Friday 20 March 2015

five-by-five

pรญratar: Iceland’s dominant Pirate Party may extend shelter and citizenship to the Fugitive

kinematografii: a collection of vintage Czechoslovakian film posters

3 quarks for muster mark: some of the invented words of author James Joyce

birds’ eye: an eagle presents Dubai as he descends to his trainer below

be mine: camera embedded in a ring box captures marriage proposals from a face-forward perspective

Wednesday 11 February 2015

unionists and publicans

Writing for the Spectator, columnist Mary Dejevsky has found a more apt, although much more uncomfortable, analogy for the tension and territorial integrity that’s no rarified metaphor or theoretical matter triangulated among Russia, Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula.
Rather than resorting to popular but inhibiting comparisons to Nazi aggression or Czarist Russia, Dejevsky suggests a more contemporary parallel to another triad composed of Ireland and Britain and the creation of Northern Ireland. The correlation is of course not a perfect fit either, history being untidy, but I believe that by avoiding abstractions that strip away civility and humanity and making matters more personal (the UK certainly would not have tolerated any meddling in these internal affairs), one is better outfitted with the vocabulary to talk about matters, even if the received-language is already chilling enough in one direction.

Thursday 20 November 2014

gregorian mission or lex luther

Having enjoyed a tenuous overlordship on the island to begin with and with the Romano-Britons driven across the Channel by the Anglo-Saxon invaders, there was essentially no writing in England until after the year six-hundred. The Germans chieftains did not speak Latin, having had little exposure to it previously, which already had a true alphabet. The Germanic tribes had runes, which were primarily used for inscriptions and charms and not an effective way of imparting lore or commerce—although surviving evidence of personal amulets suggest that the illiterate peoples were already enchanted by the written word: one of the more prevalent words found on these charms was garlic (spear-leek, แšทแ›š), attesting to the Germanic custom (as was the fashion at the time) of wearing a garlic clove around one’s neck to ward off evil eventually being replaced by the non-perishable glyph for the same Kryptonite, imbued with the same mystical powers.  Irish monks to the north and west were scholars of Greek and Roman—inventing lower case Greek, among other things to make texts easier to copy, and the Goths on continental Europe had published a version of the Bible in their native language—but neither of these achievements was transmitted to England.

Instead, literacy only got traction thanks to Church administrators. A young monk from a Roman patrician family named Gregory was credentialed as apocrisiarius (papal ambassador to Constantinople) and plead with the emperor of the East to send in the legions to protect the Eternal City from barbarian raids. Though unsuccessful with this mission, Gregory did become extremely popular in aristocratic circles of the capital, especially with the wives of prominent officials and academics. This influence made his elevation, though unbidden, to Pope (discourses and chants but not the calendar Gregory) himself seem natural. While the anecdote of Gregory smitten by the sight of youths from England being sold at a slave market in Rome (Non Angli, sed angeli—But they are not Angles, rather they are angels) is said to have been what inspired the Pope to send Augustine and an army of missionaries to England, beginning with the Kingdom of Kent, to convert the pagan population, it probably also had to do with Church politics and cohesion, as those monastic communities in Ireland were not under the authority of the Holy See and had some pretty radical and potentially dangerous ideas—doctrinally and regarding decentralised governance. Augustine was welcomed by the king and queen of Kent, who were already members of the flock, but fearing what might happen after the current regime was replaced and wanting the Church of Rome to be fully cemented in England, the future archbishop of Canterbury directed throngs of monks to compose the most enduring and compelling reasons that he could summon up, aside from the Church itself: legislation and punishment. Perhaps Augustine thought that such threats were the only thing that these pagan brutes would understand, and he knew that none of them would care a jot about a bunch of rules in Latin. Therefore, scribes adapted the Latin alphabet to Old English and wrote out eighty-five laws, mainly dealing with consequences for damaging Church property or the clergy, in the native language of the population--making it not only the first document written in English but also one of the first vernacular codices in Europe since the beginning of the Republic.

Wednesday 19 November 2014

immrama or beyond the beyond

Though the Turkish president is facing some unfair ridicule for claiming that the relationship between the Islamic world and Latin America is a far more ancient one, Ireland stakes an even older title with the legendary voyages of Saint Brendan of Tralee.
Though the saint never stated that America was the Earthly Paradise (another candidate is La Palma in the Canaries), the Isles of the Blessed he was charged with finding by an angel for having been skeptical about an account of miracles and strange beings, Brendan does have a dedicated society of believer advocating his discovery preceded even that of Leif Erickson and the Vikings. Having embarked on this immram (the Irish word for a seafaring odyssey), the abbot assembled a cast of fellow monks (plus a few naysayers for good measure) may not have reached the Americas—though that is a matter of debate and faith—but came across many other curious places along the way. It is told that the adventures camped one evening on the back of a slumbering sea-monster, the aspidochelone, having mistook it for an island, make landfall on the island of the Birds of Paradise that sing like a choir of angels, encounter other monastic communities—including a hermit who has lived in the elements for sixty years draped only in his own hair and taken care of by an otter, a fiery land of blacksmiths that cast molten slag at the visitors (possibly a reference to volcanic Iceland) and crystal pillars in the sea (maybe icebergs) and the lonely skerry where Judas gets his respite from Hell on Sundays and holidays.

Saturday 26 July 2014

croatia week: outstanding universal value or spaghetti western

We visited some of Croatia's amazing and varied natural landscapes, including the cascading and constantly changing lakes of the Plitvice national parks (Nacionalni park Plitviฤka jezer) whose unique character is due to the malleable tufa that dams up the rough and eternal karst foundation of the Kvarner Gulf.
This lime- stone funda- ment is reminiscent of County Connemara in Ireland, whose sweeping plains are rivulets of the jagged rock face—with little top-soil but still managing to hold fast an ecosystem that supports everything from mosses up to cows—and people, rising also to form pseudo-fjords in parts.
The pools and lakes here and waterfalls are created by sediment that transforms into basically a chalky, soft substance that is much less permanent than what lies beneath and has given rise to wonderland, which was already duly recognised as one of the world's treasures by UNESCO in 1979 as one of the first natural places on the register.
Tourists can visit the park by sticking to these wooden gangways that look like the walkways from the Ewok village on the Moon of Endor. The wildlife here includes wolves, bears, otters, owls, vultures and lynxes but most shy away from the visiting crowds and the trails close promptly at sundown. A bit further south, past the Velebit mountain range, was the nature reserve of Paklenica canyon, and we hiked the trails there as well. It was easy to conjure up any number of adventures transpiring here.
Not too far away are much more arid climes, baked by the Adriatic sun and unrelenting Bora winds (a gust characteristic of the area that barrels downhill and snowballs once it reaches the lowlands), like these desert hills of the Isle of Pag—whose moonscape made me think of Tatooine. They were filming something there, but we suspect it was a car commercial, to appeal to customers' off-road fantasies even though it's doubtful they'll ever be realised.
It turns out that these natural backdrops were indeed made famous on celluloid in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the cinematic adaptations of German adventure-writer Karl May's novels of the Wild West, whose success spurred on other franchises like the Lone Ranger and Zorro.
May came to claim his cowboy-and-Indian stories with such iconic characters as the wise Winnetou, chief of the Apaches, and Old Shatterhand, his white blood-brother and the author's vicarious alter-ego, but May never saw these exotic places for himself—though compensating well with his imagination. It seems appropriate that the wilds of Yugoslavia (at the time) could be a fitting understudy and perhaps more authentic and awe-inspiring than those locations never visited.

Sunday 4 August 2013

abc's and 123's

Slate has an excerpt from Daniel Tammet's new book on thinking in numbers, in which the author experiences the cultural nuance, chiefly while visiting Iceland, where amounts are treated as something qualitative as well as quantitative and not something separate and abstract.
For the numbers one through five, there are different forms for years, sheep (it reminds me of the shepherd’s rhyme and special number system for counting sheep and stitches for knitting—Yan Tan Tethera, and probably also useful for sending someone off to slumber-land), people, naming trains and highways and houses—reflecting declination and something categorical that has no equivalent English despite the occasional encounter with twain, deuce, score and murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, etc. The fourth sheep is called something like “Sheep Number Four,” as if it were a city-bus—preserving a sense of cardinal bias, something not strictly ordinal, since four follows three only by the reckoning of the counter, unlike the passage of time. Bigger numbers are not elaborated in the same kind of way. I would like to read this book and find out how ways of counting influence the cognitive process and possible assumptions made about the significance upon encountering the unusual.

Saturday 13 April 2013

who moved my cheese?

Doubtless the governments of Cyprus, Portugal and Spain will accept the extra funds and for the latter the extended repayment periods offered coming out of the summit in Dublin, but in a rare moment of clarity—though mostly ignored I think as disingenuous, there was a lament by the recipients that more money is not what the beneficiaries need in this crisis. It is possible to throw good money after bad, but no one is going to turn down generosities, even when they might lead to greater sorrows later. The plaintive alternative requested was instead for more administrative flexibilities in managing the assets they have, reforming leadership, regulation and enforcement with but not around those initial life-lines before being presented with overtures of more—with new terms and conditions.
This preposterous suggestion, dismissed, made me think of this scholarly interview from Der Spiegel’s International desk examining the rise of anti-German sentiment across Europe over the euro and re-packaged austerity. It is a difficult and probing question, but I think, from these latest rounds of renegotiation, the public protests are a reflection in part at least of frustration that little flexibility—the structural might that Germany appears to have and seems to influence the body politic, that’s not accorded to the people equitably. Unfortunately, more credit does not equal a measure of determined reform, despite similarly deferred wishes for greater alignment.

Wednesday 13 June 2012

dรฉcoupage


Tuesday 12 June 2012

achterbahn

Lending tacit support to the infusion of credit to Spanish banks by way of a demurring and quiet concession towards the pooling of debt, Germany bore some chinks in its armour of resistance to the notion of sharing responsibility for broader financial stability. Signaling (again so lightly as to miss this cue) that the machinery of the European Union might be willing to admit a bit of the chaos of democracy (wherein people might not be obliged to choose wisely), Germany advocated a stronger political union for governance of monetary issues, ceding control of budgetary competence to the EU board.

Necessarily such a decision could not be unilateral and only up to the will of EU functionaries but must be submitted to a vote, since radical changes in national sovereignty require amending individual constitutions and a new legal framework. Now, even as the soothing effects of the cash for Spain is evaporating and raising the ire of the public and other earlier aid recipients that are being made to feel categorically different, irresponsible and blameworthy, which I do not think was the reason behind the German compromise but rather fear that became face-saving for Spain’s banks, Germany has shown a willingness to entertain the democratic process before the voting public has wearied of the issue and the ideals behind the EU are sunk. Instead of inheriting a failed coalition, Germany hopes to install a carefully crafted framework that honours Teutonic stoicism and fiscal responsiveness. Agreeing to share the burden of new debt incurred (and no country in the soi-disant core of the EU can manage right now without taking on new debt) comes also at the exclusion of existing obligations, which I fear might make the union, after negotiations that delimit one’s jurisdiction, even harder to leave, should things take a turn for the worse.

Sunday 3 June 2012

ex ante or porto portugal you are permanently punished

This week’s vote in Ireland whether to accept or reject the conditions of the European Union Fiscal Compact, a treaty meant to promote financial stability and responsibility through punitive measures and supranational controls, was a stirring of an issue that goes dormant as member states shuttle in queue and declare what they expect their prerogatives to be.

All countries, with the exception of the UK and the Czech Republic, have now assented and one can expect the process to lurch quietly towards enforcement next year. Ireland, uniquely contrary and potentially ruinous, had a pivotal decision, not so much for deigning to participate, but for letting the voters of Ireland make that mandate—being the only EU member to put the Fiscal Compact up to a plebiscite. Public engagement results in education and a better understanding of the expectations and consequences. The Irish constitution has to now be amended in order to conform to the terms of the compact, which demands that signatories stay just under budget or face fines and surrender trade and tariff matters to the EU government. States still retain control over tax regimes and public projects but it is a legitimate question how meaningful that exercise of prerogative and priorities are still when tethered within the latitude of treaty rules and whether the conditions of this pact are going beyond the reserved rights of individual sovereignty as put out in the language of the Lisbon Treaty (Vertrag von Lissabon). Rejection would mean that Ireland or any other dissenter would be ineligible to receive emergency aid and rescue funds. The EU has the bully pulpit, along with the deportment of its top performers, but also has a sloshing budget of billions with only nominal and ethereal accountability and negatively reinforced, and it seems to me that this poses more of a danger than a deterrent, like keeping a standing army in times of peace.

Wednesday 30 May 2012

pyrrhic victory or yes, we have no bleeding turnips

“Another such victory and I am undone.”

The ethos of the battlefield has, for the most part, been relegated to the invisible and agnostic sphere of finance, which has created an aversion to bloodshed and protracted war-making, since that is not a good climate for business—most business, likely there’s a calculus for acceptable loss and trigger for cutting-off the profits for the infernal machines, but it also tends to overshadow the “retrograde” and black market skirmishes that still go on and the people who take part in these sorties and surprises. The majority of what passes as an economic victory (although industry innovation and what’s now called a come-back or revival, like with Ireland or Iceland and what will happen for the Greek people, is not being entertained with this category of robber-baron success) is little cause for celebration (DE/EN), priced in terms of bankruptcy for the competition, the bleeding dry of stake-holders (shareholders and debtors), loss of jobs and living-standards, and trend-setting easily overturned that’s mere redistribution among the oligarchs. What are deemed key institutions are even sustained after being vanquished at the expense of public treasure. Those who would like to see struggling members of the European currency union quickly dispatched and dismissed unwillingly, rather than risk a sort of economic cold war, are rushing away from triumph. The EU’s proponents and founders could not have anticipated the spread of the economic collapse and that such a crisis would force a sober discussion of policy (how taxation and budgets are drafted) integration and is not using the plight of some members to justify the hegemony of others—rather this experiment in amalgamation, an imperfect union, shows how diminished the whole would be without its constituent parts and that the abridgement of differences is no basis for abandonment or ejection. Though the belligerents of politics and finance are intertwined, there’s principle enough, I hope, within the governments (at the behest of the people and not business or self-interest alone) to make the right decisions and have cause to celebrate.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

kฮฑฯ„ฮฑฮฝฮฑฮปฯ‰ฯ„ฮนฯƒฮผฯŒฯ‚ or conspicuous consumption

While it is premature and insulting to suggest that Greece, failing to form a definitive coalition government after its legislative elections that were themselves held in the framework of a caretaker government ingratiated as a condition of the first bailout package, will flagrantly choose to not uphold its obligations—attracting no clear majority though like-mindedness abounds—it does beg the question at what cost default. Greece is already in hock for the better part of a generation just keeping current on payments to service its rescue packages, with acutely less to show for it in the end: the dictates of creditors and angel-investors are superseding public services and the cultivation of a jobs market. Prophets of doom are probably not exaggerating when the say that Greece will suffer an extended period of massive poverty if they are forced to default (there is not much choice left in the matter) and quit the euro, but such consequences are temporary, surely less than the terms of the loan, and the Greeks could begin clawing their way back right away. Such a precedent, though, would be dread to see, dread to hear for other countries on the economic ledge and the minders of the EU—a cue for Spain, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Belgium and Italy, another nation imposed with a caretaker government, to consider doing the same.
I venture that the biggest fear behind the potential for contagion and strict monitoring of Greek conduct lies in not the potential for poverty but rather that it is a renegade category of poverty. Consumption continues at a pace, regardless of financial standing, so long as there is credit and interminable refinancing. Trade partners can still sell their exports and settle payments with a common currency in understood and agreeable terms, but once those conditions disappear and a country is unable to afford imports, established trade routes break down and there’s a turning inward and countries become more self-sufficient, relying on native products and developing local manufacturing (even if not as immediately efficient and technically advanced), perhaps even getting accustomed to getting by with less. Stronger economies would not be sustained without broader markets for the export of their expertise, and their sterling credit.

Thursday 19 January 2012

herab heraus or power of the purse

While still caught in either mid-yawn or mid-reel from the repercussions of the downgrade (Herabstufung-- Herabstufung is an upgrade or a promotion) of nine states of the European Union by one member of the creditworthiness brat-pack, the agency then proceeded to cast a pall of doubt on the EU’s financial crisis-management plan, the European Financial Stability Facility (gekรผrtz als EFSF oder bail-out pie), making the mechanisms of recovery potentially more costly, paying a dearer premium on the assurance of their efforts.

 I suppose it is logical that plans and pacts would also be targeted for assessment, but given that the EU was not simply downgraded en mass but rather parsed and excised instead of indirectly attacking their credibility through their good neighbor programme and that I cannot recall the agencies being very vocal (for or against) during the early phases of the US economic recession with trillions from treasury coffers dispersed to salvage over-exposed financial institutions, the gaming of the EFSF seems to me more like the bookmakers’ culture of Briton, wagering on an outcome and any interest-grabbing probability with the intent of skimming a little off the top. Germany and other EU leaders have dismissed the notion, at least not publically addressing or entertaining the idea, that the activity of the rating agencies is vindictive or something of a conspiracy--though there is more money to be made raising the stakes. Banks, in collusion with the rating agencies, are bringing down Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal whose baited lend-lease ventures shoved these countries over the ledge by obscuring their real levels of indebtedness and still foisting more easy credit on them, past the EU statutory limits. It is simply false to attribute the whole crisis to bad governance, greed, or laziness without factoring in the temptation and terrorism visited by this conspiracy. Once the crisis was forced, the same predatory gang called in their debts and are now profiting off the chaos and desperation as well.  Hopefully, national responses to this sort of gamble are measured and in proportion.

Monday 17 October 2011

hungry hill

There was a sort of inaccessible quality of tragic beauty to western County Cork, which became, like other places we have visited in Ireland, more defined with study and background. Adrigole, though, at the foot of the Healy Pass and the summits of Sugar Loaf and Hungry Hill (made famous by the Daphne du Maurier novel, who also penned what became Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds), had an especially poignant—but not unique sadly as we had also stayed in Leenane, County Galway, where The Field was set—history that we got to know that added to the experience of visiting. Adrigole (Irish, Eadargรณil) stretched out over ten kilometres, hugging the distinctive coastline of the Beara Peninsula, and is a peaceful and serene place, though it was once a boom town, before being decimated by the Famine (Hungersnot), immigration and the copper mining industry going bust and the robber-barons leaving the area.
There was evidence of this livlier past, and also of more ancient oppressions, like the ruins of Catholic churches that were hidden in the mountains when worship was persecuted by the Church of England. The place was warm and inviting, and certainly did not feel empty or like a ghost town, but knowing this history enhanced our time there.

Saturday 15 October 2011

mnemotechny or counting sheep

In the quiet evenings after our daily adventures in Ireland--much more to come in following episodes, I read the very memorable and inspiring "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Slate writer Joshua Foer (Penguin Books, 2011). In a sense, right after I had checked this volume out from the library, the anticipation of reading it had my thoughts roving to the old James Burke BBC series Connections and the Day the Universe Changed and the installments that addressed memories, specifically the mental constructs of utilized by the ancients and story-tellers of long ago of palaces or cathedrals as cues for memorizing and understanding.
Revisiting those riveting techniques and then recalling passages from Plato about the hazards of the written (uncommitted) word, printed on a page but not imprinted elsewhere and making memory something external was a little bit revolutionary for me, in the retelling. The author’s coverage of participatory journalism that made him the architect and landlord of many memory palaces really highlighted the extent to which we have made our memories something outside of us, relying on the internet, digital photographs, and even surrendered to GPS when one of the things that humans are innately good at is navigation and spatial awareness, and thus in a time where memorization is frowned upon and seen as demeaning, punishment, how much practice really can perfect and lead to expertise. Our minds are really capable of incredible things and we may be too quick to fault them or resort to the latest crutch.  After all, what innovation comes without a jolt and a hook from what came before. I fully intend to investigate this, but don't take my word for it... Speaking of the memorable and what creatures might people your own memory palaces, last time we were in Ireland, we noticed that neighbouring sheepfolds had begun tagging their flock with spray paint, usually a green, red or blue dot. This time, however, there was a splendid group that appeared nearly tie-dyed.

Friday 7 October 2011

korkenzieher or exonymy

I remember when I was little, I had a light and fluffy block of cork wood that I thought was a very rare and exotic thing as part of a larger collection of stones, fossils and pieces of petrified wood. It was eaten with wormholes, and I think I only tried once floating it in the bathtub. Such an unusual grove must have its origins with the Irish second-city of the same name, I was convinced.

Of course, since then I learned that the cork oak is mostly cultivated in Portugal and the city is derived from the Irish Corcaigh for marshland and that wine corks are mostly plastic or rubber anymore--which is nice to a certain extent since one need not be as practiced at uncorking a bottle because the rubber stopper is not brittle and won't break apart into the bottle, but we did notice this unsung and ingenious hybrid that has a bit of plastic as a catchment for a tradition, fragile cork. It's strange how exonyms and making aboriginal place names sensible to foreign ears--or those of settlers to natives--can result in some creative folk etymology. The German (and of course Germany for Deutschland is one of the more prevalent exonyms and an invention of Julius Caesar) town of Pforzheim, for instance, is called so as a reduction, simplification of the Roman designation of Porta Hercynia, gateway to the ancient pan-European forest that remains as the Black Forest (der Schwarzwald) into modern times. Even a place named something seemingly straightforward, like Schweinfurt, having evolved from Suinurde (maybe meaning "man's land" or "divided land", connotes nothing about a place where pigs can cross the Main river. Such backformations have surprising and triangulated origins.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

whack fol de turalura ladie, whack fol de turalureley

You can see Dublin City and the fine groves of Blarney,

The Baun, Boyne, and Liffey, and the lakes of Killarney,
You can ride on the tide o'er the broad Majestic Shannon,
You can sail round Loch Neagh and see storied Dungannon.
Will you come, will you, will you, will you come to the bower?

PfRC will be will be taking a short hiatus, while we take are engaged with adventures in one of our favourite destinations--Ireland.  In the past we have enjoyed exploring the Dingle Peninsula and the Ring of Kerry, seen the savage beauty of Connemara, and this time we will be traveling to County Cork to visit Bantry Bay and the Ring of Beara on the southernmost peninsula. 
I am very excited--and surely all the while narrate our doings to the tune of the Edmund Fitzgerald or some other forgiving Irish folk song--and be sure to check back with our little travel blog for updates. 

Saturday 16 April 2011

eeyore or thanks for noticing me

In the parking lot of the supermarket, I saw this unusual trailer, which I thought I had mis- understood: Eselnothilfe or rather Donkey Rescue, though, to my mind, these sort of compound words can be manipulated to mean other things, like Emergency Donkey or Donkeys to the Rescue.  One can make donations to sponsor a service animal for villages in Africa or India, which I am sure is at least as appreciated as a WiFi router or some of the other charity forced on those communities in the past.  It was rather a service for retiring mules and the like that takes beasts of burden to farms where they are not expected to labour and can life out their days in peace.  It made me think of the dear, sweet animals we met in Ireland. 
The international organization advertised on the trailer canvas does not seem to be found under that website any longer, but searching I learned about similiar charities, which is a nice thought.  After we finished shopping, the caravan was ahead of us on the road and started on the same route as we would take home.  For a moment, I was excited that they might bring us an old donkey to care for.

Monday 28 February 2011

fรกil whale or pot-of-gold

Ireland's incumbent government was brutally routed as retribution for gross dereliction when it came to the custody of the country's wealth. Mismanagement and buying into flimsy schemes excited the ousting of the outgoing Fianna Fรกil coalition, and though, no doubt, the people should be held to account whose conduct has lead Ireland's betrothal to years of indebtedness, the elections seem one on hand symbolic and moot. Saddled with this financial crisis, the incoming government has very little latitude in determining any significant changes to welfare or austerity, since all future funding has already been allocated--spent--to pay off IMF loans with money tight and choices narrowed. Many other places facing similar situations fear population and talent drains as people move with the fleeing job opportunities and spiraling revenues. Huge swaths of land stood nearly deserted already on our visits, with little going expect for the holidaymakers, but what may not have been visible or appreciable to us was I am sure a lot of individuals getting creative and inventive. Governments may never be luminaries at stretching the household budget, and some ministers, fearing saturation and stagnation, can only hope to repackage, refinance, or hope that extra-terrestrials will infuse the market with fresh buying-power.
One nation in the same predicament as Ireland, having already dumped its lax leadership and dealing summarily with withering investment and hardships to come, is Iceland.
The bit of genius they are testing, albeit ambitious and grandiose, is a proposal to channel geothermal energy from volcanic fonts in Iceland via cable to Scotland or Ireland and onto Europe. Considering how Iceland's exposure only shifted from news of the country's financial melt-down to how Eyjafjallajรถkull (Kajagoogoo) grounded air travel, that is a good stroke that people may soon be associating the country with plentiful, clean and cheap energy. There's a bit of wildness in laying a two thousand kilometer power line under the Atlantic, but the project's scale and goal is little different from the Suez or Panama Canals.

Sunday 24 October 2010

knock-about or double-rainbow day

H and I are just back from holiday in western Ireland and environs.  The visit was absolutely outstanding in all regards: the people, the history, the ancient and holy sites, but the natural wonderments were really superlative.  Here are just a few snapshots.  More photographs and stories are posted on the companion blog.

Downpatrick Head
This tall rocky outcropping at Downpatrick's Head was where the Devil lived but crumbled away from the mainland in the Middle Ages, and like the snakes, was banished from Ireland.
Doolin Harbour
At the southern edge of the karst moonscape, the Burren, we visited the village of Doolin before traveling on to the amazing Cliffs of Moher.
Cliffs of Moher
  There was no end of things to see and we certainly did not exhaust the Connemara region, with its undulating ribbons of coastline and picture-perfect drives.  We did venture further north, however, through County Sligo.  On the descent from the hike up Knocknarea Mountain, we had a spectacular view of Ben Bulben, which dominated the land like a green version of Ayers Rock, sides carved out by rivulets that swelled with cascading white water after a good, brief rain.

Ben Bulben
 
And about the weather, it was forever damp but the rains only stayed for a brief spell and afterwards we were rewarded with a cavalry of rainbows, coming one right after another, like the dominions of Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony and the Care Bears all put together.  Here was a particularly nice one over the fjord that frames Killary Harbour, just looking out of the window of our cottage.
Killary Habour