Month: August 2016

Keizer Homegrown Theatre (KHT) present’s Anne Nelson’s, The Guys, a multi-layered portrait of the effects of devastating trauma and the slow re-emergence of hope as viewed through the lens of the World Trade Center bombings of September 11.

Directed by Artistic Director Linda Baker, seen last spring in her critically acclaimed performance of Sister Aloysius in KHT’s Doubt, The Guys shares the story of former war correspondent Joan, a character based on the author of the play, as she finds herself working unexpectedly with New York Fire Department Captain Nick Flannagan, a composite of the real men she interviewed for the script.

Nick struggles to integrate his grief over the loss of his own unit of firefighters, bodies forever missing inside the twin towers, having been asked to write the eulogies of those same men for their families. The play follows Joan and Nick over the course of one memorable afternoon as she helps him craft moving, realistic portrayals of the guys he lost.

Base on true events, The Guys brings humor and insight into this powerful tale of two wounded souls as they struggle to find their ways back into the light.

Award winning actress Nyla McCarthy,
freshly returned from her master class in acting at Oxford University, portrays Joan. Salem’s own Joe Bodkin, a veteran of many local productions and loved by those he has worked with, tackles the fire captain, Nick.

The Guys will play in a limited run at the Kroc Center, 1865 Bill Frey Drive, NE, Salem, on September 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, and 17, at 7:00 pm.

Note: a special matinee performance will be held at 4:00 pm on September 11, with a discussion between audience, cast and crew to follow. Local Fire Chief’s and First Responders will be in attendance. Refreshments will be served.

Tickets are available at the door.

With gratitude to all First Responders, they will be admitted two for one throughout the run.

Connemara ponies are beautiful creatures. Once wild, like our mustangs, and free ranging through the harsh mountains and moors of Connemara (hence their name) they were almost wiped out through cross breeding with Thoroughbreds and Warmbloods by breeders who admired their athleticism and jumping abilities but wanted taller “performance” horses. They are usually around 13 to 14 hands tall at the withers, which is perfect for the Irish countryside but not for artificial jumping landscapes.

It is believed that, also like our mustangs, they are descended from Spanish horses, probably Andalusians, which swam ashore when Spanish Galleons sunk just off the coast of Ireland. They are intelligent, strong, graceful, known for their kind personalities and have tremendous endurance.

Fortunately, the Connemara Pony Breeders Association was formed in 1923 to save the breed from extinction. Four year old mare nursing her foal. The filly will change colors and look like her mother in a couple of years.

These two mares live in the mountains of the Beara Peninsula, where I stayed in the bothy in the woods.
They belong to my hostess, Siobhan, who loves them and will train the babies herself. For the time being, she leaves them pretty much wild on the land. It was wonderful to hike the property down to the river and have these beautiful animals so close.

The foals are about three month’s old and just beginning to lose their baby coats.

practicing grooming skills is serious business

I loved this one whose mane is very much like my own.

Siobhan is a lucky woman.

“Why on earth would you choose that airline?” asked a skeptical friend when I mentioned that I’d booked my return flight from Dublin on Ethiopian Airlines.

I think I understand the unspoken racism of the comment so respond, “They just began offering non-stop flights from Dublin to Los Angeles. I like the idea of supporting a new operation. It will be an adventure.”

Oh, my Gawd, was it ever. And not one I recommend to anyone.

I’d first booked my return flight online in November, paying in full, with a return date of August 4th.

In January, I called them because I wanted to change my seat assignment to a window. First, the agent on the phone told me that they no longer had flights departing on August 4th from Dublin so he could not accommodate my request.

I politely expressed a bit of outrage about that fact. “What?! No one notified me about this. I wouldn’t have discovered it until I’d shown up at the gate. I can’t believe you didn’t send me an email about this.”

He didn’t apologize, just said, “What would you like to do?”

I asked, “So, when is the next possible flight?”

He told me August 5th, 5:30 am, then, “You need to be at the airport three hours before flight for check in.” in a stern voice.

“Okay. Please transfer my booking to that flight and let’s change my seat to a window.” I was being very patient.

Then, he told me I had to pay extra for for the seat change. I sighed. I pulled out my wallet and used the new credit card sent me by Bank of America following a security breach they’d experienced.

I paid the fee with my card. Same account, new card number. Remember this as it becomes key to the “adventure”.

Fast forward to August 5th.

I wake up at my hotel before 3:00 am, take a cab to the airport, and join the throngs queuing for service. There are only two gate agents and several hundred people. No wonder they say three hours.

I get to the gate, hand the agent my e-ticket and passport and place my luggage on the scale.

“Give my your credit card, please.” The woman says.

I’m a bit confused. No one has ever, in the history of my flying, asked me for a credit card when I’ve paid months in advance.

“I paid for this seat and the change months ago.” I say, handing her my card.

She takes it, looks at it, then says to me, “Please take your luggage off the scale and go wait over there.” She points to some vague area outside the queue.

“Can you tell me why?” I ask.

“Please move, madam. We have many people to serve. I will be back to you in a few minutes.”

She keeps my ticket, passport and credit card and I do as she tells me to.

Many minutes pass and I don’t see her doing anything but checking other people in. Finally, I walk over to her and say,
“Excuse me. Can you please tell me what is going on?”

The second agent, a man, joins her. They speak in a huddle for a couple of minutes and then the man says, “Madam, do you have the original credit card you used to pay for your ticket?”

“No.” I answer, then explain, “The bank issued me the one you have several months ago to replace it. It’s the same account, just a new card.”

“I’m sorry, Madam, but we cannot allow you to board if you can not present us with the original card.”

Now I’m getting upset but I don’t raise my voice, just speak a bit more firmly.

“The bank issued me this card. It’s the one I travel with. (professional card stand in)
I paid for this ticket months ago. You have my ticket, you have my passport, which proves I am me, here’s my international driver’s license, another photo I.D. proving who I am. There should be no problem.”

He is firm and not very friendly. “We cannot let you board. Please move out of the way.”

“I’m going to call my bank and let you speak to them.” I say. “I have a ticket and I need to fly home today. Please give me back my card, the number is on it.”

They do and I call the bank. It has become a scene from a bad movie.

The bank representative spends more than an hour on the phone with the male Ethiopian desk agent, his supervisor, and me. At one point the desk agent hands me the phone and the bank rep says to me, “Don’t worry, Nyla. I’m not going to leave you stranded there. I have to put you on hold but I promise I’ll be back. They want me to send a fax with the two credit card numbers and an explanation. I’ve never heard of such a thing but I am happy to help you get out of there.”

After about ten minutes of hold time, she comes back on and asks, “Did they receive it?”

They, meanwhile, have drifted off and are not to be seen.
(This is NOT the service I received nor did I see anyone else receiving it)

The queue is gone and I am alone.

I run around, find the man, he denies having received the fax. She sends it again.

Meanwhile, the woman comes back and the two of them begin shutting down the desks and packing things away.

They deny receiving the second copy, say to me, “I understand this must be frustrating to you, but this is our policy. You will not be able to board the flight.”

Sunrise flight departing. Nyla is not aboard.

And they walk away with no further comment or help.
I am left there, alone, in Dublin terminal one, with my luggage and no way home.

Thank you, Ethiopian Airlines. You have failed another customer.

The Hill of Uisneach has been known as the “sacred center, or naval” of Ireland since long before written history. It is the geographic location where the five ancient kingdoms of Ulster, Munster, Leinster, Connacht and Mide come together.

Mide is an interesting one because while the other four refer to areas which have always been known as geographical boundaries (which still exist in most Irish people’s minds), Mide was the center, a thin place where the other four conjoined, a place of the magical otherworld, of which the Cat’s Stone, Ail na Míreann, served as the entry point.
Ail na Mireann, the Cat’s Stone

Mide was the most powerful place in Ireland, the place where the Druid’s worshipped. It is believed to be the birthplace of E’riu, the Goddess after whom the Milesians named Ireland.
E’riu was the Mother Goddess of the land; the rocks formed her bones, the earth her flesh, the rivers her veins. She is said to be sleeping under the Catstone now and for all time.

We usually think of Tara as the heart of Ireland and in practical ways it was. Tara is where the kings were crowned, where the royalty ruled. The Hill of Uisneach, on the other hand, is where the very first twin fires of Beltaine were lit and where daily rituals of great magic and divination were performed. The huge bonfires, visible all across the island, continue every May 1st. They were said to be the eyes of E’riu as she watches over the land.

In the old days, People drove their wealth, which was measured by the numbers of their cattle, to Uisneach so that the animals would be purified by the smoke from the fires and then they would take an ember from the bonfires home with them so that they could start their own hearth fires to welcome in the summer, thus receiving blessings from the Goddess E’riu herself.

Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of a roadway which links Tara and the Hill of Uisneach together, as well as tunnels and ring forts suggesting centers of learning, thus lending credence to both the mythological and historical stories about the site.

Ptolemy wrote about the Hill of Uisneach in AD82, though he incorrectly identified its name as Raiba. Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote that the stones of Stonehenge were brought to Britain from Uisneach. It is said that the God Lugh, who gave rise to harvest celebration Lughnasadh, was drowned in a lake on the Hill and rests beneath an adjoining tumulus. The lake is named after him to this day.

The Goddess Brigid, “the bright one”, was also originally worshipped on the Hill of Uisneach.

The ‘Good God’ Dagda is said to have lived there, too. He stabled his solar horses there. Two souterrains have been discovered under Uisneach, inside a wheel shaped enclosure. One of these ‘caves’ is in the shape of a mare pursued by a galloping stallion. I find it very interesting that horse deities have always been associated with the hill.

In 1111 AD, a synod of bishops and clegry was held at Uisneach to begin the work of dividing Ireland into Dioceses. The take over by the Church had begun. However, as late as the 1600’s, the people of County Westmeath still referred to themselves at ‘people of the old kingdom’ (of Mide, which is Uisneach).

Fun facts: James Joyce visited Uisneach while he was working in Mullingar in 1900 – 1901, after which, Uisneach was mentioned in ‘Finnegans wake’.

And in the late 1920’s the great Irish statesman, Eamonn de Velera, addressed a rally of thousands and thousands of people on the Hill, an event which many believe contributed to the success of the Independence movement and the existence of the free Republic of Ireland today.

Of course I had to go to the hill, only to discover that access is now controlled by a corporation created to develop it into a major tourist attraction, (Crowd gathered for the Festival of the Fires, Beltaine)

which is what has happened with access to Newgrange. A large parking lot has been laid, which bodes ill for this important sacred site.

At least they have openly acknowledged the Druidic and ritual aspects of the Hill. They continue to hold the annual Beltaine festival, though now there is an admission fee.

A subject many find difficult to discuss, and which some women will get downright emotional about, is that of our continuing role
as breeders.

In Ireland this has been particularly apparent to me. As I have travelled around this country for five weeks I have met and seen so many amazing women. Strong women.

Beautiful women.

Adventurous women.
Kind women.

Additionally, I have met a fair share of professional women. Executives running their own international businesses, career artists making a living from their creativity, women in broadcast media, women in the tech industry, health care professionals, even a couple of talented architects.

Yet many of them shared the pressure they feel to be a “successful” woman while also being a “super mommy”. This is not new, I know that. I felt those same pressures myself. In the 1980’s. However, I thought we’d somehow gone beyond all that.

Yet here they are, shining women, possibly talking on cell phones, pushing prams, riding herd over two or three other young ones, questioning themselves: “To breed or not to breed? Is that is where our worth still lies”.


Ireland, long anxious about what they call their “brain drain” (the term used to represent the numbers of young, educated people choosing to leave Ireland to live and work in other countries), might want to transform some of that anxiety into educating and supporting its women, professional or not, who feel the pressure to pump out babies as if there is no such thing as global resource depletion.

Yes, I understand that men are part of the equation. I also fully get that this problem is not unique to Ireland. We have plenty of women running the same sad path in the U.S.

However, Ireland tops all other EU countries for birth rate with an average of 3 babies per woman, married or not. 1/3 of those babies are now being born to women who are single.

As a single mother myself for a number of years, I commend these women’s commitment and courage. It is damn hard work.

Still, while the average may be “3 babies per woman” (yes, I did see a lot with that exact number), there are definitely sisters who are going well beyond.

Many of the people I spoke with blame it on the Catholic church and it’s outmoded values around birth control. Others blame the government for its Draconian laws around abortion. These things may be true, but ultimately, its the women themselves who are the ones making that choice to breed.

I suspect some of my readers are going to become angry with me over this post. I am sorry if you choose to become offended. However, my sentiments are not a secret and I am not going to keep quiet.

I think it is irresponsible, in this day and age, to choose to bear more than two children, the number required to keep growth balanced with the death rate, in the hope of slowing our world’s rampant overpopulation.

If you want more children, I support your thinking. There are hundreds of kids out there who need loving, safe families. You do not have to keep spinning your own genetic blueprint in order to have a large family. Foster or adopt. Everyone will be better off for it.

Okay. The next part: I understand the cultural and class issues connected to birth rates. I get that I hold this opinion from a position of privilege. It doesn’t matter. I feel strongly about this: our world’s resources simply cannot sustain this level of entitled breeding.

I am not anti-pregnancy. I say all of this as a woman who loved being pregnant. I remember my own times as a pregnant woman as being two of the most spiritual and magical times of my life. I loved my changing body. I delighted in the fact that I was creating beautiful, intelligent, amazing human beings.

I gave birth to my two at home, felt such peace while nursing them that I continued until each of them was nearly two, that they might receive full health benefits of mother’s milk. So I get it. It’s a beautiful feeling, unique to woman born women. Just limit it to twice, please. For everyone’s sake.

(Aware Irish woman with her two)

It’s just that these past weeks, seeing so many women, with so many children, as though they have no responsibility for the fate of the rest of human kind, has agitated my thinking.
Yes, Ireland is a female country. It has honored the Goddess for centuries.

But as I have listened to women’s doubts and anxieties about the issue of breeding versus developing a new identity for Irish women, it has made my heart ache.

Yes, my sisters, it is possible to have it all. But there is a price.

Do you really need to?

There is evidence that the harvesting and use of peat for fuel in Ireland has been going on for over a thousand years. Indeed, it is estimated that more than 16% of the island was originally bogland, which, in addition to turf, or peat, produces a habitat for a unique array of plants and animals. This includes Asphodel, Heathers, Deer Sedge, Purple Moor Grass,
(close up taken from the side of the road after I stumbled into the Midland bogs commercial harvesting area)

Cranberry
and an interesting little carnivorous plant, the Sundew,
which eats on the average, five insects per month.

Animal life includes the Irish Hare,

Dragon Flies, Spiders, Lizards, Bog Otters,

Frogs, and many varieties of Beetles and Moths.

I became interested in this and decided to educate myself when I found myself accidentally in the heartland of the midland bogs after taking back roads following a sunrise visit to Clonmacnoise in County Offaly and came upon this:

East side of the lane, commercial turf harvesting
(this photo, taken off the web captures the scope better than my humble pictures).
It felt like a wound in the earth, open and aching

Yet, simply looking across the road to the West side of the lane in its natural state, before harvesting (or, possibly after some reconstruction), yielded this:

A few miles further down the road, I came upon an area with a sign offering “peat plots for hire”. Here, people are harvesting turf in the more traditional manner, albeit at a much greedier scale

In “olden times”, it was common for families and individuals, even communities working together, to hand cut, turn, stack, dry and then carry their turf home for fuel. Hard work leading to a romanticized image of the rural Irish peasant

When the water content dries out of turf, what remains are very burnable, plant based, logs.

Sisters performing a critical service

Carrying the harvest home the “auld” way

The boglands existed in the public mind as a sort of symbol of poverty and barrenness. So, as early as the late 17th century, the government began to implement various schemes to reclaim the land: draining the water from it to make it more compatible to agriculture, then selling off the fertile acreage to monied agari-enterprises.

There are two main types of bog in Ireland: blanket bog, which is found in the uplands and throughout Western Ireland, where the rainfall is the highest

and raised bogs, which are formed out of lake basins and are found throughout the midland counties
in this image we can see just how deep the layers can be on a raised bog

Boglands are critical to the island’s biodiversity and they help alleviate the effects of climate change by locking away the carbon. In fact, bogland is a sort of proto-coal; always wet, it remains turf–if entirely dried out, the turf would turn into coal. However, this process takes thousands, possibly millions of years, and given Ireland’s bounteous rainfall, it has never happened.

It helps to think of bogland a a kind of giant sponge: it stores water and prevents flooding during heavy rains, then due to its high carbon content, it purifies the water which seeps through it and back into the water table. This is a very good thing.

But the survival of boglands, and with it, Ireland’s climate health, is in serious trouble.

Commercial harvesting of the blanket bogs has increased to an unsustainable level since the 1930’s, when the Irish Free Government formed what was originally known as the Turf Development Board. It later became Bord na Móna, the entity which now oversees marketing and “management” of the fragile boglands.

Presently, in addition to the mass selling of peat to the population for home heating purposes, there are several turf-fired electricity stations consuming over 3.8 million tonnes of milled peat supplied by Bord na Móna per year as part of the Irish energy plan. One of many of the peat fired electrical plants being subsidized across the island

It has been estimated by the Peatland Conservation Council that viable bogland had been reduced to just 6% since the advent of these giant truck harvesting schemes.
midland bog being raped for profit

In many of the central boglands, there are even train tracks and transport systems in place across the midland bogs to facilitate swifter transport of the highly valuable peat. Born na Mona approved

This should be of concern to everyone because Peat is the most expensive, as well as one of the least effective, fossil fuels out there. It adds twice as much greenhouse gas and CO2 to the atmosphere as natural gas. It costs more to produce electricity using peat than it yields in revenues.

In fact, the Bord na Mona has been subsidizing the production of electricity through peat fueled power plants to the tune of over 45 million Euro per year! This, just to break even. Imagine how many sustainable and environmentally friendly jobs could be created with that sum of money.

Given the politics involved and the pockets being lined, it will take the creation of an aggressive and creative social marketing strategy to inform Ireland’s citizens and change their fuel consumption practices if the bog lands are to be saved.
natural bogland, thanks to an organized conservation project

“Determined now her tomb to build,

Her ample skirt with stones she filled, 

And dropped a heap on Carnmore;
Then stepped one thousand yards, to Loar, 

And dropped another goodly heap; 

And then with one prodigious leap

Gained Carnbeg; and on its height

Displayed the wonders of her might.

And when approached death’s awful doom, 

Her chair was placed within the womb 

Of hills whose tops with heather bloom.”
Jonathan Swift, 1720

Like the better known Newgrange, Loughcrew (Sliabh na Caillíghe–The Hill of the Witch) is a passage tomb constructed in the Neolithic period, sometime before 4000 B.C.

More accurately, Loughcrew is a complex of passage tomb cemeteries, over 30 of them known, spread out over two miles of the Sliabh na Caillighe hills, making it the largest Neolithic necropolis in
Ireland.

Also like Newgrange, Knowth and Howth, the three better known sisters to the east, Loughcrew was created with precise attention to astronomical motion. However, unlike those sites which are aligned with the Winter and Summer solstice celebrating the return of the Sun (male light force), Loughcrew is aligned with sunrise of the Autumn and Spring Equinoxes-that day when lightness and darkness are in perfect harmony (the female light force). The exact religious significance has not been proven, but for centuries it has been believed that Sliabh na Caillighe is devoted to a female, matriarchal form of worship.

Legend states that Garavogue, a magical woman, was told that if she could succeed in dropping an apron full of stones on each of the three Loughcrew peaks, by jumping from one to the next, she would be given the rule of all of Ireland.

She gathered her magic and her stones and succeeded in dropping them on the first two peaks but then missed her landing on the third and fell to her death. To honor her, the giant stone seat,
or altar, on the side of what is now known as “Cairn T”, was constructed for her spirit to come, rest and survey the land that dwelt in her heart. This legend is given as explanation for the impressive group of 5000 year old passage tombs which are spread across the hills.

Jonathon Swift was so enamored of Irish folk tales and legends that he wrote the passage I used at introduction of this post to commemorate Garavogue’s epic actions.

It is thought that Garavogue may be yet another name for, or incarnation of, the Celtic Goddess Bui, the Cow Goddess, who is also associated with fertility and the River Boyne (where Newgrange, Knowth and Howth are located, some 40 miles east of the Sliabh na Caillighe hills).

She is also known as “the supernatural female wilderness Goddess”, or Earth Mother, who watches over the landscape. This provides another explanation for the existence of the Witch’s Seat at the Tomb. This seat, found only at Sliabh na Caillighe, is unique among the neolithic ruins of Ireland. It is 10 feet long, 6 feet high, and is estimated to weigh at least 10 tons. Legend states that a woman who sits in the Witch’s seat with pure intention will be granted one wish.
My wish was not for personal gain. I hope that counts.

It is interesting that the megalithic art found incised throughout the stones, both when entering
and when within the tombs themselves, has been interpreted as referencing more “feminine” objects: celestial stars, moons, Goddess deities, floral and plant shapes, patterns of chevrons, zigzags, and circles. This is in contrast to the art found at Newgrange, Howth and Knowth, which has been described as geometric and mathematical.

Most experts believe that the design elements of all megalithic art most likely comes from hallucinations.
It is well known that magic mushrooms and other hallucinatory plants were used in early religious practices, much as they are still used in authentic Shamanic societies.

It is also believed that the spiral motif, which occurs over and over again in megalithic art across multiple societies, may well represent a sacred vortex which facilitates travel between the different realms, or dimensions, of existence.

Most archaeologists agree that while the cairns of Loughcrew were definitely burial tombs, they also served as ritual, or religious, centers for their communities, for whom celestial motion was sacred.

Cairn T, known as “The Hag’s Cairn” (minimizing our magical woman by giving her one of the negative patriarchal names for a powerful aging woman), is the principal monument in the Loughcrew complex.

It is located at the summit of the Sliabh na Caillaghe hills, which is the highest point in County Meath. Its’ location gives it 360 degree views over 18 of Ireland’s counties, making it a powerful place to look over the lands.

The mound itself is 115 feet in diameter.
The passage from the entrance to the back stone of the inner chamber is almost 30 feet in length. At it’s “hotspot”, there is a cruciform with 10 foot ceilings where the inner chamber and the three side recesses all come together, each with its own corbel roofing.
This is both unique and very impressive. Even more impressive is that at sunrise on each of the equinoxes, the sun rises over the hills and shines directly through the entrance passage, to reflect on the ornately decorated altar/backstone within.

Cairn T was once known as “Carbane”, which means “white cairn”. This is because the cairn, like Newgrange, was once clad with white quartz, which would have caused the site to gleam and sparkle across the land.

The entire necropolis of Sliabh na Caillighe, with its 30 tombs, can be explored on foot over the course of a day or two.
It is thought that there were even more tombs in this location but that erosion, looting, and thoughtless development of the land accounts for the destruction of countless others.

There are ruins of six satellite chambered tombs on the main hill which I visited on the eve of Lughnasadh. None of these has been excavated or opened, making this hill a truly “thin” place for those willing to make the effort to visit it.