was Dublin, now Dingle

Thanks to everyone who is responding to my blogs and interested in my trip. I will do my best to continue then, and make new postings to let everyone know what's going on. Though I likely won't be able to post every day, I will post as often as I am able. Right now I'm at the only internet cafe in Dingle, County Kerry. County Kerry is on the Southwest coast of Ireland. The quaint town of Dingle is on the Dingle Peninsula within County Kerry. The name of my hotel is the "Benner's Hotel" in Dingle on Main St. I'm staying in Room 405 and we will have been here for three days before we head to Galway.I came here from Dublin. I had been there about two weeks. Almost every day I had something to do in Dublin. I've been to (get ready for a list...): the National Museum, the National Library, the Natural History Museum, Dublin Castle, Pheonix Park, the Guiness Brewery/Storehouse Museum, Grafton St., Saint Stephen's Green, Christ Church, Parnell Sq and statue, the North Side (or "da nort soyd," as the REAL Irish/Catholic working-class people that live there would pronounce it), Temple Bar, Trinity College (obviously), the Book of Kells exhibit, and in and around the City Centre, generally. (note my spelling of "centre"... when in Rome, after all) .For most of these places, I'm sure you could just view the main exhibits online to see what they're all about. I'll say a few general things about the class though, and a few particular things that I've seen as well.

This class is on Irish literature, however, we'll be viewing the literature through an ecological/environmental lens. Indeed, the department this class is under is called "Nature and Culture". One of the main points of this class is to show the different ways that different cultures view "nature," in effect, rendering it a construct. This has political consequences (think Anglo vs. Irish). The professor likes birds; he is a "birder" in fact. We have binoculars and bird guides and we have to pick out Native Irish species of birds, at times relating them to the places they appear in the literature. Most people consider Joyce an urban writer, yet even in Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" we're focusing on the handful of references he makes to birds for their deeper symbolic significance.

The professor's name is Jim McElroy. He teaches at UC Davis, but he was born, raised and educated in Ireland. He scowls at me like an angry and suspicious badger. But he gives everyone dirty looks, so it's ok. He kind of looks like a badger too, so a badger is a rather apt metaphor. McElroy is very sarcastic and it's hard to get a straight answer out of him, but he did say that nobody got an 'A' in this course last year. Also, when someone asked him how people generally do on the paper he said "horribly. Nobody ever does well on the papers. You guys are so lazy." So, he is a weird hard-ass who doesn't give nice grades. But he is also funny and extremely informative and so I can't help but to like him. He knows a lot about the socio-political climate in Ireland and the local species of flora and fauna, from having lived here so long, and he is fascinating to hear.

There are two assignments. One is a 12-15 pp paper, double spaced. One is a DETAILED journal that we are to keep on everything that we do and see while in Ireland. That is all. He even gives us the option to submit these assignments through email after we go home, in case we want to type it up and make it look pretty or something. And the reading, of course, we are supposed to keep up with too. So as you can see, this class is not designed to be stressful on a day to day basis; it's perfect for the procrastinator. (Or maybe it's horrible for the procrastinator...), but I'm going to catch up tomorrow...I swear!

Some of the particular things:

The Guiness Museum was a very nice, modern and informative museum for all the tourists, but it was... a museum about beer, after all, and I could only take so much education about hops and barrels and bla bla bla. You make your way up seven floors until you reach your free pint (!) at the observation deck. So we wised up pretty quick and just took the elevator to the seventh floor to skip all the crap. At the National Museum I saw the remains of the Bog Man in a glass case. The bogs in Ireland preserve things extremely well for thousands of years due to the anarobic, airtight environment that is created beneath its depths. Ireland has the largest preserves of undestroyed bog land in all of Europe. Because Ireland is so tiny (only 300 miles across), they have a different concept of distance and wilderness. In the states, the term "wilderness" brings to mind sprawling forests that never end, Rocky Mts. majesties, etc... Ireland doesn't have enough land to have that concept. Besides, the trees that once covered 92% of the island were all cut down by the 17th and 18th centuries. The closest thing to "wilderness" for the Irish would be the remaining bogs, which are particularly expansive up in County Mayo and County Donegal. As you dig deeper down into the bogs, through the turf, you can view history through an archeological/anthropological lens...the deeper you go the further back you can see, due to the amazing quality of the artifacts that the bogs yield. Gold jewelry, utensils, clothing, human bodies, etc--ancient artifacts, from pre-Celtic indigenous races as well as more recent ones-- all perfectly preserved. So you can see why this digging or "downward" exploration is more of a vertical/temporal notion of "wilderness" or the "unknown" for the Irish, compared to the American view which is more horizontal and spatial (wide open spaces, Manifest Destiny, etc). We'll be going to the bogs soon. We'll even get to cut some of our own turf. A few species of carnivorous plants have evolved in the boglands because they can't derive nutrients from the bog-muck where nothing lives, so they must look up for their sustenance. By the way, the bogs are about 90% water and about 10% dead, decomposing vegetation. Though once associated with the "dirty, poor, uncivilized" part of Ireland, most Irish people that exist today in the modern ecology-minded society of 2004 take pride in their nation's boglands, even though the phrase "bog-man," in the contemporary vernacular, still refers to an ignorant hick from the sticks. Also, people might say that they have to go to the "bogs" when they have to go to the bathroom. We will have to buy very thick rubber boots called "Wellingtons," ("wellies" for short), that go up (practically) to our thighs in order to trek through the muck of the bogs. Don't worry, I am aware that I may be boring you all at this moment. I'm quite conscious of it. I will now try to focus on some more interesting social aspects of my trip thus far. Being a student here, however, most of my activities with the UC group might be considered "bookish," so please excuse me if it sounds like I am re-hashing a lecture or something like that.

You might want to consult a map of Dublin now. Note the River Liffey. It flows through the center of things. Most of the "cool" stuff is on the South side of the river: Trinity College; Nat'l Museum; Nat'l Library; the trendy, high-end shopping district of Grafton St.; the epicenter of pubs, clubs and drunken revelry known to the world as "Temple Bar"; Saint Stephen's Green; etc etc etc ... All these things are on the South side of the River Liffey. Even my restaurant guide says: "as far as sit-down table service, there really isn't anything North of the Liffey." This is because the North side is primarilly working-class, blue-collar, Irish and Catholic. The South side is more heavily Protestant, Anglo-Irish, and thus, richer as well. You can hear it in the accents. It's very "rather" and "good evening"...very elevated, elegant, snooty, and in short, British when you're South of the Liffey. These are the Anglo-Irish, whose families have lived in Ireland for a couple hundred years and so they consider themselves Irish now too, but they are Protestant of course, and they certainly don't consider themselves to be anything like the people on the North side. After work, the Anglo-Irish return to their grand estates south of Dublin in County Wicklow, which is almost exclusively inhabited by rich British people in huge houses.

I will admit to you: this class is not causing me to like the British very much. It's true. Also, the last class I took before I came here covered a lot of Colonial lit/modernism (Passage to India, lots of Orwell essays, Heart of Darkness, Joyce, etc etc etc), so I've been reading a lot about British Imperialism, white man's burden, "noble savage", and all that crap...
Regarding Ireland in particular, I learned that during the potato famine the British exported all all other foodstuffs back to England during the famine, leaving the Irish with no food whatsoever, forcing millions to starve or flee. And of course the famine pertained only to the Catholics in the country-side. Within Ireland, all the estates which housed the British Protestant landlords were doing fine, while people were starving just outside. (Outside wall: starving, death, destitution. Inside wall: "Here is your duck, Sir.")
AND, the Irish would have been just fine if the English hadn't introduced the potato to their country in the first place. Their crops were diversified before the introduction of the potato. The potato blight wouldn't have made a difference. After the potato, the English had everyone growing potatos and only potatos for his or her sustenance; it was a recipe for disaster. I view the potato as a symbol of British oppression now. I resent the potato. I am angry at the potato. ...It is at this point where I must step back and breathe. ...For it is silly to hate a potato.

(one more interesting tidbit: Queen Victoria, in order to help out with the famine-tragedy going on in Ireland, wrote a check for £10.00 to contribute to the effort. That's $15.00. That's her idea of generosity.)

OK, I'm done! No more of that...jesus christ...

We haven't gone to the Aran Islands yet; that will be in the week to come. But we drove around the entire Dingle Peninsula yesterday, and we took a boat to the Great Blasket Island. That is the biggest of the Blasket Islands. If anyone has read "Peig" the autobiography of Peig Sayers, that is where she lived. I saw her house. It's been converted into a little place where you can have tea now, and a hostel. So I had some tea there.

Peig Sayers was a woman who lived her whole life on the island (a sad life, 10 kids...half died), but she had strong spirits and a way with words and storytelling. So a lot of her stories, including her biography have been translated into English from the Irish language which she spoke. It was a very rough life on the island and so the last inhabitants were evacuated in 1953. No one has lived there since.

I hiked around the island and saw the ruin-like remains of the peoples' houses. Essentially there is nothing on the island, except for a lot of austere and sublime beauty.
There were huge cliffs dropping down into the Atlantic Ocean. Spongy and fragrant patches of heather provided a purple quilt to cover the steep hillsides. Rabits live there too. Grass. Ocean mists and gentle rains, etc etc etc .

I'm not done. this is unfinished. Will try to post more tomorrow, next day by the latest. (we ship out to Galway in the morning). cheers! Andrew