In this issue, we travel to places on the cusp of staggering change, talk to people who have seen and done it all and rescue a few choice items from the recycling bin. From Ireland's Catholic priests once exported around the world and now under threat even in their own country to the hitherto obscure music saved from extinction via the vast exchange mart of the Internet, Granta 105 captures moments of both disappearance and rebirth in all their complexity and strangeness.