Week ending 26th May 2009 www.tourmakeady.com
I can’t wait to see the Bad Bank. It’s pure curiosity on my part. I just can’t imagine what it will look like. Who will they get to design it? Will it have a big black hole instead of a vault in which to stash the debts and the negative equity? Will they get convicted Bank robbers with white collars to staff it? Will the Bank with no money come to rival the pub with no beer in song and story? Will it be the baddest Bank in the whole damn town?
I don’t quite understand why they are going to call the group to be set up to run the bad Bank ‘NAMA.’ Why not NOMO – no money? Right now I reckon that every Bank robber from Ned Kelly to Jesse James are turning in their graves, green with envy that they were not around to see the Bad Bank. They would probably ask for a reward themselves to rob it, to steal debts instead of money, just to get the red writing off the books. That would make them even bigger heroes than they already are.
If the IRA really wants to prove that the war is over and that they are ‘going away, you know’ I suggest that they pull off the biggest job in their history, a job that will put the Northern Bank robbery (which they had nothing to do with, of course) into the half-penny place. Put on the balaclavas one more time. The door of the Bad Bank will be discretely left open. Security services will be looking the other way to allow you rob billions of debts to be blown sky high with the last of the semtex. With one great leap our ‘good’ Banks will be free. Did someone coin a phrase onetime – ‘an Irish solution to an Irish problem?’
The ‘Last Of The Semtex’ sounds like a good title for a movie, to rival ‘The Last Of The Mohicans.’ I might even write the script in return for a pad in one of the ghost-suburbs that sit unsold at the edge of most of our towns. The more I think about it, the more I realise that we are getting closer to the ‘Old West’ every day. We have the ghost towns, the cowboys, the Banks ripe for robbing. We even have the stories of the gold-rush to remind us of tiger times. All we need is a good sheriff to clean things up.
To continue the ‘Western’ theme, what we need now is the sound of the trumpets to herald the arrival of the cavalry from over the hill. There are plenty of people out on the election canvass blowing their own trumpets but nobody seems to see any of them as the real cavalry. We have circled the wagons. Some have got loaded while they can afford it. We are waiting to be either attacked or rescued.
The spirit of the Alamo is alive and well among us. Let them do their damndest. Let them throw everything they have at us. They can take our lives, take our property, take anything they like, but we have a hidden weapon. They can’t take away our bad debts. We have our own Fort Knox alternative, or at least our school for hard knocks. We have NAMA, the baddest Bank in the whole damn town.
I don’t quite understand why they are going to call the group to be set up to run the bad Bank ‘NAMA.’ Why not NOMO – no money? Right now I reckon that every Bank robber from Ned Kelly to Jesse James are turning in their graves, green with envy that they were not around to see the Bad Bank. They would probably ask for a reward themselves to rob it, to steal debts instead of money, just to get the red writing off the books. That would make them even bigger heroes than they already are.
If the IRA really wants to prove that the war is over and that they are ‘going away, you know’ I suggest that they pull off the biggest job in their history, a job that will put the Northern Bank robbery (which they had nothing to do with, of course) into the half-penny place. Put on the balaclavas one more time. The door of the Bad Bank will be discretely left open. Security services will be looking the other way to allow you rob billions of debts to be blown sky high with the last of the semtex. With one great leap our ‘good’ Banks will be free. Did someone coin a phrase onetime – ‘an Irish solution to an Irish problem?’
The ‘Last Of The Semtex’ sounds like a good title for a movie, to rival ‘The Last Of The Mohicans.’ I might even write the script in return for a pad in one of the ghost-suburbs that sit unsold at the edge of most of our towns. The more I think about it, the more I realise that we are getting closer to the ‘Old West’ every day. We have the ghost towns, the cowboys, the Banks ripe for robbing. We even have the stories of the gold-rush to remind us of tiger times. All we need is a good sheriff to clean things up.
To continue the ‘Western’ theme, what we need now is the sound of the trumpets to herald the arrival of the cavalry from over the hill. There are plenty of people out on the election canvass blowing their own trumpets but nobody seems to see any of them as the real cavalry. We have circled the wagons. Some have got loaded while they can afford it. We are waiting to be either attacked or rescued.
The spirit of the Alamo is alive and well among us. Let them do their damndest. Let them throw everything they have at us. They can take our lives, take our property, take anything they like, but we have a hidden weapon. They can’t take away our bad debts. We have our own Fort Knox alternative, or at least our school for hard knocks. We have NAMA, the baddest Bank in the whole damn town.
Week ending 19th May 2009
The development of the human thumb at the turn of the second millennium of Christianity will be the subject of great debate by archaeologists in a couple of thousand year’s time. How did the digit best known in the twentienth century as an instrument with which to hitch a lift in an automobile develop into a super-fast and flexible telephone text-er and game-player in little more than a decade?
The sudden suppleness developed by what will become known in academic circles as the ‘new thumb’ will be a matter of wonder and awe among scholars from alien planets as they pore over the relics of life on earth before the human species imploded in a fog of its own CO2 emissions. The new thumb will be up there with the wheel and the toilet roll among the remarkable achievements and developments of homo sapiens.
In terms of archaeology, I love documentaries such as RTÉ’s “Secrets Of The Stones” broadcast in two parts on recent Bank holidays. I hope that it is re-broadcast at a later time of the evening. A six-thirty timeslot may suit a younger audience for such a thought provoking and educational programme, but I think it would deservedly reach a wider audience a couple of hours later. Secrets Of The Stones does not have or claim to have all the answers contained in our sacred stones, burial mounds or rock carvings of Ireland, but it used some new and scientific ways of trying to give us an understanding of our unwritten history.
There is an element of: “I have a theory and I am going to prove it” about the efforts of some scholars to understand the past. There is nothing wrong with that as long as the viewer keeps an open and questioning mind. I would give the same advice to Bible readers or listeners. There may be other meanings and understandings, better translations, newer insights that can throw a different light on what has been accepted until now. All of this excites the enquiring mind.
One of the dangers I find with scholarship, no matter how eminent, is that we may accept it as the last word on a subject. My faith in sciences such as archaeology and anthropology took a bit of a hammering during my time in the Aran Islands. I saw certain conclusions being jumped to without what I would consider sufficient evidence. This was particularly true of an anthropological study done on the island of Inis Oirr by an American called John Messenger. The results were published under the title “Inis Beag” which I have since heard and seen quoted as a gospel of Irish life in the 1950’s/60’s.
I was four times longer on that island than John Messenger. Allowing that I am no anthropologist I feel that he got at least as many things wrong as he got right. It is clear that the wool was pulled over his eyes on certain matters. It certainly raised questions for me about famous studies done in far-off lands by people of one culture on another. You can describe, but can you understand? The fact that I can question the results probably means that the study was a success of a kind. Thumbs up to science, but keep asking the questions.
The sudden suppleness developed by what will become known in academic circles as the ‘new thumb’ will be a matter of wonder and awe among scholars from alien planets as they pore over the relics of life on earth before the human species imploded in a fog of its own CO2 emissions. The new thumb will be up there with the wheel and the toilet roll among the remarkable achievements and developments of homo sapiens.
In terms of archaeology, I love documentaries such as RTÉ’s “Secrets Of The Stones” broadcast in two parts on recent Bank holidays. I hope that it is re-broadcast at a later time of the evening. A six-thirty timeslot may suit a younger audience for such a thought provoking and educational programme, but I think it would deservedly reach a wider audience a couple of hours later. Secrets Of The Stones does not have or claim to have all the answers contained in our sacred stones, burial mounds or rock carvings of Ireland, but it used some new and scientific ways of trying to give us an understanding of our unwritten history.
There is an element of: “I have a theory and I am going to prove it” about the efforts of some scholars to understand the past. There is nothing wrong with that as long as the viewer keeps an open and questioning mind. I would give the same advice to Bible readers or listeners. There may be other meanings and understandings, better translations, newer insights that can throw a different light on what has been accepted until now. All of this excites the enquiring mind.
One of the dangers I find with scholarship, no matter how eminent, is that we may accept it as the last word on a subject. My faith in sciences such as archaeology and anthropology took a bit of a hammering during my time in the Aran Islands. I saw certain conclusions being jumped to without what I would consider sufficient evidence. This was particularly true of an anthropological study done on the island of Inis Oirr by an American called John Messenger. The results were published under the title “Inis Beag” which I have since heard and seen quoted as a gospel of Irish life in the 1950’s/60’s.
I was four times longer on that island than John Messenger. Allowing that I am no anthropologist I feel that he got at least as many things wrong as he got right. It is clear that the wool was pulled over his eyes on certain matters. It certainly raised questions for me about famous studies done in far-off lands by people of one culture on another. You can describe, but can you understand? The fact that I can question the results probably means that the study was a success of a kind. Thumbs up to science, but keep asking the questions.
Industrial School Stan
We were reminded once again last week of the Irish Holocaust. The report on child abuse, physical and sexual by priests, nuns and brothers in reformatories made for painful reading and viewing, especially by those currently in those professions. We will be reminded again soon of similar abuse when the Dublin Archdiocesan report is published. We have to hang our heads in shame that we are part of a church which inflicted such pain, hurt and abuse.
Many will baulk at my use of the word holocaust. “Nobody died,” we will be told, or not many, as far as we know. There were no gas chambers, but how many lives were ruined? How many lives were blighted? The amazing thing is that thousands came through the system intact and that some grown-ups have fond memories of the goodness and kindness of nuns and brothers who helped them in their early lives. This side of the Industrial Schools is largely forgotten, and has naturally been overshadowed by the suffering of the abused.
Such painful reminders as the Report gave us are a necessary part of ensuring that the same does not happen again. Churches and voluntary and sporting groups have systems in place to try and prevent abuse and with few exceptions those rules and regulations are being strictly observed. West of Ireland dioceses generally have been praised by Independent monitoring groups for the effectiveness of their training schemes and the implementation of guidelines. This will not correct the past, but it should help to improve things for the future.
Among the more perceptive comments I heard after the report on Industrial Schools was released was the observation that those who suffered in such institutions suffered because they were poor. They would not have been in such schools in the first place except for poverty. Most were there, not because they had crimes committed, but because their families could not afford to look after them. Some were there for mitching school, others for crimes as small as stealing apples from a tree.
The word “Letterfrack” hung over the heads of many children growing up in Ireland in the fifties. It would be mentioned as the ultimate bogeyman if someone was bold at home or careless at school. Those parents and teachers who tossed the word around were, I’m sure, unaware that the Reformatory was even worse than its reputation. Those who grew up in happy homes, even if comforts were frugal, realise how lucky we were compared with many of our peers. Whatever pain or shame we feel as each report is released is as nothing compared with what was endured by so many inmates of the Industrial Schools.
Many will baulk at my use of the word holocaust. “Nobody died,” we will be told, or not many, as far as we know. There were no gas chambers, but how many lives were ruined? How many lives were blighted? The amazing thing is that thousands came through the system intact and that some grown-ups have fond memories of the goodness and kindness of nuns and brothers who helped them in their early lives. This side of the Industrial Schools is largely forgotten, and has naturally been overshadowed by the suffering of the abused.
Such painful reminders as the Report gave us are a necessary part of ensuring that the same does not happen again. Churches and voluntary and sporting groups have systems in place to try and prevent abuse and with few exceptions those rules and regulations are being strictly observed. West of Ireland dioceses generally have been praised by Independent monitoring groups for the effectiveness of their training schemes and the implementation of guidelines. This will not correct the past, but it should help to improve things for the future.
Among the more perceptive comments I heard after the report on Industrial Schools was released was the observation that those who suffered in such institutions suffered because they were poor. They would not have been in such schools in the first place except for poverty. Most were there, not because they had crimes committed, but because their families could not afford to look after them. Some were there for mitching school, others for crimes as small as stealing apples from a tree.
The word “Letterfrack” hung over the heads of many children growing up in Ireland in the fifties. It would be mentioned as the ultimate bogeyman if someone was bold at home or careless at school. Those parents and teachers who tossed the word around were, I’m sure, unaware that the Reformatory was even worse than its reputation. Those who grew up in happy homes, even if comforts were frugal, realise how lucky we were compared with many of our peers. Whatever pain or shame we feel as each report is released is as nothing compared with what was endured by so many inmates of the Industrial Schools.
Week ending 12th May 2009
I’m not one to encourage swearing as a pastime, but I distinctly remember an occasion on which the sweetest words I heard began with an ‘F’ and ended with ‘Off.’ It was in the early seventies of the last century at a time in which I was a curate with pastoral responsibility for two offshore islands. I was called from my bed in the middle of the night to anoint a young man who had lost consciousness. He seemed to be in danger of death and naturally enough his family was distraught.
The nearest doctor was four miles away across the sea. The local nurse was present and she kept in touch as best she could with the doctor by the public telephone in the middle of the island. It is hard to believe in this ‘mobile’ age that there were about five phones in an island of seventy houses in those days. The doctor was ready to have the local lifeboat launched if the phoned instructions he had given to the nurse did not work.
Both doctor and nurse were aware of something I only discovered gradually after anointing the pale boy who lay stretched on a settle-bed in the kitchen of the family home. He and a number of friends who attended secondary school in Galway had somehow acquired bottles of red wine and cider with which to celebrate the end of their Inter Cert examination. He had drank too much and passed out. His companions had carried him home and admitted after some time what had caused the problem.
Following the doctor’s advice the nurse called the boy’s name and slapped his face. She then got a local man to slap the soles of the youngster’s bare feet while she continued to slap his face and call his name. This resulted in a groan and those sweet words I mentioned earlier: “F**k Off.” This led to a great cheer of relief from all present. Although delighted, his mother was mortified and apologised to me in particular: “Such a thing to say in front of the priest.” I assured her that I had never heard more welcome words.
I tend to think of episodes like this when I hear complaints about “the youth of today” and what they get up to. If they only knew what their grandfathers and grandmothers got up to in those far-off days. Similar episodes from those years come to mind. There was the night a girl on an Irish language course got out the window of the house in which she was staying unknown to the ‘bean an tí.’ She joined friends camping on the island for a party and passed out after drinking too much. In an attempt to revive her, her friends threw her bodily into the incoming tide. When this did not work they sought medical help to prevent her from dying.
The example that sticks out in my mind more than any other is of another girl at the Irish College who presented herself to the nurse with a dart sticking out of the side of her head. Not knowing how deeply the dart had penetrated the lifeboat was called to have her brought to hospital in Galway. Thankfully all survived and are probably the best of role models for their grandchildren at the present time. Much has changed in technological terms in the past forty years or so, but in terms of human nature I think the Bible got it right with the phrase: “There is nothing new under the Sun.”
The nearest doctor was four miles away across the sea. The local nurse was present and she kept in touch as best she could with the doctor by the public telephone in the middle of the island. It is hard to believe in this ‘mobile’ age that there were about five phones in an island of seventy houses in those days. The doctor was ready to have the local lifeboat launched if the phoned instructions he had given to the nurse did not work.
Both doctor and nurse were aware of something I only discovered gradually after anointing the pale boy who lay stretched on a settle-bed in the kitchen of the family home. He and a number of friends who attended secondary school in Galway had somehow acquired bottles of red wine and cider with which to celebrate the end of their Inter Cert examination. He had drank too much and passed out. His companions had carried him home and admitted after some time what had caused the problem.
Following the doctor’s advice the nurse called the boy’s name and slapped his face. She then got a local man to slap the soles of the youngster’s bare feet while she continued to slap his face and call his name. This resulted in a groan and those sweet words I mentioned earlier: “F**k Off.” This led to a great cheer of relief from all present. Although delighted, his mother was mortified and apologised to me in particular: “Such a thing to say in front of the priest.” I assured her that I had never heard more welcome words.
I tend to think of episodes like this when I hear complaints about “the youth of today” and what they get up to. If they only knew what their grandfathers and grandmothers got up to in those far-off days. Similar episodes from those years come to mind. There was the night a girl on an Irish language course got out the window of the house in which she was staying unknown to the ‘bean an tí.’ She joined friends camping on the island for a party and passed out after drinking too much. In an attempt to revive her, her friends threw her bodily into the incoming tide. When this did not work they sought medical help to prevent her from dying.
The example that sticks out in my mind more than any other is of another girl at the Irish College who presented herself to the nurse with a dart sticking out of the side of her head. Not knowing how deeply the dart had penetrated the lifeboat was called to have her brought to hospital in Galway. Thankfully all survived and are probably the best of role models for their grandchildren at the present time. Much has changed in technological terms in the past forty years or so, but in terms of human nature I think the Bible got it right with the phrase: “There is nothing new under the Sun.”
Week ending 5th May 2009
Two of Ireland’s leading poets, Thomas Kinsella and Seamus Heaney were featured in recent times in separate programmes on RTÉ’s excellent Tuesday night Arts slot. They are men at the top of their profession or vocation, or both, depending on how you look at poets and poetry. They both have numerous collections of poetry published, and the prizes to prove their worth, the biggest prize of all, the Nobel, in Seamus Heaney’s case.
Thomas Kinsella is probably not as well known to the general public as Seamus Heaney, but his collaboration with Seán Ó Tuama in “An Duanaire 1600 – 1900, Poems of the Dispossessed” (Dolmen Press) made centuries of poetry in Irish accessible through the medium of English to people who do not know the Gaelic language. For that reason he is up there with people like Dubhghás De hÍde (Douglas Hyde) the first President of Ireland who collected and safeguarded aspects of the oral Irish tradition in song and story when it was in danger of being lost.
One small aspect of both programmes fascinated me as a religious fanatic. Neither poet could realistically see a life after death, although both, Thomas Kinsella at eighty, and Seamus Heaney at seventy know that the end of their lives can not be all that far away and they have obviously thought deeply about the subject. I have no problem with anyone’s belief or unbelief – it is an area that can not be forced, but it did surprise me that men of such vision and imagination could seem so earthbound.
For all I know they may be right. Realism, rationalism, logic all point in that direction. There is a lot to be said for going down in the ground or up in the smoky chimney of the crematorium and that being that. You’re gone and that’s it. It is something I can’t settle for unless I have to. I’m one for the high jump to eternity. I’m backing the resurrection, and it the Easter stories of Jesus flitting about like a butterfly from flower to flower that give me hope.
The shackles of space and time are off and we are into imagination territory. That’s where we need the poets with us.
At the risk of offending those who think that our poets are beyond criticism I must admit that both seemed stuck in somewhat of a last century fifties time-warp when it came to religion. It was as if their religious education or development had stopped after secondary school as they delved deeper and further into literature, classics, drama and art. I don’t blame them for that. There has been a failure of religion and theology to engage with art and literature.
Literati would hardly thank me for introducing “Coronation Street” to the equation, but there was an interesting touch on religion and humanism in an episode of the soap over Easter. Ken Barlow tried to introduce his five year old grandson Simon to an understanding that the Easter story may not be all that it seems, that humanism, atheism, agnosticism may have an authenticity too. “My Mummy is in heaven,” the child told him. How do you answer that? As we grow older the call “to become as little children” can be upstaged by us becoming the old people that we are. “I imagine, therefore I’m eternal.”
Thomas Kinsella is probably not as well known to the general public as Seamus Heaney, but his collaboration with Seán Ó Tuama in “An Duanaire 1600 – 1900, Poems of the Dispossessed” (Dolmen Press) made centuries of poetry in Irish accessible through the medium of English to people who do not know the Gaelic language. For that reason he is up there with people like Dubhghás De hÍde (Douglas Hyde) the first President of Ireland who collected and safeguarded aspects of the oral Irish tradition in song and story when it was in danger of being lost.
One small aspect of both programmes fascinated me as a religious fanatic. Neither poet could realistically see a life after death, although both, Thomas Kinsella at eighty, and Seamus Heaney at seventy know that the end of their lives can not be all that far away and they have obviously thought deeply about the subject. I have no problem with anyone’s belief or unbelief – it is an area that can not be forced, but it did surprise me that men of such vision and imagination could seem so earthbound.
For all I know they may be right. Realism, rationalism, logic all point in that direction. There is a lot to be said for going down in the ground or up in the smoky chimney of the crematorium and that being that. You’re gone and that’s it. It is something I can’t settle for unless I have to. I’m one for the high jump to eternity. I’m backing the resurrection, and it the Easter stories of Jesus flitting about like a butterfly from flower to flower that give me hope.
The shackles of space and time are off and we are into imagination territory. That’s where we need the poets with us.
At the risk of offending those who think that our poets are beyond criticism I must admit that both seemed stuck in somewhat of a last century fifties time-warp when it came to religion. It was as if their religious education or development had stopped after secondary school as they delved deeper and further into literature, classics, drama and art. I don’t blame them for that. There has been a failure of religion and theology to engage with art and literature.
Literati would hardly thank me for introducing “Coronation Street” to the equation, but there was an interesting touch on religion and humanism in an episode of the soap over Easter. Ken Barlow tried to introduce his five year old grandson Simon to an understanding that the Easter story may not be all that it seems, that humanism, atheism, agnosticism may have an authenticity too. “My Mummy is in heaven,” the child told him. How do you answer that? As we grow older the call “to become as little children” can be upstaged by us becoming the old people that we are. “I imagine, therefore I’m eternal.”
