The Riot Will Be Televised

Video of the Feb. 25 riot in Dublin that was provoked by pro-loyalist Orangeman parade.

England Out of Dogtown

They come every year as surely as Cromwell's army invaded Ireland, loud, boisterous, obnoxious foreigners, all. Tis the price of living in St. Louis' designated Irish-American neighborhood. Mind you, it's far from an exclusive ethnic ghetto. Growing up nearby, in a area that somehow has been annexed into the larger Dogtown community in recent years, there was a smattering of Greeks, Italians and Jews. The Burkes and Hogans and Cardinales and Kasinases all lived amongst each other. And in St. Louis, it's impossible to get away from the German immigant population. They would call it "diversity" today, although nary a black face was to be found in my elementary school. Segregation aside, second and third generation American families of European descent in St. Louis were more interested in assimilating back then, finding common bonds that united them. Now the trend is to single out what makes us different. But, of course, on St. Patrick's Day everybody is Irish. So they begin arriving from the hinterlands by the droves by mid-morning, the suburban hordes, who wouldn't live in Dogtown if they were paid to do so and have no idea where the island of Ireland is even located let alone what its history and people are all about. They clog the streets with traffic, get drunk, make noise and then, thankfully, leave. It's only one day not 600 years, but it's more than enough for any native to tolerate.

Follow the Money, Lads

Earlier this year, the Irish Times estimated that the Irish government had received €37 mil from the US Defence Department in 2005 for permitting more than 300,000 US troops to pass through Shannon Airport. This amount doesn't include, of course, the black budget for the CIA's so-called "extraordinary rendition" flights, which use the same airfield as a pitstop. And there are likely other Irish beneficiaries feeding at the Pentagon's trough, including fuel distributors, a particularly dodgy sector of the Irish business sector. But nobody seems to be following the money in Ireland. Instead, the anti-war movement there is directing all its attention abroad to the ultimate "Evil Empire" -- the United States. All well and good, lads, but, in so doing, the Irish movement is ignoring one of activism's primary rules: Think Global, Act Local.

Above: Irish anti-war organizer Tim Hourigan, who managed to get a brief sound bite on the CBS Evening News on March 16. Hourigan was protesting in front of the Irish Aviation Authority in Dublin on Feb. 6 when this picture was taken.

Burned

I'm calling it the St. Patrick's Day Massacre, although that might be overstating it a wee bit. The above shot was taken on Feb. 16 at about 3:30 p.m. at a park next to the new Shannon Bridge in Limerick City, County Limerick, the Republic of Ireland. I was supposed to meet Irish anti-war activist and plane spotter Tim Hourigan at that location and time so I could go plane spotting with him. But he didn't show up. In subsequent emails, he said that I was the one who didn't arrive on time and that, after waiting 45 minutes for me in the rain, he departed. Maybe we got our times mixed up. It did rain that day. But it wasn't raining obviously when I took this picture.

As a result of the missed rendezvous, I stayed the next four days in County Clare instead of heading back to County Cork, where I had a free place to stay. This cost me a few extra bob and generally messed up my last few days in Ireland. I made the best of it, though, by visiting the Cliffs of Moher and the Burren, which are both spectacularly beautiful.

The snafu was fading from my memory already, when I received an email earlier today from another Irish anti-war activist, who graciously hosted me while I was in Ireland. She was excited that Hourigan and the Shannon (Airport) plane spotters had managed to get a spot on the CBS Evening News. The segment highlighted the plane spotters' efforts to expose the use of the airport by CIA "extraordinary rendition" flights. This, of course, is why I was supposed to meet with Hourigan last month.

The timing of the activists' media coup with CBS was perfect. Ireland's leader, Bertie Ahern, is at the White House today as part of his annual St. Patrick's Day visit. By coordinating the spot to immediately precede his visit, the activists have put more public pressure on Ahern to address the issue of the CIA's use of Shannon Airport. Obviously, my interest in covering the issue for a fledgling publication -- Ireland From Below -- was eclipsed by the activists' strategy of getting CBS to cover the issue.

Bertie Kisses Bush's Ass, Again

It's become a tradition for the Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) to visit the White House on St. Patrick's Day. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who is flying to Washington to meet with US President George W. Bush Friday, is no exception. But the annual kowtowing is seen by republican-minded Irishmen with contempt. They view it as an ass-kissing ritual that shows the Irish government's subserviance to Washington. If anything, Bush should fly to Dublin instead in their minds. But I'm sure he wouldn't be greeted with open arms there, either. The word republican has a completely different meaning in Ireland, of course, and even Texas Repbublicans probably don't want Bush back nowadays.

A West Cork State of Mind

The Skellig Islands off the southwest coast of Ireland, once home to a noted 6th-Century monastery, is the furthest spit of Irish soil from Dublin. On the mainland, however, that distinction may very well be the tip of the Beara peninsula not far from Garinish, the townland where I stayed for part of my five-week journey.

In Garinish, as in other areas of West Cork, there are more sheep than people, and both the livestock and their keepers seem quite content with the ratio. Part of the local economy, of course, is dependent on the blow-ins, tourists, who come from Cork City or Dub or the four corners of the world, and therein lies the rub. They are inevitably changing the charcater of the place. Moreover, the natives often don't take too kindly to the absentee landlords who have been building "holiday homes" here of late, not to put roofs over their heads but as a tax shelters.

On the other hand, many of those who live in West Cork come from elsewhere, captivated by the stark, unbridled beauty of a landscape that quickly finds a way into their marrow. This is land's end: a place to which saints and travellers, artists and rebels have gravitated longer than anyone can remember; before the Sheahy, Caha and Slieve Mikish Mountains had names or their peaks -- Sugarloaf, Hungry Hill and Knockgour, Knockoura -- straddled a liguistic divide. Here the weather changes and time stands still, if only for a moment, as life laps against age-old mysteries like the tides meet the shore.

So be it destiny or coincidence, the gent on the cover of the decade-old Irish travel guide I lugged from America just happens to be posing in front of O'Neill's pub in Allihies. When my host in nearby Garinish spied the book on his dining room table, he laughed. The man on the cover, he said, is not an Irishman at all, but a mad English artist who has lived on the peninsula for the last 15 or 20 years. No more than a few hundred people live in Allihies, nonetheless, the Irish musicians who played at that same pub are friends of St. Louis musicians whom I also know. John Prine, the American singer and songwriter, drank here, as well, and not too far from Allihies, film director Neil Jordan keeps a holiday home.

No chamber of commerce is promoting the tourism trade. There are no golf courses, no grand hotels, no theme parks, no beaches worth mentioning. The roads are dangerously narrow, often hemmed by stone walls, and they wind like corkscrews through the mountains. In winter, there are few tourists and rain can fall for days on end. The natives and would-be natives like it this way. They don't want to make the Beara peninsula more accessible. The eccentric poet, who lives down the road a piece, may still traipse into O'Neill's with his retinue of bedazzled blow-ins, but it's more the exception than the rule. During this time of year, the owner of the Lighthouse pub, which is next to O'Neill's, still stokes his fireplace with blocks of turf. Ollie, the village idiot savant, still rolls his meager cigarettes as he babbles to anyone who will listen, his words mostly unintelligable even for those who speak the native dialect. Through a translator, however, Ollie's gibberish can be strikingly insightful. After railing against the government, he summed up his rant by declaring: "The only freedom is found inside a man."

There's nothing really worth seeing on the Beara peninsula unless you're ready to see it. And there are those who will tell you that it's a waste of time to venture any further south than, say, Killarney. A film director I met in Allihies, himself a blow-in from Dublin, likes to say that this is the "arse end of the island." Then again, the first words of advice that my Irish friend Robert Allen told me upon arrival was, "Don't believe anything an Irishman tells you."

The Fields of Athenry

I remember playing along with this song at many Irish-American jam sessions held in a cramped kitchen in Maplewood, Mo. more than 20 years ago. Of course, until last month I didn't have a clue about what the song was about or from whence it came.

Back then I thought it was a traditional ballad. I should have known better because traditional Irish ballads are sung unaccompanied. Since the mid-1970s modern songwriter Pete St. John has laid claim to the words and music. Irish troubadour Paddy Reilly recorded the most well-known pop version, which has been covered by various artists ever since, including more than one punk rock band. The Fields of Athenry has also been filched by sport fans as a theme song.

Lost in the translation of the many tortured renditions is the tune's poignant yet rebellious message. Athenry is a small town in County Galway. Michael, the character in the song, has been put aboard a prison ship bound for Bounty Bay, the location of a 19th-Century British prison colony in Australia. His crime: stealing "Trevelyan's" corn to save his family from starvation due to the Irish potato famine of the 1840s.

Sir Charles Edward Trevalyan oversaw the flawed British response to the famine that resulted in the death of nearly one million people. Known as the "Great Hunger" in Ireland, the potato famine was caused by a fungus, but it was exacerbated by the British policy of laissez faire economics and by a belief in the Malthusian theory, which promulgated the idea that natural disasters such as the potato blight were a devine remedy for overpopulation. In this way, Britain rationalized the famine, while continuing to export Irish grain on the world market.

Abandoned stone farm houses such as the one pictured above are still a common sight in rural Ireland today. During my visit, fisherman and farmer Michael "Mitey" McNally told me that the reason the windows are so small in these deserted cottages is because the British taxed Irish farmers more if their houses had bigger windows.


The Fields of Anthenry

By the lonely prison wall, I heard a young girl calling,
Michael, they have taken you away.
For you stole Trevelyan's corn,
So the young might see the morn,
Now the prison ship lies waiting in the bay.

Low lie the fields of Athenry,
Where once we watched the small free birds fly.
Our love was on the wing,
We had dreams and songs to sing,
It's so lonely 'round the fields of Athenry.
By the lonely prison wall, I heard a young man calling,
Nothing matters, Mary, when you're free.
'gainst the famine and the Crown
I rebelled, they cut me down.
Now you must raise our child with dignity.

By the lonely harbour wall, she watched the last star falling,
As the prison ship sailed out against the sky,
For she'll live and hope and pray
For her love in Botany Bay.
It's so lonely around the fields of Athenry.

Allihies, Saturday Night

by Noel Shine and Mary Greene

The midnight revelers gathered at O'Neill's pub in Allihies had been "drowning the shamrock" for hours, when I snapped this shot of Noel Shine and Mary Greene, who were charged with entertaining the boisterous crowd Feb. 11. Talking to them during a brief break, I discovered the couple had played McGurk's pub in St. Louis about 10 years ago and knew several local musicians with whom I, too, am acquainted.

On this night, a group of young French co-eds joined the locals in the craic, dancing to Shine and Greene's country and rock covers. One of the women was ostenibly researching the similarities between traditional Norman cultures of the north of France and West Cork on a Saturday night.

Viva la difference!

Greene bought the old Martin guitar she is playing from St. Louis fiddler Marc Rennard.

500 Guarda for 9 Anti-War Protestors

Irish Times, March 3:

The security clampdown for US President George W Bush’s stopover at Shannon Airport in the early hours of yesterday morning (March 2) was in stark contrast with the garda presence at the Love Ulster march which sparked vicious riots in Dublin.

Overall, some 500 gardaí, army and airport personnel were on alert when Air Force One landed at Shannon en route to America from a state visit to India and Pakistan to generate support for the dubious ‘war on terrorism’. ...

At Shannon, only nine anti-war campaigners were on hand when the plane landed just after 2.30am. Kept outside the perimeter fence, they went unnoticed by Mr Bush who did not disembark during the 80-minute refuelling stop. Demonstrators see the use of Shannon for US troop movements as facilitating the war in Iraq where over 100,000 civilians, half of them children, have died. Despite White House denials, they also believe dozens of prisoners have passed through the airport on so-called ‘extraordinary rendition’ of CIA suspects for torture. ...

My Native Guide

After driving in a circle between the villages of Inchigeelagh and Ballinageary looking for a hostel, I finally stopped in the Rose Briar pub to ask for directions. There I found 70-year-old Ted Vaughn, an Inchigeelagh native, seated next to the hearth with a pint of stout, his fifth of the day.

Having known the previous owner of the property on which the hostel is now located, Ted volunteered to personally guide me to my destination, but not before we drank another pint of the black stuff and then walked across the road so I could buy a few provisions. While I browsed the store aisles, Ted bought a pack of cigarettes and flirted with the shop clerk.

On the way to the hostel, he told me stories of how, as a younger man, he had attended all-night drinking sessions at the place, when it was owned by a friend of his, Tim McCarthy, a farmer. McCarthy, said Ted, had eventually died from imbibing too much poteen -- Irish moonshine. Laughing, he added that one of the renovated accomadations at the old farmstead used to house pigs.

Ted, recently released from the hospital, has throat cancer, but so far refuses to foresake smoking or drinking, although he says he indulges far less in both habits nowadays.

When I asked if I could take his picture, he opened the door to the village hardware store and posed for this shot. As he did so, he told me another tale about the hardware store owner, who having no money to invest in property after World War II, ingeniously built his store by placing planks over a creekbed and then constructing the building. Nobody it seems owned the space over the creek.

The Lay of the Land

Bogs unlike swamps or marshes are not necessarily limited to the lowground. Above the conifers in the Sheahy Mountains of County Cork, the wetland rises and falls, each false summit beckoning a climber higher, the sky growing nearer with every step.

Steep Airfare for the Little Bollix

Security for US President George W Bush's brief stop at Shannon Airport in County Clare was estimated to have cost Irish taxpayers 300,000 euros by the Irish press, or 200,000 quid, in the North. If Bush wants to save American and Irish citizens a few bob, he should consider flying Aer Lingus the next time he pops across the pond. Irish anti-war activists used Bush's pit stop to again call for banning US military and intelligence flights from using Shannon as a refueling base in the so-called "War on Terror."

Belfast Telegraph March 1:

A £200,000 security operation was in place overnight at Shannon Airport as nothing was being left to chance ahead of the anticipated stopover of US President George Bush.

Up to 500 gardai, army personnel and airport police were involved in what was the biggest security operation at the airport since President Bush's brief visit to Ireland for an EU-US summit in June 2004. ...

The Great Hunger

This famine pot on display in the village of Inchigeelah, County Cork, is a reminder of the Great Hunger, as it is called in Ireland. The potato famine of 1845 to 1848 is estimated to have killed between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people. It also resulted in the Irish diaspora in which approximately 2,000,000 Irish were forced to immigrate abroad, including the United States and Canada. The famine was the result of a potato fungus, but was greatly exacerbated by the devastating and repressive economic policies of Ireland's then-colonial ruler Great Britain.

Famine pots such as this were used to cook a communal soup to feed the hungry. This one served the Balingeary parish of Uibh Laoire south of Inchigeelah.