Since my last post I've been trying to think of a way to make this year's "Gathering" in Ireland a theme for my posts.  All it's done is caused me to delay posting!  At first I thought about doing some gathering related thing each week and posting about that.  But, most of the gatherings [www.thegatheringireland.ie] are family get-togethers; it would be kinda weird for me to crash a family reunion.  The other thing there's a lot of are sports events, but I'd rather eat rocks than go to any kind of sporting event, so I'm pretty thwarted. 

Still, while we were in Madrid last week, we returned a week ago today, we did marathon museum hopping:  The Prado, The Reina Sofia, The Summer Palace and several on a day trip to Toledo.  I saw several paintings entitled "The Gathering" one of a group of women meeting at a restaurant that I liked very much but can't find an image of, and another of what looks like a meeting of the mafia in The Prado, see it here: http://www.museoreinasofia.es/images/coleccion/300/AS00915_300.jpg .

That led me to thinking about "The Gathering" in Art and when I googled the term, I found two more.  One that I like very much and think I might just try to buy as a remembrance of my time here, even though it looks like Spain or Italy: http://www.anastasiamak.com/PAINTINGS%20full%20size/gathering.jpg and another that's just strange and I can't imagine why anyone would want to paint pigeons or have them on display anywhere:  http://vyala.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gathering1.jpg    .  So, I worked The Gathering in after all.

Now back to Madrid.  We had a great time there, although Alan came back with what he thinks might be a stress fracture in his heel.  He's at the docs right now to have it looked at.  I wouldn't be surprised because while all the museums were beautiful and interesting, all the floors were very, very hard and we did three consecutive days of visiting museums.  We were both undone by the hard, and mostly marble, floors.

I think I liked the Summer Palace the most.  It was the summer home Spain's royals in the 15th and 16th century.  If you get to Madrid, the commuter train ride to Aranjuez is worthwhile.  It's a nice little town and a short walk from the station to the palace.  I really enjoyed the audio tour and the porcelain room was just amazing.  I hadn't really thought of royals' role in establishing industries but this room, which is entirely made up (walls, floor, ceiling) of porcelain is really something.  The queen wanted to establish the porcelain industry in Spain so, in addition to outfitting the room, she was getting the artisans to hone their craft by doing it. http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&p=The+Porcelain+room+Aranjuez+Spain+image

Another highlight was seeing Picasso's Guernica up close http://totallyhistory.com/guernica/ .  It was at the Museo Reina Sofia, a very nice modern art museum in the heart of Madrid.  The museum has a real focus on Spanish modern artists and there was plenty to see there.  While we were there, a class of elementary aged children came through.  I was surprised to see first that they focused a lot of attention on Guernica, given its grizzly provenance, but also the reverence that everyone in the room displayed, including the very young children.  We also noted several times during our stay in Madrid, that Spain seems to want to skip over the Franco period entirely.  None of the audio or live tours that we did made any mention of that long and recent dark period.  I imagine it was something like in Ireland, once the period of occupation (in the case of Ireland) was over, all the streets and buildings named for the reviled government were renamed.

The day after I returned from Spain was the day for the public report for the study I worked on with The Community Foundation for Ireland.  It got some good coverage in The Irish Times the following day:  http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0124/1224329226963.html .  Unfortunately, the report neglected to mention my role in the design and analysis of the study.  Since this was the first time I've ever volunteered my professional services, a practice I've always avoided since volunteering research just serves to undercut those out there trying to make a living as I was, I expected that I would not have had to ASK them to recognize the value of the work.  It was quite a shock and disappointment and reinforced my instinct not to volunteer in that way in the future. 

This week I've been trying to finish up a new research project I took just before Christmas, which is growing like topsy.  Once I get it done, I'm going to implement my plan to try and NOT work for a while.  I have a presentation on a research study in Lisbon in April and another in Atlanta in August and that's enough.  I'm going to take some time off now.   So, hopefully my next post will be about doing nothing but fun stuff and gathering...Till then.

It's 2013!

When I was a child, I imagined the far, far away turn of the century.  Like most kids then, I calculated the age I'd be then and wondered if I'd live to see the ripe old age of 52.  I remember telling my mother that I didn't think anyone would get to be that old.  Since she must have been about 40 then, she just laughed and said she'd hoped that we both would be alive to see it happen.  She added that when that time came, I probably would marvel at the feeling that I hadn't really "grown up" in the way I thought about it then.  She was right on both counts. 

Now I'm one year into retirement and still feeling a sense of new beginnings and adventure but also incomplete and insecure.  I still can't decide if I retired too early or if I've really not given myself a chance to experience it fully since I've completed several large research projects in the time I've been here in Ireland.  We've done a lot of new things here, met new people and reinforced friendships with visitors from America but there's lots more to experience.  In the coming year, that's my goal, to try and work less and have even more fun than I did last year!

Which brings me to The Gathering  This year, all of Ireland is putting out the welcome mat for the diaspora to "come home."  The actor, Gabriel Byrne, calls it the Irish shakedown, but he's taking a more negative view than I am about the effort to encourage people to come to Ireland and explore their roots (if they have them) or just experience the country and its people. 

I've been looking for a unifying theme for this blog.  Sometimes over the past year I've felt that my posts might be a little overbearing.  "We went here, we did that everything is cool and exciting!"  After reading several Christmas letters that have seemed that way to me, it's given me pause.  I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to do it, but at the end of this adventure I want to try to write a publishable memoir.  I've noticed that the ones I've read and liked have some kind of context or unifying theme and so I'm going to try to make The Gathering that theme for my posts this year. 

As I write this, I still don't know what that means but I'm hoping an idea comes to me between now and my next post.  In the meantime, visit www.thegatheringireland.com and consider your own adventure here in 2013!