Submitted by Joyce Fields, Columbia College
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Seeing Tomas in the Limerick Airport was a wonderful way to begin our tour of Ireland. We knew at that point that we had really arrived, things were going as planned, and we could just sit back, relax and enjoy.
After a much appreciated rest in our room at the Radisson, many of us met our other tour guide, Phillip, and departed for Adare Village just outside of Limerick. Phillip kept us entertained with commentary on the upcoming EU treaty election, Travelers, and the countryside. Adare Village is home to Bunratty Medieval Castle and Folk Park, a compendium of cottages from different locations and times in Irish history, many of which were filled with the bittersweet aroma of peat in the fireplace. Our lively guide for the castle tour provided us with a complete picture of Irish medieval castle life, and it was great to peek through the hidden windows to the action below in the great hall while we explored the nooks and crannies of the historic structure. I remember that the winding staircases were a matter of castle defense. It would have been nearly impossible for a right-handed intruder to wield a sword while advancing up the staircase. The greater your rank in life, the closer to the fireplace you were positioned (another adaptation to life that serves as a metaphor for those in higher ranks today--the more responsibility you hold, the closer you sit to the fire!!). I particularly enjoyed a little shopping time in the village. We saw fabulous woven goods and received a scolding from one shop owner for commiserating over the poor exchange rate for the dollar. On our way back to the hotel, we made a brief stop across the river from King John’s Castle in Limerick--and we tried to get a handle on British/Irish history. I’m not sure we ever really got there.
Saturday evening back at the Radisson, we enjoyed an Irish coffee dinner. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet everyone attending the conference and hear about the topics for fireside chats. Leslie Koepke, Groves President, welcomed us with the following poem by John O’Donohue, an Irish poet who died earlier this year:
“For the Traveler”
Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along.
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening a conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight you could not have know
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing;
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And life your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
We listened and resolved to “balance the gift of days” ahead and happily drifted off to sleep.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
We had a sumptuous breakfast at the Radisso--bags packed and out for loading onto the bus by 9am for our journey to Galway.
The journey included a drive through the Burren, a rocky, wild region of Ireland whose barren landscape was broken by golden avens and a wide variety of vegetation growing in the cracks of the limestone rock. Relics in this region mark human existence over 6000 years ago, with over 60 megalithic tombs. The most famous of these wedge tombs is the portal dolman. We were able to walk up to this ancient relic and appreciate the span of human life it represents.
Among discussions with Tomas over peat…its merits, its harvesting, its utility…we arrived at the Cliffs of Moher. Although it was foggy, we did stand on some cliffs and look down. You couldn’t prove by the Groves experience that either the Aran Isles or the Atlantic Ocean indeed exist, but we took Tomas’ word for it and forged on.
We arrived in Galway in time for dinner on our own and a quick walk into the city center. Our fireside chats that evening were on a variety of topics (all of which are available on the Groves website) providing additional opportunity for getting to know each other and discussing current family research projects. Some of our group braved the pubs for an authentic Galway experience, while others ventured to a musical production of authentic Irish dance and song. I opted for dreamland.
Monday, June 27, 2008
Glory--hose of us who do not serve on the illustrious Groves Board got to sleep in and enjoy the wonderful breakfast afforded by the Park Hotel. By 10 am we were on the busses bound for a Bank Holiday day of touring. Our first stop was the Connemara marble factory where we learned about the various marble quarries, colors, and uses in Ireland and internationally. From there, we proceeded to Clifton, stopping at a bodhran factory and other delights. We learned how the ancient drums are made and played and enjoyed the demonstration by famed bodhran maker. That evening, we enjoyed free time for local dining and entertainment.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The scholarly opportunity of the tour continued on Tuesday with a morning visit to the National University of Ireland at Galway. We were privileged to hear about several research projects from the newly established Child and Family Research Centre hosted by the University. John Canavan, the associate director, gave us a powerful overview of family life and research in the Republic of Ireland. He spoke of changes in family policy and their effects on family life and provided us with a profile of Irish families—50% are couples with children, 15% are lone mothers with children, 3% are lone fathers with children, 21% are couples without children, and the remaining 11% are cohabiting couples, 4% of whom have children. Canavan has found that family size is decreasing and that age of marriage is increasing; he reminded us that women were not allowed in the workplace after marriage until Ireland joined the European Union in 1973. Currently, women represent 55% of the employment field. In 1993, Ireland was forced to liberalize some family policies with regard to contraception, divorce, abortion, and homosexuality (which was decriminalized in 1993). Now, Ireland is seeing a decrease in the age of first sexual intercourse and an increase in sexual partners of its citizens. Still nine out of ten Irish adults report that family is very important to them.
Dr. Canavan introduced Michelle Millar and Henrike Rau who reported on their study of lone parents and their families in Galway City and County Galway. With a focus was to collect data regarding lone parents and their families, their living conditions and risks of social exclusion, their findings indicate that the concerns of lone parents in the area of economic factors are: the costs of work/education/caregiving; the fear of demands for increased work interfering with current welfare assistance; affordable child care and time parents in training could spend with their children otherwise; and a reliance on family of origin for financial assistance. Barriers to employment for this group included: the necessity of taking time off at short notice to care for family, lack of suitable and affordable child care, lack of suitable employment, reluctance to give up welfare assistance, and loss of time with children. They found this group is particularly affected by a low rate of homeownership and housing insecurity and that access to work and education is still limited for more rural lone parent families. These families experience most radically the shift in attitudes toward women and work and report stress with becoming breadwinners and sole nurturers of their children with minimal state and societal support. Both paid and unpaid relatives are the main providers of childcare for all family types in Ireland.
Ricca Edmondson, Professor of Sociology at NUI Galway, reported on her research on intergenerational resilience and its relationship to family wisdom. She is working on a project—the Galway Wisdom Project--in which she defines wisdom as a resource in families passed down as the capacity to tackle problems without prescribed solutions. She says wisdom is a connection between social settings and practices evidenced through metaphor or storytelling. She quoted research by Wendell Barry.
Anne Byrne, Senior Lecturer in the School of Political Science and Sociology, briefly spoke about Irish community as represented in her replication of Arensberg and Kimball’s work in the 1940s. She related that we can be held by stories as they shape our reality. “Successors need predecessors.” Her work involves the desire to carry on the tradition of the story in community life. On Tuesday afternoon, she hosted a group to visit with residents and researchers in Kilnaboy, one of two rural villages (County Clare) where the Harvard anthropologist, Conrad Arensburg conducted his classic studies of family life in the Irish countryside, and where she is conducting her research, allowing community members to re-represent their lives. I declined to go and spent the afternoon walking through the charming old city of Galway.
Tuesday evening, we dined in the historic Dungaire Castle and were royally entertained by a trio of local actors. King Steve and Queen Coco (Readdick) presided at the festive event where we were wined and dined with charm and gifts of talent between every course. The menu of salmon, chicken, potatoes, breads, and apple buckle was supplemented with traditional song, dance and stories from Irish literary, historical, and musical tradition. It was wonderful.
Joyce W. Fields, Ph. D.
Associate Professor, Child and Family Studies
Assistant Director, Honors
Columbia College, SC 29203
(803) 786-3688
jfields@colacoll.edu
