I got caught up with both set and modern dance classes since our return from Madrid, but now we're off again tomorrow and so will miss the classes for both this week.  We're headed to Holland and will spend Valentines Day there.

While in Amsterdam I'm hoping to get tickets to a sold-out Beethoven concert at the Concert Hall.  Since we've come here, I've only been to one classical music concert and I really miss hearing that music. On Friday we saw the movie Hitchcock and, while it wasn't very good, there was a scene in which "Hitch" was listening to Beethoven and I was reminded of how much I miss hearing the classics every once in a while.  I've been so focused on Irish dance and Irish music in general.

Since we returned from Spain, we saw the films Lincoln and Hitchcock and, although I like Anthony Hopkins as an actor, he's no Daniel Day Lewis.  Not once during Hitchcock did I ever get over thinking "Anthony Hopkins in a fat suit."   Daniel Day Lewis' Lincoln was another matter entirely, he WAS Lincoln.  It was a phenomenal performance.  I would definitely recommend it.  I would not recommend Hitchcock. 

I think I mentioned that Alan is writing more regularly here than ever before.  He's written a poem that is quite poignant.  It's about my brother, Frank.  Any family member reading this who knew Frank will remember his challenges with the Veteran's Administration as a result of his military career.  Its some of Alan's best work and I thought I'd reproduce it entirely here. 

No, Wait

By Alan Balkema

What did you say? I don’t hear too good.

I filled out your form.

That’s your problem, not mine.

Yes, disability payments.

Yes, Vietnam veteran.

My body is falling apart.

I have cysts where they shouldn’t be, and your asshole doctors won’t touch them.

No, wait. I’m sorry.

I’m not drunk.

I’ve been sitting here for hours. How could I drink?

I understand.

Agent Orange.

The worst of it.

Fuckin A I killed people. I was in a war zone.

No, wait.

Sorry, sorry.

I won’t do it again.

They looked like the enemy to me.

Nineteen.

Drafted.

Fourteen months.

They extended me for two months.

Disrespecting an officer.

He was a fuckin asshole.

No, wait.

I’m sorry.

I know I said, but I didn’t promise.

This time I promise.

Purple Heart.

I threw it away.

It was bad luck.

Because it never brought me good luck.

It must be in your records.

Nineteen sixty-eight.

Da Nang. Ever heard of it?

How old are you?

Was your daddy in the war?

I didn’t think so.

The base got shelled while we were sleeping. My hootch-mate was killed, and I got shrapnel in my back.

That’s where the hearing loss comes from.

It seemed like the line of duty to me.

I wouldn’t choose that locale for a vacation.

Seven days in the infirmary. There must be records.

I have a picture of me wearing the medal. See? I was young then.

I was mentioned in my hometown newspaper. There must be a record of that.

My mom cut the article out and sent it to me, but I lost it.

She’s dead. Dad, too.

Don’t you have one of those connections?

Do a search or something?

Fire in St. Louis? That’s not my problem.

How am I supposed to recreate records?

I’ve given you everything I have.

Fuck you.

No, wait, don’t go.

You’re pretty.

What am I supposed to do?

I don’t have anything to eat.

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! 

The last post of 2012

Just one more day left in an eventful 2012.  It's been a great year for us and we hope for you as well.
Except for a disappointing stay at Lough Erne Resort over Christmas last week (which you will all likely read about in April when the G8 visits there) we have had a wonderful year.  So good, in fact, that we've decided to extend our stay in Ireland.  We will definitely be here until at least November 2013 and I'm lobbying hard for another year after that.  We will make our decision on that in April when our lease is up on the property we're renting now.  If we stay I'd like to move from the tony Sandymount to a place where actual Irish people live.  It's a little like living on Embassy Row here, not quite as snooty but close.

We just returned from our Christmas trip to Ulster, the northern province in Ireland that includes my mother's home county of Donegal and Northern Ireland.  Donegal is in the Republic of Ireland but the rest of the province is in Northern Ireland.  We spent Christmas Eve and day at Lough Erne in County Fermanagh, the county adjoining Donegal.  The only thing to be said for those two days is that it was expensive.  We had a pretty good time with one another, but could have done that just as easily in Dublin.  On the day following Christmas (Boxing Day here) we moved to Donegal and visited my mother's family.  That was great and really made up for the bad time in the hotel.  We should have angled for an invitation to Christmas Dinner with family instead!

We decided to fly into Donegal this time.  It's about the distance from DC to New York so it's not  a long drive but I don't like the car very much and it just seemed easier.  All went to schedule, except the 80 mile-an-hour winds when we returned made for a harrowing landing back in Dublin at the end.  I don't think I've ever been afraid on an airplane, but I was then.  Fortunately the (woman) pilot was experienced and she seemed to think this was all in a day's work.  I was happy to be on the ground.

I hope you are all looking forward to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2013.  

We made our reservation for your Christmas program with high expectations.  We have experienced Ulster 5-star hospitality at Solis Lough Eske in Donegal several times.  Soon after booking we learned that you would host the G8 in the spring.  We were sure a stay booked as a "program" in such a venue would be more memorable than a nice bed and some meals.

Before going into our list of disappointments let me say your staff is lovely.  To a person everyone was kind and interested in our comfort.  It could only have been better if they were more well-informed. 

Before we arrived, we read, with dismay, about the fire in the pool area and received a call about same in advance.  We were told that there would be an adjustment to the bill for the spa treatments we booked.  We were a little surprised that the rate wasn’t reduced because without a pool a 5-star becomes a 4-star in our opinion, but we were also told during that call that there would be entertainment nightly during our stay.  At this point, we would have cancelled except for the promise of ‘nightly entertainment’ and the strength of the G8 booking, which we considered a ringing endorsement.

When we arrived we were surprised at the architectural sameness of the campus but encouraged when we saw the warm appearance of the lobby.  After check-in we encountered our first major setback.  Our room was a long hike to a side hall that reeked of paint.  The odor didn't encroach on the room so we didn't complain but we found as our stay progressed that we became more sensitive to the unpleasant passage. 

Once we were settled we decided to explore our surroundings.  We took the first stairway we encountered and discovered that the only egress at the end of the stairway was to the outside.  Since we weren't dressed for it, we thought a sign alerting us to that on floor two would have been nice.  Later, after a real chill we started just trying doors because there was no indication of which of the many doors might lead us back to the lobby.  The dearth of signage in such a large establishment was a problem for us several times:  looking for the room for Christmas lunch and the massage location most notably.

The most memorable thing about the Christmas Eve dinner was the popper.  The wine stopper was a nice gift.  As far as the meal, except for my overlooked pork belly, my husband and I were hard pressed to remember it the next morning.  Meals in general were disappointing.  Overcooked fish and meat and undercooked morning eggs were the norm.

Page 2

Still, it was Christmas and we were determined to be of good cheer.  When we asked at Christmas lunch if there would be turkey on the evening buffet in advance of making or meal selection we were assured there was.  Imagine our surprise when we discovered it was turkey cold cuts and the hot meal was curry!  Surely the waiter didn't think we'd have passed up the hot turkey at lunch for a turkey sandwich in the evening.

When we’d received the telephone call after booking we were told that we couldn’t have our massages at the same time.  We didn’t question it because we assumed that they would be booked in tandem and there were limited facilities.  Again a disappointment to discover they were 3 hours apart and when I arrived for my 1 p.m. massage, I was sharing the facility with a mother and daughter who had just booked.  Both my husband and I were very much looking forward to the Thai massage because they are hard to find in Ireland but having one at 10 and another at 1 meant there wasn’t much we could plan for that day.   As it happened, we were so disappointed with Lough Erne that we’d already decided to cut our visit short and only stayed two rather than the three nights.  So, this timing was really inconvenient because we had to check out of the room at noon which meant a rushed shower for Alan at 11:30 when he returned.  At this point, I called the desk and was assured that there were shower facilities in the spa.  When I got to the spa, it was clear that a shower would have been a major inconvenience for the staff and so I just passed it up and I had no shower that day.  On top of this, when we paid, we had to ask for the adjustment that was promised.  If I hadn’t asked, it would not have been honored.

We were also assured that there was “free internet.”  In most fine hotels “free” is truly free, you don’t have to provide your information to Bitbuzz in order to access it.  Contrary to what many people think, one’s private email address is valuable to services such as Bitbuzz or any other ISP so while there is no monetary charge, it is not free.  In addition, it didn’t work very well.   Because there were so many people staying there with electronic devices, any short hiatus in searching meant one had to sign in yet again through Bitbuzz.  The severe lack of internet bandwidth available there also affected the cable television reception.

Except for the terrible smell in the hallway and the not very well prepared food, we might have been able to overlook the other small annoyances if our biggest disappointment was absent.  We asked about entertainment and were assured it was planned for “every evening.”  But, 45 minutes of carols at 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve and background music on piano for a few hours nightly is not what we expected at all.  There was no attempt in any way to engage us, no sing song, no guided walk, no singer or dancing, no talk or lecture and, above all, no attempt in any way to help the many couples, without large family in tow, to get to know one another.  Ireland is so noteworthy for friendliness, music, dance, beautiful environment, storytellers, and so much more, but there was nothing like that for us this Christmas.  We could have booked at the Shelburne Hotel in Dublin if all we wanted were meals and a nice bed.  We were very sad about that.

In short, all we can say for our Lough Erne experience was that it was very, very expensive. 

With best regards to your very nice staff, we are,

Monica Dignam and Alan Balkema

Today is the start of the equinox and we really know short days here now.  It's 9:41 a.m. and daybreak was just a half hour ago.  Tomorrow it will be at 9:30.  Sunset will be around 3:45 today and 3:30 tomorrow.  I'm hoping the days lengthening is as apparent. 

I wish Happy Holidays to everyone reading this and hope you are all planning for some good memories in the week to come.  We are headed to Donegal and will visit my mother's grave and some of her family.  We are spending Christmas Day in Fermanagh, which is in the adjoining county to Donegal but in Northern Ireland.  The place we're going is the place the G8 is going to meet this spring, so we're expecting a lot.

This is going to be a short post but I leave you with a link to the Ballyvourney Jig, the Irish set dance I learned this year.  Watching it, you will see how much fun I've had since I started last September, by the time I'm back in the states, I'm going to be ready to start a group!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fa0h_ieKeU

With all my best wishes for a Happy Christmas and health and prosperity in 2013!

Although I don't usually do pictures in this blog, I'm going to post a really great picture of Dorothy and me at Glendalough during that grueling hike I posted about two times ago.  The picture is great and it gives a really good sense of the terrain.  That little boardwalk was quite wet and were it not for the many nails embedded, we would definitely have slipped off into the wet bog!  The up and down walking was a real challenge.  If you enlarge the picture you can see the path from about the halfway mark in the middle right.  From here, there was another quarter to go.  This picture is now my screen saver and I'm guessing I will start to have fonder memories of the walk as time goes by, but right now, I still remember it as very difficult. Yet, just this week we've booked a walking tour in Scotland for next September!  It will be between towns on the coast, so I'm hoping not this rough.  We're going with friends from Virginia.  They have done these walking tours before. I'm pretty sure they are both hale and hearty and just hope they are also not race walkers!  I have to say, the pictures of walking tours we've done are always great to see, I have to remember that while I'm doing it. 

 This week we have been doing things pretty close to home, although we have booked trips to Madrid for January and Paris for March, so we have stuff to look forward to after Christmas.  Last Saturday, we met one of the women we met in Majorca at a pub in Rathmines and had a great evening of Irish music in Grace's Pub.  She brought along her husband and a friend of his, so it was a nice group.  I really enjoyed the singing.  There were some familiar songs and some that I'd never heard before, including several that were identified as "Orange," Protestant songs from the north.  That was a real surprise and an indication of how the peace process has taken hold.  In the past, I think any Orange song sung in Dublin would be met with howls of protest.  It was good to hear.

On Friday this week we were included in the Hannigan's family Christmas dinner at a restaurant in Terenure, a nice little Dublin village.  We met the two siblings, Christine and Tom, that I haven't seen since they were toddlers.  Another very nice evening.

I'll end with a little update on my set dancing.  I'm actually getting better at it.  If you are interested, here's a youtube link to see one that we do at the end of each night:  It's called the balleyvorney:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nh6Qz6C5j14 .  This is a pretty long and vigorous dance, but it's as fun as it looks.  I'm really happy with this class.  We're about to break for Christmas and it will not resume until January.  I'll miss it for the month, that's for sure. 

I'm not as disciplined on this blog as I was at the beginning.  It's now almost two weeks since my last post.  But, I'm determined to keep it up.  My last post ended with preparations for Thanksgiving dinner so I'll recap that day. 

In addition to our friend Dorothy, who was visiting from Atlanta, we invited four new friends we have made here in Ireland.  None of them had experienced an American Thanksgiving in the past so it was a treat to shepherd them through the best of all American holidays.  I tried a few new things, most notably stuffed walnuts and dried fruit and nut stuffing, but for the most part it was as traditional as I could get. The stuffed walnuts came about because we couldn't find the traditional Diamond Nut collection in the shell and I knew that I had to stuff myself with walnuts in advance of the meal if it was going to be my idea of Thanksgiving.  The stuffing happened because I learned that Alan thinks my mother's traditional beef and pork recipe is heavy (who knew). 

There were several firsts, the pumpkin pie (described in my last post) was made from scratch and a fresh turkey.  The pie was a little more fibrous than that which is made from canned pumpkin but good nonetheless.  The turkey was a little disconcerting at first, I'm used to slow thawing a rock-frozen bird with all the feathers off and the skin kinda whitish and smooth.  The fresh version, as least what's on offer here, still had a few feathers sticking to the kinda purple skin, broken in several places.  I was very concerned with keeping it cool during the overnight it was in our teeny refrigerator.  I have to say, though, the turkey was a triumph! We are still eating leftovers. 

The meal was just great.  We started with each person's thankful list and that segued into some great conversation.  All of the participants complemented one another very well.  It was a completely pleasant meal and evening.  One of our guests brought us a bottle of Midleton Irish Whiskey, a limited edition libation in the price range of the finest single malt Scotch (but better since it's Irish).  At the conclusion of our meal, we each had a little taste of that neat (except, Mary, the driver) and after several bottles of the Majorca wine we saved for the occasion from our trip there we were all pretty mellow.  It was a really fun day.

The following day, Dorothy and I took an overnight trip to Belfast.  We went to the Titanic Museum, newly opened this year, 100 years after the sinking. It was a really good museum, particularly the way they did the film of the launch of the ship.  The historic film was somehow superimposed on a window at the spot where the ship went in the water when it was launched in 1911.  You could still see some of the features of the port and the mountains behind in both the film and reality.  It was quite spectacular.  I'd wanted to take Dorothy to Cork, the ship's last call in Ireland before sinking, but there just wasn't time in her visit to do all we wanted.  That evening we went to a pub for traditional Irish music.  As I'd experienced in the past, and prepared her for, the musicians play for themselves, not an audience.  Unlike our early experience in Dublin where the pub was so crowded and loud we couldn't hear a thing, this one was pretty empty and quiet.  The musicians were really great and there was also a singer with a beautiful voice.  It was perfect.  

We had a quiet weekend after returning to Dublin on Saturday evening but on Monday she and I took a day tour to the Hill of Tara, the inauguration site of 140 Irish kings during the millennium before the English took over; and Newgrange, a megalithic passage tomb that has been preserved.  I'd been to Newgrange several times but this was my first trip to the Hill of Tara and it was well worth it.  They say you can see 22 of the 26 counties in the Republic from there.  We were fortunate to visit on a sunny and bright day and the view was spectacular. 

To our great sadness, Dorothy left on Tuesday morning.  Her visit was too short, we've prevailed on her to plan another visit and stay a month! Dorothy's was the last scheduled visitor for us and I expect we won't see any American friends again until the spring, at least.  We will have to content ourselves with travel in Europe till then.  Our next adventure will be the Christmas program at a resort in Northern Ireland.  We will fly into Donegal, visit my mother's grave and some of her family and then drive North to Fermanagh.  Since booking we have learned that the G8 will meet at that resort in the spring, so that's made me think the place is going to be pretty nice. 

Next week we have been invited to the family get together of the Hannigans', the family that the Dignam family has known for over 100 years.  The great grandchildren of the family my Aunt Lilly worked for as a nanny/barmaid are our (younger but still boomer) contemporaries and, although I've known the first son, John and his family for many years, and have gotten to know the eldest sister Frances since coming here last spring, I haven't seen the other siblings since I was 19 and there were little kids scrabbling around the table during my several visits to Ireland in 1968 and the early 70's.  We are looking forward to it.