Things I’ve Seen

Sometimes I see a little thing and try try to remember so I can write about it here.  Then I usually forget to write until I see the next little thing I try to remember so I can write about here.  Now I sit at this keyboard and try to remember all those little things.  So today a list:

• They call the ocean the sea here.
• They call the bay the sea.
• Cindy and I went down to the sea one warm Sunday a few weeks back to put our feet in the water.  DAMN it was cold! Reminded me of attempting to bathe in Horton Creek, a snow-melt powered creek my family camped next to the summer Nixon resigned while my dad ran an archaeological excavation.  Also reminded me of trying to shower at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival where only the first 5 people had warm water and I was number five hundred and five to visit the shower which was also powered by snow-melt creek water.  Washing your hair made your head hurt.
• We saw a school of eels while we were waiting for our feet to warm up enough for a second attempt at dipping them.  It was the first time I had seen such a thing.  The word murmuration comes to mind.  Not sure if it applies to anything other than Starlings but it in my head it applies to birds, fish, and now eels.
• Which brings me to words:
  • Would a starlet who has advanced but not quite to star status be a starling?
  • Is there a collective noun for a group of eels?
  • I heard the word “gongoozler” on the TV and knew what it was.
• We attempted to have milk delivered to the house.  Cindy and I had milk delivery in the States at different times and found it enjoyable in some sense.  So we tried it here.  The company did not provide a box (as we thought they would and as was done in the States), they didn’t even call to let us know the milk delivery was starting (as they said they would).  We were the second group to discover the milk; the crows were the first.  Now we have to put a bucket outside and upside down with a rock on top to keep the crows away.  We’ll see how that works.
• There was a family of swans in the canal this spring.  Four cygnets, but as the summer has worn on the number of cygnets has reduced until there is now only one.  It makes a forlorn sight when one knows that there were more earlier.
• One morning, while cycling along the canal on my way to work,  I saw a pied wagtail catch an insect in mid flight and then fly into the safety railing, which rang out like a small gong.  The bird did not drop its catch and continued to fly off.
• Galway is bidding for the 2020 European Capital of Culture.  I am working on the data manipulation to track the status of the bid on social media.  I hope that we will be providing a lot of open data for the bid and into the future.
• We have a lot of birds in our front garden (not just crows) and have decided that pigeons do not land so much as crash into the ground.  We can always hear them when they arrive.

Well that is all I can recall for now.  I am certain there are things I have forgotten but which I will remember the moment this is posted.  I guess those things are lost in l’esprit d l’escalier.

— Claude

Galway Burlesque Festival

Looking forward to this particular festival!

Home.

— Cindy

Politically correct

On Friday 22 May the people of the Republic of Ireland get to vote on a referendum regarding marriage equality; in other words, the straights get to say whether or not the gays get to marry.  I find it ridiculous that the masses get to choose whether people who love one another are allowed to marry, but that’s the state of our world these days.  Of course, Claude and I don’t get to vote, and that makes me sad.  I’d love to be able to proudly mark a YES on my ballot.  Such is the plight of the ex-pat.  I am frankly surprised how many people are scared to admit that they want to vote yes – and how many are scared to admit they want to vote no.  The No side has a pretty lame argument: some blather about ‘marriage is about having children’, and how scary surrogacy seems to be, and children needing both a mother and a father (while any number of studies easily accessed will refute that argument quite handily).  They don’t take into account the two-gender marriages that won’t or can’t produce children, or relationships that may emulate a single-sex marriage exactly.  If you ask me, I think it’s just another way for the insidious Catholic church to assert itself into the government and into the minds of the people.

Last week we received our first water bill in the post.  Anyone who hasn’t been paying attention – I’m looking at you, USA – wouldn’t know that water charges are a huge bone of contention in Ireland.  The entity administering this boondoggle is called Irish Water, and everyone reviles them.  They’ve already pulled millions of euros out of our pockets and now they’re siphoning even more – Like that analogy?  I thought it apt – without having done anything to improve infrastructure or water quality.  I’ve been told that the government will not start prosecuting people who refuse to pay until they are 4 bills in arrears.  Others have said that they don’t think the government has the intestinal fortitude to prosecute the predicted number of people who plan to refuse to pay.  But we’re afraid of the consequences to our bid for citizenship if we refuse to pay and end up in court.  So as much as we despise the position we’ve been brought to, we’re going to capitulate and pay the bill.  After all, as Americans we’re used to paying for water.  Where we come from, it doesn’t ‘just come from the sky’!

Speaking of the insidious church, I am finding it more and more difficult to listen to people make reference to their god without adding my two cents.  All these exhortations of “God bless you” and “God willing” and “with God’s help” etc. ad nauseum make me want to stomp my feet in frustration and ask all kinds of questions that will most certainly upset the devout.  I see parents going through the expensive and time-consuming routine of offering their daughters up as brides to the christ (aka communion) because they don’t want their children to feel “left out” while they themselves claim not to be religious or even attend church on a regular basis.  Ireland actually has blasphemy laws on the books under which one could theoretically be prosecuted for saying something against someone else’s god!  There’s an atheist group that I think I should join – and I will, as long as they don’t ask for too much of my time.

I like to be politically involved but I find that it’s difficult to be involved more deeply than simply peripherally, as I can’t really effect any change in any meaningful fashion until I am no longer afraid for my immigration status and can be allowed to vote.

It is 20 months until we can apply for citizenship.  Until then we can only sit back and watch the politics fly.

— Cindy

Almost Summer (“Samhradh”)

Mr Whippie in Salthill, Ireland

Summer, “Samhradh” in Irish, starts on May 1. Yesterday I was at the Salthill promenade. A chill wind was blowing and the sun was shining. I sat in the windbreak of a cement structure and enjoyed the atmosphere.

A Pied Wagtail was darting and hopping about eating flying bugs.

A young man stripped down to his swim trunks and ran into the cold water of the bay wherein he began to yell about the cold.

The salty scent of seaweed filled the air.

The cool cement sucked the warmth out of my shoulder, an effect that would have been welcomed in the hot dry desert of the American Southwest but here just made me cold.

The persistent sound of the crash of waves on the shore and the near synchronous sound of traffic on the road above intermixed with the putt-putting of the Mr. Whippie van.

The crunch of shoes on stones.

The low murmur of people talking, punctuated with the occasional call of a child.

I dozed.

— Claude

 

Is é Éire mo bhaile

I recently made a trip home to Las Vegas to see my son and family of origin.  While there my nephew-in-law asked me what I found to be the biggest difference between Ireland and the US.  The question took me aback and got me thinking.  There are a number of reasons I wanted to move to the EU: better privacy protection, a chance to live in a different culture, the chance to get out of a country that was beginning to feel like the world’s biggest bully.  But after living here for three years, what do I see as the major differences?

The US feels plastic, nothing seems to be real.  Everything seems to big: cars, houses, grocery stores, roads, serving sizes.  It’s the consumer mentality gone wild.  On top of that a lack of recycling, maximum packaging, few family owned stores.  Nothing that I want to really support with my hard earned cash.

It was good to see the family, the conversation was great craic, and the weather was nice but I don’t want to be there.  It was good to come home to Ireland.  Ireland really feels like home now.

Is é Éire mo bhaile = Ireland is my home

— Claude

You know you’ve been long enough in Ireland when…

You watch Father Ted and laugh your head off because you get the jokes.

You have a conversation with Paddy down at the Saturday market and understand every word he said to you.

Someone uses a colloquialism you’ve never heard before but you still get it.

Your Irish friends quit giving you a hard time for speaking like a local.

You get used to the funeral notices the bus driver listens to on the radio.

The voices in your head are now speaking with an Irish accent.

Convoluted sentence structure doesn’t confuse you any more.

It no longer bothers you to spend half of your conversations with strangers talking about the weather.

You’re afraid the next time you go back home you’ll be talking like an Irish person and everyone will think you’re being pretentious.

This video makes you laugh (and, for me, cringe at the same time)!

— Cindy

Strange and unusual

Look carefully at this photo and tell me what’s out of the norm.

I was sitting at my computer this morning doing research on tablets for my student at computer class when a large fluttering of wings caught my attention.  I may be wrong, but I think this is a small hawk perched on our patio table.  He was only there for seconds and I had to walk stealthily over toward the door with my phone in front of me to get the picture; apologies for the quality.

Amazing how strange this place can be.

— Cindy

PS: The Buddha apparently likes the spillway railing…

Further random observations

1. The other day I was riding the bus into town and noticed the bus driver was listening to a radio broadcast with a woman speaking in a calm, soothing voice.  As I approached the front of the bus to get off at my stop, I realized that it was an obituary report!  She was naming the dead person, the time and date of their service, and the charities or families to whom one could send condolences.  Morbid!
2. I was chatting with my new volunteer mate at the till in the Oxfam shop last week when I asked her what the difference is between cookies and biscuits.  She told me that only chocolate chips in the treat make it a cookie, otherwise it is a biscuit.  I went to the grocery store and confirmed it for myself.  Only the cookies with chocolate chips were labelled as “cookies”!
3. Somehow I got on the subject of hoarding with my student Maire at the computer class the other day.  We talked about how she finds it very difficult to throw out things that even she has a problem justifying keeping around.  She told me she thinks that hoarding is in the DNA of Irish people.  After all the many decades of poverty and privations, a lot of Irish people find it tough to throw things out.  She said it’s the “7 Year Rule.”  An Irish person must keep something for seven years before it’s okay to let it go.  This leads me to believe that my darling mother-in-law is much more Irish than even she realizes.
4. Google “uniquely Irish” in the images search and these photos come up in the first 12 choices:

Father Ted

Claddagh ring

Irish stile

That whitewashed thatched cottage that every American thinks is where every Irish person lives

— Cindy

Mother Nature vs. the Galway County Council

At the beginning of January this year Galway – and the entire western coast of Ireland – was hit extremely hard by a major winter storm.  High winds and heavy rains lashed the coasts for days.  We watched on the news as live webcams and camera feeds showed the ocean snatching away buildings and seawalls in a matter of moments.  Damage amounted to millions of euros, fishermen lost their living for weeks, re-building took a toll on property owners and business owners.  Leisureland, the local fitness/swimming/amusement center, is still rebuilding 10 months on.

The Prom is a seaside walking trail along the sea coast of Galway Bay, extending from near the Claddagh to the Blackrock diving tower, and is one of the main attractions in Galway.  People come from all over the world to walk the Prom.  I once met a couple from Dublin who made it a habit of catching the bus once a month from The Big Smoke out to Galway specifically to walk the Prom.  (Frankly, I count us terribly lucky indeed to live so close to such an amazing place.)  The county council extended the Prom past the diving tower some years ago, all the way out to Silver Strand.  This little path was situated only a few hundred yards up the beach and right next to the golf course.  It was mostly gravel with a bench or two along the way; it was also a marvelous walk with incredible views of Co Clare, the Burren, and on good clear days, the Aran Islands.

The trail took the brunt of the damage of the storm and was wiped out.  Folks were disappointed but the ocean does what it wants.  But there was no stopping the council.  They got right on rebuilding that trail – into a monster!  It is now paved the entire way, bordered on the golf course side by curbing (that likely contains conduit for electricity…) and on the bay side by these enormous rock walls that completely obscure the view unless you’re over 4.5 to 5 feet tall.  The gigantic rocks are held together with a slurry of concrete that looks for all the world like a rock monster got ill and sicked up everything it had eaten for years all over the place.  Honestly, it is so bleeping ugly!  There is one break in the wall about halfway between the diving tower and the strand that allows people to access the beach.  Word on the street is that they plan on lighting the entire path, but that may take a while considering it’s taken them 10 months to complete only about 75% of the trail.

We expect an outcry if the lighting goes up – but here in Ireland the government rarely listens to the people, much less follows their mandate.  Maybe we’ll get lucky… Who knows, it could happen.

But whether the lights go up or not, in our opinion the trail has already been ruined.  To be perfectly honest, we’re kind of hoping for another storm like January’s, localized onto this horrid Sasquatch of a trail, just enough to take the damned thing out and give us back our lovely walking path.  Ah well, one can hope…

Claude trying to enjoy the view

The horror of the concrete

The horror continues forever

Life and beauty attempt to prevail

— Cindy

Festival city

One of the things we really appreciate about Galway is the tremendous number of festivals it hosts.  As I type, the 60th annual Galway Oyster and Seafood Festival is well under way.  This year they’ve built this huge pavilion on the Fishmarket (apropos, eh?) at the Spanish Arch to accommodate the guests and events.  Today we were having lunch on Quay Street and saw at least two separate parades!

At the beginning of September we had the 3rd annual Oscar Wilde Festival, a celebration of the man and his western Ireland roots.  I have attended one or more of the functions of this particular festival each year because I am a huge fan of Mr. Wilde; this year it was a play written by a local author called “Kicking Oscar’s Corpse”.  Next month we’re going to see two shows at the annual Comedy Festival: Tommy Tiernan and Rich Hall.  The main venue for the festival is the Spiegeltent Paradiso, an amazing looking structure that should lend a bit of panache to the event and the city.

June and July typically bring the most popular festivals to town.  This summer we attended a play and numerous art shows during the Galway International Arts Festival, a huge to-do that brings in artists both famous and no-so-famous, and a showcase play or two starring well-known actors of Irish descent.  This year we were visited by John Mahoney (Fraser’s dad) and Cillian Murphy.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to see either of the plays they were in but we hope to rectify that next year.  While we had a chance to attend the Food Festival, we didn’t see any of the films featured at the Film Fleadh (that’s pronounced “flah” as far as I can tell).  The children’s festival, Baboró, is coming up soon too.

Hardly a month goes by without a festival.  Now that I’ve done a bit of research, I find that no months go by without a festival of one sort or another!

— Cindy

PS: New Jamaican restaurant in town, opens in two weeks but they had a “soft” opening today so we got to stop in and meet the proprietor and have some juice and coffee.  Can’t wait to try the food!

 

The Absurdist Pipe Band

The Absurdist Pipe Band

The Absurdist Pipe Band

Oyster bar