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Wednesday

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18
Mar 26

Ceann Iorrais

We saw another landmark that people use from the sea. It’s a point on the tip of a peninsula. And we didn’t see the whole of it, but we got close to Ceann Iorrais, or Erris Head.

The scenic viewpoint of Erris Head is said to give you views of the ocean and rocky cliffs. You have to go across a number of fields. Today, they were very muddy fields. It’s also a conservation area. Seabirds nest on the cliffs, included gulls and falcons, Irish crows, and more. You’ll also see geese, seals and other critters depending on the season. You can sometimes sea the dolphins and porpoises at sea.

If you could walk the route — up and off to the left from these first photos — it’s about three miles, and you’d see some old naval watch posts, and the ancient stones that make up some of the most exposed coast in this part of the world. The cliffs, made of quartzite, gneiss, and slates aren’t especially tall, rising just 295 feet above the sea.

Some of them are thought to be the oldest rocks in Ireland, dating back 1.8 billion years.

When the first people came to this area, it was native woodland, and had been since (relatively) shortly after the last Ice Age.

During the Neolithic period, about 6,000 years ago, the first people living in Ireland began to cut down the forests to clear land for growing crops and grazing livestock. Just below a thin layer of soil were those old rocks, and so erosion took its toil. When the crops began to fail, and this probably just took a few years, the Neolithic people had to clear the native woodlands further and further inland for their crops.

In the 1930s R. L. Praeger, a naturalist, described this as “the wildest, loneliest stretch of country to be found in all of Ireland … ”

Ocean and wind energy are the future around here. Folklore is a part of the past and the present. There’s one tale about a jealous stepmother who doomed her kids to spend 900 years as swans on the lakes and waters around the island. Another good one is about the mounds of the earth near a nearby village. They haven’t been explored, but are apparently not naturally occurring. The story goes that you had to pay a toll to come onto the peninsula or you were never seen again. I’m not sure if you can call that a case of highwaymen, since roads are a relatively new development around here, the first having come into service less than two centuries ago.

adventures / history / Ireland / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
Mar 26

Blacksod Lighthouse

We made a quick stop to start the day at a place that’s been historically relevant in more than one way and in more than one time. Blacksod Lighthouse has been in operation since 1866. It remains an active lighthouse. It is waymark for local fisherman, has been a post office for the community, and still serves as a fueling stop for the locals and also emergency operations.

Just out of view here is a small collection of signs memorializing the vessels and people that left from these shores during tough times. This was the place where struggling, starving people set out for Great Britain and Canada and the United States. You can just come to the little beach here and do a little genealogical work if you are of Irish descent.

The lighthouse hasn’t opened for seasonal tours just yet, and it’s a quiet spot in the midmorning. Just two other people were there, having a picnic on the stone wall overlooking the water. Behind the building is the rocky beach. Just off the right of the frame is where you’ll find the garden with all of the immigrant vessels.

Then, in 1944, the people working here played their role in saving the free world.

Blacksod, as a weather station, measured atmospheric conditions and made regular reports to Britain and the US. There were no satellites or computer models, of course, there was only first-person observation, extrapolation, and educated guesswork. A young woman, Maureen Sweeney, was a part of that effort. She worked there in the mail office and also made hourly weather observations from this key spot, one of the first stations on the western coast. On her 21st birthday she saw the coming storm that threatened the armada assembled in the English Channel for northern France. Men were sick in the boats, nervously waiting to go ashore or jump into France or ferry others here and there. It was the world’s largest military operation and it came down to secrecy, timing, the tides and the moon, and the weather. What Sweeney saw helped generate the forecasts that convinced Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, to postpone the invasion by a day.

There’s a movie due out this summer about the weather, full of wonderful actors all delightfully miscast. But the star will be the history, and that weather. Some of it was recorded and reported at this spot, at Blacksod.

Maureen Sweeney stayed on there, running the mail, until she retired in her 80s. She died at 100, just a few years ago. Working here is a family business. Her son runs the lighthouse these days.

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18
Mar 26

The Wild Atlantic Way — between Gweesalia and Sligo

We got into the Erris Coast Hotel last night just in time for the last seating at their restaurant. I know that because at a certain point, our view from the corner of the rustic looking place showed a lot of empty tables and the music changed mid-song. We had a dinner package at the hotel, which offered us a special menu but was mostly important because you didn’t see anything else on the way in. Lovely little hotel, comfortably modern and in the middle of nowhere. The woman that served us dinner also saw us off this morning. Twice she discussed our plan and her suggestions for the day, and she approved of all of our choices for the day.

And there was so much to see! I’ll break it up into several posts again, but before that, here’s a place to start.

Great views, incredible history, and places we had no idea we’d encounter are ahead of us, so let’s get to it.

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11
Mar 26

Almost not sleepy, but definitely bleary eyed

We are in Dublin, Ireland. It rained, as it does. And then the sun came out for a while, which is still a seasonally new thing, I gather. There is a conference going on at Dublin City University, which is next door to our hotel. My lovely bride has been in and out of the conference today. (More on that tomorrow.) I have spent the entire day, I mean the entire day, in our room doing school work.

There was a lot to grade, midterms, and write, the usual, and prepare, presentations, and it took all day. All of this was part of my plan to stay ahead, or on par, but certainly not behind, over the next three weeks. It was an effective day, and it was a full day. I was fetched for dinner, at a charming little cafe right across the street. I grabbed my sunglasses on the way out the door of the room. It was something like 8 p.m. and pitch dark. I had no idea. It was a great way to waste a day in Ireland, though, which was always the plan. Get work done, drain the jet lag out of my weary eyes and limbs. Be ready to present as a human being should at the conference tomorrow.

I had the fish and chips. I think that was the only meal I had today.

So I have nothing for you here. Except these two little photo fillers.

Sunday night, before this trip began, we got a bit of ice cream. Mine was not good. I did not get this, which looks gross, but it might have been better.

Equally unimportant, but much closer to where I am right now: there’s an electrical panel on one of the walls in the DCU building where the conferences are underway. A little sticker graffiti is fun. Custom stickers are cheap and easy to make. Eventually some maintenance or facilities person will come by and peel these off. But no paint or other serious labor needed. Until then, though, have a little character on an otherwise spartan wall.

Tomorrow, I’ll join the Sport and Discrimination conference and see a lot of research done by brilliant scholars, some of which are our friends. And a few more will be by the end of the weekend. Friends, I mean. They’re already brilliant scholars. On Friday and Saturday I’ll pretend to fit in with presentations of my own.

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4
Mar 26

Should I put ‘Write book about Want To Do lists’ on such a list?

Today I sent off a rough draft of that packet I’ve been working on. It presently stands at about 30 pages, and so I waited a half hour to check for feedback. Nothing yet. Until I hear back it is perfect. Or terrible. We should also allow for the possibility that it is perfectly terrible.

Anyway, they give you this checklist and you attend a whole bunch of meetings and there are more shared documents than you can possibly be expected to keep in your head. All of this in service to this packet, where you are required to write a narrative about your teaching, including student feedback and your response to that, and peer reviews, and your response to that. Then you write a narrative that discusses the service you’ve done in that time, so committee work and projects and things. And then you write a third narrative about your professional development — so research and presentations and every little other thing you can remember. (Take notes throughout is the lesson.) Above these things are some forms detailing classes, and on top of all of that is a fourth narrative, the executive summary, where you finally realize you’ve actually done quite a bit these last few years, and a long nap, a cup of tea and a peppermint sound pretty good right now, in any order you like.

You’re not getting those things, of course, because there are still all of the appendices to append. There’s the batch of student evals, and the peer feedback, and some other forms that have to do with your original job ad, which is hilarious, and then some paperwork that must get signed and some feedback from your previous review …

By the time I’ve spelled all of that out another 30 minutes have passed, and there’s no feedback. So it is perfect.

Anyway, I’ll think about this until March 16th, when it is due, so just two more weeks. But I can have that nap, and tea, and peppermint.

Except I can’t, because there are slide decks for tomorrow’s classes to finalize, and two presentations next week, and a host of meetings for which I must prepare. That master calendar I made last week was a good idea. So far I’ve not only scratched everything off the list, but I’ve gotten to everything scratched off on time. Score one for To Do lists.

I’ve soured on To Do lists. Sounds rebellious, because I am rebellious. There’s an issue with To Do lists, a notion of responsibility, work demanded. The satisfaction of striking things off the list does not outweigh that.

But the real problem is this: I have discovered Want To Do lists. No mystery to that. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Only no one ever tells you about them. Big List doesn’t want you to know about Want To Do lists. But before “they” track me down and bury me under another pile of administrivia, let me speak to you of the truth of this uproarious uprising, this revolutionary revolt: When you start making Want To Do lists you’re doing a powerful thing. I first wrote about this in 2023, apparently, so let’s just consider me an expert.

What you do, right after you’ve made yourself a Want To Do list, is to do one of the things on that list. Do it just for you. The feeling of scratching one of those things off one of those lists, that’s satisfying.

But you have to attend to the Want To Do list. I wonder how many of those I have floating around, still incomplete. At least two, surely.

Well, a few more months weeks, and maybe we can see about some of those thing.

Then, in a few more weeks, it’ll be “Well, in two more months.”

That’s the power of the list. If you just say it, you just say it. The idea floats in your mind and in the air but things out soon enough. But if you write it down — and go stream of consciousness here, rank ordering a Want To Do list is madness — then you can ignore the list. But … But! When you finally get around to it, you have that list in front of you, and you can recall that thing you wanted to do last November. Then you only have to remember why.

And do the thing.

But first, work stuff.