Baby Zero by Emer Martin

I’ve already retweeted Emer’s alarm on Twitter. I don’t use Facebook but Mannix Flynn sent me what Emer posted on Facebook and I’m reproducing it here for non-Facebook users who may be interested.

Steve MacDonagh the publisher at Brandon Books died in 2010. It was reported in the Irish Times that O’Briens Press bought the company. In fact they only bought the ten most lucrative titles. I am presenting awards for the SCC today and they requested 30 copies of my book Baby Zero as prizes. I tracked down the liquidator, who sent me to Gill and MacMillan the distributor. When I arrived at the warehouse the very accommodating manager brought me to the site of all Brandon Books and informed me that they would all be destroyed on June 1st. He was aghast that no author was informed of this. If you are a Brandon author, or know one, please alert them to the fact that all their books will be pulped in one month if they don’t contact the liquidator. (I thought I’d seen everything in Publishing)

You can search for Brandon-published authors on Irish Writers Online Note: not all are necessarily in print.

on Twitter: Emer Martin @emermartin ; Mannix Flynn @mannixflynn ; Philip Casey @Philip_Casey

It is no coincidence that imprisonment for non-payment of fines has soared during the present recession, from 1,335 in 2007 to over 7,000 last year.

The Vicious Circle of Social Exclusion and Crime: Ireland’s Disproportionate Punishment of the Poor is available from the Irish Penal Reform Trust.

click to enlarge

The Old Triangle

A celebration for the benefit of the Irish Penal Reform Trust

Sunday, 26th February 2012 at 8pm

Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1

A celebration of music and words for the benefit of the Irish Penal Reform Trust, The Old Triangle seeks to raise awareness of the need for penal reform and the place of prison and prisoners in society. Many of the artists taking part in this celebration have worked in prisons, and we are mindful of the important role the arts and artists have to play in the life of our prisons.

The featured musicians and writers, all of whom are waiving fees for the night, are:

Christy Moore

Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill

Peter Sheridan

Karan Casey & Niall Vallely

Tony Curtis

Shaz Oye

GREENSHINE

(Noel Shine, Mary Greene & Ellie Shine)

Leanne O’Sullivan

Jimmy Kelly & friends

The artist Eddie Cahill, introduced by Brian Maguire

The event is hosted by Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan.

We are all aware that there is a huge debate going on in Ireland right now about what kind of civil society we should be striving for. Artists are as much part of the
debate as anyone, and conscious of the need to make this debate as inclusive
and wide-ranging as possible.” – Paula Meehan, Patron of IPRT

Booking details

Tickets are €20 (standard) with a limited number at €40 (premium supporters).

Tickets can be booked online at www.abbeytheatre.ie or by calling the AbbeyTheatre box office on (01) 87 87 222. (The Box Office is open Mon – Sat from 10.30am – 7pm.)

IPRT is very grateful to Poetry Ireland and to Sheehan & Partners for supporting this event.

Ich am of Irlonde,
And of the holy londe
Of Irlonde.
Goode sire, praye ich thee,
For of sainte charitee,
Com and dance with me
In Irlonde.

Anon. (14th century)

It inspired Yeats, of course.

‘I am of Ireland’

I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.’

One man, one man alone
In that outlandish gear,
One solitary man
Of all that rambled there
Had turned his stately head.
That is a long way off,
And time runs on,’ he said,
‘And the night grows rough.’

‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’

‘The fiddlers are all thumbs,
Or the fiddle-string accursed,
The drums and the kettledrums
And the trumpets all are burst,
And the trombone,’ cried he,
‘The trumpet and trombone,’
And cocked a malicious eye,
‘But time runs on, runs on.’

I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
“Come out of charity
And dance with me in Ireland.’

– W.B Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems, 1933

Links:

Middle English lyrics Miscellaneous Texts
Inaugural Speech Given by Her Excellency Mary Robinson,President of Ireland,
in Dublin Castle on Monday, December 3, 1990

Richard Stallman at Marlboro College

In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws, every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead.

With printed books,

•You can buy one with cash, anonymously.
•Then you own it.
•You are not required to sign a license that restricts your use of it.
•The format is known, and no proprietary technology is needed to read the book.
•You can, physically, scan and copy the book, and it’s sometimes lawful under copyright.
•Nobody has the power to destroy your book.

Contrast that with Amazon ebooks (fairly typical):

•Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an ebook.
•In some countries, Amazon says the user does not own the ebook.
•Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the ebook.
•The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can read it at all.
•To copy the ebook is impossible due to Digital Restrictions Management in the player and prohibited by the license, which is more restrictive than copyright law.
•Amazon can remotely delete the ebook using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell’s 1984.

Even one of these infringements makes ebooks a step backward from printed books. We must reject ebooks until they respect our freedom.

The ebook companies say denying our traditional freedoms is necessary to continue to pay authors. The current copyright system does a lousy job of that; it is much better suited to supporting those companies. We can support authors better in other ways that don’t require curtailing our freedom, and even legalize sharing. Two methods I’ve suggested are:

• To distribute tax funds to authors based on the cube root of each author’s popularity.
(See http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html.)
• To design players so users can send authors anonymous voluntary payments.

Ebooks need not attack our freedom, but they will if companies get to decide. It’s up to us to stop
them. The fight has already started.

Copyright 2011 Richard Stallman
Released under Creative Commons Attribution Noderivs 3.0.

Taken from the Sunday Tribune 30th Jan 2011

Diarmuid Doyle – Bertie is out of public sight but it’s never been more important to keep an eye on him….

Timely, because Ahern cannot yet be consigned to history. In fact, now that he will be out of public sight, it has never been more important to keep an eye on him. He remains a menace and a threat to Ireland’s prosperity through his significant, but little commented on, position as chairman of the International Forestry Fund.

So far, only the Sunday Tribune among the country’s newspapers has paid close attention to Ahern’s role in this private company. Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan has asked a Dáil question and Sinn Féin’s Martin Ferris has thrown a few shapes about the former taoiseach’s latest gig. But, as with John O’Donoghue’s expenses a few years ago, it is taking the political classes a while to wake up to this issue.

Although the International Forestry Fund sounds like a vaguely cuddly group, which loves trees the way some of us love kittens, it is in fact a very profit-conscious joint venture between two private asset management companies, Helvetia Wealth and IFS Asset Managers Limited. It makes its money by acquiring existing forests on behalf of investors. As it says on its website, Helvetia has 1.1bn Swiss Francs (€867m) in assets “following a number of very successful acquisitions in the UK, Germany and Ireland”. IFS currently manages in excess of €100m of forestry assets on behalf of 18,000 private and corporate clients in this country.

In Ireland, most of our trees and forests belong to the state agency Coillte, which owns more than one million acres of land – about 7% of Irish land cover. In July last year, Colm McCarthy issued his An Bord Snip Nua report in which he suggested, among other ideas, that the government look at flogging Coillte as part of a mass sell-off of state assets.

This obviously piqued the interest of the cash-rich International Forestry Fund and five months later it announced that Bertie Ahern had been appointed as its chairman. “MrAhern implemented bold economic initiatives that included corporate tax incentives and education reform”, the Fund said at the time. “His efforts laid out a welcome mat for international corporations, making Ireland an attractive location for foreign companies”.

Indeed. Seven months after that, in July 2010, McCarthy was given a new job – to look in more depth at the idea of selling off the state assets he had mentioned in his 2009 report. One of the companies specifically targeted was Coillte.

By now, the International Forestry Fund, with Bertie Ahern firmly ensconced at the top, was salivating at the prospect of getting its hands on Coillte and the 7% of Ireland that comes with it. “We would certainly have an interest in that regard,” Paul Brosnan, the fund’s director, told this newspaper last year. “We have always had an interest in Coillte. It certainly would not be beyond the bounds of possibility that we would acquire it.”

Of the very many questions that arise from all of this, here are just some: why on earth would we sell 7% of Irish land to private investors? Why is a former taoiseach heading up a company registered in the Virgin Islands which wants to profit from more than one million acres of the country he used to run? How much is he getting for whatever advice or help he will be giving to help secure this grand sell-off? Does the Green Party have anything to say? Will Bertie Ahern make a statement on the issue?

Many of these questions would be irrelevant if Ahern was to resign from the International Forestry Fund or if the fund was to confirm that it had no interest whatsoever in Coillte, now, or in the future. Such outcomes seem unlikely, however. The former taoiseach and the company he chairs are apparently both driven by an insatiable greed for money. They are perfect bedfellows.

An Píopa/The Pipe

The Pipe, The Film website

Update: the video has been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons

#ge11 is the Twitter tag for the Republic of Ireland’s general election 2011

Boards.ie 2011 General Election Poll Brilliant take on the ballot paper, allowing you to make a virtual vote, and better, to acquaint yourself with your candidates in your constituency. Its current overall vote appears to be closely tracking conventional polls in newspapers etc, which is interesting in itself. Whether it is accurate for each constituency remains to be seen.

Some candidates you might not have been aware of (with links to boards.ie/vote)

Declaration of interest: I’m a friend and Aosdána colleague of Mannix Flynn. I follow Kate Bopp on twitter.

. Vote Mannix Flynn. running in Dublin South East
It has become a universal truth of General Election 2011 that “the people want change”, but, as citizens, we need to reflect on the nature of that change. Do we merely want to “modify” the way we are governed with a tired reshuffle of the personnel and values that have served us so badly? Or do we want “transformation”? Transformation requires courage and hope. Don’t do the same thing, expecting a different result

Mick Wallace, running in Wexford

We need political reform to bring a new politics, an end to political donations which separate the electorate from the legislature by allowing those with the most money to have greatest influence, a smaller Dáil with accountability and transparency in all its workings, a genuine effort to provide a decent State Health System for all, a greater emphasises on education including access to pre-school education, an end to expenses and pension abuse, and real local Government that works.

Kate Bopp running in Tipperary North

I believe we must pass power & responsibility to local Government at local level. Introducing directly elected mayors and giving local councils more executive powers. This will allow national legislators to focus on National Issues. The identification and abolition of cronyism is a top priority. I will also strive for shorter terms in office allowing for a regular influx of fresh knowledge and ideas. I will promote a greater accountability of those in office.

Gerry Kinsella and Pat Kavanagh of Fís Nua, running in Wicklow

Fís Nua is an all-Ireland federation with a political structure that seeks to bring together, under one umbrella, all those disaffected with the corruption in politics and government and who feel that they have been left without a voice within the political arena in Ireland.

Egypt

Perhaps, and perhaps not, relevant to #ge11, but a thought-provoking essay nonetheless. The Egyptian Revolution: First Impressions from the field. , a deeply moving essay by Mohammed Bamyeh.

At this moment, out of the deadweight of inwardness and self-contempt, there emerged spontaneous order out of chaos.

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, 1932. Carl Van Vechten photograph collection (Library of Congress), reproduction number LC-USZ62-42516 DLC (b&w film copy neg.).

I became interested in the painter Jackson Pollock through a poet, Frank O’Hara. They were both Americans, and oddly enough, both died in car crashes.

Like a former director of this gallery, Thomas MacGreevy, O’Hara was a poet who had a deep and professional interest in painting. Amongst other institutions O’Hara worked for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Many of his friends were painters, and some, including Larry Rivers, illustrated his books.

He is one of the most amusing poets I know, and I would like to quote a favourite and hopefully apposite poem called Why I am not a Painter

The New Spanish Painting and Sculpture and Jackson Pollock, published in 1959, are just two of his publications on art. Of course I had previously seen many photos of Pollock’s work, but it was the O’Hara Monograph which sparked my interest and which eventually led to the small poem called Prophet, which largely depends on an O’Hara quote from the monograph, which is: ‘In the state of spiritual clarity, there are no secrets.’

When I look into the abyss of The Deep I find it a paradoxically fearful and peaceful experience. But stripped of any symbolism, I think it is in itself a beautiful painting, and achieves what painting is best at doing, that is to say, it achieves beauty on its own terms, those of colour and composition, without necessarily having a subject or theme. In other words, he has achieved a state of spiritual clarity, which can either mean that there are no secrets, basically, or that in this state, all secrets are revealed. This dilemma is constantly present in contemplating The Deep, to my mind.

Image: Number One 1949

A few years back, and maybe it still continues, there was a vogue for comparing the findings of quantum physics with eastern philosophies and religions. Such books as The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu Li Masters made quantum physics seem not only comprehensible, but spiritual too. The Wu Li book is particularly interesting, if only for its title. Chinese syllables can apparently be pronounced in several different ways, depending on the meaning. To cut a long story short, there are several meanings for Wu Li in this context, which includes Patterns of Energy – the Chinese way of saying ‘Physics’. Other meanings include ‘My Way‘, ‘Nonsense‘, ‘I clutch my Ideas‘ and ‘Enlightenment‘, where, in the latter case, wu means ‘My heart,’ or my mind.’

End of Chinese lesson.

It seems to me that any or all of these meanings could be applied to the masterpieces of Jackson Pollock. Moreover, they seem to me reminiscent of the restless sub-atomic world as I understand it, in which case the artist has envisaged the sub-atomic world before the scientist, and is in this sense a prophet.

Image: White Cockatoo

And whether I’m being totally fanciful or not, it also seems to me that in The White Cockatoo he closed his eyes and travelled inward until he came to a group of nerve cells in his brain in which was entangled the lost memory of a white cockatoo.

PROPHET

When he closed his eyes

he saw The White Cockatoo,

forgotten in the ganglia.

Pressing them further closed,

tension induced a magnified

print of connective tissue,

which he dripped onto canvas,

scattering electrons in fright.

He saw what physicists

would predict and measure.

‘In the state of spiritual

clarity there are no secrets,’

wrote Frank O’Hara of Pollock.

In The Deep, there are no secrets.

Pollack was deeply interested in the great Mexican muralists Orozco, Siqueiros, and Rivera, and in Rivera’s dictum that art should express the ‘new order of things … and that the logical place for this art, … belonging to the populace, was on the walls of public buildings.’ O’Hara suggests that this statement may have somehow pointed the way to the heroic scale of his later masterpieces.

Image: Self Portrait, 1947

Diego Rivera was married, twice, to the much younger Frida Kahlo.

This is The Two Fridas, one of many paintings which document their tempestuous relationship. Although she always claimed that she was born during the Mexican revolution of 1910, she was born in 1907, and christened Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon. Her first two names were given to Frida so that she could be baptized with a Christian name. The third, the one her family used, means ‘peace’ in German – her paternal grandparents were German. One of her maternal grandparents was Indian, a fact which was most important in her life and art.

At the age of six, she contracted polio in her right leg, but the event which transformed her life and gave the world such a rich legacy occurred on September 17, 1925, when Kahlo suffered horrendous injuries in a road accident.

Image: The Broken Column

I’ll spare you the bizarre details, which are given in Hayden Herrera’s biography, FRIDA. Suffice to mention that her spinal column was broken in three places; her collarbone was broken, and her third and fourth ribs. Her right leg had eleven fractures and her right foot was dislocated and crushed. Her left shoulder was out of joint, her pelvis broken in three places.’

Image: El Autobus

Now I knew nothing of all of this when I first became fascinated with Frida Kahlo. As is alluded to in Waking To The Plain, (which was originally called Homage to Kahlo) I first heard of her through an artist friend, who happens to share with me a significant experience of hospital. We were discussing pain, and she recommended that I should look up Kahlo’s paintings.

Image: Tree of Hope

Image: Without Hope

Of course I was very interested in her account of Kahlo, and I fully intended to investigate further, but the truth is I forgot all about it. Until a few months later that is, when I received a very excited letter from a close friend in Berlin. Enclosed were black and white copies of several Kahlo self-portraits and my friend knew me well when she predicted my interest in them.

Image: Self Portrait 1926

Shortly after this, I met a Mexican, and – you’ve guessed it – she loved Frida’s work and knew a great deal about her. She also spoke about the difference of colours in Mexico and Europe.

Image: The Love Embrace of the Universe

So now, three women, within a very short space of time, had come to me with the gift of Frida Kahlo. It was as if I hadn’t taken the hint on the first or second occasion, and now the gods were sending me a third messenger to make sure I got the message. I had already begun the first of many, many drafts of a poem which I hoped would lead me to the core of what was for me an enigma. (return to slide of ‘The Tree of Hope’) Even without their emotionally-charged colour, I was fascinated, particularly by The Tree of Hope. Now, I know there is a powerful feminine presence in this painting which transcends the self-portrait, and that is part of its attraction for me, even though, insofar as I am a man, it excludes me in a sense; but it also vividly states a personal and universal experience of which up to then I had only been vaguely aware.

Image: Tree of Hope. Now, I know there is a powerful feminine presence in this painting which transcends the self-portrait, and that is part of its attraction for me, even though, insofar as I am a man, it excludes me in a sense; but it also vividly states a personal and universal experience of which up to then I had only been vaguely aware.

As I thought about this talk, it seemed that there was a link between several of the paintings I wanted to explore, both those of Pollock and Kahlo. I’m thinking of the tension created by the presence of opposing ideas or states, and nowhere is this more graphically illustrated than in The Tree of Hope, where defeat and triumph are simultaneously present. It is, I suppose, a very Christian idea; in any event, I find it a haunting image.

A year earlier, in 1945, she had painted the heart-rending Without Hope. Perhaps more than any work of art I know, this goes to the core of the despair which is the inevitable visitor to those who suffer chronic illness and pain. However, on closer observation, there is a glimmer of hope. Her specially-constructed easel is on her sick bed, and it was on this, with the aid of a mirror, she painted many of her of her self-portraits, and this is a partial explanation of why she was herself her principal subject.

As I mentioned earlier, Kahlo developed a system whereby an emotion or state corresponded to a particular colour. If I could quote her biographer Hayden Herrera:

“The self-portraits from 1940 also show clearly the degree to which Frida had by this time grasped the power of colour to communicate emotion. To eyes accustomed to the French tradition in the visual arts, Frida’s colour choices – olive, orange, purple, many earthy tones, and a hallucinatory yellow – are jarring. Although her bizarre palette reflects her love of the untutored colour combinations in Mexican popular art, Frida cunningly makes colour set off psychological drama. Pink is often used in ironic contrast to violence or death; in several self-portraits (slide The Little Deer) a yellow olive accentuates the feeling of claustrophobic oppression; (slide Henry Ford Hospital) the grey-blue of Frida’s skies and the lavender or burnt sienna of her earth give an edge to the expression of alienation and despair. Since not much black is used to model forms, her paintings often have a visionary brilliance.’

And here is an extract from her diary in the mid-nineteen forties:

Green: warm and good light.

Yellow: madness, sickness, fear. Part of the sun and joy.

Cobalt blue: electricity and purity. Love.

Black: nothing is black, really nothing.

Leaf Green: Leaves, sadness, science. The whole of Germany is this colour.

Greenish Yellow: more madness and mystery. All the phantoms wear suits of this colour… or at least underclothes.

Dark Green: colour of bad news and good business.

Navy blue: distance. Also tenderness can be of this blue.

Well, to quote from Waking to the Plain, there is bad news and good business in The Henry Ford Hospital. The bad news is that, because of the damage done to her pelvis in her accident, Frida is enduring yet another miscarriage, and the profound grief that, naturally, caused her. In the background one can see industrial Detroit, which was then dominated by Henry Ford’s factories which were producing babies of a kind – the Baby Ford car, illustrating yet again her black humour.

This, Self Portrait with Monkey, 1940, is Frida some eight years later, which she painted in a hotel room in New York for a wealthy collector, Conger Goodyear, and which graces the cover of the U.S. edition of her biography by Hayden Herrera, sent to me by an Irish friend who at the time lived in New York. Along with a gift of boxed cards of Kahlo’s paintings, this biography revealed to me why I was so obsessed with Kahlo, and finally allowed me to write about my obsession with a degree of honesty, and thereby lay it to rest.

I’m very fond of this particular painting, partly because of its attention to fine detail; also its suggestiveness, where the ribbon which binds her tightly combed hair is also the link to her pet monkey, and in turn, the monkey’s hand seems to grow out of her hair; and finally for its unrelenting honesty. It was one of several in which she is accompanied by pet animals and which were painted during the years of her divorce from Rivera – the monkey here was actually a gift from Rivera. Her eyes reveal her loneliness, but her batwing eyebrows and her light moustache are forceful presences, and dressed in her finery, she is sensual and proud.

This is The Dream, painted in the same year, 1940. According to Herrera, she was preoccupied with death during the period after her divorce, and that she actually did keep a skeleton on top of her bed’s canopy as – to her – an amusing reminder of her own mortality, as she explained to visitors. This is a Judas skeleton, part of the Day of the Dead folklore of Mexico.

But if Frida Kahlo was often preoccupied with death, and she had good reason to be for much of her life, she took a great sensual pleasure from her life and art. She was admired and loved by many of the great figures of her time, including Trotsky, Kandinsky, Juan Miro, Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O’Keeffe and even that arch-egotist Picasso, who if my memory serves me right, wrote to Rivera that she was a greater portraitist than either of them. She once told a friend that her view of life was: Make love, take a bath, make love again. She was still painting up to her death in 1954, and on her last painting she wrote VIVA LA VIDA – Long Live Life.

Image:
Self Portrait 1947

WAKING TO THE PLAIN

Here I painted myself, Frida Kahlo, from a mirror-image. I am thirty-seven years old, and it is the month of July, nineteen forty-seven. In Coyoacan, Mexico, the place where I was born. – Frida Kahlo

I tried to understand you through the self–portraits you began when the collision of a bus and tram changed your life as time slowed down.

They chronicle the trials of your body’s broken column; your love affair through two marriages with Rivera; the miscarriages; your passion compressed into a high tension and expression.

I must have known it was impossible, but blinded by what I thought was love – and it was, by some measure – I made draft after draft, losing my way through your subtle world of guise and fantasy, through what is at once concealed and revealed. The Tree of Hope was my prime enigma:

Dressed in her red Tehuana costume,

she is Kahlo the desert queen,

reigning over her butchered flesh and bone

that lies defeated on a surgical trolley -

where the moon is mistress beyond the orange sun.

The moon, Frida, and that old orange the sun, that your childhood teacher held in one hand – a candle in the other – to explain the solar system. Darkness and Light.

And the fissured desert that stretches to the distant, eternal mountains is the desert that encroaches when hope is ruined to often. Isn’t that so?

The images return to haunt, and I repeat the attempt to write them out:

Bound in plastercast, she paints in

the hair on her lip from a mirror-image,

rapt in search of the meaning of what

she is doing again, and again, and again.

After dinner one night, an artist told me about you. The house we were staying in was old and later I sensed a ghost in my room. I think it was a part of myself, long forgotten. A few months later a letter arrived from a friend:

A bulging letter, postmarked Berlin.

I read the excited hand, unfold

the black and white copies: Kahlo.

So began the obsession. Spring passed into summer, and one evening I ambled down Kilmainham Lane, admiring the elderflowers, the peace of this rus-in-urbe broken only by guard-dogs and the rhythmic clack of my crutches. Then an odd thing happened:

A red car stops, a puff of dust

rising before the tyres,

and a Mexican asks for directions.

Later, in a bar, I ask about Kahlo,

who, she insists, painted with colours

which don’t exist in Europe.

The burnt siennas of your Mexican earth, Frida; your yellows at once pouring out sickness and fear, sun and joy; your dark blues occupying both distance and tenderness. Dark green, you said, was the colour of bad news and good business. There is bad news and good business in your Henry Ford Hospital, 1932:

In the Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit,

Frida has lain in her own blood

since 1932,

her miscarried foetus spirited above her

like an African fetish – her pelvis, her tear,

the hopes of her famished love, so much debris.

Its foreground is green, and the spiritual drama of your miscarriage is played out against a backdrop of Henry Ford’s factories delivering Baby Fords. It took me a while to see humour where previously I could recognize only suffering. Now I’m glad to know it was typical,like your parrot who drank beer and tequila and croaked:I’ll never get over this hangover!

This is a quote from the story of your work and life by Hayden Herrera, who wrote it with the ring of respect and truth. A friend sent it from New York, while another gave me reproductions I had never seen. It was then I realised that all my drafts were false. I was writing about myself.

Something as formerly innocent as a cloud or landscape or as utilised as a polluting bus, can recall you as if you were seated in them, a mirror before you, your brush in hand.

So many correspondences where nothing is strictly itself might unbalance a mind. How many women limp through a crowd? Might they have light moustaches or eyebrows joined like batwings?

They, the correspondences, are sane because you are unique, like a giant river from whom tributaries flow away through the thoughts and emotions of those who need you.

She floats, asleep

in canopied rest, rooted

high over the earth -

her vigilant companion

a Day of the Dead skeleton

decked in dynamite and flowers.

She has journeyed a long way,

and no one can follow

into the shell

of all she has yearned for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou0EOcpdJm4

The Real Frida Kahlo Con musica de Cafe Tacuba (Esa Noche)
Fragmento extraido de un documental dedicado a esta gran artista, (The History Channel Español)
Ojessy Youtube channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXtRN-UNKKA

frida kahlo including The two Fridas (1939); Wearing a velvet dress(1926); The little deer (1946); What the water gave me (1938); Without hope (1945); The Broken Column (1944). Chanystears Youtube channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVE-WQBcYQ

Jackson Pollock 51, 1951 (excerpt)
Hans Namuth and Paul Falkenberg (directors) Morton Feldman (composer)
Facs100b Youtube channel

Elephants Dream is a computer-generated movie made using open source applications that premiered on March 24, 2006. Beginning production in September, 2005, it was developed under the name Orange by a team of seven artists and animators from around the world. It was originally known as Machina, before being changed to Elephants Dream to more closely match the storyline.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4

Big Buck Bunny tells the story of a giant rabbit with a heart bigger than himself. When one sunny day three rodents rudely harass him, something snaps… and the rabbit ain’t no bunny anymore! In the typical cartoon tradition he prepares the nasty rodents a comical revenge.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license

http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/

Open Source Cinema

Bella Akhmadulina

The Russian poet Bella Akh­madulina has died. I saw her read once, in the old Project Theatre in Dublin, and was so moved by the way she read her poems in Russian, which reminded me of chanting in a cathedral, that I wrote the following piece, published in my collection The Year of the Knife.
Thank you, Bella. May you rest in peace.

photo credit: www.kremlin.ru some rights reserved.

THE RED CATHEDRAL
   –on see­ing Bella Akh­madulina per­form her work

‘The Cathed­ral is aligned East to West,
a circle on two rect­angles
over a blind spring where pil­grims sup.
Its red­stone wings spread North and South.
It greets the rising sun,
and accepts dark­ness as it comes.
Requir­ing noth­ing, it is noth­ing to itself.
To enter into it
is to be given a hard grain as talis­man.
Solitude touches its high, bare walls.
Grass has split the flag­stones;
dust swarms in light from the stained glass.
The Cathed­ral is home to ter­rains and cit­ies
and those who live in them
as they breathe fumes, travel on shunted trains;
and just now, a woman dressed in black and gold
is the swooned instru­ment
through whom the Cathed­ral fills with their song.
High in the dome, a swal­low loops and skims
to the soar and whis­per
of grief, to the little shuffle of the woman’s fun.

  – Philip Casey



The Red Cathedral by Philip Casey is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The Congress Altar Cappagh Hospital May 16 2008

As the result of an early childhood illness, by fourteen my right leg was five inches shorter than my left, and inevitably without attention would fall further behind, so I was brought to Cappagh Hospital in October 1964 for a series of operations which would stop my growth and leave me two inches shorter in height, but with only a slight limp. Most of these operations would be under Mr McCauley, but at least one was under Mr Joesph Gallagher, who I not only respected, as of course I did Mr McCauley, but warmed to as a person. On one occasion he introduced me to his entourage thus: “This young man is as healthy as a trout.”
When you’ve been confined to bed for some time, a remark like this can only be described as Positive Medicine, and I’ve never forgotten it as such.

photo credit: Philip Casey some rights reserved.

For me, Cappagh was a positive place. When I entered St Mary’s ward for the first time on a beautiful autumn evening, the ward was full of light and sound. It was like walking into a tropical aviary, such was the energy and colour. Being from the country, adjusting to twenty-four hour company took some time, but almost immediately I realised that while many of the boys had been here for years with ailments such as polio, most of them were full of normal, healthy mischief and fun.

Imposing order on this chaos was Sister Angela. I was only fourteen, but I quickly saw through the stern mask to a deeply human heart and sense of humour. Once, I was dared to ask her did she want a Kiss, which was a popular toffee. Without hesitation I intercepted her on the corridor and popped the question. She was of course taken aback at my effrontery and disrespect for her vows, but when I quickly proffered the tube of Kisses, she erupted into laughter.

Because children were often in Cappagh for years, I remember many of them, though not all of their names, of course. There was Larry W., a fine tall youth who was disabled by polio. He once had a classic, slow-motion fight from his wheelchair with a tall, thin boy, Alan K., also stricken with polio, over a chess game. It took them so long to get their fists to a sufficient height to land a blow, that the strike count was probably one a minute, but it was no less ferocious for that.

Although they had ample reason, very few if any of these boys showed self-pity. Danny M. struck me as particularly brave. He had brittle-bone disease, and invariably fell and broke another bone almost as soon as he had recovered from the last misfortune, but invariably, hopes dashed as they were risen, he smiled through it. There was Gerry from Clare, and Philip from Finglas, and Oliver from Kilkenny, and Willie, famous as Little Willie – but by the time I knew him was far from little; he was wild, and great fun. There was Mossy D., about whom more in a moment, and the great Tommy Lavin, who had an arm amputated and who died from cancer a few years later. He, too, never lost his spirit in adversity, a young man of noble courage and elegant character.
There was John C., from Waterford, an inveterate reader who advised me to read something decent, rather than endless Agatha Christies, and handed me the plays of Sean O’Casey, thereby changing my life.

And there was Paddy Doyle. A few years later Paddy would be muscular and married to Eileen – I would be his best man. But when I first met him, he was a small, skinny thirteen year-old orphan, his feet twisted by what would later be diagnosed as dystonia. There was certainly no inkling that he would be internationally famous as the author of The God Squad.
Being a farmer’s son capable of carrying a sack of wheat, Paddy was like a feather to me, so I carried him on tours of the hospital, including around the Congress Altar and up to the top of the fire escape of the Nurses’ Home, from where we had an excellent view of the farm, which if I’m not mistaken was owned by the Sisters of Charity and partially supplied the hospital – but I’m open to correction on that. Later he would reach the Congress Altar under his own steam.

Beneath the Nurses’ Home was the Occupational Therapy department, run by Sister Bride. She was so beautiful she could have starred in The Nun’s Story, but would probably have been horrified at the suggestion. One of her occupational therapists was an English Rose called Pat, so all in all the atmosphere in the OT department was very pleasant! I had my first inkling of a literary bent when I was asked to work on a magazine with Paddy and others. I can still smell the Gestetner ink. Paddy was particularly good at weaving as he would be at writing.

Needless to say, Paddy and his wife Eileen and their three sons and their partners are my friends to this day.

Then there were the lovely girls in the girls’ ward, every bit as lively and mischievous as the boys. In summer, the beds were wheeled out onto the verandas, and we didn’t need binoculars to see them. On the long summer evenings, there were not-so-secret rendezvous behind the Congress Altar, no pun intended. Separating us was a ward, or wards, for asthmatics, but there were girls there too, including the stunning Hannah, who I’m sure had a legion of admirers. I remember several lovely ward maids, too. It was all great fun.

Of course there were dark moments. Operations are never easy, and the aftermaths of some were excruciating over a long period. Some of the children were orphans, and others weren’t but never had visitors. No doubt some of them envied me my visitors, specifically the gifts of my visitors. It was of course difficult for relatives to travel long distances in those days, but it was thought that some children had been abandoned by their families. Some had diseases which would dog them all their sometimes abbreviated lives.

But the nurses were heaven on earth for a teenage country boy. Goddesses in their pristine uniforms, it was only later that I realised that the student nurses were teenagers like us – only more mature. We gave many of them nicknames. I was in love with some of them, of course, including Twitty from Wexford and Benjy from Dublin.

Benjy, a beautiful redhead whose perfume I will never forget, swore she’d never marry…
Some of them, like Fritz and Benjy, and indeed one of the primary school teachers, sometimes brought some of us to see Dublin, with Sister Angela’s blessing. Sister Angela on at least one occasion gave us money “to treat the girls.”

As nurses, some of them were outstanding. I believe that a staff nurse, Martha Moroney, saved my sanity when I was having my leg lengthened. Her calmness and superb nursing skill saved me a great deal of pain and I want to thank her here, some 42 years later. Perhaps I remember her particularly in contrast to another staff nurse at the time, who I dreaded coming near my leg.

Among other great healers were Fritz, and Staff Nurse O’Callaghan, also both deeply calm in a crisis. Some have a healing touch and others don’t and one doesn’t forget it. I have been in hospital a lot since then, and their skill and demeanour has always been the gold nursing standard for me.

It must have been 1966 when Mr O’Malley, Minister for Education, swept through the wards and decided there should be a secondary school in Cappagh. It was held in the more spacious girls’ ward, and the teacher chosen was the bi-lingual novelist and poet Eoghan O Tuairisc/Eugene Watters. His first wife had recently died and he took the post to help him endure his bereavement. It was more like a university, or perhaps a hedge-school, than an orthodox secondary school, though of course the curriculum was addressed. Arriving in beds and wheelchairs and on crutches, there were no benches. We were encouraged to think and to ask questions. He lectured us on the Bible, including, if memory serves me, the Song of Songs, and he lectured us on John Keats, a great literary love of his. He had just won an Oireachtas prize for one of his books, and he put up a monetary prize for the best essay on Keats, which I won – my first literary prize. But the best moment of education I have ever received happened by accident.
Mossy D. had a spinal problem, and was confined, on his back, to a striker, a narrow, semi-rotating bed. Mossy must have been sleep-deprived, but in any case he fell asleep in Eoghan’s class, whereupon there were cries of “Sir! Sir! Mossy’s asleep.”

Eoghan put his finger to his lips and shusshed us.

“Listen,” he said slowly and quietly, “to the beautiful sound … of the human body at rest.”

First published in the Cappagh Centenary Commemorative Book, 2008

He had been regarded as a pioneer of modernism in his own country, though later adopted a more pared-down, minimalist style and became noted for religious music. In 1992, a recording of his then 15-year-old third symphony, also known under the title of the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, was released to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust: it became a worldwide critical and popular success.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miLV0o4AhE4

I play this regularly. Oddly enough, given its theme, it helps my brainwaves settle to a rhythm where I can work – as does the Adagio from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, or Frank Corcoran’s Trauerfelder, and Ommagio, from Michael Holohan’s Fields of Blue and White

Michael Holohan’s piece apart (I don’t know what inspired it) what does this say about music inspired by intense sorrow? Perhaps it means that powerful sorrow in the hands of a supreme artist blasts away the superfluous, leaving us with our spiritually naked selves.

Demand for maximum income to cut gap between rich and poor emerges at Ireland’s first ‘citizens forum’.
A maximum income, a reformed tax system, and a minimum income threshold emerged as policy priorities at Ireland’s first ‘citizens forum’ in Dublin’s RDS today (Saturday). Over 1,100 participants also called for a stimulus package to maximise job creation in the social and green economy, and expressed overwhelming support for a radical new emphasis on economic security and social and environmental sustainability.

The event, which saw the launch of a new progressive civil society movement called Claiming Our Future, ranked equality, environmental sustainability and accountability among its core values.

“The huge endorsement of minimum and maximum incomes is very exciting because it’s totally doable regardless of whether we are in recession or not. This is an entirely deliverable demand to reduce the gap between rich and poor through a redistribution of income and wealth. Nobody can claim that it must wait for better economic times,” according to Mary Murphy, one of the MCs at Claiming Our Future.

Siobhan O’Donoghue of the Community Platform said today’s event was a huge success, which demonstrated a massive appetite for an alternative approach to economic, environmental and social policy in Ireland. “We brought together people from every county in Ireland and from a vast range of backgrounds and experience. The movement we launched today is going to grow in size and volume until the political system wakes up to demands for sustainable economic and social policies based on values of equality, accountability, solidarity and participation,” she said.

The organisers emphasised the high value placed by participants on environmental sustainability. “This shows that people understand the importance of the environment even though we’re in an economic crisis. I am really pleased to see that people are taking a long-term view because true sustainability is dependent of new and different social, economic and environmental policies,” according to Charles Stanley-Smith of An Taisce who was among the organisers.

ICTU deputy general secretary Sally-Ann Kinahan welcomed the endorsement of policies to stimulate the economy and create jobs. “We have to tackle the deficit but policy must also take account of need for jobs and sustainable economic activity. Three austerity budgets have already taken €13 billion out of the economy and the Government is talking about more than doubling that. But the economy isn’t reacting and many now believe the adjustment is too fast and too deep. It’s time to prioritise tackling unemployment, particularly youth unemployment which now stands at 30%,” she said.

Today’s event was massively oversubscribed with over 2,000 seeking to register for the 1,100 available places. Hundreds more have participated in local events and debates at www.claimingourfuture.ie and its associated social networking sites.

Uniquely in Ireland, the event used new software technology, which allowed participants to have an equal input into discussing and agreeing the values and priorities for this new civil society coalition. Innovative software enabled the 1,100 participants to follow the debate across the whole event and to identify, in real time, the emerging themes and final agreement. Hundreds more participated on line through social media and www.claimingourfuture.ie, where the event was streamed live.

Claiming Our Future was initially developed by Is Feidir Linn, the Community Platform, ICTU, the Environmental Pillar of social partnership, the TASC think tank and Social Justice Ireland. Registered participants in the event were from groups involved in community action (18%) voluntary services (11%) education, arts and culture (10%) conservation and environmentalism (12%) trade unions and workers’ rights (19%) urban and rural enterprise and economy (7%) politics (10%) global justice and development (7%) and faith beliefs and ethics (6%). (Note: These figures have been rounded).

Claiming Our Future is neither a political party nor an electoral initiative. It has no permanent staff and is sustained by volunteer effort and the contribution of time and volunteers from its supporting organisations. The 30th October event is financially supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Atlantic Philanthropies, the One Foundation and the Community Foundation for Ireland. Mandate trade union has given temporary office space and other trade unions are providing small financial contributions. The overall initiative is not dependent on any of the organisations that have allocated funds, time or expertise.

[there follows a rough draft of what was to be a chapter in my work-in-progress, now deleted. I'm publishing it here in case it's of interest to anyone. Click to enlarge image.
The action, as it were, takes place in the mid-12th century.]

Nesta’s Relentless Brood

What Dermot may have had in mind, and indeed what he may have discussed with his friend Robert FitzHarding, was the solution arrived at in Scotland when modernisers under Malcolm Canmore’s sons won out with help from Norman England. Not only did they employ the military prowess of the Normans, but invited them to settle in the southern half of the country, and with their help, King David had established a stable Scottish dynasty.¹

Another model with which Dermot would have been familiar was the relative co-existence of the Welsh Princes and the Norman Marcher barons, independent but giving fealty to Henry II. Aware as he was of the economic price of war, it is thought that Henry was conducive to the idea of a commonwealth with its economic benefits and with himself at its head – the forerunner, one might say, of the British Commonwealth.

Whatever Dermot’s other plans, he had to find Henry, and Henry was busy in his French dominions. MacMurrough had set out from Ireland in August; he stayed with FitzHarding until late autumn and caught up with Henry in Aquitaine, the Duchy of his estranged wife, Eleanor, in the New Year of 1167.

He swore fealty as his liegeman.

The term ‘liegeman’ meant that Dermot had sworn to become Henry’s vassal, with feudal obligations of fidelity in a military, political and social sense to Henry as his lord. This also meant that Henry was obliged to come to his aid in time of danger, but for the moment, at least, Dermot only received permission to approach any of Henry’s liegemen – his vassals – for support. It was the first and last time he laid eyes on the English King.

Dermot may have been disappointed that he did not receive Henry’s direct involvement, but he returned to Bristol and FitzHarding. Initially he had difficulty inspiring any interest in his venture, despite Henry’s endorsement. Eventually, probably on the recommendation of FitzHarding, he crossed the Severn to South Wales, where he met one Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, known to history as Strongbow.

Strongbow had backed the wrong contender for the English throne, and Henry deprived him of the earldom of Pembroke when he came to power. He was at this time a widower, in his mid-fifties, and open to redeeming his fortunes, but he drove a hard bargain which was not sealed until Dermot offered his young daughter Aoife in marriage, which meant, in Strongbow’s eyes at least, that he would inherit the province of Leinster on Dermot’s death. That this was impossible under Irish law, other than by force, was evidently not discussed.

MacMurrough’s next stop was the court of the man recognized by the Welsh as their king, Rhys ap Gruffyd – son, as his name suggests, of the long-lived Gruffydd ap Cynan, who, according to one biography, had two Irish half-brothers who were kings of the Ulaid, but had otherwise strong connections with the O’Briens. So he was a distant kinsman of Dermot.

Rhys was the nephew of perhaps the most remarkable woman of Welsh history, the prodigious Nesta, daughter of King Rhys ap Tewdwr, and mother and grandmother of several of the eventual invaders of Ireland, essentially making it a Welsh-Norman, or Cambro-Norman, invasion.

Her first marriage was to Gerald of Windsor, by whom she had one daughter, Angharrat, and three sons, William, Maurice, and David FitzGerald, fitz being a corruption of the French fils, meaning son. She and her children were abducted, possibly with her connivance, by a Welsh chieftain, afterwards killed by her husband in a skirmish. Later she had three more children, before being held as hostage by Henry I. She became his mistress, giving him a son, the first of the FitzHenrys, who in turn fathered Meiler and Robert FitzHenry, who were both to join Dermot’s forces. Another grandson who joined the adventure was Raymond le Gros, founder of the Redmond family in Ireland. Her son by her second marriage to the Constable of Cardigan was Robert FitzStephen.²

It was this Robert FitzStephen, cousin and captive of Rhys ap Gruffyd, that Dermot wanted to meet. Rhys had imprisoned him because of his loyalty to Henry II, and now the bargain was that he would release him if he joined Dermot’s expedition. He agreed.

The first group to accompany Dermot in August 1167 was a small group of Welsh, Flemings and Normans, under Richard FitzGodebert de la Roche.³

So began what can best be described as a dance of wits between Dermot, the High King and O’Rourke. Dermot’s first stratagem was to disappear into the Augustinian cloister in Ferns until the following Spring. How the international force which had accompanied him fared, or what they made of this, we don’t know. Neither do we know how this initial expedition was funded, and indeed the delay of a full expedition was most likely due to financial difficulties.

As soon as Dermot emerged from the cloister, word reached O’Connor, and Dermot submitted to overwhelming force again – although O’Rourke’s men broke ranks and attacked Dermot’s lines, killing 200, including the son of the Welsh king.⁴ But a settlement was made, hostages were given, and O’Rourke had the satisfaction of seeing O’Connor finally compelling MacMurrough to pay him 100 ounces of gold for his loss of face at Dervogilla’s abduction. Once again they returned to the west.

The Annals mention a very curious incident which occurred soon after Dermot’s return. Ua Dhuibhne, of the Cenél nEoghain – that is, of the late King Muirchertach MacLochlainn’s people – is described as a gillie, or servant of Donnchadh Ua Cerbhaill, ruler of Airgailla. It is hard to escape the suspicion that Ua Dhuibhne was taken as a slave after MacLochlain’s downfall. In any event, on finding the king drunk, he took advantage of the fact and killed him with a battle-axe, the favourite weapon of the Irish soldier.⁵

Meanwhile, Dermot discovered that his son Énna, kept as a hostage by Ossory, had been blinded on news of his return. Naturally enraged, he sent his secretary Maurice Regan to Wales to hasten reinforcements.
Robert FitzStephen and Maurice FitzGerald eventually solved their financial problems with loans from Josce, a Jewish financier in Gloucester, and a significant force under Robert FitzStephen arrived in Bannow Bay, south Wexford, in 1169. FitzStephen was the uncle of the historian of the invasion, Gerald de Barri, better known as Gerald Cambrensis, whose brother Robert was the first of the Barrys in Ireland. They were joined the next day by Maurice de Prendergast, a Pembrokeshire Fleming who brought two ship-loads of men-at-arms, and most significantly, archers. They took Wexford town and MacMurrough granted it to FitzStephen and his half-brother Maurice FitzGerald.⁶

Once again the dance with O’Connor began, but this time, seeing the formidable Norman force behind MacMurrough, O’Connor decided to negotiate. The intermediary was the Wexford prelate Joseph Ua hÁeda.⁷ In the event, MacMurrough made another submission, and in return O’Connor allowed him the kingship of Leinster, on the condition that he send back his mercenaries once it had been secured. He even offered his daughter in marriage should he stick to the bargain, despite the fact that Dermot was already married – yet another instance of how women were used in politics. MacMurrough agreed, probably in bad faith, but fatefully, O’Connor took MacMurrough’s youngest son, Conchbhar, his grandson Domhnaill, and the son of his belovéd foster brother, as hostages.⁸

Dermot had regained his kingdom, but the Normans kept coming. Raymond Le Gros, the founder of the Redmond family in Ireland, arrived in May 1170 at Baginbun, Co Wexford. Then, at last, the main driving force of the invasion, and the man to whom MacMurrough had made the most significant promise, arrived in August 1170, with as many as 200 knights and a thousand troops. They took Waterford, and Strongbow married MacMurrough’s teenage daughter, Aoife, or Eva, in the city, and as they had agreed, became heir to Leinster.
Like FitzStephen and Maurice Fitzgerald, Strongbow had raised the money for this substantial expedition with Josce of Gloucester.⁹ Henry was furious. Josce had already been fined £5 by the sheriff of his county for having lent money to those who against the King’s prohibition went over to Ireland.¹⁰ The prohibition was odd, given Henry’s promise to Dermot.

It was only a matter of time before they took Dublin and alarmed O’Connor into another confrontation. He marched to Dublin and besieged them for two months before the Normans took the Irish by surprise and routed them. It is thought that O’Connor was bathing in the Liffey when the attack came.

Within months, practically the eastern half of Ireland was in Norman hands. Dermot was on the verge of supremacy, or so he must have thought, but one last tragedy awaited him. O’Connor had his hostages killed – Dermot’s son, grandson, and his foster brother O’Kelly’s son – and delivered to him. He left the field and retired to Ferns, and died a few months later in May 1171. He was 61.

Henry II had a superb spy network,¹¹ but in this instance it was probably superfluous. However he heard about it, he came to Ireland to curb his barons, particularly Strongbow, and received submission from the Irish kings and chiefs wherever his route took him. This wasn’t as significant as it seems; it was par for the course wherever a stronger king was present, be he Irish or foreign.

What was significant was the clash and mutual incomprehension of cultures. As we have seen with Rory O’Connor and Dermot MacMurrough, an Irish king conquered and then withdrew once he had submission and hostages to ensure the submission, plus whatever plunder, usually cattle, possibly slaves, they could bring with them. The Normans, on the other hand, consolidated their gains, largely by building castles, and later towns.

Rory O’Connor did not submit, but in 1175, he agreed the treaty of Windsor with Henry, wherein O’Connor was recognized as King of all Ireland except Leinster, Meath and the city and hinterland of Waterford. In return he was to collect a tribute of every tenth merchantable hide from slaughtered beasts, and to compel any Irish who had abandoned the annexed areas to return and pay tribute, or give their services in return for the use of lands. The mediator was MacMurrough’s brother-in-law, Archbishop Lawrence O’Toole.¹²

Within a few years, the Normans had broken the bargain. In despair, his own people against him, Rory retired to Cong Abbey in 1183¹³ and died in 1198¹⁴ O’Rourke was already dead, treacherously killed by the Norman baron de Lacey and one of his own kinsman during a parley. He was beheaded, his head raised over the entrance to the fort of Dublin, his body hung upside down nearby.¹⁵

Thus began the long involvement of the English crown in Ireland.

1. W.L. Warren, The Interpretation of Twelfth-century Irish History, Historical Studies VII, ed J.C. Beckett, London, Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1969, p9.
2. Nicholas Furlong, Diarmait, King of Leinster, 115/116
3. Richard Roche, The Norman Invasion of Ireland, pp100/101. Because his family castle in Pembrokeshire was built on a rock, they took the name de la Roche, from the French word for rock.
4. Furlong, Diarmait, King of Leinster, p121
5. Annals of Ulster, 1168; Annals of the Four Masters, 1168
6. Seán Duffy, The Concise History of Ireland, Dublin, Gill and Macmillan, 2000, p67
7. Furlong, Diarmait King of Leinster, p138.
8. ibid
9. The Jewish Enclyclopedia
10. L. Hyman, The Jews of Ireland, Irish University Press, Shannon, 1972, p 4
11. J.O Preswich, Millitary Intelligence under the Norman and Angevin Kings, in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy, eds Garnett & Hudson, Cambridge University Press, 1994
12. later St Lawrence O’Toole
13. Katherine Simms. Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland, p. 60
14. The Norman Invasion of Ireland. p 182
15. The Annals of Ulster; quoted in The Norman Invasion of Ireland, p196

This is a a family Bloomsday story which we’d like to share with the greater family and friends throughout the globe, but of course if you’re neither, you’re welcome to share our happy memories too. I should have published this several weeks ago, but maybe it’s appropriate that it appears on the day Dublin was designated a UNESCO City of Literature.

June 16 was also my aunt Kaa’s birthday. She died last November and is sorely missed. Her real name was Katherine Philomena, shortened to Kamena, and then to Kaa.

Some weeks before, my cousin Eamonn mentioned to me in an email that he and Kaa had always joked about going to Dublin for Bloomsday . I remembered that Kaa and I also always shared a joke about Bloomsday on her birthday. It was one of her many kindnesses that she was aware that I loved the work of James Joyce, and she was well and humorously aware that I remembered to ring her on her birthday only because of the Bloomsday celebration. Then Eamonn suggested that we celebrate Bloomsday in Dublin in memory of Kaa and her eldest son Michael thought it was a great idea and immediately said he would come.

We had all been frantically busy in the meantime, so the arrangements were very last minute, but the idea crystallised thus: Michael and Eamonn would come to my house at midday, with a photo of Kaa.

(Kaa’s daughter Alexis actually sent it by post and it arrived just in time) and we would have some lunch and then walk to several places in Dublin associated with Bloomsday, and read a few passages from Ulysses along the way.

We were met by someone who would rather remain anonymous in Jervis Park, and we took some photos with The Church and Mary Street, where Joyce set up a cinema around 1907, as background.

Our first stop was The Church, a former Protestant church where Wesley preached, Arthur Guinness was married and Sean O’Casey was baptised. It’s been very tastefully restored with many plaques and religious signs, and the organ, still as remarkable features. Our anonymous benefactor stood us a round of drinks and went back to work.

Then Eamonn spotted this above where I was sitting.

“This do in Remembrance of Me”.

It was an obvious photo.


Then, in brief, we went to the Joyce statue in North Earl Street, the cricket grounds in Trinity College where we read appropriate passages from Ulysses (and were caught in the act by Brendan Kennelly)
and Sweny’s Pharmacy (where Michael did the honours and bought lemon soap), all mentioned in Ulysses.

Then Aisling joined us in Lincoln Place, outside what was once Finn’s Hotel where Nora Barnacle worked when Joyce met her, and we went for cool drinks in The National Library, also associated with Ulysses.



After which we went to Stephen’s Green for final photos at Joyce’s statue there, and retired for a much-needed drink in Neary’s pub.


We then came back to my place, uploaded the photos and sent them to as many family members as we had email addresses for.

It was quite a day.

By the way, we’ve renamed Bloomsday KaaBloomsday, at least as far as our family is concerned!

The inaugural talk is The Responsibility of the Individual, by Professor Ivor Browne

These conversations are contemplative in nature and attempt to understand the dynamics behind the upheavals in our current culture. The format uses silence and reflection as a sympathetic cocktail for exploring an appropriate spiritual response to the dilemmas we collectively face.

The Taking Ownership series begins on 7th May, 2010 from 7.15pm – 9.15pm. Refreshments will be provided. Admission free. (The Living Room is a money-free zone!)

@Philip_Casey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc6ZY91kUTk