This time I have two movies that cover Ireland!
(See them both.)
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| GAELIC! |
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IRELAND (Connemara)
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June 20—DUBLIN!
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The Mossop Family: Jonathan, Anne, Pauline
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Anne and Jonathan Mossop, colleagues and
friends from Emma Willard, greeted us at the bus stop. We took the city bus to Terenure, where
Jonathan’s 90-year-old mother, Pauline, lives in a beautiful old house.
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Treeless Landscape
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We caught up and then took a walk up a
forested hill to an ancient hunting ground.
We could see all of Dublin, the coastline and the new developments from
there.
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In the Turf
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We drove to a very high area
where people cut slices out of the bog, dry out the pieces and burn them to
keep warm in the winter. Jonathan said
that all the trees were cut down for the queen’s navy to fight in the wars, and
now what is considered beautiful landscape are these moss-covered mountains
that hold a long history of fallen trees (this is the carbon that they burn)
along with a lot of water.
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Long Ago Murder
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Also, in the
middle of nowhere, there was a memorial to someone who died here because of "the
troubles." After meeting some relatives,
we sat down to a nice dinner with the Mossops.
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Surfer paddling
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Pier out to Mutton Island
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June 21—We drove to Galway together, and the Mossops dropped
us off at the hostel. We walked about
the town and out to a long pier to Mutton Island where they clean their sewage
water.
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Salt Hill
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Down the coast a little way is
Salt Hill: a community right along the water with trendy cafes and
casinos.
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For Sale! Our little "fixer-upper"
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Picturesque riverside and boats at low tide
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Along the quick river that runs
through Galway were lots of swans, ducks, gulls, cormorants, and other
birds.
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SO many swans
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A sign said if we fed the swans
moldy or white bread, they would get a pink flamingo disease that would render
them not waterproof and they would become susceptible to diseases. Some looked like they had some pink feathers
on their head. Oh no! Of course, we were
charmed by their natures.
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| Jellyfish |
In the shallow
water were beautiful dinner plate-sized jellyfish. They were clear with bright lines. I could see their innards.
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Monroe's Irish Music and Dance Show
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We ended up at night at Monroe’s Tavern to
see traditional Irish music and dance.
It was a nice concert, but there were only a few more audience members
than performers. We tried our best to
represent a bigger audience.
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Can YOU walk in these heels? They can't
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Most folks
were in the “meat market” on the other side of the wall. The bouncer at the door spoke to a pleading
young lad, “No ye can’t go in; ye got too much drink in ya.”
That night we seven were awakened by a grand
snorer from Bahrain. I shook his arm and
said, “Excuse me.” Les rattled his bunk as per a request of another roommate,
but we couldn’t get him to budge. We
covered our ears and went back to sleep.
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Personal dance in a private room in a bar-see video
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Monroes gave me dancing space when I needed it. Thanks
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June 23—Other than catching up with Internet stuff, the big
event for the day was the Global Underscore. Dancers all over the world set their clocks to
the same exact time and danced (metaphysically and some through technology)
TOGETHER! At the same time, we all faced
the next city to the north of us, then began to work at our own pace along a
dance score (much like a music score but less specific) for a few hours. After this, we faced the dancers in the city that
is next south of us. There is a quartet
who has organized us all and put it together, and I was very pleased to be a
one-person-satellite of this activity.
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Les and Marilyn Monroe are witnesses to this dance
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I
was going to dance the entire Underscore outside, but it was rainy and cold, so
we went from art center to theater to church to yoga studio looking for a
place. Then Monroe’s Tavern, at just the
right time, gave me a space to work in.
I told them it was a “meditative Yoga” type dance to help the barrier
around not knowing what is Contact Improvisation.
The last phase of this Underscore is called
“harvest.”
It’s where you solidify your
experience by reflecting upon the whole.
I wrote my harvest and posted it and the video/photos with the others at
http://globalunderscore.blogspot.com/2012/06/wee-underscore-ireland-satellite.html:
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End of the "Underscore" facing East
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Harvest:
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TIME: It
was my first 2½-hour solo and I felt clearly the Underscore and how much it
makes sense, even alone.
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PEOPLE: I
was aware of the bartenders in the next room and wondered if suddenly they came
in the room, if I could not shock them by being in some strange
place/position. I didn’t want to be
kicked out. Also, sweetie Les was a
witness/sleeper/recorder in the room.
·
ENERGY:
More than ever, I became more aware of the ebb and flow of activity. A chunk of time being very quiet and
listening followed and preceded a surge of activity. Always something comes—improvisation is a
miracle of faith. Part of what we learn
is that we sometimes have to wait long enough to find out that the miracle
comes every time.
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DISCOVERY:
I pondered through my “furniture” partners that peoples’ habits ARE form; like
a stool who can’t tip over one leg without extra force—tipping between the legs
requires less force.
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SPACE: In
this place I felt quiet and sneaky; out there were beer drinkers exploding in
joyous outbursts.
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Wedding in the Cathedral
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In our search for space, we found a wedding going on in the
cathedral. I heard the Lord’s Prayer in
Gaelic! We walked along the beautiful
river afterwards toward our new expensive hostel in the University area and
stayed up late howling at bloopers we downloaded off the Internet.
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We two too at the Cliffs of Moher
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The Burren Landscape--Limestone drains the water
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June 25—Tour day #1. South
to the “burren” landscape and the CLIFFS of MOHER! We hopped on the front seat of a tour bus,
and off we went toward the Cliffs of Moher, a famous outcropping on the ocean
with a huge drop off.
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Cliffs of Moher
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The cliffs were
gorgeous with a super clear day and blustery wind. The cows of “Mooer” watched us humans as we
gazed out to the Ayer Islands and along the steep bank looking for birds.
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Carolina at one of the drop offs
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Our new friend Carolina told us about her
Ph.D. in criminology learning more about recidivism.
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Cute Thatched Roof Home
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Close up of thatch on the roof. Look how it insulates!
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Looking for a mate?
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Smarty with Stone Mortar Board
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Les has the right hat on.
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Glen for the little people (fairies)
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Along the way we passed cute thatched roof
buildings, Lisdoonvarna—the matchmaking capital of Europe— a leprechaun
house next to a babbling brook, visited an ancient burial site, older than the
Egyptian pyramids, and walked into a tourist farm that ended with a nice Irish
sing-along and granny’s apple pie.
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View from the farm hill
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Sitting quietly on the flowery land
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At
that farm we learned about the thorn trees and how important they are to the
fairies. People attach things to the
trees and ask these fairies for wishes to be granted, or their worries to go
away. There are legends of terrible
things that happen when someone cuts down a thorn tree.
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Thorn tree where the fairies live
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Word is that a church burned down, not long
after someone cut down the thorn tree in the front yard. There was no evidence of any start to this
fire. It was the fairies. One straight highway had to go around a thorn
tree despite the cost and the additional commute around it, because they didn’t
want to risk the wrath of the little people.
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Feeding a lamb
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| Cow with a mask |
The farm had one lamb that was rejected by mom, so it came running when
the tourists showed up to feed it. My
favorite part of the day was lying in the flowery grass on this farm in silence
for about a minute in the sun.
Just the
wind, a couple of cows and the silage tractor filled the air.
The rocky hilltops with no vegetation have
rock walls that climb clear over the mountains.
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Stone wall goes over entire mountain. Work during the famine.
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Walls Walls Walls
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Homes during the famine years
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The farmer said that during the famine years, the English paid people to
pick up rocks (1 penny per square yard) and build these walls. This was to keep them busy doing a worthless
activity during a low morale point, and to keep Ireland from building
infrastructure (good highways, developing electric lines, etc.) that may
threaten England later. The farmer said
that everything we see has history in it.
In this soil grows a huge percent of flora from both arctic and
Mediterranean climates. It’s pretty
beautiful.
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Connemara Lake
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| Castle Reconstruction |
June 26—Tour Day #2.
Connemara! They say that no
matter the weather, Connemara is magical.
We never got to see the tops of the mountains, but the angle of their
rising into the clouds gave us quite an impression. We could see the rain coming from afar. The landscape in general was soft, springy
bog with some forests scattered here and there.
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Les and waterfall
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Can you see where they dug out the turf to dry and to burn?
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In some places the limestone drained the water into underground rivers,
and others, the water ran on top, made lakes and soaked into the peat. People
ripped up some of this topsoil to dry it completely out and burn in their bog
fireplaces to heat their homes and cook in the winter. This is the area where the potato famine hit
the hardest. We saw the small plots of
land outlined in rock walls, and the burned out or destroyed old homes with
huge hearths from that time. For the
curious, they created a replica of one of those homes.
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Ye ol' Maypole
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We stopped by an artisans’ village and I was
able to watch a woman weave, see the aftermath of the familiar maypole dance
and view other pieces of local art.
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Kylemore Castle from the side
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History part of Kylemore Castle
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Old telephone circuitboard
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The jewel of this tour was the Kylemore Castle
who was built by Mitchell Henry from England. Nuns started an international
boarding school for girls there in 1921.
You think Emma Willard looks like a castle, get an eyeful of this
school!
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Kylemore Castle: Girls boarding school for 90 years
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June 27-28—After wool sock hunting (gift for a dear friend
taking care of Tarka our dog) we returned to the Mossop’s home in Dublin.
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Blood Pudding and Sausage
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Anne made us a traditional Irish breakfast,
including black pudding (and egg and sausage and bacon). I had been dreading
(but very curious about) black pudding and I stiffened up and ATE it! It wasn’t that bad! With all that protein, I wasn’t hungry for
most of the day! Out we went into town.
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Les and James Joyce
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We wandered up to the theater district so
that Les could see the places he had studied in school. The Abby Theater surprised him in that it had
burned down and was totally refurbished and was not how it looked in his
history books.
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Pipe Organ in King John's
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After a nice cup of
cappuccino near a farmers market, we went to Dublin Castle and went inside the
church where the ornate but small organ decorated the back wall.
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Tribute to Wolfetone
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Sculpture tribute to the sufferers of the famine
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We caught on to one of those free walking
tours and followed the guide (from Northern Ireland—and who wasn’t that happy
about the Queen visiting the North and speaking some sentences of Gaelic. He said that her ancestors had banned the
speaking of his language.) on a route through the city. We
learned even more about the famine and about locals: Theobald Wolfetone who
first initiated action to make Ireland independent: “the Father of Irish
Republicanism;” Jonathan Swift—satirist—who suggested the upper class eat the
babies of the impoverished Irish, comparing how they were treated to how one
would treat livestock; and a law student at Trinity who tested a rule (one of
MANY outdated rules) by riding his horse in full armor to his exams, thereby
deserving dinner and wine during the assessment, only to be expelled for not
having someone tend to his horse during the exam.
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Size of an ancient viking bed for 10
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We stood in an ancient area where a Viking
community had settled and on which Dublin had built; there was a 10-person bed
mapped out on the ground, along with a hearth, the corral for the animals, the
loo and the supplies shed out back. It
was pretty tight quarters! Our guide
showed us the spire that stands in the place of an old column dedicated to
British Naval Officer Lord Nelson.
Jonathan Mossop was there when the IRA blew up the statue in 1966. Evidently they blew up only the top half so
the British army did the rest to make way for something new. However they put in too much dynamite, and
blew out all windows in a mile radius and created a huge crater in the middle
of the road!
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Jonathan and Anne Mossop
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Pauline Mossop
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After the tour, ending in
St. Stephen’s Green, we soaked in some of the sun until the sprinkles came
down, made our way on the #15 bus to Terenure, and shared dinner together with
the Mossop family, before packing for the last trip—home.
---
USA
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June 29—a year and a day after we left on this massive
trip—Our plane was delayed 2 hours so the line was very long to help each
person re-arrange his/her flight. We had
to figure out how to communicate with the person picking us up.
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Unfortunate sitting place
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| Sue in coffee spot |
Eventually we got home, later than expected
and a little irritated at each other, to find that Les’s apartment is being
renovated. Apparently, the right person
at the school didn’t know his returning date, and had torn out the entire
bathroom: walls, sink, toilet and all.
The kitchen had no sink, floor or counter and some new cabinets were
being put up. A chop saw stood in the living
room.
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Stone art work
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You could imagine Les’s
disappointment when he had made arrangements for some cleaners to come in to
rid the place of dust and take off the plastic coverings in order to come into
a pristine home, ready to start his much-missed routine again. His heart and body sank. Soon we were at the Glomset’s home using the
phone to see if we could stay at a motel until another option rose.
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| Faces... Or Flor |
Since Tarka was coming to us the next day Motel 6
was the best option, as they are dog friendly.
Now—Les is looking forward to having a healthier apartment
(they are trying to get rid of all the mold), we are now staying in the
Glomset’s home where their dog Argus and Tarka are getting along well, and
waiting to go to my place to move stuff in on July 6th. I’m still living out of my backpack, and I
love having so little; so the sabbatical trip isn’t quite done…. Maybe it will never be over?
One more post trying to reflect on the whole...
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| Les with fancy Coffee |
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| Flower and Lake |
