August 19, 2018
Last weekend, driving to the Burren in County Clare (just south of Galway, where I live, and an endlessly interesting place to explore), a friend and I picked up the relevant Ordinance Survey map to get a better sense of the terrain.
Maps are a reliable source of pleasure, firing the imagination as we pore over their flattened geography, their special codes and symbols. Digital maps are ubiquitous now, but I still love to use paper maps when the opportunity arises.
View of Co. Clare from Mullaghmore (‘Great Summit’ or ‘Big Summit’)
Read the rest of this entry »
9 Comments | 
film, Ireland, naming, personal, photography | Tagged: Burren, Cape Fear, County Clare, film history, filmmaking, films, geography, Gregory Peck, hiking, hillwalking, history, Ireland, Irish history, Kilmacduagh, landscape, maps, Martin Scorsese, monastery, movies, Mullaghmore, naming, personal, photography, round tower, ruins, The Burren, thriller, travel | 
Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
June 22, 2016
Martin Scorsese’s film Gangs of New York (2002) has a special feature on the DVD called ‘Five Points Vocabulary’. Five Points is a reference to the Manhattan district where the film is set, and the vocabulary is a glossary of slang from that era (1840s–60s) and place.
It looks like this:
The glossary is spread over eight such pages, so rather than add images, I’ve compiled the text below. Fair warning: it’s slang, and therefore not politically correct.
Read the rest of this entry »
15 Comments | film, language, language history, lexicography, slang, words | Tagged: crime, criminal slang, DVD, film, Five Points, Gangs of New York, George Washington Matsell, history, Jonathon Green, language, language history, Manhattan, Martin Scorsese, New York, slang, underground slang, words | Permalink
Posted by Stan Carey
Sentence first 