As opposed to an Ireland dairy.

I will use this place to post some of the imagery and thoughts on the Ballinglen Foundation trip, and associated nonsense. My little chronicle of the ordinary. The frequency and quality of the posted material will depend on internet access in northwest rural Ireland. And, of course, the latest posts will always be at the bottom...

Stay tuned...

It is Monday, August 29. This first post is for my potential visitors. Arrived fine, though waay too jetlagged for Driving In Ireland, or DII, which sounds like 'die' which is a real risk if you try it half asleep.

The phone here is 353-86-071-7257. It is activated.. I will post any further instructions later if necessary.

It is VERY green here...

BAF Headquarters

My house, Kenny House.

Thursday, September 2, 2005

I will indulge in a couple of long distance observations here.

At the little local pub here in Ballycastle we all watch the hurricane spectacle over in the states. No one here understands how the richest country in the world has responded so slowly to its own tragedy. I don’t know what to tell them. I can only tell them that my countrymen have adopted a new belief system, one that makes no sense to me, but seems to serve some odd need to return to a parent-child relationship, a clinging to (at least the perception of) a strong parent-leader. From over here we see the Strict Father model at work, in all its anachronistic retro styling. It is like the Victorian family down the street that has isolated itself, and wont let their children play with your children, because your children are unclean or bad. The punishing Father is George Bush. I get reminded regularly of other historical figures in history who adhered to this model. I tell them it was not my choice…

Perhaps all the wealthy people in the affected areas in the hurricane path left, so those that remain don’t really matter…a good cleaning is in order.

Friday, September 3, 2005

I went down into the mountainous area to the south here, and saw lots of Ireland that does not fit my notions or memory. The pics don’t do it justice.

Ireland is a Catholic country. Where the kids are in school, they all wear uniforms. It is a nice thing to see. All are equal while in class. I remember this when I was a kid, parochial school till I was in high school where uniforms were the great equalizer. The rich kids and the poor kids were indistinguishable in appearance, and what set you apart was your performance. Fashion was not high on the academics list.

Catholicism has its patriarchal system, a punitive system. Now, in true Catholic fashion I have been reminded of every traffic and road related infraction I have ever committed. I have been admonished to confess them openly, and am now doing my penance for them. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

The Irish roads exist to punish the American driver, made lazy on American roads. In America our roads serve us. In Ireland, we are the servants.

Saturday, September 10, 2005

It has been grey and wet the past few days, much like the Pacific Northwest. There is a crow here that makes a peculiar "aack" sound, if you can imagine that "aack" ejected from a squeeze toy. They are social, plentiful, extremely vocal, and they serve an important role in starting the rural day. (They will also eat just about anything so they are great with food scraps. Nothing gets wasted.)

Spent a couple days in Galway, just for some urban life. Galway is a small city, but it is Ireland's fourth largest. Very cosmopolitan, nice mix of traditional and contemporary. It is built around a series of canals and a river called the Corrib, which empties into Galway Bay.

It is one of the walled medieval cities, though on a much smaller scale than most. The original walled part, built by Normans to keep the Irish at arms length has a section preserved inside a mall in the shopping district. The original walled city only took up a couple of city blocks, unlike a town like Dublin. The Irish have never received occupiers well, one of the original "insurgent" populations, a tradition which continues to this day in Northern Ireland.

I am not the first to notice the role of alcohol in Irish culture. Ireland is an alcoholic country. I mean, the country itself is shaped by pub life. I don't mean that as a judgment, just as a statement of fact. At one point sitting in the Quay in Galway, every establishment in my field of view was a bar. In Ireland, there are pub-laundries, pub-bicycle shops, pub-groceries, and just pubs. If you have a business, and there is the possibility that your customers may have to stand around for any length of time whatsoever, then there is a reason to serve a pint. And why wouldn't you? A small bar appears to fill the void, and voila! A pub-drycleaner, or a pub-baitshop! Imagine how your wait at the doctor's office would be if it were softened by a nice chat and a Guinness? Maybe a chance to catch up on the football scores or help resolve Mary Margaret's dating woes since the death of her husband two years ago?

Apparently, a licensed pub is one where you can drink what you buy on premises. In case there is a stretch of real estate not covered by the Pub Access Rule there may be an "off license" package store where you can pick up something to nip at elsewhere. For example, I have not seen a pub-hospital or pub-daycare center, but I would not be surprised to see an Emergency Room with at least an attached Off License establishment.

There is almost no such thing as just a restaurant built specifically to eat in. Eating is something to sort of take care of, like a pesky bodily function. Something you get over with so you can have another pint. It seems almost incidental in pub-restaurants, never much of the focus.

There is a little place in Ballina near Ballycastle called "The Junction" which is the closest thing to a non-pub restaurant and it is quite acceptable, but it is a rare bird. Little Ballycastle does have one called Mary's, which is quite good. Just one. Little Ballycastle has at least ten bars that I know of. Then there are always the hidden ones. (The little grocery store that I have a tab at has an unmarked door toward the back of the shop that takes you into the pub in the back...where my tab continues.) Mind you, Irish food is good (way better than English), just not the star of the show here in Ireland, not like in the States. Galway, being a big city and all, did have more specialized eateries than rural Ireland, but even ones billed as eateries had prominent bars.

The Irish are social, as most of the Old World is. Libations here are tasty, and they serve the purpose of facilitating that social priority. There is no great moralizing done (that gets listened to anyway...) over the role of good drink in European life, it is seen as part of the fabric and form since the beginning of recorded history. A prohibitionist would be dismembered here, his head removed and put on a stick in the square.

Which brings me to an odd related observation.

Ireland decided that it would become a non-smoking country. When I was in Ireland in the mid '90's, smoking was everywhere. The Blue Cloud pervaded every establishment. It was even on the public transportation. Apparently, everyone thought the anti-smoking "scheme" was a good idea and decided to go along with it. Everybody has not quit, there are still plenty of smokers around, but they do it outside. You cant smell smoke in any pub, anywhere. It is amazing.

A final note on today's episode.

I heard a report of an accident the other night, where 10 people were killed in two separate auto accidents. As I mentioned before, Irish roads are narrow, bumpy, and for the most part shoulder-less. In addition to having no shoulders, they are often rimmed tightly by three-foot rock walls, so a mishap causes the cars to pinball within the stone walls. The margin of error on these roads is tiny to non-existent, and here is the place where I inject the alcohol factor. When alcohol is added to that equation, the risk of serious mishaps makes driving late at night a sort of Irish Roulette. Something you do not see here is damaged cars driving around. They are mostly tiny to fit side by side on these narrow roads, and remain pristine because collisions tend to be total. Cars are one or the other with little middle ground.

I have pictures, but will have to put them on later. The connection here in Ballycastle is slow and drops out too much to ftp easily. Next time I get to a broadband location, I will do a picture load.

On one of Ireland's BIG highways...

Afternoon in Ballycastle

Wednesday, September 14th, 2005

All my houseguests and my partner are gone, and I was grieving that fact substantially. Carolyn to the airport in Shannon, and artist visitors drove off to the next adventure. For the first time since arriving in Ireland, I am by myself.

This morning I sat in the eating parlour in my shorts and t-shirt, rubbing the stubble and looking out the window at the wind and I found myself perhaps thinking like a native bachelor farmer here. What to do today? The steers from the lower pasture (the “boys” as they are affectionately called…) are up by the back fence, their bums to the wind. It is sunny today though, and mild. Perhaps I will go out and see how they are doing. There is still some wind getting thru the kitchen windows, and I could attempt another tool-less remedy for that. A little bird with a damaged wing, (perhaps from yesterdays high winds) has taken up residence in my driveway, and I have been leaving bran flakes there for it, hiding them so the crows don’t get wise to the dole. Little stuff. Or maybe I could go down to Polk’s and get Aona to pour me a breakfast…

And so begins the descent? Faulty Thinking.

Perhaps I can become the lad I saw the other day in Ballina, hammered around 11am stumbling around the busy street arguing with the spirits and the pedestrians of the tiny crowded village, till some nice neighbor leads him by the elbow…to his car…

The Dartys outside Sligo

Being in a remote village has little gifts. Like stars. The other night Carolyn woke up in the middle of the night and stepped outside in the mild air to be greeted by more stars than she had ever seen. She was kind to not wake me, but I have since repeated the act. You wake up about 3am, make a cup of tea and stand outside in your bare feet with the wet warm Irish grass between your toes, and above you is a firmament that is expansive and brilliant the likes of which no urbanite is familiar. I had seen this before while living high up in the Colorado mountains many years ago, but was not expecting it at sea level, and the crashing sound of the sea off to the north adds something. It is all enhanced by the haunting melody “The Lad’s Song” by Dervish coming out of the little radio in the kitchen…you had to be there.

Carolyn has christened this place Chez Moo. This is because the house here is surrounded on three sides by pastures full of cows. Steers mostly. One small pasture between the house and the town itself holds two little yearlings, Condi and Rummy. (More about them later.) And just uphill from them is a pen behind the buildings in town which hold the most vocal cattle around. Maybe it is because the building they live behind is the butcher…

A couple of the "boys"

I was thinking about painting this morning. You would think I would do that more often, but I don’t. I don’t think about painting much normally, I just do it. I think about it less here, counter to the best intentions of my hosts, I am sure.

But here I am, thinking about it. There is room for your head to expand in this place, and stuff enters that doesn’t seem to fit when I am with my distractions. The relationship with the world here is different than my usual associations, and I am trying, lately, to find a new way to dialogue with it. The old way of painting this wont be adequate. It will be an interesting winter, processing this after it has had some time to percolate into my center.

I also just found out that my front yard may be full of “Liberty Caps” or “magic mushrooms” (psilocybin mushrooms)…it is the season for them in Ireland. I don’t know if my mind could use any more expanding, so I think I will pass on those. I do find it interesting (though not surprising) that the consumption of these little buggars is perfectly legal here. In fact, “Mushies” as they are known, celebrate the mushroom season all over Ireland every year. What a strange and beautiful world…

Kent and Jim on Downpatrick Head (no sissy American safety fencing here, no siree!), and another view of the Dartys.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Windy and actually cold today. I can do without the wind.

Wind is a feature of this landscape. The trees and shrubbery hug the ground on the coast, and in case a tree grows a bit too high the wind shapes it into a curve, away from the prevailing source.

The wind driven waves on Downpatrick Head, which I can see from my windows, smash and explode into great white plumes and you can hear the conflict from up here. The waves are winning, slowly reducing the cliffs into a honeycomb of stratified coral, with a surface which occasionally collapses into huge holes in the top, which if you step into one you fall a hundred feet or so into a dark churning sea cauldron. One of these holes is fenced off on the Head, but the fence is close enough to the edge you can see down into the thing, and it has a channel that extends hundreds of feet toward the sea under the land, like a huge cave. It is big enough to bring a boat into it from the Stack (A freestanding section of the Head separated by a gap carved by the waves) all the way to the hole. If only you could prevent the boat from being smashed into the walls of the cave by the surf, that is...

The unnerving part is that though the present holes are fenced, there are depressions all over the Head which may be holes one day, eaten from below by the surf pounding away in the unseen caves underneath your feet. I walk carefully around them when out there...(someone hinted that these depressions may be ancient burial pits. I am leery of taking chances tho...)

The cliffs of Downpatrick Head are not a place to visit on a windy day. As the picture above shows, a good gust will send you to the fishes. There are no fences at the edges.

Crazy as it seems, Downpatrick Head and it's Stack, called Dun Briste, is a favorite place to dive. Scuba dive that is, as opposed to the involuntary diving encouraged by the wind...

There is a potter near here named Henri Hedou who speaks with a mixed accent, Irish with an overlay of his native French. He tells me his wife Fiona is a diver and part of the rescue divers who get called out when something or someone designed for above water ends up below it. He says the undersea flora at Downpatrick is like no other, competing with dive sites in coral reefs in Australia and the U.S. This is hard to imagine, but I take his word for it. That sea looks a little rough for me, and I speak for Henri too. He wont dive, but he goes on diving trips with Fiona's diving group, and spends his days on land exploring by bicycle and testing the local eateries and coffee houses. I like Henri...

Today is Friday, and thus trash day in Ballycastle. I brought my can out to the side of the house at 9, thinking it was too late, as I did not see any other cans out. I left it on the windless side of the house not wanting to look like a dope, bringing it to the road after the trash truck had already left. When I came back from checking mail, someone had brought it out to the road for me, and I noticed that there were other cans to the road in town. Apparently I was not too late, but too early.

Later on, when I came back from my walk to the beach, someone had taken the emptied can all the way back to the back of the house. Mind you, I have no next door neighbors, as you might see from the picture at the beginning of this thing. Someone just did this for me, such a sweet Irish thing. These villagers watch out for each other, and I am not exempt because I am a foreigner. By now everyone in this area knows who the occupant of my house is. Update... that only happened once... after that I was expected to bring my own blasted trash out to the curb!

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Ireland has a layer of goo covering a lot of her surface, which is called many things. Bog, sod, or turf, as it is known around here, is a layer of compressed and decayed (but unoxidized) plant material that has accumulated over many thousands of years. Some formed after the original deforestation of the land by prehistoric peoples where it had not been prior. It is wet and spongy-soggy in the field, and you cannot build on it or cultivate it for crops. Every so often, a big sheet of it slides off the underlying glacial-till in a massive wet-blanket bog-slide, sometimes slipping right off into the sea taking with it whatever gets in the path on the way.

Around here it gets dug up and cut into little bricks or logs mostly by machine though many do it the traditional way (by hand) with a specialized little shovel called a.. um, goofy little turf spade, or maybe a spurf. (Sorry, I will get the proper name and fix this...there is no one around the center to ask right now...) The cut turf is placed in the open air in piles to dry and then it is burned in fireplaces, producing a unique smell that is completely and thoroughly Ireland, a sort of an earthy barbeque wood smell.

Why am I going on about this?

Well, my little house here burns this stuff. The fireplaces in Ireland are designed not for wood, but for turf, and I was given a small supply of commercially dug (compressed) turf when I got here. It came with the place.

Fortunately for me, there are tractors that go by my front gate every day pulling locally dug turf in its more natural state off somewhere to the west of here. And as luck (and ridiculously large statistics) would have it, there happens to be a little irregularity in the road (imagine that...) in front of the house which makes the trailer overloaded with the piled turf bounce just enough that I am left with one or two chunks of the stuff almost every day. Part of my routine each day is to look out front and see if there are any turf chunks in the road, and if so, I go out and grab them and put them in my turf bucket. I am getting quite a pile, which will come in handy in October when things really start to cool off.

Just a little little Irish blessing...

By the way, I did find out the name of the spade. It is called a "sleán" which is pronounced like "schlawn", say the office staff here at the Ballinglen Arts Center. It appears that, like office staff everywhere, they more than welcome the opportunity to drop whatever boring office stuff they are doing to spend a 20 minutes or so debating the Irish pronunciation of sleán. You cannot imagine what a lively sound salad that discussion was...

Monday, September 19, 2005

Brian, the shopkeeper of Polks, the little pub-grocery across from BAF, is a nice fellow and fun to talk to. I was looking over the vast array of newspapers the other day, and he was telling me which ones he liked and disliked. He dosn't like the tabloids, saying he only likes hard news. He doesn't care who is dressing who or what the latest page three girl looks like. As we were going over the pile he holds up one called "The Guardian" and says with disdain "this is a right wing one" and we both chat about that for a moment. I ask if many people buy it out here, and he says surprisingly yes, quite a lot do. After a moment of examining the Guardian through his bifocals, he says, "Im sorry, this is a left publication..." Oops...

The Guardian is, in fact, a progressive paper. I put a copy on my tab along with the Irish Times and a soda, startling Barny, the mostly-blind-dog in the doorway on the way out.

Newspapers here still trump the internet, and they are a refreshing view of the States and the world at large. They are truly an independent and free press, and still hold truth to be a standard of journalism. Because of this the press over here is honest, brutal, and valuable. After listening to an interview between one of the radio news journalists and a representative of one of the organizations up in Belfast on the recent violence surrounding the annual Orange parade, I was astonished by the interviewers courage and dedication. He would not let his target NOT answer questions, saying over and over when a question was dodged, that he had dodged the question. If only we had journalists like that in the U.S.

There is no Rush Limbaugh over here. These rural Irish may be knee deep in cow shite, but they at least know the difference between cow shite and bull shite, a lesson some of my rural countrymen could stand to learn.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Well, that last entry tells me it is time for the "shite" episode.

One remarkable thing about the Old World, is a sort of an acceptance of grit in the business of life. And I say "Old World" because this place and the surrounding places are old. Much older than the United States, of course. In the Chronology of Human Endeavours the U.S. is like a twelve year-old in a world of sixty year-olds, or older. The wine section of the grocery store I shop in has wines categorized by country of origin; French, German, Australia and New Zealand, Argentina, and NEW WORLD, which is mostly California wines.

Back to the grit.

I recommend Monty Python's movie "Jabberwocky" as a primer on REAL medieval life, the way it more likely was than the romantic pictures we got from our childhood "history" books. In the movie the MP gang does a smashing job of showing the relationship to man and grit, the dung not far from the dinner plate. All those historic displays of wealth and power, art and war, all revealed in their stinky glory. The facade that thinly veils, giving way to the stench of unwashed bodies, hair powder, crusty clothes, livestock and all the associated fluids and materials, rotting teeth, the aromas of disease, mud, and excrement. You get the picture.

Where am I going with this? To a humorous leftover that most Americans wont appreciate, and those who dont are certainly forgiven. If you are offended by this discussion, stop reading now, though I think that ship has sailed...

Here in rural Ireland, you get to live closer to shite. It is everywhere. Shite is, of course, poop. It is shit. Over here is is pronounced shite, or phonetically more like "shoit". It is a normal thing, and it is everywhere.

This part of Ireland raises more beef and lamb than any crops, a trend that seems popular all around Ireland. These animals make lots of shite. Lots of it. Since the animals often share the roads with cars, and sometimes the sidewalks in rural villages, manure is omnipresent. The livestock is likely accompanied by working dogs, herding dogs which are an amazing topic of discussion in itself for another time. Wellington boots or "Wellies" are the most popular footware around here. Knee high, of course. Ballycastle was built as a market location between two other towns in this area (I will get the names) and built on the hillside so that every rain would give her a nice rinsing. It works to this day. And what mostly gets rinsed off, is the shite.

Where is the big edifying point you ask? It is coming.

I was struck by the commercials here for toilet paper, mostly British commercials since the BBC is big here, but Irish commercials are similar. They are very frank about what they are about. They say things on the packaging like "Be kind to your bum" which is unlike the TP commercials in the U.S. which simply overstate the resemblance to quilts and clouds and kittens. "'How do you wipe your arse with a kitten?" might be the reaction here, producing more funny images...

A standout example of this frankness is what they call the toilet. It is called the toilet. The U.S. must be a confusing place for foreign travelers who need to use a facility. We are embarrassed by this part of life so we disguise our toilet with pretty names, or obscure it completely. It is considered vulgar to call the toilet a toilet. We prefer the "restroom" or the "powder room".

When a woman here in a pub needs to go to the "ladies room" she says she needs to use the toilet. This leaves such an impression in the minds of Americans in earshot! You may (if you are prone to such imaginings...) imagine a very different picture than if she says "the little girls room" which conjurs up images of a room with a party of ten year old schoolgirls chatting and making school projects. Or the "restroom" which may have nice cots and hot towels. (Sorry. I think in pictures, and sometimes I say things that I should only think...much like, say, Homer Simpson.)

There is simply little sugarcoating here on this subject. I learned right away at the gas station that if you need the key to the toilet, better call it that or they just look at you like you are new around here...because they dont HAVE a restroom.

Later....

Another look at the Dartys outside of Sligo, and some pix of Benwee Head.

Downpatrick Head with rainbow...

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Thinking about home a little today, listening to Bruce Cockburn sing "Pacing the Cage". Bruce is one of my favorites, a real gift to the world.

It took me years to figure out how to navigate around Boston when I lived there in the eighties. I could not make hide nor hair out of the system till I figured out my own system of spokes and rings that, when used with a compass, helped me till I could memorize "routes". Routes are how Bostonians do it. They dont know where anything is on the map, but they know a route that will get them there. Routes are passed on from parent to child in Boston, and is was a touching thing to be privy to.

One of the most difficult aspects of Boston navigation was the way the same street changed names from neighborhood to neighborhood. It was quite frustrating because relying on street names was so much of what I knew of getting around the other parts of the country. If a street had a name, that name stuck for as long as the street was contiguous. If it did change, you would have some notice, like maybe a sign.

Not in Boston.

But NOW I know where Boston gets that, they get it from here.

Looking at the Castlebar street map, I figured that a street has a name that is local to the block it is on. In the next block, it is local to that block. Old Westport Road becomes Mountain View, then Ellison Street, then Market Street, then Bridge Street, then Rush, then Thomas, and so on as the same street progresses across Castlebar. Any given corner has four separate streets on the building plaques, like Lucan Street, Bridge Street, Rush Street, and Linen Hall. No avenues, no grid indicators. Everyone here knows where stuff is located, so there is no need to fix what aint broke.

Needless to say, dont try asking for directions unless you can take notes (you are going to get a "route" from where you are) and you commit yourself to a serious wander if you dont have a map of these little towns and cities in Ireland. Not only is the system local and personal, but nowadays the signs may be in Irish only, which is about as baffling as language gets. I was just up at Benwee Head on the coast and came to an intersection which gave me directions to various cliffy locations out on the edge of nowhere, and the signs were all in Irish.

I had no idea...

They could be signs telling me the road is out or prone to give way to to subterranean blow holes (not unheard of here) that could swallow up a little car like mine. One could have said "Dont go that way!" Irish has no apparent latin roots I can fall back on. It is sort of like trying to read Arabic.

So I just guessed, hey...what the heck...I managed...

Though difficult to decipher for the untrained, there is no more beautiful a language in song than Irish, such as as this one by Capercaille called "Oran". This is what I hear in my head all the time I am in these fields.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Montana artists Monty Dolack and Mary Beth Percival came by to spend a few days. I took them out last night to see the Downpatrick Head and associated wonders. The tide was high and the waves were crashing against the rocks and occasionally sending spray in gigantic plumes high into the sky. The North Atlantic put on a lovely show for them. Not windy, just big swells and waves.

At one point we see a man standing on an outcrop cliff maybe a hundred feet above the surf casting out into the turbulent water. We watched thru Mary Beth's binoculars as he hauled little silver fish up from the waters below. He was actually catching fish. I couldn't get over it. It looked like risky business for such a small fish, casting off the edge of a cliff like that.

We took our time walking back down to the parking area, admiring the silver light and the boiling sea, still talking about the crazy guy casting from the cliff. Monty is a fisherman in Montana, and made the comment that even in Montana, you can be in some fairly insane places but if you have your fly rod, people will just understand that you are fishing. If you were in those places without your rod, you would be looked at with suspicion, but with your rod, you are ok. Just fishin'.

It is starting to get dark as Monty squeezes off a few last pictures before getting in the car, and the tide appears to be all the way up. Across the bay I see a wave crash that sends a white plume all the way up above the cliffs and on the land on the top, maybe a hundred fifty feet in the air. Suddenly we notice a man in a hat with a fishing pole walking down to the parking lot from the cliffs. As he comes thru the fence, we notice he is the guy from the cliffs so we introduce ourselves and ask him how he did. His name is Joel, and he is friendly and shows us his bag, which is just full of beautiful iridescent silver fish, some still wriggly. He tells us they are Mackerel, and after a few admiring remarks from us about his craziness, I mean courage casting off that cliff, he offers us some of them. I was taken aback. After the usual polite refusals and insistence between us, we agree and he gives us 6 of the little critters, each about a foot long. He gives us instructions on cooking them, we thank him profusely, and I am reminded again of the rural Irish characters that I have been living with these past few weeks. This is just the way they are.

Back at Kenny house, after admiring their perlescence and other fishy traits, Monty cleans them and we pack them in the little fridge, and Mary Beth agrees to cook them for tomorrow night's supper. I am looking forward to this...from the surf to the plate...and I didnt have to do squat but bear witness and eat...

The fisherman and his catch...

A postscript on the above...

Mackerel with rice and an apple, mushroom, garlic sauce...thanks, Mary Beth...(It was better than it looks here.)

Friday, September 23, 2005

Punctuating traffic in every little rural village I have visited are the ever present little farm tractors blasting thru town. Mostly red, and compact, they seem to be a sort of status symbol, a sort of a rural sports car. No one can use a low riding Ferrari here, but you can carry around ROCKS with a little tractor, and you can drive one at ten! What they lack in sexy, they make up for with cross-usefulness. And I may be making an assumption with sexy...(the young lasses here may make associations I am not privy to, even though I cant imagine any first experiences in one of those things...)

It does seem that a guy feels he has done well when he has a little land and a house. But he has "made it" when he has one of these little babies in the driveway or around back.

On the backroads, the drivers of these tractors are very courteous and helpful when you need to pass one or are passing an oncoming one. They tell you when you are clear, and pull over as much as possible when coming toward, and are never brusk or intimidating.

Apparently, Ireland has pretty strict laws about driving and kids. The age for a learners permit for cars is seventeen... However, you can be quite young and still drive a tractor down the highway or rural roads.

The other day I came up behind one on a fairly major road (in Ireland this does NOT mean large...) and noticed a the driver had a little passenger hanging onto whatever he could bouncing around behind the driver. The little guy was maybe five or six years old. As I approached, the driver pulled to the side and waved me around. As he did this he turned around to face me and I was surprised to see he was no more than twelve or thirteen. He was handling the thing as if he had many years of experience.

"Rush hour" in the little town of Ballina (near here) is pretty thick, considering the streets are about 5 feet wide and traffic "laws" are more of suggestions here. In Ireland, flow is the Law. Law is the collectively understood set of suggestions that everyone has agreed on to help facilitate that. From what I have witnessed, the only real law you can break is the law of flow. If you disrupt the flow, you make the locals quite plussed. You can drive up on the sidewalk in order to preserve the flow, and you are hardly noticed, the pedestrians moving out of the way with no more than a glance. They all understand. But lord help you if you do anything that stops the flow...like HITTING a pedestrian. Dodging pedestrians, good. Hitting pedestrian, bad.

The pedestrians here know this too. Unlike Seattle, where the pedestrian has all sorts of rights, pedestrians here are invisible. I found this out waiting at a corner in Ballina with a couple other pedestrians waiting to cross. This corner had a small traffic circle, and no lights. It did have what passes for a non-signal pedestrian crossing and after waiting for the traffic to yield for quite some time, I decided to assert my pedestrian rights and just force myself out there. Hoo boy...not a good idea if you are faint of heart. I know what the other pedestrians were thinking..."stupid foreigner...probly a 'merican..."

Occasionally you will see a signaled pedestrian crossing which actually stops traffic for pedestrians, and that is the only time pedestrians are actually visible.

Hmm...I was talking about little red tractors, wasnt I? Got sidetracked...

Occasionally blasting thru town in Ballina's rush hour would be one of these little tractors piloted by a teen with a little portable boombox in the cab with him, and often a few friends hanging on as well. It reminded me of kids in other places who might swipe dad's sports car in the afternoon for a joyride with friends. One advantage with these is that the tractor is rarely the loser in collisions. And they dont go very fast. You could have quite a few mishaps and return the thing to the farm and no one would be the wiser...till the victim catches up to you or your parents...

Also, today marks the 4th day of a wicked cold for me...not liking this. Woke up to gale force winds today again. The sea, she is not happy.

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Gale force winds again. It is part of the deal here. There are big whitecaps on the ocean out my front window, and the surf is crashing hard because the airflow is offshore, blowing onto the land. I was thinking about going to Downpatrick Head at high tide if the wind keeps up, to see if the blowhole does it's thing. They say when the conditions are right, the spray can shoot out the blowhole two hundred feet into the air. I wanna see that...

Last night I was awakened in the middle of the night with the wind just howling. A constant roar. I dont know what the wind speed got to, but I'd be curious. You can always get an accurate wind direction reading when it gets like this, the cattle all orient themselves arse to the source. I can easily understand why the stone or block house is the preferred dwelling here. If these were tab shingles on the roofs, I am sure I would have been pelted all night by shingles. The wind was just ferocious.

All around me though, these ancient people were snug asleep, Hobbited into their cottages with the two foot thick stone walls and concrete shingled roofs, their heavy doors and stone fences. They don't pay much mind to the wind. The newer block houses are not as stout as the older ones, but they are more draft tight. They don't flex, even if they are not the mass of their older neighbors. The trees don't have such advantages, however, and they record the struggle by doing their growing on the side away from the wind, some bent over like old men.

A couple of nice folks from Oregon, Gwen Davidson and Doug Lubotsky are leaving tomorrow, and I will miss them. Gwen is the fellow, and Doug is her happy to tagalong husband. He has helped me waste some of my time here going to yet MORE ruins and filling my head with stories of his hippie days in San Francisco in the seventies and his never ending knowledge of really protracted trivia. Doug has had a lot of interesting experiences and can spin them into colorful yarns. I hope he and Gwen don't arrive home with my cold to remind them of me, but THAT ship may have sailed too. So in addition to feeling lousy, I have been keeping to myself as much as possible not wanting to pass this along. Not a good way to get to know people.

So, yes, I am in the throes of a lovely head cold and it is sucking the enthusiasm out of me this past week. In order to lay low and get over this, I have been writing more than doing studio stuff. This is a part of that process for me, though, and nothing is wasted. The cold just gets tiring, and I may have to take out a loan to pay for all the kleenex I have trashed. Monty and Mary Beth left for a couple days hoping to miss the inoculations I provide every two minutes or so sneezing my brains out then honking into a wad of tissues. I know, I know...

In addition to everything else, my little broken iBook is going dark a lot more than it used to, and it is starting to scare me. I have to press on the case a certain way with my wrist at all times now to keep the screen lit. I am far from even a decent phone connection here, much less service for something I suspect many in these hills around here have never seen before. If it craps out, this will all come to a crashing halt. (For example, all bicycles that I have seen around here have bolt on wheels...)

But seriously...

I do hope this thing makes it, I would have a tough time doing this down at the center. (There is a little mac there that is used for email.) It wouldnt be the end of the world, but they might get tired of me constantly asking how to spell stuff...and wondering when I actually go into my studio and paint anything. God forbid I should do this longhand...

Yep, such a funny guy... More later.

Monday, September 26, 2005

High winds and rain again this morning. This could get old...

My Montana houseguests leave today. They will wind their way to Dublin and then back to the U.S. Mary Beth has picked up a sore throat, and I am feeling a little guilty that it came from me. Though the sore throat is about the only thing I have not had with this cold, you have to suspect...

We had dinner with another Fellow, Geraldine O'Reilley, at her little cottage out on the road to Downpatrick. Geraldine is quite the interesting character, presently residing on the Aran Island, she was born and raised in Ireland, a Fullbright Scholar, and has traveled and lived in many places, including stints in the U.S. She is a tiny woman who draws from life, and has been braving the winds and weather on the Head for three weeks putting the sometimes violent, almost always agitated coast through her artist filter and onto paper. Her drawings have the energy of her subjects, as well as the love of the native who watches them, and she treated us to seeing some of them while we were there. She also treated us to a spectacular dinner, after which she revealed that she had been a professional cook in New York when she was in the U.S. One of her many lives...

After we returned home, I walked up to Polke's to see if Brian would sell me a pint of Irish Whiskey so we could make the traditional Irish Cold Remedy, a concoction that is famous for making the cold a short affair. It is a mixture of a little sugar, lemon juice, a clove, a generous shot of whiskey, and some hot water in a small glass. Brian was happy to oblige, and included a little bag of cloves and some advice on putting it together, such as preheating the glass so it doesn't break when the hot water hits it. He suggested the ladies like the sugar, but that he didn't care for it. Not manly I suspect...

As I write this, MB is not up yet so I don't know if it helped.

I started some drawings in my little studio at the center yesterday, and the first painting. I swiped a lamp from one of the empty studios and set mine up to be minimalist but functional. My plan is to spend as much time out during the day and work in the studio at night when the light is consistent. I shall see how it all works. These small paintings will be mostly from sketches and memory, with some minimal referencing to the pictures I have on my broken laptop when I need to be reminded of some detail. I am anxious to see how this all works.

P.S: MB woke with little evidence of any illness...the stuff seems to have worked.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Most Americans I talk to consider the Irish Pub to be a highly anticipated part of the Irish experiences when they visit. Most of them also have a stereotype of "pub" from some movie or picture formed in their heads, or by descriptions from other Americans. There are lots of pubs that fit that description...the crowded and dark wood accented places with musicians in a corner playing some traditional music, the barkeep doing the ritual topping of the Guinnes pint, lots of noise and interesting characters...perhaps a leprechaun sitting somewhere trying to pick up the foreign lassies.

Yes, there are plenty of these, and I confess to not spending too much time in them yet. I may later when I am traveling, as they are pretty much the same wherever you go.

But there are other pubs here. Some of them are private little pubs, known only to the locals, and generally only visited by locals. No traditional music, no leprechauns. The patrons get together to just be together, to be among familiars, and no tourists seem to be interested in these.

We have at least two such places here, and one is called called Winters. There is nothing outside to tip you that it is a pub. It is just a doorway in town with the word "Winters" above the door. I am told it is ok to go in, and a person can get a different take on some of the town history and people from the place, but I still feel a little intimidated. I have mostly been invited into others privacy so far, and I hesitate to go poking where I am perhaps not going to be welcome. This may be an irrational concern since up to this point the Irish people have been nothing less than generous and kind in every way. So, I can't imaging the folks up at Winters being any different, but still I am hesitant. Perhaps before I head back, I will suck it up and stop in Winters if I can think of a good pretense.

Polke's is another one. Polke's is a licensed pub, which is altogether different than Winters. He can have a tap. However, Polke's is a little grocery store, complete with Barney the Black Dog sitting out front. And as I mentioned earlier, the only way you would know it has a pub is if you ventured thru the unmarked door in the back or if you knew Brian or had lived here most of your life.

Not many "yoong paepl" venture into Polke's. I have seen a select few in there that may have been coming in with mum and dad since they were wee ones. Polke's is small, just a back room with a bar and six or seven stools, and a bench behind against the wall. There is an impressive collection of small artwork on the walls given to Brian by the many artists that have been directed in by the Foundation across the street.

Awhile back a couple of 20-ish young women came in, and they seemed to know everone. They were chatty and had lots of stuff to discuss causing the oldsters to lean farther into the overhead TV to hear the sport recaps. No one said a word to them. That is not the way it is. Their discussion was far from either the working farm guys experience or the couple of artists from the center that were in there, but it was part of the fabric of the place, the pub and the town, and it was as sacred as any other part when it comes to the web of life here.

They both had tattoos on various places, and their young voices are still mixed in my ear with the scores on the tube and the low, heavily accented discussion about hoof rot (or whatever it was) going on behind me, all rolling into a thick and scented turf smoke that I can not and would not want to wash from my clothes. Not just yet anyway.

After my "sleeper" tonight at Polke's, (a shot of Irish whiskey I down to help my cold) I stepped out into the empty single street of Ballycastle of County Mayo and into a temporarily and surprisingly clear windless sky, with stars stretching out to the edge of the sea. As I head down the hill I am wondering how long this will last when I feel my heel give way to something that sinks my spirits...one of Barney's goddam little yard mines that had rolled down the sidewalk and escaped Brian Polke's broom...

Not the first time I have been looking up and not looking where I was going...

Barney...

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

The "boys" returned to the field below the house for just a day, gone this morning. They did the crowding at the fence when I came out to say hullo...a person usually means a treat to these steers, a noisy group of two year olds. They were sold this morning early, I had to move my car from near the gate. Pádraig (Irish for Patrick, pronounced "Poor-egg") warned me last night that he would be moving them to the lot behind Winters to show them to a buyer and he was afraid they would damage the car if it was too close to the gate when they came out for the 2 block cattle drive. He is the son of the owner of Winters, and he works for a pharmaceuticals distributer in Ballina for his day job. The last two weeks he has been on holiday, and he "farms" in his spare time and holidays. He is a nice guy, and he actually spends time with his cattle, and they run to the fence when he brings them a bucket of meal. These cattle are raised on grass, but occasionally he has a bucket of cow chow, some sort of meal that he leaves them causing great excitement. He pats them and pets them for ten or twenty minutes when he comes around, and they hang around and chat.

I am sorry to see them go, he says he wont replace them till spring. They are steers, and they have only one possible destiny but I thanked them for their sacrifice before they went. I didn't do it for them, they have no idea. They will happily go where farmer Pat leads them. I just think it is important to be thankful when other life forms are sacrificed for us to have what we want from them. It is important that it happens at my end. We humans arrogantly think we have a right to just about anything we reach for, and then wail and scream for the great tragedy when something reaches for us.

There is a regional court session tomorrow morning at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation. This traveling court uses the BAF gallery space as it's courtroom. I am going to sit in to see some of the dirty underside of the Irish rural life. There is a bank that comes around in the back of a truck, and a court that operates out of the trunk of a car. It is like the Wild West here, and I think I may wear Wellies when I sit in the observers gallery...just for fun.

I am ramping up to put some pictures on soon...and, I forgot to mention, high winds again today. Sheesh...

Thursday, September 29, 2005

The day began in Ballycastle with a marked increase in cars, and what seemed a high proportion of them Mercedes. Solicitors, as it turned out...lawyers. Wednesday was court, which is held ever so often in this part of County Mayo at the Ballinglen Center's gallery space, which is actually located on the old municipal building site in Ballycastle. Traveling court, overseen by Judge Mary Devins.

Every month or so the government in County Mayo sends someone to sit in a common chair and help the locals sort out their legal business, liquor licenses, land deeds, domestic disputes, custody issues, and even assaults, domestic violence, and the occasional murder. Mary Devlin does that for this part of Mayo, and the people that swirl around her in the little tempest of activity this time were not remarkable except when viewed against the backdrop of muddy shoes and cowpies in the street.

These were city folk. They had soft hands and Italian leather shoes. They wore suits and stylish city outfits, and moved with purpose...time was money to them. In fairness, time is money to the locals here as well, just not as much and...um... over a longer time.

These people had gold pens.

Judge Devins was impressive, the picture of what little Irish girls can look up to and emulate. I met her "in chambers" out in back in the little conference room of the Center, where she had her tea with the BAF staff and did some catchup with her Clerk. I had the impression someone would be required to wear a white "powdered wig" by tradition. I was disappointed she would not be wearing the big powdered wig...same for the solicitors. I was hoping someone would be wearing the white powdered wigs, but they don't do that here. Maybe just in England.

Judge Devins is a tiny woman, dressed sharply and stylishly with perfect coffee colored dark brown hair with some light streaking on the top. You probably cant get that sort of coif here, maybe in Ballina or Castlebar, but not here in Ballycastle or Killala. (Maybe only in Galway or Dublin for all I know...I haven't even seen a hair place around here.) Anyway, she is quite the presence, a strong intelligent persona which only hints of the power she wields. She has a reputation for being a tough judge, straightforward and no nonsense. It was difficult to tell her age, she obviously takes care of herself and has used her mind instead of her hands in her career, so I can only guess she is in the middle somewhere. However, as judges go, she is a hottie... no matter what her age is, and a bit of a celebrity here at Ballinglen. (I had to throw that in, see what the tabloids do?)

When Mary Devins is on the bench, there is no question who is the boss. Once the judge enters the room, she is Queen, and seeing these big men ask her permission for everything they seek was entertaining. She wore a simple black robe with a little white tie at the neck, and her chair is slightly above everyone in the room for the theatre of power which you quickly realize she does not need.

The court she held this time was pretty quiet stuff, only one hooligan in handcuffs. there were only three or four issues to take up, one was a bar license, a couple of unfinished things from somewhere else, and the young hooligan. The kid arrived late because of a big rain and hailstorm, accompanied by two Guarda (Irish for Police) in plain clothes. He had short cropped hair, with many divots in the back, and he couldn't have been more than twenty-ish, but had quite a violent rap-sheet with multiple counts of assault and domestic violence. He got referred down to Castlebar which seemed to be what all parties wanted. Some sort of arraignment.

The prisoner's state supplied companions were a couple of fit middle aged cops in nice street clothes, perfectly groomed, with faces that hinted of the experience of being a cop in a land with a violent past and present. They could have been Boston detectives, and I wouldn't want to mess with them. Ireland has some clever and violent factions, and being a soldier in that world teaches these cops some pretty ugly lessons, which is true of cops everywhere I suppose. But in Ireland, the violence is organized and dispersed throughout the population, even woven into the politics, making these guys stay on their toes at all times.

Watching them converse with the uniformed Guarda and the solicitors, they all sort of blend together untill one of the plainclothes cops sticks his pinkie in his ear and gives it a good twirl, giving him away as the flatfoot. The lawyers would never do this... not in the courtroom anyway.

Cops. I think it is funny how underneath it all they are the same guys everywhere you go.

When it was over, everyone rushed out to their cars, and were off to other business. Mary Devins let me take her picture, and then she left. Later in the evening we took apart the makeshift bench and Peter told me his plans to redesign it for her and make it nicer. After a shot of Irish whiskey, Peter and Margo went home to dinner and I went upstairs to my studio to work. It is still raining and windy out.

Her Honor, Mary Devins

Friday, September 30, 2005

Not much prepared for today, the connection has been very bad lately, and difficult to upload. I will try to start october on a new page and kick 'er off with a rasher of pictures...

I did finish two paintings, and as soon as I can get a decent picture of them, I will put them on the splash page or in here or both. It is clear out tonight, but cold and windy. The sea was a big show today, at high tide the surf was yielding twenty foot breakers. Looked like Southern California for quite awhile. The wind was heading directly offshore, which would be north here, and blowing the tops off the breakers making a white mist trail behind them. I have not seen it like that before, with waves crashing against Downpatrick Head that sent spray sixty to a hundred feet above the top of the cliffs. I got pictures, and will try to have them on tomorrow. Time for a nightcap and beddy-bye...

This continues on The Ireland Diary, October 2005