Cultural exports

I think Translations by Brian Friel has travelled the globe and even been translated into Irish — with great ease, one presumes.

But I suspect next week's production in Hawaii will be a premiere.

I came across the production on the blog of Lurana O'Malley, a director of some renown who has a clear understanding of the importance of Friel in the pantheon of great playwrights.

Location for the Translations debut is the University of Hawaii at Manua.

Ireland wanted to reign supreme on Wall Street and Broadway. The Wall Street dream now lies in tatters but the cultural high road remains ours....food for thought at the launch on Tuesday night coming of Professor Finbarr Bradley's Capitalising on Culture.

Earlier this week, I met with the Deloitte Consultants tasked with developing a strategy and marketing plan for the Gaeltacht Quarter. I share the same frustrations as everyone about the need for another development plan but let's just clear the hurdle. The case for the Gaeltacht Quarter hub is now unanswerable and the potential to create economic uplift by clustering Irish language projects from St Mary's University College to the former Beechmount Leisure Centre campus is enormous.

Budget for the single landmark project in the Titanic Quarter is £65m and rising. For that sum alone, the Gaeltacht Quarter hub could be delivered.

Will Scotland beat us to the Republic?

There was a time when you wouldn't get a bookie to take odds on Scotland becoming a republic before Ireland (that's all of it, not just four-fifths) but nowadays with the SNP in the saddle and Alex Salmond as First Minister, I'd say they the better bet.

I was interested therefore to see New Yorker Larry Ginsberg place this advertisement in today's Irish Echo saluting the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robbie Burns and marking the death in 1845 of Thomas Davis.

The link between the moves to indpendence of Scotland and Ireland are often overlooked so I enjoyed seeing this ad...and I called Larry Ginsberg in New York to tell him so too.

Guatanamo closure order

General Jim Cullen is behind Obama's in this picture from the White House of today's Executive Order to close Guantanamo within a year (of those who are visible he is fifth from the right).

President Obama paid tribute to the retired generals who had fought and defended America for also defending its constitution.

Academic performance key to success of Irish schools

Go raibh maith agaibh as na poist maidir leis an aithbhreithniú ar chúrsaí oideachais. Is mó seans go bhfoilseofar poist a bhfuil ainm leo ná cinn gan údár ainmnithe agus creidim gur féidir an cheist seo a phlé gan daoine a mhaslú.

Is féidir an t-aithbhreithniú a íoslódáil i mBéarla anseo, moltaí maidir le hoideachas dara leibhéal ag toiseacht ar lch 77 agus i nGaeilge anseo.

Is iontach, dar liom, an saothar a caitheadh leis an aithbhreithniú agus cruthúnas atá ann go bhfuil athraithe suntasacha bainte amach in earnáil an Ghaeloideachais maidir leis an stát de...fiú má tá baol ann go gcúlfar anois ón talamh a bhí glactha!

Mar dhuine a bhfuil ceathrar curtha tríd an chóras Gaeloideachais agam, níl mé dall ar na laigí atá ar an Ghaeloideachas ag an leibhéal iarbhunoideachais. Tá fís, áiseanna, scilleanna agus ceannasaíocht de dhíth go géar le go mbeidh scoileanna dara leibheal Gaeilge ó Thuaidh ar aon chaighdeán lena macasamhail ó dheas agus creidimse go mbeidh bláth ar an Ghaeloideachas ag an leibhéal sin más féidir na torthaí céanna a thaispeáin go hacadúil agus atá bainte amach ó dheas. Tá mé ar an phort sin le 10 mbliain anuas agus ní ghlacaim leis gur ar an Roinn Oideachais amháin atá an locht uilig as gach rud a thit amach sa stáitín seo maidir le hoideachas dara leibhéal de. Ach mar Éireannach, creidim gur chóir go mbeadh an teanga s'againne inchurtha mar theanga nuaaimseartha ag an oideachas dara leibhéal. Muna bhfuil, is fearr dúinn éirí as ar fad.

Thanks for posts relating to review of education. Preference is always given to posts which come with an author's name and I believe this debate can be facilitated without stooping to abuse of indviduals or bodies.

The review can be downloaded in English here and in Irish here with the proposals around post-primary level provision as Gaeilge starting on page 77.

Having helped put four youngsters through Irish medium education from the age of three to 18, I'm under no illusions about the shortcomings with second level educational provision in Irish — and I don't blame the Department of Education for all our failings either. Vision, leadership, skills and resources are needed if we are to realise the dream of being able to have a second-level education in Irish which is on a par, in relation to academic performance with Southern Irish medium schools. Second-level education as Gaeilge will flourish in the North if we can guarantee first-class academic performance. That's been my tune for the past ten years and more and will remain so.

Irish education must not suffer

There's been a lot of debate about the new review of Irish medium education in the North, some of it, in my view, intemperate and more than a little paranoid. However, here's tomorrow's editorial from the Andersonstown News. It's my view that if Irish speakers with one voice say standalone Irish medium secondary schools must continue to exist in the North (alongside Coláiste Feirste), then we can win that demand. (And of course this posting gives me an opportunity to use a picture I love of New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Coláiste Feirste Chairman Seán Mistéil with pupils of the Belfast Irish medium college.)

Seo an t-eagarfhocal:

Built by sweat and tears and dearly treasured, the Irish medium education system is a jewel in the crown of this community.
From humble beginnings in a mobile hut on the Shaws Road in 1971, when Irish was a non-language in the eyes of the authorities, Belfast Gaeilgeoirí sparked a resurgence of interest in Irish medium education when they opened a bunscoil for just seven children. In the subsequent years – some of them very lean – the Irish school movement has spread to every corner of the six counties and added a rich thread to the quilt of diversity which covers this island.

Indeed, the Irish language community in Belfast owes its roots to that pioneering stance taken by a small number who dared to believe that a language spoken for over 2,000 years in Ireland could once again flourish in Béal Feirste na Long.

Every advance in Irish medium education was hard-won. The authorities resisted mightily when the Irish school movement spread to north, east and south Belfast and stoutly opposed the establishment of the first Irish language medium secondary school in 1991.
Despite the best efforts of the backwoodsmen, however, the Irish language continued to thrive until the present day when an Irish-speaking minister, who has made her own commitment to education as Gaeilge, now holds the education portfolio in the powersharing Executive at Stormont.

The advances made by Irish in the interim have been truly phenomenal  — even if the journey towards legislative protection for Irish with an Irish Language Act has not yet been completed.
However, this is not a time for complacency because the new Review of Irish Medium Education being carried out by the Department of Education threatens to bring to an end the valued concept of Irish language education at secondary level.
Now out to consultation, the Review contains the depressing recommendation that Irish medium secondary education be subsumed into the English medium sector with stream status.
Unfortunately, the upshot of any such move will be the downgrading of An Ghaeilge into second-class ‘units’ within larger schools and the collapse of secondary level education in Irish.
The lesson from the South of Ireland is that Irish secondary schools can be the crème de la crème of our education system. If that’s the case in the South, it should also be the case in the North. (Indeed, why aren’t all the Gaelscoileanna North and South following the same curriculum?)
Of course, the existing Irish medium secondary school institutions face enormous challenges — how could it be otherwise when they are only in their teens and have been starved of the strategic direction provided to second level indigenous language schools in the South, Wales or the Basque Country.

There is no evidence to show that Irish language ‘streams’ or ‘units’ will be anything but the poor cousin of the educational systems which have transformed language communities in other regions and countries. In fact, all the evidence strongly supports freestanding schools — providing they are given the resources and leadership needed.

The struggle of Irish people to be able to conduct their lives through the medium of Irish in their own land is a long and noble one. It has had many setbacks but also, in recent times, many important victories. Some of those gains were made because of the personal intervention and commitment of the West Belfast MP Gerry Adams.

It would, therefore, be nothing short of devastating if, under the watch of a Sinn Féin minister, the fight to provide freestanding Irish medium education at secondary level was to be lost.
We trust this will not be the case.

Now We Can

Tomorrow's front page from the Irish Echo will truly be a collectors' item.

Judge for yourself

I'm not sure this was Obama's finest speech even if it was his finest moment.

Until the final moments, I thought the address failed to rise to meet the importance of the moment and in its detail failed to connect with the millions on the Mall.

But then what do I know? And regardless of delivery, the sentiments were spot-on. Roll on the Executive Orders ushering in a new era.

But then in those views I was a minority of one at the Belfast Presidents' Club where I watched the live broadcast along with a hodge-podge of others with an interest in the US. Among those I met was Davy Simms, a former BBC new media guru who revealed that he once did my voiceover for Talkback back in the days when Sinn Féin councillors were forbidden to speak direct on radio or TV.

Redemptive power of apology

Via Roy Greenslade's blog, I found this story from Mississippi where the local paper has published a mea culpa for its coverage (and non-coverage) of the black civil rights struggle in the early sixties.

The Meridian Star, and Meridian was a hotbed of bigotry, published this redemptive piece by editor Eddie Carmichael as part apology and part correction, in particular to the three 'Mississippi Burning' martyrs including local civil rights activist James Earl Chaney.

The author writes: "Soon after Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman arrived in Meridian from Ohio they left in the blue Ford station wagon, headed to Longdale. On their way back to Meridian, they were arrested for speeding, later released from jail and then chased down by a mob of Klansmen in cars. They were killed, their bodies buried in an earthen dam in rural East Mississippi.

"Forty-five days later their bodies were recovered. But it wasn’t until 2005 that a major conviction was obtained in the case that became a tragic national symbol of injustice.

"During the time of Chaney's efforts to register voters, few people —other than those within the civil rights movement — knew of the work he and others were doing. This very newspaper failed to report it, so there's no recorded history. There is little record of the picketing, the voter classes or the community centers. The memory of their work has faded with the years, lost in another time.

"Even today, Chaney can't be left to rest as locals continue to vandalize his grave, the headstone repeatedly broken or stolen.

"Chaney, a man of Meridian, fought for a voice; he understood the importance of a vote. He represents what is great about our community and our nation.

"I can't imagine that as a line of cars (filled with Klansmen) chased Chaney and the other two civil rights workers to their eventual death he could have ever imagined what will transpire in Washington on Tuesday."

Naomi Wolf and General James

Leading Irish American and Brehon Law Society veteran General James Cullen is interviewed in Naomi Wolf's new movie about American democracy under Bush, The End of America.

I particularly like this line from General Cullen's interview with Democracy Now when he joined other retired generals to condemn the torture of prisoners. (I hear reports that Obama may call together on Thursday the 12 generals who spoke out against the Bush administration's use of torture. That would be more good news.)

"The current conflict is one of insurgency. This is not the first insurgency we have fought. Anyone who managed to stay awake during a high school history class can recount any number of insurgencies that we have fought. Even during our own Civil War, we adopted and followed the Lieber Code, a professor at Columbia wrote out some rules of war, and it was followed by the Union armies and later on by the Confederate armies. So, there has always been a recognition that there are some rules that are inviolate."

The full interview is just as much fun. If you read the review, and wonder what a philippic is, this should save the trouble (From dictionary.com):
Phi⋅lip⋅pic
   /fɪˈlɪpɪk/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [fi-lip-ik] Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. any of the orations delivered by Demosthenes, the Athenian orator, in the 4th century b.c., against Philip, king of Macedon.
2. (lowercase) any speech or discourse of bitter denunciation.

A review of Wolf's new movie, and some may suggest (and this is where my money is) with Obama being sworn in tomorrow it's actually The Beginning of America, is here in the FT.

The great friend of Ireland, Congressman Peter King also makes an appearance in this trailer for the movie.

A reader and an orator

Two wonderfully-crafted articles on Obama.

The first, from the New York Times, on how books formed him.

The second from the Financial Times on his oratorical skills.

And this from the New York Daily News today, under the heading 'Obama Abú'.

Twist and Shout

It's famously said of radical Derry artist Locky Morris that he turned down an offer from the Imperial War Museum to buy some of his works (not least the unforgettable helicopters with searchlight and RUC jeep with oven stuck in roof) because he had his fill of the Imperial War.

At any rate, his wonderful work 'Twist' (1989) stole the show at the recent GT Gallery A Shout in the Street exhibition.

According to the catalogue by Declan McGonagle: "An archetypical emigrant's suitcase is cut open to make a fan of playing cards, referencing a celebrated focus of British sculpture of the 1980's on found objects and materials. However, Twist also refers directly to one of the key reasons for the wrongful conviction of the Birmingham Six, the inadequate forensic evidence which proposed that the chemical traces found on the prisoners' hands could only have come from handling explosives, when, in fact, the traces came from the back of playing cards which the men had been handling during their train journey to a ferry port, just after the Birmingham bombing.
"The evidence was eventually discredited and the men released. What, on first contact, looks like an artwork which relates to particular art preoccupations at the time, is a powerful and poignant reminder of the darkness which surrounded anything to do with Northern Ireland."

I'm hoping that Twist will shortly go on show in the Cultúrlann (and, no, I have no idea why the image is reproducing so poorly).

I'll raise a glass to that

From Colum Mulhern in Luxembourg, or is it Switzerland, this reflection on the sexes.

Slow starter out of the blocks

Our entrepreneurial hero Mark Finlay who coined the Belfast: A City of Seven Quarters adagae is also up and running as a blogger.

Check out his first entries. Mark is one of our biggest players in plans to bring back to life the Cathedral Quarter and the, as yet imaginary, Library Quarter.

The Library Quarter, behind the Belfast Central Library, will take in an area leading up to Carrick Hill and will probably mean the Belfast Telegraph discontinuing printing in its city centre premises.

Our picture shows Mark about to jump from the Balcony at the Presidents' Club he established in Belfast overlooking St Anne's Cathedral (and the location where Terry Óg Enright was shot dead by loyalists in January 1998 — a small bronze plaque marks the spot where he fell).

American Fenians and waterwings

The part of any flight I hate is coming in over water before hitting the airstrip. It happens in Belfast City (Belfast Lough) and Belfast Aldergrove (Lough Neagh), Logan in Boston (Boston Harbour), Chicago (one of the Big Lakes..and you have the winds to contend with), and Dublin (when the pilot sweeps out over Dublin Harbour).

However, after seeing CCTV footage of Thursday's crash on the Hudson in NYC, I don't feel just so bad.



Meanwhile, from litriocht.com which promises to sell "every Irish book in print", I have just bought Fíníní Mheiriceá agus an Gheilge, a new book by Fionnuala Uí Flannagáin about the Irish Fenians in America in the nineteenth century and their devotion to An Ghaeilge.

Conventional wisdom has held that the revolutionary Fenians were not interested in the Irish language or concerned about its preservation. In Fíníní Mheiriceá agus an Ghaeilge, Fionnuala Uí Fhlannagáin aims to correct this misconception. She presents 10 Fenians, some of whom were prominent in the Fenian Brotherhood. Special attention is paid to their efforts as writers, editors, publishers and translators of Irish language material.

We learn of the scholarly John O’Mahony, who was associated with two weekly Fenian newspapers - The Phoenix and The Irish People - which were published in New York between 1859 and 1873. The author also deals with other key Fenians such as Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa and John Devoy. The name of the latter became synonymous at one time with Clan na Gael.

What makes this work particularly interesting is the appearance of lesser known Fenians who have not been dealt with previously. The Galway –born John F. Finerty founded and edited the Citizen in Chicago and also became a Congress representative. For several decades Limerick man Patrick Meehan edited the Irish-American. Irish language material in Gaelic font was provided by scholarly Irish writers in this newspaper from as early as 1857.

Dála an scéil, rinne mé iarracht theacht ar Scnitzer Ó Sé (1974) le Domhnall Mac Amhlaigh ar an idirlíon ach níl sé ag litríocht.com ar ndóigh as siocair é a bheith as cló ach ní raibh sé ag díoltóirí athláimhe Amazon.com ach oiread. An bhfuil siopa eile idirlín a dhíolann seanleabhair Ghaeilge?