Alls well that end ends well for US backpackers turned away by Irish immigration

A nice uplifting story:

Three guys from Plano, Texas were denied entry to Ireland recently because they had "no visible means of support" (no hotel booking and seemingly not enough money for their trip around Ireland and Europe - although the Irish Immigration police refused to look at their online banking details when they offered). They were sent back to the US (and had to pay for the flight back!). There was an outcry in Ireland, and now the three backpackers are being offered a hotel for a week, free cellphones, plus a thousand euros in spending money. They are instant celebrities in Ireland now - the "Plano 3".

All's well that ends well. This restores my faith in Ireland. We should not be blocking Texans at the border.

Isn't it ironic

Debt-Free USA goes bankrupt, too much debt.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/news/0906/gallery.companies_going_bankrupt/11.html

Swine flu reaction: Relaxed in Boston, Tense in Ireland

This story pretty much sums it up - calmness about Swine Flu in New York, but tenseness in Ireland. My kids both had the flu recently, probably Swine Flu. So did many local kids, and the school was shut down for a while, so I minded the kids at home so that other people did not get infected. I talked to family in Ireland who were shocked to hear such as a relatively relaxed attitude to Swine Flu ("yeah I think they have Swine Flu, but they're fine"). In Ireland, it's a big deal right now. I was told "don't mention Swine Flu too much when you're in over here in Ireland!" :-)

Get yer Mexican wrestling masks here

"You can get your wrestling mask at El Chavo in Roslindale on Washington Street in Roslindale Square. You can get all sorts of Mexican food and supplies there."

From examiner.com

Whenever I see the store "El Chavo", I can't help thinking that "El Chavo" is Spanish for "the chav". Indeed, a look at the derivation of the word "chav" shows that it may be influenced by the Spanish word for "lad" or "boy", which would make sense. Do chavs wear Mexican wrestling masks though?

Massachusetts gets an Irish Summer, complete with Irish Potato Blight

The rainy summer in Massachusetts is so bad that the Boston Globe features a section on how to build an ark. As an Irish person living in Boston, this summer weather makes me feel at home. Flights to Ireland are cheap right now, but why go to Ireland when you can get the weather right here? Look at the forecast for Dublin for the next five days - looks pretty similar to what we've been getting in Boston, except it's in Celsius rather than Fahrenheit:



The Irish summer similarity goes further. Universal Hub and today's Boston Globe both report that the disease best-known as Irish Potato Blight has struck Massachusetts.

Standing by the flag not feeling shameful

Two recent musings on Stars-and-Stripes flag-flying, both at the local level and at the national level:

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From Timothy Egan in the New York Times:
http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/capture-the-flag/

While following the length of the Lewis and Clark Trail several years ago, I was struck by the huge number of flags in places like rural Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and Montana. On Indian reservations, the same thing – though often with tribal symbols superimposed. But in the major cities along the trail, St. Louis and Portland among them, I was hard-pressed to find a flag in front of a home.

I wondered whether urban Americans, overwhelmingly Democratic, had something against the flag, or if they felt the country was no longer theirs. Now you can ask the same question of the other side of the political spectrum.

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And locally here in Roslindale, from Ken Ward:
http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-02-fourth-july-symbol-patriotism/

Flag-flying, like bumper stickers, is an expression of personality and identity, which also, in the aggregate, helps define a community. The journey from Jamaica Plain to Roslindale (...) is marked by a decline in rainbow flags and Tibetan prayer banners and an upsurge of shamrocks and American flags.

It has always struck me that the liberal/progressive rejection of the American flag (traceable to anti-Vietnam protests, I assume) has had a subtle but nonetheless powerful impact on U.S. politics. Refusal to show the flag is an eloquent expression of deep ambivalence toward America and a huge boon for conservatives and the Republican Party.

---------

This chimes with me. Although I am not American, I do, for the first time, have a small American flag out for the 4th July. And it's because of Obama.

It's interesting to notice the different flags around Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and West Roxbury too. In Jamaica Plain, it is true, you see Tibetan prayer banners, which you will probably not see in Roslindale and certainly not in West Roxbury. And the shamrock flag count goes up as you go from Jamaica Plain into Roslindale, and then there is no shortage of shamrock flags and Irish tricolors in West Roxbury. But as you go from Jamaica Plain to Roslindale you'll also see Puerto Rican flags and Dominican flags, Greek flags (including the shamrock-covered Panatinaikos flag on Washington Street in Roslindale), and Mexican flags. In Roslindale you'll see some Canadian flags and at least one Swedish flag. There may now be more gay rainbow flags in Roslindale than in Jamaica Plain. In all three areas there are US Marines flags (at least one in each neighborhood that I can think of). You'll also see many of those homely flags showing rabbits (at Easter time), leaves (in autumn), snowmen, and the like.

But everywhere, in all three strongly liberal and strongly Democrat neighborhoods you will see many American flags. This wasn't the case during the Bush years, I think. That's changed now.

Happy 4th of July weekend.

World Dwarf Games to be held in Belfast next month

From today's Irish Times:

"The fact that Belfast has been chosen to host the prestigious event is quite a coup for Kelly and her colleagues at the Dwarf Athletic Association of Northern Ireland (Daani). The first World Dwarf Games were held in Chicago in 1993, and previous host cities include Toronto and Paris. So why Belfast this time? It’s largely down to the success of the Dwarf European Championships that were held in the city in 2006, which attracted more than 100 athletes – including three of Europe’s top Paralympians – from eight different countries."

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2009/0626/1224249568541.html

Lions lose, and even Matt Damon joins the South Africans

So the Lions lose the second test. In retrospect, as someone on Twitter remarked, Ronan Keating may have been a better choice than Ronan O'Gara.

And I see Matt Damon in Springbok colours for a film about Francois Pienaar and the 1995 Rugby World Cup. If they're making a rugby film, I wish it was about the famous Lions tour led by Willie John McBride (of "Get our retaliation in first" fame). Now that would be a good movie. And, we could then finally get to see the Lions beat South Africa again...

MBTA.com's recommendations for getting to Boston's airport

I sometimes use the MBTA trip planner (on mbta.com) for checking bus and train times. It's pretty useful. But it seems to have problems when it comes to the airport.

If you query it for a trip from (let's say) Roslindale to the airport (entering "Roslindale" as the start and "airport" as the destination), it changes your destination to "Airport, MA", and then you see this:



So, rather than getting off the Blue Line at the Airport, you would go past the Airport station and then get off at Wood Island station, and get a bus from there. Who in their right mind would do this?

But, what if you put "Logan Airport" instead of "Airport" as the destination? In that case, you are given the route via South Station and the Silver Line:



Notice there is an "Itinerary 2" there. You'd presume this would be the Blue Line subway to the Airport station, right? Wrong. The alternative route is to go to Oak Grove on the Orange Line and then take a bus to the airport from there!



Unfortunately, some people not familiar with Boston may take this crazy route to the Airport.

Crazy as it sounds, the MBTA Trip Planner does not seem to realize that the station called "Airport" on the Blue Line is a way to get to the Airport. It suggests the Silver Line bus, and buses from Wood Island and Oak Grove. But, what about the option of "take the Blue Line to Airport station"? In order to see that option, you have to enter "Airport Station" (not "Airport") into the search. Then it gives a sensible way to the airport:

Loyalist racism against Romanians in Belfast

Sad news from Belfast. Over 100 Romanians, fed up with racist attacks where they live in the Village area of South Belfast, have left Ireland to return to Romania.

A church took them in for protection, but the church itself was attacked, its windows smashed. Over the weekend, an anti-racist march was attacked by people making Nazi salutes and throwing stones.

I know the area of Belfast, "the Village", where the Romanians moved to. It's somewhere where I'd be very uncomfortable opening my mouth with my "southern" Irish accent, because it would be assumed that I am Catholic (I'm not). Anti-Catholicism runs deep there; it's an accepted part of life. Romanians would also be assumed to be Catholic, and therefore fair game for attack.

A number of commentators have asked why the "loyalist" (Protestant, pro-British) areas in the north of Ireland are more racist. Laurence White in the Belfast Telegraph puts forward some ideas:

"The simple fact is that there are an uncomfortable number of racists in Northern Ireland. For some reason they seem more prevalent in loyalist areas – perhaps it’s because they are just more stupid than racists in other areas and cannot hide their bigotry so well. "
...
"People in those areas have been told for generations that Catholics are their enemies; that Catholics want to bring down the state and drive all Protestants into an united-Ireland.

Fed such a diet of hate, it is little wonder that some people living in such areas view any outsiders as a threat. If they cannot vent their sectarian bitterness against Catholics because of lack of opportunity, then they turn on others that they view with suspicion, be they Romanians, Poles, Chinese or whatever nationality."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/laurence-white/bitter-racists-grew-up-on-a-diet-of-hatred-14355407.html

Unfortunately that rings true to me.

In the Sunday Business Post, Tim McGurk addresses this difficult issue too:

"The racist attacks on the Roma community in the Village area of Belfast will come as no surprise to those who know the place.

For years, it has been synonymous with the most extreme loyalist elements and, throughout the Troubles, was dominated by loyalist paramilitarism. During the worst days of the sectarian killings in Belfast, the Village was the headquarters for some of loyalism’s bloodiest gangs.

Situated as it is just below the Falls Road by theM1 motorway and close to Belfast city centre, it was ideally located for loyalist murder gang sorties into adjacent Catholic areas to kidnap victims."
....
"However, they are only the latest victims of sectarian attacks in the North, which has the highest level of hate crime in these islands. Over the years, there have been persistent attacks on the Chinese community in south Belfast, while in other places Poles and Portuguese have suffered.

The origins of the latest attacks lie in a riot around the Northern Ireland vs Poland soccer match at nearby Windsor Park in March. Given that the Polish community is mostly Catholic, it took very little to set off the violence that occurred."
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/wholestory.aspx-qqqt=TOM+MCGURK-qqqs=commentandanalysis-qqqsectionid=3-qqqc=5.3.0.0-qqqn=1-qqqx=1.asp

The Guardian also questioned why so much of the racism in the north of Ireland is concentrated in Protestant, Loyalist areas:

"So far this year there have been 33 racist attacks recorded and 30 of these were in Protestant areas. These assaults range from petrol bombings of the houses of migrant workers to the forced evictions of black women from loyalist estates. In one incident in March this year racists smeared excrement over a Catholic Church in the Upper Newtonards Road in east Belfast, which has become a place of worship for Filipino nurses working at nearby Ulster Hospital. The latest alleged racist incident occurred last Monday at a secondary school in North Belfast. Jade Taylor, 13, was left badly shaken and bruised after she said she was assaulted by racists at Glengormley High School. "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/oct/22/race.ukcrime

This is the dark racist underside of the working class "White Anglo Saxon Protestant" culture which has contributed so much to Ireland (the shipyards, entrepreneurial, innovation) and to the US too. What can be done about it? When so much of identity is about the negative ("not Catholic") rather than the positive (hard-working, proud, resourceful), maybe it is no surprise there is so much hostility towards outsiders. The fact that so much religious sectarianism is accepted is also bad. If it's "OK" to hate people from another religion, it's not a big step for it to be "OK" to hate people from another race.

Hopefully there will be an anti-racist campaign which will make discussion like this a thing of the past.

Things to do in Dublin when you're dead

Why not visit some cemeteries? Bernd Biege writes a nice guide to Dublin's graveyards.

I've often walked past the Huguenot cemetery which Bernd mentions, on the way from the office to Grafton Street in Dublin. Picturesque and always makes me think.

"To emigrate is to become a foreigner in two places at once"

Sadly true.

From the Colm Toibin "Brooklyn" review in a recent New Yorker, which I read in a holding position over Providence last night:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/brieflynoted/2009/06/01/090601crbn_brieflynoted1