Monthly Archives: September 2012

University to open “Great Hunger” museum

Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., is opening the largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials related to the Irish famine of the mid-19th century.

“This is the only museum anywhere in the world dedicated to Irish art on the Great Hunger,” University President John Lahey told the Hartford Currant. “There is nothing like this in Ireland. The educational piece is that this was an avoidable tragedy.”

The 4,750-square-foot “Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum,” opens to the public Oct. 11.

Here’s the museum’s website.

Ghost estates

The unfinished and vacant housing developments from Ireland’s property boom-turned-bust are called “ghost estates.”

There are more than 2,000 of these forlorn neighborhoods spread across the country. Here’s a New York Times story about one in Dublin. Here’s a government paper about the problem in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland.

We saw a few of these ghost estates during our June visit to Ireland. Nobody seemed to know what’s going to happen to these properties, though it’s a safe guess that many will end up being bulldozed.

If so, and given enough time, the land will re-green itself. But will the lessons of greed be remembered?

Her emigration, 100 years ago

One hundred years ago, in mid-September 1912, Honorah Ware boarded the passenger ship S.S. Baltic at Queenstown, Ireland. The 20-year-old farm girl from rural Kilelton townland in northwest Kerry was bound for the American city of Pittsburgh.

Her journey began with a seven-mile trip to the railway station at Listowel. She probably was joined by an 18-year-old girl from nearby Ballylongford who also was bound for relatives in Pittsburgh. The 65-mile trip to Queenstown, now called Cobh, included stops in Tralee, Killarney, Mallow and Cork city.

The young women likely spent a night or two in a boarding house before taking a lighter out to the Baltic anchored in the harbor. Remember, this was five months after the Titanic sank in the icy waters of the north Atlantic. Imagine what must have going through their minds.

The crossing took eight days. Nora and the other passengers were processed at Ellis Island on Sept. 21, 1912. From there she took a 300-mile train trip to Pittsburgh.

Like many young Irish women of the period, Nora spent her early years in America working as a household servant, or domestic. She married a Kerry man in 1924, at age 33, and they had six children, including my mother. In 1959, I became the seventh of Nora’s 12 grandchildren.

Nora died in 1983, shortly after her 93rd birthday. She never lost her Kerry brogue, but she never got back to Ireland, either. I have had the pleasure of walking the north Kerry headlands and Shannon estuary of her birthplace.

At this centennial of her emigration, I honor her memory. God love her.

Just wanted to post a pretty picture. This is from Feb. 2009 trip to North Kerry.

Modern eviction drama in Co. Kerry

The story reads like something out of 19th century Ireland. A farmer is being evicted from his land. His rural neighbors rally to his side.

But this drama is playing out in modern day County Kerry.  The Bank of Scotland is in the role of the villain instead of an English landlord and his ruthless agent.

Here’s coverage from the Kerryman newspaper. Here’s an interesting blog post from Maggie Land Blanck with lots of historical background about 19th century evictions, mostly in County Mayo. Maggie’s great collection of artist renderings and even a few photos of evictions in rural Ireland is worth the click over to her site.

Court battle over Troubles stories

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to settle a legal dispute over the release of the tape recorded interviews of people involved in violence during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The case involves the governments of the United States and United Kingdom, as well as Boston University, and the perpetrators and surviving family of a 1972 IRA killing.

Here’s a quick summary of the details from the Boston Globe. Here’s a video report from the PBS NewsHour.

There is some irony here. The case has been working its way through the courts at the same time Ireland’s Bureau of Military History has made available online more than 1,700 witness statements from the revolutionary period 1913-1921, as we detailed two posts below.

Were there any legal attempts to have those statements released to prosecute events that had happened decades earlier? Is there a secondary issue of considering these matters as crimes or as war-related?

I certainly understand the surviving family members desire for justice. And as a journalist I have frequently argued for the release of any material that sheds light on public events. But I also understand the BU researchers’ desire to keep their word to the people who came forward to give statements, just as I would want to protect a source. I also have some sympathy for the witnesses who shared their stories in the belief their remarks were being kept secret until after their deaths.

It’s an interesting and thorny case.