Before leaving
for Ireland my friend Keegan gave me a book of Irish Myths. We talked about James Joyce and read William Butler Yeats,
who had come to be a bit of a bard for the Occupy Movement. Yet, I did not really know what he meant when
he wrote, “A terrible beauty is born,” in his poem Easter 1916, his homage to the Easter
Rebellion of 1916. But Joyce’ stories of
the pubs, Yeats’ poetry still lingered and called.
The night
before we were supposed to fly to Ireland my friend Christine had friends over
for a roof top salon. She’s been having
these for years.
“So what’s the
deal with the politics in Ireland?” I
asked. “Why are they fighting again?”
“You better not
talk too much in the bars,” one of my friends mused.
It was
true. All I really knew about Ireland, I
had seen in movies such as Gregory’s Girl and Waveriders, and grew up with songs by U2
and Stiff Little Fingers. Still, the images and iconography of the Ireland, the cry for an “Alternative
Ulster” was a very present place in my imagination.
Over the next
two weeks, I would unpack layer after of stories of the various people who have
lived, immigrated, invaded, enjoyed a Guinness, written poetry, told stories
and created politics, written novels, painted, fought and saved manuscripts
over the last five thousand years on this island to the West of the UK.
We landed in
Shannon, running out for an Irish breakfast. The butter was the kids' favorite
part. “Butter in the US is tasteless,”
they insisted. My mom was traveling
with us. She said they used to land
there before flying to points elsewhere.
It was rarely a destination. The Bunratty Castle –
castle at the end of the river - was our
first destination. Starting as a Viking
trading post in 970, it was the first of the sites we encountered dating to
this period.
Driving from
County Clare to Kerry, I was in awe of the beauty of the roads, the hills, the
lush greens, the countryside. Just driving, we stumbled into this church.
We did not to make it to the Cliffs of Moher. But my brothers did.
 |
| We stumbled upon this chuch on our drive in. The landscape was breathtaking. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
We did not to make it to the Cliffs of Moher. But my brothers did.
 |
| Cliffs of Moher by Jennifer Shepard. We didn't make it. But it looks cool. You'll make yourself crazy trying to do everything on a trip like this. |
Just driving on
the right side of the car was hard enough.
“Passenger to the curve, passenger to the curve” we kept repeating.
 |
| Double rainbow as we arrive in Inch. By Jennifer Shepard |
 |
| Inch beach on a moody day. By Caroline Shepard |
It would take
all day to meander through the country roads to Dingle or Daingean Ui Chuis,
where we were staying in the beach town of Inch. Drive to the Strand bar and take a right,
that’s all our directions really said.
But we got there. Arriving with
beer and food in hand, I greeted my brothers and their families. It had just started drizzling. Looking down at the windy road back to the
beach, a double rainbow shone in the distance. We would stay in inch for a week before
heading out to Dublin.
 |
| Our daily walk to the beach. by Jennifer Shepard |
 |
| We stayed half way up this hill. By Caroline Shepard |
Our house was
about a half mile from the pub and the beach.
Surrounded by fields, the winding road took us past a striking horse who
came up to say hi every morning as we walked.
Dodi talked with the horse every day, greeting her affectionately. Looking at me we fed her grass, she reminded
me of protagonist in The
Horse and His Boy, who shared stories and adventures in the fifth of the
Narnia Chronicles. I read somewhere that
CS Lewis and Tolkein were actually in a writing group together. To be a fly on that wall. Traveling through these lush country towns
with their own distinct mythologies, I could see how their stories and pasts
influenced the very imprint of what would be a mythic land of the Shire and
Middle Earth.
 |
| While we missed the Cliffs of Moher, these cliffs off Dunberg Fort were pretty spectacular. There are so many beautiful spaces one can see on such a trip. I feel very grateful to have been able to see a few of them. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Monday we drove
West out to the Dingle Peninsula to see the Kilmalkedar Church,
the Caherdorgan
Fort and the Callarus Oratory. Once
again the roads and historical sites were hauntingly beautiful.
Many of these sites are barely marked.
Most of the signs are in both Irish and English. Irish is a variation of
Gaelic and Scottis. While the language has been on life support for a century after years of neglect by the English, in recent decades it has made and comeback with more and more kids learning it and using it, a cabbie explained to us in Dublin. Looking for the the Kilmalkedar Church, we dropped into a pub – roughly Tig an T Soarsaigh – dating back to 1870. An elder gentlemen drinking a pint helped me sketch a map pointing to the church. It was a great little spot.
Living in Bloomberg's New York where the new and the plastic is so often seen as the better, authentic spaces like this are just such a tonic. So we stopped for a bite in the fantastic little space…full of irreverent signs, messages, stories, beer steins, pictures of sports heros and the like. We ordered soup, sandwiches and Guinness. When Caroline was living in Ireland two decades ago, the joke was the choices of sandwiches were “ham and cheese” or “ham or cheese”. Today, “pubs even have paninis” noted Caroline’s buddy Paul. Sadly, “They threw the baby out with the bathwater…” he noted, getting rid of many distinct places. Cities around the world have taken a gamble that if they look more like each other they will do better. But not here. Just ham and cheese Guiness and soup. A young Irish boxer was on TV. “Katie Tayler – she’s the world champion” the bartender told me. The room was hushed for the next eight minutes as Katie bobbed and weaved her way to a win over the English boxer. Everyone roared with approval for Katie. We would not miss another of her fights, as Katie fever took Ireland. I loved Mary Lou Retton. But by the end of the week, Taylor’s run started to feel something like the watching USA Hockey in 1980, as the whole world tuned in.
 |
| Top, this gentleman gave us directions, outside the pub, "the rules" in the pub, and Scarlett enjoying "cheese and ham" as opposed to "cheese or ham" in our favorite pub of the trip. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Living in Bloomberg's New York where the new and the plastic is so often seen as the better, authentic spaces like this are just such a tonic. So we stopped for a bite in the fantastic little space…full of irreverent signs, messages, stories, beer steins, pictures of sports heros and the like. We ordered soup, sandwiches and Guinness. When Caroline was living in Ireland two decades ago, the joke was the choices of sandwiches were “ham and cheese” or “ham or cheese”. Today, “pubs even have paninis” noted Caroline’s buddy Paul. Sadly, “They threw the baby out with the bathwater…” he noted, getting rid of many distinct places. Cities around the world have taken a gamble that if they look more like each other they will do better. But not here. Just ham and cheese Guiness and soup. A young Irish boxer was on TV. “Katie Tayler – she’s the world champion” the bartender told me. The room was hushed for the next eight minutes as Katie bobbed and weaved her way to a win over the English boxer. Everyone roared with approval for Katie. We would not miss another of her fights, as Katie fever took Ireland. I loved Mary Lou Retton. But by the end of the week, Taylor’s run started to feel something like the watching USA Hockey in 1980, as the whole world tuned in.
 |
| Go Katie! by Bernard O'Neill |
Over the next week, we would watch Katie highlights over and over, wherever we could. In between Katie highlights, the Irish coverage of the Olympics was refreshingly irreverent, making fun of Americans, conventions, and the ridiculous wherever they saw fit. Some nights we laughed out loud watching.
Leaving the
pub, we drove to Gallarus Oratory, “one of the oldest churches in Europe,” the
gentleman at the pub told me. The early
church dated back somewhere between the 700 or 800 AD. Some 1300 years old, he stone building was
used daily by farmers. 8 m long and 5 m
wide, the space survived waves of successive Viking and Norman invasions as the
world transformed around it. Yet, the
stones – Kilfountain and Riasc decorated with Celtic images – remain, as the way
of life it once survived disappeared. But not quite.
“People seem lost in time here” Caroline noted as we drove the windy road up toward the Caherdorgan Fort. There between farm land and age old walls stood beehive like brick huts once used by Celtic farmers. What is remarkable about these spaces is how little we know about the Celts, the people in Ireland before the successive invasions. Yet, they created these stone forts with flowing water which withstood thousands of years. The kids climbed on the wall. From there we meandered to the Kilmalkedar Church, a Norman church from the 12th century, with a cemetery, overlooking the harbor.
 |
| The girls exploring the Oratory. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
“People seem lost in time here” Caroline noted as we drove the windy road up toward the Caherdorgan Fort. There between farm land and age old walls stood beehive like brick huts once used by Celtic farmers. What is remarkable about these spaces is how little we know about the Celts, the people in Ireland before the successive invasions. Yet, they created these stone forts with flowing water which withstood thousands of years. The kids climbed on the wall. From there we meandered to the Kilmalkedar Church, a Norman church from the 12th century, with a cemetery, overlooking the harbor.
 |
| Caherdorgan Fort and Kalmalkedr Church Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Nights followed
with lots more Guinness, Harps, Olympics and stories.
The next day,
we drove out to the Celtic Museum where we saw a Wooly Mammoth head from the
area. Run by an ex pat, the space offered
a lighter, campier touch than many of the other museums. We ate lunch as a group at a sports pub next
door with images of Irish sports heros, JFK, “a local boy done good”, Ted
Kennedy, and Bill Clinton, “the best US president since JFK.” Almost fifteen years after the Good Friday Accords, the Irish are still very grateful to Clinton for brokering a peace deal. Gymnastics were on in the pub. “I spent most of the money on booze, birds,
and fast cars” noted a quote below a picture of Gregory Best. “The rest I
squandered.” All over Europe this quote
is revered.
 |
| Mom and the wooly mammoth. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
After lunch we
made our way to Dunbeg Fort,
a 500 BC promontory fort overlooking the cliffs and waters which were the final
resting place of the Spanish Armada and other unknown armies. The kids climbed up on the rocks. We watched the film about the space, about
which even the tour guides seemed a little lost. “It must have been the faeries” they
explained. When all is lost, it must
have been the ferries. Its amazing how
little we actually know about history.
 |
| The kids at Dunberg Fort. By Caroline Shepard |
 |
| Inch Beach where we ran and played. By Jennifer Shepard |
Between Katie
Taylor’s second round fight and a trip to the Skipper, a French bistro for
lunch, we finally scheduled surf lessons on the beach at Inch where the kids
had played hide and seek in the dunes and I’d
jogged every morning. I've played
in the water, boogey boarded from Santa Monica to Vieques, even stood up on a
board once in the waters of Venice Beach, but I never thought I would learn to
surf in Ireland, where the waves are smooth and the beer is everywhere. The
whole crew was there for the lessons – Dodi, Scarlett, Caroline and I. The teachers were quite funny as well as
helpful. Lots of jokes and humor. “He’s such an American, even chewing
bubblegum,” one chimed in about me to Caroline.
But they were lovely teachers.
“These are great waves to learn on,” one explained, holding my board and
giving me a push into the wave. Scarlett
was the was the first shepard to stand up and catch a wave. With slightly higher center of gravity, it
took me longer, but I finally did as well.
The wave were smooth as could be, taking me straight into the beach,
with no undertoe. Wave after wave, we
rode. “I’ve never had a surfing day like this,” noted my little brother Will,
who had spent years riding the waves on the Jersey Shore which rise and crash.
It took Dodi two tries to get up on the board.
I have never been on a smoother shore.
This is what it must have been like to find the perfect wave in the
Endless Summer.
 |
| Top: Myself, Bijorn and Will. Bottom: BS Surfing by Helena Hooper Shepard |
We suspend our
collective journeys into the Celtic past for the rest of the week to keep on
surfing.
Finishing the
second day, which was as fun as the first, we saw a sign noting that Katie
Perry was fighting for gold at 4:45. A
chalk sign on the road announced the fight would shown at the pub at the beach.
Walking in, I expected a big TV sprawled
across a sports bar. But this space had
none of that. A small TV facing into the corner of a room jam packed with
families was all that was there. But it was enough. We all got to
know each other a little better waiting for the fight. “We saw Obama when he was here,” explained
one woman with her family. Everyone
loves Obama here. But Bill Clinton was
there favorite, they confess over and over.
“Go Katie” they as we watched the Irish phenom box the Russian through a tie in the first, falling behind in
the second, a comeback in the third, and a finally a decisive victory for the
first gold for the Irish in Olympics. The room erupted when the referee lifted her
hand went up in the air. In between the
beach and beers with my brothers,– the final two nights in Inch were lovely.
 |
| While it took me like twenty seconds to get up, even I caught a few waves. By Jennifer Shepard |
Saturday we all left for Dublin,
eating tea biscuits and reading about Katie Taylor in the tabloids. Driving through the countryside we stopped at
St Patrick’s Rock in Cashel –
an iconic group of buildings - a 12th
century tower, high cross, Romanesque chapel, and 13th Century
gothic cathedral – its foundation dating back to the 5th Century. “Its
their acropolis,” noted Mom.
 |
| St Patricks Rock Photo by Caroline Shepard |
It was only a few hours before we
all arrived in Dublin. “This is an old town,” I noted to Dodi after we
parked. “It sure is” noted a man on the
street – pointing us to Parnell Square down the street. Our room was on 50
Parnell Square, just down the street from a health clinic and the Sinn Fein coffee
shop. Outside our apartment, a pub dating back to 18th century stands boarded up, down the street from a movie theater and grocery store.
We ate across the street from Trinity College in Marrion Square.
 |
| Sinn Fein Coffee on Parnell Square by Caroline Shepard |
Early the next morning, we ran to
meet my mother and brother’s family at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells
– an illuminated manuscript dating back to the years before the Vikings
invasions in Ireland.
My Mom has long studied such manuscripts. So, it was a wonderful opportunity to see
this treasure with her. The film The
Story of Kells dramatizes the struggle to keep the manuscript during the
successive invasions. Much of the
history of Celtic and early Christian art can be found in the lush illumination
of the manuscript. Pre Christian imagery
finds its way into the manuscript – Celtic spirals and icons. “It’s the way they made meaning of the world” Mom explained. Light into
darkness.
Walking upstairs to the reading
room, we reveled in the tall reading rooms. The library contains a 1916 copy of the Irish declaration
of independence from England.
In
between the hustle bustle of the metropolis, the city’s history leaps out,
between nooks and crannies. It lives
along with the ever gentrifying city, contending with closing pubs, and new pedestrian
malls, where the city of old must contend with the image of city as shopping
mall gripping urban spaces around the world.
 |
| Hanging out on the Ha Penny Bridge by Siobhan. Sunset on the Liffy by Caroline Shepard |
Later that afternoon, we met
Siobhan, a friend Caroline and I met in New York in the late 1990’s. In between trips to the National Gallery and
dinner, she walked us down the O’Connell Street. “There is the general post office they
occupied during the Easter Uprising of 1916,” she noted. Looking at the statue Daniel O’Connell,
she noted “see there are still bullet holes from the uprising.”
 |
| Caroline analyzing the Guiness, BS sampling the lager, and the gang enjoying the view from the Ha Penny. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Trips take families in all sorts
of directions. While I was enjoying
seeing contemporary Ireland and comparing it with the Ireland Caroline saw two
decades prior, my Mom – the medievalist – was taking us further and further
back in Ireland’s ancient past. Monday
we all jumped in the car for a trip to Bru na Boinne in the county of Meath. There we saw Knowth
– rock formations and burial grounds dating back to anywhere between 3,200 and
2,500 BC, before the pyramids or Stonehenge. The passage tombs have are aligned with the
winter and summer solstice sunrises.
Ritual spaces or spaces of worship, it is not at all clear why they were
made or what their purpose was. “We are
not really sure,” the tour guide confessed when I asked why people would spend
their days moving thousand pound stones up a hill to a space not designed for
shelter but for ritual purposes. A
lively storyteller, our tour guide offered her reasoning that it most certainly
was religious social control. “Perhaps,
if women were in change it might be something else,” she conjectured. Touring through the space, inside the passage
ways, through the passageways, interpreting the
stone drawings of spirals, concentric circles, a sundial and other images of
the sun and moon, she reminded me of the tour guide who makes up her
details in Lettuce
and Lovage. “I don’t want to know what they
did with the fertility objects,” she confessed.
 |
| Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Driving back to Dublin, we
dropped by Montasterboice
in County Louth where three 9th century crosses have stood for some
1300 years in the churchyard of the small fifth century monastery. A tower stands in the middle of the cemetery. These were places where churches and
communities threw up a ladder and hid when marauders came looking. These towers probably helped the Book of
Kells survive. Cracks of time line the
crosses. “You may be the last to see
them here,” explained a tour guide. Many
of those who come for pilgrimages chip them off, taking pieces home. “Even the hundred year old plastered replicas
we have show less age than these.”
 |
| Tower top, 1300 year old cross below. Nitice the chips at the bottom taken by those in the pilgramages. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Walking out, I chatted with some
of the elders at the ad hoc welcoming area.
Looking through post cards, they asked where I was from.
“Brooklyn in the US.”
“And what brings you here? You have family or distant relations?”
“Well, some of our family are
from England; others are presumably from here… we’re not really sure.”
“What are their names?”
“The Mayhers.”
“Probably from Maher county. I’m sure they came during the
potato famine. That’s when a lot of
people left.”
Funny, I rarely feel much of an
ethic kindred spirit with anywhere.
We’re all really brothers and sisters in this world. But in Ireland, they really help you feel
like you are their brother or sister. It’s a feeling I have rarely had anywhere
I’ve ever visited. And certainly this is
part of the genius of the Irish. On St.
Patric’s day everyone in Chicago is Irish.
Mom and I visited the Powerscourt
gardens and waterfalls the next day, while Caroline and the girls ran through
the city.
 |
| Revolutionary memorabilia. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
By Wednesday, I was ready to re
engage with the contemporary world or social history. Siobhan had said we had to visit the Irish
prison of Kilmainiham
goal, opened n in 1796. Most of the
revolutionaries from the Irish Independence Movement would find their paths
crossing with its isolated prison cells. Walking through the museum, I was taking by Bertrell Russell's statement about jails: "If the prison does not underbid the slum in human misery, the slum will empty and the jail will fill." And certainly, Kilmainiham goal became a place the poor and starving were drawn to during the potato famine when there was nothing else to eat. Jails often are. Kilmainiham was the model for the
penopticon – the all seeing eye – as prison.
A modern prison, it was thought to reform those in its walls by holding
them in silent isolation. Yet, rarely do
these things work as planned. Overcrowding
was a constant in the space from its earliest days. Almost immediately, the jail filled with Irish
revolutionaries, sodomites, kids stealing to sustain themselves, sex
workers. Arrests for disorderly conduct spiked
during the Doneybrook Fair of 1849-1850. Between the 3rd and the 12th
of May 2016, fourteen of the revolutionaries from the Easter Uprising faced the
firing squads. One was married the night
before; another who was dying in the hospital was carried in and shot. Their treatment turned popular opinion in
favor of the cause of independence. Uprising veteran Eamon de
Valera was the last to leave the jail in 1924 and the first to visit it
again as the Prime Minister responsible for re opening it as a tourist destination and testament to the Independence Movement.
If ever there was a testimony to
the adage that jail is the home of just people, Kilmainiham goal
is it. As Henry David Thoreau explains in Civil
Disobedience: “Under a government
which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.” A chilling way to look at history, the
experience offers a painful reminder of suffering and resiliency.
We spend the rest
of the day, romping through Dublina and St Patrick’s. Catholicism is such a large part of
life in so much of Ireland, but
I did not see much any backlash against the abuses of the Catholic Church in
Ireland. People seem to handle the
injustices of history with humor, drink and the occasional pipebomb. Yet, their memories linger.
 |
| Bacon's studio by Caroline Shepard |
Others contemplate the
interworkings of the pain. Visiting Frances Bacon’s studio, in
the Dublin City Gallery, I was taken by quiet images of his life and work, his photos of friends and catalogs strewn through his studio. Throughout the trip, I had been reading the
work of Bertram Cohler, my one time mentor at University of Chicago, who died
this spring. The last time I saw Bert
for lunch at the Oyster Bar in New York in 2005. He was here to deliver a paper at the White
Institute where I was completing a one year course of study in
psychoanalysis. Waiting for Bert in the
Oyster Bar, I was reading Freud’s case study of the Wolfman. Max Ernst's "Angel of Hearth and Home" is featured
on the cover, so close to Bacon's images. The week before Dodi and I
had gone to the Met where she declared “Wolfman” when she saw the picture on
wall. Bert smiled seeing the copy of
the book. We shared stories and books. He talked about his lecture at White ordering some clam
chowder, oysters and a beer. “I love oysters,”
he confessed. In the years to follow,
his reference helped me get my first academic job. He asked about a long life study I completed
in graduate school, which I am now completing for a new book on friendships. In
the years to follow that talk, he
invited me to contribute an essay to his final published collection.
Gradually, his correspondence became less and less engaged. It was harder to reach him. Last fall and spring I contacted him when I
was in Chicago and he could not get together.
This summer, I looked up an article of his and saw
his obituary. Over and over again in Chicago he
advised that what connected social work and psychoanalysis was advocacy. He framed case studies as
narratives. But generativity was his life blood, he connected, empathized and
cared about others. Today my copy of the Wolfman case study with the Bacon
cover has those notes from that final engaged conversation. These thoughts passed through my mind looking
at the paints, crumpled newspapers, and catalogs strewn through Bacan’s work
space. The girls had gone to work on art
in a workshop downstairs so Caroline and I wondered through the show on our own
with our thoughts, memories, and
associations.
 |
| Copy of Freud's Wolfman with Ernst cover top, painting of Freud below. |
"They were brilliant," the artist at the museum gushed, complimenting the girls.
Leaving the museum, we walked to meet Siobham at the Ha Penny
Bridge before wandering through Temple Bar over to the Staggs Head pub for a lunch of Guiness,
tomato soup, and ham and cheese sandwiches.
The girls played in St. Michael’s Green that afternoon before we got
sushi and wondered home. Most nights at
home we watched movies. The Secret of Roan Innish
was our favorite of the trip. “To be back in Roan
Innish - its like a breath of fresh air after three years underground,” muses
the Grandad over a pipe as the movie ends.
Irish folklore would become more and more real, a part of history,
culture and our present experiences in Ireland.
Reading through the novel The Story of Kells, Dodi recalled the story of
the Wedding we’d read in one of the many books of Irish folktales which had
crossed our path over the trip.
 |
| Dodi, Caroline and Scarlett on the Ha Penny Bridge by Siobhan |
The full final day of the trip
took us back to social history, part memory and part narrative. We’d pack in the morning and meander out to
catch the Rebel Tour of Dublin starting on Parnell Square in the Sinn Fein
coffee shop. While I’ve never been one
to support armed resistance, I wanted to hear their take on Irish history. Pete Seeger once said it is our job to listen
to and talk with people with whom we do not necessarily agree. And certainly this was the case of Sinn Fein,
or at least what I know of them, which is a swatch of bombings and violence
over the years. But who am I to judge
any of this. Although I teach students
about the Indian Independence Movement, which overthrew the British Empire with
non-violence to civil rule, it was armed resistance and a revolutionary war
which finally got the English out of the US.
“Daniel O’Connell
tried to find a legislative solution to the problem,” noted Rory, our
tourguide. A former guide at the
prison, he was planning to study history in between work. “It’s a funny thing, the recession in
Ireland, it started before the potato famine around 1808. And only really ended in the 1990’s with the
Celtic Tiger,” he explained. And now its back. "It was the famine both stifled and stirred the
revolution.” And the British largely
stood by to watch it happen, as fish and other goods were traded outside the
country.
“O’Connell wanted to replace the
British elites in charge of Ireland with Irish elites,” Rory noted.
“Were the Irish at all influenced
by Gandi?” I asked, referring to the model of non-violent civil disobedience he
helped innovate.
“It was the other way around
mate” Rory retorted. “He saw a small
country kick off the Empire and realized they could do it to.”
Models of non-violence may not
work everywhere. They rarely work in
Palestine. Ask Rachel Corrie’s
family. But it did work in movements
from South Africa to the US Civil Rights movement.
My friend Erik in New York’s’
Occupy Movement was recruited to join the shining path when he lived in
Peru. Once they put down their guns and
bombs, he would be willing to be their first lieutenant, he explained to them. Until
that day he was going to stay out.
A cab driver earlier in the week
suggested that it would not work in Ireland because the cause did not enjoy the
support Indian Independence enjoyed. “Not
all the people wanted it,” he suggested.
“You have to go up to Belfast to
get a since of what it is like for us,” noted Rory. “War is violent. This was a violent conflict” he explained
referring to the Michael Collins’ efforts to track down the English infiltrators in the Independence Movement. "He’d take
them out, drink with them, get information and if he found out they were really
working for the Brits, he’d gun them down," explained Rory. “They were watching his headquarters here in
Parnell Square. But Collins’ cousin
worked for the city, getting background information. They found maps of secret tunnels between the
buildings so those in the movement could move to and from. If the British had wanted to really kill the
movement, they could have by bombing Parnell Square.”
But perhaps this violence – this
Machiavellian violence – this is what Yeats was referring to when he said “A
terrible beauty is born” in Easter 1916.
Over time, Yeats’ poetry and prose and his brother’s
paintings helped ignite a Celtic revival, which helped bring back the love
and use of the Irish language and perhaps even the nationalism of the
movement. Is this nationalism the “terrible beauty.”
Rory kept walking us around the
square to a monument for a band called the Miami Schill Band killed in the
mid-1970s during the period of “the
Troubles.” And we walked to the Garden of
Remembrance.
 |
| At the Garden of Rememberance, a tiled pool illustrates the ritual of solders throwing their sowards and shields into the water to sybolize reconciliation, that the war is over. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
“We love the British people,”
Rory explained. “It’s the empire we do not appreciate.” Walking
through the garden we talked about the idea of reconciliation and its often
elusive nature.
We talked about the youth of
Ireland who are paying higher costs for education, higher contributions to
pensions which will be smaller, etc.
“There was an Occupy movement here, but the police put it down,” he
explained.
“Same thing in New York,” I
concurred. “The NYPD arrest first and look for the laws to justify it second.”
“The police work for the elites,”
explained Rory.
Walking out, we thanked him for
the great conversation. He was going to try to find full time work, he
explained taking a drag on his cigarette.
That afternoon, our final stop in
Dublin was at the Glasnevin Cemetary, a public park founded in 832 where over a
million people are buried, as many living in all of Dublin. Ireland’s necropolis was the inspiration for
the Hades chapter in Joyce’s Ulysses. Walking
through the acre after acre of crosses in between weeds, decaying tomb stones
and memories, its amazing to watch the ways time has allowed the trees to grow
as crack make their way into the stones.
The periphery of the park is far less manicured than the front where the
tours move.
 |
| Glasnevin by Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Siobhan met us at the cemetery for
a cup of tea. A final pub meal and we
strolled home, past pubs and music.
There were no rainbows. But we had seen two on the trip. We could not have been happier to have been there walking sharing memories with
Siobhan and our beloved Dublin.
 |
| Rainbow number two in Dubllin by Caroline. The sun shone, sparkling through the raindrops . By Caroline Shepard |
 |
| Scene from the Temple Bar. Sun shining through the rain. In Ireland, "we can have four seasons in a day" people reminded us over and over. Photo by Caroline Shepard |
Dodi sat looking out her window
at Dublin as went to sleep that night, listening to the city pour in.
Leaving I probably know nothing
more about why Stiff Little Finders wanted an “Alternative
Ulster.” But the feeling is still real, the melody, its hope, its human yearning for
freedom still resonates, today even more.
 |
| I never would have thought Ireland was the place I would learn to surf, much less my daughter and nephew. That freedom is a memory I hope they carry through the rest of the adventures of their lives. Photo by Helena Hooper Shepard |
No comments:
Post a Comment