al. gave speeches nearby  I am sitting on a wooden bench by the Limehouse Cut, the oldest canal in London, built in 1770. It is a Sunday morning, and there are only a few passers-by on Commercial Road that crosses...

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We Need More Insouciance

We Need More Insouciance

Flt. Lieut. Peter Guy Scotchmer next to his damaged Typhoon after returning from an attack on an E-boat. Today, we read and hear not only about wars in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and of impending wars, but of riots and the threats of riots in many countries....

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Gordon of Khartoum

Gordon of Khartoum

An overdue retrospective Major General Charles George Gordon, CB, 1833-1885 The Victorian Age was an idealistic age, beginning with the might of the Royal Navy breaking the thralldom of slavery outside the British Empire. There was a dawning acceptance of Darwin’s...

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A Culture of Reticence

A Culture of Reticence

The past is another country. They do things differently there. – L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between   (A mosaic from Hadrumetum, in Tunisia, an important pre-Carthage Phoenician city, which depicts Aeneas surrounded by Clio, (history), and Melpomene (tragedy). This...

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The Luring of Children

The Luring of Children

A Bookseller’s stall in Kutaisi, Georgia Now the ‘Luring of Children’ is a provocative title for an article in a non-political periodical like The Ironist. It comes from a picture, (above), that I took in Georgia (the country), recently, at a bookseller’s stall in the...

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Finding Her Voice

Finding Her Voice

  Finding Her Voice   Lou-Ellen Lewis was a quiet girl given to reading. She was not shy, but her reflective disposition discouraged her from revealing her inmost thoughts openly in class. Unlike so many of the other girls, enthusiastic and vital as they tended...

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Possession

Possession

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. --F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby I have often wondered why it is that some slight and unremarkable memories remain strongly embedded in our waking consciousness while others...

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