More cool stuff to report!

As usual, lots to report!  Today is a day off of sorts.  I went for a run in the Belfast Botanical Gardens this morning and then spent the late morning in the library at Queen's University.  I felt rather important as I had to get a key to the special collections section in order to get my hands on the original Field Day pamphlets.  I wasn't allowed to bring anything other than pencil and paper in with me, but I was allowed to make copies.  It is pretty unreal and fantastic that I'm here and get to actually hold these in my hands in their original form rather than just some excerpts in anthologies.  They aren't easy to come by in the States.  I decided to only make full copies of three of the pamphlets (there are about 15 or so total): "Civilians and Barbarians" by Seamus Deane, "Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature: Yeats and Decolonization" by Edward W. Said, and "Heroic Styles: the Tradition of an Idea" by Seamus Deane.  I also wrote down a number of titles I found on the shelves in the library that I hope I can find in the States -- as guests, we aren't allowed to actually check anything out of the library, but just having access to the shelves here feels like a god-send!  This next statement is going to make a few readers anxious and induce a few deep sighs, and trust me, it pains me to say it as well, but...I'd really love an MA in Irish Studies.  In fact, in many ways, I feel like so many of my courses and independent research within this MA in English degree actually fall into that category -- certainly this trip does.  I'll move on before I give anyone, including myself, a coronary though...
After the morning in the library, I arrived back at the Elms (where we are staying) in time to accompany the profs (we've swapped out John Day for both Dr. John Spencer of the Religious Studies Dept. and Dr. Andreas Sobisch, Director of the Center for Global Studies) to meet up with the famous folk singer, Tommy Sands, who is hoping to come to John Carroll this next year.  Tommy Sands is a well-known folk singer who also works towards peace & reconciliation -- he's good buds with Pete Seeger, if that helps give you some sense of him.  Here are two youtube clips of him (the woman with him is his daughter I believe - we met her just for a second):   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc9CM_qmf58&feature=related  and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVlIV9dqVXA  We met him at Belfast Cathedral where he is doing a free concert tonight and moved swiftly to Jim Hewitt's pub down the street.  He told some great stories and said two things that stuck out to me: "People don't have to shake hands if they can sing a song together" (this was in reference to a story about Gerry Adams and Jeffrey Donaldson -- more on him later) and "Here in Northern Ireland we have a problem for every solution, and now I think we might have a few solutions for some of the problems."  He and Raymond also had an interesting discussion about identifying as Northern Irish or as a Belfast man rather than as Irish or British, which may end up applying to some of my research/writing -- we'll see.  If he ends up coming to Cleveland, I'd love to bring some students to see him!

Yesterday morning, due to rain, we had to postpone our trip to Milltown Cemetery -- we'll be going on Monday instead.  But we went to the Ulster Museum instead.  A really nice museum with a mix of dinosaurs and paintings and the like.  In the afternoon we met with Bill Shaw over at the 174 Trust (http://www.174trust.org/v3/index.php).  Bill Shaw grew up a working class Protestant on Sandy Row, and says he didn't meet (as in truly meet and regularly interact with) a Catholic until he was 17, when he became friends with a man he worked with named Sean.  Bill now works through 174 Trust to try to get kids to make those connections earlier.  He told us at about 26 he had an evangelical conversion experience (he became a minister) and decided to work at a church in a Catholic area, which allowed his kids to have mixed friends in the 80s.  About his congregation, he said "Because I was challenged, I felt I was called to challenge them."  He spoke of stirring things up a bit when he gave a sermon about the Good Samaritan and substituted Gerry Adams and company in as the "bad guys" of the parable.  On May 1, 1998 --  three weeks after the Good Friday Agreement), Bill Shaw started working at 174 Trust.  Here are a couple of passages lifted from their website:
"Established in 1982 by a group of concerned Christians (including members of two local churches - Duncairn Presbyterian and Antrim Road Baptist), the Trust purchased premises at 174 Antrim Road. The Trust incorporated the address into its name since the physical location became the nucleus of work dedicated to tackling many of the problems confronting the local community.
The Trust soon opened the Salt Shaker Cafe and began addressing the real needs of those living in a materially and socially disadvantaged area. Our mission is to effect change in North Belfast by social action and community development so that North Belfast would become a place of co-operation, prosperity and hope."  
"The 174 Trust is a non-denominational Christian organisation that facilitates a variety of essential community projects in North Belfast. Located in the New Lodge community, the Trust offers opportunities and assistance to people of all ages. The 174 Trust is committed to a process of community development based on building relationships with local people, working together to identify and meet local needs.
Our value base - the heart of our work and witness - is the proclamation of the kingdom of God through demonstrating Christ's values in action."
Basically, as he said, the community tells the Trust what the needs of the community are, rather than the other way around, and the Trust offers its facilities in any way it can.  There is a pre-school there, there are AA meetings daily, there is a youth group/soccer league of sorts, etc.  It's a non-denominational outfit, but he talked about how suspicious the neighbors were when he first arrived and how his own perceptions were altered by the regular presence of a particular nun.  Now, he says he is a Christian, but doesn't seem to identify himself as a Protestant minister anymore -- I couldn't quite tell.  The place is doing great work, which is becoming a theme of the trip -- places and people who are slowly but surely doing things at the community level to encourage peace. 
I've been particularly disturbed by two statistics while we've been here -- both of which were discussed at 174 Trust.  There is an incredibly high suicide rate among males aged 16-24 (the age of combatants during the Troubles) and many also drop out of school not being able to read or write.  I've heard more than one man say that when he left school he could not read or write and it took some outside organization to teach him how.  Bill Shaw also told us that drug use skyrocketed after the Troubles because the paramilitaries actually used to keep drugs out of the neighborhoods.  One surprising thing (for me at least) has been the link between these things and the (scary as it is) sense of identity that young men used to get (or in some cases still get) from being a part of the paramilitary organizations.  Again, one big difference I've learned is the lack of emphasis on education for the loyalist communities versus the Republican ones.  The Republican community knew the only way it could get employment was through betterment through education while the loyalist communities could always count on there being dock and factory jobs for them...now, with the recession, those jobs no longer exist. 
After meeting with Bill Shaw, we hurried back to Elms where we met with a member of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Right Honourable Jeffrey Donaldson, MP, DUP Privy Councillor.  Apparently the last time some of the professors met with him here, he was much more hard-edged on his politics, and they were delightfully shocked at how much he has "moderated" his position and strategies.  He did still say he is a member of the Orange Order though, but he was once a member of the Ulster Defense Regiment.  Donaldson said a lot of really wise things, I thought, and I was struck by how much he emphasized that everyone now is doing what they can to make things as good and stable as possible for the benefit of the next generation.  He actually said "it's a settlement for the next generation...whatever the next generation decides to do I can't say."  He basically said that there is a need to build on common ground (a desire for peace, to end conflict, and remove violence), rather than focusing on differences; more or less "we've agreed to disagree," which is actually a step forward.  One of the things he marked as common ground is a common humanity, noting "grief and pain are something that we share."  This, he said, is what helped moderate his view.  He talked about how in war you have to dehumanize your enemy, so then part of the peace & reconciliation process is about re-humanizing others.  He also spoke of the need to accept that people can't go back in time and change who they are or what they've done but that you can make sure that people make positive contributions to society as they are now.  Part of this also relies on the need to admit collective failure; that you can't come down fully on one side in terms of who's to blame.  One of the main stumbling blocks within the peace process, he said, is that "we haven't figured out how to deal with the legacy of the past."  There are 3,000 unsolved murders, but in regards to a truth-telling mission, he remarked "you can't guarantee the truth," adding "Are we going to get justice for all the people?  No, we're not.  We're just not and that's the reality."  I was really enthralled (though I haven't yet decided if I'm convinced...I'm really not sure) by his philosophy on dealing with re-opening cases and seeking truth-telling justice for victims.  He said, "If you pick the scab and open up the wound again will that bring more healing or will the wound get infected?"  He told us that he'd seen families come out on the other side of a re-investigation even more wounded than before, but I can't help but think that the scab analogy he used is a big part of what contributes to the culture of silence that, I believe, is debilitating for people and a source of further trauma.  When we talked a bit more about this as a group, it was noted that the process of telling is beneficial for the victims but maybe not forward motion for the perpetrator...I just don't know.  Regardless, Donaldson said that he thinks individual truth-telling justice of the kind we discussed can hold back society from progression and is incredibly financially costly.  He's certainly right about the finances, and Eavan Boland has some great poems that seem to question whether or not the act of "remembering" is cathartic or a sort of frozen trauma.  For example, he said the money would perhaps be better spent on programs that show the young people of Belfast and the North that there are positive things for them in the community, encouraging them to stay here and thrive.  He did also remark that "peace can't just be the absence of violence...we need to educate the next generation about the consequences of failing to find a way to live together peacefully...We want to get to a place where even if you are offended by something [*we were talking about the parades*], you turn the other cheek because that's called tolerance."  All in all a very interesting guy who seemed both down-to-earth and practical...both of which seemed to surprise those who met him a few years back as I said.

One thing that still makes me ponder on a daily basis even as we hear about all of this progress, and which one of the undergrad guys keeps bringing up, is the notion that the Republicans haven't yet achieved their goal (one united Ireland), while it makes perfect sense for the Loyalists to be comfortable with the way things are now since the status-quo is essentially their goal (remaining a part of Britain).  We have talked with several members of both sides, and while ALL of them are happy with the peace (i.e. end to violence) that now exists and with the move, essentially, to dialogue, when you talk with the Republicans, they still say -- for the most part -- "I'm Irish," "This is Ireland," "when we have a united Ireland," etc..  I was surprised (sort of) to learn that nationalists are allowed to carry and travel with Irish passports while unionists carry and travel with British ones.  There is also no Northern Irish flag...just the Irish flag and the U.K. flag...They may not be fighting, and they may (thank God!) be able to now work together and enter into dialogue civilly even on the government level, yet it is clear that there is still a division and that one side (at least) is still waiting "to win" for lack of a better term...or that they at the very least aren't yet fully satisfied.  It's not clear how this is all going to pan out in future years -- some people we've met say there will be a united Ireland in their lifetime, some say in their children's lifetime, some say never -- but the peace, the state of non-violence perhaps, is in the hands of the next generation, and from what I've seen people are working hard to breed tolerance among its members.
Sidenote: had lunch with Andreas this afternoon and had a good talk about the art of and the importance of organizing educational international trips for students at both the high school and college level.

Below are some pictures from Thursday when we went to the Antrim Coast.      



Note: "barely 10,000"...barely!



Wednesday, June 15th





Me and Paedar Whelan

Today was a very interesting and diverse day.  We covered a lot of ground both literally and figuratively, and I enjoyed every minute of it.  We started the morning off with a walking tour: the first half directed by Coiste (http://www.coiste.ie/), a Republican group that runs political tours of the Falls Road area by ex-political prisoners, and the second half directed by Epic, the loyalist version that gives walking tours of the Shankill area.  I was particularly enthralled by the first tour because I managed to get a good amount of time walking one-on-one with our guide, Peadar Whelan, a former IRA man who was imprisoned with Bobby Sands, though he did not participate in the hunger strikes (I think he did do the dirty/no wash protest though).  The reason I found him most interesting is that he talked a great deal with me about my area of research and a lot of his educational background surprised me.  He is originally from Derry so I made a point of asking him if he had any opinion about Field Day, particularly Brian Friel and Seamus Deane.  He said that really he didn't know too much about them at the time because he was in jail when Field Day really started up but that the general sentiment was that what they were doing was positive in terms of reviving culture.  As he asked about what I was focusing my work on, I was really shocked -- though I probably shouldn't have been -- that many of the texts I've been reading in my research are ones he was reading in prison!  I guess it sort of makes sense, but I was caught a bit off guard thinking that my education is in line with a political prisoner's self-education.  It's unsettling to simultaneously understand and even sympathize with someone's or some group's ideology (in terms of anti-colonial theory in this case -- don't worry, I'm not a communist!) and be appalled by their past actions.  He said that most of the IRA prisoners spent their time earning degrees and reading the likes of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, liberation theology texts, Marx, and anti-colonial/post-colonial theory.  I'm not sure why while sitting on the couch in my living room reading articles about these guys through the lens of post-colonial/anti-colonial theory I never pictured them actually reading the same stuff, but we are finding that part of what has allowed former IRA guys to find their way into government positions (via Sinn Fein) is that they spent their prison time earning degrees in philosophy and the like and developing a huge ideology -- socialist in nature clearly (as he said to me at one point "when you are reading you'll find that really he [T.A. Jackson] is a communist, but it sounds better to say socialist"  haha!).  I told him I was looking forward to going to the Queen's library to find books that I can't get in the States and he recommended a few titles and names important to these guys for me to search for -- obviously many of them are very biased authors/titles and I'm taking these recommendations well aware of that, fear not!  Two that he pushed strongly are T.A. Jackson's Ireland Our Own (the title says it all) and the writings of James Connolly.  Many of the texts he spoke of to me were, as I said, anti-colonial in nature and largely about the oppressed in Africa.  One thing he stressed several times was that for him (and many of his peers), the struggle is purely a colonial thing; it is not about religion, and he said that if there is ever a united Ireland, the new structure will need to respect a total separation of church and state.  He also told me that his partner is a psycho-therapist and that she has studied trauma theory in conjunction with colonialism.  I kind of wish I had gotten to speak with her as well!  Though his tour (like the Epic tour) was blatantly one-sided, it was heartening to see the two different guides shake hands with a smile as we were passed off to the second half of the tour.  See picture:      



Lee and Paedar shake hands! Progress!

Sidenote: as we were walking around Falls Road, a car passed and the man behind the wheel waved at Paedar and gave him a thumbs up.  I said "You certainly are popular," and he laughed and replied "Actually, that's the head of Epic so you may meet him later!"  Another good sign towards peace, I say!
So we walked through the peace gate and found ourselves back at the major peace wall near Shankill Rd. with Lee as our new guide.  Lee -- who has 8 children ranging in age from 6 months to 14 years!  See, it's not just the Irish-Catholics, it's the British-Protestants too! -- is a former UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force -- a loyalist paramilitary group) member though he has never been a prisoner.  What a 180 this tour took when we switched hands!  Just as fervently as Paedar declared the UVF was working with the British Police during the Trouble, Lee swore that the UVF was/is completely independent of the British Police, saying the police beat up the Protestant Loyalists in Shankill too, not just the Irish Catholics.  Phil made some interesting comments later that helped put some things in perspective.  One question people were asking is why former IRA men are now seen in Stormont, while there seem to be virtually no former Protestant Loyalist paramilitary men in government positions.  Phil pointed out that while the mentality of the Republican side has been based on this overarching ideology and they worked towards degrees in prison, the sense on the Loyalist side of town seems much more working class/I just want to defend my neighborhood -- sort of a working class pride -- and that they didn't try as much to educate themselves in a larger ideology.  It's all very interesting stuff.
Lee was a member of the C-Division, a special or elite division of the UVF to which both his father and uncle belonged.  Here is a picture of their mural, honoring the five most respected men in the division:

It was quite an eye-opening experience to hear such vastly different versions of the same story back-to-back, as you realize just how strong the bias is on both, and yet so hopeful to see how the narrators of these different versions can now interact positively, especially individuals who have literally shot bullets at one another and would never think of shaking hands just a decade ago.   * I really hope I'm not coming across as too biased as well!*  I'll post more pictures from the tour at the end of the post.
After our walking tour, we met up with fellow JCU/Orientation Staff alum Rory O'Neil at the Peace Players International office (http://www.peaceplayersintl.org/locations/northern-ireland).  It was great to see him and even more fantastic to hear about the work he and the organization are doing.  Essentially, the premise of Peace Players International is to bring the children of divided communities together through sport (particularly basketball).  Here is a link to the first youtube video of three covering a presentation at the 2007 ESPY awards giving the Arthur Ashe Courage Award to the program -- it's really worth watching all three parts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6iMh7DPsV4  They actually talk about the two elementary schools on Ardoyne Rd. I mentioned yesterday (Holy Cross and Wheatfield), which Peace Players Organization members have successfully brought together through their program so that those kids who once had to have police between them on the way to school are now socializing happily.  They are really doing important and effective work.  They are really doing more than I can write about here, but I strongly encourage you to visit the website and learn more about all of their initiatives.  We are hoping to go help out at one of their tournaments next week and hope to see more of Rory while we are here as well. 
After Rory, we made the natural progression and had tea in the Lord Mayor's parlor.  :) 

In fact, here's a picture of me in the Lord Mayor's chair.  I didn't get to try on his 14 pound gold chain necklace, but I'll settle for this.  This mayor, Niall O Donnghaile, is the youngest in Belfast's history at 26 years old, and he's a member of Sinn Fein.  One of the more interesting things -- at least to us -- that he's done in his 3 weeks as mayor so far is to remove the pictures of the Queen Mother and Prince Charles from the parlor and replace them with a poster commemorating Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen's 1798 rebellion and a copy of the 1916 Irish Declaration of Independence.  He's also left two spots for Belfast minority groups to tell him what they would like to have hung honoring them.  He was very kind and presented our group with a gift plaque which will be hung up in the office of the Peace & Justice Department at John Carroll, and Phil gave him a nice JCU pen in return.  Here they are admiring their gifts:

Tomorrow we are off to the Antrim Coast to see the Giant's Causeway and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge and to tour the Bushmill's Distillery.  I probably won't post since I've already been to the Causeway and Rope Bridge with WRA students last March and since it's more of a tourist day than an education day.
Feeling Very Lucky to be Here,
Jeannie

Tuesday, June 14th

As promised here comes a long post, please stick with me.  I'll start by covering what we did yesterday and move chronologically right up through the run I took in the Belfast Botanical Gardens about an hour ago.  I already feel like I'm overflowing with experiences and things I want to say/report, so I acknowledge that covering two days in one post may be a bit much -- apologies in advance.  I also apologize that in order to not truly take up hours of your time, I'm going to assume my readers have a general knowledge of Irish history, politics, and the Troubles to a certain extent.  So here goes...
Yesterday morning, our guide of sorts -- Raymond Lennon, who is associated with the Clonard Monastery (more on that later) where he plays the organ -- took us on a mini-bus tour of the areas most heavily involved in the Troubles (with the exception of Derry which we will journey to later in the trip).  I had seen the murals spread throughout the city from afar when here with students in March of 2009, but we essentially atop a mountain looking down on the city as opposed to actually touring through the streets.  This time, thankfully, we were right there weaving our way through the remarkably segregated neighborhoods.  First we'd be in a Catholic neighborhood and 50 yards later we'd be in a Protestant neighborhood; not a big deal for us Americans, but as Raymond said, if a local strolled into the wrong neighborhood absentmindedly (hard to do as flags and murals mark the territories fiercely) he/she very seriously risked (and still risks, though much less often) disappearing forever.  Just recently the body of a woman (mother of 13 whose husband had already died) who had been dragged from her home by the IRA on suspicions that she was an informer was found buried 50 miles away on the beach... She disappeared (I acknowledge this is somewhat of a tangent as she didn't wander into the wrong neighborhood -- I'm already full of too many stories) over 40 years ago.  When we Americans think of segregation, I think we automatically think of black/white, the civil rights movement in the 1960's, and some of that sort of thinking still does exist, not just in the segregated neighborhoods -- there are actually swimming pools for Catholics and swimming pools for Protestants because the government knows if they built one to be shared neither community would use it.  One thing that really struck me was seeing two elementary schools directly across the street from one another -- one Catholic, one Protestant.  The Catholic elementary school had massive metal shutters on all the windows that have to be shut every evening when the school closes in order to avoid having the building burnt down, and a vandal had spray-painted "UVF" (Ulster Volunteer Force) on the building.  Across the street, the Protestant elementary school stood -- much shinier -- with no shutters at all.  The two schools are in a predominantly Protestant neighborhood.  Raymond told us a story that happened close to "marching season" -- which is fast approaching.  In preparation for an upcoming Orange (i.e. Protestant) parade, a Protestant man in the area was hanging a Unionist flag (probably the British flag) and one of his Catholic neighbors made a comment along the lines of "Soon you won't be allowed to hang that flag anymore" -- next thing you know, the Protestant and his fellow Protestant neighbors decided that they didn't want the Catholic families walking their children to school down their street anymore and for weeks hundreds of police officers had to line shoulder to shoulder down the middle of the street as a barrier as the children and their parents walked to school.  Earlier in the bus tour, we passed an elementary school that still had huge bullet holes in the exterior walls.  Perhaps the children weren't doing the fighting in the Troubles, but it's easy to see how those who were children at the time and even in recent years come to grow up with such divided viewpoints.

Fences.  There are walls and fences everywhere.  Around the police headquarters, around schools, around whole neighborhoods.  At some spots, you actually have to pass through a gated border to get from a Catholic neighborhood into a Protestant one, and the gates are shut at dark.  Obviously, things have changed greatly since the signing of the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998, but there are more "peace walls" in Belfast now than there were before the peace agreement.  It seems that "peace" very much means diminished violence, but there is still a long way to go in terms of integrating these communities.  This morning Minister Attwood (SDLP) said to us: "What we are doing now is a good start, but we are no where near the end," and this is visually evident in the city.  Peace walls are built between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods to separate the communities in order to enable peace...it takes a concrete wall it seems.  The most impressive (though that seems a much too positive word) is the peace wall we visited yesterday.  It appears to go on for miles and has actually gotten higher twice to stop things (such as petrol bombs) from being thrown over to the other side.  The first wall is concrete, atop that was added a metal wall, and atop that was added a chain link fence.  People from all over have come to graffiti and write peaceful sentiments on the wall, and Raymond told us there has been talk by some of wanting to put windows into the wall as a show of progress in the peace process.

Driving and walking through Falls Road, Sandy Row, Shankill, etc. yesterday was important but sad for me, even though I know the violence has decreased tremendously.  It seemed that we were told several times in the first 24 hours "we have a great peace here now," but all morning as I looked around, I kept thinking "This is what peace looks like?"  I guess it is more peaceful...and as we also keep hearing, "it's a process." 

That being said, it was a welcome shift to visit Clonard Monastery in the afternoon, where we met with Ed Peterson, who I will discuss in a moment.  First, some important information about the role of Clonard Monastery in the peace process.  This is where Gerry Adams always attended mass (he's now found his way into the Dublin government). Fr. Al Reid of Clonard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Reid) had a hand in arranging secret meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume by sneaking John Hume in the front door of the monastery while Gerry Adams slipped in the back -- they could not be seen entering the same establishment together or risk losing credibility with their supporters.  It was in Clonard -- in Room 007 no less -- that these secret peace talks took place and where Adams and Humes wrote the six points that would eventually give shape to the Good Friday Agreement.  And it is in Room 007 that we met with Ed Peterson who works at Clonard in peace and reconciliation efforts.  He spoke mainly of their efforts with Unity Pilgrimages, which involves a group of Catholics joining "our Protestant brothers and sisters" (a refreshing thing to hear someone say at the end of yesterday!) at their Sunday worship services.  His comments and the group's perspective were a hopeful sign of progress and optimism, despite the many Eucharistic issues, etc. he says they still try to work through.  The persepective of the pilgrims and the program is that "the way towards peace is through becoming friends with one another," and they strive for "Christian unity" in Northern Ireland.  They now cycle through four different worship services in a joint worship service as well; the cycle goes through Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Church of Ireland, so that they can worship together and sort of take turns with Eucharistic practice.  To go from such violent images in the morning to such a calm, gentle, inspired man in the afternoon left me with a sense of hope in the air.
Then last night Phil Metres (English/Creative Writing Prof. at JCU), John Day (Academic Vice President of JCU), Rich Clark (Sociology Prof. at JCU), and Mim Conway, who I was in a Contemporary Irish Fiction course with in the fall, all went to a reading by the writers of Queen's University's Seamus Heaney Center, which marked the opening of the Belfast Book Festival.  We saw readings and music by Ciaran Carson (and his wife), Medbh McGuckian, Glenn Patterson, and Padraigin Ni Uallachain.  We then went for a pint with Don Bogan (and his wife), who teaches in the Creative Writing program at the University of Cincinnati but has a Fulbright position here at Queen's for the semester.  By the way, I've been able to find some great material at the University bookstore that I can't find in the States, and I'm eager to get into the library later this week to search for Field Day pamphlets!
All in all, a busy but eventful first full day.

Are you still with me?

Now for today!

Today we spent all of our time together at Stormont, the center of government here in Belfast/Northern Ireland.  A magnificent building, and as Raymond and Phil pointed out, it was amazing to sit in the legislative assembly and watch two sides of the room talk respectfully (and even share a chuckle at one point) when just ten years ago they would have been shooting at each other.
The first person we met with was Minister Alex Attwood of the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) -- the more moderate Irish Nationalist group, though he did refer to himself as a Republican (slightly more radical term than Nationalist) -- sidenote: Raymond has a rather funny story about being in Hudson (yes Hudson, OH! He has worked with Walsh in the past) and meeting a woman during Bush's last campaign who expressed jealousy when a bit in jest he told her that the Irish Republicans have their own army (meaning the IRA).  Minister Attwood talked mostly about John Hume (SDLP is his party) and referenced his admiration for Bobby Kennedy often.  He expressed that the SDLP believes that you can only achieve peace through dialogue, but made a point to tell us he was not a pacifist.  That he believed an arms struggle can be legitimate but that it never has been in Ireland/Northern Ireland, that it has only been terror.  He really, as Phil pointed out, was speaking largely from just war theory.  He pointed out that though the IRA has always said they fight on behalf of the people, only 2-3% of the people support the IRA.  He also spoke admiringly of Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith because they "stopped when the price was too great," noting that Michael Collins recognized that there was too much suffering and that a compromise was a positive and preferable step to continued violence.  He also talked about how much British intelligence had infiltrated the IRA, leading up to the peace agreements at the end of the Troubles, and spoke very candidly about his belief that full truth about everything that has happened over the last 50 years will never come to light, saying "people don't want the truth to come out.  Really...Because the truth is so revolting," adding that individuals can't/won't admit to the atrocious things they did.  He thinks exposure would be too great and too personal for there to be some sort of truth recovery.  He also mentioned that politicians don't make decisions they think will be too upsetting to victims and that he thinks amnesty should be given to allow for truth-telling mechanisms but that amnesty doesn't extend to leaders of organizations. 
The big news around here right now seems to be that a woman (I think an IRA woman) who had been convicted and served time for murdering a young school teacher who was walking down the street with her father who was a judge (and I think the actual target) has now been appointed as an advisor to someone in Stormont (the arts & culture person), and people are outraged.  He mentioned her yet also noted that people from all parties spoke nicely publicly about the politician Brian Lennahan (sp?) who passed last week which is progress.  This woman is an interesting segue to the next person we met...
Even though we spent the least amount of time with him (we hope to have him come meet us at the university later in the trip), I was most...starstruck is an awful word for it, but perhaps the most accurate...with meeting this next person: Patrick Sheehan.  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/pat-sheehan-the-hunger-striker-who-gave-up-bombs-for-the-ballot-box-2174664.html 
Sheehan is a member of Sinn Fein (MLA -- Minister of Legislative Assembly) who took over for Gerry Adams when he switched to Dublin.  Perhaps more...impressively?....he was one of the hunger strikers in the H-Block alongside Bobby Sands.  He grew up in West Belfast as one of only three Catholic families in an all Protestant neighborhood and said that as he aged, his Protestant friends grew more and more distant.  He was attacked by Loyalist gangs several times, and his family finally picked up (over night) and moved to Falls Rd. when a man came knocking at his front door, asking his father if he could speak with Patrick.  His father delayed and the man eventually started shooting into the house -- though no one was harmed.  Shortly after moving to Falls Rd, Sheehan joined the youth division of the IRA and then, at 17, joined the IRA.  In 1979, he was sentenced for a bomb that went off in Belfast City Center, and it was in 1980, in the H-Block of Maze Prison, that he volunteered for the hunger strike movement led by Bobby Sands.  He replaced hunger striker Kieran Doherty (one of the ten Hunger Strike Martyrs) when he died.  Sheehan participated in the Hunger Strike starting on August 10, 1981 until it ended on October 3, 1981.  He told us that October 3rd was a Saturday and the Wednesday before, the doctors at the prison told him he had virtually no time left - he wasn't going to survive, as his liver had gone into failure.  He was down to 105 pounds.  Shockingly he has no ill health effects from it today.  He was released from prison in 1987, but was back in 1989 and sentenced to 24 years.  Then, in 1998, with the signing of the Good Friday Agreements, he was released again.  Then came Sinn Fein and now Stormont.  To see this man in a snappy suit with a bright purple tie, looking so official, one would never know he was an IRA gunman and a hunger striker, but he has done work with a political ex-prisoner group, peace groups, and outreach groups with unionists.  He said the film Hunger was incredibly accurate and like being transported back in time...very disturbing film, so perhaps part of the "starstruck" feeling comes from having watched that film and read about the events and then meeting one of "real people" who experienced it.  I'm ashamed to admit it, he was essentially a terrorist, but it's oddly hard not to be impressed by this man.  Phil referred to a weird "glamour" that seems to surround the IRA, and he's frighteningly right.  On one hand, I come from an Irish Catholic heritage and have spent a good amount of time exploring postcolonial theory and literature and therefore on some level understand or acknowledge the source of their anger, but at the same time I can not condone or respect (even if I can explain it with theory) the extreme and violent actions they have committed.  I guess that makes me a moderate nationalist?  Still...I got more excited to meet Sheehan than anyone else we met.  Fear not, lest you think I or this trip is seeming one-sided or biased.  We are meeting with Protestant DUP leaders soon as well!  It's an odd thing to be able to explain the thoughts, motivations and reactions of both sides to a certain degree, knowing that your heritage lies on one side -- that Irish Catholic guilt finds a way to creep in and you have to remind yourself to step back.   Ultimately though, perhaps that's exactly what the peace process is about.
Tomorrow we do a walking tour of the same areas from the first day, but we do one with a former IRA political prisoner and one with a former loyalist political prisoner.  Then we go meet Rory O'Neil, an old JCU Orientation Staff compadre, who is working with an organization called the Peace Players.
Slainte,
Jeannie

Here in Belfast!

Hello all!  I'm very happy to say I've been in Belfast for almost two days now and have already had enough experiences to make this trip more than worth it!  I'm going to keep this blog post brief as I'm still pretty tired, but I should have more time to write a substantial post tomorrow and promise to do so.  It's about 11:30 pm here right now, and I just got back from a reading by the writers of the Seamus Heaney Writing Center at Queens University Belfast that opened the Belfast Book Festival, which will be going on for the next several days.  I will write more in detail about this reading tomorrow.  Today we started with a great bus tour of loyalist and republican neighborhoods, murals, "peace walls," etc. (again, I promise more specifics and possibly pictures tomorrow), and in the afternoon we visited the Clonard Monastery, where the secret peace talks between Gerry Adams and John Hume took place.  In the very room they met (room 007...seriously!), we met with Mr. Ed Peterson, who leads Unity Pilgrimages and works on peace and reconciliation efforts there (and again, more tomorrow).  We've already heard many amazing stories and have a tremendous host in Raymond Lennon, a man who is a wealth of knowledge and seems to have infinite connections and know all the important people -- just the right sort of guide!  Tomorrow we are off to Stormont to meet with politicians from all sides.  We were supposed to meet with Martin McGuinness (former IRA Chief and now Deputy First Minister) , but there are rumors that he's been called away to Dublin for a funeral.  We shall see.  We are also supposed to meet with SDLP Minister of Environment, Alex Attwood.  Again, I apologize for not having the stamina for a longer post, but I promise a more detailed (perhaps excruciatingly so) update tomorrow in which I will cover today's adventures as well.  As I said, this has already been a fabulous experience! 
Cheers,
Jeannie   

Updated Itinerary

Got an updated itinerary yesterday!  Here it is:

Arrive on Sunday, June 12th

Monday, June 13th: Belfast Tour and Clonard Monastery

Tuesday, June 14th: Stormont
Visit to Stormont Assembly
Meet Sinn Fein (Member of the Legislative Assembly)
Meet former IRA chief and now deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness *
Meet DUP, SDLP, Alliance members

Wednesday, June 15th: Falls/Shankill Tour
Also meet up with Rory O'Neil (who served on Orientation Staff at JCU with me the summer of 2003) at his Peace Players office

Thursday, June 16th: Giant's Causeway, Carrick-a-Rede Ropebridge and Bushmills Distillery

Friday, June 17th: Milltown Cemetery and Bill Shaw (North Belfast Presbyterian Minister)

Saturday, June 18th -Sunday, June 19th: Free (possible trip to Mournes or Fermanagh Lakes)

Monday, June 20th: US Consul General of Northern Ireland

Tuesday, June 21st: Queens Lectures -- Dr. Dominic Bryan

Wednesday, June 22nd: PSNI (Policing)
Police Headquarters and meet Assistant Chief of Police, Gary White
Visit and patrol with Police in North Belfast
Baroness May Blood (Protestant Loyalist peacebuilder)

Thursday, June 23rd: Peace Players:
Peace Players Event -- Stranmillis University College -- Rory O'Neill
meet with Victims Groups

Friday, June 24th: Derry
Derry -- visit the Walled City
Bogside and Bloody Sunday Museum
Maybe go to Donegal

Saturday, June 25th -- free day in Belfast

Sunday, June 26th -- I head to Dublin


**Other things that may be fit into the schedule:
Glenn Jordan -- East Belfast Methodist Mission
Castlereagh Community Group
Relatives for Justice
Lord Mayor of Belfast Civic Recpetion
Visit with poet Sinead Morrissey

Only One More Week Until Departure!

I leave next Saturday, and thought I'd try to do one more update before I cross the pond.  Two days ago I finished reading Bernard McKenna's Rupture, Representation, and the Refashioning of Identity in Drama from the North of Ireland, 1969-1994.  I found it to be a really insightful and relevant book in regards to my research, perhaps the best one I've read yet as it takes the first step in discussing actual pieces of trauma theory criticism in conjunction with Northern Irish writing. 
While I'm not focusing solely on drama for my research/paper, I do intend to take the opportunity to catch some great theater (or "theatre" as they spell it over there) during my trip.  I currently have two shows lined up, though both will be during my Republic of Ireland leg of the trip as opposed to the Belfast portion.  Nonetheless, at least one of them is pertinent to my studies! 

I will be seeing a preview showing of Brian Friel’s amazing play Translations on June 27th.  Brian Friel, as I mentioned, is one of the writers I’m focusing my MA essay on, and Translations is probably my favorite (it’s at least in the top 3) of his plays both for its content and its structure.  I also teach this play in my senior elective: The Best Irish Poems & Plays (which I'll be teaching again in the fall).  Friel would tell you that the play is about language, and he’d probably stop there.  Yes, it’s a play about language, but it’s also full of postcolonial concerns.  The play is set in a hedge school in 1833— hedge schools were (mostly rural) illegal schools that carried out instruction in the Irish language after England outlawed the use of the native language.  It is also set in the midst of England’s great (as in large and extensive) “re-mapping” and “re-naming” of Ireland’s towns, roads, etc.; essentially the Anglicizing of Irish place names and boundaries (they took all the Irish names of rivers, towns, roads, and converted them into more English-sounding names).  This was known as the Ordnance Survey.
Now, the really cool thing structurally is that while all of the actors deliver their lines in English, over half the characters are supposedly speaking Irish.  In other words, half the characters only know Irish and the audience is to understand that Irish is the language they are speaking, when – in reality (and here is Friel’s point, as virtually no one in the audience now knows the Irish language) – the actors are speaking English.  For instance, though we, the audience, understand both sides of a dialogue between an English-speaking character and an Irish-speaking character, the characters will interact as though they do not understand one another.  It’s all very postmodern and delicious.  I'll be seeing the play at the very famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin – famous, of course, for its role in the Irish Literary Revival/Dramatic Revival courtesy of W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory (and J.M. Synge, etc.).
The other very exciting theatrical experience I will have will be on the opening night of the Galway Arts Festival, July 11th.  I will be seeing Misterman by Enda Walsh, and not only will Enda Walsh be directing it, but the strikingly blue-eyed and divine Cillian Murphy (you may recall him from the films The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Inception, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, among others) will be starring in it!  And yes, you better believe I’ll be there opening night.
Thanks for reading and check back again after June 11th!
Jeannie 

Readings in Prep for my MA essay

Record of Reading for MA Essay:

Main Texts to be Discussed:

n      Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane

n      Freedom of the City by Brian Friel

n      Potentially some Seamus Heaney poems and/or another Friel play

Already Read:

n      portions of Brian Friel, Ireland, and The North by Scott Boltwood

n      “The Orange Idealist” by Robert Lynd

n      “Guest of the Nation” by Frank O’Connor

n      “Changing History – Peace Building in Northern Ireland” by Mari Fitzduff

n      “Reconciliation and the Politics of Forgiveness” from The Ambivalence of the Sacred: Religion, Violence, and Reconciliation by R. Scott Appleby

n      The Cambridge Companion to Brian Friel – Edited by Anthony Roche

n      “Joycean Epiphany in Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark” by Dermot Kelly

n      “Symptom and Fantasy in Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark” by Conor Carville

n      “Reading in the Light of Reading in the Dark” by Eoin Flannery

n      “What I’ve Learned from Seamus Heaney” by Olivia O’Leary

Former reading that will likely be helpful (need to review each one):

n      “The Social Structure of the Irish Republican Army, 1916-1923” by Peter Hart

n      “Language, Myth, and History in the Later Plays of Brian Friel” by F.C. McGrath

n      “Carrying Across into Silence: Brian Friel’s Translations” by Suzy Clarkson Holstein

n      “Molly Astray: Revisioning Ireland in Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney” by Karen M. Moloney

n      “The Indignant Sublime: Specters of Irish Hunger” by David Lloyd

n      “’Outside of here it’s death’: Co-Dependency and the Ghosts of Decolonization in Beckett’s Endgame” by Nels C. Pearson

n      “Scare More a Corpse: Famine Memory and Representations of the Gothic in Ulysses” by James R. Wurtz

n      “Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice” by George Sweeney

n      “Strategies of Silence: Colonial Strains in Short Stories of the Troubles” by Ronan McDonald

n      “The Truth-Tellers of William Trevor” by Julian Gitzen

n      “William Trevor’s Martyrs for Truth” by Richard Bonaccorso

n      “Review: Postcolonial Poet” by Priscilla Long (review of Eavan Boland’s The Lost Land)

n      “’We Were Never on the Scene of the Crime’: Eavan Boland’s Repossession of History” by Patricia L. Hagan and Thomas W. Zelman

n      “Eavan Boland and the Politics of Authority in Irish Poetry” by Catriona Clutterbuck

n      “Decolonizing Rosaleen: Some Feminist, Nationalist, and Postcolonialist Discourses in Irish Studies” by Kim McMullen

n      “Colonialism and the Problem of Identity in Irish Literature” by Patrick Colm Hogan

n      “Between Speech and Silence: The Postcolonial Critic and the Idea of Emancipation” by Paul Muldoon

To Be Read and/or Currently Reading (as of 5/23/11…may alter):

n      Writing History, Writing Trauma by Dominick LaCapra

n      Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History by Cathy Caruth

n      Works by Dori Laub and Shoshana Feldman

n      Excerpts from The Diviner: The Art of Brian Friel by Richard Pine

n      Actign Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre Company and Irish Cultural Politics, 1980-1984 by Marilynn J. Richtarik

n      “Justpeace” by John Paul Lederach

n      “The Meaning of Reconciliation” by Hizkias Assefa

n      Excerpts from Brian Friel in Conversation Edited by Paul Delaney

n      Excerpts from Irish Literature since 1990: Diverse Voices Edited by Scott Brewster and Michael Parker

n      “Catholic and Protestant Literary Visions of ‘Ulster’: Now You See It, Now You Don’t” by Norman Vance

n      “Irish Studies and the Adequacy of Theory: The Case of Brian Friel” by Shaun Richards

n      Excerpts from Brian Friel: Essays, Diaries, Interviews: 1964-1999 Edited by Christopher Murray

n      Rupture, Representation, and the Refashioning of Identity in Drama from the North of Ireland, 1969-1994 by Bernard McKenna

n      Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790 by Seamus Deane

n      Brian Friel’s (Post)Colonial Drama: Language, Illusion, and Politics by F.C. McGrath

n      “British Romans and Irish Carthaginians: Anticolonial Metaphor in Heaney, Friel, and McGuinness” by Elizabeth Butler Cullingford

n      “Territory and People or People and Territory? Thoughts on Postcolonial Self-Determination” by David B. Knight

n      “Globalization and Culture: Placing Ireland” by G. Honor Fagan

n      “Irish Women in London: National or Hybrid Diasporic Identities?” by Breda Gray

n      “New Ireland/Hidden Ireland: Reading Recent Irish Fiction” by Kim McMullen

n      “An Interview with Seamus Deane: University College, Dublin, June 1993” by Dympna Callaghan and Seamus Deane

n      “Review: Literature, Nationalism and the Challenge of Representation” by Catherine Frost (a review of Joe Cleary’s Literature, Partition and the Nation State: Culture and Conflict in Ireland, Israel and Palestine)

n      “Varieties of Irishness?: Some New Explanations” by Paul Bew

n      “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” by Kwame Anthony Appiah

n      Excerpts from The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama Edited by Shaun Richards

n      Excerpts from The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies Edited by Neil Lazarus

Still need to find and/or print:

n      “Nationalisms Against the State” by David Lloyd

n      “Regarding Ireland in a Postcolonial Frame” by David Lloyd

n      Banal Nationalism by Michael Billig

n      “Joyce and Nationalism” by Seamus Deane

n      “We Are All Revisionists Now” by Roy Foster

n      “Yeats and Decolonization” by Edward Said (may have in office…?)

n      Making History by Brian Friel

n      “Translating History: Brian Friel and the Irish Past” by Sean Connolly

n      “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” by Frantz Fanon

n      “Brian Friel: The Double Stage” by Seamus Deane

n      “Historical Actuality” by Elizabeth Winkler

n      “Forms of Redress” by Michael Parker

n      “Hegemonic Discourses” by Helen Fulton

n      ** The Location of Culture by Homi Bhabha

n      * Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland Since 1965: Moments of Danger by Richard Kirkland

n      ** “Field Day Five Years On” by John Gray

Other Potential Reference Texts:

n      Principles of Freedom by Terrence J. MacSwiney

n      A Popular History of Ireland by Thomas D’Arcy Mcgee

n      Northern Ireland: A Very Short History by Marc Mulholland

n      Ireland Since Parnell by D.D. Sheehan

n      Ireland in Conflict: 1922-1998 by T.G. Fraser

n      Home Rule by Harold Spender

n      “An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland” by Henry Brooke

n      Irish Writing in the Twentieth-Century Edited by Pierce

n      Inventing Ireland by Declan Kiberd

Films:

n      The Wind that Shakes the Barley

n      Omagh

n      Hunger

n      Five Minutes of Heaven

n      In the Name of the Father

n      Michael Collins

n      Bloody Sunday

* I also hope to be able to use audio recordings of various speakers/meetings during the trip as source material.  I plan to explore issues of Field Day at the Queens University, Belfast library, as well.