The real winter begins this month, the courgettes
in the garden are dying a slow death, the last outdoor green
tomatoes will soon be brought in to ripen or, in many cases,
go bad before they do (though fried green tomatoes are tasty
too, or a few sliced finely in salads). And work and other
routines gather even more pace. As I have said before, the
seasons now meet in our garden in way they didn't before global
warming took hold; our schizostylis (the politically incorrect
English language name, kaffir lily, indicates it comes from
South Africa) stopped flowering by late-November two decades
ago - now a few blooms straggle on well past Christmas to
meet the first of the croci/crocuses in the early spring.
The proof of global warming? It's here in our Belfast garden,
and a later first frost in the autumn/winter as well.
Into The Wes
So said the inscription on a pub gable wall as we were actually
leaving the west after an autumn/September break walking and
cycling in Galway and Mayo, though fortunately or unfortunately
Kerry made mayonnaise of Mayo in the all-Ireland Football
Final in September. Prior to this final, it was amazing to
see the 'green and red of Mayo' (cf Saw Doctors) on so many
houses or in so many gardens, and not just on houses but in
fields, on cars, you name it. We saw one old car decorated
in green and red squares, and another car that was red anyway
which had its tyres and hub caps painted green. The solidarity
even spread across into Roscommon where some near the border
with Mayo flew not only the Roscommon flag but Mayo's as well.
We got some wonderful autumn weather, as good
or possibly even better than much of August, and we were even
too warm with just one layer on top striding up mountains
and watching the wind whip up a wall of spray in a mountain
lake in front of cliffs two or three hundred metres high.
It's strange really. If you (for which read 'me') find yourself
in another country alone with nature, and nobody else around,
you marvel at it and your luck to be so alone. But in Ireland
you can often take it for granted - there were we on part
of the Western Way and there was nobody else around for at
least a mile or two (but plenty of sheep who in places, through
overgrazing for which humans can be blamed rather than the
sheep, some of the bog was degraded in a variety of ways).
It's an amazing feeling to commune with nature [you commune-ist
you - Ed]. And, bog degradation not excepted, it's easily
done in Ireland. Even beautiful beaches can be had to yourself
(but then I remember family summer holidays where the children
had all their wet weather gear on and were still cold - in
July).
We had cycled by Lough Mask before but this
time we cycled around it, maybe 70 - 75 kms, and it was very
enjoyable except for the part of about 11 kms going north
from Ballinrobe to Partry where for most of this distance
it is very busy and narrow and sometimes felt a bit scary
with the traffic zooming by. The only hilly part is on the
south west, which we took first, going anticlockwise, though
admittedly after that, moving towards Ballinrobe you are away
from the lough and cannot see it and are conscious of it only
as a gap in the mid distance (no hills, no structures visible
there). And staying on the west shore of Mask on a clear night
with a full moon was really magical, as was passing the shores
of the Corrib at Cornamona and when we stopped near Headfort,
admittedly on the previous moonlit night.
I can't remember if I'm told you about our 'Walk
one way' method to avoid having to do a loop when hill walking,
using both a car and bicycle(s), for this you would need both
[I think at this stage you've told us everything at least
once - Ed] [So you keep saying! - Billy]. First thing is to
choose your route carefully so that your points A (start)
and B (finish) are accessible by both car and bicycle. We
prefer to walk more uphill and cycle more downhill so we take
the bicycles in the car to the highest point (B, the walk
finish), leave the car, and cycle to A where we lock the bicycles
to an immovable object or well out of the way, and start our
walk to B. On arrival in B we pick up the car and then go
to get the bicycles, which, if carefully planned, can be on
the way home. It works well. If you take a swim while you're
at it I suppose you could have your own individual triathlon.
If you're into hill walking you can try it sometime though
if you have more than one car, or a non-walking driver, there
are various possibilities with that too. Of course with two
groups of cyclists (same numbers both ways!) you could also
do it by going on the same route from opposite ends and swapping
keys half way (but meeting each other is a necessity and needs
careful planning unless you have two sets of keys!) and then
taking a different bicycle 'home'.
Long division - divided education in the
North
There is a periodic defence of Catholic education
by leaders in the Catholic church and rejection that the Catholic
church education system is divisive. Bishop Patrick Walsh
gave just this defence in June (Irish News 16/6/06) when he
said "There are overtones in the word 'segregation' which
we in the Catholic sector find offensive." So what else
can we call the reality of divided education? Divisive? Apartheid?
Separate? Sectarian? 'Segregated' seems a mild term. But I
think it is important to remember that the division is two-sided;
if the Catholic church said 'yes' to integrated education,
you'd have many Prods running for the hills fast, i.e. they
would opt out. The segregated education system is sometimes
used as a stick to beat the Catholic church with, yes, that
is true, but both sides bear responsibility for the division.
Let's take a couple of cases. A bit over a decade
ago two of my children were walking into Belfast town centre,
aged around 9 and 11, to meet one of their parents there.
At an interface they were challenged to give what school they
attended. One was hit hard on the face by boys a few years
older, and they risked worse. The younger of my children there
gave his school name - which turned out to be a 'right' name
because it was Catholic and they were not attacked any more.
These were Catholic kids who had seen (my) younger kids emerge
from what is a Protestant area while they were en route through
to town. This was a clear case of Catholic sectarianism among
young teenagers.
Then in the early summer this year we had the
publicised case of a fifteen year old Protestant boy injured
while heading home on the bus after a GCSE exam in Glengormley.
He was set upon by a group of Catholic school students (without
any previous interaction and only knowing what school he was
from); the attacked boy's mother reckoned he could have been
killed and whether that is true he certainly risked serious
injury. He was saved by a 17 year old Catholic girl who intervened
and stopped the attack. She pushed the boys off and allowed
the attacked Protestant boy and his friends to escape. Maybe
the 'Catholic' school ethos had motivated the 17 year old
girl to intervene but it certainly did nothing for the Catholic
boys in the two cases mentioned. And these cases are not atypical.
Perhaps there is a special Catholic ethos in
school. Perhaps it does work for some schools students. The
Catholic primary school my children attended usually had a
very caring attitude, and it had a mixed social intake too,
but I could not say that the effect would have been any different
to a caring, state/Protestant school. However I would feel
that the overall effect of having a divided school system
is negative and far outweighs any positives that any special
segregated system can provide. If the kids mentioned above
had all gone to the same schools, or who had friends who went
to someone else's schools, they would surely think rather
harder about attacking someone for their religious label,
if they would think about it at all.
There is a danger in Northern Ireland that sectarianism
can be thought of only as a Protestant disease. This is dangerous
because it lets Catholics off the hook and removes the need
to look at Catholic prejudices. There is a difference, yes,
in that nationalist ideology is more inclusive ('if you're
not a unionist we expect you to identify with us') and left
of centre, in general. But racist attacks happen in Catholic
areas as well as Protestant areas, and Catholics can make
assumptions about what others believe which are far from the
truth, or not realise they are doing things which others find
objectionable or just insensitive. I have explored before
Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich's assertion that Protestant
sectarianism is religious and Catholic sectarianism political
(NN 134) and I don't want to go into that again, and there
certainly are differences in pattern, but living in Northern
Ireland makes dealing with sectarianism a fact of life - either
through being passively or actively sectarian, or in taking
a stand to be anti-sectarian.
Of course there are complexities to the situation
including ones of what education is about, class, commitment,
relationships, academic learning, leadership and cooperative
skills. Losing specifically Catholic schools would make religious
education and preparation for first communion and confirmation
more difficult for the Catholic church. It could (and can
in integrated schools) still be done in school by special
arrangement, while in Protestant churches preparation for
confirmation (which usually coincides with 'first communion')
takes place in Sunday Schools, i.e. outside of school hours.
The integrated education sector in Norn Iron
is only 5% of the total (admittedly grown from a formal 0%
twenty-five years ago) and it will be interesting to see what
happens in the future as school numbers decline and there
is more and more pressure on numbers, especially in a situation
with so many different kinds of schools (Protest/Catholic/integrated,
grammar (academic), secondary, and often boys/girls, as well
as a small but growing Irish language sector). Recently new
integrated schools have not received funding. How you move
from a segregated system that most people tend to support
in practice to integration is not easy but a much higher proportion
of parents support the idea of integrated education so that
can be built on. The fact that integrated schools are comprehensive
(all-ability) is also important to me in that they are integrated
on ability as well as religion - the 'middle classes' in Norn
Iron have had a bit of a backlash against the idea of doing
away with selection at age 11. But most children who currently
who pass the to-be-replaced-by-something-or-other 11+ exam
(that cruellest and most vile of exams, telling most children
at the age of 11 that they have 'failed') tend to go for the
'academic' option. There is also a small multi-denominational
school movement in the Republic.
The division in Northern Ireland is multi-faceted
and certainly not easy to disentangle. It would be wrong to
try to put all the 'integration' eggs in the 'integrated education'
basket when questions of youth provision, housing, personal
security, employment, community relations strategy abound,
apart altogether for the need for an effective political system
where representatives of the different parties pull together
and would have a knock-on effect over time in encouraging
cooperation at all levels. But it would be hard, looking at
the divisions which exist in Northern Ireland, not to draw
the conclusion that it would be better for society if all
children and young people were educated together so that they
did have close contact, and more opportunity for friendships,
with 'the other side'. That may not coincide with what the
Catholic church wants from its educational system, and it
may not coincide with what some Protestant churches or Protestants
would want if it came to the bit, but there is a question
of which is more important in the Northern Ireland situation
- churches having their 'safe' and divided system or facilitating
the development of friendships for the future in a society
which has massive fault lines.
I know what I would draw as the humane and Christian
conclusion. Jesus said something about the Sabbath (God's
laws) being made for man (humanity) and not the other way
around. So the churches in a society which has had a good
stab (sic) at destroying itself need to make radical decisions
which may be difficult but which are for the good of the whole
of society.
Putting it under your
shamat - but not brushing it under
What is it that makes one symbol successful and, well, symbolic,
and another never catches on? Take the CND symbol; it is widely
known in many countries of the world, communicates 'peace'
and often its 'anti-nuclear weapons' origin, and is easily
reproduced (a circle and a few lines). Incidentally the CND
symbol's origins are easily traced by doing a web search,
and if you don't have a reference to hand, it was designed
originally by an English guy named Gerald Holtom in 1958 based
on the semaphore signals for 'N' (nuclear) and 'D' disarmament
- though some Christian conservatives have interpreted it
spuriously as a 'broken cross'! Which says more about their
politics and conspiracy theories than anything else.
The 'Black shamrock' symbol, of recent origin
in Ireland - or should I say Derry - is obviously not so well
known but has achieved quite some currency in peace and anti-war
circles in Ireland and sometimes further afield as a symbol
of opposition to Irish involvement in the war in Iraq - particularly
through the use of Shannon airport by the USA military. It
took an obvious Irish symbol - the shamrock - and gave it
just a little twist of being black - to relaunch it as having
an anti-war connotation. It is downloadable from the Black
Shamrock website at www.blackshamrock.org and you can order
button badges from the same source. Given the widespread opposition
to the Irish government giving carte blanche to the USA in
its war effort at Shannon, it is the right symbol at the right
time to communicate "I oppose Irish involvement in the
Iraq war and particularly the use of Shannon airport".
I hope you've got yours.
But for every symbol that is successful, or
has success thrust upon it, there are surely many more that
don't make it. Even successful symbols are not always understood.
The beloved, and common broken rifle symbol (it is the symbol
of the War Resisters International which INNATE has links
with) is open to misinterpretation. In a nonverbal exchange
a few decades ago with a (north) Vietnamese hero of the war
against the South Vietnam regime and the USA, when he saw
my broken rifle badge he raised his hands in the air as if
wielding a rifle in triumph; I indicated non-verbally with
a swipe of the hand, no, and then portrayed a breaking movement!
He got the message.
Then locally in Norn Iron we also have the 'shamat',
which in its original guise as an actual hat I have seen on
its originator (Drew McClean) at a peace or anti-war rally
- a multicoloured shamrock-hat, the term being a shortening
of the two words into one. Recently I came across white shamrock
badges, produced some time ago, with ''SHAMAT' written on
them, which set me off on this train of thought about symbols,
and you can explore the thinking of this one at www.shamat.org
However 'shamat' also has a host of other connotations - as
surnames presumably of Middle Eastern origin, as the name
of an Argentinian rock group, as part of the name of a place
in Syria (Khan Abu Shamat) or Lebanon, the name of a Middle
Eastern dancer in the USA, a sufi in the Middle East, a Hebrew
word meaning "a primitive root; to fling down; incipiently
to jostle; figuratively, to let alone, desist, remit discontinue,
overthrow, release, let rest, shake, stumble, throw down",
a temple prostitute in the legends of Mesopotamia, a kibbutz
set up in 1948, a fictional character, a word in Bollywood
lyrics......the amazing list of different connotations just
goes on [well, it does show you can copy down from the internet
- Ed] [As I say, I do it so you don't have to! - Billy].
'The shamat' of Norn Iron has never made it
as a peace symbol and I think the chances of it doing so are
remote. It is not necessarily too 'way out', it is just something
that didn't grab people's attention sufficiently, or if it
did then not as something they wanted to copy and use. Stranger
things have become symbols! Consider the 'red hand' of Ulster
(see my Colm in NN114) - although maybe that's an appropriate
symbol for somewhere that has just come through a bloody conflict.
And meanwhile other symbols, such as the dove, frequently
become clichés - getting the paramilitary response
in the North to 'shove your doves'. But original designs of
doves looking a bit more active/dynamic/different can be effective
too.
So, to summarise, what makes an effective political
symbol? 1) It comes at the right time - people want to identify
with a particular cause, and 2) is an extension of No.1 -
People are happy with it as a symbol of that cause, and something
they can wear or display with pride and identification, 3)
It is significant and dynamic in some way - wishy-washy doves
and pastel colours are unlikely to be it (not impossible according
to the context, but unlikely), 4) It is often simple to reproduce,
and easily recognisable.
In a world of words, just as in a world of illiteracy,
symbols can be potent reminders of possibilities and identities,
positive and negative. The swastika was, after all, an ancient
religious symbol until the Nazis nabbed it making it impossible
to use in most contexts for a thousand years (the thousand
year non-reich). Using symbols creatively is part of the challenge
of communicating effectively so maybe I should join in also
saying 'shove your doves' and use something more challenging
and effective.
A rose by any other
name....wouldn't smell at all
We sat in the foyer of the fairly fancy hotel before the meeting
was due to start. The whites irises (no, not my eyes) sat
in water in round, tall vases (or vaizes or vauzes). A member
of the hotel staff came around and was taking them away and
replacing them. Certainly they were getting fresh water, possibly
the irises being replaced, maybe they had begun to wither.
A colleague challenged our belief that these were fresh flowers.
Not a bit of freshness - they were as artificial as they come.
But with them sitting in water, and the water being replaced
(as it would have to be periodically to avoid it going off),
the illusion was complete. Is it not amazing how we can buy
into an illusion like this by such a simple trick as having
fresh water? And what does our acceptance of artificiality
say? Well, I suppose it's better than fresh blooms being flown
in and contributing to greenhouse gases.
- Well, that's me for another month, although
at the rate this autumn seems to be going it will just feel
like tomorrow when I'm back again. Hoping the autumn is treating
you well, Billy.
Who
is Billy King? A long, long time ago, in a more
innocent age (just talking about myself you understand),
there were magazines called 'Dawn' and 'Dawn Train'
and I had a back page column in these. Now the Headitor
has asked me to come out from under the carpet to write
a Cyberspace Column 'something people won't be able
to put down' (I hope you're not carrying your monitor
around with you).
Watch this. Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman
pass by (because there'll almost certainly be very little
about horses even if someone with a similar name is
found astride them on gable ends around certain parts
of Norn Iron).
