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[Rigor Mortis]

The Rock is about 22 miles from where I'm sitting right now. I've not been in since they completed the restoration work.

Did you kiss the Blarney Stone? I wouldn't have thought you needed it, but it couldn't hurt.

I'm very glad you and yours are having a good time.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I have to confess that I did not kiss the stone, but my sister-in-law and one brother did. (I’m eloquent enough??)

We went to the Dublin House Party tonight and we loved the music and the Irish dancing.

I think I mentioned before I have two nieces who began Irish dancing when they were 4 years old and advanced to dance competitively. One of my absolute favourite things in the world is watching Irish dancing.

Tonight at the show they ended with my one niece’s favourite song to dance to- Tell Me Ma

 

[CatrionaGrace]

I'm glad you're having such a good time. Thanks for sharing your adventures with us, Louanne.

 

[GrahamLewis]

If every city snowplow driver was not born with a heart of cold stone, they must surely all acquire one after getting nasty stares from homeowners, when said drivers push mounds of icy snow across newly cleared driveways. But at least it gives said homeowners something to commiserate about as they work together to clear it all away. And, for those people who hire a snow-cleaning service, it gives them something to smile about as they look out their windows, sipping the first coffee of the day.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Snowplows here push snow to the center of the road. After heavy snow, they pick up the wind rows with giant snowblowers that transfer the snow into trucks, which transport it to designated dumping areas. Of course that's on main roads and roads where rich people live, not out here in the boondocks. where the snow generally blows into drifts with stretches of bareroad between. Some neighbor with a big truck comes along and bust the drifts so the rest of us can get through and we call it good.

 

[JLT]

I have to confess that I did not kiss the stone, but my sister-in-law and one brother did. (I’m eloquent enough??)

You're positively effusive, Louanne.

My mother kissed the stone when she was in Eire, but it didn't seem to affect her much.

Speaking of local legends of elocution, I used to travel to Phoenix every year, crossing the Hassayampa River just west of there. I recalled something H. Allen Smith* wrote about it:

"The Hassayampa is a river in Arizona, and there is a legend which says that if you drink from its waters, you will never tell the truth again. I didn't ever get near it, though I know there are some niddering idiots who will say that I am fair bloated with its waters."

Since there wasn't a drop of water in the "river" whenever I crossed it, I must paradoxically assume that whoever told him that must have drunk their share of it.

*Smith was a well-known and successful humorist and travel writer in the previous century, although he seems to be almost unknown today. The quote is from We Went Thataway, about his tour around the US. He also wrote Waikiki Beachnik, about pre-statehood Hawaii, and Two Thirds of a Coconut Tree, whose title came from a building code in Tahiti that specified the limit of the height of a building.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I'm glad you're having such a good time. Thanks for sharing your adventures with us, Louanne.

You’re welcome!

 

[Louanne Learning]

I had opportunity today to read the Irish Declaration of Independence from 1916 and I thought it significant that it was addressed to both Irish men and women.

It begins:

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom….

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Yet Irish women didn't get full voting rights until 1922.

I only know that because I've been researching women's rights in that era for a book. It's not something that was stored in my brain until recently.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Yet Irish women didn't get full voting rights until 1922.

I only know that because I've been researching women's rights in that era for a book. It's not something that was stored in my brain until recently.

Yes, Ireland did not get self-rule until 1922.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

It was always my assumption that voting rights were extended equally to men and women after independence. Google tells me that, under British rule (pppffft!) women over thirty and with satisfactory property ownership were permitted to vote since 1918. Equal voting rights to men and women were installed from the beginning of the Free State.

Countess Markievicz was a central player in the war of independence and a minister in the first Dáil. She's the best known, probably, while many others were written out of history for reasons that, well, you know.

That aspect of history encapsulates some of the tensions between progressive elements and traditionalist RC, the latter holding dominance until late in 20th Century, including gender-based bias despite the right to equal voting rights.

 

[Dark_Indigenous_Prince]

I love

It was always my assumption that voting rights were extended equally to men and women after independence. Google tells me that, under British rule (pppffft!) women over thirty and with satisfactory property ownership were permitted to vote since 1918. Equal voting rights to men and women were installed from the beginning of the Free State.

Countess Markievicz was a central player in the war of independence and a minister in the first Dáil. She's the best known, probably, while many others were written out of history for reasons that, well, you know.

That aspect of history encapsulates some of the tensions between progressive elements and traditionalist RC, the latter holding dominance until late in 20th Century, including gender-based bias despite the right to equal voting rights.

I love history so much.

The history of the Moors and their trek to the Americas before a lot of explorers is well noted in historical records, but not government approved history books though.

The image of the Moors, also called Blackamoors, is seen all across Spain, parts of Europe, and even as far and wide as GERMANY. Its an enormous fallacy that there are not any movies based on these families in their lifetimes, it would make as much as Bridgherton times a million.

.

 

[Dark_Indigenous_Prince]

This is a coat of arms of a royal house.


And this is my personal favorite, a Shakespeare pamphlet for his play of Romeo and Juliet, staring a black romeo. This is a great part I wish I got to play when I was more involved with the playacting world.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

but not government approved history books though.

I was just speaking to someone yesterday about some of the personal histories we've encountered that defied the accepted history and how these stories are being lost as generations die out. Anyone with old folks in their lives shouldn't put off that someday intention to record their history because many of us look back and regret not doing so.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Something I was familiar with before I travelled here is the Irish sensibility- much older and deeper- that women can match men in both word and deed.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Anyone with old folks in their lives shouldn't put off that someday intention to record their history because many of us look back and regret not doing so.

As I read that, it occurred to me that I am "the old folks." Except for an 88 year old aunt, I am the oldest in my family.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

As I read that, it occurred to me that I am "the old folks." Except for an 88 year old aunt, I am the oldest in my family.

I have 8 older siblings, so there is that. I meet my colleagues at work more extensively and there I really do feel old most of the time.

 

[GrahamLewis]

Looking over my Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, which I purchased new as an undergraduate, I note that it was copyrighted in 1973, more than half a century ago, meaning that the scope of its contents could hardly be described as "modern."

I think I need to go lay (or lie?) down for awhile.

 

[JLT]

I have 8 older siblings, so there is that. I meet my colleagues at work more extensively and there I really do feel old most of the time.

I have one older brother and two older cousins, but we are the last of the family that my grandfather and grandmother spawned. We are the patriarchs/matriarchs of the family now.

I wrote a piece on my grandmother some years back, and received a bunch of thank-yous from family members who had never heard the stories before. So folks, document what you can, because future generations might appreciate it. (That goes especially for old photographs: identify, if you can, who's in the picture, and where and when it might have been taken.)

Two Stories about my Grandmother

©2015 by John LaTorre I didn’t know my grandmother well, sad to say. We never really communicated, because she preferred to s...

jayeltee.blogspot.com

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I have one older brother and two older cousins

I also have 3 younger siblings, 12 of us in total, and more first cousins than I'd care to count.

I once worked with a woman from Bermingham who was an only child and had two cousins. I told her I had two first cousins through my uncle the priest in Brazil, though he had left the priesthood and married at the time.

I wrote a piece on my grandmother some years back

Good on you. I'll follow your link and have a read.

Edit: I just had a read. They were a different breed, that generation. My maternal grandmother was also a seamstress and the only wage earner after my grandfather suffered after effects of his first stroke at a relatively young age. She was formidable, didn't suffer fools and had an awful lot of authority crammed into her five foot nothing frame. Her husband, my grandfather, was six foot one and pretty much did as he was told.