28 Waiting in Line To Be Legal

A few weeks ago Ron and I spent an entire day—from 7:45 a.m. to 5:45 p.m.—at the Irish Immigration and Naturalization Service office on Burgh Quay here in Dublin. We were there to register for our extended residence, something we should have done months earlier. Because of some confusion in the instructions Ron received from Trinity, we hadn’t realized that we needed to take this step until our son Evan flew in to Dublin to visit us in November. Evan told the gardaí (the “guardians” or police, from An Garda Síochána, guardian of the peace) at passport control that he was coming to stay with his parents who were here for a year. They looked us up and found that we weren’t properly registered. No one likes to get a call from a stern-voiced policeman at 8 a.m. in the morning saying “I’m with your son here at the airport.” It turned out that our mistake was not a big deal and easily resolved, but for a week or so until we could devote a day to the process of getting registered, we had a small taste of the tension and fear faced not only by undocumented immigrants but also by anyone who comes under the authority of the always byzantine bureaucracy of immigration departments here, in the US, and throughout the world. With generations of emigration to its history, Ireland is used to people leaving the country in search of a better life, but only in the last thirty years or so has immigration begun to change the face–literally and figuratively–of this formerly homogeneous country. More welcoming than some destinations but by no means perfectly adjusted to the reality of new faces, new languages, new customs, new religions, new foods, and new perspectives, Ireland is trying to figure out how a people that have found new homes and lives all over the world should react to others seeking the same things on this island. It was cold and pitch dark as we walked from our apartment to the INIS office at 7:15 a.m., though the streets were filled with people on their way to and from work. As we took our places in the dishearteningly long line winding around the block outside the building, we saw quite a few people who had obviously been there all night, as evidenced by their blankets and sleeping bags, coffee cups and food...
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27 Handel’s Messiah in Dublin, 13 April 1742

A few days ago I revived my annual Christmas ritual of playing Handel’s Messiah at full volume while I work at my desk or around the house, a practice that is exhilarating but that can also make me nostalgic and weepy—familiar Christmas emotions for many. Truth be told, I sometimes do this at other times of the year, particularly when I need a blast of energy or inspiration to get a project going. My love of vocal music, Handel’s soaring melodies (especially those of the Messiah), and his choice of English as the language for his many of his libretti—he lived in London from 1710 to his death in 1759—have long drawn me to his work. For the most part, European musical tradition did not recognize English as a hospitable language for opera or oratorios until the nineteenth century or later. Whether he made the choice for economic, political, or musical reasons, Handel was an innovator in using English. Here in Ireland I have the version of Messiah by the Academy of St. Martin’s in the Fields with Neville Mariner (1976), a combination that is always a good bet for baroque music. When I’m alone, I turn up the volume and sing out loud, taking the alto part or finding my place in a higher or lower octave for the rest. Let me make clear that I don’t sing well, but I do sing enthusiastically and in tune. At home in Atlanta I have about a dozen more of Handel’s oratorios and operas set up to play consecutively starting with Acis and Galatea, which I recently learned was performed by Handel while he was visiting Dublin and incorporates an Irish jig. In certain moods I allow myself a full day of Handel blasting through all the downstairs rooms. Last December I had the great pleasure of hearing the Messiah live for the first time with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. Ron and I were sitting in the back row in two seats set apart from others, so my silent mouthing of the words and rhythmic swaying and bobbing didn’t bother anyone but Ron, who is used to my Messiah antics. At least I didn’t sing out loud or hum. It was a magnificent performance, easily the highlight of our five day culture fest in the city. The soloists were perfect, the choir brilliant, the orchestra beyond compare. I quickly...
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26 Eddie Doherty Handwoven Tweed

I love wool in all its forms—on the hoof, on the spinning wheel, on the loom, as knitting or crocheting yarn, or made up as garments or throws. I sometimes wonder if Ireland drew me to wool or the other way around. In yarn stores I can be found wandering from section to section touching the different types and brands or sniffing the lanolin in skeins of wool that have not been overly processed. I’m afraid I have a lot more yarn at home than I’ll ever get around to knitting up, but buying yarn always seems to be such a great way to take a little bit of Ireland back home with me. Wool has amazing qualities that are not always recognized: it’s flame retardant, resistant to dust mites, and only extremely rarely allergenic, though most of us need a layer of cotton or some other fabric between our skin and the wool. Cool in the summer, warm in the winter, wool “draws moisture away from the body in the heat and maintains a layer of dry air around the body when the air is cool and damp” (see previous link). Long before I started actually coming to Ireland, I learned to love the subtly multicolored wool made in Scotland and Ireland known as tweed, though I didn’t own anything made from it. Some sources connect the word “tweed” to the River Tweed in Scotland, but a more likely origin is a modified version, probably resulting from mistakes, of the fabric type “twill.” Authentic tweed comes mainly from Lewis, Harris, and Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland or from County Donegal in Ireland, and the colors are all made with natural dyes. If you examine a piece of tweed or a strand of tweed yarn closely, you’ll see how complex the fibres are, with different colors of yarn woven together to support and deepen the overall color of the fabric, the so-called “heather” effect. Donegal tweed is particularly distinctive because of the small particles of color along the thread that add another dimension to the unmistakable “tweedy” look, the “Donegal” effect. I’ve knitted seven or eight sweaters with Donegal tweed; the colors come across differently with each stitch and make the project continually interesting, something a knitter always craves. You only have to look around you at the landscape of Ireland or Scotland to understand the inspiration for this compelling way...
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25 Divided by a Common Language Redux

Here are some more language stories collected by an American surrounded by—and rapidly learning—Irish English. For the first installment of “Divided by a Common Language” see post number 17 under “Past Posts.” The other day an Irish friend asked me if I was enjoying my “doss” year. Luckily she asked this in an email, because I had to do some research before answering her. In UK and Irish slang, “doss” actually means “sleep rough” as in “she’s dossing at a friend’s house after the concert,” etc. “Doss” can also be a noun: “Did he find a doss for the night?” Another definition online mentioned that the word can be extended to mean “a situation giving the opportunity for being extremely idle.” While I’m certain that the Professional Development Committee and the powers that be at Agnes Scott College do not think of sabbaticals as “doss” semesters or years, I am ready to own this description of my sabbatical. And yes, thank you very much, I am really enjoying my doss year! In fact, I’m having a grand time in my doss year! I’m not sure why “grand” beats out “great” in Ireland, as the two words are very close in meaning and origin. This is one of those words that’s said so often, I can’t help but say it myself, though I frequently get tangled up at the “grrr…” part, not sure which way I’m heading. One interesting use of “grand” that is a bit outside the scope of “great” occurs when you say something along the lines of “I don’t want to trouble you,” or “Is it okay if I sit here?” or “Is there anything I can do to help?” and the response is “Ah, you’re grand!” That means that there’s no problem, whatever you are doing is fine, you don’t need to do anything else. I find this very heartwarming, and it makes me very well-disposed to whomever I’m talking to. Ah, you’re grand! Here’s a side note that will, perhaps, only be appreciated by my brothers Jeff, Todd, and Mike. Our mother Barbara had a language of her own that combined baby talk with arcane references to what she called “boarding school books,” other elements of the culture of the twenties through the forties, and her own family oddities. Someday I’ll have to put together the complete lexicon. For example, whenever she encountered a baby she would...
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24 November in Ireland / Mí na Samhna in Éirinn

Anyone who has stumbled upon the spot pictured above, Doolough (Black Lake) in County Mayo, knows how beautiful it is at any time of the year. This photo—taken on Tuesday, November 18, 2014—speaks to everything that needs to be said about Ireland in the month of November, Mí na Samhna. The bracken has turned to brown, the heather to unnamable dark shades, the peat-infused water to even more impenetrable black. The green that lingers glows greener than ever. Most of the flowers are gone, yet the color palette has expanded. The hills are coated in warm brown velvet—mole-colored when in shadow—that seems creased and draped with artistry. Shadows are longer, colors have more depth and darkness. And there’s no one—not a tourist, not a sheepherder, not a hiker—in sight. As in other Gaelic languages, the word for Halloween, Oíche Shamhna (oíche means “night”), is also the word for November, testifying to the importance of the season in Celtic culture: Mí na Samhna means the “month of Samhain.” The root word Samhain [SOW-en] means “the end of summer” and is the name for one of four festivals marking the seasons of the year: Imbolc, Beltane, and Lughnasa are the others. Samhain and Beltane [BELL-ta-nuh] (May) were the most important and were considered to be times when the barriers between our world and the world of the spirits became porous, so-called “thin” times allowing movement and communication back and forth. That certainly is the mood of November in the many cultures where the Halloween tradition has developed. Before coming for this twelve-month residence, I had never spent even a day of either February or November in Ireland. I don’t yet know what February will bring, but November is fast becoming my favorite month here. For one thing, a lot happens in November as far as the look and feel of the day. Remember that Ireland is very far north, at roughly the same latitude as the middle of Hudson Bay. Every day makes a radical move towards darkness. With daylight saving time marking the month (this year DST actually began on October 26, a week before it started in the US), we are suddenly measuring the rapidly diminishing daylight so that we can get everything we can out of it. When we arrived in June, it stayed light until almost 11 p.m. and the sun was up a few hours later. Because our bedroom blinds...
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