10 Questions About…

Another glorious day in Dublin. OK, we got caught in one little rain burst but otherwise – sunny, warm, breezy – amazing. I started my day at the Phoenix Park. We’re not too far from it so it was an easy hike. My goal was to find the wild deer. Apparently, there are 600 of them, so it sounds easy. But the park is almost 3 square miles – not so easy. I was about to give up when I saw them. I see a lot of deer in Minnesota but these deer are different. Their antlers are spectacular. I got pretty close, actually much closer than I probably should have – but I live to tell the tale.

Then I stopped into the Museum of Decorative Arts and History. It was a quick trip but I’m a sucker for any kind of reenactment setup. And there’s a room full of “overflow” silver and art is amazing.

Next, I met up with the girls in Temple Bar. Sadly, the Market isn’t really what we remember from when they were kids. It’s much smaller now but always fun to walk around that area. We caught lunch and headed to the National Gallery, a big favorite from when they were kids. They’ve moved so many things around but they still have a nice mix of old and new art. Some of my favorites: Shield with Head of Medusa by an unkown artist (seen with Aine below), Late Late Show host Gay Byrne by John Kindness, Sinead O’Connor by Jane Brown and a mirror (featuring me and Aine below) in one of the majesty galleries.

Because we were back in the neighborhood we knew, we stopped by Merrion Park to see the statue of Oscar Wilde. Years ago, I heard they were going to add an audio component of him (or someone) reading his most quotable quotes. I hope that happens someday. Then we headed home. We stopped by the charity shops where I got two new dressed. (Score one for the usually bad shopper!) The next statue was musician Luke Kelly, posing with me below – later posed with Phil Lynott.

I took a long walk. Saw some amazing street art and then went to the Irish Museum of Modern Art, where I saw all of the awesome outside art the girls love when they were little and I saw the Irish Coast Guard land a helicopter. I watched for a minute, hoping it was an art installation. It wasn’t but I didn’t see much happen after the landing. The IMMA is built in the old Kilmainham Hospital. So some irony there.

At night we went to the Port House, our favorite tapas restaurant and then on search for the perfect pub. We went to a couple. It was heartening to see so many people at the pubs – post pandemic and really post Celtic Tiger. I haven’t seen the pubs fill so fast in a very long time. Also through the day saw some awes street art!

Aine, Kate and I do not bask in the joy of traveling. But we made it! We have landed in a really nice AirBnB in The Liberties, Dublin 8. This is a part of Dublin that we do not know well, although we toured the area once, 11 years ago on a memorably rainy day. It’s an historical area and I think of it as an inner city working class neighborhood. Back in the day it was where the weavers, tanners and market traders live. It still has a vibrant ethos of folks selling stuff on the sidewalk flea-market style. Very entrepreneurial and DIY vibes.

The Liberties are much farther west than areas we know. So, we’re getting our bearings. Being jetlagged is not helping. But we’ll get there. It is very close to the Guinness Storeroom. It’s not far from Christchurch where I lived long before the kids were around. It’s amazing to see how much is building up now.

It’s also fun to remember how much history has happened here and how much is celebrated. On one building I sawt a memorial saying it was where The Chieftains played their first gig and across the street Robert Emmet died in the cause of Irish Freedom (1803).

We all went on walks; ok mostly me alone. So I have random pictures of the area.

We all pulled it together to walk to the City Center for dinner. It was fun to see Temple Bar on a Friday night. It was fun not to feel obliged to duck into any of the pubs of Irish music and hen parties. We ran across a nice memorial for Sinead O’Connor.

We’re waiting for our favorite Guide of Dublin Free Events before we make any big plans. We are saving ourselves for a full Saturday!

The last day of Dublin is always rough. I start getting nervous about the flight – and how to get there, and did we leave the AirBNB nice enough. (A quick aside, we now know of a super awesome place to stay in Dublin if you need one!) And it’s a little sad to leave and a little happy to be going home. And we left Lily behind for a few days and we’ll miss her.

So to add emotion to nerves and extreme fatigue we went to Cabinteely where we used to live with the girls’ Irish Grandma. The house has been entirely redone. It looks really nice but it’s different. The park (Kilbogget) across the street looks the same. It is a nice park, mostly for soccer and rugby but there’s a nice walking path and a few playgrounds. The view is spectacular. You can the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains.

We went into the Cabinteely village to check out the library. (No pun intended.) There was a day when I thought we had read every book on those shelves. It’s still a nice library. There was a knitting club meeting while we visited, lots of little kids and an older gentleman reading the newspaper. Then we had lunch at the Italian, which was a favorite back in the day. The we finished the visit at Cabinteely Park, which really is a world class park. The girls played on the playground equipment they loved as kids. I always thought the playground equipment in Ireland seemed like more fun that American playgrounds. I was going to say that’s probably my imagine, but it’s probably less stringent safety rules.

We also went up to see the art by the manor. Cabinteely is the home of the giant hopper used for the old Irish Sweepstakes. So there’s that.

At night, Kate went to Dun Laoghaire to visit friends, which meant she took the train there and back alone. And lived to tell the tale! So that’s good. And Lily took the rest of us to dinner, which was entirely unexpected. We went to the Port House tapas bar on South William Street. It is one of my favorite restaurants in the world. Great food. Great buzz about the place. Feels like you’re in a cave. A few pints later and now we’re at the airport – in the American sin bin. You go through pre-clearance in Dublin and then they send you to a corner of the airport. It means a lot of security passes, multiple queues for showing your boarding pass and immigration and then a very adequate place to wait. (Although I’ll be having a beer in 20 mins so might feel differently in an hour!)

Started the day off meeting a long time friend, Gary Murphy. It’s always great to see Gary and it feel like no time has passed since last we met. We talked about his theater work, politics, life and health (which is an indication that we are no longer 20) and everything. It was great to catch up.

Then the girls and I went to the Science Gallery, which remains one of my favorite places in the world! The exhibit was called Perfection. The girls learned a ton about DNA and genetic modification. The gallery does such a nice job of combining science and art to make a lot a data and info more accessible and interesting. We each stepped into the biometric mirror. It uses algorithms to assess your personality and general facts about you. For example, my biometric age is 44. So I’m going with that now. (Note: will need to update my driver’s license when I get home!) It also gives you a score for happiness, kindness, aggression and other feelings or qualities. Then – the mirror uses your picture to produce a more perfect you. I’m going to post all of the pictures for the process below:

After the Science Gallery we went back to the National Gallery. I think it’s genius that the museums are free here. (MIA is free at home too, which is nice!) But it makes it so easy to stop in anytime and people grow up closer to art and history. Then we went shopping at the secondhand stores, saw some more street art.

We met the girls’ Uncle Fearghal for dinner, which was very nice. Fearghal used to take us (and their Irish Grandma) out to lunch and usually an adventure every Sunday. He is the reason we got to see most things we saw outside of the Dublin County limits. While we always had fun, I imagine there were some Sunday mornings where Uncle Fearghal might have preferred an extra hour of sleep to toting people to the Bog of Allen or New Grange.

We ended the night with a few pints at the local pub.

Today we headed to the Northside – me the girls and a friend from Lily’s college who is here at the same time. We took the DART (great for views) to Killiney to check out the beach and then climb Killiney Hill. It’s another activity that was pretty popular with us when we lived here. It turns out the girls are not in the same good condition they were back in the day. There was a lot of huffing, puffing and pausing on the way to the top but one we made it the views were worth it. Even after it started to rain.

After the big climb, we headed to lunch in Dalkey. There is nothing better than seafood chowder after a big walk. The we walked around Dalkey, especially it see Dalkey Island. We were horrified to see people jumping from from a high wall into the sea. First, the wall was too high. Second, the sea is too cold. But I had to share some pictures of strangers jumping.

Also went to dinner and the Abbey with Tony Roche and Katy Hayes. They were very, very good to us when we lived here before so it was nice to catch up. It’s fun to hear how families change and flourish; they all seem to be doing well. And we went to opening night of The Hunger at the Abbey. (Katy writes reviews for the Irish Independent. I can’t want to see her review.)

It is an opera, here’s a brief description from the website…

Asenath Nicholson travelled in Ireland and provided relief to starving people during the Great Famine. Her harrowing first-person account Annals of the Famine in Ireland forms the basis of this extraordinary opera by Donnacha Dennehy, composer of the award-winning The Last Hotel and The Second Violinist. Director Tom Creed makes his debut on the Abbey stage with the European premiere of a moving and thrilling new work.

It as if someone put the exact words of her account to music; she is reporting and commenting on the state, especially of a father who has brought a dying child to town, looking for relief/support. The father sings his reaction to his story. And occasionally experts from the field appear on multimedia screens to offer social and academic commentary.

The music isn’t drone – I almost wish it had been because that would be interesting to me but it is repetitive, sometimes cacophonous sometimes dramatic. More palatable for a wider audience but like drone, it’s not as easy to listen to, it requires more work from the audience. That mixed with the operatic singing is an interesting juxtaposition. As one of my friends said, dying isn’t very dramatic on stage. And while the show is barely over an hour, it seems long. But I assume that’s by design. It puts the audience in the middle of the famine. It’s bleak, it’s seemingly never-ending. (Or in the case of the dying daughter, she dies right before the father gets money.)  The themes are compelling.

The commentary highlights the economics and morality of famine versus free market economy. Some opinions: If the British had invested in jobs and job training versus workhouses, the outcome may have been different. Giving to grand scope tragedies like this is futile, because there isn’t enough money to make a difference. And of course giving money to the poor, means the rich get less. Some of the rich feel that it’s a meritocracy – that the poor are someone deserving of their plight or are at least not deserving of something better.

It makes me think of my time spent helping Monica advocate for the homeless in the Twin Cities. Is it futile to give? Will the rich be unwilling to give up renting luxury apartments in lieu of affordable housing? I also couldn’t help but think of the families and the children on the US-Mexican border. How can we continue to watch people die before we decide to make a difference?

The play brings up George Thompson, a British abolitionist who toured the US to lecture about the role American played in the perpetuation of slavery. Such an interesting choice. Tied to the video commentary in the play. A lot so questions arise, observations are made – now it is up to the audience to be inspired to action.

The audience didn’t riot as they did for the opening of John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in 1907 when they saw the show as a offense to public morality – maybe we’re thicker skinned now. Maybe right people aren’t in the theater. Maybe we need this to open in El Paso, Texas.

Also – I’ll be certainly using some of the ideals of investing in people rather than letting them flounder in my day job, writing about how investment in rural broadband has a certain and palpable return on investment and without it communities will die.

We’ve reached the point of the vacation where everyone needs a little alone time. Except, of course, if you want your mom to come with you to Penney’s to buy you cheap and cheerful clothes. (That’s how I got the picture of the girls near the Spire.) So I spent the morning walking around parks and the afternoon chasing down street art.

I also met a long time friend, Karina, at the IFI (Irish Film Institute). Karina and I worked at Mother Redcaps market together at a cafe called Bread and Roses. It was great to see Karina looking and doing so well. And every time I see Karina, she gives me an Irish book. She is one of the best promoters of Irish authors that I know! Also at the IFI I got to see an Oscar that the girls and I got to hold 9 years ago!

I won’t say much about the art. I have added some notes, like locations – but it didn’t last long as that seems like a lot of computer time on vacation. Many of the pictures I got in Camden and the Liberties. Some I have walked by in the last few days. And a lot of it comes from Templebar. The scale of the art is not always evident much much fills the wall. You can see that people get creative in where the post things – second floor is fair game.

Today the girls were a little under the weather. Or maybe they were sick of me – but aside from lunch and dinner I had the day to myself. I walked up to Phoenix Park. On the way, I visited Collins Barracks where they have a few airplanes hanging from the ceiling. Actually it’s now the National Museum of Decorative Arts & History.

From there I hiked up to Phoenix Park. My plan was to find the deer from my friend Monica. I forgot that they could be anywhere. SO I got to do some hiking. But then I was rewarded. I forgot how tame these deer are. I think I could have taken one home if I had a leash.

Then I hiked up to Kilmainham Hospital to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. I love that place. I love how it feels like a sanitarium. It’s creepy but cool and so clean and white now. And I always like their exhibits. Today one was about dead machines and anxiety.

On the way back, I walked by the Guinness factory, which is fun since many years ago I used to live just around the corner. I didn’t stop because I’m not actually that into drinking Guinness.