Stan Carey
LightNews LightNews
banner
stancarey.bsky.social
Stan Carey
@stancarey.bsky.social
4.6K followers 250 following 1.7K posts
Editor, writer, lapsed biologist in the west of Ireland

Copy-editing, writing: https://stancarey.com
Language: https://stancarey.wordpress.com
Strong language: https://stronglang.wordpress.com
🎞 https://letterboxd.com/stancarey
🦣 @stancarey@mastodon.ie
Posts Replies Media Videos
stancarey.bsky.social
Ireland's presidential inauguration chair was made from native oak, symbolic of strength and endurance

Here's some background from a beautiful book that I copy-edited in 2018 artisanhouse.ie/product/see-... #SpéirGhorm #SpéirGorm
Hardback book on a wooden floor: "See the Wood from the Trees: The story of storm-felled timber gifted to GMIT Letterfrack from Áras an Uachtarán", by Marion McGarry & Dermot O'Donovan. Foreword by Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland. Introduction by Duncan Stewart. Poetry by Theo Dorgan. Published by Artisan House, Connemara. The cover shows a cross-section of timber in close-up, bright orange, with the book title in green all-caps. Two pages from the book "See the Wood from the Trees". Each has a photo. On the left, President Mary McAleese and Dr Michael Hannon, registrar of GMIT, stand at a reception in Áras an Uachtarán to mark the presentation of lecterns in 2008. On the right, John Lee stands with the Presidential Inauguration Chair that he designed. Text on page 96: Áras an Uachtaráin and GMIT Letterfrack have enjoyed a fruitful relationship for decades. Students and graduates of the college have produced a range of furniture for Áras an Uachtaráin over the years. In 1992 Mary Robinson visited GMIT Letterfrack, and in 2006 Mary McAleese opened the GMIT Letterfrack Furniture Gallery. Mary McAleese was enthralled by the quality of student work, and in 2008 she asked students to design and make a lectern for use in the Áras. When she received the three final designs for selection, she was so impressed by them that all three were commissioned and are now in use throughout the reception rooms of Áras an Uachtaráin. Page 97: In 2011, GMIT Letterfrack graduate John Lee won the tender to design and make the new Presidential Inauguration Chair. The Office of Public Works brief was exacting, requiring that the chair be 'presidential, not regal', and be of a 'sufficient timeless design and character to be suitable for use for many future inaugurations'. For the material, John chose Irish white oak, symbolic of strength and endurance. The chair has a broad back and is characterised by outstretched sweeping arms, which reflect the Irish phrase céad míle fáilte, or 'welcome'. President Higgins was the first Irish president to use the chair, at his inauguration as the ninth president of Ireland in 2009.
November 11, 2025 at 6:31 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
Tom Gauld continues to document my life
3-panel black and white comic strip. Panel 1. A woman sits in an armchair reading a book. There are shelves full of books either side of her. A voice off-panel says, "You can't survive on books alone." The woman says, "Maybe I can!" Panel 2. The voice says, "How?" The woman replies, "I don't know yet, but I'm sure the answer will be in one of my books." Panel 3. A caption reads: "However". The woman is now a skull, resting on two books on the armchair. The skull says, "I regret nothing!"
November 10, 2025 at 1:23 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
The trees and the light on the hill this morning
View from a gravel path through a wood, bright in morning sunlight. Our shadows stretch long down the path. To the left, dominating the scene, is a rather dramatic beech tree. The sky is bright blue through its branches. Dead leaves of various browns form a carpet amid the mossy rocks between the trees.
November 9, 2025 at 7:18 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
I enjoyed this very much, @powersflowers.bsky.social
Hardback copy of the book "An Irish Nature Year" by Jane Powers, placed on a colourful cushion with cactus design. The book cover is off-white, with the title in large green type and the author's name below it in orange. Surrounding the text are illustrations by Robert Vaughan of several Irish species: swallows and swifts in flight, a wren singing, and a small tortoiseshell and a wasp (I think) feeding on various flowers.
November 2, 2025 at 10:09 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
Nothing I watch this Halloween can compare with these lines about midges I just read in Jane Powers's "An Irish Nature Year"
Another of the tiny biters, Serromyia femorata, resident in Ireland, is worth mentioning for its interesting behaviour. While mating, the female pierces the male's head, releases enzymes that liquefy his innards, and sucks them out. His useless corpse breaks off at his genitalia which then act as a plug to prevent her mating with another male.
October 31, 2025 at 6:36 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
A nice array of newspaper mastheads in blackletter type (Simon Garfield, "Just My Type")
Image from "Just My Type" showing five newspaper mastheads, all in blackletter typeface: The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Irish Examiner, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph. A caption in smaller text reads: "Blackletter news from around the world".
October 22, 2025 at 8:41 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
The "linguistic doom loop" of Wikipedia pages machine-translated ineptly into minority languages:
www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1... #Wikipedia 🐦🐦
Abdulkadir sees an urgent need for the Fulfulde Wikipedia to work properly. He has been suggesting it as one of the few online resources for farmers in remote villages, potentially offering information on which seeds or crops might work best for their fields in a language they can understand. If you give them a machine-translated article, Abdulkadir told me, then it could “easily harm them.” as the information will probably not be translated correctly into Fulfulde. Google Translate, for instance, says the Fulfulde word for January means June, while ChatGPT says it's August or September. The programs also suggest the Fulfulde word for “harvest” means “fever” or “well-being,” among other possibilities.
October 20, 2025 at 10:25 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only
Feathers McGraw, the nefarious penguin in the stop-motion film The Wrong Trousers. They are looking into the camera with beady eyes shining. On their head is a red rubber glove as a disguise, and they're holding a remote control box for the titular trousers.
October 19, 2025 at 6:59 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
E.E. Cummings once had a collection of poems rejected by 14 publishers. When he eventually got it published as "No Thanks" in 1935, he dedicated it to those 14 publishers in a visual poem shaped like a funeral urn
Centre-aligned poem whose lines forms the shape of a funeral urn: TO Farrar & Rinehart Simon & Schuster Coward-McCann Limited Editions Harcourt, Brace Random House Equinox Press Smith & Haas Viking Press Knopf Dutton Harper's Scribner's Covici, Friede
October 14, 2025 at 3:39 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
"Would of" (for "would've) and other modal+"of" phrases are surprisingly common in literature – see the link below for loads of examples

But I've seldom if ever seen both at once: "would've of" (from Jim Nesbit's novel Lethal Injection) [1/2]

stancarey.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/w... #writing
"Well, I'll be damned," Eddie said. "I never would've of thought you had it in you."
October 10, 2025 at 4:11 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
Here's a wonderful little clip of Goodall greeting the world, chimpanzee-style

More on pant-hooting and other chimp-related communication in these excerpts from her book "In the Shadow of Man"
stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/c...
October 2, 2025 at 9:50 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
Professors who are merely silly should be fine, though
#CrashBlossom
Image from the website of RTE (Ireland's state broadcaster) with this news headline: "'Ludicrous' professors cannot be appointed - ATU President". There's a photo of a large fish sculpture on a campus, with the caption: "The Atlantic Technological University is the largest university outside of Dublin".
September 26, 2025 at 2:05 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
I haven't seen many sound effects for nose-blowing. These are from "Blankets" by Craig Thompson

I'd have liked a little variation, hungry-cat-in-Ulysses-style, but it's good enough

#comics
Black-and-white drawing of a woman sick in bed blowing her nose. She's lying against an elevated pillow and is visible from the shoulders up. Her eyes are closed as she blows her nose, and the sound effect is: HRXXXP! Black-and-white drawing of the same woman, this time sitting on the floor blowing her nose. She has shoulder-length hair and is wearing trousers. Her eyes are closed again as she blows her nose, and the sound effect, again, is: HRXXXP!
September 25, 2025 at 12:21 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
Notes (and comics) on the hyphen in Moby-Dick
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=71056
Frazz comic by Jef Mallett, 12 September 2025. Three panels, showing a middle-aged teacher, Mrs Olson, talking with a schoolboy, Caulfield. She wears glasses, an orange shirt and a red skirt; he wears a blue T-shirt, black trousers and white sneakers. Panel 1. Caulfield: "I like 'Moby-Dick' better spelled with the hyphen. Panel 2. Mrs Olson: "Whatever for?" Caulfield: "I'm glad you asked." Panel 3. Mrs Olson: [thought bubble] "Whatever for?" [She rubs her eyes] Caulfield: [laughing, hands raised] "It makes it look like a compound adjective waiting to modify something vaguely rude."
September 16, 2025 at 4:34 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
A great role for Redford, and one that some people may have missed, is in J. C. Chandor's All Is Lost (2013), an exercise in pure cinema. Redford has to carry it pretty much by himself, and he's perfect
Poster for the 2013 film All Is Lost. It shows Robert Redford at the wheel of his heavily listing boat in a bad storm. Colours are muted, but he's wearing orange oilskins and the sea is deep blue with lots of white foam. The sky is dark grey, with dense lines of white showing heavy rain. His name appears over the film title, followed by the slogan: Never give up. Each is in black sans serif capitals.
September 16, 2025 at 3:01 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
Decades after watching The Kingdom, I remembered its wild premise and very specific mood but little of its storylines and work politics. Enjoying a revisit and lines like these
Morten Rotne Leffers in The Kingdom saying, "It may start as stupidity but it will end as evil." He's wearing rubber gloves while he washes gloves in the hospital. Vera Gebuhr and Kirsten Rolffes in The Kingdom. They're linking arms and chatting as they walk along a corridor in the hospital. Vera says, "Word processing is a dreadful term. I don't want my words processed." She's wearing a snazzy-coloured shirt, while Kirsten is wearing a pink cardigan over white shirt.
September 16, 2025 at 1:50 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
Classic U-shaped valley at Binn Chaonaigh in the Maamturk mountains yesterday

Binn Chaonaigh is Irish for "Peak of Moss", but the mountain really abounds in heather
Landscape photo from a rocky plateau between mountain peaks in the west of Ireland, looking down on a grassy green valley, with more mountains in the misty distance beyond them. To the left and right in the middle ground rise ridges forming a classic "U" shape, a legacy of glacial erosion. The predominant colours and grey exposed rock and scree, and dark green scrub and heather; the sky is grey and the distant mountains bluish.
September 8, 2025 at 5:42 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
Watched cheesy 1980s horror film Not of This Earth (1988) on the strength of the director's Chopping Mall and Night of the Comet. The biggest jump scare was unintentional:
Roger Lodge as a cop in the film Not of This Earth. He's sitting on the corner of a cluttered desk, talking on the phone. Among the items on the wall behind him is a framed photo of President Ronald Reagan. Aaaaargh!
September 3, 2025 at 6:20 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
Jim Corbett:
Drake meme. On the top, Drake refusing: "Shooting big cats with a hunting rifle". On the bottom, Drake accepting: "Shooting big cats with a nice camera".
July 25, 2025 at 9:51 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
Corinne Marchand in "Cléo from 5 to 7" (Agnès Varda, 1962)

It was decades since I'd seen this, and I remembered very little about it. Delighted I went back #filmsky
Black and white image from the 1962 film Cléo from 5 to 7, directed by Agnès Varda. It shows Corinne Marchand as the singer Cléo, pausing on her way down a series of wide wooden steps in a park. She has thrown her arms dramatically to the sides, extending a scarf, her hips slightly twisted, as she says, "Music!" She has blonde hair and is wearing a dark, knee-length dress. Tall trees grow on either side of the steps.
July 23, 2025 at 1:58 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
"Why read at all? Why does anyone do it in the first place?"

Patrick deWitt ventures an answer in his novel The Librarianist
"Why read at all? Why does anyone do it in the first place? Why do I? There is the element of escape, which is real enough—that’s a real-enough comfort. But also we read as a way to come to grips with the randomness of our being alive. To read a book by an observant, sympathetic mind is to see the human landscape in all its odd detail, and the reader says to him or herself, Yes, that’s how it is, only I didn’t know it to describe it. There's a fraternity achieved, then: we are not alone. Sometimes an author’s voice is familiar to us from the first page, first paragraph, even if the author lived in another country, in another century." Bob held up his stack of Russians. Patrick deWitt's The Librarianist, Bloomsbury paperback edition. The design, by Allison Saltzman, imitates a library card, using images from Shutterstock and Getty. It's yellow, with the author's name in the "Borrower's name" column, and various due dates crossed off to the left. The title is in red sans-serif at the top, and below the author's name is the text: "Man Booker Prize–shortlisted author of The Sisters Brothers".
July 14, 2025 at 11:55 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
"With every tightening of the screw, the tyrant makes our hope more precise. And nothing enrages a tyrant more than hope." —Anne Michaels
Paperback copy of the novel. It's red with a white band at the bottom. Text is in black, white, and red. It has a black and white photo of a young woman in a coat and scarf in heavy snow, looking lost in thought. The image is by Armin Haab / Fotostiftung Schweiz, and the design is by Carmen R. Balit. There are cover quotes from Margaret Atwood: "Michaels shows us our humanity"; and Elif Shafak in the Guardian: "The beauty of her prose is outstanding". Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024.
July 7, 2025 at 5:35 PM
stancarey.bsky.social
I didn't know much about Anna Kavan before reading "Ice". This is quite the bio.

The tennis treatment. Was that a thing?
Penguin Modern Classics. Ice. Anna Kavan was born in 1901, the only child of a wealthy British family. She began publishing under her married name, Helen Ferguson. During this time, she was introduced to heroin by her tennis coach in order to improve her game. She suffered a breakdown after the end of her second marriage, and was committed to an institution to treat both her depression and her addiction. She published her two best-known novels after this experience, Asylum Piece and Ice, under 'Anna Kavan', the name of a character in an earlier novel. She died of heart failure at her home in London in 1968. "Ice" by Anna Kavan, Penguin Modern Classics edition. The cover is white with a heavily stylized illustration by Jim Stoddart in shades of blue. It features a woman standing in a circle of snow, within a larger circle that has segments like a mollusc shell. She wears a long dress or coat with a hood, and she appears to be smiling slightly.
June 30, 2025 at 11:52 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
Joyce's connections to Galway city and county are expertly detailed in Ray Burke's book Joyce County, a fully revised edition of which was published by Artisan House in Connemara in 2021. I had the pleasure of copy-editing it: artisanhouse.ie/product/joyc...
Cover of Ray Burke's book Joyce County: Galway and James Joyce, Artisan House edition, 2021. A thick border of light green shades in to wine. In the title, the letter O's in Joyce and County are bridged to look like James Joyce's glasses. A line drawing of Nora Barnacle in hat and furry shawl, in black and white, is accompanied by a line drawing of Joyce, standing in profile, with hat and walking stick, one foot raised behind him to rest on the border. In the background between them is a small sketch of Connemara mountains. Text at the bottom reads: Foreword by Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland.
June 16, 2025 at 9:04 AM
stancarey.bsky.social
Was watching Foxes (1980) when I suddenly felt intensely seen #filmsky
Image from the film showing an advertising banner that says, "Stan's books & movie arcade". (Stan is also my name.) The words are in white all caps on a charcoal background, and below them is a red brick wall.
June 13, 2025 at 6:10 PM