This week's post is about Miss Ellenie.
I've been wanting to find a volunteer activity that I'd enjoy. Something that would help me to get more into the community and better understand Ireland. Several posts ago I wrote about meeting a new friend, Mary, who has introduced me to several people and through whom I've made my volunteer connection. Mary is quite a match maker and I very much enjoy her company, hopefully it will be a friendship enduring beyond our stay here.
Anyway, Mary introduced me to Noreen who told me that she volunteered one day a week for The Community Foundation of Ireland. The way she described it sounded a lot like a "foundation of foundations," right up my alley since I have so much experience with the "association of associations." I thought there might be something there for me to do in, what else, research.
At this point I expect some of you are thinking that my retirement is already a bus man's holiday and getting more so. But, those of you who really know me know that I didn't retire from research, I retired from bureaucracy. I still love research. Designing studies that ask people to share their attitudes, beliefs and behaviors and then converting that to numeric tables that tell stories is my forte. And, I don't have to interact with a lot of people in person to find out, what curmudgeon could ask for more? But I digress.
I met with the CEO of The Community of Foundation of Ireland (CFI) on Tuesday and we discussed many things research. CFI is interested in setting up an evaluation program to assess the effectiveness of the programs supported by the funds they manage. I left with a project. I'll be designing an evaluation of "Chess for All" a program that teaches the game of chess in schools. Right up my alley. The great thing is that starting with something that's so familiar to me will virtually ensure that I'll be able to do a good job while learning more about Ireland's schools. What better way to start learning about the community? That's the great thing about what I do, learning a little about a huge variety of things. This is a two-fer because I don't know much about chess either.
But, back to Miss Ellenie. At the end of our meeting CFI's exec, Tina, asked me if there was anything she could do for me or for Alan. (A sign of a generous nature that bodes well for me in this endeavor I think.) I told her that Alan was trying to find a writer's group, a networking group for him to have his work criticized and to read the work of others. She said she knew some writers, as do most people in Ireland, and would check around. She also mentioned an RTE (Ireland's NPR) program on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. where writers' short works are read. She said the program is called Miss Ellenie. I thought that was a pretty weird name for a show but figured that Ellenie was the name of the host. I speculated that this was an Irish name, spelled something like Aoughire similar to Aoife the spelling for Ava. I asked about Miss Ellenie's background to Tina's great puzzlement. The program is Miscellany, "a mixture of various things." Gotta get better with understanding the brogue.
Today we are off to Donegal to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary. Except for my little break on Tuesday, the week has been spent entirely on doing tables in Excel for a compensation survey that contains over 75 positions. It's been a tough week and I need a break. Then on Tuesday, I'm off to Provence to meet a friend from the States and "see the lavender," one of the things on her bucket list.
To all of you back in the States, have a great Independence Day. I'll be thinking of fireworks on the roof of our old apartment building in DC where we spent the last 5 years watching the huge fireworks display on Washington's National Mall and the smaller ones put on by communities throughout the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.
Right now I'm marveling over 35 years of marriage!
Friday, June 29, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
This is the first week since we have been here that I've devoted completely to full time work. I've had about three months of not working full-time, although this survey that is now occupying all of my time, was in the field and there was some work to do to prepare. This week has been nothing but doing it. So, unless I were to write a litany of my challenges with cleaning data, programming and formatting tables, there's not much to say! Next week will be more of the same.
At the end of the month there will be some respite when we go to Donegal for our anniversary weekend and then I'm off to Provence to meet a friend for a few days. That's what I will look forward to while I'm working as hard as I did when I was employed full time in the coming week.
At the end of the month there will be some respite when we go to Donegal for our anniversary weekend and then I'm off to Provence to meet a friend for a few days. That's what I will look forward to while I'm working as hard as I did when I was employed full time in the coming week.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Well this was the week of Bloomsday. I'd been looking forward to experiencing Dublin on June 16th since we started making the plan to move to Ireland. Yesterday (Saturday, June 16th) was the culmination of a week of activities mostly centered around James Joyce' Ulysses . It was a fun week, we did something almost every day.
We started on Monday with a walk through the city center on the parts of Leopold Bloom's (the main character) walk from the Liffey (the river that runs through Dublin) to the National Museum. The guide said it was the part of the story focused on digestion and he made a lot of references to where in the human alimentary canal we were throughout, an interesting approach. The guide was very knowledgeable about the book as a lot of people seem to be.
On Tuesday, we went to a reading of the last chapter of the book, Molly Bloom's (Leopold's wife) monologue. This, like all the chapters, is sparsely punctuated with a total of eight sentences in the 90-minute reading. The actress was amazing. This was done at Bewleys, a cafe on Grafton Street (the main shopping street in Dublin) in a little theater on the third floor. We were two of only 12 in the audience, hopefully the subsequent days were better for them.
On Wednesday, we did a bus tour starting from the Joyce Museum at the City Center to Dalky where one of the other main characters, Stephen Dedalus taught school. On this trip we stopped at the Dublin Jewish Museum, which had little to do with either James Joyce or the character Bloom (who was Jewish) but it was quite interesting to see the museum and synagog as well as hear a little about the history of Jews in Dublin. The guide was a Joyce scholar from Baton Rouge, LA. He's spent the last 6 years in Dublin studying Joyce. An interesting young man, although I wonder what he's going to do when he has to get a job. I think he's hoping for a university position, which I guess is quite possible since I'd say half of the other 28 people on the bus were university types, all with some expertise in either Joyce or Ulysses.
On Thursday I took a break from all things Joyce and walked with some new friends in Phoenix Park, a huge park in the city center similar to New York's Central Park. The Irish President and the American ambassador's house are within, along with an estate called Farmleigh which was the former home of the Guinness family but is now Ireland's Blair house, the place where they put up visiting dignitaries. It was about 3 miles from the gate to the house and the walk in was great, we ate lunch there during which it started to rain, so the 3 miles out was pretty soggy. Still it was nice to be with new friends.
On Friday we rested, although I began working on a compensation survey which promises to take up all my time in the next two weeks. I also completed a presentation on a book I've co-written that I will be giving in Liverpool in July.
On Saturday we attended the Bloomsday breakfast at the Gresham Hotel in the city center. There were several really good readings by actors in some of the key characters' roles. Then I went to the Writer's Museum to attend part of a 28-hour marathon of author's reading from their works. The marathon began on Friday at 10 a.m. and went through Saturday at 2, breaking a Guinness World Record for consecutive hours of authors reading from their own works. The 111 Irish writers involved successfully beat the record held previously by the Germans for 75 authors reading. I attended the last 14 readings, including one of my favorites, Roddy Doyle, who some of you might know from the movie The Commitments (which if you haven't seen it, you should, especially if you like rock and roll).
It was a fun week. It's just amazing how many people from all over the world come to Dublin for Bloomsday. It's also amazing how people talk about "Bloom" as if he were a real person, people speak authoritatively about his back story in quite real and historical terms. I found that part quite amusing. Less amusing is the incredible pretension surrounding many literary types. While I know it's a manifestation of insecurity, it just galls me nonetheless. Anyway, a small gripe in what was otherwise a really interesting week. Especially for a book I haven't read and don't intend to.
The next two weeks will be taken up with work. I'm working on a compensation survey that I'm hoping to get finished by the end of the month, when we are scheduled to go to Donegal to celebrate our 35th anniversary in my mother's home county. I'll go back to posting on Fridays.
We started on Monday with a walk through the city center on the parts of Leopold Bloom's (the main character) walk from the Liffey (the river that runs through Dublin) to the National Museum. The guide said it was the part of the story focused on digestion and he made a lot of references to where in the human alimentary canal we were throughout, an interesting approach. The guide was very knowledgeable about the book as a lot of people seem to be.
On Tuesday, we went to a reading of the last chapter of the book, Molly Bloom's (Leopold's wife) monologue. This, like all the chapters, is sparsely punctuated with a total of eight sentences in the 90-minute reading. The actress was amazing. This was done at Bewleys, a cafe on Grafton Street (the main shopping street in Dublin) in a little theater on the third floor. We were two of only 12 in the audience, hopefully the subsequent days were better for them.
On Wednesday, we did a bus tour starting from the Joyce Museum at the City Center to Dalky where one of the other main characters, Stephen Dedalus taught school. On this trip we stopped at the Dublin Jewish Museum, which had little to do with either James Joyce or the character Bloom (who was Jewish) but it was quite interesting to see the museum and synagog as well as hear a little about the history of Jews in Dublin. The guide was a Joyce scholar from Baton Rouge, LA. He's spent the last 6 years in Dublin studying Joyce. An interesting young man, although I wonder what he's going to do when he has to get a job. I think he's hoping for a university position, which I guess is quite possible since I'd say half of the other 28 people on the bus were university types, all with some expertise in either Joyce or Ulysses.
On Thursday I took a break from all things Joyce and walked with some new friends in Phoenix Park, a huge park in the city center similar to New York's Central Park. The Irish President and the American ambassador's house are within, along with an estate called Farmleigh which was the former home of the Guinness family but is now Ireland's Blair house, the place where they put up visiting dignitaries. It was about 3 miles from the gate to the house and the walk in was great, we ate lunch there during which it started to rain, so the 3 miles out was pretty soggy. Still it was nice to be with new friends.
On Friday we rested, although I began working on a compensation survey which promises to take up all my time in the next two weeks. I also completed a presentation on a book I've co-written that I will be giving in Liverpool in July.
On Saturday we attended the Bloomsday breakfast at the Gresham Hotel in the city center. There were several really good readings by actors in some of the key characters' roles. Then I went to the Writer's Museum to attend part of a 28-hour marathon of author's reading from their works. The marathon began on Friday at 10 a.m. and went through Saturday at 2, breaking a Guinness World Record for consecutive hours of authors reading from their own works. The 111 Irish writers involved successfully beat the record held previously by the Germans for 75 authors reading. I attended the last 14 readings, including one of my favorites, Roddy Doyle, who some of you might know from the movie The Commitments (which if you haven't seen it, you should, especially if you like rock and roll).
It was a fun week. It's just amazing how many people from all over the world come to Dublin for Bloomsday. It's also amazing how people talk about "Bloom" as if he were a real person, people speak authoritatively about his back story in quite real and historical terms. I found that part quite amusing. Less amusing is the incredible pretension surrounding many literary types. While I know it's a manifestation of insecurity, it just galls me nonetheless. Anyway, a small gripe in what was otherwise a really interesting week. Especially for a book I haven't read and don't intend to.
The next two weeks will be taken up with work. I'm working on a compensation survey that I'm hoping to get finished by the end of the month, when we are scheduled to go to Donegal to celebrate our 35th anniversary in my mother's home county. I'll go back to posting on Fridays.
Friday, June 8, 2012
For those of you who asked for pictures, here are some. This week's post follows.
First our building
Interior -- Living Room (the new sofa is WAAAY better) and Guest Room
Sandymount, including St. Johns Church (Anglican), Sandymount Strand, and The Martello Tower at the end of our street. Martello Towers were built by the English when they were fighting with Napoleon because they felt that Ireland was their soft underbelly and they posted look-outs in each one of them. These towers ring the Irish Sea, there are about 20 of them.
Finally, Alan in Dun Laoghaire. You can see my cute new bike helmet on the handlebars. It looks like a bowler, unfortunately it sits way high on my head in a kinda "Little Tramp" perch. But the brim keeps rain out of my face.
First our building
Finally, Alan in Dun Laoghaire. You can see my cute new bike helmet on the handlebars. It looks like a bowler, unfortunately it sits way high on my head in a kinda "Little Tramp" perch. But the brim keeps rain out of my face.
When we decided to come to Ireland, I extracted a promise from Alan that he wouldn't mention the weather every single day. He's from Indiana, where rain, sunshine, snow and sleet, tornados and whatever else is heaped upon the landscape is fodder for hours of conversation. He's been good to his promise and has not mentioned that it has rained every single day. Sometime hard, sometimes light -- a condition my grandfather called 'a nice soft day' -- but every day. So far, that's 66 consecutive days.
On the day we arrived, April 3, I thought it was a pretty typical spring day; temp around 50 degrees (which is something in the single digits in Celsius) and showers. But today, June 8th it's still 50 degrees and showers. It seems there is no march toward summer at all. In between we've had one or two 70 degree days, including one last Monday. I've learned not to let those days go by as I have on one or two previous occasions because they are few and far between.
Monday was a glorious sunny day. It wasn't particularly warm but it was a beautiful day for a bike ride. Now that we have our new bikes we decided to seize the day and do it! I donned my very cute, but ultimately dorky, rain hat looking bike helmet and we were off to Dun Laoghaire, a pretty seaside village on the Irish Sea. There's a nice bike trail that hugs the coast for the 7-mile trip. There was a little street riding but mostly we were on a shared bike/walking trail for the trip there. It was a great ride, we both got to figure out the gears, learn the tricks for getting into and out of our toe clips and generally get comfortable with our bikes. We had lunch at Dun Laoghaire -- note my cute helmet on the handlebars in the picture. It was a bank holiday so there were lots of people everywhere since bank holidays and sunny days are even rarer than a day without rain. Everyone was happy. Alan suggested that we ride back on the street so that we could get used to traffic on this shake-out ride as well. That was a little hair raising but I found my assertive Washington, DC bike riding techniques emerged pretty quickly -- despite riding in the very unfamiliar left lane. It was a lot of fun. It rained that evening and has been continuously raining since then.
Next week is Bloomsday. June 16th is the day James Joyce' Ulysses was set. It's quite a big thing in Dublin and they milk it for the whole week. On Tuesday, we're doing a walking tour, on Wednesday we are going on a bus tour featuring the Jewish areas in 20th Century Dublin, on Friday we are going to a rendition of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Bewley's Cafe and on the day itself we are going to have a traditional Irish breakfast at the Gresham Hotel (I'm not eating the kidney). For those of you who haven't read the book (I haven't, Alan has) the guy whose funeral figures prominently was Paddy Dignam (my father's name) of Sandymount (where we are living). Synchronicity. I think I will hold off posting next week until Saturday afternoon so I can relate all these activities.
On the day we arrived, April 3, I thought it was a pretty typical spring day; temp around 50 degrees (which is something in the single digits in Celsius) and showers. But today, June 8th it's still 50 degrees and showers. It seems there is no march toward summer at all. In between we've had one or two 70 degree days, including one last Monday. I've learned not to let those days go by as I have on one or two previous occasions because they are few and far between.
Next week is Bloomsday. June 16th is the day James Joyce' Ulysses was set. It's quite a big thing in Dublin and they milk it for the whole week. On Tuesday, we're doing a walking tour, on Wednesday we are going on a bus tour featuring the Jewish areas in 20th Century Dublin, on Friday we are going to a rendition of Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Bewley's Cafe and on the day itself we are going to have a traditional Irish breakfast at the Gresham Hotel (I'm not eating the kidney). For those of you who haven't read the book (I haven't, Alan has) the guy whose funeral figures prominently was Paddy Dignam (my father's name) of Sandymount (where we are living). Synchronicity. I think I will hold off posting next week until Saturday afternoon so I can relate all these activities.
Friday, June 1, 2012
This blogging is harder than I thought. I'm going to do my best to keep the discipline of weekly posts but skipping last week it was easy to think about just letting this fall by the wayside. I've reminded myself that I'm doing it for myself as a chronicle of our time here and that I will regret it if I don't have that at the end (for my memoir, of course).
Our lives here in Ireland have fallen into a routine. It's not that it has become boring, but that excitement of every day bringing some completely new challenge or wonder or sight has passed. Some of the initial challenges still remain to be completely sorted out. Banking is still a problem. Our bank in the US, Capitol One, has changed "policies" yet again on how they will, or more accurately will not, handle international transfers when you are not in the lobby to do it. At first they said they didn't do it, then they said they did do it and we should send a letter. We did the letter thing, which they just ignored until Alan contacted them, when they again said they didn't do it. Four or five interactions later, they said they did do it but now the Bank of Ireland had to initiate it. BOI has already told us they can't do it because, as we and they pointed out to Capitol One, that cuts us -- THE OWNERS OF THE MONEY -- out of the transaction. Anyway, it's not as big a problem as it had been because we can now use PayPal, but the fee is higher and the amount of each transaction is lower. We still might have to go back to the US in the upcoming months to get ourselves into a bank that has a clue. Sorry for the rant, but someone told us this would be the hardest part of this move and we just didn't believe her. Was she ever right.
I missed blogging last week because we went to Belgium (Bruges) and The Hague (Holland) for a trip from May 22 to 28. We flew into Amsterdam and took the train to Bruges, a three hour trip. It was clear it was a commuter train and it was rush hour when we got on, so we quickly learned the down side of a second class ticket and didn't sit together for most of the time. Not a tragedy, but as those of you who commute long distances by train know, the evening commute can be a tired, irritable one and our fellow passengers weren't in the mood for tourists! Anyway, that was only a tiny glitch. We came back first class.
Bruges is an amazing place, I would definitely recommend it to anyone. The city is a medieval wonder, cobblestone streets, huge red brick buildings, busy central squares, virtually no car traffic and a zillion tourists that, like us, seem to think there's no recession. The Hague was also nice but if we had it to do over, I would have done that first during mid-week rather than the weekend because Bruges is a tourist town and The Hague is all business. I would have liked to have toured the international criminal court there, but of course it was closed. Still, the city center had its charms and we visited a wonderful museum there the Gemeentemuseum (municipal museum). It was a really great Art Deco building, purpose built, but not anything you'd expect to see as an art palace. I would definitely recommend it. Based on what I saw on the train and in both Bruges and The Hague, this is a very rich region. Still, the recession in Europe is on everyone's mind.
Yesterday was the vote in Ireland on the European Austerity Treaty, it has another official name, but that's what everyone calls it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am eligible to vote because I'm recognized as an Irish citizen through my parents' birth. I registered several weeks ago and did so yesterday. Turnout was low and the counting is expected to be done today. After much research and consideration, I decided to vote 'yes'. Ireland is the only country in the EU to use the vote as a means of ratifying the treaty that was negotiated last year. I have observed that they are very democratic here and, even though the powers that be would like to just rule, the Irish public won't stand for it. A positive outgrowth of the difficult history in my view. The treaty was initially negotiated when the conservatives were in power in France. Then, it mostly covered austerity measures, with a heavy dose of "no new taxes". Now, with the election in France where they booted out the right wing Sarkosy and elected the left wing Hollande there's more talk of an approach that is balanced between growth and austerity. An interesting concept. Anyway, I voted yes because I think it's important to for all of Europe to work together and I am more confident that a Hollande/Merkle mix it won't be as one-sided as a Sarkosy/Merkle approach would have been. Pretty much everyone agrees that France and Germany are calling the shots now. Interestingly enough, there was a recent survey about attitudes toward Germany and throughout Europe, they seem to be held in high regard. It's great that they are using their considerable power, intelligence and wealth in the economic rather than the military realm.
The coming month is going to be a busy one for me. I'm finishing the writing on a book, the second in a series about why people join associations, working on a compensation survey, and preparing for a speaking gig in Liverpool on the book topic. When I started writing this morning I thought I had nothing to say, now it's turned into a too-long post! I'm a re-energized blogger, and off to yoga. Till next week...
Our lives here in Ireland have fallen into a routine. It's not that it has become boring, but that excitement of every day bringing some completely new challenge or wonder or sight has passed. Some of the initial challenges still remain to be completely sorted out. Banking is still a problem. Our bank in the US, Capitol One, has changed "policies" yet again on how they will, or more accurately will not, handle international transfers when you are not in the lobby to do it. At first they said they didn't do it, then they said they did do it and we should send a letter. We did the letter thing, which they just ignored until Alan contacted them, when they again said they didn't do it. Four or five interactions later, they said they did do it but now the Bank of Ireland had to initiate it. BOI has already told us they can't do it because, as we and they pointed out to Capitol One, that cuts us -- THE OWNERS OF THE MONEY -- out of the transaction. Anyway, it's not as big a problem as it had been because we can now use PayPal, but the fee is higher and the amount of each transaction is lower. We still might have to go back to the US in the upcoming months to get ourselves into a bank that has a clue. Sorry for the rant, but someone told us this would be the hardest part of this move and we just didn't believe her. Was she ever right.
I missed blogging last week because we went to Belgium (Bruges) and The Hague (Holland) for a trip from May 22 to 28. We flew into Amsterdam and took the train to Bruges, a three hour trip. It was clear it was a commuter train and it was rush hour when we got on, so we quickly learned the down side of a second class ticket and didn't sit together for most of the time. Not a tragedy, but as those of you who commute long distances by train know, the evening commute can be a tired, irritable one and our fellow passengers weren't in the mood for tourists! Anyway, that was only a tiny glitch. We came back first class.
Bruges is an amazing place, I would definitely recommend it to anyone. The city is a medieval wonder, cobblestone streets, huge red brick buildings, busy central squares, virtually no car traffic and a zillion tourists that, like us, seem to think there's no recession. The Hague was also nice but if we had it to do over, I would have done that first during mid-week rather than the weekend because Bruges is a tourist town and The Hague is all business. I would have liked to have toured the international criminal court there, but of course it was closed. Still, the city center had its charms and we visited a wonderful museum there the Gemeentemuseum (municipal museum). It was a really great Art Deco building, purpose built, but not anything you'd expect to see as an art palace. I would definitely recommend it. Based on what I saw on the train and in both Bruges and The Hague, this is a very rich region. Still, the recession in Europe is on everyone's mind.
Yesterday was the vote in Ireland on the European Austerity Treaty, it has another official name, but that's what everyone calls it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am eligible to vote because I'm recognized as an Irish citizen through my parents' birth. I registered several weeks ago and did so yesterday. Turnout was low and the counting is expected to be done today. After much research and consideration, I decided to vote 'yes'. Ireland is the only country in the EU to use the vote as a means of ratifying the treaty that was negotiated last year. I have observed that they are very democratic here and, even though the powers that be would like to just rule, the Irish public won't stand for it. A positive outgrowth of the difficult history in my view. The treaty was initially negotiated when the conservatives were in power in France. Then, it mostly covered austerity measures, with a heavy dose of "no new taxes". Now, with the election in France where they booted out the right wing Sarkosy and elected the left wing Hollande there's more talk of an approach that is balanced between growth and austerity. An interesting concept. Anyway, I voted yes because I think it's important to for all of Europe to work together and I am more confident that a Hollande/Merkle mix it won't be as one-sided as a Sarkosy/Merkle approach would have been. Pretty much everyone agrees that France and Germany are calling the shots now. Interestingly enough, there was a recent survey about attitudes toward Germany and throughout Europe, they seem to be held in high regard. It's great that they are using their considerable power, intelligence and wealth in the economic rather than the military realm.
The coming month is going to be a busy one for me. I'm finishing the writing on a book, the second in a series about why people join associations, working on a compensation survey, and preparing for a speaking gig in Liverpool on the book topic. When I started writing this morning I thought I had nothing to say, now it's turned into a too-long post! I'm a re-energized blogger, and off to yoga. Till next week...
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