My Ireland

Maura and I drove out to Meath on Monday, to a little church at Donaghmore, not fifteen miles from the General Post Office in O'Connell Street, where an old lady, 96, was to be buried. She had died Friday morning, and had asked that her remains be brought to the church Saturday, and that she lie there until the funeral mass, so, after a wedding mass on Saturday, it was arranged as she had asked. This way all her friends could drop in when they had a chance, and say goodbye, and Monday, after the funeral mass, there was to be another wedding.

I could tell there would be problems, when we were still a half-a-mile away on the little short-cut we had taken, because suddenly cars were jammed up against the hedges, where their owners had left them. When we got to the church Maura managed to get a seat, where a lady signalled her she could squeeze up. The little church, six to a pew, and perhaps, twenty pews on each side of the single aisle, was jambed. There must have been twenty-five priests crowded on the sanctuary, from the same order as her son, and I'd be very surprised if there was anybody there who could not claim that his blood was one hundred per cent Irish. These are farming people, either farmers or farm labourers, or horsey people: owners, trainers, jockeys, and everybody who works around farms or horses. Unless you were born amongst them, you are a 'blow-in', and you will always be a 'blow-in', as will your descendants.

Kitty was there, who phones Maura when her black currants are ripe, and then gets her pleasure from exchanging gossip with here when she picks them up: Stan was there too, whose uncle Eddie, rode Caughoo to win the Grand National, in 1947, and Wardie, who helped Meath win the Gaelic football trophy, the Sam Maguire cup, when he was young. Maura used, when she holidayed at the Rath Farm, be driven to this little church by her Aunt Katie, in her little trap pulled by a pony

Everybody knew Chrissie, and looked out for her, when she walked around the roads near her little cottage, or made sure that she wanted for nothing.

Super Tuesday

The results of Tuesday's primaries in the States are all in, and how fascinating they are.

McCain is so confident of his own ability elsewhere to gain the primary votes he needs, that he is able to suggest to his supporters, in West Virginia for instance, that they vote for Huckabee, so as to deprive Romney of a victory, since he knows he cannot win himself. Hardly the way in which you would expect a lily-white democracy to function.

Then we have the Democrats and this is where the fascination comes. If one looks at Obama's and Clinton's victories, we see that Obama is especially powerful in the south and in the farmbelt, both strongly Republican in recent years, while Clinton's strength is in the Democratic heartland, the East and California. Obama couldn't even carry Massachusetts with the support of both senators, Kennedy and Kerry, and the Kennedy clan. If ever there was a 'dream' ticket it is Clinton/Obama or Obama/Clinton. There is one big problem.

If the Clinton/Obama contest continues indefinitely then there is the prospect that the Democratic party's fundraising ability is going to be exhausted by the primary battle, while McCain is in the enviable position of increasing his war-chest for the real election in the autumn.

Reaching Out

I have been trying to understand what was going on around me for as long as I can remember, and I feel that I have been very fortunate in the opportunities I have had. Great as they have been, I am amazed when I think of what has recntly become available, to virtually everybody on our planet. Access to the Web is now worldwide; libraries race to capture in digital form virtually everything which has been written; news media provide instant news reports; students in Iran, as people everywhere, tell us what is really going on in their countries. We no longer have to learn through the distortions of others: we can reach out to others individually, find out who they are, what they need, and what they can offer us.

I would like to be part of such an effort, and it is for this reason that I felt it worthwhile making the commitment to begin this initiative. I have no idea how it will develop, if it should develop at all. I have no preconceived agenda, hidden or otherwise. I look upon it as a forum, in which each is free to make his contribution.

Metamorphosis

Yesterday, as Maura and I sat on the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) train approaching Donaghmede, on our way into Dublin, I happened to glance out towards the construction, when suddenly I realised that, in the midst of the construction, were five, or perhaps six, huge columns with those windmill blades which betrayed them as wind turbines, for generating electricity, and I started thinking.
When we came back to Ireland to live, perhaps twenty years ago, nothing much had changed, since I was a little boy. Unemployment was almost twenty percent, and people questione our sanity leaving America. The construction cranes are not as numerous as they were, and they say growth will be two and a half per this year instead of five or six per cent, but the change is still extraordinary.
The government has been trying, since the 1930's to bring the Irish Language, Gaelic, back, but the other day I read that the second most widespread language spoken here is Mandarin Chinese. The construction around the River Liffey, and in other parts of the city, could be compared to the most expensive in New York City, and the multitude of foreign languages which other passersby are speaking on O'Connell Street is incredible. The majority of the residents of central Dublin are foreign-born.

Brrrrh!

Here, in Ireland, we are in a unique situation. We are approximately on the same latitude as Moscow and Montreal, but we have a very moderate climate. We are protected from the extremes of European temperatures by our fringe location in the Atlantic, and we are, normally, protected from the Arctic blasts by the Gulf Stream and the temperate weather fronts which follow it across the Atlantic; nor do we ever have to worry about hurricanes, tornados, or volcanic eruptions. In compensation we accept that we can never count on settled weather: winter and summer often compete, by wearing each other's clothes. Suddenly that all changed a few days ago.
The Arctic suddenly decided to assert itself and we have lived with temperatures, which seem as cold as I remember in Montreal, and winds which made the cold a cruel companion out-of-doors. There were pictures on television of a large container ship about one hundred miles off our southern coast which had forty foot containers strewn across its decks like matchboxes.

Clinton-Obama or Vice Versa

I think it is good that neither candidate has ruled out accepting the second spot on the presidential ticket, since it suggests to me that ego is not the conclusive element in their struggle for the presidency. If I am right, and we are fortunate enough to have two viable candidates for president, who are prepared to subordinate their personal ambition in order to achieve their professed goals, for America, and the world, then we are truly blessed. The possibility would be that they might be able to look forward to sixteen years in which they were able to define and implement plans based on their electoral promises.

This election is not just about America. The whole world is waiting to see who is going to manage the power which rests with the United States. Will it be someone who genuinely believes that all men and women are created equal, and that they must therefore work for everyone, or will it be somebody who, no matter what they say, is dedicated to a narrow vision, and selfish objectives?