Who will lead us across the divide?

I had a useful meeting yesterday with George Patton, ceo of the Boaod of Ulster-Scotch/Ulster-Scots Agency which is an all-island body set up under the auspices of the Good Friday Agreement.

The members of the Boord come almost exclusively from a Protestant background (certainly, Sinn Féin doesn't take up its right to make appointments to the Boord) which is a pity since more than a few of the republicans I know have roots in the Plantation and, presumably, with the men and women of '98.

But if republicans remain proud of the political legacy of the Presbyterians of Planter stock who led the United Irishmen, why has there not been a simliar interest in the language they spoke?

One republican who crossed that bridge between Irish republicanism and the "Scottish dialect" of Ulster was Joseph Campbell/Seosamh Mac Cathmhaoil (pictured). Among other things, Joseph, born on the Castlereagh Road, introduced Irish studies to the US — quite a boast.

He wrote in Irish and English but also penned poems in what his biographers describe as "the peculiar Scottish dialect of Co Down" and what we would call Ulster-Scots (not the artificial tongue promoted by a small cadre of extremists interested only in blocking promotion of the Irish language in the North). Here's a rendering which pays tribute to the beauty of the Lagan and Malone — where I was on the run through packed snow this morning and spotted the male and female bullfinch (that's the fine-looking male pictured, the female is more demure), but as yet no sign of the waxwing which is reported to have been blown south to Ireland by the arctic weather conditions.

'Tis pretty tae be in Baile-liosan,
'Tis pretty tae be in gree Magh-luan;
'Tis prettier tae be in Newtownbreda,
Beeking under the eaves of June.
The cummers are out wi' their knitting and spinning,
The thrush sings frae his crib on the wa'
And o'er the white road and the clachan caddies
Play at their marlies and goaling-ba'

Could Joseph Campbell, a republican prisoner in Cork Jail after the Civil War, be the figure who, 130 years after his birth, helps bring the nationalists and republicans of the North to a new recognition of this wonderful part of their Irish heritage?

Time warp with beef wellington

Wonderful company but pitiful speeches at the Institute of Directors annual dinner at the Europa Hotel last night.

I was a guest of former Lord Mayor Cllr Tom Ekin, the Alliance Party representative with roots in South Africa ("I love Africa," he confided last night though he hasn't had an opportunity to return for four years now.) who runs the excellent Weavers Court business park — arguably the best business address in Belfast.

I have always held Tom in high regard since he rushed back from Áras an Uachtaráin on the night of the Aisling Awards in November 2004 to ensure he could welcome our guest speaker the Rev Jesse Jackson in person on behalf of the people of Belfast.

Joining him were his tenants, including serial entrepreneur Bryan Keating and Steve Brankin of Asidua, who are among our most revered business leaders.

However, the speeches didn't match the calibre of the company. You would have sworn we were in Finchley. IoD Chairman Joanne Stuart wasn't entirely blameless but the speech by a Tory Party wannabe, who shamelessly turned the event into a party political broadcast for new Conservative-UUP alliance, was truly awful. This was pre-Good Friday Agreement stuff, pre-1969 and the start of the civil rights movement, if truth be told. No acknowledgement of the island of Ireland never mind the powersharing government in the North or the all-island bodies.

And to round it off, we had British comedian Alan Cleary who clearly had no idea whether he was in Blackpool, Burnley or Belfast — all he knew was that it was one of those British stopovers. Admittedly, I missed some of the punchlines since they predicated a knowledge of British B-list celebs and backbench MPs but when the jokes started with, "I read this morning in the Daily Mail" you just knew this was a night of cultural cringe by the pravince.

Bring back last year's guest speaker (albeit staunch ally of unionism) Gavin O'Reilly. Never thought I'd say that.

Challenges ahead for Invest NI

There's no doubt but that the incoming head of economic agency Invest NI, former advisor to former First Minster Ian Paisley, Alastair Hamilton, will have his work cut out for him.

He will also know that areas which have benefited least from Invest's strategies, including West and Shankill, will be hoping for a new brush to brush clean (as they say in Irish, "scuab úr, scuabadh sé glan") and for new policies to replace the old, failed approaches.

It would be a mistake to judge Mr Hamilton on his past role with Dr Paisley alone. Coming from the private sector and working with the farsighted new chair of Invest Stephen Kingon, he may be the guy who finally realises it's time the areas which suffered most during the conflict should benefit most from the peace.

And here's hoping our readers will be equally broadminded when, one of these days, From The Balcony files a report on a former advisor to Martin McGuinness capturing one of the most important jobs in these parts. Mair, a chapaill, agus gheobhair féar.

Sneachta, sneachta chuile áit

De ghnáth glacann sé trí nó ceithre phionta sula n-éiríonn m'aghaidh chomh dearg sin ach is leor, is léir, rith 5 mhíle cois na canálach i ndeisceart Bhéal Feirste fosta.

Thosaigh mé ar 7:30 agus d'ainneoin a n-abrann lucht tuartha na haimsire, bíonn an lá ag bánú ag an am sin.

Níl inse béil ar áillneacht na tíre ag an am sin den mhaidin agus an sneachta ag titim: chonaic mé cearc uisce agus plúiríní (?) sneachta ar a dhroim dubh aige, lachain ag briseadh an leac oighir taobh leis. Chuir sé Cathal Buí Bocht agus an Bonnán Buí i gcuimhne dom.

950 míle nó mar sin le dul.

(Pic den chearc uisce ón idirlíon.)

Tough all over

It's tough all over and no mistake.

John Hynes III of Gale International, Boston's most prestigious developer, is continuing work on building an entire new city Songdo in South Korea says even the once ebullient South Koreans are not immune to the downturn.

But this BBC clip on Gale and the Songdo initiative does put in context our trepidation when faced with our modest developments in Derry, Titanic Quarter or Gaeltacht Quarter.

Sophistication of Irish culture

Following publication of my Culture Counts interview with James Kennelly in the Irish Echo last week, I received an email from Charlie Troy and his wife Dearbhaill Standún who were in New England promoting their Conamara initiative Cnoc Suain.

Their mission: "Presenting Irish Culture and Heritage with the sophistication and high standard which befits it, without compromising its integrity and authenticity"

The Cnoc Suain Cultural Centre seems to be the template for the type of visitor/educational campus which the Gaeltacht Quartere in West Belfast is crying out for.

"Irish/Gaelic speakers, musicians, natural scientists and owners of Cnoc Suain, we invite you to join us on our 200 acre private estate, overlooking mountains, lake and sea, where the air is pure, the sky is blue and the atmosphere relaxed and convivial."

I'm delighted to hear that Fáilte Ireland, the Irish tourist body in the South, have already asked Charlie and Dearbhaill to brief them on the venture when they return from the US.

If you take my advice...

I was in the Great Hall at Queen's last week (more about the wonderful art work there later) for a conversation between Professor Michael McElroy of Harvard (probably Belfast's greatest scientific export and who was honored by the Irish Echo last December) and William Crawley of the BBC in front of an invited audience of government, business and academic leaders.

Professor McElroy believes Ireland has the potential of being "the Saudi Arabia of wind power" and advocates building 5,000 turbines off our west coast to serve the island's domestic electricity needs.

He also tells a funny story of his first day at St Malachy's college in North Belfast.

“On my first day, a principal who shall remain nameless told me I had to chose between three subjects, history, geography or science and added, ‘if you take my advice, you’ll skip science’.”

Green beer and blackboards

Growing up, we were surrounded by reports in the British and Irish press about 'ignorant Paddies' in the US who raised their gobs from their pints of green beer only long enough to curse the Sasanach. Furious at US support for republicans, the press in London and Dublin painted Irish America as romantic fools chasing an outdated dream and lacking the education to understand the complexities of contemporary 'Northern Ireland'.

Of course, turns out Ireland's greatest academics and writers are now nearly all linked to US universities and it's often in those same colleges that the most important research on Ireland's politics and literature is taking place.

I'm reminded of that fact by this not about the annual convention in New York of Celtic Language teachers. The explosion of Irish classes across the US is one of the phenomenal cultural developments of our age and it's no surprise to me that Daithí Mac Lochlainn of New York is at the forefront of the latest initiative to bring the teachers of the Celtic languages together.

The 2009 Conference of the North American Association of Celtic Language Teachers (NAACLT) will be held May 20-24, 2009 at The New York City Irish Center (10-40 Jackson Ave, Long Island City, New York).

Perhaps someday, we'll catch up with those 'backward' Yanks and host our own annual Belfast convention of Celtic teachers.

Culture counts and closing Guantanamo

I thought the Irish Echo carried my interview with James Kennelly, co-author of Capitalising on Culture, before Christmas but perhaps not since it appeared in last week's edition.

The same edition notes that H-Block escapee Pól Brennan has now spent over a year in detention in a Texas prison for the 'offence' of finding himself in the legal limbo in which the US on-the-runs reside. A suitable starting point for anyone who wants to deal with the legacy of the past would be to release him back to his family in California.

Last night, I met up with Ned McGinely of the AOH in Pennsylvania and Steve McCabe of the Brehon Law Society. The pair were in Derry for the annual Bloody Sunday commemoration and then had travelled to Belfast to check up on some initiatives which receive the support of Irish America.

I'm told the AOH in the US has stepped in to help the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry continue its civil rights work while other projects across the North have also benefited from the generosity of the organisation.

Steve and some of his colleagues have also been doing tremendous outreach work with the former loyalist paramilitaries and hope to bring some of their number to the US later this year.

Ned, Steve and General Jim Cullen spent the better part of the last 15 years attending briefing sessions in DC to ensure the American administration kept on the straight and narrow in its dealings over the North. After the McCartney murder, they did sterling work to reject a proposal by the powers-that-be in DC that Adams and McGuinness be cast to the wolves. But their finest hour came when the Columbian Ambassador in Washington DC agreed to see them over their concerns about the three republicans detained in that country, allegedly for helping the FARC gueriallas. At the end of the tense meeting, and after listening to the concerns of Irish America, the Columbian consul said he had a question for them. "What are you doing to close Guantanamo," he asked.

Stumped, Ned and Steve looked at each other before the General intervened, "well, actually, I have filed a lawsuit on behalf of a detainee to have Guantanamo closed down."

Cometh the hour, cometh the men.

Winds of change rolling in

As the winds roll in from Russia, I'm with Obama on keeping schools open. In the Washington Post (and I was alerted to this by a poster on Léargas), he complains that schools in DC closed when a snowstorm hit, which never happens in (much colder) Chicago.

Meanwhile, my blogging levels dropped over the weekend because my wireless internet access at home has gone down. I have tried this morning to contact BT by internet/email and then by phone...but gave up when they told me I was in a five minute queue.

How come if they have the customers waiting that they can't simply employ the customer services staff to serve them?

Finally, I can't remember the exact figures but in Croke Park on Saturday night, they flashed up the attendance figures for the Superbowl (74,000 or thereabouts), Old Trafford (77000) and then Croke Park (79,000). And for a wee amateur game too!

Update: Have a long posting in from West-Of-The-Bann but can't be carried except in edited form because it contains libel. Folks, points can still be made forcefully without crossing the line.

Formidable Forty

It's been a tough 48 hours sifting through almost 200 nominations for the Irish Echo's annual 40 Under 40 Awards and coming out the other end with just 40.

The quality, diversity and talent of the nominees was humbling and inspiring; giving a real indication of the breadth and depth of the Irish American contribution to the USA. The good news is that, on the evidence of our nominees, the next generation of Irish Americans is set to make as powerful a contribution to the new America as their forebears.

You can see last year's fabulous 40 on the sidebar at irishecho.com when politicians, artists, broadcasters, musicians, entrepreneurs and sports champions lined out for our famous accolade. It would be hard to trump that gathering but dare I say the final forty this year have done that.

The full listing won't be revealed until the presentation evening in New York on 26 February but I am happy to say that the 31-year-old founder of the micro-finance initiative Kiva is among our honorees. Matt Flannery (pictured) is well-tuned into his Irish roots and from the west coast of America has really set a developmental revolution in motion. The principle behind Kiva — lend money to those who want to set up businesses in the developing world reminds me of the credit union movement in Ireland. My parents were among the farsighted community stalwarts in West Belfast who realised that credit unions offered working class people economic independence and the discipline of wealth building when they, with others, set up the Antigonish Credit Union in the late sixties.

Matt Flannery has just taken that same idea, harnessed the power of the internet, and transformed thousands of lives in the most impoverished corners of earth. We're honored to have him on the listing.