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Pilgrimage to Ireland, Part 2: Limerick, Travelers &

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by Janet Maher in Ireland, Pilgrimage, Thoughts

≈ 8 Comments

©2014 Janet Maher, Limerick Mural

©2014 Janet Maher, Limerick Mural

As I pick back up most of the rest of my life, I’m trying very hard to hold onto the memory of these last two weeks. While the Baltimore sun glared down on me yesterday I found it especially pleasant to recall being wet and even a bit chilly at times, needing an additional layer or two. With the loss of spring, Baltimore’s weather quickly becomes the kind that my mother used to say “takes the starch out of you.” Yesterday I willed myself to remember, instead, my feet sloshing within my sneakers, pants glued to my legs as I plunged into the high grasses of a graveyard coated with the remains of the previous downpour as Jane and I looked for a particular stone one afternoon. Mind over matter worked like a charm.

When driving along quiet roads in Ireland one nods or raises one’s hand in greeting, actively looking into the eyes of another. In Ireland people also talk about the weather. A greeting and mutual acknowledgement of a beautiful day is common, or comments about yesterday’s beautiful day as we mutually anticipate the current weather to change. And change it does, constantly, which accounts for perfect weather in my book, including the rain. I love the description of misty Irish days as “soft,” and I love the cloud-filled skies both before and after the rainfalls, one set made up of velvety grays, another set an endless array of postcard-worthy compositions. I have been waking these past few mornings thinking I’m still somewhere in Ireland. I welcome this sensation for as long as it takes for my soul to completely make its own journey back.

©2014 Janet Maher, Cashel Tree

©2014 Janet Maher, Cashel Tree

On my first afternoon and night in Ireland I came upon some contrasts—other realizations beyond the island’s contemporary and ancient beauty. The economy is indeed in dire condition, as I’d known from the global news. But several times throughout my trip I heard the statement voiced, “There is no money in Ireland.” When I shopped at Penny’s that first afternoon, trying to find something to put on other than what I’d been wearing for three days in transit, the place was packed with women and girls shopping. The amount of activity was surprising. There seemed to be more people inside that store than had been on the sidewalks. Were the more expensive clothing stores as well-populated?

After I got back to the place where I was staying, showered, changed and re-emerged, considering an attempt to find someplace to eat, I encountered even less, and different, outside activity. I wandered around the area, passing a small group of twenty-somethings drinking beer on a church’s steps, one woman’s face covered in bruises, then headed across a bridge into a neighborhood. When it turned out that the likely eating establishments were closed, I asked an elderly woman who was walking with packages from recent shopping if she could tell me where I might find a cafe nearby. She seemed startled that I addressed her and hurriedly told me there was no such place there, to walk in the other direction, and proceeded to get herself home. Along the river toward the next bridge I passed another small group of young people who seemed oddly threatening. Soon I was near Penny’s again. Turning to walk up the block I almost came face to face with three young women prancing in my direction in skimpy clothes and make-up so overdone that they looked to be in costume. Just beyond was a group of about twenty young people, mostly male, hanging out aimlessly.

Soon there seemed to be utter desolation of a kind I had only experienced in American inner cities. The streets twisted and turned with only an occasional figure darting quickly into a doorway, a few pairs of men talking to each other outside corner bars, and a couple or two wandering as I was, with deer-in-the-headlights expressions on their faces, and maybe one on mine. There was no grime or litter about, however, only an absence of activity and a feeling that the area had been abandoned. Perhaps this was the kind of neighborhood about which Frank McCourt wrote and I hadn’t wanted to believe existed. Eventually someone walked in my direction who looked kind, and I asked him to direct me to my landmark, which proved to be not too far away. I decided to call that day’s adventure to an end and simply headed back to my room. It would only be upon my last night in Ireland that I learned of the bustling center of Limerick, with many a business that would have appealed to me, only a few blocks further had I walked in the opposite direction.

©2014 Janet Maher, Lookind Down #1

©2014 Janet Maher, Looking Down #1

The feeling of emptiness occurred in other ways afterwards, though, thankfully, without including a sense of potential danger. It seems that throughout the midlands beautiful towns are closing up shop as nearby malls have attracted business away from the small locally owned ones, and the population itself moves to larger cities or other countries. In Shannonbridge, County Offaly, I wondered if I had arrived in the town too early in the day. Where was everyone? Besides the few cars that were parked or had passed me on the road I only saw two men out repairing a wall. They assured me that the tourist office I stopped at would open in a couple of minutes if I waited. Did it actually ever open that day?

Having not yet gotten the hang of the routine of recharging my camera and phone batteries each night, downloading pictures and thus making ready for my tomorrows, I had arrived in Shannonbridge with a full camera and had left my phone (which takes great snapshots) back in the room charging. I’d hoped to find good postcard versions of the beauty I was seeing right then, but had to suffice with the still images I captured in my mind. This lovely town with its own view of the River Shannon drifting past, flowing under the bridge for which the town was named, was the homeland of my great aunt’s husband and his family, the Martin’s. It was the first of many small towns that I visited in order to locate my research in a physical form that I could feel directly and observe at first hand, imagining my ancestors in place.

The landscape of the Irish countryside would once have been full of communities and teeming with people. The Great Hunger and several other famines and epidemics denuded huge swathes of territory over the centuries, but the global economy throughout more recent decades has continued to take a severe toll. Dr. Irial Glynn, a Marie Curie fellow at the Institute for History in Leiden University, explained much about the current Irish emigration problem in an online podcast he made for the History Hub. He explained that more than 400,000 Irish have emigrated since the Famine and that now the country is losing its young at a disturbing rate—particularly its male population, who have difficulty finding work in their own country. Unemployment is over fourteen percent today, up from six per cent in 2006. Currently about forty per cent of Ireland’s 15 to 19 year olds are out of work, as are more than twenty-five per cent of her 20 to 25 year olds and sixteen per cent of her 25 to 34 year olds. Immigration was just over 13,000 in 2007, but had risen to more than 40,000 in 2011.

Many Irish immigrate to Great Britain and send money back to their families, reminiscent of the nineteenth century era of immigration into the United States and other countries. Dr. Glynn explained that after World War II, almost all countries had “boom” times, except for Germany and Ireland, in which there was never an industrial revolution. Irish workers could find seasonal employment and many settled in the greater London region. Today, however, when there is a global economic slump, it is difficult to find work anywhere. I heard upon two separate occasions during my visit about young Irish men going, or considering going, to work in the mines in New Zealand or Australia. As in centuries past, here once again young Irish men are taking on the most difficult manual labor opportunities to afford themselves and their families a better future.  One women I met revealed that of her several children, some of them have emigrated to the United States, Canada or Australia. As Dr. Glynn quoted, “in times of crisis Ireland tends to spit out its young.”

Aideen Sheehan, wrote in December for Independent.ie that almost 250 people per day leave Ireland in search of a more stabile financial future. United States immigration data suggested to Sheehan “a brain drain of talent as they include 1,171 Irish people with ‘extraordinary abilities or achievements’, as well as 1,259 athletes, artists and entertainers.” In his article was embedded a poignant video of families being reunited at the airport during temporary trips home for Christmas. Meanwhile, as they do in every other country, political parties vie for power and promise that they will fix the many problems. Local elections were being held during my stay, and telephone poles everywhere were covered with posters for political candidates.

©2014 Janet Maher, Horse Heads, Co. Tipperary

©2014 Janet Maher, Horse Heads, Co. Tipperary

In trying to understand what I experienced during my first night in Ireland, I was told that the young women I saw might have been Travelers, a minority culture with early Irish ancestry. I recalled the biography of Nan Donohoe, published by Sharon Gmelch in 1986, about an Irish traveling woman who lived this entirely different kind of life in our own times. Gmelch is a professor of Cultural Anthropology and other topics at the University of San Francisco. My memory of her book was of awe for the hard life that the Traveler population of Ireland survived in their own insular universe. Working for cash doing hand labor included “tinkering” for the men, the repairing and producing of metal products and other types of small commodities for sale. The tightly knit families would move from place to place continually through the seasons and when forced to leave by people settled in areas they encroached upon. Having pulled Gmelch’s book down from my library, I intend to reread this, and to seek out her other books about Tinkers and Travelers: Ireland’s Nomads, Irish Life and Traditions, and a new book co-authored with her husband, Irish Travellers: The Unsettled Life, due out in October 2014.

My host at one of my AirBNB locations (a service that I heartily recommend, even given my first night’s experience) explained that Travelers may be found all throughout Ireland, often setting themselves up in places like abandoned railroad bridges. Apparently, they might be able to claim a parcel of land permanently if they successfully remain in place there for ten years. No longer a horse-drawn carriage society, they live in mobile homes and small trailers. Some have acquired a great deal of money and live in mansions. While traveling between towns in Tipperary, I suspected that I may have driven past a Traveler cluster, a cropped portion of the presumed encampment photo included here. Although I had watched the 2007-2008 television series, The Riches, which I stumbled upon on Netflix, I had imagined that the premise of the series was an entire fantasy. I had not been aware that this culture also took root centuries ago in the United States and in other countries, and that there are Traveler settlements in such places as Murphy Village, South Carolina, and White Settlement, Texas. The stories in modern times are far from romantic.

I don’t pretend to understand the complexity of Irish politics, its economy, its immigration situation nor its Travelers. Nor do I profess to even comprehend the complex workings of my own country’s equivalent social and political concerns. Being in another environment in a manner beyond that of a tourist, however, did help to bring new awareness to my own various micro and macro realities. Perhaps there is too much about the global present that unsettles me, leading me continually back to a relatively safe fascination—the searching for links between the dead and the living in undeniably beautiful places to which I have some personal connection. It is upon this aspect of my journey that I will concentrate the rest of my Pilgrimage posts.

©2014 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ni Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

Peace to All Who Run or Walk Here

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by Janet Maher in Early Irish Catholics in Connecticut, Thoughts

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

117th Boston Marathon, Native American wisdom

St. Canice Angel, Kilkenny, Ireland ©2011 Janet Maher

St. Canice Cathedral Angel, Kilkenny, Ireland ©2011 Janet Maher

This sequence of thoughts begins with some excerpts from the introduction to my book:

“When a country seeks to colonize or conquer another, peoples choose or are forced to relocate and put down roots in uncharted territories or in areas that had been established by others before them. These settlers and their descendants come to identify with their new home and feel that their claim over time is as legitimate as anyone else’s. We see this phenomenon being played out today in wars surrounding the concept of a Holy Land, as Muslims, Jews and Christians share the physical origins of their religions within the same relatively small location in the Middle East. If we get back far enough in historical research it becomes possible to discern who was somewhere first. Over centuries and an exponentially increased number of families the issues and claims become much more complex. It is impossible to return to simpler times, when fewer people existed, when implications of social status were part of a lived tradition, and conflicts were between different tribes that had more similarities than differences…”

“One’s spiritual beliefs became the means by which a new class structure in a country could be formed, affecting the quality of life of the native people over multiple centuries. Whomever had the means to survive famine, the ability to rise up against their oppressors or to emigrate was determined in a socioeconomic balance. As for that of the Jews, the Tibetans, Native Americans, African Americans and others, the Irish diaspora was a story that may not be fully known and that some may feel is best to forget. While the Irish, ever adaptable, have moved on and largely put the pain behind them, some of us “across the pond” may feel the need first to know and understand the history in context, then, likewise, to intentionally put it aside, rather than remain entirely ignorant about it.”

“As a pacifist myself, the irony of studying polarizing conflicts, armed rebellions, persecutions and their ethical complexities in Ireland is not lost on me. No matter what one’s own spiritual beliefs (or non-beliefs) and practices may be, if one researches Irish ancestry and attempts to understand the cultural history of those who lived in previous centuries, religious issues and the social status associated with them are inescapable. They also effect the ease with which it may be possible to actually find records…”

My husband and I have begun to watch the remarkable Public Broadcast production, “We Shall Remain.” This television series, available on Netflix, “shows how Native peoples valiantly resisted expulsion from their lands and fought the extinction of their culture — from the Wampanoags of New England in the 1600s who used their alliance with the English to weaken rival tribes, to the bold new leaders of the 1970s who harnessed the momentum of the civil rights movement to forge a pan-Indian identity.” Having lived for a long while in New Mexico I feel a natural connection to and appreciation for Native American culture. Throughout my study of the history of Ireland, the colonization of America repeatedly came to mind. While watching this series about the Native American tragedy I must continually try to prevent myself from exclaiming out loud, “That’s exactly what happened to the Irish!” (now that I’ve done that once too many times).

All these centuries later, in a global economy interconnected by the Internet, with an unprecedented mingling of heritages, a growing awareness of the need for peace seems to have re-emerged. A rising concern for the welfare of all peoples who inhabit this planet is accompanied by alarm regarding the planet’s own environmental health. Many of us believe the words of the Abenaki Indian, Alainis Obomsawin, who said, “When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”  Still, economic greed runs rampant, genetically modified foods threaten all, professional politicos seek to thwart human-centered legislations, and repeated random acts of violence continue to occur. (And sometimes the wrong people are accused and sentenced.)

Yesterday’s explosions at the Boston Marathon killed three people, including an eight year old boy, and severely injured 170 more. It is difficult not to feel helpless as we are continually reminded that we live in a world that seems to have gone insane. Hairstyles and fashions have changed throughout the centuries, but the same problems continually repeat in ever new guises and places.

The lessons of history and the teachings of the wise in every culture urge us to strive for balance between good and evil, between that which is and is not achievable. This balance is at the heart of what it means to be human. We wake each morning amid possibilities of polar opposites in a vast and extenuating gray area that we call Life. What will occur before the day’s end is an open question. Indomitable spirit miraculously seems to replenish itself, arising above each disaster, propelling us collectively forward toward the generation of hope and attempts to create a better future.

Students at Boston College provided a beautiful example of hopeful action as they began today to organize a walk from their campus to stand together in Boston, symbolically completing the 117th Boston Marathon for those who were prevented from doing so yesterday. With a vision of sharing the higher road in solidarity, they wrote, “For anyone who did not get to finish, For anyone who was injured, and For anyone who lost their life…we will walk. We will walk to show that we decide when our marathon ends.”

May they empower each other and themselves as they generate balance in the universe to energetically counter the suffering of those who were brutally attacked during yesterday’s joyful event. Sadly, that was yet another in a long line of attacks against innocents around the globe and throughout the ages. May we all someday know in our hearts and through the expression of our lives, as Black Elk did, that “There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.”

©2013 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

Who You Are is Where You Come From

09 Saturday Mar 2013

Posted by Janet Maher in Early Irish Catholics in Connecticut, Exhibition, Thoughts

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Early Irish History, From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley, New Haven County Connecticut

Coming Into Ireland, 2011

Coming Into Ireland, 2011

Felicity  Hayes-McCoy’s memoir, The House on an Irish Hillside, contains such poetic chapter headings as this one, and “Enough is Plenty,” “Nothing is Unimportant,” “Dancing Through Darkness,” and “The Music of What Happens.” Each of these phrases resonate for me. For most of my life I’ve been fascinated in probing where I came from, having always felt my present reality to be a great mystery. I intentionally left what I knew as home, ran as far as possible within my limited means, and eventually delved deeply into historic roots trying to truly find a literal and metaphoric right place.

Hayes-McCoy explained the importance of identity in Ireland. “When people meet,” she wrote, “they try to place each other and they’re not happy till they find links that join their story to yours. They want to know where you come from. If they can, they’ll find they’re related to you. But they’ll settle for knowing you were born a couple of roads from their mother’s cousin, or that you use the same broadband provider, or your best friend owns a a caravan near a beach where they once caught a cold.” Some part of me continually longs for this kind of community and mourns the impossibility of being in touch with those who make up the web of my emotional life, flung far between states and countries. I like to believe in reincarnation in order to trust that one day my spirit will know a simpler, more rooted way of existence, somewhere beautiful and slow-moving.

My early dreams of being a gardener in Vermont making my living supplying restaurants or having one of my own disappeared into a reality where decades later I avoid cooking at all. Perhaps we are made up of opposite tendencies or are forced into extreme contrasts in order to continue to grow. Maybe some other incarnation of mine knew that country life. Certainly my many Irish ancestors did. This incarnation, however, began with a different set of conditions. Maybe it’s in order to keep the big game moving forward that different entities live out the evolving stages, bringing the lessons from each into the next one. I may garden now, but only as a hobby and without real time for it, though the yearning to work in the land remains from many generations and incarnations past.

The journey of researching ancestry and finding a bridge between Connecticut and Ireland was fascinating for me and, thankfully, for others in Connecticut, Ireland and Australia. Finding the identities of so many interrelated individuals and placing them in time and in other countries kept my brain firing on many levels for half a dozen years. In another time this quest would not have needed to stop. It might have been the role that I played in the community. Here, in America, however, it did have to end. A book is out, a show is up, but it’s the big next thing that others anticipate — the artwork expected to return that must make up for all the time I spent wandering elsewhere. Much hangs on the fact that it must also be good.

Tolkien believed that not all who wander are lost, and so do I. The wandering is the best part! I resist arriving, especially when that simply leads to the questions, so, where will you go now, what will you do? I’d like to be still. I’d like to write another book, the one I already have going on the back burner. I’d like to find a better way to bring these stories to light and keep expanding the web of connections. I don’t want to pack my Irish library away and store my boxes of notes and folders. I’m not ready for it all to be over. But I am ready for the music of what happens when time opens up this summer.

Something has ended and something else must begin. What to keep, to reference, to enlarge, to layer, how to arrange it in the present is all about choice. I am lucky to have that. The layers of where I come from have become clear. That I have these hands, this mind, and a certain range of skills has also been expanded. This feels a bit like graduating, having earned an invisible degree. Like my students I’ll venture out to discover what lies ahead, bringing all of my recent experience into the foundation. Perhaps when I leave Ireland after another visit this summer I will not cry. Maybe it now and will always also belong to me.

©2013 Janet Maher / Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

Illuminating Blogger Award Nomination

11 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by Janet Maher in Award, Thoughts

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Blog Award Nomination, Illuminating Blogger

Iluminating Blogger Award

I have been nominated for the Illuminating Blogger Award!

I am most grateful to Chris (“Crissouli”), who nominated me for the “Illuminating Blogger Award.” Chris has become a generous virtual friend over long distance and many years through our mutual interests of all kinds, particularly in regard to Irish genealogy, culture and history. I hope one day to be able to visit her in Australia and meet in person! She is the author of three blogs, chock full of eclectic information of interest to those involved with Irish family history research. She includes links to many other related resources and is aware, continually, of relevant breaking news. Her own “As They Were,” was also nominated this year. Indeed, this, with her others, (“That Moment in TIme,” and “Irish Graves  – they who sleep in foreign lands,”) places her on my own list as a favorite blogger.

The Illuminating Blogger Award was created by the author of the Food Stories blog, who extended an initial food blog award to become more inclusive. “One random thing about myself” that would not be gleaned from my own blog is that, in addition to my identity as an artist and educator, I have a passion for gardening and I founded and used to run a community garden. When I am interacting with the earth in this way, growing, tending a particular space, I feel connected to myriad aspects of life, including to my own ancestors who once farmed in the midlands of Ireland. Quite often a favorite memory of my own father mowing our lawn comes to mind, as I recall his bypassing a patch of forget-me-nots on a particular day when I asked him to spare them from his push-mower blades.

Other bloggers that I would like to nominate for this award include:

Angela Gallagher, A Silver Voice From Ireland. Already a multiple award winner, this lovely woman’s silver voice is wonderful to read, whether one is interested in Ireland, family history, invaluable oral histories, or the wisdom that comes from having lived through many chapters of life and having reached what she calls one’s “third age.”

David Cain, Raptitude, getting better at being human. I wish that I took more time to read everything Cain has ever posted, and sometime I must begin to try to do so! It is a joy to me when the announcement of a new essay of his arrives by email, and I am continually impressed by his posts. I have recommended Raptitude many times to others as my favorite blog – ever. Like some singer-songwriters (Ryan Adams comes to mind), Cain seems unusually wise for his age, as he grows daily into the depth of his studies and beliefs. I began reading Raptitude when Cain was traveling abroad, documenting his journey while considering the implications of conversations and simple discoveries along the way. Someone described this blog as “Buddhistish,” which serves just fine.

Printeresting. This is “the thinking person’s favorite online resource for interesting printmaking miscellany,” written and edited by several authors in America. It is the first of its kind to focus upon this art form in such depth, and is extremely well done. It is one-stop shopping for anyone interested in printmaking, whether new to the form, a veteran, or anywhere in between. Interviews, studio visits, photographs of artwork and places, are only the tip of the iceberg here. This combination website/blog does for printmaking what Peter Verheyan’s listserve, Book Arts Web, did eighteen years ago for Book Arts!

Cara Ober, BmoreArt. Artist, curator, writer, educator, and mother, Cara Ober has received many awards and notices for her work as an active participant in the arts community of Baltimore. Her blog, BmoreArt, is the place to go to find out what’s happening on all the art fronts in town, and she has excelled at this and every form of social media that links our arts community together. Along with Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Urbanite magazine (for which Ober also writes), Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, and the ground zero of Baltimore – the designated arts district Station North, we are one “tapped in” community, and Cara has been instrumental in helping the communication between groups grow!

Colm Moloney and Damien Shiels, Know Thy Place. This blog is beautifully done, an extension of a business that does Irish archaelogical research for customers. I have enjoyed the personal stories that bring a particular place in Ireland to life, as the group focuses upon the history of the land from which family lines evolved. This is certainly the kind of urge that I, as an American, follow when I wish to walk on the same roads and through fields that my ancestors might have traversed, imagining them in place and time. Sheils’ own blog about Irish in the American Civil War in is also an excellent resource and beautifully done. I recommend him for this award in both instances.

I will leave messages to these individuals, who can then follow the award nomination steps that I just did:

  1. The nominee should visit the award site (http://foodstoriesblog.com/illuminating-blogger-award/) and leave a comment indicating that they have been nominated and by whom. (This step is so important because it’s the only way that we can create a blogroll of award winners).
  2. The Nominee should thank the person that nominated them by posting & including a link to their blog.
  3. The Nominee should include a courtesy link back to the official award site (http://foodstoriesblog.com/illuminating-blogger-award/) in their blog post.
  4. Share one random thing about yourself in your blog post.
  5. Select at least five other bloggers that you enjoy reading their illuminating, informative posts and nominate them for the award. Many people indicate that they wish they could nominate more so please feel free to nominate all your favorites.

Notify your nominees by leaving a comment on their blog, including a link to the award site (http://foodstoriesblog.com/illuminating-blogger-award/).

Good luck to all!

©2012 Janet Maher/Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley: Early Irish Catholics In New Haven County, Connecticut

11 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Janet Maher in Connecticut Irish, History, Kilkenny Mahers, New Haven Irish Catholic Immigrants, Origins, Pilgrimage, Thoughts, Tombstone Transcriptions

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

American Mahers, Ancient Ireland, Brennan, Early Irish History, Irish Catholic History, Irish in Connecticut, Irish in the Civil War, Irish Meaghers, Irish pilgrimage, Milesian Genealogy, Naugatuck Connecticut, New Haven County Mahers, Patrick Maher, Saint Bernard Cemetery, Tombstone Transcriptions

©2012 Janet Maher, From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley, books at home; image: Katherine Maher Martin and Eliza Maher, ca 1850s

©2012 Janet Maher, From the Old Sod to the Naugatuck Valley, books at home; image: Katherine Maher Martin and Eliza Maher, ca 1850s

First thing I did when I got the proof was to take pictures of it, then bring it into my department and show it to my colleagues, who then immediately got to hold it. Not exactly like having a baby, but pretty exciting, nonetheless.

The first mention in the press is out, on the Naugatuck Patch! The book is in the process of being offered on the Amazon website, and will also be available through Amazon.uk.

Hope to see some of you on June 21. Huge news is that Jane Lyons is flying all the way over from Ireland to be there! We’ll be going to the Irish Festival in New Haven that weekend too!

Wishing you all well,

Janet

©2012 Janet Maher/Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

Just A Moment In Time

24 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by Janet Maher in Pilgrimage, Thoughts

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Looking for Ancestors in Ireland

O'Neil's Pub, Dublin, Ireland, 2011

O'Neil's Pub, Dublin, Ireland, 2011

Since I had been working from home on my book during the break between semesters, I did not hear a December message until school started up again last week. I had the most wonderful surprise in a call from someone my husband and I met in Ireland this summer. Unfortunately, he did not leave his name or number, so I could not call back. So as not to startle me he prefaced his message with, “It was just a moment in time, no panicking…,” then said that he’d just found my card and it made him laugh, so he thought he’d give a ring and see how I had made out trying to find my ancestors, my Mahers, and the whole lot of them that I was looking for. He said the name of a pub, but I couldn’t place it. “It was just a moment in time that no one will ever know about,” he said, and I thought about the moments and conversations in the several pubs we stopped in throughout our stay. Now I’ll try to find the names of them and drop a note to those I can track down. Of all things not to have jotted down, the names of the pubs!

Now I guess I know where Chris’ title came from for her blog. “It’s just a moment in time” must be a common Irish saying. I have been thinking about the phrase, so Zen, so mindful, the idea of all the noticed and savored moments that make up the best parts of the big picture of our lives. This phone message was such a gift for the new year, a beautiful touchstone of kind and good energy in the accent I’ve come to love so much. It’s saved to listen to at any other moment that I may need a smile of my own.

©2012 Janet Maher/Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

Happy New Year!

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by Janet Maher in Thoughts

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Garo Antreasian, Tamarind Institute

Knot Garden

Knot Garden, drawing, ©1996

Although this is off-topic I must post about the most wonderful thing that has happened to me in a long while. The curator of a museum found me via this blog a little bit ago and made a comment, letting me know that my former teacher, artist and educator Garo Antreasian, the first master printer of Tamarind Lithography Workshop (in Los Angeles) and first technical director of Tamarind Institute (Albuquerque), had donated four of my lithographs to his museum collection.  While that is wonderful, it’s not the most wonderful part. I just got off the phone with Garo, as I called to thank him. It has been at least thirty years since I’ve spoken with him, and this was an incredibly special gift to me. When he asked what I was up to and I explained the book, he was, as always, immediately supportive and understanding that this as an extension of my work as an artist, not something I should not be doing, as some have suggested, or should not be publishing in this way… As he always did when visiting my studio in graduate school, he encouraged me to keep doing whatever I wanted, to follow my own heart. Back then he had suggested that I bring my whole studio into the museum and work live as performance/installation, letting people see my process and watch how I sort through all the piles of ephemera that I typically gather around me with which to make works of art. At the time I didn’t do it, but I reminded him about his suggestion and noted that artists do that kind of thing frequently these days. He laughed and said, “Maybe you still should!” Today he said, “People don’t understand that some of us are driven that way (from our hearts) and we must follow our own direction…” He bet that I already had an idea for my next book, and encouraged me regarding all my work to, “Keep doing it, kiddo!” This is a sign I must make to hang where I will frequently see it so as to never be discouraged amid all that I continually try to balance. After our talk, through my tears, I tried to recall and tell my husband all that he had said. Now I must write it here (because I can!). What a great thought for the new year! Thank you, Garo, my teacher, the mentor after whom I try to model my own teaching. Thank you for the vote of confidence, once again, after all these years. All blessings on you, 90 years old and still working, still exhibiting, still so vital and present! I am eternally grateful for having been fortunate enough to have been your student!

Here is a YouTube video of Garo Antreasian speaking about the early days of printmaking in America at Tamarind’s 50th Anniversary in 2010. (Jim Dine’s even in the audience…) This is a talk that needs to be published. Let’s hope.

Happy 2012 to Garo and to All of You! May we all keep doing our own “it!”

©2011 Janet Maher/Sinéad Ní Mheachair

All Rights Reserved

Miscellaneous Thoughts, Links.1

22 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by Janet Maher in Connecticut Irish, History, New Haven Irish Catholic Immigrants, Thoughts

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Irish Catholic Immigrants, Irish in the Civil War, Irish Online Links, Links, Saint Bernard Cemetery, Saint Joseph Cemetery

Civil War Graves, Saint Bernard Cemetery, New Haven, CT

Civil War Monument and Cluster of Tombstones, Saint Bernard Cemetery, West Haven, CT

I’m learning daily about blogging and about Word Press, which I find very user-friendly. I’m really happy to be with them! My “Dashboard” shows addresses of web sites that have referred mine, and it’s terrific to see that people are finding me and making comments. With school about to begin I will not be able to post as regularly as I have, but will try for once a week. “Miscellaneous Thoughts,” can be a way to fill in between more indepth pieces.

• Mashpedia has listed MaherMatters on their page about Ikerrin. They also linked a blog by Malcolm Redfellow, who included some text and images from Joseph Casimir O’Meagher’s book. Redfellow discovered an anonymous article in Antiquary (Vol. XIV, July-December, 1886) that is included in O’Meagher’s Some Historical Notices of the O’Meaghers of Ikerrin. He determined that it was attributed to Andrew Carnegie, leading one to wonder – in a chicken and egg manner – who wrote it? Did Carnegie see O’Meagher’s work before it was published and anonymously publish it first in Antiquary magazine, or did O’Meagher include Carnegie’s piece in his work that Dr. William O’Meagher entered into the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. in 1890? My bet is on O’Meagher as the author, but we may never know. The Antiquary article can be found online, pages 101-108.

• The links I include in my postings are ones I have found on my own and recommend. Most sites that I had included in my three pages of links (and more within other pages) on my first Maher and Ireland-related website are still active and I recommend looking at them. I think “Ireland’s History In Maps” is a particularly invaluable one. I have already mentioned Jane Lyons’ From Ireland web site, which is chock full of helpful information, but I also want to point out another for which I included a link in a previous post – Pat Connor’s, Connor’s Genealogy. He also extracts information from microfilms and continues to add resources. Mahers can be found in his Tithe Applotments Lists for Tipperary, Kilkenny and Laois and in Famine Emigration, Castlecomer Area, Kilkenny. There is much more there that I should also look at! (When such index extractions seem relevant to one’s own research, the next step would be to rent the microfilm and translate the handwriting yourself to ensure that you see the same thing the indexer did.)

• I have discovered two excellent blogs through my involvement with Word Press. One is called A Silver Voice From Ireland, loaded with interesting and eclectic Irish topics. The author recently announced news about another find of an ancient body in a Tipperary bog.

• An amazingly rich resource for those interested in the participation of the many Irish in the American Civil War is Damien Shiels’ blog. Jim Larkin, in Connecticut, has a website about the Ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the Civil War. His father, Bob Larkin, was instrumental in the erection of a monument honoring soldiers who died at Vicksburg. Larkin is also responsible for gathering together the volunteer group who are currently transcribing Irish tombstones in Saint Bernard Cemetery, West Haven, Connecticut. They have already found more than 500!

• As was the case with Silas Bronson Library, in Waterbury, Connecticut, built on what had been the earliest Waterbury cemetery,* it has been discovered that Yale New Haven Hospital was built on top of the site of the first Catholic Church in New Haven. By covering up the footprint of Christ’s Church, the first cemetery was also buried. Howard Eckels and others are working to document burials in this location before Saint Bernard Cemetery** began to be used. That all this good work is being done in New Haven is a monumental step in preserving and noting the important legacy of Irish Catholic emigration to New Haven County in the years before, during and after the Great Famine.

• Neil Hogan, editor of Shanachie, the newsletter of the Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society (of which I am a member) has told me that Sacred Heart University, in Bridgeport/Fairfield, which offers a degree in Irish Studies, has put the archive of Shanachie online. They have also included his excellent book, ‘Strong In Their Patriotic Devotion,’ Connecticut Irish in the Civil War, which I see that Damien Shiels has listed in his own resource of books. (When I get the correct link for the SHU resources, I’ll add them.)

• The topic of the Civil War came up in a comment someone recently posted here. I mentioned Major Patrick Maher, about whom Neil Hogan wrote, and about whom I will add a post, having gone to Cahir, Tipperary, on our recent trip specifically to look for his family’s graves. Some of what I’ve already written in relation to Mahers in the Civil War and about Thomas Francis Meagher can be found here. Major Maher, a stone mason/builder, is also mentioned in a New Haven website, Irish In New Haven.

• For some lovely reveries about Irish ancestors and ancestry and for those particularly interested in County Clare, see That Moment in Time, by Crissouli from Australia.

* When I put up my first Irish-oriented web site I did not include my Maher transcriptions. I did, however, quietly include some images. In the composite image header at the top of this page (Saint Bernard Cemetery), center, the tall brown monument is the tombstone of Catherine Strang Maher, wife of Stephen Maher, about whose lineage I am currently writing. The tombstone by the tree in the far right image is that of Catherine Maher, of Templetouhy, Tipperary, her husband Thomas Maher, Tipperary, and Michael, whom we believe to have been relatives of Bob Larkin.

** In the composite image header at the top of this page (Old Saint Joseph Cemetery), far left is the tombstone of a Maher couple from Templemore, Tipperary. At the far right is the stone of William Maher and siblings, from Queen’s County (Laois).

©2011 Sinéad Ní Mheachair (Janet Maher)

All Rights Reserved

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