Monthly Archives: June 2013

Great Hunger Museum acquires “The Ragpickers”

I’ve written several posts about Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. The museum has just acquired a new painting, “The Ragpickers,” by Henry Allan.

ragpickers

 

 

 

 

 

Niamh O’Sullivan, the museum’s consultant curator and Professor Emeritus of Visual Culture at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, writes in a museum newsletter:

Ragpicking was a common occupation in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Ragpickers eked out a living by rummaging for scraps of cloth and paper and other discarded items to identify anything that could be recycled or sold (even dead cats and dogs could be skinned to make clothes). Ragpickers turned over what they salvaged to a master who would sell it, usually by weight; anything of value was to be returned to the owner or the authorities….Painters and writers of the Romantic period turned the ragpicker into a type of street philosopher who, living from day to day and unburdened by material things, understands human nature. Unobserved, he observes others.

Allan’s image dates to 1900. O’Sullivan suggests the scene “is consistent with the dunes of Ringsend, Dublin, seen from South Lotts,” which is on the south bank of the River Liffey at the eastern edge of the city, near the open sea. The name Ringsend is a corruption of the Irish “Rinn-abhann”, which means “the end point of the tide,” according to Wikipedia. The area went into decline about the time of Allan’s painting as shipping activity moved to other parts of Dublin and ports further south along the coast.

Arrogance and deceit exposed at Anglo Irish

The Irish government is scrambling to launch an investigation of the 2008 Anglo Irish Bank collapse after the Irish Independent uncovered damaging internal telephone recordings between two senior executives from the period.

The newspaper says the recordings reveal “a dual strategy of deception and scare tactics to the lure [the national government] into a financial trap that eventually cost billions and bankrupted the country.”

The arrogance and deceit of the two bankers is shocking to hear. The recordings are available on the Independent‘s website.

Anglo Irish eventually required a 30 billion Euro bailout from Irish taxpayers. One of the bank’s toxic assets is located near my home in Tampa, as detailed in my blog post for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Anglo Irish Bank held a defaulted $27 million note on Channelside Bay Plaza, below, a retail and entertainment complex in Tampa, Florida. TBBJ photo.

Channelside

Irish-American president and streetcar workers

The 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s June 1963 trip to Ireland is getting a lot of attention. Part of the commemoration has included bringing a flame lit from the eternal flame at Kennedy’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. to New Ross in County Wexford.

Flame

Image from ABC

Kennedy’s trip was a triumph for Ireland, for Irish-Americans and for Roman Catholics. Thirty-two years before his 1960 election, Irish-Catholic Democrat Al Smith was crushed by Herbert Hoover in his bid for the presidency. The nation was still too mired in its prejudice against Smith’s ethnicity and faith. (As it turned out, missing the 1929 stock market crash and start of the Great Depression might have saved Irish-American Catholics further hatred in the long run. It sure helped the Democrats.)

As Kennedy made his historic visit to Ireland in June 1963, a small group of Pittsburgh-area politicians and volunteers established the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum. They realized that street railways in Pittsburgh and other parts of the nation were fading from regular use as buses became the preferred public transit to serve far-flung, rapidly growing suburbs.

What does that have to with Kennedy?

Irish immigrants dominated the labor force of street railways in urban America from the time the systems were created in the late 19th century. They joined the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees, formed in 1892, to push for higher wages and better working conditions.

“The streetcar workforce and the union were composed entirely of men, many of whom were Irish,” says the National Streetcar Museum in Lowell, Mass.

The same was true in other Irish immigrant hubs such as nearby Boston (where Kennedy’s ancestors settled), New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh. My Kerry-born grandfather, his brother-in-law and three cousins were among many Irish immigrants employed by Pittsburgh Railways Co. as motormen and conductors.

Like cops, the Irish had a big advantage over other immigrants in obtaining these big city jobs, which required frequent public contact. They spoke the language. In both professions, these unionized, uniform-wearing jobs helped first-generation Irish immigrants build middle-class lives that provided even better opportunities for their children and grandchildren.

And that’s another important part of what JFK’s trip to Ireland symbolized in June 1963.

PRC

Early 20th century Pittsburgh Railways Co. streetcar workers.

DISCLOSURE: I am a member of the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum.

Irish road bowling comes to U.S. country lanes

Great story from the Wall Street Journal about Irish road bowling gaining popularity in the U.S.

Irish Road Bowling—a low-tech cross between golf and bowling—has been played in Ireland since the 1600s. Much more recently the sport has popped up around the U.S., with fledgling clubs in North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Iowa. …But the serious rivalries belong to clubs in New York, Boston and West Virginia. Top bowlers in the U.S. vie in tournaments for limited slots to compete in the All-Ireland championships each year.

The object of the sport is to hurl a 28-ounce iron or steel ball over a 1-mile to 2-mile course. The winner is the player who covers the distances in the fewest throws.

Road-Bowling-Ireland

Here are links to the Irish Road Bowling Association (Bol Chumann na hEireann) and West Virginia Irish Road Bowling.

I was surprised to learn that the cannonball rolled down the road is also called a “bullet.”

My north Kerry grandmother used to bake hard, roundish oatmeal raisin cookies that she called bullets. I always thought the self-depreciating nickname for her delicious creation referred to gun ammo. Now I believe she was recalling her youth, following the boys and the iron ball down the rural roads of Kilelton townland near Ballylongford.

Irish road bowling image by Martin Driscoll from Ten Pin Alley.

Obama in Northern Ireland for G8, addresses peace process

A lot of media coverage came rolling out of Northern Ireland as U.S. President Barack Obama and other leaders gathered for the G8 summit June 17-18. First Lady Michelle Obama and her two daughters also visited the Republic of Ireland.

Barack Obama

There were plenty of security concerns before the summit. Who could imagine such an international gathering in Northern Ireland in past decades? While the two-day event was a costly inconvenience to residents of nearby Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, there was no violence.

A bomb was found near the Lough Erne resort hosting the summit, but it turned out to be a remnant from a World War II mortar range.

Links to some of the best Ireland- and Northern Ireland-related stories follow below:

  • “Northern Ireland has languished out of the headlines and a gradual erosion of the peace process has taken place,” writes Irish Central founder Niall O’Dowd. “That is why the visit of President Obama is so vital.”
  • Michelle Obama, Bono and families lunch at Dalkey pub.
  • Significant progress has been made in the 15 years since the U.S.-brokered Good Friday Accords, including a Catholic-Protestant government and the disarmament of the IRA and outlawed Protestant groups responsible for most of the 3,700 death toll. But tearing down Belfast’s nearly 100 “peace lines” — barricades of brick, steel and barbed wire that divide neighborhoods, roads and even one Belfast playground — is still seen by many as too dangerous. Obama cited that playground in his speech, lauding an activist whose work led to the opening of a pedestrian gate in the fence.
  • Obama: “If there’s one thing on which Democrats and Republicans in America wholeheartedly agree, it’s that we strongly support a peaceful and prosperous Northern Ireland. … We will keep working closely with leaders in Stormont, and Dublin, and Westminster to support your political progress.”
  • The Irish Times reports U.S. President Barack Obama to press for renewed efforts to end community division in the north.
  • Great headline on security-related story from the BBC: Lock down on Lough Erne.

Authors interview: The Secret Gospel of Ireland

About a year ago brothers James Behan and Leo Behan published The Secret Gospel of Ireland: The Untold Story of How Science and Democracy Descended From a Remarkable Form of Christianity That Developed in Ancient Ireland.

In the process of converting from paganism to Christianity, the ancient Irish developed a remarkable approach to the Christian faith that would one day make science, democracy, and our modern world possible. …With their powerful brand of “Irish Christianity,” the monks of Ireland transformed Europe and produced the key to unlocking the awesome potential of the Christian faith.

The Behan brothers provided my Irish-American blog with two complimentary copies of the book, which is available at Amazon.com and other outlets. I found the book well-conceived and enjoyable to read. I shared both copies with two priest friends of mine who vouched for the theological presentation.

My short email interview with the Behan Brothers follows below the book image.

secretgospelireland01

MH: What was the most challenging part of the research and/or writing?

BB: Definitely deciding what to leave out. In writing a narrative history that spans more than a thousand years, we were confronted with a mountain of information, most of which wasn’t relevant to the story. Moreover, we realized that most events don’t lead to significant change. So we were looking for the ideas that moved civilization along toward our modern world, which required a great deal of discernment. In fact, when we started, we weren’t sure how Ireland fit into the story or where it would end. We truly followed a trail of ideas that generation after generation built upon and changed. What we ended up with was a narrative history that tells the story of how science and democracy developed out of Christianity and Ireland’s pivotal role in that process.

Continue reading →

Kenny echoes Kennedy

“I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in a September 1960 campaign speech to a group of Protestant ministers.

Kennedy

“I am proud to stand here as a public representative, as a Taoiseach who happens to be a Catholic, but not a Catholic Taoiseach.”

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny in a June 12 speech to the Dáil, or parliament, regarding his sponsorship of a proposed law changing Ireland’s abortion law.

Kenny

Kerrygold, Cashel Blue and a cheesy love note from Texas

My lovely wife, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Angie Drobnic Holan, is the unofficial editor and webmaster of my Irish-American blog.

She is also the baker of delicious third-generation Irish-American soda bread, perfecting the recipe brought here in 1912 by my Kerry-born grandmother and adapted to U.S. kitchens and ingredients by my Pittsburgh-born mother. Angie and I love to slather Kerrygold butter on fresh, warm slices.

KerryGold

Today while visiting an Austin grocery story another Kerrygold product caught Angie’s eye: Cashel Blue Farmhouse Cheese. We both love cheese. She snapped a picture with her iPhone and emailed it to me as a love note, insisting that I write a blog post.

Done, my love, with an additional image from the company website. Safe home soon.

kerrygold2

Pro-life supporters rally in Dublin, Washington, D.C.

Pro-life campaigners rallied over the weekend in Dublin and Washington, D.C. against the Irish government’s proposal to change the nation’s restrictive abortion law.

Estimates of the Merrion Square crowd range from at least 20,000 to more than 40,000. About two-dozen people gathered outside the Irish embassy in the U.S. capitol.

In Ireland, spokesperson Caroline Simmons of the Pro Life Campaign said:

The turnout today shows that the middle ground of Irish opinion is increasingly concerned about the Government’s abortion legislation. There are people here who never attended a pro-life event before. The message is getting through that this legislation is not restrictive or about saving women and children’s lives, despite the repeated claims by the Taoiseach and his Government.

picture of crowd vigil(1)

June 9 rally in Dublin. Image from Pro Life Campaign

At the core of the debate is when to allow exceptions to Ireland’s restrictive abortion law to save the life of the mother. The issue flared last fall when a woman having a miscarriage died for lack of the procedure. The government’s bill is perhaps most controversial because it allows for abortion when the woman says she is suicidal.

The government’s vote is expected later this month or July. Prime minister Enda Kenny has said he will not allow ministers of his Fine Gael government a “free vote” outside the party voting block, putting him further at odds with Catholic church leaders.

International investors buying Dublin commercial real estate

Reporting about commercial real estate is a big part of my day job as a staff writer at the Tampa Bay Business Journal. So this Irish Times story about international investors snapping up commercial property in Dublin caught my eye.

The story says investors from Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, China, Russia,  Australia and the United States are buying office buildings, apartments and other commercial property. (Several are featured in an accompanying photo slide show.)

“What’s interesting is that this is really the first time that there has been serious international buying in the Irish market,” says Jones Lang Lasalle managing director John Moran. “The Irish market traditionally was left to the Irish institutions, developers or property companies, and it is probably the first time we’ve seen a real significant sea change of ownership in the market.”

California-based Kennedy Wilson is among the U.S. investors. Its first purchase, made a year ago, was the 210-unit Alliance Building, an apartment in the Gasworks estate.