What does a penguin wear on her head?
An ice cap!
Ah, 4th class humor ? rocks our world these days. As Mary may have told you in an earlier letter, we get loads of 4th class (we would call it 5th grade in the US but 4th class works better here) humor from the wrappers of our children’s favorite cookie, the Penguin Bar. They recently came out with a new set of jokes and new penguin art on the wrappers of the cookies - high culture for us. Speaking of culture, we are thinking seriously about buying a TV set. We don’t have one yet but feel that now that the Olympics are over, it may be time to break down and get one. That way we can catch the World Series and cheer the Sailors on to victory. That way also we can stop reading so many books. Mary has read 16 full sized novels since we arrived. I have read about ten but six of them were Garth’s fifth grade books. (I liked "Sing Down the Moon", "The Clay Marble", and "The Wind in the Door" but must have missed something in "Trouble River".)
Back to the topic of culture ? we are beginning to meet with some success in trying to feel that we are missing out by not having a TV. Apparently it is part of the culture here to tempt fate and the authorities by flaunting the requirement of a TV license. (Mary just interrupted me to tell me that she has finished another book, "Kathleen." She is sick with some sort of upper respiratory (?) ailment and is on a second course of antibiotics and under threat of blood tests come Monday but I will ask her for her review anyway. Hold on.
She says that "Kathleen," by Brian Behan, brother to the rather famous Irish writer, Brendan Behan is "not all that hot."
15 October 2000
It’s me. Taking a break from reading. It is 8:40 Sunday evening, now. We are anxiously awaiting the beginning of what we hope won’t be the Mariner’s last outing of the year. They were doing just fine when their Ireland fans could listen, but this one o’clock in the morning business is for the birds! At least this evening we have a sensible 9 o’clock start. Anyway, on to my week.
Monday I started an art class. Plassey Partners, the faculty spouses club, has a small art contingent that meets Monday mornings. The group was full, but seeing how I would only be here for a few months, they willingly allowed me to join. I was a bit apprehensive about going. These were artists. What if they laughed at me???!!! However, I told myself when I bought the supplies that if I didn’t like it, the bruscar (Irish for trash bin) was readily available. So why not! And they are a wonderful group! They are so supportive and encouraging. I really had a delightful time. I got about half of a painting done. I’ll bring it back tomorrow and hopefully finish it, and at least at this point, the bruscar is looking like a long-shot!
I forget if I have mentioned this part of my experience here before or not. If I have, please bear with me. I find this short stay so liberating. I can try anything I want. I can introduce myself to anyone without fear of rejection. I figure, by the time people start talking about me, hey, I’ll be 5000 miles away in Seattle! It’s a great way to live.
Back to my week. Monday evening I went to the first meeting of the newly appointed parent board. We spend an arduously long time appointing a slate of officers. Then on to new business. So the pushy broad from Seattle pipes in. "You know, it’s really hard to meet people here. If my older kids want to have friends over, I send them to school with slips of paper, some with our name and phone number on it, and some blank that Emm’s and Garth’s friends can write their numbers on them so we can set up play dates. That doesn’t work, however, with a 4 year old. When Melinda gets out of school, there are 140 junior and senior infants getting out at the same time and maybe their mom’s are picking them up, or maybe it’s a child-minder, and it’s enough just to be able to find Melinda in the melee, much less trying to figure out which little girl it is that Melinda wants to invite over, and who is it that’s picking her up. Look, I brought this handy-dandy school directory that has the names of all the children in all the classes at or Seattle school, and their parent’s names and their phone numbers. You want to call to invite a classmate over, you’ve got all the information you need. It’s great." Cathy Izzo, another parent from Oklahoma backed me totally, her previous school having done the same thing. "Yeah, it’s great." They looked at us like we had asked for their social security (or the Irish equivalent thereof) and bank account numbers. "You mean all the kids’ names are in it? And their phone numbers?" "Yeah, that’s the whole point. It’s a school directory." Needless to say, it looks like a school directory won’t soon be a part of Monaleen school culture. So it’s back to square one on the Melinda play-date front.
Tuesday, I left Birdhill Station at 7:31 a.m. bound for Dublin. [Mary is too modest to mention it, but I will record here that she was able to leave the Birdhill train station because Melinda got up at 5:45 a.m., made a strong cup of coffee, and drove her through the darkness. She dropped Mary off, turned around and made it back to Limerick in plenty of time to wake us up in time for another day. What would we do without her?] It was a lovely morning. Clear and so green. We followed a river for a bit and just the other side of the river I saw the most beautiful stone cottage. The countryside was beautiful. I saw countless sheep and cattle and even 3 rabbits (hares?) fleeing from the train. We traveled to Ballybrophy where upon we switched trains and proceeded to Dublin, arriving at 10:10. I took the bus (a double decker) to the downtown area and walked to the National Library to begin my research on James Ahern, cow thief and great great grandfather.
I did not have much information on James, merely a year of birth (1831), a father’s name, John, a mother’s name, Mary Troyrey, and the facts that he was sent on a convict ship to Australia and was a naturalized US citizen in New Jersey in 1858. Before I left, I had found 2 James Aherns convicted of cow stealing in 1849, one in Limerick, one in Cork. The age would have fit and timing would have allowed him to serve a sentence of 7 years transport and make it to the US. So I went to the genealogy room where you begin this research process and met with the librarian. First, she thought Troyrey was a made-up name. She had never heard of it and we got on the computer and could find Troy’s but no Troyxxx’s. She thought perhaps it was Tangney. We found Ahern’s and Tangney’s living in Co. Limerick in the 1830’s and she located 2 parishes, Newcastle West and Monagay, which had those names and of which the library had microfilmed parish records. However, it seems that there are 3 diocese in the country in which the Bishop has required that he give permission for people to examine the church registers. So it was off to find a phone to call the Bishop’s secretary and request such permission. It was readily granted so I was on my way upstairs to the reading room to look at microfilm (by the way, that’s a 4 syllable word here).
As soon as I entered the reading room there was an alarm. I thought, what did I set off now? However it was merely the fire alarm, so after 10 minutes in the cold Dublin sunshine, I was back upstairs. The reading room in the library is beautiful. It is a circular, domed room with high windows and a beautiful frieze of white cherubs on a blue background. The reading material I accessed was dark-gray scribble on a light-gray background. An examination of 2 parishes worth of records yielded nothing I could use. Perhaps I had the wrong parish. Perhaps the records were there and I missed them. Perhaps I had the wrong birth year (could it have been 1830?). Who knows? I also requested a copy of the newspaper for the day of Limerick James’ trial. Wouldn’t you know it was out being microfilmed.
Well, I still had the national archives. Perhaps they would have additional records on the trial or the convict records. So I walked 20 minutes across town, signed in, got a photo id card (I can use the archives anytime I want for the next 3 years!) only to find that I had as much information as they did ? a trial date, crime and sentence. Well, they also had the name of the magistrate who heard the case but the court records are long gone. So I struck out at the archives, as well.
In order to salvage the day, I headed over to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. It was beautiful, as was the Long Room of the Trinity College Library. But with all the walking and carting the lap-top computer all over Dublin I was not feeling like much more exploring at that point so I took the bus back and waited for my return train. I met a very nice girl as we approached Ballybrophy on the return train and we visited all the way back to Birdhill. She went to Monaleen School and is on her way to Thailand and Australia for 15 months. She spent most of last year in Boston so it was fun to compare countries.
By the time I got home, I was not feeling at all well and had a 101 degree fever. So I spent several days in bed, but am on more antibiotics and hopefully on the mend.
Yesterday was beautiful. Clear and sunny but I spent it reading inside (and a poor book to boot! Whine, whine). Today however, I was a bit better so we drove down to Kerry to the Dingle Penninsula. There are 2 ways you can get from Tralee to Dingle, through Anascaul or over the Connor Pass. For my birthday, my friend Amy gave me the Lonely Planet Guide to Ireland and it had the following assessment regarding the Anascaul route: "For drivers, this route has little to recommend it other than being faster than the Connor Pass Route." Well that settled that dilemma, Connor Pass it was! And what a beautiful drive. Connor Pass is the highest pass in Ireland. As we approached, a storm was beginning to blow in off the Atlantic and there was much fog and some rain, but it made the glacier carved area that much more enchanting. It reminded me a bit of the Going to the Sun Highway in Glacier National Park. Only the sheep were domestic, not Rocky Mountain Big Horns. [And spray painted! The wooly beasts often sport big swaths of day-glow green, red or blue paint across their backs. This breaks the pastoral spell for me but I guess it makes the shepherd’s job easier.] Crossing the pass, you look down over Dingle Harbor. That view is perhaps a bit better on a fairer weather day, but we drove through Dingle and headed to the Gallarus Oratory. No one is quite sure when it was built but likely sometime between 900 and 1300 years ago. How would you date a thing like that? [This is what the friends of my old girl friends used to ask.] It is shaped like an upturned boat and is a dry-stone corbelled structure that is remarkably still dry inside even after a millennium of Atlantic Storms.
The Dingle Peninsula is one of a few areas in Ireland which is a Gaeltacht or genuine Irish-speaking area. That also means reading. As in the signs. I was attempting to navigate after we left the Oratory. The storm was blowing and we were torn as to whether to go out to the far coast or start to head back. We finally decided to just head back toward Dingle. But which way is Dingle? We came to a T-junction. 15 km to the right was Ceann Sleibhe. I knew that was Slea Head. 20 km to the right was Dun Chaoin. I finally found that on the map Dunquin. But how can Slea Head come first? Finally I realized we were headed south, not north. But which way is Dingle? And what the heck is An Daingean 1 km to the left? Our map did not list towns in Irish, only English. But finally I looked in the atlas we had for Ireland, and found that An Daingean is indeed, Dingle. So we were on our way.
We had done Connor Pass, and as it was getting late we headed toward Anascual. Amy’s book, did however, have a bit more on the subject of Anascual. It seems that the main reason to pause here is to visit the South Pole Inn. The South Pole in the west of Ireland, you ask. Anascaul was the hometown to one Tom Crean, one of Ernest Shackleton’s crew on the ill-fated Endurance. After he was done with the ice and snow, Mr. Crean moved back home and opened a small inn. Though he died in 1938, the inn still stands and has many photos and clippings about the journey of the Endurance. We even bought another recently released book, "An Unsung Hero: Tom Crean ? Anarctic Survivor." So we had a pot of tea with the ghost of Tom Crean (but, surprisingly, no Penguin cookies) and headed home. Look forward to more Antarctic visions in future e-mails!.
That’s it for this missive. Enjoy your week and root hard for my team.
Slan,
Mer and Mark
