DUBLIN~…or just Brits out of Ireland? The graffiti below was marked on the plywood barrier of a city center Dublin construction site on 19 July 2016. As the 1916 Easter Rising remembrance winds down, and Brexit plays out, talk of reuniting the island of Ireland is a topic of growing debate, and will continue to be so as the centennial of partition quickly approaches.
I’m finally heading back to Ireland after four…long…years.
I launched this blog on tumblr in July 2012 after returning from my fifth trip to Ireland. As stated then and the blog subtitle, the goal is to “publish research and writing about Irish and Irish-American history and contemporary issues.” Now, 391 posts later, I’m returning to the source of my interest and affection.
Over the next two weeks I’ll be in Dublin, Belfast and Kerry. I’ll be reconnecting with family relations and sitting down with new people that I’ve met through the blog. I’ll be doing ongoing research about the Land War murder of John Foran, checking out a few 1916 centennial exhibits, and exploring other attractions. I’ve mapped out a really cool scenic drive.
Most of my posts will be images, with more detailed reporting and stories to follow later when I get home. Please join me virtually. Meanwhile, enjoy this drone-captured video of my grandfather’s hometown of Ballybunion, County Kerry. I’ll be happily on the ground here very soon.
Dublin will host the next World Meeting of Families in 2018.
The announcement came as Pope Francis wrapped up this year’s gathering in Philadelphia, concluding a historic nine-day trip to Cuba and the U.S. It’s too soon to say whether the pontiff, who turns 79 in December, will go to Ireland.
Held every three years and sponsored by the Holy See’s Pontifical Council for the Family, the event is described as “the world’s largest Catholic gathering of families.”
The Irish Catholic church as been rocked over the last decade by clergy sex abuse and Magdalene laundry scandals. A gay marriage referendum won overwhelming approval in May, and there is talk of liberalizing the country’s abortion laws, both against the wishes of the church.
Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin welcomed the announcement that the WMF would take place in Ireland. “Despite many challenges, the family remains at the heart of faith and of so much that we hold important in this country,” he told The Irish Times.
Ireland hosted the 50th International Eucharistic Congress in 2012. Pope John Paul II was the last pontiff to visit Ireland, in September 1979.
Hate to say it, but Dublin beat defending champions Kerry in the All-Ireland Finals on Sunday. The match played through torrential rain at Croke Park, home of the Gaelic Athletic Association.
“The win was sweet because it was the first time Dublin have beaten Kerry in three successive championship encounters (after 2011 and ‘13) and two successive final contests,” The Irish Times reported. “In the end the disappointment was far more profound for Kerry, who never performed – as acknowledged by manager Eamonn Fitzmaurice.”
The All-Ireland championship dates to 1887. Kerry has won 37 times, the most any county.
Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn positions himself in the long line of Irish-American political figures. During his first term in office he instituted the Mayor’s River O’ Green Fest, coloring the Hillsborough River a fine shade of emerald.
Now in his second term and with an eye on the Florida governorship, Buckhorn and other Tampa Bay officials have just returned from an economic development trip to Ireland. At a press conference, he said diversity is a key to success:
“Dublin, in particular, is a great role model for what Tampa could become. In 2000, everyone looked like me. You walk around Dublin now, and you hear a multiplicity of languages and see different ethnicities and a lot of young people. They have done exactly what we are attempting to do here.”
As a former resident who maintains personal, professional and property relationships with the Florida city, I hope Buckhorn’s efforts to improve ties with Ireland are successful.
Irish Central‘s Cathy Hayes has posted two stories about how cholera epidemics in the 1830s claimed the lives of Irish citizens on both sides of the Atlantic.
In an odd coincidence, the resulting mass graves are each next to railways.
One story is about Duffy’s Cut, a stretch of railroad 30 miles west of Philadelphia. There’s an ongoing dispute as to whether the nearly 60 workers interred in the small plot next to the tracks died of cholera, were murdered for fear of carrying the infection, or a combination of both.
Dan Barry of The New York Times wrote an excellent piece about Duffy’s Cut in March 2013. An hour-long PBS documentary is posted below.
The other story details the recent discovery of a mass grave in Dublin city center, near a Luas tram line expansion project. The burial plot is believed to be overflow from a nearby hospital cemetery that was unable to handle the death toll as the disease ripped through Dublin’s squalid tenements more than 180 years ago.
Experts are still examining how much the planned construction will disturb the burial site, and it remains unknown how many people were interred in the mass grave.
As someone nearly clipped by cars a few times in hectic Dublin city center, I was pleased to read this Fast Company story passed along by my friend Margaret C.:
…the city wants to route cars around the city center, and turn major streets into car-free plazas and passages for buses, bikes, pedestrians, and a new tram line. Along the banks of the River Liffey, polluted roads will become promenades. On Grafton Street, a former car lane will turn into a tree-shaded terrace with cafe tables, while the other lane has tram tracks. New bike lanes and wider sidewalks will be added as well.
Transit, but no cars, leaves more room for pedestrians in Dublin city center.
The Irish Times calls it “the most radical redrafting … ever” of transportation plans within the downtown area. This story contains a good map and video report of the proposals, which have an eight-year horizon. Here’s additional reporting from RTE.
Or go directly to the proposal website.
The Irish Times begins the new year with several stories about how Dublin’s Georgian heritage is threatened by degradation and development.
Dereliction has become “endemic” in the north Georgian core of the city, according to Independent Senator David Norris. O’Connell Street and the surrounding Georgian and Victoria district are slipping into ever greater degradation with derelict historic buildings, a build-up of household rubbish and inappropriate infill developments on the site of former Georgian houses, the Times reports.
The Georgian period stretched through the reigns of four King Georges from 1714 to 1830. The style of buildings in the period derived from Palladian Architecture.
Dublin image from Panoramio.
A sidebar in the Times package details the 1757 creation of the Wide Streets Commission, which was “responsible for creating the grand Georgian boulevards of the capital and for turning it from an east-west to a north-south orientated city though the development of new bridges.”
Here’s a link to the Irish Georgian Society. And another blog about the period from Dublin by Lamplight.
The New York Times has published two complimentary travel-style pieces about Dublin in less than a month.
The newspaper spotlighted the capital in its “36 hours in … ” feature Nov. 12. The story began:
Dublin’s been through tumultuous change in recent decades, from the Celtic Tiger years, when BMWs were de rigueur, to the post-crash depression, when the cacophony of incessant building suddenly went silent. Today, signs of economic recovery are emerging, but it’s a more refined wave of affluence than what the flashy boom years had to offer. The city is finding a new way to exist — neither ostentatious with wealth nor bowed down under debt.
The Times published a second story, “Christmas in Dublin: Good Cheer and Great Deals, on Dec. 9. Writer Ratha Tep praised “a newly energized city rich not only with jovial cheer, but also an abundance of artisan offerings and a creative, literary spirit. Better yet, much of it can been enjoyed frugally, all in the city’s compact, eminently walkable center.”
The positive media coverage is good for business. Tourism Ireland projects 7.74 million visitors will come to Ireland in 2015, surpassing the previous record year of 2007 (my story from my visit that year) and a 6 percent gain on the expected total for this year.
O’Connell Street Bridge.
Historian Michael Barry has produced an excellent piece in The Irish Story about getting around 19th century Dublin by canal, horse drawn cart and eventually electric tram.
Up to the end of the eighteenth century, transport in Dublin was primitive. By the end of the 19th century, however, all that had changed. The city was criss-crossed with electric tramlines and railways took the well to do out do distant suburbs. In short the 1800s, often considered a period of decline for Dublin also saw much of the Irish capital’s infrastructure improve dramatically.
A good read.