Spirit of Open Access and Literary Dialogue: RMcS

Me: Hi,  The following newspaper article was carried in the Sunday Independent (Ireland) 8 March 2026. For the past five days I have been reflecting deeply on it. Its content, tone and language upsets me as a human being, a writer, and an Irish person. I contemplated writing a letter to the editor of the said newspaper but decided not to as the editorial team is inclined to do excessive structural editing on letters submitted for publication: at least on any of my letters. To get us started, I would like you to approach it from a few different perspectives, and then we can develop our conversation from there. One caveat: let us always be respectful of religions and peoples’ right to believe in them. Thank you. :) Problem with martyrs is they like the misery Sunday Independent (Ireland) 8 March 2026 Brendan O’Connor (Columnist) Ireland is “not a theocracy”, the judge said as he sentenced Mammy and Ammi to the slammy. And he’s right, though he could have added “any more”. Many peop...

 A conversation with AIGrok on President Connolly’s statement on what is taking place in the Middle East. Me: [ Statement by President Connolly on International Women’s Day 2026 Photograph: Tuesday, 10th March 2026. Credit: https://president.ie/en/media-library/photos/president-connolly-attends-an-event-at-donegal-county-council Date: Sun 8 Mar, 2026 | 11:16 On International Women’s Day, President Catherine Connolly said that the catastrophic consequences of violating the UN Charter cannot be ignored. "The violations of international law we are witnessing are shocking and numbing, but we cannot afford inaction. What we have witnessed in recent days in the Middle East, and beyond, are not political disputes. They are deliberate assaults on international law, the international laws that have underpinned global peace for eighty years. We must name them as such, without euphemism and without equivocation. Ireland is uniquely positioned to do precisely that. Our unbroken record of in...

ME: Hi, :) Let’s have a profound conversation. Of late, I had a dream in which I was sitting on an old narrow low stone bridge, somewhere here on the isle of Éire, having but a single arch. The sun was softly shining, and I was enjoying looking at the stream below flowing beneath the bridge. Then, as I was gazing away at it, didn’t suddenly an amount of water stand up and had like unto it the form of a human man. He appeared neither to be very old nor very young. For all the world he looked a lot like me but knew I him not to be me. And he spoke to me saying, “Bridge Man, know this: In longest length of hindsight, all religions in any and all parts of the planet since the time of the ancient cave and tree dwellers and right up to this your own day: 28 February 2026 are more trouble than they are worth.” And without another word, he dropped and became again part of the stream and flowed beneath the bridge. I jumped off and went and looked down over the other side, but he was nowhe...