Aran Islands

Asgard II "can be raised from the seabed"

2009-01-05T22:55:37Z

LORNA SIGGINS, Marine Correspondent

THE CAPTAIN of the Asgard II has expressed confidence that the national sail training vessel can be raised from the seabed off north-west France.

Capt Colm Newport, who was responsible for the safe evacuation of all 24 fellow crew and trainees from the vessel last September, hopes that approval for the salvage will be given by Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea after a second survey. Capt Newport confirmed to RTÉ yesterday that the vessel's rigging was largely intact, and said that a salvage partner had been identified after a "fairly lengthy" tendering process.

However, the west Cork based company which is due to carry out a second underwater survey of the ship in mid-January says that trawling in the area could inflict damage upon the hull if it remains much longer on the seabed.

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Slow Death of a Tiger

2009-01-04T14:47:29Z

IT'S 3 a.m. at Doheny & Nesbitt, a favorite watering hole of Dublin's political and business elite, and the property tycoon Sean Dunne stoops to retrieve a penny from the pub's grimy floor.

One would think that Mr. Dunne, Ireland's best-known building developer, would be in bed at this hour. It's a weeknight, after all, and he has meetings that begin before first light.

What's more, the Irish economy, pummeled by the most severe housing bust in Europe, has collapsed. And the gossip around town is that Mr. Dunne, whose brazen deal-making and Donald Trump-like lifestyle epitomized the country's euphoric boom, might be going bankrupt.

But, no matter, a penny is a penny.
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Winter Waves, brave souls

2009-01-04T14:43:04Z

By Sarah Lyall

BUNDORAN, Ireland -- It was a typical late-winter day on the Irish coast, no worse than usual. Bands of black clouds sailed ominously across the sky. Rain bucketed down in freezing torrents. Icy winds pummeled and churned the ocean.

The New York Times

Cold, rough water has brought surfing renown to Bundoran.

Joanne Fulton sat in her wet suit with a group of friends in a van in the parking lot above the beach, ashen and shivering.

This is après-surf, Irish style, and the whole enterprise has a unique and subtle appeal. "It is very, very cold," Ms. Fulton observed. "But once you get in, the wet suit keeps you warm. Although my hands actually have no feeling. Or my face and feet."

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A snarky Village Voice

2009-01-03T14:36:06Z

The Cripple of Inishmaan, currently being revived at the Atlantic Theater, is one of the plays by which Martin McDonagh became well known. (The others are The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, and The Lonesome West.) All written in a short period of time, they're the plays of an intelligent young man out to make a name for himself, displaying all the good and bad qualities that situation implies. With their zestful storytelling and sardonic humor comes an ingenuity that sometimes turns glibly show-offy and manipulative. With their arrestingly dark vision comes a kind of smirking satisfaction in glutting the audience's appetite for unpleasantness or explicit violence.
more from The Village Voice's snarky review here

The go-to guy for Irish accents

2009-01-03T14:24:13Z

Speaking Synge

Stephen Gabis comes across like speech therapy. That's because Mr. Gabis is a go-to dialect coach whose craft can be heard on Broadway and beyond.
He just did a production of "The Playboy of the Western World" for Queens College, NY. It's one of the most difficult things. I find it tougher than Shakespeare, that particular play by John Millington Synge.
He went to the Aran Islands and literally listened to people through keyholes. English was the second language. Most of them spoke Irish Gaelic first, and the specific Gaelic of that province, of Connacht. It's written in convoluted language. You can't say "I love you." You say things like [speaking in an Irish accent], "It is to you I might be thinking of giving love next Thursday if I'm not milking the cows and stuck somewhere because I drank too much." [back to an American accent] It's a real roundabout way of speaking. It's tonal, like Chinese.
WITH talk of diphthongs and tongue positions, a dialogue session with His fluency with accents helps make the rounded vowels of "The Seafarer" or the dropped r's of "To Kill a Mockingbird" sound authentic enough to sometimes fool even native speakers of the represented regions.
Read the full NYTimes profile here

Gealtacht suburbia on the cards

2008-12-28T15:52:41Z

As the 50th anniversary of Peig Sayers is being marked, mini Gaeltacht suburbs are being considered in cities to help boost the language in the 21st Century.

Gaeltacht Minister Eamon O Cuiv said the native tongue must be encouraged to develop organically within communities in urban areas in the same way that Polish, Chinese and other immigrants promote their own language and customs.

The TD believes that future Gaeltacht areas should not just be based in sparsely populated areas in West Cork, Connemara or the Aran Islands. "There's no reason why we can't have bustling Gaeltacht areas in any part of Dublin, Cork, Galway or Limerick," Mr O Cuiv said.

New York Times raves about "Cripple"

2008-12-27T00:28:09Z

On a Barren Isle, Gift of the Gab and Subversive Charm

By BEN BRANTLEY

Published: December 22, 2008

For those of you for whom an annual reading of "A Christmas Carol" is as welcome as a two-ton fruitcake, the Atlantic and Druid Theater Companies have provided a savory alternative. That's the fine imported Irish revival of Martin McDonagh's "Cripple of Inishmaan," which opened Sunday night at the Linda Gross Theater, offering its own salty variation on that sugarplum Tiny Tim. He is called Cripple Billy, and like Dickens's beloved tot, he is sickly, misshapen and deeply wistful. I can promise you, though, that he isn't about to say, "God bless us, everyone."
There's more at the NYT

"The Cruiser" dies

2008-12-20T14:31:25Z

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Conor Cruise O'Brien, an Irish diplomat, politician, man of letters and public intellectual who staked out an independent position for Ireland in the United Nations and, despite his Catholic origins, championed the rights of Protestants in Northern Ireland has. He was 91

Once described by the social critic Christopher Hitchens as "an internationalist, a wit, a polymath and a provocateur," Mr. O'Brien was a rare combination of scholar and public servant who applied his erudition and stylish pen to a long list of causes, some hopeless, others made less so by his combative reasoning. When called upon, he would put down his pen and enter the fray, more often than not emerging bruised and bloodied.

As a diplomat, he helped chart Ireland's course as an independent, anticolonialist voice at the United Nations and played a critical role in the United Nations intervention in Congo in 1961.

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Watch your manners, Irish beggars told

2008-12-20T14:27:09Z

By Mary Jordan

DUBLIN -- Jason Bissett, 30, sat on a busy pedestrian bridge that arches over the River Liffey, a hood pulled tight around his head and his hand out.

"Can you spare any change? Please. Can you spare any change?" he asked softly, aware that police now consider "aggressive" begging a crime. Last month, the government announced a crackdown on hostile panhandlers, introducing the first new laws against begging since the Potato Famine in the 1840s. A conviction could lead to as much as a month in jail or a 700 euro fine, about $976, according to a Justice Ministry statement, which said the final language of the measure will be published soon.

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Cross border shoppers' paradise

2008-12-18T13:44:32Z

NEWRY, -- During the decades of the "Troubles" here, long lines of traffic at the Irish border usually were a sign that the British military was searching vehicles on the road ahead. But these days the lines of traffic leading off the main highway north to this city just inside Northern Ireland are not about guns as much as butter: shoppers from the south are heading north to spend their euros in the malls and supermarkets here. There's more

Tenement Museum Reflects New York Irish Immigration

2008-12-18T13:41:25Z

A wake was probably held on April 21, 1869, in a cramped walk-up at 97 Orchard Street. A 5-month-old girl, Agnes Moore, had died that morning of malnutrition. Her Irish immigrant parents, Joseph and Bridget, may have invited the German immigrant neighbors in the building and some co-workers from the saloons and restaurants where Mr. Moore worked to visit and mourn, as well as the Catholic priest who had baptized Agnes.

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Librado Romero/The New York Times

The recreation of Joseph and Bridget Moore's 1869 bedroom and kitchen.

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Librado Romero/The New York Times

A coffin for the Moores' 5-month-old daughter, Agnes.

There's more at the New York Times here

Arts Trip to an Aran Island

2008-12-16T21:09:47Z

A group of Sligo people are organising the 3^rd annual weekend on the Aran island of Inis Meain, promising creativity, community and fun.
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Dramatic erosion at Rossbeigh beach

2008-12-16T05:06:52Z

ANNE LUCEY (The Irish Times)

TIME AND tide have caused further dramatic erosion at Rossbeigh beach in Co Kerry where the sea has broken through to create an island of the outer tip of the sand spit.

Well known for bathing, horse-riding, surfing and fishing, Rossbeigh beach is something of a sister to Inch Strand, which reaches out from the opposite northern side of Dingle Bay. Inch was made famous internationally in the film Ryan's Daughter.
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Why it's time to bring a major Irish artist home

2008-12-14T23:06:25Z

Maybe now we've sufficiently recovered from both the cultural ideology of the 1930s and the subsequent reaction against it to look at Peig Sayers for what she is - a remarkable artist. Its time to recognise a great storyteller's magic imagination says The Irish Times' Fintan O'Toole
read it here

Craiceann Inis Oírr International Bodhrán Summer School

2008-12-13T20:27:02Z

The world's leading Bodhrán Summer School. Classes, lectures, workshops and craic. Contact: Micheal. The Bodhrán Summer School is arranged around a series of daily master classes given by some of the world's best bodhrán players and teachers, and also includes special workshops relating to the instrument itself, and traditional Irish music in general. As an additional benefit, music sessions are arranged each night in the island's pubs, and students are welcome to bring their drum and join in. 'Craiceann' - pronounced 'cracken' is the Irish name for skin, so it is felt an appropriate title for a school of drummers whose instruments depend on the hide of a goat.

Contact

Telephone:+353 (0)99 75 067
Email: almhain@iol.ie
Website: www.craiceann.com
Address: Inisheer (Inis Oírr), Aran Islands, Co Galway, Republic of Ireland