Day 14, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Sunday [Later still—or is it early, by now?

A bit of a rush, this last morning of the trip. We always like to stay in Newmarket, because the route to Shannon, via back roads, is only about three-and-a-half miles. On this last morning, when we had a 10:15 departure and a requirement to be in the airport two hours in advance, the Dr Smith shuttle’s limited capacity was a bit of a problem—necessitating three round-trips in order to accommodate all travelers and their (propagating) carry-on bags—lots of gifts there! We still would have been OK for time, except that Ireland played one last trick on Dr Smith. In past years, navigating has always been an adventure: navigating “the way there” (to wherever “there” is) is a challenge, but one can be reasonably confident that someone in even relative proximity to “there” will be a pretty cool place. Navigating “the way back”, however, is a bit more frustrating: you know you’ve been there, and that you’ve come from there, but the return, for some reason(s), never looks the same as the departure.

And so again today. In the age of the rentable auto GPS, when a cultured “received British” accent comes out of a dashboard box and identifies on an LED map the most obscure back roads “between green hedges and ditches,” one would think that the days of being lost are over. One would be Mistaken: the Green Place was there long before satellites and databases, and we can hope (even with the advent of high-tech in Ireland) that it, and its tricksy-ness about time and space, will be there when both are gone. And so finding the way back to Newmarket, on that first circuit, was a challenge.

But, all made the deadline, were shuttled quickly, by the very helpful and unflappable Aer Lingus staff, through the customs and baggage-check process, and then it was onto an entirely-too-cramped 757 for a seemingly-endless (but in reality only 8-hour) flight to Chicago. O’Hare’s design is much more international-traveler-friendly than it used to be, so even with stiff headwinds lengthening the flight and shortening the layover, we were able to make our connection for Dallas. While waiting to board, and following much cell-phoning of parents and boyfriends/girlfriends, Dr Smith gave his closing oration—but that’s private, for those who journeyed There and Back Again.

Straightforward flight to DFW, where we ducked the ubiquitous and various-and-sundry Texas weather, and into the arms of parents and significant others.

We are home, and the journey is over. But we are all changed, as are all who Left and Returned.

And we won't forget what we've meant to each other.

Day 13, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Saturday morning, last day of the journey—and we’ll sleep when we’re home.

No takers for the 9am shuttle—and no bother for Chris and Angie, as it gave us a vehicle and two free hours, which we put to good use with a run out east of Newmarket to Quin, where there is a beautiful (and remarkably unknown) 15^th century Franciscan abbey, built on the ruins of a 12^th century Norman keep. Very reminiscent of Sligo Abbey, because the Franciscans, like most monastic orders, had their own specific and prescribed approaches to monastic architecture, design, calendar, and work habits. Out in a field east of the river, essentially deserted, but very complex and permitting lots of climbing, exploration, and contemplation. A quick tea-and-scones break at the Abbey Pub, a national award-winner dining experience, and it was back to Newmarket for the noon run. By now, it’s raining pretty steadily, so the students can count on a classic Fleadh experience (crowded, wet, and confusing).

Full complement on the noon shuttles; very pleasant visit with Mrs Fleming as we settled the bill (to save hurry and bother on an early Sunday departure), and a second run to pick up girls.

We love walking around Ennis during the Fleadh, both because we enjoy running into old friends and because we love to see our students elsewhere in the crowd, taking it all in: Brian singing “The Shamrock Shore” on the sound truck (there’s a party piece that’s gotten its full mileage), Jillian coming back beaming from Custy’s Music Shop (the best Irish trad music shop in the world) with a new bodhran on her back (after Junior Davey playing her bones, there was really no way she wasn’t going to come home with a bodhran); Lincey, Brian, and Jeremy slipping through the crowds at the Old Ground Hotel; Eric eating periwinkles under a tree out of the rain. Meeting old friends Mick Moloney and Niamh Parsons, who we know from half a world away in New York and Boston, having a drink under an awning outside Brogan’s, “The Tape Worm” (a Clare resident whose name few know, but who has been recording seemingly every musical event anywhere in the county for the past 50 years) holding a mini-recorder up to a friend’s mouth as the friend lilted an obscure old tune in the lobby at the Old Ground.

[Later:

7:30pm run, and six of our group actually opted for an early night in: we think the appeal of another shower, clean jammies, and a full night’s sleep before the 8am airport run was just a little too powerful (it helps that both Mrs Conheady and Mrs Fleming were wonderful landladies: solicitous and considerate, yet simultaneously easy-going and flexible. The other five stayed in Ennis, determined we think to wring every last minute, every last tune, and every last dance out of the night, the Fleadh, and the trip as a whole. We leave in a little while for a last blast of ceol (music) ourselves, before the final 1:00am (1:30am? 1:45am? who knows?) Dr Smith shuttle back to Newmarket and an early start.

[Later still:

Dallas, and journey’s end. Great music and much congestion in and around Ennis’s O’Connell Square, O’Connell Street, and the Old Ground Hotel—the axis that defines Fleadh Nua. We drove back north through Clarecastle (site of an old Norman keep that commanded the River Fergus as it ran from central Clare down to the Shannon) and on into Ennis and the Old Ground, site of our group’s rendezvous. We were headed for Cois na Ambhna, the beautiful purpose-built octagonal dance-hall belonging to Ceoltas on the north side of town on the Galway road, but thought we’d swing by the Old Ground first to pick up any stragglers. Our timing was excellent—just as we pulled into the car-park, we idled past two of our people, who’d been offered a lift by a new friend to CnA but we glad to ride the Dr Smith van. On to CnA, where we readily found a parking place and walked into the hall in time to see the first sets forming, getting ready to dance to the music of the Kilfenora Ceili Band.

The Kilfenora is the other of the most venerable ceili bands in Clare—bands that were formed in the 1930s to play in the new contexts of the parish dance hall (where behavior could be monitored and admission costs tithed) and the national radio network. The great rivalry was between East Clare’s Tulla Ceili Band, led by the great P. Joe Hayes, father of trad superstar Martin, and North Clare’s Kilfenora, led by a rotating cast but always including the stalwart box of ? and fiddle of Peadar O’Loughlin. Both bands were/are great, with the Tulla perhaps a bit subtler and “spookier”—and funkier—and the Kilfenora tighter, more straightforward, and more driving. It was wonderful that our dancers had had a chance to experience both: the Tulla on Thursday and the Kilfenora on this closing evening. Our dancers were not shy about getting “stuck-in,” and the Clare set-dancers responded with their customary hospitality and quick on-the-fly tutorials in the sets.

The set-dances (different than the step- or ceili-dances) are the old 17^th-18^th century forms which were danced, in regional variations, in kitchens and at open-air crossroads dance platforms all across Ireland. They’re an outgrowth of the collision between the indigenous Irish love for dancing, which is documented (but not notated) all the way back to the Middle Ages, and the imported “Continental” dances (quadrille, minuet, mazurka, and so on) which were brought to Ireland in the 18^th century and taught throughout the countryside by itinerant dance-masters. Attempts were made to purge the sets in the nationalist 1890s, out of a conviction that they represented a “foreign contagion” which contaminated indigenous forms—though that was certainly not the perspective of the local dancers—and the 1890s-1960s were an arid and unfriendly time for the traditional dance. Replaced by the solo step-dances modernized by Riverdance, and by the simpler, much more calisthenic, and much less body-contact-oriented ceili dances (“Leave enough space for the Holy Ghost!”), the sets languished for several decades, preserved by certain families in private kitchen-parties, but were revived in the 1980s, and are now stronger and more popular than ever.

They’re danced in multiple “figures,” combining the “threes and sevens” footwork and geometric patterns borrowed by ceili dances (and, eventually, American square dancing), and the figures, swings, handclasps, and other circuitous patterns of Renaissance French court dance. In each, there is a “set” of figures, danced to a succession of tune types (reel-reel-reel-hornpipe-reel for the “Caledonian” set, for example), but revved up in tempo by the drive of the ceil bands.

Our kids acquitted themselves beautifully. It helped that they’d had ceili dance as part of their semester’s seminar, and that they’d been getting some impromptu and more formal tuition over the course of the two weeks, but it also helped that the Clare set-dancers are old hands at swinging newbies into the dances. From a vantage point in the balcony, one could look down on Cois na Ambhna’s beautiful octagonal dance floor and see Becca, Steve, Eric, Jillian, Josh, and others hurtling through the figures and making friends as they went. As is traditional with our trip, Dr Smith applied an Irish time-sense to the “1:00am” deadline so that our kids could dance the very last set of the evening and of the trip—and then we were further (and happily) delayed by the chance to visit with, renew acquaintance with, and receive congratulations about our dancers from the Clare stalwarts. They were insistent that we bring them back (or at least a new crop) next year—and we will

Then it was back into the Dr Smith shuttle for a last run south through Ennis (dodging confused Americans in rental cars driving the wrong way through roundabouts), past Clarecastle and sleeping Newmarket, to drop them at their lodgings. Airport shuttle runs commence in 6 hours.

Day 12, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

[telegraphic form, temporarily: so much happened I hadn't time to write it all up! Will update later]

Dysert O Dea, Cragganowen. High cross of St Tola, round tower, O’Dea Castle. Cragganowen, John Hurt castle, dolmen with ogham script, crannog, round fort, living history demonstrations, Brendan. Tim Severin, reconstruction of the Voyages of St Brendan, currach or hide boat made of oak-tanned ox-hides over a tied wooden frame, epic journey from a creek in Kerry to Scotland, Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland. Very moving to be in the room with the very vessel, all 22 feet of it, with which these 6 lunatic adventurers (or adventurous lunatics) set off “into the West,” with not much more certainty of safe arrival than did Brendan and his own monkish adventurers. Wild boars and other archaic breeds.

Pick up van, say farewell to Marty. Students agog at “smallest minivan ever seen.”

Return to Newmarket. Visit to Missus Annie’s. Rendezvous point for multiple trips in the shuttle. Kindly welcome from the O’Neill family, including the traditional round of “Irish Flags,” a made drink invented by Missus Annie whose three (secret) components mirror the green, white, and gold bands of the Irish tricolor. The “Irish Flag” is a tradition at O’Neill’s whereby the house welcomes old and new friends back to Newmarket, and is expected to be drunk “all in one go,” so that the distinctive flavors of the (we think) crème-de-menthe, Bailey’s Irish Cream, and some golden mystery drink all blend together. These made quite an impression—enough so that there was a mad scramble for notebooks and scrap paper to attempt to derive the recipe.

After that, it was off on the first round of the Dr Smith shuttles to Ennis, for a dropoff at the Old Ground (our staging point) so students could take advantage of their free-admittance to the set-dance classes. The two-cycle shuttle ran again at 10:30pm, for the few who wanted an early night of it, and one last time at 1am to Cois na Abhna, the purpose-built octagonal set-dancing hall which is the Clare headquarters for Ceoltas Ceoltoiri Eireann.

Day 11, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Nice easy day from Galway down through Clarinbridge toward Ennis. Marty found his way in through Galway’s circuitous one-way streets and pulled up outside the Sleepzone, where we took our farewells from Michelle, Deidre, and the rest of the top-notch staff. Quickly made our way out of the city’s (typically urban/industrial) outskirts and headed south on the N18 for Clarinbridge, at the very foot of Galway Bay.

It’s a pretty town, so-called because of the little river Clairin that runs through, consisting of a single main street and a triangular village “square”, with antique shops and pubs, only marred by the heavy-industrial traffic that barrels through on the N18. We slipped up a tree-lined side road running out of town to find Tom Cussen’s banjo shop.

Tom’s a good friend from past years, who we first met in 1999 when Tom loaned Chris a banjo for a great night of music in Tulla down in East Clare. Tom’s built banjos and led the great ceili band Shaskeen in Galway ever since the 1970s, when, like a whole generation of young Irish musicians and artists, he moved west to go to school. His shop is down a lane behind his home, and, as Dr Smith said, “for a banjo-player it’s a bit like Aladdin’s Cave”: a tiny showroom lined on all four walls with three ranks of suspended instruments: vintage, new, and “Clareen” banjos (Tom’s own line).

Tom’s also very canny about how best to sell Clareens to prospective buyers: that loaned banjo in ’99 was his top-of-the-line “Elite”, and for a banjo-player was about as tricked-out a machine as anything on MTV Rides—as Dr Smith said, “In ’99, I played one note on that banjo, and I felt my wallet shriek.” Even for those students who are not musicians or crafts-inclined, Tom’s shop is a fascinating place: he takes them through the sanding room, the spraying room, and the fabrication room, accompanied by the various friendly dogs who clearly believe they run the place. Lots of photos are taken and questions asked, both of which Tom fields with his customary understated aplomb. Then it was back down to Clarinbridge’s tiny main road for lunch at Paddy Burke’s.

Paddy Burke’s is one of the top-ranked seafood restaurants in Ireland. With Galway Bay at the foot of the drive, and a beautiful old stone-walled building which has probably stood by the Galway-Ennis road for at least 400 years, it has both a wonderful atmosphere and wonderful access to the “Catch of the Day.” We had rung ahead for a reservation and the Paddy’s staff was very flexible about accommodating us. As in past year’s “The Trip” paid for lunches here, but all were reassured that they were not obligated to order seafood if they were not so inclined. And, as in past years, this set of menu options was a relief for some and a challenge for others: those Texans missing Mom’s home cooking could order steak or beef stew, while the adventurous ones (or those with a wider experience of maritime cuisines) could order seafood chowder, “fried plaice” (cod and chips) or large plates of intriguingly weird-looking steamed mussels. For a group who’d come into the place chilly, sleepy and hungry (with Paddy Burke’s on the itinerary as a “Trip Lunch,” Dr Smith had taken a break from preparing the hostels’ “Dr Smith’s Blue-Plate Special”, and they’d made do with toast and tea), when warmed-up and filled-up they woke up as well, and were in good fettle for the ride down past Ennis (on the most welcome new “Ennis Bypass”, part of the massive modernization of the West’s roads systems which is both easing the new traffic jams, and also causing consternation among those who wish to preserve the ancient landscapes) and into Newmarket-on-Fergus.

Newmarket is the old Ennis-Limerick highway town, which was a common stopping-over place for those flying out of Shannon, just down the road; in fact, our first visit to Newmarket, in 2001, was by happenstance—we’d been touring around the country, and needed a B&B to overnight before our Sunday flight, so winding up in Newmarket. It’s a nice place, with several excellent pubs, a late-night Chinese takeaway joint, a very comfortable bar/restaurant/guesthouse called the Hunter’s Inn, and numerous friendly B&Bs. Like many suburban towns in the West, Newmarket is undergoing a building boom as Galway, Ennis, and Limerick become congested, so the B&B’s known to us from past years were all three closed, having “the builders in” and expanding.

Luckily, our good friend Deirdre O’Brien-Vaughan, a local music teacher, music advocate, and all-around community dynamo, had come through once again and “sorted us out”, putting us in touch with Mrs Conheady at Beechgrove Farmhouse for our 6 girls, and with the Flemings (and son Conor, a traditional musician and university student) for our 5 boys. The students subsided into their comfortable, spotless, and well-bedded rooms with audible sighs of relief, and we left them to naps, clean showers, and some welcome “mothering.” Ennis and the official opening of Fleadh Nua tonight!

[Later:

Very pleasant and nicely low-key opening to the Fleadh—except for Dr Smith finding out, approximately 90 minutes before the event, that he was scheduled to give a speech providing “The American Perspective” as part of other addresses by the Mayor of Ennis, the Chair of the Fleadh Nua committee, the chair of the local chapter of Ceoltas Ceoltoiri Eireann (the Irish traditional music advocacy organization), and senior national Senator Labhras O Murchiu. It all worked out well in the event, with a classic accompanying Irish-municipal-event high tea of ham-and-butter sandwiches, tea and coffee, upon which both the Ceoltas stalwarts and 11 discreet-but-ravenous Texans descended. It was a classic Irish event in other ways as well: the sound-system crew arrived 20 minutes after the speeches were to start, every speech (even including Dr Smith’s) began with a brief prologue in Irish—if only enough to establish the speaker’s credibility—and there were nods and vigorous applause at every mention of nationalism, the sad past, and the rosy future. Dr Smith endeavored to match his tone to this aesthetic—not an easy task for a cynic such as he.

After the opening, it was upstairs to the large ballroom on the top floor of the Old Ground Hotel, where the magisterial dance teacher Dick O Connell, and the legendary Tulla Ceili Band (fiddles, flutes, accordions, electric piano, and drum set), were just starting to crank up tunes for the dancers.

Attending a ceili by these stalwarts is an amazing experience for an American, primarily but not exclusively because, here in Ennis, music which in the States is an obscure upper-middle-class niche interest is the heart’s-blood of many people’s lives. Everyone in Ennis can dance the sets; everyone knows the classic Tulla Band tune medleys, and everyone knows almost everyone. The other result, of course, is that when you walk into the Old Ground Hotel’s ballroom with 12 Americans in tow, almost everyone knows you’re there and who you are. And, of course, it’s nice to be recognized by old (and new) friends. And then the pianist kicks off two opening chords, and the band sails into a set that these same musicians recorded fifty years before, and it feels just about as if the top floor of the Old Ground is going to fly off into the sunset Ennis sky

Our kids acquitted themselves just fine, waiting for a high sign and then getting stuck-in to the sets. Dick is a master at mixing-and-matching veteran and newbie dancers so that each eight-some has just enough experience to make it through the multiple figures of each set—and he and his fellow teachers are agile and quick enough to see traffic-jams and collisions almost before they happen, and to fend them off. A very pleasant night altogether.

Day 10, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

[Morning entry:

Our first wet day: overcast, with spells of light rain (what the Irish call a “soft” day—meaning the rain is misty rather than lashing). This is another free day, mostly intended for exploring and to cater to those who are shoppers. This morning’s breakfast was Dr Smith’s “experimental” pancakes, so-called because made with self-rising flour (the baking powder already combined within the flour). But, with some borrowed Sleepzone orange juice, the last of our eggs, and some improvisation, acceptable pancakes ensued—or at least that was the evidence of their having been devoured. That, and sausage-and-potato hash, made a suitably stick-to-the-ribs breakfast. And the pancakes did provide a delivery medium for two European inventions that were new to most of our trippers: Nutella, a peanut-butter-like spread made with chocolate and hazelnut, and completely addictive to a chocoholic; and Lyle’s Golden Syrup, a classic Irish sweet, packaged in an ornate tin canister, and of which there is a lyrical description in Ciarán Carson’s Last Night’s Fun, which we read during the course of our seminar. It was an instant hit, and several trippers inquired regarding the whereabouts of the stores where Lyle’s could be bought. So, friends and families, there may be an imported Irish treat in your near future!

Later on, we’re off to the (new, excellent, and free) Galway museum.

All continue well, in good spirits but (I think) glad of a slow day to read, curl up with a book or the free Internet connection, sleep, and otherwise recharge the batteries before we depart for Clairinbridge, Paddy Burke’s famous seafood bar, and Ennis on Thursday. Will write more again later.

[Later:

As predicted, a slow/quiet/rest day: opportunity to catch up on sleep, reading, and Internet messaging. After breakfast, several took advantage of the optional walking trip down to the Galway Museum, an excellent, new (and free!) museum detailing the city’s history, folklore, and folkways. One centerpiece of the museum is a 26-foot-long Galway hooker suspended in the atrium. The hooker, a rib-and-plank-built, wide-bellied, lateen-rigged sailing boat, was the principle working boat of Galway Bay and the Aran Islands, used to haul sheep, turf, and other goods to the islands, and bring back fish and seaweed to the mainland. The last working hooker sailed out of Galway in the 1960s, but the museum commissioned builders X and Y to build this boat specifically for the museum, naming it the Martin Oliver over the last king of the Claddagh, the free village on the south shore of the Corrib which housed fishermen, musicians, sailors, and other ne’er-do-wells.

And, some additional very welcome news: old friend and banjo-maker Tom Cussen will in fact be in residence at his Clairinbridge workshop and store, so we can have the visit and tour which is an annual fixture of the tour, before the much-anticipated visit to Paddy Burke’s bar, also in Clarinbridge, and widely acclaimed as one of the best seafood restaurants in Ireland—and a lunch that the trip will pay for (Dr Smith dictum, derived from years as a working musician: “It Tastes Better If It’s Free.”). After said better-‘cause-it’s-free lunch, we’ll wheel our way in a leisurely fashion down through Ennis to Newmarket-on-Fergus, about halfway between Ennis and Shannon, where our students will be housed in B&B luxury for the three nights of the Fleadh Nua.

Even more welcome news: our new friend, stalwart bus driver Marty, is laid on to drive us on behalf of Corduff Travel for our two “coach days” in Ennis, visiting Dysert O’Dea and the Cragganowen Historical Park.

Bus rolls at 10am.

Day 09, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Pretty early night on Monday, after the day's sun and travel. Dr Smith's Blueplate Special on order for this Tuesday morning's breakfast (eggs, chips, and sausages--a good way of bulking out the free continental breakfast and of keeping within trip budgets), where we also heard about the exploits of our step-dancing girls, who apparently took over the place at Taafe's for an impromptu dance concert.

The weather continues relatively fine: cloudy and blowy, but dry and warm with no rain, so a late-morning walking tour of the old medieval city was in order. We visited, in rough order:

Eyre Square, the old Georgian park, lined with the townhouses of the 18th-century burghers who ran this commercial city, and whose new renovation includes a monument containing a 16th-century slab giving the coats-of-arms of the 14 trading families (the “Fourteen Families” or “Fourteen Tribes”) who ran Galway;

the Quays--the walking/pedestrian mall, ground zero for trip-shoppers, whose cobbled streets slope gradually downhill toward the River Corrib and the harbor;

St Nicholas Church, founded in the 1340s as a Catholic cathedral (whose size and opulence confirm the wealth of the medieval traders who endowed it), later taken over as a Protestant church during Cromwellian times (1640s-60s), then reconsecrated as Catholic, before finally being given back to the Protestant denomination. It's a beautiful, peaceful, but rather sad place inside, containing the tombs not only of the 17th and 18th century commercial aristocracy, but also the flower of Galway's Anglo-Irish population who were cut down on the Western Front in WWI;

Kirwan Lane, one of the more beautiful alleys off Quays and Market streets, whose narrowness, side-gutters, cobbles, remnants of the old ring-wall, and three-story stone houses are a powerful evocation of the medieval town;

the Claddagh shop, where the ring which has become an Irish symbol for commitment or availability was first designed by Irish-born, Spanish-trained jeweler Thomas Joyce for a wealthy burgher in the 1750s;

the quay and Spanish Arches: last remnants of the city wall, and the gates to which Spanish traders brought cargoes of wine, spices, leather, and cloth to trade for Irish hides, timber, and tallow;

the locks and canals that diverted a portion of the water-power of the River Corrib through the granaries and mills that turned Irish barley and wheat into flour for export;

Monroe's pub, a fantastic bar with a beautiful floor made of wide old-oak planks, where there is set-dancing Tuesday nights and which our step-dancers plan to invade;

the Crane Pub, my own favorite music bar in Galway, owned by a nephew of the legendary Clare fiddler Junior Crehan, and button-accordion virtuoso John O'Halloran, who comes from Inishmore but now lives in Galway.

From there, we split up for lunch, to rendezvous at 2:30 for a visit to

The King's Head, the oldest bar (in continuous operation since 1641) and one of the oldest buildings (c1550, on the foundations of an older structure from the 13th century) in Galway, where there is a fine seafood menu and where we prevailed upon Liam the manager and Michael the bartender to let us into the upper floors, each an open, stone-walled room, where Angela and I have heard some mighty music in the past, and where Dr Smith regaled the group with the story of the building and the 17th-century violence and skullduggery which it witnessed (and one peripheral tale of the 17th-century violence and skullduggery in Dr Smith's own family history);

then it was on to Charlie Byrne's second-hand and remaindered bookshop, right up there with Hay-on-Wye (in Wales) and Archer City (in an exotic place called Texas) for award as Very Best Bookstore in the World, where various parties punished the “bargains” and “Irish” tables, and engaged in much closely-figured calculation regarding remaining discretionary funds.

After that, it was more free time, before we meet up again at Kashmir for a group dinner (catered in part by trip funds) to both assuage the ardor of the Indian-food junkies and to introduce those without prior Indian-food experience to a new vice, and then on to Monroe's for the sets!

[Later:

Very pleasant group dinner at Kashmir, funded by combination of trip funds and Dr Smith/Prof. Mariani private donations. The combination of North and South Indian dishes on the menu and ordered by various individuals made for a nice combination of flavors for the “newbies” to Indian cuisine to sample. Leisurely dinner, followed by a short walk over to Monroe’s Pub, where the regular Tuesday evening set-dancing was going on.

Very nice music at Monroe’s, but the place was rather overrun with tourists more interested in watching than dancers interested in participating. That’s one of the unfortunate by-products of Galway’s thriving arts-and-tourism scenes: some of the traditional music “sessions” are actually “gigs” (e.g., musicians paid—which is only fair—and thus responsible for a “show” rather than for musical sharing) and the sets at Monroe’s are more a display for the tourists than a participatory event for the locals. Our girls and boys got stuck in, volunteering happily, but it was evident that the really good, really positive set-dancing experiences will be down the road in Ennis on Thursday through Sunday evenings. Later, some trippers went on to the Crane Bar, where there is always good music, but most opted for a relatively early night of it.

Day 08, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Soda bread for breakfast, dry, warm and still weather; quiet crossing on a mostly-empty ferry; Sleepzone shuttle into Galway with true curb service; into rooms in beautiful, clean, new, and impeccably-maintained hostel; laundry, free Internet (though with long waiting lines sometimes), the Quays within short, easy (and costly!) walking distance.

[Later: Last morning on Kilronan, and the weather was, if possible, even more idyllic than it had been the two days previous: clear, bright, warm, with only a light breeze blowing. Angie and I agreed that it was, bar none, the longest stretch of virtually-perfect weather we could imagine in all our springtime visits to Ireland. Dr Smith managed to scavenge enough staples from the left-behind dry goods of previous hostelers to be able to improvise a soda-bread, which though an “experiment” was speedily dispersed. Then, after watching the wave of incoming day-trippers off the 11am ferry from our hostel veranda, it was down to the quay to board the ferry for return to Rossaveal.

Very calm crossing, in contrast to the trip out, during which many of our travelers opted to nap (combination of Dramamine, a great deal of sun, and two late nights all taking their toll). Met at the quay without a hitch by our friend Joe driving the familiar red-and-orange Sleepzone shuttle bus, for the ride into Galway city, through the small Gaeltachtai (Irish-speaking villages) of Bannog and Spiddal, east along the north coast of Galway Bay, with the coast of Clare and Burren across the water. Joe took the circuitous route into the city and provided us curb-service (literal: he drove up on the curb to avoid the following traffic) to Sleepzone Galway (http://sleepzone.ie), located on Bothar na mBan (Mary’s Street) just north of the old medieval town.

Galway (name probably deriving from the Latin for “Place of the Gaels”) is a medieval trading city, founded at the mouth of the River Corrib where it empties into the huge (perfect, deep-water, dramatic, and workable) harbor of Galway Bay. It was a Norman city founded by Richard de Burgos in the 13th century, but there had been settlements of traders and fishermen long before then.

Like Cork on the south coast and Limerick at the mouth of the Shannon (and Dublin on the Liffey and Belfast on the Boyne), Galway’s riverine nature made it a natural point for the international sailing trade. On the streets of medieval Galway, which was ruled not by nobility but by an oligarchy of “Fourteen Families” of tradesmen, you could hear the languages and accents of Spain, France, England, and most of the eastern Mediterranean. The Phoenicians came here trading for the tin that, mixed with copper, created the bronze weapons that ruled Troy and Greece. The Romans traded into Ireland, principally for hides, timber, and tallow, but never conquered. The Normans invaded in the 12th century, founding trading alliances with their homeland in western France and building castles, but were quickly assimilated anad “Hibernnicized”. The city remained.

And remains: portions of the old medieval wall that surrounded the quays, the Spanish Arch where wine and leatherwork came off ships to replaced with hides and timber, the Claddagh on south side of the river outside the walls, where fishermen, traders, musicians, prostitutes amnd other undesirables were ruled by a self-styled “King of the Claddagh,” are all very much alive. It’s still a university and arts city, its streets teeming with students, tourists, and Irish natives who moved west in the 1970s (as California hippies had moved to San Francisco in the 1960s), and it’s a wonderfully exciting place.

Here we fetched up at the Sleepzone, where we have good friends and fond memories, and were able to quickly move the students into their (impeccably clean, well-appointed, comparatively spacious, and well-thought-out) dormitory rooms, with free Internet computers, an expansive kitchen, and a webcam downstairs, clean “en suite” bathrooms and laundry room above, and the center of the city’s street life just a couple of blocks away—but behind three sets of key-carded security doors. We always breath a sigh of relief when we arrive at Sleepzone: no more cliffs, no more ferry rides, no more unknowns—while the students take a breath of excitement: shops, pubs, street musicians, great views, cheap and interesting ethnic restaurants, and all around them, the still-very-real feeling of a medieval trading city.

We’re glad to be here.

Day 07, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

[Later: intentionally-later start today, to allow trippers to catch up on sleep after a long day in the coach, aboard the ferry, and then trekking up to Dun Eochla. We opted for a 10am call to breakfast, at which the trip budget paid for and prepared eggs, sausages (local, and delicious), and home-fried potatoes to bulk-out the hostel’s cereal, toast, and tea/coffee. Then we split up: one group renting bicycles (20 euro for 2 days, and a great value considering that it stays light until 10pm and grows light by 5:30am) and the other opting for a minibus ride out to the Dun Aenghus interpretative center. We made rendezvous at around 1:15pm, and clambered up the lengthy limestone trail to the fort.

Dum Aenghus is a Bronze-Age fort, begun 1100BC, which eventually grew to include a series of three concentric rings—or they would be concentric, were it not for the fact that they are bisected along a chord formed by a sea-cliff of around 190 feet. Having reiterated the trip’s “two Brians and a Jeremy” rule (e.g., no one is to approach closer to an unfenced precipice than the combined heights of our two tallest males), we turned the students loose to explore, take photos, and lie in the grass watching the clouds sail over. Beautiful warm, dry, and mostly still weather, as a result of which we could easily see the Twelve Pins of Connemara to the northeast, and Inishmaan and Inishmore to the southeast, with the Cliffs of Moher, the Burren, and the coast of Clare beyond. Last Monday we'd stood on the Cliffs, and I'd pointed north and west, saying "see those islands? On Sunday we'll be standing out there looking back here."

Then it was back to Kilronan, for a walk on the beach, much seashell-gathering, and a group supper. Later we’ll have a go at the Aran Hotel, where a friend from past trips, Paddy Quinn, is rumored to be playing accordion tonight.

[Later: A really special night in the Aran Hotel bar, where old friends from past trips Paddy (accordion) and Locko (guitar, bouzouki, song) were trading tunes and songs. We remembered ourselves (and some of the musicians who traveled with us last year) to Paddy, and after a while of listening were invited up to sit in on the music. Had a fine time playing tunes unfamiliar to each other, and later a number of our trippers came up to play or sing their “party piece” (one of the special requirements of the semester was that each traveler prepare such a party piece for just such an occasion). Then a walk back along Kilronan harbor with the 2AM stars and the Milky Way lighting the path.

Day 6, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Rossaveal, on the south coast of Connemara between Glinsk in the west and Spiddal in the east, is one of a series of small Gaeltachtai (Irish-speaking villages) dotted along the seashore. Spiddal was the home base of the legendary Irish band De Danann, who were formed in sessions at a pub there; it also has an excellent crafts co-op featuring work by artists from all over the West. Rossaveal is notable primarily as the departure point for the ferry to Aran.

[Later: Beautiful, exciting, but rather choppy crossing to Kilronan on Inishmore. A much brighter day than some we’ve known, when the waves were just as bad but the sheeting rain was driven horizontally into our faces, but you could tell there had been storms outside Galway Bay: the long, deep Atlantic rollers had been driven far inland, all the way around the northeast coast of the island and southward, and as we crossed them east-to-west we could definitely feel them.

Kilronan Hostel is an old hotel, probably from the 1930s/40s when the plays of John Millington Synge and the film Man of Aran had made Inishmore something of an exotic tourists’ location, that faces out to Kilronan Harbor, and beyond that to Inishmaan, Inisheer, and finally to the coast of Clare. Previously we had stayed at another hostel inland, and it is very nice this year to be staying in the town, a few steps away from the Supermac (McDonald’s/Dairy Queen-style fast feed), the Spar (supermarket and “off-license”), and the Aran Sweater Mill, whose stock our people immediately raided upon arrival. Our people are housed in two dormitory-style rooms in a separate house beside the hotel, with the kitchen and dining area immediately below—very handy that!

The Aran Islands Inishmore (Inis mor: “The Big Island”; Inis maan; ; and Inis sheer ) occupy a very large role in Irish folkloric mythology. Original Gaeltachtai, they have been occupied since Stone-Age times. These Neolithic settlers began the very elaborate system of stonework and walls which cover the island, and of planting crops in gardens built from a mixture of sand and seaweed gleaned on the shore. Aran was a very important inspiration on the great Irish playwright John Millington Synge, who wrote both ethnographies and plays based upon island life. His descriptions in The Aran Islands (ethnography) and Playboy of the Western World (drama) provoked enormous conflict in c1900 Dublin, but are a much truer and more evocative picture of pre-colonial Irish seagoing life. They were also the principle inspiration for Robert Flaherty’s heavily-romanticized but nevertheless evocative “documentary” film Man of Aran.

[Later: very nice walk up to Dun Eochla (“The Hill of Eochla/Olaf”—possibly a Nordic saint), a derelict lighthouse and Bronze Age stone for located at about the highest point of Inishmore. It’s a very dramatic landscape, with thin turf over limestone—the limestone that continues all the way across the floor of south Galway Bay and then rears up into the massive limestone heap of the Burren, which we crossed on our first day, and which terminates with the dramatic Cliffs of Moher. On Monday, we had stood at the Cliffs, and I had pointed north and west to Inisheer, Inishmaan, and Inishmore, saying “come Saturday we’ll be out there looking back”—and so we were.

On Aran and in contrast to heavily-scheduled “bus days,” the trip is always and exclusively “free days”—that is, there are no specific group events, in order to provide everyone a chance to decompress and get off on their own. However, Angela and I will usually plan one or two specific activities each day, in which any may participate if they wish. So on Saturday around 4pm (“Aran”-time, that is—so perhaps about 4:30), we set off up the Kilmurvee road west from town heading for Dun Eochla.

Later today, we plan another such activity, heading west across the island toward Dun Aengus.

Dun Aengus is one of the largest and most dramatic Bronze Age fortresses in Ireland’s West. Built upon a high eminence on the southwest coast of Inishmore, the fortress rises in successive concentric rings of stone cheavaux de fries (long and sharp spikes of stone stuck into the ground and intended to impede attackers) to a remarkably well-preserved concentric dry-stone wall—or it would be a concentric circle, except that the walls terminate with the precipitous cliff-edge. It’s thus an eminently defensible place, from the top of which, on a clear day, one can see southeast to the Cliffs of Moher in Clare, east into Galway Bay, northeast to Connemara’s Twelve Pins and, most dramatically, directly west into the setting sun..

Day 5, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Connemara, western County Galway, is in some ways the wildest, starkest, most deserted, and most beautiful landscape in Ireland. With famously fierce weather and poor soil, Connemara was also the heart of the Gaelic West, least desirable and most distant from the Anglicizing influence of the “Pales” of Belfast and Dublin. In the 17^th century, Oliver Cromwell very famously banished the Gaelic chieftains “To Hell or To Connacht,” with the clear implication that the latter might be a second-best choice. But in its landscape (especially the range of mountains called the “Twelve Pins”) and seascape (especially the coastal vistas and villages of Clifden, Carna, and Glinsk), it is very magical and wonderful place. The Killary, a long very narrow harbor that reaches from the sea deep into Connemara, is the only true fjord in Ireland, and, like the Burren mentioned above, supports unique microclimates, flora, and fauna.

[Later: after farewells (to both friendly Yeats Village staff and resident dogs) and a last clean-and-shine of the students’ individual self-catered houses, a very pleasant drive out via Castlebar through southwest Mayo and Roscommon. We detoured through harbor town Westport, a beautiful Georgian-era resort town which is still very popular seaside real estate with Ireland’s yuppie elite, and out along the south coast of Clew Bay

Connemara is also a very sad place, because it was hit very hard by the famines of the 19^th century. Many people died, and many people left. The result was a heavily depopulated landscape (now being taken over with Dubliners and Mittel-Europers building vacation homes) in which the sad memories are very strong. The “Famine Road” that runs south from Westport to Leenaune is one such: in 184?, a group of starving peasants trekked north on the road to ? to ask their landlord for assistance. Following the principles of 18^th-century laissez-faire economics, he declined—and on the return trip many of the petitioners died.

[Later: lashing rain made it more attractive for some to stay in the Sleepzone-Connemara hostel (about 4 miles out of Leenaune), a 19^th-century hunting lodge turned into a modern appointed youth hostel with magnificent views, down a road lined with 20-foot-high “rosey-dendrons” as the locals call them. Later, a very pleasant evening in the hostel’s pub, where at the invitation of managers Ronan and Frida, the students played, sang, and danced for the assembled company. As Ronan said when we were having a nightcap (“one for the ditch”): “it’s like the Rose of Tralee [a talent competition in Kerry]: they all have their own party piece."

In a little while, off on the Sleepzone shuttle to Rossaveal for the ferry to Aran.

Day 4, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Yeats country. Though William Butler Yeats was born to a middle-class Anglo-Protestant family of clerics and artists in Dublin, his heart was in his ancestral home of Sligo, where his mother’s Pollexfen people came from. His patroness Augusta Lady Gregory maintained a home at Coole Park (site of “The Wild Swans at Coole“) in Galway, but Yeats himself chose to settle his family at Thoor Ballylee, a Norman-era tower he purchased and restored. Sligo was very important to Yeats, however: years after his death in France, he was re-interred at Drumcliffe Church, his grandfather’s seat. He lies in the Drumcliffe churchyard, near the church doors whose bronze handles have been rendered as Coole’s wild swans, with his wife Georgie beside him, in the shadow “Under Ben Bulben.” As the poem opens, Under bare Ben Bulben's head / In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

[Later: very nice visit to Drumcliffe, where Ben Bulben was rather socked-in by cloud but the churchyard, carved stone cross, and 8^th-century round tower (for safety from Viking raiders) were as we remembered—and again this year, our luck held: we had the churchyard to ourselves for our visit to the Master’s grave, and only as we were departing did the huge tour-busses of tourists arrive.]

Later, it’s off east of Sligo town into northwest Limerick, to visit various sites important in the Yeats canon (including Lough Gill, where lies the “Isle of Innisfree”), and also Parke Castle, a beautifully-preserved “Big House” built in the early 17^th century at the east end of the Loch, chose name means “Bright Waters.” And they are—looking west on a clear day in the afternoon, one can watch as the sun sets over the loch, turning the gray, green choppy water a bright gold. The castle was built in 1607 as part of the “Plantation”, when English and Scottish Presbyterians were “planted” in Gaeltachta as a way of assuring Protestant Ascendancy. The castle is beautifully preserved (including a unique period “sauna”, and an escape tunnel that leads to the loch’s shores just outside the walls) with excellent exhibits and very knowledgeable tour guides. Typically, there is a lot of Monty-Pythonesque “was that a European or an African swallow?” humor at this point.

[Nice quiet day at Parke’s Castle, where the weather held for us and we got a nice tour and photos of the Castle and Lough.]

Listen to Yeats reciting The Lake Isle of Innisfree.

Day 03, "Ireland" seminar trip

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. Posting one-a-day in the aftermath.]

Another day of intense archaeological antiquity. We travel northwest out of Sligo along the coast of Mayo, a beautifully, very underpopulated landscape, through the wool-and-pottery town of Ballina, to the northernmost coast. Our specific destination is a very large archaeological site called the Ceide Fields (see also here). It is a legacy of the Neolithic period in Ireland when the island was still covered with a temperate rain forest, not unlike that of Northern California (redwood trees, etc). Primitive farmers who had migrated into Ireland used slash-and-burn techniques (cut the tree’s trunk to kill it, then burn off the detritus) to clear the land. In turn, this gradually developed a thick layer of decaying vegetable matter, which in turn decomposed and became the bog which now covers the Fields. It was a huge stone-walled settlement which argues for a high degree of social organization, and which predates the Pyramids and Stonehenge. There is an excellent interpretative center there, with dioramas, paintings, and a huge (and beautiful) trunk of “bog pine”—a pine tree buried and petrified in the bog.

[Later: a bit of a glitch in the original travel plans, but one that (as often happens in Ireland) led to an unexpectedly-better result. Noel, our driver for the past two days, rang via mobile in the morning to say that he’d been called in with an appointment for (minor elective) surgery, and so we’d be having a different driver for the balance of the days. We were sorry to bid farewell to Noel, who’d handled our 55-seater like a master, but very happy to meet Marty, with his 30-seater “midi” coach, who was wonderfully responsive and happily put in a very long day for us. One other bit of info we had to incorporate: scientists at Sligo Institute of Technology had confirmed that the cryptosporidium outbreak that had hit the Galway and Clare water systems was expected to appear in Sligo as well. So, it was bottled water for drinking and tooth-brushing, and no ice in the drinks. A small price to pay, we thought, for avoiding the discomfort of stomach problems.]

After a tour and lunch at Ceide Fields, we will proceed back north and east along the Mayo coast to Downpatrick Head, a very dramatic piece of natural topography. Located on the very edge of the coast, in a region mostly given over to sheep pasturage (sheep are very resilient and can handle more severe rainy and cold weather than cows, with less attention), it’s one of the coldest and wettest places we’ve been in Ireland.

[Later: Wonderful visit to Ceide Fields, though the weather socked us in pretty swiftly so that only a few shots of the coastline could be taken. That didn’t stop the students from shooting tons of bytes worth of photos inside the museum, and from the top of the (award-winning) pyramidal observation tower. We had a good short tour of the fields themselves, and were struck once again by the obvious sophistication and social organization the Fields suggest: cooperation, security, and sensitivity to the land were obviously familiar topics. A few brief photos off the observation platform (railed, and with a straight-vertical dropoff down the sea-cliffs that made for some gratifyingly-hair-raising photos), and then up to Downpatrick Head.]

Downpatrick Head was nearly as wet but nowhere near as cold as in previous years, but the students found it just as gratifyingly intense.]

The fields, which are shot through with crevices and “blowholes” under which the ocean surges, slope uphill to the Head, which drops off precipitously in cliffs not unlike those at Moher (though much more deserted). Dun Briste (“The Battered Hill”) is a tall column of rock with a few tufts of grass atop it, which rears up out of the ocean about 150 yards offshore of the cliff (photo). It is thought that Dun Briste was originally attached to the mainland, and that it is a core of older, harder volcanic rock, the connecting topography of which was gradually worn away. Of course the Irish have a better story for that: they claim that a group of Druids were approached by St Patrick and urged to convert. They refused, and “God punished them” by marooning them on this distant tower.

This is also the region where the last defeated remnants of the French who had invaded under General Humbert to assist in the 1798 Rebellion took refuge in the blowhole called Poll na Seantoine, but were trapped and drowned by the incoming tide.

[Later: then back down from Downpatrick, onto the bus to towel and dry off, then back through Ballina for a brief tea- and bathroom-break, and into Sligo. Marty was a champion and volunteered to stop outside the “Tesco” (good-quality 24-hour grocery store), as the students had decided they would cook-in at the very-nicely-appointed kitchens in their digs. Back to the bus (now very cold and wet, but with bagsful of cheap groceries to turn into a very cheap dinner for all) and to Yeats Village, where we all parted, to dry off, cook, and hang out together.

Day 02, "Ireland" seminar trip (expanded)

[These are the daily posts located at Google Maps. I'll post one-a-day in the aftermath.]

First morning in Ireland. There’s always a transition moment here, when everyone (we hope) has managed to stay up long enough, and sleep late enough, that their circadian rhythms are adjusted and the jet lag is past. Magnificent (as always) full breakfast in the Durkin’s breakfast room, wherein almost all of the boys, and a surprising number of the girls, had their experience of the “full Irish fry.” Also always a watershed moment here, when the girls, realizing that Ireland’s cold and wet climate, and the amount of trekking we’ll do through fields in the rain, combine to make Texas-style “big ol’ hair” more than a little impractical. Our girls rose to the challenge like champions, and then it was off to the sites! This area is full of “raths” (ancient mounds which were the sites of “ring-forts”), a term which also occurs in local place-names like Rathcrogan, Rathmore, and Rath Ra (“the hill of the voice”—most striking, as there are very curious acoustical phenomena on the top of this last). This area is especially important in the history of Pagan Ireland because Roscommon contains many sites integral to the history of Queen Maebh of Connacht, one of the principle characters in the Ulster Cycle legends, which tell the story of the Tain Bo Cuailgne (“The Cattle Raid of Cooley”; text in translation available here), when the Queen’s soldiers raided east into Ulster, seeking to steal the legendary Brown Bull of Cooley. They were opposed by the mythic hero Cuchulain (the “Hound of Chulain”), whose adventures are the core of the Ulster Cycle. As Angela’s “Roswell” reference confirms, it is a very spooky landscape; the raths are usually located at high elevations. We will visit Rathcrogan, the site at which Queen Maebh was crowned and from which the Cattle Raid began (provided the present-day bull who lives in that particular field permits us). [Later: We were able to make our way up Rathcrogan: a large flock of sheep and their new lambs were in residence, and the bull was nowhere to be seen. On to Tulsk, where a recently-begun dig explores the area’s extremely rich Neolithic and Iron-Age cultures. Our visit to the Cruachan Ai archaeological site, where a rath is being painstakingly opened and diagramed, was enlivened by making friends with Michael and Lora, director and assistant-director of the Center. They shared with us some absolutely riveting geo-topographical discoveries about the arrangement of the raths and other sacred sites in relation to other places in Roscommon and beyond. Though it’s beyond our powers to know just yet what all these new insights mean, one thing is clear: the ancient peoples of Ireland, like ancient peoples everywhere, were just a sophisticated in their science and insightful in their art as are we moderns—and far more in tune with the landscape.

Boyle Abbey is a beautiful, well-preserved site in the market town which exemplifies the history of both the medieval Catholic church and the Renaissance religious conflicts in Ireland. Located on a bend in the river Boyle which flows from Lough Key to Lough Gill, the abbey’s grounds demonstrate both the financial power and the central social role that abbeys played in medieval life: as libraries, schools, farms, manufacturies, and employers. The grounds include the old chapel, various parts of which were built at various periods, the “buttery” (kitchen, complete with bake oven), the “commons” (where the monks ate, while one read aloud), and all the necessary components for a living-and-working community. Later, when Henry VIII founded the Anglican Church, broke with Rome, and confiscated monastic holdings, the Abbey fell into disrepair, after which it was eventually turned into a cavalry barracks during Oliver Cromwell’s mid-17^th century conquest of Ireland. There are good descriptive plaques and a restored upstairs room in the guard tower, which includes a detailed diorama of the Abbey at its height.

North Roscommon/South Sligo is also the heart of a very rich tradition of fiddling and flute-player. Most of the legendary players of Irish music’s “Golden Age” (the 1920s-30s) who recorded in New York and played on its vaudeville stages came from the region, and the place-names “Kesh,” “Culfadda,” etc are name-checked in hundreds of tune titles. We will visit the Michael Coleman Heritage Center in Gorteen, where Coleman, who emigrated first to England and then to America, was born. It’s an excellent small museum (with the mandatory “fillum” video presentation) and a good gift shop, full of rare and top-notch recordings. [Later: magical visit to the Heritage Center, where we greeted old friends from previous years, raided the gift shop, and enjoyed the tea and biscuits laid on for us. Then it was upstairs in the (revamped and expanded) center for the obligatory short “fillum”, and an impromptu concert and visit with bodhran-player Junior Davey and accordionist P.J. Hernon, two legends in Irish music, and great characters both. Their music was so good that it mandated a return raid upon the gift shop, a series of autographs, and an impromptu lesson on the percussive bones.

Sligo town itself is fairly small (it was mostly a Victorian shipping town) but its musical and cultural legacy is very rich (see its arts weekly here): the pubs are jammed to the rafters with great music and dancing (especially Shoot the Crows, the pub owned by members of the trad supergroup Dervish, who have the distinction of coming in last in the execrable pop-song context called Eurovision), and it’s near where the poet William Butler Yeats made his summer home. Yeats Village is a new hostel to us, but comes very highly recommended by other hoteliers who we trust implicitly. [Later: no music on at the Crows, but great craic there nevertheless: our students met up with David, Michael, and Ciarán, three locals who had great stories about their own travels, and great curiosity about ours. They were hard-pressed to believe that we’d only been in-country about 24 hours, but most impressed with our students’ dance and Gaelic language abilities (though they scoffed at the students’ too-good pronunciation of the “Queen’s Irish.”

Day 02, "Ireland" seminar trip

Friends:

Typing from a cyber-cafe in Sligo town (so forgive me for tranposed double quotes, ampersands, and any other wonky characters); will try to upload more detailed and descriptive itinerary/event info when I'm working from my own laptop. I think many of your students have called already, but herewith a truncated general note.

All very well here. Wonderful trip yesterday up through Clare via St Bridget's Well and the mighty Cliffs of Moher, for which the rain clouds even cleared, and during which several saw the ocean for the very first time--a good place to pick for this! Landed up at Durkin's Hotel in Ballaghaderreen, Co. Roscommon, where we have friends and there is a mighty breakfast.

Today, after said mighty (and mighty fattening) breakfast, wended our way ESE to Bar na Si (Fairymount Hill), an ancient site on the highest point in Roscommon, and then to Rathcrogan (coronation seat of the Kings of Connacht, and the place from which the Tain Bo Cuailgne departed); then to Tulsk, where there is a good interpretative museum and we met staff who are doing fascinating things mapping the geometric/topographic patterning of Megalithic sites.

On to Gorteen in South Sligo, home of the Michael Coleman Heritage Centre, where we heard some absolutely stunning live music, laid on especially for us, by accordionist PJ Hernon and bodhran-player Junior Davey, and where the students both bought many CDs and gleaned autographs from PJ and Junior for several of them.

Finally on to Sligo town, where we are ensconced at Yeats Village hostels, in 2 side-by-side row houses, one housing the 6 girls (in very nice single rooms around a central kitchen) and another housing the 5 boys. Off on their own for dinner, before we all meet up at "Shoot the Crows" pub for some live music in about 40 minutes time.

Tomorrow we're out west and north along the coast of Mayo to the Megalithic site of Ceide Fields, back to the dramatic cliffs at Downpatrick Head, and finally to the Michael Davitt museum at Sraide, before returning to Sligo for the night.

Again, all are well and seemingly very happy--and especially happy now to have fetched up in such nice digs.

More whenever I can connect to Internet again.

Day 02, "Ireland" seminar trip

Friends:

Now 8:45am at Shannon (2:45am Texas time). All are well. Connections went without a hitch and the flights in were relativeliy smooth. Angela and I are enjoying the (brand new!) free wireless at Shannon, as we await our driver Noel's arrival with our 30-seat "midi-"coach. Students are off changing money and using the local Internet terminals.

Itinerary for the day can be found at here, and includes St Bridget's Well, Cliffs of Moher, Black Rock Head, and Ballaghaderreen. The link also includes fairly extensive annotations describing the significance of the various sites.
We're off!

Day 01, "Ireland" seminar trip

Friends:

Just a quick preliminary note: we leave in about 4 hours from DFW/Dallas to Chicago O'Hare, whence we'll depart this evening for Shannon airport in County Limerick. The O'Hare/Shannon flight (American 256Q, partnering with Aer Lingus; track it at http://www.flightaware.com) will leave around 6:40pm, and arrive around 7:45am Ireland time. We "gain" five hours, which makes for a very short night on board! Most of the students will be excited and wakeful, which in turn makes for a sleepy Monday in Ireland. But we'll try to stay awake--the best way to adjust to jet lag is not to nap, but to stay awake past one's usual bedtime.

You can follow a map keyed to these trip notes by following this link at Google Maps, where I will day-by-day create an itinerary. This will include annotations, comments, links to other fun facts about locations, and so on. We invite you to follow-along as a "virtual traveler" as we explore Ireland's west.

all the best,

cjs