Over the last few days we have had a continuous barrage of gale-force and storm force winds. Curiously, the weather was meant to be dreadful today but it didn’t turn out like that in Cork at least. It was actually quite a pleasant day..
In any case I still had to get down to the sea to take a few photos. I don’t know about you, but there is nothing like the sea during a storm.
I had a very good night last night. Leslie Dowdall and Mike Hanrahan, two of Ireland’s best singer/songwriters and formerly of In Tua Nua and Stockton’s Wing, were playing a gig in McDaid’s Pub in Midleton. It was a great gig – a real feast of music! There were about 30 people present, so it was cosy, relaxed and intimate. Boy, does Leslie know how to sing! It was captivating stuff. I was not familiar with many of the songs, but “Wonderful Thing” and “Beautiful Affair” brought back good memories. They also played a few Annie Lennox and Nick Cave songs along with their own work such as the very touching “Garden of Roses”.
Nights like these, when you don’t really know what to expect, are often the best.
This weekend was an eventful and pleasent one.
I met a friend of mine from years back in O’Hare, and it so happened that he was sitting right in front of me on the flight. Other than that it was a typical flight – about 90 minutes of sleep and the usual clammy, drained feeling when I finally arrived into Shannon.
I was exhausted (as usual) when I arrived home after driving back from Shannon. I really, really should stop doing this: I’m flying to direct to Dublin from now on. After a 3 hour nap, I headed out to Roches Point, the lighthouse at the eastern entrance to Cork Harbour. It was wonderful. There were some fantastic rock structures out there and the seas were raging. The “harbour effect” was quite dramatic – I could virtually draw a line across the harbour mouth where the waters suddenly became calm. Further on in my travels, I came across a pristine beach that has a stunning cave and cliff backdrop. No photos unfortunately. I’ll definitely be back, though.
Today I took all four kids on a trip up to the Nire Valley in Co. Waterford (once again, no photos 😦 ) . We ambled a short distance to a place where a small river cuts deeply into the valley. Nobody there but ourselves. Flocks of ravens could be seen fighting the air currents. My eldest was thrilled when we came across a megalithic standing stone on our return journey. After looking carefully at the stone, I noticed that the symbol of the cross was incribed in the rock.
I then took a meandering trip to Ardmore, Co. Waterford, the site of one of Ireland’s best preserved round towers (a defensive structure used by monks during Viking times). We found a terrific playground there quite close to the beach, and I pretended to be a big bad monster while the kids tried to defend their playground castle from me. We spent the time there shrieking with joy. It was great fun.
They were exhausted when we got home. One thing though – my eldest son tried to put on a DVD movie (thinking I wouldn’t notice) and when the Universal Pictures intro started – the one with the world turning – my two youngest boys (age 2) started shouting “Earth!!!” and one of them pointed to a small country on the globe and said “Ireland!!!”
He was quite right.
This interview caught my attention on the radio this morning: Richard Dawkins was pitted against David Quinn, a leading Irish Catholic writer. Dawkins has just written a new book called the “God Delusion” (definitely on my reading list).
It didn’t seem however as if Dawkins was terribly prepared for Quinn’s onslaught.
The main arguments coming from Quinn were that physical matter was evidence of God; that atheists could not explain free will (which was also evidence of God); and that atheists were just as responsible for fundamentalism and violence as religious people.
On the question of the existence of matter, just because scientists don’t know everything about the world, it doesn’t mean that “God” is immediately the answer. Quinn, quite unashamedly, invoked a false dilemma, and Dawkins didn’t pick him up on it.
Dawkins completely avoided the question of free will – which was curious because Quinn’s argument seems to be that atheists believe that we humans are completely controlled by our genes, and that we are therefore somehow mechanical in nature. I think he needs to read up on quantum theory, complexity theory, and the unpredictability and emergent effects that arise out of systems as complex as the human brain. It’s not necessary, in my mind, to invoke outside agencies to bring about decisions of free will – the billions of neurons in our brain are well able to yield complex and unpredictable effects when working in concert with each other. Another point about free will is that it appears to me to be a theological concept mainly – it’s never discussed by scientists terribly much. Maybe talking about free will is the equivalent to talking about the colour of the Angel Gabriel’s wings – i.e. a rather meaningless discussion in the first place. In any case, I was a bit surprised that Dawkins steered completely around the question, saying he wasn’t interested in talking about it. In doing so he dug a hole for himself that Quinn was quite happy to shove him in during the final seconds of the interview.
The last piece, on the subject of atheistic morality, Quinn made some good points – particularly regarding atheists who cherry-pick the worst that religion has to offer without balancing this against it’s more benign effects. However, Quinn tried to lump atheists in with some of the worst 20th Century dictators and their followers. He implied that, because atheists do not believe in God, that they often believe in some other weird or cruel world theory that is even more invalid. Shouldn’t a true atheist should be skeptical of everything unless there is proper evidence for it? So, just as an atheist would have problems with Islam or Christiantity, so too should he have problems with eugenics or extreme nationalism or Communist utopianism.
Maybe Dawkins was somewhat unprepared for Quinn’s rather aggressive stance, but he didn’t manage to get his point across very well in the short time allotted. I would have loved to have heard a longer debate on the subject.
It starts from about 8 minutes into the program, and you need Real Player to listen to it.
This photo says it all, really.
Bertie Ahern is the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, a position he has held since 1997, roughly the same amount of time that Tony Blair has been in power in the UK. By any standards, he has been one of the most successful politicians this state has ever seen. He was centrally involved in the resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, his economic policies helped to prolong the country’s amazing economic boom, industrial relations have never been so good, and he has demonstrated a remarkable ability to work successfully with other political leaders. It’s hard not to like and admire the guy. On the political front, he has maintained a strong lead in the popular polls throughout his entire tenure. Opposition parties could only seethe with frustration when he grew his political support base during his second term in government. Very rarely in the last 9 years have they been able to land any punches in his direction.
It’s a pretty amazing record for a man who doesn’t, on face value, look like someone who could run a country. He is from a relatively humble background in north Dublin, he has few, if any, academic qualifications. He is not a good public speaker by any stretch of the imagination. He is self-deprecating, quietly spoken and he doesn’t much like conflict. And yet, he has this common touch and ability to work hard that makes him accessible to people in some way. He’s had a remarkable career in politics. Bertie is known here as the Teflon Taoiseach – nothing that has ever been thrown at him has been able to stick for very long. Compared to Tony Blair, who has aged visibly during his tenure over the UK, Bertie still seems fit and healthy.
However the last two weeks have been hugely difficult for Bertie. Information was leaked into the public domain that allege that he took payments from friends and businessmen during the 1990’s. The reason for this was the breakdown of his marriage and his subsequent separation. Under pressure to disclose the details of these payments, he made what he thought was a full public statement, but this only ended up in him getting into deeper water. He revealed during the course of the statement that some businessmen in Manchester had paid him £8,000 for personal use. He has since had to make further public statements, and now with a drip-drip pattern emerging about his personal finances, it seems as if his tenure as Taoiseach, if not quite dead, is in serious trouble.
Even though the country is likely to lose a good leader, this whole incident gives me a strong impression that Irish democracy is quite healthy. Our political class are not above criticism and our media still are able to do their job, irrespective of how it affects the sensibilities of the ruling elite. Ireland went through a period in the 1980’s where businessmen passed huge amounts of money to politicians with a clear expectation of political favours being performed down the line. Planning decisions and rezoning decisions were made that beggared belief, while 20% of the adult population were unemployed and 50,000 people a year were leaving the country. Some of these payments have been revealed through a number of public inquiries but we will never know the full extent of the corruption that existed at that time. When attempts were made by journalists to discover the truth, it was the journalists themselves who ended up in court.
Even though the Bertie incident is minor by comparison with all this, we need to be very careful about introducing a culture of tolerance for all this back into political life.
Today wasn’t exactly the type of day to be putting on boots and getting outside. It had been bucketing down for most of the day. I was keen on going for a walk by the coast, but when I saw the rain pouring down on the balcony I decided that I would need to leave it for another day. But then I got a call from a friend of mine. He was interested in going on a walk, and without a second thought I decided we would do it, rain or no rain.
We met each other in Ballybrannigan Beach at 3.45, put on our rain gear and headed out. The walk is not the easiest: you have to scale rock faces at times, and you always need to be on the look-out for slippery stones. This type of walking requires the utmost concentration. The sea was wild! Not as far out as I would have liked, but we managed to do the walk without any problems.
My friend was the first person I have ever taken out on a walk on the coast. He has done hillwalking a few times before, but this was different. I’m not sure if he was expecting it to be so challenging. Certain algaes and seaweeds can make boulders very slippery indeed, especially in bad weather.
The walk is quite short, but it’s a good one because you get to see everything the coast throws up at you: sea caves, stacks, bridges, cliffs, wave-cut platforms, ledges, boulders, sandy beaches and little alcoves everywhere.
The major item of interest is a rock wall that is punctured by huge round indentations. These indentations, ranging from 30 cm to 1m, have been put there by great round boulders, some of which are still embedded in the rock face. There appears to be a thin ‘skin’ on the boulders. I discovered today that similar indentations can be located some distance away from the rock wall. I’d love to know more about how these features originated.
I think I live in a fascinating and beautiful part of the world.
Water flooding into a narrow inlet.
Sea fishing on the rocks
Moonscape: a boulder field
An American colleague was over for the weekend, so I asked him if he would be interested in seeing a bit more of Ireland before he went home.
So this morning, I picked him up at his hotel, and we headed down to West Cork. We first went to Lough Ine and then to Baltimore, staying for a quick bite to eat in Bushe’s Pub. The day was beautiful, with quite a few people eating lunch outdoors, taking in the September sun.
We then drove further west, listening attentively to the golf on the radio as the last moments of the Ryder Cup were played out up in Straffan. We continued past Barley Cove and arrived at Mizen Head shortly after 3pm. Mizen is the most southerly point on the Irish mainland. There is a visitor centre there, and close by is the signal station, reachable via a winding path and a narrow foot-bridge. We spent some time looking at various memorabilia and surveying the rugged beauty of the place. Gannets were busy plummeting into the sea a short distance from us. Far in the distance, the Fastnet Lighthouse could be seen.
On our return journey we went through the town of Bantry, and then through the Keimaneigh Pass to Gougane Barra, the source of the River Lee. It’s an ancient monastic site associated with St. Finnbarr, the patron saint of Cork. Following a quick coffee, we returned back to Cork.
Before I returned home, I took a picture of the Cork Opera House at high tide.
More pics – this time from a recent trip to Co. Clare on the Irish west coast.
Thought I would put up some pictures from a recent trip to Donegal.
Passive Impressions 
