Dennis Deery

The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting article today on Ireland’s Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) areas. Click here to read it, then come back here for my thoughts on the subject. As mentioned in the article, Ireland is officially a bilingual nation, with Irish (you may know it as Gaelic) being the primary language. The overwhelming majority of the population however speaks English on a regular basis. All government materials, including road signs, are published in both languages.

Many pubs here offer regular traditional music sessions, or “trad” sessions, and we’ve been happy to find several close by. Our closest pub, O’Neill’s Bar, has a session every Thursday night, and we’re doing our best to become known as regulars. The awesome winds we’ve been experiencing here finally took their toll on the electricity distribution system, and we spent part of the evening tonight without power. Though our power was restored after only a half-hour or so, we were still without streetlights, and a glance down the street showed much of the town was still waiting for power.

Late this evening another Irish fishing trawler sank, this time near Wexford, about 40 miles up the coast from here. The trawler was participating in the search for one of the boats that sank last week. Thankfully, the two crewmen onboard were able to abandon ship in a life raft, and were rescued by a helicopter from the Irish Coast Guard.

I’ve commented before about the incredible wind and waves we’ve seen on the southeast coast this winter. What I don’t think I’ve mentioned is that many of the coastal villages in this area are fishing villages. As you might guess, that combination can often spell tragedy, and that’s been the case over the last few days. Last Wednesday night and Thursday morning, two fishing trawlers sank just north of here. Two crew members from one of the boats were rescued after 20 hours in a life raft, while two of their crewmates and five crewmen from the other boat are still missing and presumed dead.

Upon our return to Ireland, the first newspaper I picked up, the Irish Independent, had this headline on the front page: “US experts hired to fight the ‘dirtiest’ election ever” Ah yes, wonderful. We had the good fortune to leave the States before the worst of the election ads hit the air, but it seems the tactics are going to follow us. From the article: *“THE two main political parties have signed up US experts to fight the dirtiest election campaign of modern times.

Well we survived our trip back to the States for the holidays. We started off with a 1.5 hour delay out of Dublin. The good side of the delay was that it had us taking off right into the setting sun, which we chased most of the way across the Atlantic, giving us a nearly 7-hour-long sunset to watch out the plane window. We had good luck with the weather as the midwest was having unseasonably warm and snow-less weather.

Well the time has come to head home for the holidays. We leave Wednesday for a couple of weeks visiting the midwest. There probably won’t be any updates here until we get back to Ireland. Thanks so much for stopping in and keeping up with us. We appreciate all the emails we get, it helps us feel connected to those we’re far away from. We wish you all the best for the holiday season and the new year!

One of the great things about living in Ireland is the easy access it gives us to most of Europe. Flights to almost anywhere in western Europe can be had for less than $100, in many cases significantly less. Our first adventure to the continent to take advantage of this was a trip to Germany to visit an old friend of mine from Belmont. Jill grew up in the house next to me, and was always another big sister to me.

The weekend before Thanksgiving (that’s deer-season opening-weekend to you Wisconsinites) our friends John and Kat from Menomonie arrived in Cork for a week-long visit. Kat was here to do some training at Dunhill, and John tagged along to work on some business connections here for UW-Stout. It was good to have old friends around this week, as it’s usually a big family week for us - deer season with the Deery family, then off to Detroit for Thanksgiving with the Saura family.

In Ireland there is no Thanksgiving… Well okay, they may give thanks, but they haven’t built a ridiculous shopping holiday around it. Thankfully, they’re willing to celebrate it on our behalf. We had friends from the States visiting over the holiday week. Since they were here to work, Thanksgiving Day was a work day for all of us. But, Thanksgiving night we went out to dinner with the board of the Dunhill Multi-Education Centre, where Kathleen works.

Shortly after we got to Ireland, we of course began haunting the local library. On my first trip there, I found a great book called Working Towards Balance that explored the changes in Irish society due to the booming economy. Reading the book, I learned that it was actually a collection of the papers presented at an annual conference in Ennis, Ireland. The conference is put on by an organization called The Ceifin Centre.

On November 4, Connie Loden, from the Heart of Wisconsin Business and Economic Alliance in Wisconsin Rapids, arrived in Dublin with a group of people from the Wisconsin Rapids area. Their purpose was a tour of Ireland looking at regional branding and marketing initiatives in communities, and other types of small-community and rural-area economic development. I’ve known Connie for some time through my involvement with the Wisconsin Rural Leadership Program and Wisconsin Rural Partners.

We’ve been making the rounds doing a lot of sightseeing and Christmas shopping the past few weekends. As you might guess, the lovely old downtowns with so many historic buildings are quite lovely when decorated for Christmas. I’ve been doing a lot of night-shooting, and I can tell you walking the streets with a tripod after dark certainly attracts a lot of attention - see the drunk pic below. Many thanks to our friends John and Kat, who on their recent visit lugged my tripod over here so at least some of my Christmas pics wouldn’t be fuzzy.

I’ve heard from a number of folks that they’re eagerly awaiting updates to this site. My apologies, I’ve not been keeping up with it as well as I’d hoped. We’re spending so much time out doing things in our spare time that I’ve just not taken the time to write much (unless you’re a client reading this - in which case I’ve been so busy working on your stuff that I haven’t had time to write!

This past weekend, for an early Christmas present, I gave Kathleen a weekend getaway to Ennis in County Clare, in the west part of the country near Shannon. I had been to Ennis for a conference a few weeks ago, and knew Kathleen would enjoy wandering the town while we finished up our Christmas shopping. On the way to Ennis, we took a quick detour to the Cross of Spancilhill, the location immortalized in the old Irish song “Spancil Hill”, one of my favorites.

We’ve had some amazingly windy days here recently. Last Sunday we had some friends in from the U.S. and were touring down the coast during a windstorm - sustained gusts of 50-60 MPH. I shot a short video of the waves crashing on shore. You can play it below. It doesn’t really do it justice, but it’s kind of cool. Those are 50-foot cliffs the waves are blowing up and over.

This past weekend brought us a 3-day weekend because Halloween provides a bank holiday in Ireland. With our typical forethought, we made no plans and instead hopped in the car Saturday morning and headed to Galway, tourist Mecca of Ireland. It’s only 150 miles from Tramore to Galway, but given the Irish roads that’s nearly a 4-hour drive, though a very lovely one. We got to Galway and spent most of the day sightseeing before dropping in to a Failte Ireland office to check on accommodations.

A few weeks ago we headed to the Ring of Kerry on the southwest coast. We’d heard from several people, Irish and American, that this area is one of the most beautiful in Ireland, and they were right. We got pretty lucky with the weather and had sun for most of the day we were down there. However, we were a little early for the fall color, which was a little disappointing.

A couple of weeks ago we went down to Cork for the UCC graduation ceremony. A number of students who take classes at the Dunhill Multi-Education Centre, where Kathleen works, were graduating, so we tagged along to take pics. One of the grads was our friend Katherine, wife of Willie Moore, who is the board president of the organization Kathleen works for. Congratulations Katherine! After graduation we spent the day wandering around Cork, Ireland’s second largest city.

Well, we’ve survived Halloween in Ireland. We’ve learned that here in the land where they invented it, Halloween is a big deal! We were greatly disappointed to not have any trick-or-treaters stop. We saw very few out wandering around the neighborhood. The bigger thing here is to have fireworks and bonfires, so we did get to watch (illegal) fireworks all around the neighborhood for a good share of the night. This time of year there are lots of references to the ancient Celts floating around, and that’s intrigued me to do more reading about them.