Days 5 and 6: Farewell, Dublin. Hello, Armagh.

 Another Ireland, and another nation, across the border

St. Stephens's Green in Dublin, a setting James Joyce used in Ulysses, is one of the most beautiful parks in the world.  We visited on our last day in Dublin.
Take a walk across it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0GsDzaP65Q&feature=youtu.be

The border between the Irish Republic and Ulster, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, is about an hour north of Dublin and as you approach it north of Dundalk, it's clear you're in a different place.

A yellow shrub that looks like American forsythia, gorse, appears. It's common in Scotland, but non-existent in the Irish Republic. The land rises. It's hillier and rockier. The homes look a bit tidier, as they do in the English countryside. 

There's just a highway sign at the border, indicating that distance will henceforth be measured in English miles, not European kilometers. There are no checkpoints any more, as there were in the time of "The Troubles." It's more more like a time of "the tensions" since the 1998 Good Friday accord and its finalization a few years later that allowed Catholics and Protestants to share power in the Northern Irish Assembly, the region's parliament.

The Irish Republic is the new Europe, cosmopolitan and multinational. Northern Ireland is Great Britain, and in-your-face about it. The British Union Jack flag prominently adorns many public and private buildings right up to the border. Orange flags and banners are common, commemorating William of Orange, who defeated the Irish at the Battle of the Boyne River, north of Dublin near the current border, thus ensuring British rule for all of Ireland until 1922, and part of it through modern times.

The Orange Gate, with British and Ulster flags and insignia honoring
William of Orange, marks a major thoroughfare in downtown Armagh. 

While many Northern Irish are proud of the Britishness, ~ mostly Protestant members of the Church of Ireland, affiliated with the Church of England (Episcopalians in the U.S.) as well as Presbyterians and Methodists ~ others are less comfortable.  The Protestants parade through Catholic neighborhoods on the anniversary of William's victory, June 12, called "Marching Day," in a show of pride. Catholics see it as an insult. In the past, the marching season has lead to bombings, shootings and deaths. Today, marching season usually results in vandalism and fistfights, at worst. 

And while the political conflict may be over, the region has yet to bury 1,000 years of Anglo-Irish animosity. It remains part of the culture.

Our group will explore that culture from the northern perspective for the next month. And as a cultural Catholic with recently reinforced genetic and nationalistic ties to the south, it's not always going to be comfortable. But this is a learning experience for us all. And THAT is what the Armagh experience is all about.

Theater teacher Kimberly Lynne of the University of Baltimore leads members of the Ieimedia class around St. Patrick's Church of Ireland (Episcopalian) Cathedral in Armagh. The Church-of-England-affiliated Cathedral lies atop the city's highest point, looking down on St. Patrick's Catholic Cathedral.

Maria Hirsk, right,  an official city Blue Badge guide, explains the history of
Church of Ireland Primate Richard Robinson's palatial estate
to Ieimedia Program Director Terry Ciolfalo and theater teacher
Joan Weber during a tour of Armagh, Northern Ireland.

Program Director Terry Ciofalo shows Ieimedia students some of the facilities they will be using in the new performing arts complex in downtown Armagh.

Day 4: A very dead, but present, history, and a lively present

Fun in the streets, mummies in the museum

A young person plays in soap suds that resulted from some mischief after someone put detergent in a fountain in front of the Irish National Bank adjacent to the houses of parliament.

One of those all-too-common rainy days limited our activities, but whether you're indoors or out, you can't escape Irish culture and history in Dublin.

We went to the nearby national museums of natural history, archaeology and art to find a well-preserved past, and then enjoyed the sights and sounds of a vibrant present.

The highlights of the archaeological museum are ancient gold works and reproductions, but the stars of the show are the "bog men," 2,500 year-old mummies preserved in peat-moss bogs. Several have been discovered around Dublin in recent years, usually by accident.

The well-preserved, and well-coifed,  head of a 2,500-year-old 
mummy shows Irish pride  in red hair existed centuries ago. 
The lower half of this bog man was lost
as he was discovered by accident as
workers harvested peat for fuel about 30 years ago.

The hand of a bog man reaches across the ages. He was beheaded and his body mutilated, but his well-manicured hands indicate he was a nobleman of the pre-Christian era.

After the archaeological museum, we visited the natural history museum, a Victorian-era curiosity shop stuffed to the rafters with preserved animals in jars, mounted beasts, skeletons and reproductions. Among the unusual exhibit was an extinct Tasmanian wolf, a carnivore more closely related to the kangaroo or the oppossum than coyotes and dogs, pickled human brains, Neanderthal skulls and century-old butterfly collections under heavy covers to preserve them.

Animal heads, skeletons and century-old wood-and-glass exhibit cases cram the insides and line the walls of the Irish Natural History Museum.

The Irish elk was the largest member of the deer family.
It had  antlers spanning 12 feet.
Archaeologist believes early people helped bring it to extinction.

We followed the natural history museum visit to the national art gallery, which has a nice, but not overwhelming, collection of old and modern masters from Brueghel to Rembrandt to Goya to Picasso. The gallery has dedicated significant space to Jack Yeats, brother of William Butler, a modernist painter hailed as Ireland's greatest visual artist of the mid 20th century.

Goya's portrait of an actress of his day
bears a striking resemblance to the modern Spanish 
actress Penelope Cruz.

We finished the day approaching the modern era at Gogarty's restaurant and pub, founded in 1835, making it a relative newcomer to the scene. We learned at the archaeology museum that the area around the restaurant was the site of the original 9th-century viking settlement that was the nucleus of the modern city. Gogarty's features 14 hours of daily Irish music, usually familiar Irish ballads.

Irish folk singers keep the crowd at Gogarty's hostel and restaurant entertained. The establishment keeps the music going 14 yours a day.

After a good long walk, we ended the day comparatively early. For tomorrow we go to Armagh,  and my work begins.

Day 3: Dublin

The cosmopolitan capital

The main gate at Trinity College, one of the finest universities in the world and the home of the Book of Kells, a 9th-century illuminated Bible. Irish monks meticulously and artistically copied Bibles during the"dark ages" in order to keep literacy alive. Their works and their reputation spread throughout Christian Europe.

Dublin, in some ways, might as well be New York. It's crowded and confusing and cosmopolitan. It's full of famous museums and semi-autonomous neighborhoods. 

The hotel maids, restaurant servers, clerks and various others often come from eastern Europe. They are attracted by better wages than they could earn in their home countries despite the sluggish Irish economy. Luba Irtentvi, a hotel maid from Latvia explains:

Luba's story

Luba Irtentvi came from Latvia to Ireland 

to work as a hotel maid in 2007. Listen to her story:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n7Qv8PavWI&feature=youtu.be

There are hardly any skyscrapers, though.

It's dominated by the shops of Grafton Street and the pubs of Temple Bar, the neighborhood south of the River Liffey. with street musicians and salespeople hawking leprechaun toys, there is something of a "Six Flags Over  the Celtic Folk" feel to it. 

Pedestrians and tourists windowshop in the Temple Bar neighborhood.

Locals enjoy a pint at noon at Temple Bar.

But you can't escape the history. The landscape is dotted by monuments to great Irish writers and revolutionaries. And the one tourist attraction EVERYONE sees is the Book of Kells. The book is housed in a special exhibit at Trinity College,  on of europe's premiere universities. The book, an illustrated Bible, was written and illustrated in around the year 800 by local monks who painstakingly hand-copied each verse. Some monks wrote the verses and others illustrated letters as the beginning of the passages in detailed and fanciful colors and pictures. The book isn;t the only work of the Irish monks, but it is the most detailed, best-preserved and the most beautiful. Ireland is sometimes called "the light in the dark ages," as the relatively isolated monks hand-copied books that found their way throughout Europe as wars and plagues ravaged other countries.

The "long room" at Trinity College houses a huge collection of ancient books. The room was the home of the Book of Kells until recently.

An illuminated manuscript reproduction of another 9th-century work
illustrates the art and literature of the Book of Kells.
The Book of Kells is larger and much more ornate,
but visitors are not allowed to take pictures.

From there, our walking tour took us to bookshops along the River Liffey, where the vikings came up to build the city shortly after the monks created the Book of Kells. We wandered the narrow cobblestone streets of Temple Bar, the theater and restaurant district south of the river, to the Grafton Street shopping district to St. Stephen's Green, a very popular and manicured park downtown, across from our hotel.  

A local man feeds the swans at St. Stephens Green near our hotel.

We later met our family friend Catherine Keoghan of Mullingar, a close friend of my brother who met her when she visited my original home town of New Haven, Connecticut. And then I met my colleagues for Armagh. It's getting to be time to get ready for work.

Day 2: Genealogy and history

The weir, or low dam, at Athlone, ireland, dates to 1216. It was built to catch eels, and it has a fish ladder to allow salmon to pass. The English stormed across it in 1691 to end the siege and establish the rule of William of Orange in Ireland. It was the last stand of the Catholic Stewarts.

Genealogy and history in Athlone and Offaly

Nobody heard of any Bentleys in Athlone, Ireland.

We asked business people and officials around town as we saw the local sights in our attempts to look up my routes.

While no one knew of my grandfather or other relatives, many people knew Geroid O'Brien, the city historian.  Mickey and Denny, two garrulous, tipsy and not-terribly-reliable-appearing patrons (they were arguing about how many "r's" the word "reserved" has) at Sean's, the 1,100-year-old dive bar,called him up for us.

We visited him in his office amid the records and microfiche and in minutes, he found my grandfather, and his father and his father before, in the 1901 and 1911 Census. My grandfather, Nathaniel A. Bentley, it seems, was Nathaniel the third. His father and grandfather, both still living as of the 1901 census, worked as railroad policemen and conductors for the railway. And they lived near the railway station on the west side of town, in County Roscommon.

Indeed,  O'Brien said, Bentley is not a Irish name, but an English one, and he surmised that my grandfather, or perhaps even his parents, had immigrated from Yorkshire, England, which is full of Bentleys, to work on the railway when it began in the 1850s. An uncle was an artilliary officer in the Royal Army, and O'Brien said, "everybody was legally English at the time. They were the only armed forces."  Even with their English roots, they married Irish local women and raised their families in Athlone, and in the Catholic church. 

O'Brien also noted that indeed, as a grandson of an Irish-citizen grandfather, I am qualified to be an Irish citizen, as is my mother and the nine other middle-aged grandchildren of Nat Bentley in the U.S. 

"All the information you need is right here," he said, pointing to the census data. 

So with my Irish roots established, I explored the town: a walk by the River Shannon, a visit to the 13th-century abbey and equally ancient Norman castle, now a city museum opened just this year, to learn of the local history. And as of June 25, 2013, my own history was part of it, too.

Old gravestones are lined up at the 13th century abbey at Athlone.

A funeral cortege proceeds along a main road in Athlone.

We walked a few blocks from the library to the old abbey, built in 1240, but never finished. Inscribed slabs at the site in the city museum dating from the 9th century indicate an earlier church affiliated with the giant Clonmacnoise Abbey about 20 miles to the south, operated on the site. The abbey was used as a graveyard and a barracks for the British but it had fallen into disrepair. Its primary use was a graveyard, but the centuries-old gravestones, too, fell into disrepair. Beginning in the mid-20th century, locals carefully took the gravestones down and laid them around the walls of the abbey and its grounds.

The old Norman castle at Athone is now a museum and visitors center.

We then went to the museum and learned the town was on a ridge across central Ireland and its location  on a ford on the river was attractive to settlement from neolithic times 8,000 years ago. And it was a Catholic stronghold. Its most famous moment was the siege of 1690-91 during which it held out for the Catholic Stewarts against the Protestant followers of William of Orange. They were eventually defeated, but they took their Catholic and then Irish Republican sentiments through to the modern era.

From there, we drove to Dublin, but a spur-of-the-moment side trip down 20 miles of very narrow two-lane country roads brought us to Clonmacnoise, in County Offaly, a Christian abbey founded by St. Cieran in the year 545, the same time and era as King Arthur. Clonmacnoise was one of the places in which monks scrupulously copied scripture and other books, preserving Western education after the fall of Rome. It was one of the lights in the dark ages. Alcuin of York, tutor to Charlemagne, studied there. Clonmacnoise, too, fell into disrepair after being raided by Irish tribes, Vikings, and ultimately the English, who destroyed the abbey one final time in the 1500s.

Irish students explore an 10th-century church at Clonmacnoise

The main chapel at Clonmacnoise, on the River Shannon, background,  was finally closed after it was raided by English protestants in the 1500s.

The 9th century chapel, center, is one of the oldest still standing.

The grave of St. Cieran, dating to the 6th century.

Kate Zibluk, 13, explores the 10th century
ruins at Clonmacnoise, County Offaly, Ireland.

Sara E. McNeil explores an 11th-century chapel at Clonmacnoise.

Day 1: Athlone, the new and the very old

The Shannon river waterfront at Athlone, with the 11th century castle now serving as a welcome 
and historical/tourist center. The river tour boat at left has
 been done up as a viking vessel to commemorate their visits in ancient times.

Like many Irish towns, Athlone has many pubs throughout its winding streets.

The new and the very old in Athlone

From the Czech car-rental clerk to the Latvian hotel maid to the Afro-Caribbean business-store proprietor, the Irish don't sound as Irish as they did when I last visited.

The Irish pound has been replaced by the Euro, and Europe and the world has begun to settle, even in smaller towns like Athlone, my grandfather's home on the Shannon River. Many came in the 1990s as the Irish economy, dubbed the Celtic Tiger, boomed. While the economy shrank with recession, the networks and family ties to Eastern Europe remained and multi-cultural Ireland seems established.

http://european-immigration.com/ireland/ireland.htm

But the old ways, the very old ways, remain. Athlone is the home of Sean's bar, proclaimed by the Guinness Book of World records as the oldest pub in Ireland. The bar owners display some mud daub and wattle remains of the original pub they found behind an old wall. It dates from the year 900.

Sean's pub in  Athlone preserves part of its old wall
dating to the year 900.

Some of Sean's patrons have been visiting for much of
this century as well

In later history, the town was besieged by the Orangemen of King William in 1690. The staunch Catholics of the area defended it for the Stewarts until they were defeated  in 1691. Local commander Col. Richard Grace is buried on the grounds of St. Mary's church downtown.

Irish Catholic and Republican feelings go deep, as the town lost 21 of its men in the 1916-1921 uprising against the English that ultimately ended with the founding of the Irish Republic in 1922.

Irish Catholic and Republican sentiment runs deep in Athlone.

Guinness is strength indeed, as pub-goers enjoy a pint
from mid-afternoon onward.

Athlone is also the home of  one of the original Irish tenors, 
the world-renowned John McCormack.
The site is now occupied by a Chinese restaurant.

An adventure and a homecoming

Albert Bentley "Bert" Sanford and his wife Kathy at
 their vacation "van" on the Irish Sea at Blackpool  in 1986.

Coming "home"

It's an adventure, and, in a sense, a homecoming.

My spouse, Sara E. McNeil, daughter, Kate Zibluk, 13 and a half, and I are heading for Ireland and the UK as part of the Ieimedia program in Armagh.

 http://ieimedia.com/armagh

I will be leading the journalism part of the program with three students, including Savana Maue, the new editor of the Arrow, the student newspaper at Southeast Missouri, where am I chair and  professor of mass media. I have been this way before, half a lifetime ago, in 1986. My mother's first cousin, Albert Bentley Sanford of Norden, Rochdale, Yorkshire, UK, my mother's first cousin, turned up by surprise in Connecticut a few years earlier, and I returned the favor. My grandfather, Nathaniel Austin Bentley,  was the younger brother of Bert's mother. I visited him and his wife Kathy  in Yorkshire; as well as my English former roommate, Paul A. Wheeler in the Richmond area of London, and I also visited Athlone, Ireland, from whence the Bentleys originated. I am Jack Bentley Zibluk, and under the Acts of Patriation, I have been told I qualify to be an Irish citizen. On this trip, I aim to document whether that's true.

It was a "lovely" trip in 1986, as they say. But the world has changed. There was no social media, no cell phones and no "interweb" 27 years ago, and the Internet was just beginning. Ireland was engulfed in "The Troubles," and a group of IRA supporters I knew asked me to deliver a "package for them" to a "Mr. Brown." I declined.

Now "The Troubles" are far less violent, though the tensions remain. I am no longer a young newspaper editor from Connecticut; I am a middle-aged university professor from Missouri. And I am not alone this trip as I was before. Though cousin Bert sadly died a few months ago, the family continues.  His brother Dennis, a retired MI5 spy-agency employee, is still there. He and my mom are the last of their generation. Bentley cousins Simon Mahon and Rachel Sanford Aston have kept in touch through cell, text and social media. Simon, who live near Sydney, Australia.  also holds a Ph.D. in communications, as do I. His mother and mine were pen pals and first cousins, though they never met. We will meet in a fortnight.

And there will be adventures and travel in our five weeks abroad. We will build on earlier experiences abroad in India asuindia2011.blogspot.com. With a little luck, we hope to build the ieimedia programme (I am spelling in British already) and bring more of our Southeast Missouri students and others next year.

So here we go, from Cape Girardeau to St. Louis to Chicago to Dublin to Athlone, Armagh and the UK.