Here's a story about when me and my (then) 16-year-old daughter Ashley went Belfast back in 2003. As you read it, please notice the similarities between this war on Belfast Catholics and the later war on Iraq. Many of "The Troubles" survivors I talked with thought that the Brits had used Belfast as a weapons training ground -- Britain can't buy new weapons until they have been tested in battle. The Brits also developed such things as helicopter surveillance, plastic bullets, mega-bases, pitting one religious sect against another, collusion, unlimited collateral damage, etc. in Belfast and Derry. They also first tried out the idea of a Wall. For Tony Blair, Belfast was definitely his favorite hands-on project. And Paul Bremmer would have felt right at home in Belfast.
What ended The Troubles? Mainly, Belfast Catholics unilaterally opted for peace and got world opinion on their side -- while the Unionists just right kept on killing children. Taliban, are you listening? Nobody likes you as long as you keep on with the killing. And nobody likes the US either for making war such a way of life. At least I don't. I'm not gonna respect you the next morning.
(Stay tuned for Chapters 2 and 3)
Chapter 1: Planning Our Trip, hanging out in Dublin, arriving in Crossmaglen
July 3, 2003: "You've done good work here, Jane," said my boss. "I want to reward you by giving you some time off." Time off! Wow. "Start taking it as of July 14." Wow! I had been getting a little desperate, trying to keep all the balls in the air -- my job, my political activism to protect America from the idiots in Washington, spending quality time with my daughter and taking care of the house. Taking care of the house was losing bigtime.
"I could spend that whole time whipping my house into shape," I told myself. Dreams of steam-cleaning the carpet, painting the walls and taking tours of IKEA swarmed in my brain. Nah. "I want to go somewhere."
July 4, 2003: Where should I go? Someplace heroic! Someplace where I can do good and save the world. I e-mailed the Christian Peacekeepers Team. They were sending a group off to war-torn South America; Columbia to be exact. They e-mailed me back. "That mission has been cancelled." Rats. Where should I go? I know! Palestine! But airfare on such short notice was impossible.
"We need at least three weeks," the www.Airtreks.com rep told me. "Otherwise it's going to cost you thousands of dollars." I had wanted to fly to Israel/Palestine via Europe; work with Jews, Christians and Muslims and then fly home via Bangkok -- finally fulfilling my dream of circumambulating the world. But ten thousand dollars was a bit pricey just to spend four days in the air.
"Global Exchange is looking for people to go to Afghanistan," someone told me. I called them up.
"Yes. Sure. We have a program available now. You are welcome to come." Then there was the three-week airfare brick wall. "Can't get you there for less than two thou," stated the Global Exchange travel agent. "You have to fly through Bahrain." I've never been to Bahrain. I don't even know where Bahrain is located.
One of our clients at work is from Afghanistan. I told him about my plans. "I would not go to Afghanistan now if I were you. These are very unsettled times there." That's why I would go there. Duh. Otherwise I'd just go to Hawaii and sit on the beach drinking daiquiris. I want to do something useful with my time. I would go to Iraq but can't even begin to find out how to get there. But even Iraq would be less dangerous than cleaning my house.
July 8, 2003: "What would you think if I went to Palestine," I asked Ashely. "Bye bye. Have fun."
"Would you want to go?"
"No way. Uh. Uh. Uh. Uh." That was a definite no. After Australia, Ashley had never wanted to travel again let alone go to some far-off war-torn country in the middle of nowhere. "Besides, I have to take Drivers Education." True.
July 9, 2003: "I know what! I'll go to Ireland! Global Exchange has a tour of North Ireland!" Perfect. And affordable. Sort of. It would be a little bit of political activism but not a lot -- and no one shooting at me. I could still wear my peace pin on my jacket -- but speak English and drink in pubs. "We have room," said the program coordinator. "There are only four people going. All of them men." I'm going to be touring North Ireland with four men? Is this good or bad?
"Let me get my flight lined up and I'll get back to you," I said. $500 for a flight, $1800 for the tour. Perfect. No strain on my budget. I could do it. And it would be of benefit to the world. But no getting shot at? Oh well. Can't have everything. Getting shot at is expensive! It costs hecka bucks. "Guess what, Ashley. I'm going to Ireland!" And do you know what Ashley said?
"Ireland? I want to come too!" My jaw dropped. "But what about your resolve to never travel with me again?"
July 10, 2003: Spent the whole day on the internet and talking to travel agents. All the cheap flights were sold out! $1,000 to fly to Europe? That's outrageous! For me and Ashley both to go on the tour, we're looking at over $7,000! Blow all our savings on a two-week vacation and go back to being poor? Forget it.
July 11, 2003: "Ashley, if we went to Ireland, it would take every penny we had and then some. We'd be back to living on peanut butter sandwiches all year."
"So?" I took a deep breath and booked a flight. lowestfare.com had the lowest fare. $924 each. We'll fly to London and transfer to Dublin. More work than I would like but we were actually lucky to get even that at the height of the season. This is a crazy thing to do considering my budget. We leave on July 26. Double occupancy. God.
July 14, 2003: I poked around through all my so-called assets today and we still couldn't swing it. Global Exchange wanted $3,700. Plus flight money and expenses in Ireland -- that's $6,700. Can't do it. "We could come up with $2,800," I told Global Exchange's voice mail last night. "Would it be possible to apply for partial scholarships for the rest?" Now I am waiting for a reply back. "If we didn't go on the Global Exchange tour, we could still go to Ireland," I told Ashley. "And we could stop by England on the way back and see Stonehenge too." It is a win-win situation. Either meet members of the IRA or see stone-age monoliths and kiss the Blarney Stone. I wonder which it will be. 12 days left until we go.
"Or," I added, "we could go to Ohio and help the Jerry Springer-for-Senate campaign." Jerry Springer would do a hecka better job than some of the senators we've got now! Ashley's former daycare provider's husband used to be a member of the IRA.
July 15, 2003: What is the most exciting moment in planning a trip? It's when the Fed Ex guy rings your doorbell! "Ashley! Our airplane tickets are here! It's real! We're actually going! Wanna stop by the library and check out books on Ireland?"
"On our way to the movies?" Sure why not. What have you got in mind? "Johnny Depp?" You're on.
"But we still haven't heard back from Global Exchange," I told her. "We still don't know if we are going to be hanging with the IRA or hitting the bed-and-breakfasts and/or sleeping in the park." But at least we know that we'll be getting there. And home again.
July 16, 2003: Haven't heard back from Global Exchange so I guess it's a no-go. Oh well. Forced to hang around Ireland and stay in B&Bs and tour Stonehenge. Poor me!
6 pm: Just got back from walking my bike home from work (flat tire). Global Exchange had left a phone message. "We can't afford to give you $900 off but I'm going to talk to our tour department director and we'll be sending you at cost. I haven't given a scholarship since 9-11. We've had to cut back our staff and everything. But hopefully we can get you $400 off." Now I really feel bad. Of course the tour industry has been hit hard. Any normal tour outfit wouldn't even think of giving money off.
I called up Ashley on her cell. "If we take their offer of $3,300, are you still willing to do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the next two years?"
"That's okay." Ashley really wanted to go on this tour. I was once again surprised.
Then I played phone tag with the tour coordinator for the next two days. I left her a message, "We will take your $400 offer and be glad to have it. I had no idea you were that strapped. Sorry, sorry, sorry." But even so, we were on the road again. The trip was on! Our electricity bill was endangered but the trip was on!
The coordinator's next e-mail read, "The Orange Order marched right through the Catholic part of Belfast today, taunting them and throwing various objects. The police arrested several Orangemen." First time in the history of Northern Ireland that Orangemen were arrested for baiting Catholics. That's the good news. The bad news is that apparently the Protestants and Catholics of Belfast are at each other's throats again and me and Ashley are about to arrive there. I can see the headlines now. "American tourists blown up by car bomb." I should have gone to Palestine where it's safe!
11 pm: Ashley is in her room reading the new Janet Evanovich book "To the Nines" and laughing her head off. Shut up and go to bed!
July 18, 2003: Nothing is easy. I should know that by now. Wasn't Murphy's law invented by an Irishman? The coordinator called me up at my job. "I can't get your credit card to work. And the money is due tomorrow." I ran to the bank.
"Why isn't my card working?"
"Your card works fine," said the teller.
I ran back to work and called the coordinator. "My card is supposed to work!" My card isn't working. My trip is falling through. I started thinking about the wonders of Stonehenge again but it turned out that the Global Exchange card-processing machine couldn't handle debit cards. I ran back to the bank, got a cashier's check, ran to the Post Office and mailed it off to the coordinator. Bye bye Stonehenge. Belfast, here we come! Again.
"And what do you want to do about the train?" asked the coordinator. Because our return flight leaves so early in the morning from Dublin, we will have to chose between missing the big march in Belfast the day before or getting a good night's sleep in Dublin (at our expense). I'm too old to spend 48 hours in a row on airplanes and trains. Or am I?
"Forget the hotel in Dublin," I sighed. "Book us on the overnight train to Dublin." I didn't want to miss a single moment of the Irish experience. I can always sleep in my grave.
"Whenever I get really, really tired, negative thoughts come pouring out of my subconscious and overwhelm me with angst. But who knows? Maybe the leprechauns in Ireland will take charge and my subconscious mind, its doors having been forced ajar by jet lag, will overwhelm me with positive thoughts for a change!
July 23, 2003: "I can't go on this trip! I only have 15 shades of lip gloss!" wailed Ashley. Yeah right. And only ten shades of nail polish. In preparation for the trip, we watched "In the Name of the Father" last night. "Look! There's Humbees in the movie! They're crashing Humbees! And look at those cute camo uniforms too!" Sometimes Ashley likes to jerk my chain.
Last night we also made an emergency run on Walgreens. Film. Lip gloss. Batteries. Toothpaste. Band-Aids. Five more shades of nail polish including orange, silver and black.
"Now I'm the one who can't go," I wailed. "I've lost 15 pounds since our last trip and my lucky travel jeans don't fit!" They sagged. Ugly. I looked like a rap-star-gone-seedy. Me and Ashley. Part of our brains are save-the-world crusaders. The other half is valley girl clones. "You know that where we are going is the most militarized zone in western Europe?" I asked.
"Then I'll be in charge of photographing the hot guys."
"Then I'll be in charge of photographing the food." We'll be staying with families in Belfast, Derry and someplace called Armagh. Oh God. Ashley is going to use up all their hot water.
July 24, 2003: "You are not going to believe this!" shouted Ashley. "We got a child-support check in the mail!"
"How much?"
"Enough to keep me supported for a long, long time!" Perfect timing. I was planning to start panhandling once we got to Dublin. Thank God. Which reminds me. I forgot to buy a lottery ticket. I can't remember everything. I forgot to confirm our flight even. Yikes. Tomorrow is the big day. I won't sleep tonight. Every time I take a trip my pre-trip jitters decrease -- but they are still there!!!!
July 25, 2003: "Ma, what airport are you going to?" asked my son Joe. "SFO."
"Do you have much luggage?"
"Why?"
"Well, we are going to a birthday party afterwards and there are four of us." Okay. All six of us plus our luggage got squished in the car somehow. Then we got stuck in interminable traffic and sweated being late -- as usual. I had more intimate body contact with complete strangers during that ride than I've had since I got pregnant with Ashley but we finally made it to the airport in plenty of time. Virgin Airways. The food was good, the flight was short. After flying home from Australia last year, any flight was short.
July 27, 2003: Sitting in Heathrow Airport, spending our three whole hours in England reading books; Barbara Kingsolver and Harry Potter. Worldwide, all airports look alike, except at Heathrow you walk in circles a lot. "What movies did you see on the flight over?" I asked Ashley. Every seat had its own screen and that made the flight just speed along. I had watched The Pianist, Bringing Down the House, The Hot Chick and parts of The Matrix, Pretty Woman and The Shawshank Redemption.
"I watched What a Girl Wants, Treasure Planet and Bringing Down the House." Plus she played a lot of SuperMario. I had the salmon dinner. She had BBQ chicken. We give Virgin Airways two big thumbs up!
Noon: We're sitting around Heathrow, waiting for our 2:25 flight to Dublin -- but only after schlepping miles and miles through the interminable terminals. Heathrow must be the size of Los Angeles. The shops at the domestic terminal sucked. "See anything British to buy?"
"Skittles, Danielle Steele and Seiko watches." Oh, and Coca Cola. Not even a Tower of London key chain. Nobody even speaks British. Rats. And why isn't the Queen here to meet us?
7 pm Dublin time: I am really tired. Once again it has crossed my mind that perhaps traveling is not worth all that jet lag. "I've been traveling since noon yesterday!" I wanted to yell to the world. The Aer Lingus flight from Heathrow to Dublin (not Shannon) was an Airbus commute trip. They crammed us in, were one half hour late and only feed us orange juice. Dublin airport looked like -- any other airport in the world. We caught the 41 double-decker bus to downtown, five miles away. "10 euros, please." A euro equals $1.12. That's 11 American dollars to go five miles.
"Dublin looks like Oakland," I commented to Ashley. "A few landmarks and lots of dollar stores."
"No, Dublin looks like a flea market," she replied. I was expecting the Dublin of Parnell and Joyce and Yeats. Instead, so far we had gotten the Dublin of the Oakland Raiders and cheap sun glasses. But maybe it's just the section of town -- or that I'm so tired.
Once off the bus, we walked all over downtown, pulling our suitcases behind us. "Have you seen the Celtic Lodge? Do you know where the Celtic Lodge is?" Everyone else in Dublin was a tourist too. I even tried to hire a cabbie to drive us there.
"It's just around the corner," he waved grandly. It was not. The damned street dead-ended at number 41 and we were looking for number 82 -- which turned out to be two blocks below number 20. It went number 80, number 20, number 40. Ashley remained remarkably sanguine during this ordeal of dragging suitcases on jet lag all over Ireland's largest metropolis.
Lodging: "We don't take American dollars. It's 90 euros for the night."
"Okay." 120 American dollars. After some intense negotiation, I convinced the night clerk to take the dollars and handed them over.
Food: "Do you take American dollars?" I asked at every restaurant on Talbot Street in a three-block radius.
"No." This is Ireland. What was I thinking? But they took American dollars in Egypt. In Cuba.
Back to the hotel. "Can you trade me $20 in euros? It's Sunday night, the Bureaus de Change are all closed and we're starving!" I did the kindness-of-your-heart thingie and the night clerk, not wanting to see two customers starving on her doorstep, made the exchange. It would have been extremely disrespectful to the heroic memory of the Long Kesh hunger strikers if nothing else. Then I spent another half hour scouring the area for cheap food. A huge football match had just gotten out and there were revelers everywhere and dressed up in purple and yellow wigs. I finally bought one $15 order of shrimp spaghetti to go for me and Ashley to share back at the hotel. But actually, it was rather good.
Lodging: We are housed over an Irish pub and they have an Irish band that plays Irish jigs right below our room. Ashley and I didn't even have to pay extra to have the Irish Experience all night long. "Thar you go, boyo, thar ye go-o-o-o."
9:45 pm: The boyos have upped it a notch. "We should go down there and thump our feet and hoist a pint and have a good old time." Right. Shut up, jerks. We're trying to sleep here.
July 28, 2003: 4 am. Wide awake. And hateful. Lack of sleep does that to people. I soon worked my way through hatred of the US death machine ("War as the ultimate consumer"); how my daughter Elizabeth hasn't stepped foot in my house for three years because she thought it was too cluttered and how she accused me of giving my granddaughter tainted baby clothes the last time she was in town; the fact that most of the Irish we've met so far have been unhelpful, surly and even downright rude; and that it's 4 am in the freaking morning and I'm freaking wide awake with a headache.
"Did you notice that when we were wandering around asking for directions yesterday, that people were singularly unhelpful?" I asked Ashley -- who I could tell was awake because even though she had a pillow over her head she had just reached over to punch buttons on her CD player.
"There was this one lady," said Ashley, "who bumped into me and I was just standing there with all this luggage and she said, `watch where you're going.' I think the whole country is PMS-ing." So, faced with the alternative of being grumpy for the next few days, I started up my little rituals -- we all have them -- of self-comforting. That's what my daughter Elizabeth says that my baby granddaughter does; self-soothing. I turned on my tape of Gregorian chants, started writing in my travel journal, reassured myself that the bottom line of human nature was goodness and hope (not just hate and PMS), took deep breaths and contemplated eating. Food! Four more hours until the "breakfast" part of "bed and breakfast" kicked in. Goody!
Today we have nothing to do. Tomorrow we tour Dublin. Maybe tonight we'll go listen to Irish music.
6 am: We're both all lying around starving to death, waiting until breakfast is served and contemplating how the orange-colored walls remind us of salmon and mangos when Ashley reaches into her backpack and comes up with -- fortune cookies! Good girl.
Ashley is reading a romance novel, "Dancing with a Rogue," and I'm starting off her latest volume of Harry Potter because I want to savor my Barbara Kingsolver book as long as possible and stretch it out for the length of the trip. "Is the world ruled by evil Valdemorts," I asked Ashley, "or are they just Muggles with no imagination?"
From my Franklin Daily Planner: "Live with the attitude that there is an abundance of resources and opportunities. Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted -- Albert Einstein." I need to start looking for the basic goodness in people instead of constantly searching for their basic flaws.
Noon: After a good breakfast of sausages, eggs, Wheatabix, toast, marmalade, canned beans, orange juice and bring-your-own herbal tea, Dublin is definitely looking up. It's Monday morning and the streets were filled with people and the shops are open. I guess that when we came in last night, we only ran into the surly types who hang around downtowns on Sundays the world over -- and the drunken football fans streaming back from the stadium yesterday. I went out in search of euros this morning and met some very helpful people.I also went in search of eye glass frames.
"Got anything unusual?" I asked. "I think of glasses as accessories, as jewelry. I'm always on the lookout for something different." I told the sales clerk all about how I'd wake up each morning all excited about choosing which glasses to wear that day. She smiled in understanding and brought out a stunningly lovely pair; a real work of art. "How much?" I asked breathlessly.
"140 euros." Almost 200 dollars! Oh but God they were nice. But I couldn't justify $200. And that's not including the cost of the lenses. Sigh.
I walked around some more, through the streets of Dublin; it had just rained as usual. I stopped at an internet cafe to e-mail home "I've arrived safely" and to check on the latest political foolishness in DC. Bush was threatening to veto the House bill countermanding the FCC's latest media give-away. When I got back to the room, Ashley was sound asleep. I swiped her Harry Potter book again and climbed back in bed. "Ahhhhh."
6 pm: We met almost everyone in our group and talked over the phone to the one who was still lost in the airport. Our two tour leaders, down from Belfast to pick us up, seem sort of "Irish". Stern types. Hope they lighten up because the rest of us seem to be very easy-going -- politically progressive but definitely laid back. Their names are Sam, Sean, Cezar and Eugene. As Ashley would say, "Not butt-munches."
We went shopping for glasses. "You are looking at men's glasses," one shocked middle-aged Irish woman said to me. We went shopping for pants. "Those are men's pants!" one shocked middle-aged man said to Ashley.
She replied, "Thank you, Captain Obvious." What's with all this middle-aged angst over gender definition? There must not be too much confusion in defining gender because you sure do see lots of babies in Ireland.
"Why am I being so hard on Ireland?" I asked Ashley.
"You're not. They all walk around with sticks up their butts." Well, everybody definitely does in America. But I had somehow thought the Irish would be different. But after 500 years of colonial rule, what did I expect?
The younger people are more easy-going but 500 years of "Troubles" can make any nation cautious. Look what 200-300 years of colonialism did to India -- or what centuries of colonialism did to the Middle East. The great thing about America is that when Britain tried that colonialism crap on us, we gave them the boot bigtime (or perhaps we were just lucky that we were so far away and had the French on our side).
So here we are in Room 204 of the Celtic Lodge, wrestling with questions of colonial imperialism. The tour we are on is geared to explore "Peace -- with Justice?" Ashley and I are right on task.
6:30 pm: "Where is the room key?" We gotta meet the group downstairs in two minutes. We tossed the room three times and were 45 minutes late. Where were they? "Here they are!" In Ashley's backpack.
The missing member of the group who had been lost in the airport showed up a half-hour later than we did. So ha! Four men and us. From Georgia, Philadelphia and Richmond, CA. I'm the oldest. Ashley is the youngest. "Now we are going to walk over to the Temple Bar," said Thomas, our fearless tour leader. "It's famous for its restaurants and bars." He gave us 13 euros each to spend on dinner. Dinners at the Temple Bar restaurants started at 26 euros. We ended up having pasta.
Beer arrived. I made a toast. "Here's to Northern Ireland, Southern Ireland and Peace,"
"We don't think of two Irelands. We only call it `the northern part of Ireland,'" said Thomas.
I told everybody at the table my two Irish stories. "My boss's wife's sister was married to the heir of the Guiness brewery. And Ashley's former daycare provider's husband escaped from The Maze prison."
On our way to the Temple Bar district, we ran into officers from the Indian navy. Naval officers from India. It was raining and we all huddled under an overhang to wait until the rain stopped. "For God's sake," said one naval officer, "Pretty soon it will be America against the world."
"No," I replied. "It will be Bush against the world. America by that time will be just another gulag."
"Bush is a madman," he said.
"That's the same thing the guy who runs the internet cafe said," I told him.
"But America voted for him."
"No we didn't. They tampered with the voting machines."
"But the Congress supports him."
"The Congress was bought and paid for by the Republicans through media influence and electronic voting machine tampering." When it comes to stealing America's democracy, I'm pretty outspoken -- almost a conservative when it comes to government tampering with citizens' rights.
Now we are sitting in an expensive Temple Bar restaurant drinking Hennekin, the Irish national beer as far as I can tell -- and listening to Ray Charles records. The restaurant's building was built in 1500 by Sir William Temple who built a dam across the River Liffey, called the Temple Bar. Sir William apparently was one of Queen Elizabeth I's many boyfriends. She also appointed him provost of Trinity College where we are going tomorrow to look at the Book of Kells, a famous medieval hand-painted manuscript.
11 pm: After dinner, we walked back to the Celtic Lodge through the streets of Dublin and across the River Liffey. Sam and George, our van driver, headed off to go listen to traditional Irish music. Cezar bought a bar of chocolate and split it between us. I stopped off at a late-night internet cafe to check my e-mail yet again. Ashley went back to the room to watch British MTV.
"I know why walking home was so nice," said Ashley. "There weren't so many people running into us." T'was true. And some drunk was actually being lectured by two Garda (Gaelic for "police"). One Garda was actually wagging a finger at the drunk. "If that had happened in America," said Ashley, "They would have had the guy spread-eagled and cuffed!"
July 29, 2003: I'm wide awake at 5 am again. Groan. Today we are off to a walking tour of historical Dublin and a trip to a jail.
10 am: Finally we can stop speculating on the human condition and start touring Dublin. We all pop into the van. George drives and Thomas tells us what we are seeing as we drive around. His Irish-accented English is hard to understand but we get the drift. "That's where they make what we call 'The Black Stuff'. There's the Four Courts, the Irish equivalent of your Supreme Court. There's the train station." Georgian architecture and Guiness. Lots of stuff in Dublin is made out of stone. There are endless quarries in Ireland. "An endless supply of stone. Basalt." And an endless supply of Guiness too I would imagine.
We arrived at the Kilmanaham Gaol. Big pile of stone. Old as hell. Built in 1796. Closed as a jail in 1924. Ireland became independent in 1922. "Except for six counties," added the gaol guide, "but full independence is coming." Northern Ireland is the longest-standing colony in existence according to some. "During the potato famine, over one million people died of starvation and another one and a half million emigrated." I learned later that lots of food was being grown in Ireland at that time but the landowners were exporting it for profit. "Many lives were saved by this goal. In prison, the meager diet kept them from starving. However, the disease-ridden, over-crowded conditions killed them instead."
An account book on display at the prison showed that one William Leary was sentenced in 1847 for "being in possession of stolen potatoes." James Bowes was sentenced for "forcibly stealing bread." Yuck. One guy went to goal for stealing turnips. Things must have been really desperate. Turnips? Things were in a sorry state back then. Even children were in the goal in large numbers. Treadmills, stone-breaking, picking oakum, shot drill: Ways to put the prisoners to hard labor. "The shot drill consisted of passing heavy cannon shot from man to man to form a pile at the end of the row and then passing them back again to form another pile on the other end. The practice was discontinued when in 1862 the Governor was seriously injured when a prisoner threw one of the iron balls at him. The expression `picking oakum' came from the practice of forcing prisoners to untwine old rope. In 1874, breaking stones for roadbuilding became the main form of labor."
As Oscar Wilde put it, "Every stone one lifts by day becomes one's heart by night."
George Bernard Shaw's view of prisons: "If the prison does not underbid the slum in human misery, the slum will empty and the prison will fill." I knew there was a reason I came to Ireland besides buying pants for Ashley at the bargain stores on Talbot Street. This is real history! Things were really bad back then. It's a wonder that the Irish national character isn't more dour than it is. Lots of housekeepers served time for murder here.
Diet: Potatoes, bread, sour milk. Occasionally rabbit soup. There were eight million Irish in 1845. There were only six million in 1850. Two million disappeared. People committed crimes to get into gaol. But guess what? The gaol was a hellhole. Typhus, cholera, tuberculoses, pneumonia, pleurisy. Yuck. Limestone walls absorbed damp and cold. There was no heating and no windows. We're standing in a cell block now. It is cold and claustrophobic even in the middle of summer.
Many criminals that were transported to Australia eventually became prominent statesmen. One criminal became governor of the territory of Montana.
Many of the prisoners of Kilmanaham gaol were political prisoners of the British. Yet despite all the jailings and executions and bother, Ireland finally became free -- once again proving that punishment always leads to resistance. The British punished the Irish. They also punished India, Iraq, America and much of Africa. There is a moral here somewhere.
"So many people died here that burying them became a problem," said our guide. "They would pull up the flagstones in the courtyard, shove the bodies under them and cover them with quicklime -- which would eat through and dissolve even the bones of the prisoners within three months. You are standing on the graves of countless former inmates now." And many of them were young children too. "There were five-year-old serving time here; usually for stealing bread.
"I took Ashley's picture in the main cell block. As usual, she stuck out her tongue.
Back on the bus I snuck a peek at the book Sam was reading: "Growing Up in a Divided Society: The Influence of Conflict on Belfast Children". I opened it to page 71. "Childhood recognition and acceptance of conflict and bloodshed create a vicious cycle of violence, one that is difficult to break in adulthood." Imagine how this prison must have hardened the hearts of the children who were given lashes on their backs every Sunday as a routine procedure. Imagine the hellish childhoods that the designers of these prisons must have endured.
"But you must understand," our guide had said, "Killmainam Gaol was a `reform' jail. You should have seen what they had before this!
"What next? "Lunch. Walking tour." Umbrella shopping! "The wind blows rain off the entire Atlantic Ocean and onto Ireland," said Thomas. "We have 40 shades of green here. We have rain every day all year long."
In the van, we listened to the radio news. "New houses in Ireland now cost an average of 230,000 euros." And I thought living in Berkeley was expensive. That's $259,900 for a house -- that's assessable only by Boeing 747.
2 pm: Ran to the Surf Center, checked my e-mail. Ran to the Bread Shop, bought Cornish pasties (pronounced "past-ies"). Ran back to the van, drove off to the walking tour. Didn't have time to buy an umbrella.
3 pm: In the basement of a pub in the Temple Bar district, we met Lorcan Collins, the guy that you think all Irishmen were going to be like: Verbose, interesting, funny. "Irish history is divided into pre-famine and post-famine. Three million people emigrated. People starved." He gave us a lecture and tour based on the 1916 rising. "The rising was actually quite small. Only 1600 people were involved even though every man in every pub will tell you after a couple of pints that their grandfathers fought there." He talked too fast for me to get it all down but I tried. "'I met Roger Casement today in this hellhole of a jungle,' wrote Joseph Conrad. Sir Roger Casement protested injustice in Africa as well as injustice in Ireland. The British knighted him for his humanitarian work in Africa. For his humanitarian work in Ireland, the British tried him for treason.
"When Casement was caught, The O'Rahilly took an ad in the Independent that the rising was cancelled." I think the rising was supposed to be scheduled for Easter Day but ended up being on Easter Monday, apparently the day after Easter. So now the rising is always celebrated on Easter Monday although it happened on April 24. I gotta check my facts on that one. However, there was no encyclopedia readily available at the pub and Lorcan was moving rapidly on. There is a lot of revolution to cover in just one afternoon!
Lorcan ended the lecture at that point and began collecting his little group for the tour. "Now you can all pay me ten euros," he told us, "except for me brother-in-law there." Even the brother-in-law coughed up. The tour turned out to be quite worth it. We walked over to Trinity College. "They should have taken Trinity College because it was centrally located and had lots of windows to shoot from but they didn't because no Catholics were allowed to go to school there and even the professors took up arms to defend it. A couple of emeritus professors who couldn't see too well went up on the roof and shot a few British as well as revolutionaries." The revolutionaries didn't seize the parliament building either, apparently because it had no windows. There was a window tax back then and I guess the government was too cheap to buy any.
From what I gather -- the guy talked really fast -- the revolutionaries did sieze a bunch of buildings (the train station, the General Post Office, Boland's Mills, the Four Courts, the College of Surgeons and Jacob's Biscuit Factory) but they couldn't keep them because, although there were 2,000 soldiers at the start of the rising, 29,000 British troops arrived shortly thereafter and that was all she wrote. "Outnumbered. The leaders were executed at the Kilmainham gaol in mid-May."
"Our tour guide obviously didn't like Eamon de Valera. "He hid out in America, raised five million dollars and ended up maybe giving $500,000 of it to the cause." The guy was a showman -- the prototype of the media manipulators that inspired Geobbels and Rove. I know the type. De Valera used a half mil to buy newspapers and then proceeded to rewrite history. Suddenly he was Horatio at the Bridge. Just like our fearless leader George Bush -- who was AWOL during Vietnam.
"The British taxed everything made in or exported from Ireland. And the Irish aristocracy was rolling in money too from this, even during the times of the worst famines. However, the Brits allowed Jamaican rum, brought as ballast from the Caribbean, to come into Ireland untaxed." Like when they tried to turn the Chinese into opium addicts, the British tried to turn the Irish into alcoholics. Guess what? They succeeded.
Next we walked over to the statue of James Connolly and his Starry Plough. "The cause of labor is the cause of Ireland. The cause of Ireland is the cause of labor." Another revolutionary-slash-labor leader in those times was Jim Larkin. "He went to help the dock workers strike. When the police came to break it up, Big Jim convinced the police that they were underpaid too." Then we walked on to the GPO, the famous Dublin post office. "Here on Easter Monday of 1916, Patrick Pearse read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. From this building, he commanded the forces that asserted in arms Ireland's right to freedom." Stirring words.
According to Lorcan, "Everyone else at the Post Office that day thought the revolutionaries were freaking nuts." After a while, some of the men wanted to go home. "Are ye scared," asked Pearse, the George Washington of Ireland.
"Nah," replied the brave men of the Rebellion. "But we gotta go to work tomorrow." No one liked the rebels at that time. People thought they were like the lunatics that get on soap boxes at Hyde Park. "But opinion changed radically and within six months they were heros."
8 pm: "That was the best chocolate cake I've ever had. I could eat another piece. We've gotta tell Elizabeth!" What? Elizabeth is going to get on a Concorde and fly here to Dublin? That may not happen but it was still great cake. After the walking tour we ended up back at the New Millennium Spire on Talbot Street. Built for the millennium, it was finished in 2003. July. It is maybe 12 feet in circumference at the base and the tip is maybe 20 stories high. "They call it the world's largest hypodermic needle," said Lorcan. "The stiletto in the ghetto. The Liffey Stiffie."
On the way back to the Celtic Lodge we perused Talbot Street and bought high-tech sneakers for Ashley at Bargain World. One pair cost 12 euros. The other pair was 14 euros. Clothes are cheaper here. And there are a bunch of bargain stores to chose from on Talbot Street.
For dinner we went to an Irish pub catty-cornered from our B&B. Irish stew -- a lot of Irish stew -- for me. Ashley had fish and chips. We debated long and hard whether we should splurge and get the chocolate cake with hot chocolate rum sauce topped with acres of whipped cream. "Let's flip a coin," I said. "Heads or tails?"
"Tails." Tails won. Tomorrow we leave for the New Grange megalithic tombs.
9 pm: I called home. Guess what I learned? "Slim the Cat misses you!" said my housesitter. This is the cat I've fed in my back yard twice a day for ten years and who still barely lets me touch him. "He came running into the house..."
Slim? Inside the house? Missing me?
"...ran up to your room, meowed like crazy and wouldn't leave." Me? Slim? Inside the house? Gosh. "I called Joe and he was amazed," the housesitter continued. "He said that Slim had to stay outside unless I wanted to clean up the poop..." Slim? Inside the house? What?
Tomorrow we leave Dublin forever...or at least until August 10 at 4 am. Just when I've come to like Dublin. Damn. It takes me a while to warm up to a place. I think it was the walking tour that did it. Once you come to recognize Georgian architecture, everything falls into place. All those Georgian landmarks and all those Irish revolutionaries trying to blow them up. You gotta love Irish revolutionaries. Large times call for large men. Poets and artists and revolutionaries and hard drinkers seeking justice and ending up in front of the firing squad.
What did I learn about Dublin? It would have been a lot less heroic city if the British had behaved like human beings and left Ireland alone in the first place. Less heroic and colorful and scenic, sure, but it would have been a lot better for the Irish people. And their kids. And even for the British.
July 30, 2003: On the bus on the way out of town, I saw more Georgian architecture than I had seen in all the rest of my life put together.
As we were getting ready to leave the Celtic Lodge, our van driver, George, said, "Want to come with me to get the van?"
Having slept very little the night before and not being too swift, I declined his offer. But walking up the stairs to our room to get our luggage, I realized that I had just missed a final chance to walk around Dublin some more. "Wait for me!" I cried but by the time I reached the street he was gone. Irish people walk really fast. If you are standing in the street, Dubliners will walk right into you. They don't swerve, they don't accommodate -- they just walk straight into you like you were a bowling pin. Bless them, they do stop for a minute -- but only to wait for you to apologize to them. Walking in Dublin is a contact sport. And when they run into you, even the petite young women are hard as rocks.
11 am: George drove wild-eyed through the countryside and slam-dunked us into a parking spot in front of the New Grange megalithic tomb museum in County Meath.
"This burial chamber and the mound on top of it were built 5,000 years ago. It is 1,000 years older than the pyramids," said the guide. There in front of us was a little round hill. "Watch your heads here as we enter the tomb through this passage." The rock-lined passage was approximately 50 feet long, boring straight into the heart of the mound. "Those who suffer from claustrophobia need better wait outside."
Once inside the tomb, the rock construction opened up into a cathedral-like open space with massive slabs of rock laid horizontally in a circle that got narrower and narrower as they formed a dome above our heads. Each slab was approximately six inches thick and six feet long. It looked like a Frank Lloyd Wright sculpture.
"I'm going to turn the lights off now," said the guide. "This was the first known solar-aligned structure from the neolithic age. Built a thousand years before Stonehenge. On the day of the winter solstice at 9:15 am, the sun reaches into the tomb and illuminates it. Sunbeams bouncing against the back burial chamber reflect throughout the crypt." A light from the front of the passageway was turned on and we could see what it must have been like at winter solstice. Not too shabby for Stone Age guys wearing deer skins and living in grass huts.
"After 5,000 years," I asked the guide, "aren't you worried that the slabs might fall down?"
"They have been tested. Solid like a rock." I wish you could have been there -- to see the beauty and complexity and effect of this Stone Age masonry.
1 pm: Still driving north from Dublin, George pulled the van up to a graveyard. "Here is where St. Patrick built his monetary in 433 BC," said Thomas. The graveyard, abbey and medieval castle stood on the hill of Slade. We climbed up the narrow steps to the top of the castle keep behind the graveyard and surveyed miles and miles of countryside. "Ashley. How many steps do you think there were?"
"A lot." At least a hundred. I figure 20 steps per floor times five or six stories. Those stairs were narrow and dark and wound around in tight little circles. I climbed them on my hands and knees.
On the other side of the graveyard was the ruined stone abbey. Although the building itself was roofless and in ruin, you could still see the stone seats where the monks sat at chapel.
Someone had erected a plaster statue of St. Patrick in the cemetery. "St. Patrick," I said, "If you bring us world peace, I will buy you a Magnum Bar." Magnum Bars were the chocolate ice cream bar equivalent in the United Kingdom and Ireland to our Eskimo Pies. (The UK consists of Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales by the way. Great Britain is all of the same minus Northern Ireland.)
"I'll give it a go," replied St. Patrick. "After all, I am the saint of Challenges and Heroic Endeavors." And snakes. Don't forget snakes. Then we got back in the van and left, but a chunk of my heart stayed behind. Slade Abbey had reverberated with hushed expectation. It was a very holy place.
Driving north again, we saw a huge truck-trailer overturned on an overpass next to us. Firefighters were spraying it with water. "This is the last turn we come through before the border. It's called the Dogs Head," said Thomas. "During The Troubles, a lot of Belfast people settled here, right across the border."
The radio in the van carried a story, "Tony Blair declared Belfast today to be an unsettled area and a point of potential conflict. Conditions in Belfast have become unsettled in the last week." Great. There's been no Troubles there since the IRA declared a unilateral truce, effected in 1998, but as soon as I set foot on the Emerald Isle, things fall apart. But it's not my fault! Honest. Thomas said it was because the "Orange Order" have been taking advantage of the truce to stir up trouble. The next week or so should be interesting.
3 pm: Truck-stop lunch: Sausage pasties and shepherd's pie. I have a problem with euros here. They only take sterling (English pounds) in the north so I had made a conscious attempt to spend all my euros when we left Dublin and so we were now down euros. "Cezar, can we borrow some euros off you?" Sure. Shepherd's pie! Home free. Back in the van.
A shepherd's pie is the British/Irish equivalent of the hot dog. I don't mean that they are hot dogs, but they are as available here as hot dogs are in the U.S. Actually, a shepherd's pie looks about the size and shape of a Swanson's beef pot pie but is covered with mashed potatoes instead of crust.
"Those are the Mountains of Mourne," said Thomas. Remember that old song? "Mary, this London's a wonderful sight, with people here working by day and by night...but for all of its wonders I'd much rather be...where the Mountains of Mourne stretch down to the sea."
So we stopped at the Irish Sea and skipped stones and watched a British gunboat watch us. "When Chernobyl blew," said Thomas, "much of the fallout landed here. They had to kill all the sheep. Plus the Sellafield (gotta check the spelling on that one) nuclear facility at Cumbria releases radioactive waste into the Irish Sea and it all floats our way." I think the famous baby tooth study (where they collected baby teeth and tested them for radioactivity) took place right around here as well. We got back into the van and drove north again, past the greenest fields I've ever seen. And lots of sheep. Bucolic. There was another ruined castle on our right.
Remember in Regency romance novels where they talked about the fad among the aristocracy of building "picturesque ruins" on the grounds of their estates? This castle surely would have qualified as one of those -- except this one was awfully big.
Edingford, where we stopped next, looked like the penultimate medieval town -- and I have the pictures to prove it. It had medieval-looking townhouses made from granite blocks. It had an old-timey churchyard surrounding a very medieval-looking church. And it had a ruined castle par excellence. Tourists that we were, we crawled all over it. The sign in front of the castle read, "Built by King John in 1200." Actually he didn't build it per se. Actually, he ordered a castle built in every city in Ireland around this time. Although he did stay here for a few days in 1204.
The castle's floor plan is D-shaped, with a courtyard taking up one half of the D and several stories of residences and facilities on the other half. "It was built on this promontory next to the sea so that boats (this was way past the time of Viking raiders) could land on its front porch.
We got back in the van. Then, about ten miles later, without fanfare, we were in Northern Ireland. The only difference I could see was it looked more prosperous. And there were surveillance cameras on poles here and there along the roadside. "This is the only part of Northern Ireland where the British don't walk the roads. They stay in their military bases. Everything is brought in by helicopter," said Thomas. "One British soldier mysteriously disappeared after going to that pub on your left." There were watch towers on the hills. It all looked normal to me. Even picturesque. There's a cow. There's a tractor. There's a sheep. There's a suburban house with a Ford Escort in the driveway. There's a British army helicopter.
"War is the Ultimate Consumer." The demand for goods is terrific -- before, during and after a war. Goods sell like hotcakes! Two million dollars for an F-16? Two billion dollars for bomb silos? Got to have them! In designer colors too. We, as consumers, can never match war's awesome buying power. Keeping up with the Jones is nothing compared with keeping up with the Pentagon.
6 pm: George dropped Ashley and I off at a supposed bed and breakfast but it was basically a private home run by Norman Bates' mum. We are in a small town in Northern Ireland whose main feature is a British army base. Picturesque town. We were walking down the sweet little main street when suddenly a gigantic olive-green helicopter gunship rose up from behind the local pub like some Star Wars deux ex machina. Jesus H. Christ! The thing was massive. I started to duck and cover!
Then we went to the local chip shop and tried to explain the American concept of Salad to the woman behind the counter. Rows of greasy fried foods: Breaded and deep-fat-fried. "I would like some salad," I said.
"What kind?" The woman behind the counter pointed to a half-hidden selection with its choices of potatoes, turkey, rice, dressing....
"Gots any lettuce?" They did. "Gots any salad dressing?"
"Somewhere." We had it going on! And the sausage pasties were excellent. I was happy. I left a big tip.
On the way out of the chip shop, I saw a British Army sergeant and two grunts in camo carrying submachine guns. "Hi, guys," I said.
"What's your lapel pin say?" one asked me. "ACLU? Keep America safe and free? Sounds good." I smiled and flashed him a peace sign. Jesus H. Christ. What was I thinking! Well, at least I smiled.
"Yep. Gotta keep America safe and free. And get rid of that idiot George Bush."
"Hey," said the sergeant, "you guys elected him."
That set me off. "Oh no we did not! The Republicans tampered with the voting machines!" He laughed and moved off.
Sam immediately attacked me. "You don't joke with the cops. You don't even speak to cops. What were you thinking?" I was thinking Freedom of Speech, Sam. Duh.
"They tried to frighten us into silence after 9-11," I told him. "They tried to frighten us into silence about Iraq. Been there, done that. I don't do that any more." But it does make me sad that one of my first encounters in Northern Ireland was with full-flack-jacket Terminator wannabees and that Irishmen can't even make jokes about being free without having submachine guns shoved in their faces and I would hate to endanger Thomas, whom we have grown to love. But as for myself, I'm too old to be endangered.
"I thought Thomas was going to be a butt-munch when I first met him. But he's nice," said Ashley. "What's the area code for America?" Her main goal in life at that point was to buy a calling card and call her friend Mia. Sean said one thing. Eugene didn't know. Thomas was willing to make something up but Cezar knew the code. 001. And there is no e-mail in this God-forsaken town. Crossmaglen village.
8 pm: We heard a talk by two local residents who object to the increased military presence here even years after the ceasefire. They were members of the South Armagh Farmers and Residents Committee. Apparently the whole area around here is called South Armagh. "The economics of the area has been negatively impacted. Tourists don't want to come here -- not with armed foot patrols in daily presence. And our livestock die from the increase of diseases spread by the patrolling forces. They just don't know to check their feet after walking from one pasture to the next.
"The livestock get stampeded by the helicopters and have to be put down for broken legs, etc."
"When the hoof and mouth disease hit, the soldiers would tramp from one farm to the other, spreading the disease. The effect on small farmers has been disastrous. The British are ruining the small farmers. They know it -- and they don't care. Fences are broken down and it is impossible to get compensation."
The other resident spoke. "Our children are terrified of the men carrying guns. There are death squads. They know you are here. They already know everything about your group even though you've only been in town for two hours. They know where we work, where our children are."
The residents showed us photos of fires started by the helicopters, children being intimidated, soldiers trespassing, barbed wire, spy towers and tank tracks breaking up the roads.
"The paramilitary hasn't been stopped by the British -- never been persecuted either. The British will try to tell you that the people here support their presence -- but the truth is that they are using this area as a military training ground."
Training ground. Of course! There is a law in the United States that all weapons must be tried out in a battle situation before being purchased by the military. Maybe this is what they are doing here too. "We have the largest military installation in western Europe. They've also tested interrogation techniques, helicopter maneuvers, etc. They developed a whole new dum-dum bullet here. Whitehall is making big profits here. Even the Orangemen don't want them here."
The residents of South Armagh were being double-teamed with sad facts. "The children are developing nervous disorders," the first resident continued. "In Belfast, the Orange Order have been starting to attack the Catholic schoolchildren. They threw pipe bombs at five and six-year-old girls. It's everything we can do to keep the Nationalists from fighting back. The Orangemen are trying to provoke a reaction." Apparently, even the police were shocked by this conduct.
"There's one law for the Loyalists and Unionists. And there's another law for the rest of us." Definition time here. Nationalists just want to stay with Ireland, Republicans want to stay with Ireland and are willing to fight for it. Unionists are the Orangemen who want to remain in the UK. Loyalists are violent supporters of remaining inside the UK. "If on hindsight we had to vote again on the Good Friday Agreement -- the ceasefire hammered out by the Nationalists and Unionists in 1998 -- we wouldn't do it. Everything we give them? It's never enough."
I was shocked. I thought The Troubles were over. How sad. I didn't realize how much killing had taken place here either. There are memorials on the highway every few miles where Nationalists and Republicans have been killed.
"There have been numerous murders in South Armagh. We have documents; names and dates. But no one prosecutes the paramilitary perpetrators. And the British Army has paramilitary connections -- their death squads."
The second resident took over again. "No one in their right senses wants to go back to 30 years of Troubles but.... It's weakness to put up with all this. We give it one more chance. Sinn Fein, the political party, has bent over backwards. They are only looking for equality. It's like the Jews and the Nazis."
And the British? "The British are trying to throw the area back into war again. But even the Unionists don't want that. The Nationalists and Unionists get along fine. There is no need for the massive military outposts here."
Apparently, cancer clusters are spring up here as well. "An expert came to do radiation studies, to see if any is coming from the equipment on the base. At the time he came, the base equipment was shut off. They knew he was coming, of course. They tap our phones." Tapped phones? Sounds like John Ashcroft.
"Soldiers peer into our windows, wire our parks, place surveillance cameras throughout our town. The whole town just wants to see them gone. If someone burglarizes your home, the last thing you want to do is call the police. No one is South Armagh would ever want their child to grow up to be a policeman."
And here is the worst part. "The police force is actively encouraging drug dealers. They want to wreck the community. They aid and comfort the dealers, allow them to seek safety on the base."
Still the residents keep trying. "At the last peaceful protest, they shot our people, sicced Alsatians on us, etc. We have to protect our people. Now we have a cell phone-tree to get silent witnesses with cameras." After the meeting, the residents shook hands with us and left. They had given us a lot to think about. George drove us the three blocks back to our B&B. The men stayed in bedrooms above the old (really old) pub.
July 31, 2003: So. Ashley and I had to share a bed at the B&B last night. It wasn't that bad. "I got the hiccups at 3 am and had to get up for water," reported young Ashley. "Did you hear me?" I didn't hear nothing. "And you kept hogging the covers too." Me?