This past weekend I got a letter in the mail from Loyola. I knew what it was when it arrived and had a pretty good idea what it contained. It was a rejection letter for the Schmitt Fellowship. The Schmitt is a fellowship for ABDs that is essentially the same thing as the fellowship I currently hold; it pays you to do nothing but work on your dissertation. One of the best parts of either scholarship is that they cover all school expenses in addition to having a stipend. Therefore, this means that next year I am basically F'd. The History department actually got 3 Schmitt fellowships, which makes it even more frustrating. It's pretty ridiculous that these sorts of things pit colleagues against each other, but oh well. What can you do, right? I saw two of the winners at the Dissertation Writing Group meeting last night and at least those two went to folks that I know and respect (the other winner is a nice enough person, but has been fully funded with no teaching obligations for four years. I mean come on. Spread the wealth a little bit!)
All of this means that now I'm going to be headed back in to the wonderful world of student loans. I threw my name in the hat to pick up a class at Loyola, but I'm sure it's no easy chore for a first time teacher to get one. Even one or two classes per semester would be a huge boon and pretty much keep me on, or close to, my current fiscal situation. More to the point though I'd really like (and need) the teaching experience. If I can't even manage that I'll probably be forced to either take a HUGE loan (which I don't want to do) and/or try to find a part-time job in this current shit economy we find ourselves in.
If I do manage to get a class or two, I have a pretty good feeling that I will get really close to finishing my dissertation in the next year. The only other thing to figure out is when I can get back overseas for a few weeks to fill some research gaps, but I think it's feasible. I spent a few days last week going through some research material, and I think the burn out is starting to fade a little bit. So when I get back from the honeymoon at the end of the month I think I'll be ready to crank out some more writing. I was able to get a page or so written today, which was good.
Showing posts with label Miscellaneous. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miscellaneous. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Bachelor Party
So this past weekend was my bachelor party. I must say that I had a good time and I even remember about 90% of it, which is pretty good for me. We spent the day Saturday in Grand Rapids, but me and a couple of my friends left Friday evening, stopping in Kalamazoo to take in the grandeur that is Bell's. We crashed at my buddy Adam's house near K-zoo so we were able to sleep in a bit before meeting everyone else at the hotel in GR since it was only about 30-40 minutes of driving by that time.
We all met at the Courtyard Marriott, a stone's throw from the local arena and downtown area of Grand Rapids. John had procured an 8 passenger van from work so we all piled in an made the drive to Holland. Starting our tour of western Michigan microbreweries at New Holland Brewing Company, most of us got some grub and tasted a variety of their offerings. I got a sampler of six different beers, and would have to say that I thought the "Dragon's Milk" was the best one. A dark stout with a milky aftertaste. Very good indeed.
Then we made our way back to GR to meet up with the a late arrival and were back off to Schmohz Brewing Company. No samplers there, so I tried their stout. It was probably one of the more interesting ones that I've ever had. It seemed to almost have a hint of citrus in it that made for a somewhat weird aftertaste. I can't say that I really liked it, but it wasn't terrible. I tasted the cream ale they made, and that was pretty good. The venue itself was a little weird. There were the standard bar games and the Wings were on (not to mention free popcorn and peanuts), but there were almost as many kids under the age of 15 there as there were beer drinking patrons. This weirded us out a bit so we moved on to the next place.
The Hideout Brewing Company was probably my favorite place. They had three stouts on their menu and I tried two of them, both very good. I also had their pilsner which was delicious as well. They had bar games upstairs, fooseball, shuffleboard, darts. Mike and I played Adam and John at fooseball and came out victorious. I would assume we spent a couple of hours at the Hideout because when we left we headed back to downtown GR for a bite to eat and the hockey game.
We went to eat at a place called Hopcat, which has 44 beers on tap. I had an O'Hara's red. It's an Irish microbrew from Co. Cavan. I had had their stout a few weeks earlier at a bar in Chicago, but before then I hadn't had either since my buddy Joe's wedding, which had both. I got some delicious mac and cheese for dinner. By the time we were all fed the game had already started, so we quickly made our way to the arena to catch the rest of the game.
It was the Grand Rapids Griffins versus the Rochester Americans and the score was tied at 1 in the first period when we got there. By the time the game was over, the Griffins had won 8-4. After every goal, once the arena died down and it was sufficiently quiet, my buddy Bill would yell "OH MY GOD!" as loud as he could. It was really funny, especially after 10 goals.
After the game we went to Founders, where there was a live blues band playing. I had the Russian Imperial stout there, which I was kind of disappointed with, and I think I had the scotch ale as well, which wasn't bad. We stayed at Founders for a while before heading back toward the hotel. Now there was a typical bar/nightclub across from the hotel that we went into for some reason. We stayed there for a few rounds of Labatt's Blue, but once John started to fall asleep we headed back to the hotel. At least that's how the story goes.
It's at this point that my memory starts to fade. I remember there being a hotdog vendor outside the bar, but that's about it. I don't think I got one since I'm not a big hotdog fan. My buddy Joe had brought a bottle of Jameson (the only whiskey I'll really drink) and apparently once we were back at the hotel we cracked open uncle Jaimoe and it got MIB'ed. Bill tells me that I proceeded to order pizza and buy a bunch of candy bars (which I found the next day in my backpack).
I woke up the next morning and I believe I was still drunk. Most of the bottle of Jaimoe was gone, and I hope that I didn't drink most of it, but judging by what happened Sunday it's entirely possible. I think Bill said I threw up the night before and that was a theme that continued for the rest of the day. I slept almost the entire way back to Chicago (stopping to vomit in the sink of a McDonald's bathroom of course) and couldn't even hold down gatorade and water for most of the day. Oy vey!
Fortunately I woke up Monday feeling about 90-95%. Needless to say I had a really good time this weekend. My brother did a great job of putting everything together and it was great to see all my friends and to hang out. I could have done without the hangover, and I was almost there (evidenced by my memory surviving intact so late into the evening), but as the song says "Whiskey You're The Devil." In reality though, it was everything a bachelor party usually is and should be and I was glad it went off so well.
We all met at the Courtyard Marriott, a stone's throw from the local arena and downtown area of Grand Rapids. John had procured an 8 passenger van from work so we all piled in an made the drive to Holland. Starting our tour of western Michigan microbreweries at New Holland Brewing Company, most of us got some grub and tasted a variety of their offerings. I got a sampler of six different beers, and would have to say that I thought the "Dragon's Milk" was the best one. A dark stout with a milky aftertaste. Very good indeed.
Then we made our way back to GR to meet up with the a late arrival and were back off to Schmohz Brewing Company. No samplers there, so I tried their stout. It was probably one of the more interesting ones that I've ever had. It seemed to almost have a hint of citrus in it that made for a somewhat weird aftertaste. I can't say that I really liked it, but it wasn't terrible. I tasted the cream ale they made, and that was pretty good. The venue itself was a little weird. There were the standard bar games and the Wings were on (not to mention free popcorn and peanuts), but there were almost as many kids under the age of 15 there as there were beer drinking patrons. This weirded us out a bit so we moved on to the next place.
The Hideout Brewing Company was probably my favorite place. They had three stouts on their menu and I tried two of them, both very good. I also had their pilsner which was delicious as well. They had bar games upstairs, fooseball, shuffleboard, darts. Mike and I played Adam and John at fooseball and came out victorious. I would assume we spent a couple of hours at the Hideout because when we left we headed back to downtown GR for a bite to eat and the hockey game.
We went to eat at a place called Hopcat, which has 44 beers on tap. I had an O'Hara's red. It's an Irish microbrew from Co. Cavan. I had had their stout a few weeks earlier at a bar in Chicago, but before then I hadn't had either since my buddy Joe's wedding, which had both. I got some delicious mac and cheese for dinner. By the time we were all fed the game had already started, so we quickly made our way to the arena to catch the rest of the game.
It was the Grand Rapids Griffins versus the Rochester Americans and the score was tied at 1 in the first period when we got there. By the time the game was over, the Griffins had won 8-4. After every goal, once the arena died down and it was sufficiently quiet, my buddy Bill would yell "OH MY GOD!" as loud as he could. It was really funny, especially after 10 goals.
After the game we went to Founders, where there was a live blues band playing. I had the Russian Imperial stout there, which I was kind of disappointed with, and I think I had the scotch ale as well, which wasn't bad. We stayed at Founders for a while before heading back toward the hotel. Now there was a typical bar/nightclub across from the hotel that we went into for some reason. We stayed there for a few rounds of Labatt's Blue, but once John started to fall asleep we headed back to the hotel. At least that's how the story goes.
It's at this point that my memory starts to fade. I remember there being a hotdog vendor outside the bar, but that's about it. I don't think I got one since I'm not a big hotdog fan. My buddy Joe had brought a bottle of Jameson (the only whiskey I'll really drink) and apparently once we were back at the hotel we cracked open uncle Jaimoe and it got MIB'ed. Bill tells me that I proceeded to order pizza and buy a bunch of candy bars (which I found the next day in my backpack).
I woke up the next morning and I believe I was still drunk. Most of the bottle of Jaimoe was gone, and I hope that I didn't drink most of it, but judging by what happened Sunday it's entirely possible. I think Bill said I threw up the night before and that was a theme that continued for the rest of the day. I slept almost the entire way back to Chicago (stopping to vomit in the sink of a McDonald's bathroom of course) and couldn't even hold down gatorade and water for most of the day. Oy vey!
Fortunately I woke up Monday feeling about 90-95%. Needless to say I had a really good time this weekend. My brother did a great job of putting everything together and it was great to see all my friends and to hang out. I could have done without the hangover, and I was almost there (evidenced by my memory surviving intact so late into the evening), but as the song says "Whiskey You're The Devil." In reality though, it was everything a bachelor party usually is and should be and I was glad it went off so well.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Movies
Katie and I went to see three movies this week. With the Golden Globes rapidly approaching Katie wants to see as many of the nominated movies as she can to better predict the winners in each category. This is an annual undertaking. I don't really get into the whole awards thing, but it is an excuse to see some really good films (Ever since the Emmy's snubbed The Wire, I have no faith in any award shows anymore). In the past week we saw The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, and Doubt.
The Reader was a very interesting story with an underlying message about having secrets, keeping them to yourself, and the effect that can have on one's life. The basic plot is of a young man who has an affair with an older woman as a teenager, and later he finds out that she was an SS Guard during the Second World War. The story itself was intriguing and the acting was really good. I don't think it will win Best Picture, but I can understand why it was nominated.
Slumdog Millionaire was my favorite of the three movies we've seen. It's about a poor Indian boy who goes on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and wins a large amount of money. The story-telling is great as it cuts back and forth between the past and the present, showing how the events of the boy's life lead him to know the answers on the show. There's a romantic arc to the story as well, and the actors do a very good job, especially the kids who play the youth versions of the characters. There's even a Bollywood song and dance routine during the credits. This film has a good chance of being a sleeper winner for Best Film. I wouldn't be disappointed if this one won.
Doubt was a superbly acted film. Both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep are nominated for their acting in this movie (no shocker there - two of the top actors in the biz today). I found the story itself to be a bit dull. It's intentionally ambiguous and nothing is clear by the end of the film, but that's the whole point. I wouldn't be surprised if either nominee won an award for this film.
Out of these three, I would recommend Slumdog Millionaire the most. See all of them if you have the time, but definitely check out Slumdog.
The Reader was a very interesting story with an underlying message about having secrets, keeping them to yourself, and the effect that can have on one's life. The basic plot is of a young man who has an affair with an older woman as a teenager, and later he finds out that she was an SS Guard during the Second World War. The story itself was intriguing and the acting was really good. I don't think it will win Best Picture, but I can understand why it was nominated.
Slumdog Millionaire was my favorite of the three movies we've seen. It's about a poor Indian boy who goes on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and wins a large amount of money. The story-telling is great as it cuts back and forth between the past and the present, showing how the events of the boy's life lead him to know the answers on the show. There's a romantic arc to the story as well, and the actors do a very good job, especially the kids who play the youth versions of the characters. There's even a Bollywood song and dance routine during the credits. This film has a good chance of being a sleeper winner for Best Film. I wouldn't be disappointed if this one won.
Doubt was a superbly acted film. Both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep are nominated for their acting in this movie (no shocker there - two of the top actors in the biz today). I found the story itself to be a bit dull. It's intentionally ambiguous and nothing is clear by the end of the film, but that's the whole point. I wouldn't be surprised if either nominee won an award for this film.
Out of these three, I would recommend Slumdog Millionaire the most. See all of them if you have the time, but definitely check out Slumdog.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Back from Michigan
I'm back after a long weekend in Michigan. It was a good visit and I got to see a number of my friends, a sweet hockey game, and I enjoyed some Hungry Howie's pizza - always a good thing. My buddy Tine gave me his old N64 along with the best video game ever - The New Tetris. My roommates and I used to play this game ALL the time in undergrad. Needless to say it might be a dangerous thing to have around the house now, but so far, so good. If it becomes too much of a problem I now have a study carrel at the library up on the Lake Shore Campus. I assume I'll get some decent use out of that, and it will be nice to have a quiet place to work and to be right there in the library as well.
The Dissertation Group continues to meet. We've basically been a discussion entity up to this point, but in two weeks I'm going to present some of my work and we'll have a proper workshopping session, which should be good. I'm interested to see how it turns out, especially since the chapter I need help on is all over the place right now. A bit of constructive criticism would bode well for this chapter at present. The first one was much more straight forward, while this one is trying to compare and contrast four different cities, which can be a challenge in terms of structure. So we'll see what happens. Hopefully there will be some satisfactory notes to post in the near future.
Completely unrelated, I've been working my way through all of the Dick's Picks albums. I actually own 2-3 of them and downloaded the rest (I know, I'm a horrible person. I'll buy them once I can afford to do so). There are 36 volumes and all but one are multiple CDs. I started the last week of October and just finished this week. You would think one might grow tired of that much Grateful Dead music for that long, but actually it had just the opposite effect. Most Deadheads fall into one of two camps, Jerry or Bobby. Personally, I'm deeply ensconced in the Jerry camp, but the Dick's Pick exercise leaves me with a greater appreciation of some of Bobby's work. I'm still not drinking the Weir kool-aid, but I'm probably less likely to skip past the Bobby tunes now than I used to be. Although, some songs, like Lost Sailor > Saint of Circumstance, will never be listenable to me and always get passed up.
I also went on a book-buying binge about a week or so ago, and have since received all of my purchases. The expensive books were of the academic ilk and should be useful for my dissertation. I also found a number of cheap books on the Grateful Dead that I wanted to read, and one on The Band. I've almost gotten through a book of interviews conducted with various members of the Dead and I find it to be a very enlightening book. It's really amazing how progressive the band was, not just musically, but in terms of musical innovation. Their experience with musical equipment, especially PA systems was more interesting than I thought it would be. I'm looking forward to getting through the other books, especially Phil Lesh's autobiography.
The Dissertation Group continues to meet. We've basically been a discussion entity up to this point, but in two weeks I'm going to present some of my work and we'll have a proper workshopping session, which should be good. I'm interested to see how it turns out, especially since the chapter I need help on is all over the place right now. A bit of constructive criticism would bode well for this chapter at present. The first one was much more straight forward, while this one is trying to compare and contrast four different cities, which can be a challenge in terms of structure. So we'll see what happens. Hopefully there will be some satisfactory notes to post in the near future.
Completely unrelated, I've been working my way through all of the Dick's Picks albums. I actually own 2-3 of them and downloaded the rest (I know, I'm a horrible person. I'll buy them once I can afford to do so). There are 36 volumes and all but one are multiple CDs. I started the last week of October and just finished this week. You would think one might grow tired of that much Grateful Dead music for that long, but actually it had just the opposite effect. Most Deadheads fall into one of two camps, Jerry or Bobby. Personally, I'm deeply ensconced in the Jerry camp, but the Dick's Pick exercise leaves me with a greater appreciation of some of Bobby's work. I'm still not drinking the Weir kool-aid, but I'm probably less likely to skip past the Bobby tunes now than I used to be. Although, some songs, like Lost Sailor > Saint of Circumstance, will never be listenable to me and always get passed up.
I also went on a book-buying binge about a week or so ago, and have since received all of my purchases. The expensive books were of the academic ilk and should be useful for my dissertation. I also found a number of cheap books on the Grateful Dead that I wanted to read, and one on The Band. I've almost gotten through a book of interviews conducted with various members of the Dead and I find it to be a very enlightening book. It's really amazing how progressive the band was, not just musically, but in terms of musical innovation. Their experience with musical equipment, especially PA systems was more interesting than I thought it would be. I'm looking forward to getting through the other books, especially Phil Lesh's autobiography.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Coping with life as a poor graduate student
As I made clear earlier this summer, the debacle with my credit card in Europe was a truly trying experience. Unfortunately, the worst effects of it are only now being felt. I can reasonably say that entering my 5th year of graduate study this is the first time I feel like I am on unstable ground financially. Yes, I won a research grant this summer and have a fellowship in the coming academic school year, but the former only helps to pay off the credit card debt I do have and the latter only really helps with cost of living expenses. There is little to help replenish my devastated savings. Perhaps I should have taken out a larger student loan this year, but it looks like its too late to adjust that. Honestly, I'd prefer to have a higher credit card bill that I know I can pay off over a longer period of time and be more stable, than to be able to pay off the bill quicker but face financial straights. The timing couldn't really be worse for all this, but there's not a whole lot to be done at this point except to ride it out.
On the research front, in addition to the database program I found, I also got a copy of MacSpeech Dictate. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, dictation software. It lets you speak to your computer and it will type out what you say. I figured since I have so much stuff to go through, a lot of which is in JPEG format and thus unable to be copied and pasted to a text document, this would be good and efficient alternative. The only real problem is that my iBook G4 runs a PowerPC processor and the program needs and Intel Mac. Luckily I can use Katie's MacBook while she's at work. Right now I'm just waiting for my microphhone headset to arrive and I'll be good to go. It will be good to start getting through this material so I can delete some of it from my iBook's hard drive. Sure I have it all backed up on an external hard drive and archived on DVDs, but I can't bring myself to delete the 20+ Gigs of photos from my hard drive yet, even though they're sucking up almost half of my hard drive space and contributing to slow performance (even worse than I was experiencing before, which were the result of putting Leopard on such an old machine). Add a new Mac laptop to my list of things I need but can't afford at the moment.
Throughout all of this I've tried to keep a "Candide" attitude telling myself that everything will work out. Let's hope that Voltaire's satire isn't just that in this case.
On the research front, in addition to the database program I found, I also got a copy of MacSpeech Dictate. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, dictation software. It lets you speak to your computer and it will type out what you say. I figured since I have so much stuff to go through, a lot of which is in JPEG format and thus unable to be copied and pasted to a text document, this would be good and efficient alternative. The only real problem is that my iBook G4 runs a PowerPC processor and the program needs and Intel Mac. Luckily I can use Katie's MacBook while she's at work. Right now I'm just waiting for my microphhone headset to arrive and I'll be good to go. It will be good to start getting through this material so I can delete some of it from my iBook's hard drive. Sure I have it all backed up on an external hard drive and archived on DVDs, but I can't bring myself to delete the 20+ Gigs of photos from my hard drive yet, even though they're sucking up almost half of my hard drive space and contributing to slow performance (even worse than I was experiencing before, which were the result of putting Leopard on such an old machine). Add a new Mac laptop to my list of things I need but can't afford at the moment.
Throughout all of this I've tried to keep a "Candide" attitude telling myself that everything will work out. Let's hope that Voltaire's satire isn't just that in this case.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
More thoughts on London, it's archives, and Tube
The pace of research in London is very fast. It's a nice change of pace from Dublin which is the equivalent to swimming in a tar pit. The days at the archives are just flying by.
Tuesday I went to the National Archive, Kew. This place is everything an archive should be. The staff is really friendly and helpful, everything is automated, yet there still a significant degree of autonomy for the researcher. One doesn't feel like they're being a burden or sized up on a regular basis. Everything there is easy to use, or at least what I needed was. I was also able to use my digital camera, yet another boon. I'll be going back there on Friday as I put in a bulk order of documents.
Wednesday I spent at the British Library. They have SO much material there and I was able to view some of the books that I wasn't able to see at the National Library of Ireland. I'm glad I did because I found some really good stuff in those books. The system there isn't as fluid as the one at Kew, but, still, I didn't have too much trouble. The nice thing is that you can schedule what day you want documents delivered, so there are a few I ordered up for Saturday (and perhaps I'll order up a few more this evening). I didn't get out of the BL yesterday until about 7:45pm. Needless to say it was a long day, but it was also a productive one.
Today, I spent at the National Army Museum. When I initially contacted them via email they sent me a list of files that they held. Ok, cool. Once I got here they had their collection accessible via an online database (run on Macs no less!), which was nice. One of the staff told me it'd be available on the internet later this year. So I looked through their holdings and found some other stuff relevant to my research. London keeps coming up aces in terms of finding materials. So I spent the day looking through this material and taking notes. In fact, I was typing as fast as I could by the end of the day trying to get one last document typed out before they closed. I was the last one to leave, but I managed to get everything I needed, at least for the time being. All in all, it was a very successful trip to a very nice little archive.
The one thing that is clear to me is that I will have to come back to London, perhaps a couple of times, in order to get through all the stuff here. The one thing that I wasn't able to figure out for this trip was anything at the Royal British Legion Headquarters. So I'll have to see about that on a subsequent trip. (After my experience in Belfast, I really need to look into the Dublin Branch as well. They may have what I'm looking for and not even realize it.) But I will say that spending so much time at these various repositories has made my time in London go by quickly, which I appreciate, especially since I'm toward the end of the trip, pretty burned out, and not smitten by my accommodations. I have, however, been able to achieve the level of productivity I've strived for all along in London, which was not always the case in other places.
Although I may find the Tube's cash fares expensive, it's easy to see where the money goes. What a great system. The trains are on time and there are displays telling you how long until the next train arrives (like the DC Metro). The cars are clean, as are the stations, and while they may be labyrinthine, everything is clearly marked and it's easy to figure out where to go. The train cars are pretty quite for a subway. Usually, there are a few windows open in each car for ventilation, and even then it's possible to listen to music without having to decimate your eardrums or to have a conversation without having to yell. It's not quite like the Montreal Metro, which has rubber wheels and is really quiet, but when compared to the CTA subway there is a huge difference. It's nice to have an automated voice over the speaker that tells you what station you're approaching/at, and what is next. On the CTA the only time one seems to get this type of information is when the driver feels like telling the passengers. Sure they have certain announcements about keeping the CTA clean and the like, but nothing like the Tube. CTA buses have this feature, but it doesn't work on every bus. I haven't ridden the buses in London, but I certainly did in Ireland, and it's safe to say that based on my experience there and what I've seen of the buses in London, they're well maintained and clean, again, unlike the CTA. This just hammers home how absolutely terrible public transportation is in Chicago. People piss and moan about a $0.25 fare increase, but having seen other, better systems it's worth it for a higher fare. Besides, on the Tube a cash fare is £4, but if you have an Oyster Card (the same thing as the Chicago Card (Plus)) then it's only £1.50, and on top of that there is a daily cap so you won't be charged anything above the cap if you have the card (assuming I'm reading the literature correctly). But a difference between £1.50 and £4 is huge. Perhaps that's the sort of price structure we need in Chicago to really initiate change. The smart cards are so much more cost effective for the transit system there needs to be a much stronger incentive for people to use them. It's kind of like in Ireland how they charge you for plastic bags at the grocery store. Every one there has reusable shopping bags. After the initial adjustment period most people will probably just go with the flow, and be more content with their service.
Tuesday I went to the National Archive, Kew. This place is everything an archive should be. The staff is really friendly and helpful, everything is automated, yet there still a significant degree of autonomy for the researcher. One doesn't feel like they're being a burden or sized up on a regular basis. Everything there is easy to use, or at least what I needed was. I was also able to use my digital camera, yet another boon. I'll be going back there on Friday as I put in a bulk order of documents.
Wednesday I spent at the British Library. They have SO much material there and I was able to view some of the books that I wasn't able to see at the National Library of Ireland. I'm glad I did because I found some really good stuff in those books. The system there isn't as fluid as the one at Kew, but, still, I didn't have too much trouble. The nice thing is that you can schedule what day you want documents delivered, so there are a few I ordered up for Saturday (and perhaps I'll order up a few more this evening). I didn't get out of the BL yesterday until about 7:45pm. Needless to say it was a long day, but it was also a productive one.
Today, I spent at the National Army Museum. When I initially contacted them via email they sent me a list of files that they held. Ok, cool. Once I got here they had their collection accessible via an online database (run on Macs no less!), which was nice. One of the staff told me it'd be available on the internet later this year. So I looked through their holdings and found some other stuff relevant to my research. London keeps coming up aces in terms of finding materials. So I spent the day looking through this material and taking notes. In fact, I was typing as fast as I could by the end of the day trying to get one last document typed out before they closed. I was the last one to leave, but I managed to get everything I needed, at least for the time being. All in all, it was a very successful trip to a very nice little archive.
The one thing that is clear to me is that I will have to come back to London, perhaps a couple of times, in order to get through all the stuff here. The one thing that I wasn't able to figure out for this trip was anything at the Royal British Legion Headquarters. So I'll have to see about that on a subsequent trip. (After my experience in Belfast, I really need to look into the Dublin Branch as well. They may have what I'm looking for and not even realize it.) But I will say that spending so much time at these various repositories has made my time in London go by quickly, which I appreciate, especially since I'm toward the end of the trip, pretty burned out, and not smitten by my accommodations. I have, however, been able to achieve the level of productivity I've strived for all along in London, which was not always the case in other places.
Although I may find the Tube's cash fares expensive, it's easy to see where the money goes. What a great system. The trains are on time and there are displays telling you how long until the next train arrives (like the DC Metro). The cars are clean, as are the stations, and while they may be labyrinthine, everything is clearly marked and it's easy to figure out where to go. The train cars are pretty quite for a subway. Usually, there are a few windows open in each car for ventilation, and even then it's possible to listen to music without having to decimate your eardrums or to have a conversation without having to yell. It's not quite like the Montreal Metro, which has rubber wheels and is really quiet, but when compared to the CTA subway there is a huge difference. It's nice to have an automated voice over the speaker that tells you what station you're approaching/at, and what is next. On the CTA the only time one seems to get this type of information is when the driver feels like telling the passengers. Sure they have certain announcements about keeping the CTA clean and the like, but nothing like the Tube. CTA buses have this feature, but it doesn't work on every bus. I haven't ridden the buses in London, but I certainly did in Ireland, and it's safe to say that based on my experience there and what I've seen of the buses in London, they're well maintained and clean, again, unlike the CTA. This just hammers home how absolutely terrible public transportation is in Chicago. People piss and moan about a $0.25 fare increase, but having seen other, better systems it's worth it for a higher fare. Besides, on the Tube a cash fare is £4, but if you have an Oyster Card (the same thing as the Chicago Card (Plus)) then it's only £1.50, and on top of that there is a daily cap so you won't be charged anything above the cap if you have the card (assuming I'm reading the literature correctly). But a difference between £1.50 and £4 is huge. Perhaps that's the sort of price structure we need in Chicago to really initiate change. The smart cards are so much more cost effective for the transit system there needs to be a much stronger incentive for people to use them. It's kind of like in Ireland how they charge you for plastic bags at the grocery store. Every one there has reusable shopping bags. After the initial adjustment period most people will probably just go with the flow, and be more content with their service.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Adventures in Belfast
94 years ago today Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, thus commencing the First World War.
Things are still moving along here in Northern Ireland. This weekend differed from my usual activities because my buddy Brendan (Poz) from Loyola was in Belfast. I let him crash on the floor of my room, and since he was staying with me, we pretty much spent the entire weekend together.
I picked him up from the bus station about noon. We came back to Queen's so he could drop off his stuff then we went to check out the mural paintings in the Falls Road and the Shankill Road (Catholic/Republican and Protestant/Loyalist, respectively). Poz had a guide book that we were using as our reference point, but the problem was that for both the Falls and Shankill there only existed a small inset map and not a map of the entire west Belfast area. Needless to say, there were many wrong turns taken. There is a big fence separating the two neighborhoods and it's somewhat surreal walking through the gates (which are closed at night) between the two areas. The murals themselves were fascinating. Along the Falls Road the murals generally focused on Bobby Sands and the H-Block Hunger Strikers, as well as other moments and ideals of Republicanism. In the Shankill Road there was a distinct theme of violence that I found very interesting, especially when juxtaposed to the Falls Road and the typical villainization of the IRA (I don't want to sound like an IRA apologist, I'm not by any means). People don't hear as much about the UVF and other Protestant para-military groups as they do the IRA. But in the Shankill road militarism was ALL OVER their murals. There was even one dedicated to a particular soldier who earned the moniker "Top Gun" for taking out so many of the "others." A whole wall on the side of a house for this guy. It really makes you think.
After we looked at the murals, Poz wanted to go see the grave of Bobby Sands. Mind you we started in the Falls Road, worked our way north and then back east through the Shankill Road. To get to Sands' grave we had to go BACK down the Falls road, i.e. the road we walked down once already, plus an extra mile or two until we found Milltown Cemetery. And it was a huge cemetery. The guide book said the Sands' memorial was on the right hand side just after you walk in the main gates. That wasn't exactly true. We wandered around trying to find the area described in the book, but couldn't find it (the pictures in the link resemble the description in the book, but not what we actually found at the cemetery; weird). Finally we asked a gentleman walking through the cemetery and he pointed us in the right direction. In the meantime he told us that a bunch of the Hunger Strikers were there as well as some of the folks from the Gibralter Incident. He told us that when they were burying the Gibralter victims that loyalists threw grenades at the mourners. He seemed pleased to tell us that even though they ran toward the motorway, the loyalists were caught. The way he said it suggested that they weren't just apprehended and taken off to jail. But it was probably about a city block's distance to the grave sites of Sands and the other Hunger Strikers buried there. Just inside the gate my ass! The cemetery was clearly a Catholic one and Nationalist/Republican. What really struck me was that there was a sizable Great War memorial in the cemetery. Probably the LAST place I would expect to find one of those would be in the same cemetery where Sands, et. al. were laid to rest.
By this time we'd been walking for over 5 hours straight. Since we had been walking south, I figured we could just find an east/west road and try to get back to Queen's. So we asked for directions at a shopping center, but they weren't too helpful. And so I did what I very rarely do. Called a cab. We took a cab back to Queen's. Of course once I saw the route that we took, I realized it only would have taken us another 45 min or so to walk back because I recognized where I was after about 3 turns and 2 traffic lights. Oh well.
Then we went to the Tesco to get some food for dinner. We bought a couple oven pizzas and cooked those up. Then we went out to find a decent pint. But first we had to walk back to the city center to find a specific ATM so Poz could get out money without any fees, or so he hoped. After getting cash, we tried in vain to find a bar that wasn't packed, loud, and full of DB's. Every place we went to was absolute garbage. Even the old fashioned pub turned chachie on Saturday night. We ended up at a hotel bar. There was a wedding going on and some of the wedding-goers were at the bar. We made nice with some of them and they bought us drinks, so that made it worthwhile. One of the guys kept trying to get us to drink Diesel, which, as he told us is for Belfast because Belfast is hardcore. It consists of 2 shots of vodka, 1 red bull, and Magners (hard cider). Poz eventually tried and said it was good. I had no desire to imbibe any such concoction and took his word for it.
When we got back to Queen's a security guard stopped us and asked to see our room keys. I displayed mine, but Poz didn't have one. So we BS'd the guy and said he had to get his bag out of the room so he could go to his hostel and the security guard let Poz through under the provision he came back out. Of course he didn't, but the guy didn't have my name or room number so score one for us.
On Sunday we got up late and went out to do some more sight-seeing. We trekked through the TItanic Quarter, which was a real disappointment. Although they did have the HMS Caroline on the display there which served in the First World War and was at the Battle of Jutland in 1915. Unfortunately, people aren't allowed on the boat. So that sucked, but it was cool to see. On our way back from the Titanic Quarter we stopped at the Crown Bar for a pint because it one of those places you HAVE to get a pint in Belfast. Then we made our way back toward Queen's and Tesco's again to get food and beer. I had no interest in going out again after all the walking we did Saturday and Sunday. So we made food, had a few beers, and shot the shit.
This morning we got up early and went to breakfast. Then we headed downtown. Poz took the bus to Dublin and I went to the Royal British Legion office in Belfast. I got there around 9am and worked there until about 1pm. They had minute books of the British Legion (Ireland) Northern Branch HQ since 1919 (pre-dating the founding of the actual British Legion itself!). So I went through those and took pictures of all the minute books from 1919 until early 1942. The interwar years is the most important and I was quickly running out of memory (and that's with a 2GB memory card).
The folks who worked at the were great. They asked me if I wanted to go out and get a pint so of course I said sure. One of the guys told me they go out for a pint in the afternoon every Wednesday. As he said that I looked at my watch to double check that it was in fact Monday. Apparently they started going Wednesdays. Then Wednesdays and Fridays. Then MWF, then everyday. So they have Monday-Wednesday, Tuesday-Wednesday, Wednesday proper, Thursday-Wednesday, and Friday-Wednesday. They only go for 1 pint, but it was cool to talk to two gentlemen I went out with, both ex-British Army.
After the pint break, I bid the guys from the British Legion adieu and went over to the Belfast Central Library. I wanted to check out their newspaper library in preparation for my planned visit tomorrow. I went through their holdings and made a list of titles I'd want to look at so I should be ready to go in tomorrow guns blazing. There was a guy there taking digital photos today, so I'm glad to see I'll be able to do so as well. Although, I'm starting to run out of space on my hard drive. I have one blank DVD with me, but I might have to go buy a few more. It'd probably be wise to have a back up of some of these things any way. I think I've got about 12GB worth of photos though.
So the rest of this week will probably be split between the Central Library and the Somme Heritage Centre. I called there this afternoon, but the guy I needed to talk to wasn't in. Of course. So I'll call back tomorrow and hopefully get something set up for later this week.
(Pictures to be added later)
Things are still moving along here in Northern Ireland. This weekend differed from my usual activities because my buddy Brendan (Poz) from Loyola was in Belfast. I let him crash on the floor of my room, and since he was staying with me, we pretty much spent the entire weekend together.
I picked him up from the bus station about noon. We came back to Queen's so he could drop off his stuff then we went to check out the mural paintings in the Falls Road and the Shankill Road (Catholic/Republican and Protestant/Loyalist, respectively). Poz had a guide book that we were using as our reference point, but the problem was that for both the Falls and Shankill there only existed a small inset map and not a map of the entire west Belfast area. Needless to say, there were many wrong turns taken. There is a big fence separating the two neighborhoods and it's somewhat surreal walking through the gates (which are closed at night) between the two areas. The murals themselves were fascinating. Along the Falls Road the murals generally focused on Bobby Sands and the H-Block Hunger Strikers, as well as other moments and ideals of Republicanism. In the Shankill Road there was a distinct theme of violence that I found very interesting, especially when juxtaposed to the Falls Road and the typical villainization of the IRA (I don't want to sound like an IRA apologist, I'm not by any means). People don't hear as much about the UVF and other Protestant para-military groups as they do the IRA. But in the Shankill road militarism was ALL OVER their murals. There was even one dedicated to a particular soldier who earned the moniker "Top Gun" for taking out so many of the "others." A whole wall on the side of a house for this guy. It really makes you think.
After we looked at the murals, Poz wanted to go see the grave of Bobby Sands. Mind you we started in the Falls Road, worked our way north and then back east through the Shankill Road. To get to Sands' grave we had to go BACK down the Falls road, i.e. the road we walked down once already, plus an extra mile or two until we found Milltown Cemetery. And it was a huge cemetery. The guide book said the Sands' memorial was on the right hand side just after you walk in the main gates. That wasn't exactly true. We wandered around trying to find the area described in the book, but couldn't find it (the pictures in the link resemble the description in the book, but not what we actually found at the cemetery; weird). Finally we asked a gentleman walking through the cemetery and he pointed us in the right direction. In the meantime he told us that a bunch of the Hunger Strikers were there as well as some of the folks from the Gibralter Incident. He told us that when they were burying the Gibralter victims that loyalists threw grenades at the mourners. He seemed pleased to tell us that even though they ran toward the motorway, the loyalists were caught. The way he said it suggested that they weren't just apprehended and taken off to jail. But it was probably about a city block's distance to the grave sites of Sands and the other Hunger Strikers buried there. Just inside the gate my ass! The cemetery was clearly a Catholic one and Nationalist/Republican. What really struck me was that there was a sizable Great War memorial in the cemetery. Probably the LAST place I would expect to find one of those would be in the same cemetery where Sands, et. al. were laid to rest.
By this time we'd been walking for over 5 hours straight. Since we had been walking south, I figured we could just find an east/west road and try to get back to Queen's. So we asked for directions at a shopping center, but they weren't too helpful. And so I did what I very rarely do. Called a cab. We took a cab back to Queen's. Of course once I saw the route that we took, I realized it only would have taken us another 45 min or so to walk back because I recognized where I was after about 3 turns and 2 traffic lights. Oh well.
Then we went to the Tesco to get some food for dinner. We bought a couple oven pizzas and cooked those up. Then we went out to find a decent pint. But first we had to walk back to the city center to find a specific ATM so Poz could get out money without any fees, or so he hoped. After getting cash, we tried in vain to find a bar that wasn't packed, loud, and full of DB's. Every place we went to was absolute garbage. Even the old fashioned pub turned chachie on Saturday night. We ended up at a hotel bar. There was a wedding going on and some of the wedding-goers were at the bar. We made nice with some of them and they bought us drinks, so that made it worthwhile. One of the guys kept trying to get us to drink Diesel, which, as he told us is for Belfast because Belfast is hardcore. It consists of 2 shots of vodka, 1 red bull, and Magners (hard cider). Poz eventually tried and said it was good. I had no desire to imbibe any such concoction and took his word for it.
When we got back to Queen's a security guard stopped us and asked to see our room keys. I displayed mine, but Poz didn't have one. So we BS'd the guy and said he had to get his bag out of the room so he could go to his hostel and the security guard let Poz through under the provision he came back out. Of course he didn't, but the guy didn't have my name or room number so score one for us.
On Sunday we got up late and went out to do some more sight-seeing. We trekked through the TItanic Quarter, which was a real disappointment. Although they did have the HMS Caroline on the display there which served in the First World War and was at the Battle of Jutland in 1915. Unfortunately, people aren't allowed on the boat. So that sucked, but it was cool to see. On our way back from the Titanic Quarter we stopped at the Crown Bar for a pint because it one of those places you HAVE to get a pint in Belfast. Then we made our way back toward Queen's and Tesco's again to get food and beer. I had no interest in going out again after all the walking we did Saturday and Sunday. So we made food, had a few beers, and shot the shit.
This morning we got up early and went to breakfast. Then we headed downtown. Poz took the bus to Dublin and I went to the Royal British Legion office in Belfast. I got there around 9am and worked there until about 1pm. They had minute books of the British Legion (Ireland) Northern Branch HQ since 1919 (pre-dating the founding of the actual British Legion itself!). So I went through those and took pictures of all the minute books from 1919 until early 1942. The interwar years is the most important and I was quickly running out of memory (and that's with a 2GB memory card).
The folks who worked at the were great. They asked me if I wanted to go out and get a pint so of course I said sure. One of the guys told me they go out for a pint in the afternoon every Wednesday. As he said that I looked at my watch to double check that it was in fact Monday. Apparently they started going Wednesdays. Then Wednesdays and Fridays. Then MWF, then everyday. So they have Monday-Wednesday, Tuesday-Wednesday, Wednesday proper, Thursday-Wednesday, and Friday-Wednesday. They only go for 1 pint, but it was cool to talk to two gentlemen I went out with, both ex-British Army.
After the pint break, I bid the guys from the British Legion adieu and went over to the Belfast Central Library. I wanted to check out their newspaper library in preparation for my planned visit tomorrow. I went through their holdings and made a list of titles I'd want to look at so I should be ready to go in tomorrow guns blazing. There was a guy there taking digital photos today, so I'm glad to see I'll be able to do so as well. Although, I'm starting to run out of space on my hard drive. I have one blank DVD with me, but I might have to go buy a few more. It'd probably be wise to have a back up of some of these things any way. I think I've got about 12GB worth of photos though.
So the rest of this week will probably be split between the Central Library and the Somme Heritage Centre. I called there this afternoon, but the guy I needed to talk to wasn't in. Of course. So I'll call back tomorrow and hopefully get something set up for later this week.
(Pictures to be added later)
Thursday, July 24, 2008
PRONO!
It was too good to be true. Things were going far to well in Belfast not to hit some sort of snag. This morning I got snagged. I've had a very productive week at PRONI and it showed. I think I had something along the lines of 50 pages of typed notes from all the materials I had looked at so far. Before I left for PRONI this morning I opened Word to get the file ready for action. I tried to scroll down to the bottom of the page, but it said there were only 2 pages in the file. So I did a Spotlight search on my computer to see if I misplaced a file or something. Nope. That was the only PRONI file on the machine. Pages and pages of notes, hours of work, gone. What I think happened is this: When I was typing everything up over the past three days I was forgetting to put page breaks in to ensure that each file has it's own page. That helps reduce confusion later. Well I must have had most of the document's text highlighted while inserting the last page break without noticing it, or something along those lines because the only thing remaining was the last thing I was working on at the end of the day yesterday. Once I saved and quit the program there was no chance of getting anything back, let alone the following day. What a huge pain in the ass. Right? Luckily, today just happens to be the one day of the week when PRONI is open late, so I have time to go through everything. And I did. I put my grant money to use and just ordered copies of everything I had already taken notes on. Fortunately, since I had a pretty fresh memory of the pertinent files I was able to get everything done by about 3:00pm, after about 4.5 hours, and move on to stuff I hadn't yet seen. So yes, the situation sucks, but if it was going to happen, it happened at the right time because I had time to get everything back. So it could be worse. At least I'm finding useful material and PRONI will post it home for me so I don't have to bother carrying the stuff around. I think that qualifies as turning lemons into lemonade. For my efforts, I'll have a beer tonight!
A few other observations: Every where I go in Ireland I run into Italians. Does Italy have some obsession with Ireland the rest of world needs to know about? I had an Italian roommate in Dublin (Carlo was great), then in Cork and Belfast there are large groups doing something (Lord knows what) under the auspices of some program. When I was in Derry there was another group of Continentals, that I assume was Italian based on deductive reasoning since their speech sounded like a romance language, but didn't sound like Spanish or French. The most annoying thing that all the groups have in common (not Carlo, like I said, he was the man) is their proclivity toward being out of doors while using voice decibel levels incongruent with whatever time of day it is. Perhaps I'm becoming a curmudgeon? Who knows.
I will say that the current crop of Italians in Belfast obviously didn't get the memo that the 80s are over. Numerous people, male and female, are rocking serious mullets. You can tell that these mullets are carefully stylized coifs and not the result of some brooding passive-aggressive spite. These are by far the worst mullets I've seen since I've been here, and there are a lot. How do Europeans not think that mullets look completely ridiculous? I blame soccer players.
Also, I've noticed that people, at least in Ireland, have an aversion to picking up after their dogs. Not only have I espied dog shit on numerous sidewalks, but yesterday I had the benefit of stepping in a huge pile of it. Granted, in Chicago no everyone picks up after their dogs. I've noticed some repeat offenders on our street, or at least people who walk their dog on our street. I have a feeling they do so at night. That, or their dog has an affinity for stealth crapping. But even so, they tend to crap on the grass, which, although still gross and not good for MY dog, it off the actual footpath, thus greatly reducing the chances for people to step in it. Not in Ireland. It's as though they're afraid to spoil all the green that surrounds them with dog poo. I don't even see people carrying plastic bags when they walk their dogs.
A few other observations: Every where I go in Ireland I run into Italians. Does Italy have some obsession with Ireland the rest of world needs to know about? I had an Italian roommate in Dublin (Carlo was great), then in Cork and Belfast there are large groups doing something (Lord knows what) under the auspices of some program. When I was in Derry there was another group of Continentals, that I assume was Italian based on deductive reasoning since their speech sounded like a romance language, but didn't sound like Spanish or French. The most annoying thing that all the groups have in common (not Carlo, like I said, he was the man) is their proclivity toward being out of doors while using voice decibel levels incongruent with whatever time of day it is. Perhaps I'm becoming a curmudgeon? Who knows.
I will say that the current crop of Italians in Belfast obviously didn't get the memo that the 80s are over. Numerous people, male and female, are rocking serious mullets. You can tell that these mullets are carefully stylized coifs and not the result of some brooding passive-aggressive spite. These are by far the worst mullets I've seen since I've been here, and there are a lot. How do Europeans not think that mullets look completely ridiculous? I blame soccer players.
Also, I've noticed that people, at least in Ireland, have an aversion to picking up after their dogs. Not only have I espied dog shit on numerous sidewalks, but yesterday I had the benefit of stepping in a huge pile of it. Granted, in Chicago no everyone picks up after their dogs. I've noticed some repeat offenders on our street, or at least people who walk their dog on our street. I have a feeling they do so at night. That, or their dog has an affinity for stealth crapping. But even so, they tend to crap on the grass, which, although still gross and not good for MY dog, it off the actual footpath, thus greatly reducing the chances for people to step in it. Not in Ireland. It's as though they're afraid to spoil all the green that surrounds them with dog poo. I don't even see people carrying plastic bags when they walk their dogs.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Derry redux
It's actually looking to be a lovely day outside here in Derry. Actually, the weather here has been pretty good, considering I'm in Ireland. All-in-all things went really well this week. Things seem to have really come together in Derry this week.
I was able to get a good deal of work done. Priority numero uno. So that was good. I spent 3 days at the Harbour museum looking at the War Memorial collection. I think I have over 1k pictures I took with the old digital camera. Needless to say, I'm glad that I bought those extra camera batteries before I left! I spent Thursday and Friday at the Derry Central Library going through newspapers on microfilm. For the most part these were really helpful and had some good stuff in them. At least I hope so. As with everything, I have no idea until I actually go through everything I've collected.
A number of other positives in terms of research this week: I got an email from a gentleman at the British Legion in Belfast about working there. I had sent an email to someone at Legion HQ in London looking for the Legion archive and he passed my info on to this person in Belfast. So I was able to communicate with him and I should be good to go to check out some Legion records in Belfast. Score! The other development also came via email. I had contacted a professor at King's College London who had written his diss and a book on the British Legion. He wrote me back and not only did he say I had an interesting topic, but gave me some leads on Legion sources. He also mentioned that he had a meeting with the general director of the Legion next week, and that he'd mention my project in case there was anything he missed regarding Ireland in the Legion archive. Very cool.
Next week might slow down a bit, much of which is beyond my control. Today, the 12th of July is a holiday in Northern Ireland, so everything is closed. Monday is a Bank Holiday so everything is closed then too. I had planned to spend some more time at the city library but it's also closed on Tuesday because of the holiday and there is strike action planned, effectively closing the library on Wednesday and Thursday. So it looks like the early part of next week will be spent trying to plan my next move. There are two regimental museums that I didn't think I was going to be able to get to, and now, with a little coordination, I should be able to see at least one, if not both. One is the Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers regimental museum in Enniskillen, and the other is the Royal Irish Fusiliers museum in Armagh. I tried calling both places on Friday, but the curator of each respective museum was out of the office. So we'll see about next week. The RIF museum is closed M-W, so hopefully I can get to the Inniskillen's museum on Wed and his the RIF on Thursday. That would be ideal. But we'll see what happens.
In other news, my credit card finally arrived! After three weeks of errors and other bullshit USAA FINALLY came through. As they say, better late than never. So that's one major obstacle overcome. I can rest a bit easier now.
There's a great traditional Irish pub in town that me and the roommates have frequented this week called Peadar O'Donnell's (hence the lack of postings). They have trad sessions every night and the price of a pint is about $5.20, which is about what you'd pay in the states for a good pint anyway. Even though the exchange rate here is worse, the prices are much more favorable, in general. So far Derry has been the hands down best part of the trip so far. I can see how people can get attached to a place like this. I wish I was back home in Derry, indeed!
All for now. Long weekend ahead. Cheers to all four of my readers!
I was able to get a good deal of work done. Priority numero uno. So that was good. I spent 3 days at the Harbour museum looking at the War Memorial collection. I think I have over 1k pictures I took with the old digital camera. Needless to say, I'm glad that I bought those extra camera batteries before I left! I spent Thursday and Friday at the Derry Central Library going through newspapers on microfilm. For the most part these were really helpful and had some good stuff in them. At least I hope so. As with everything, I have no idea until I actually go through everything I've collected.
A number of other positives in terms of research this week: I got an email from a gentleman at the British Legion in Belfast about working there. I had sent an email to someone at Legion HQ in London looking for the Legion archive and he passed my info on to this person in Belfast. So I was able to communicate with him and I should be good to go to check out some Legion records in Belfast. Score! The other development also came via email. I had contacted a professor at King's College London who had written his diss and a book on the British Legion. He wrote me back and not only did he say I had an interesting topic, but gave me some leads on Legion sources. He also mentioned that he had a meeting with the general director of the Legion next week, and that he'd mention my project in case there was anything he missed regarding Ireland in the Legion archive. Very cool.
Next week might slow down a bit, much of which is beyond my control. Today, the 12th of July is a holiday in Northern Ireland, so everything is closed. Monday is a Bank Holiday so everything is closed then too. I had planned to spend some more time at the city library but it's also closed on Tuesday because of the holiday and there is strike action planned, effectively closing the library on Wednesday and Thursday. So it looks like the early part of next week will be spent trying to plan my next move. There are two regimental museums that I didn't think I was going to be able to get to, and now, with a little coordination, I should be able to see at least one, if not both. One is the Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers regimental museum in Enniskillen, and the other is the Royal Irish Fusiliers museum in Armagh. I tried calling both places on Friday, but the curator of each respective museum was out of the office. So we'll see about next week. The RIF museum is closed M-W, so hopefully I can get to the Inniskillen's museum on Wed and his the RIF on Thursday. That would be ideal. But we'll see what happens.
In other news, my credit card finally arrived! After three weeks of errors and other bullshit USAA FINALLY came through. As they say, better late than never. So that's one major obstacle overcome. I can rest a bit easier now.
There's a great traditional Irish pub in town that me and the roommates have frequented this week called Peadar O'Donnell's (hence the lack of postings). They have trad sessions every night and the price of a pint is about $5.20, which is about what you'd pay in the states for a good pint anyway. Even though the exchange rate here is worse, the prices are much more favorable, in general. So far Derry has been the hands down best part of the trip so far. I can see how people can get attached to a place like this. I wish I was back home in Derry, indeed!
All for now. Long weekend ahead. Cheers to all four of my readers!
Monday, July 7, 2008
(London) Derry
I arrived in Derry last night right about on schedule. The bus ride up from Cork was very long. In the States, with our interstates system it would probably take all of 4-5 hours to drive from Cork to Derry. It takes about that long to drive from Chicago to Detroit, even on the Megabus. I tried to read a bit on the bus but the road was so bumpy I started to get a headache. I opted for watching a movie or two instead. The first leg, from Cork to Galway, I did some sudoku and tried to read. The second leg from Galway to Derry I watched Wayne's World and got through most of I Heart Huckabees. My battery died just as we were getting to Derry, so that was alright.
The walk from the bus station to the University was bearable, even while hauling my luggage. The folks at the university security station were nothing but pleasant and helpful. Already Derry was good in my book. I got to my room and it was comparable to the apartment in Cork. The only differences being that there was no tv, no en suite bathroom, and a smaller bed - all things that can be easily dealt with. I was pleased to see that I DID have an internet connection in the room, which is all I really needed anyway. In the words of Nick Monterosso, "hooray for me."
Today I went down to the Harbor Museum and started to go through the War Memorial collection there. It's fairly large and will probably keep my occupied for the remainder of tomorrow and part of Wednesday. I spent the lunch hour wandering around Derry. It reminded me a lot of Quebec City, what with the river below and the hills, etc. Perhaps I'll take some pictures from the city walls this week. Speaking of pictures, I was able to use my digital camera today at the harbor museum, which is always a boon to my pocket book.
On the way home I went to the grocery store. While eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich another fellow moved in. He's from Bristol and goes to Oxford where he studies geography. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but we had a good evening. We went out in Derry, which apparently shuts down at about 5pm. We managed to find a watering hole or two, where we procured sustenance in the form of food and beverage. At one particular place the price of beverages on Mondays was about $3USD, so that was also a boon to my pocket book. Needless to say, I'll probably be there next Monday as well. It was nice to have some good conversation as well.
All in all, Derry is the highlight of the trip thus far.
In other news, it looks like I should be able to get a credit card mailed to me here in Derry after all. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it, but there is hope. They said they'd send it FedEx, so we'll see what comes of this. Apparently the reason I never received the card in Cork was due to a rep error, and they sent another card to Chicago. Brilliant.
All for now, back in a few days probably.
The walk from the bus station to the University was bearable, even while hauling my luggage. The folks at the university security station were nothing but pleasant and helpful. Already Derry was good in my book. I got to my room and it was comparable to the apartment in Cork. The only differences being that there was no tv, no en suite bathroom, and a smaller bed - all things that can be easily dealt with. I was pleased to see that I DID have an internet connection in the room, which is all I really needed anyway. In the words of Nick Monterosso, "hooray for me."
Today I went down to the Harbor Museum and started to go through the War Memorial collection there. It's fairly large and will probably keep my occupied for the remainder of tomorrow and part of Wednesday. I spent the lunch hour wandering around Derry. It reminded me a lot of Quebec City, what with the river below and the hills, etc. Perhaps I'll take some pictures from the city walls this week. Speaking of pictures, I was able to use my digital camera today at the harbor museum, which is always a boon to my pocket book.
On the way home I went to the grocery store. While eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich another fellow moved in. He's from Bristol and goes to Oxford where he studies geography. I can't remember his name for the life of me, but we had a good evening. We went out in Derry, which apparently shuts down at about 5pm. We managed to find a watering hole or two, where we procured sustenance in the form of food and beverage. At one particular place the price of beverages on Mondays was about $3USD, so that was also a boon to my pocket book. Needless to say, I'll probably be there next Monday as well. It was nice to have some good conversation as well.
All in all, Derry is the highlight of the trip thus far.
In other news, it looks like I should be able to get a credit card mailed to me here in Derry after all. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it, but there is hope. They said they'd send it FedEx, so we'll see what comes of this. Apparently the reason I never received the card in Cork was due to a rep error, and they sent another card to Chicago. Brilliant.
All for now, back in a few days probably.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Finishing up in Cork
Obviously there weren't any updates this week. I can't really say why. All 4 people reading this probably don't care anyway. Not a whole lot happened this week. It was actually pretty productive in terms of research, or I should say I did a lot of research and hope that it turns out to be useful. I think I was pretty fortunate this week. I was researching at the Boole Library at University College Cork, looking at the Grehan estate papers. Major Steven Grehan fought in the First World War and when he came back to Ireland to take over the family estate, he became involved with the British Legion in Ireland. All the available information for the collection said that the British Legion files were closed for 30 years from 1996 to protect the families of those mentioned from any potential embarrassment. I inquired about the collection when I was there and the archivist told me that a few years ago the family went through the collection and blacked out all the names in the papers, and that I could now look at them. So it took me about 2.5 days, but I got through the whole collection. It was nice to feel like a real historian again. I can also add that the UCC archive was a really nice place to work: the staff were nice and the archivist was very friendly and helpful. It's too bad that I'm not researching a subject that is better suited to the available sources here because the archives at UCC and the CCCA are both really nice facilities (even if they close for 1.5 hours for lunch).
Other than archival research I've continued to look at various newspaper sources available online. This morning I had an appointment at the College Archive, which didn't have much useful material for me, but the archivist there was really nice. She recognized my Grateful Dead tye-dye because her husband is apparently a Dead head. Who knew?! The internet access situation here, or should I say lack thereof, has really limited my ability to get work done outside the archives.
In other news, the new credit card USAA was supposed to send me never showed up. Couple that with the fact that I am unable to receive mail where I'm staying in Derry and I'm pretty much SOL. So that sucks. Oh well. Good bye savings! Most of the time they're a great company and I can't say enough good things about them, but in this situation they have failed miserably.
Tomorrow is laundry day and Sunday is the trek up to Derry, which will be an all day affair. The bus leaves Cork at 8:25 and gets in to Derry at 19:15. UGH! Hopefully I'll have an internet connection in Derry, but based on the way things have gone thus far on this trip, I won't count on it until my computer is connected and online. Seeing truly is believing over here.
All for now.
Other than archival research I've continued to look at various newspaper sources available online. This morning I had an appointment at the College Archive, which didn't have much useful material for me, but the archivist there was really nice. She recognized my Grateful Dead tye-dye because her husband is apparently a Dead head. Who knew?! The internet access situation here, or should I say lack thereof, has really limited my ability to get work done outside the archives.
In other news, the new credit card USAA was supposed to send me never showed up. Couple that with the fact that I am unable to receive mail where I'm staying in Derry and I'm pretty much SOL. So that sucks. Oh well. Good bye savings! Most of the time they're a great company and I can't say enough good things about them, but in this situation they have failed miserably.
Tomorrow is laundry day and Sunday is the trek up to Derry, which will be an all day affair. The bus leaves Cork at 8:25 and gets in to Derry at 19:15. UGH! Hopefully I'll have an internet connection in Derry, but based on the way things have gone thus far on this trip, I won't count on it until my computer is connected and online. Seeing truly is believing over here.
All for now.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Jackie Lennox's, Christy Moore, and other items from Cork
The end of the week finished out much better than the start of the week. I guess I can cease whining for a bit now. I was actually able to get some work done and feel as though I was rather productive. Hopefully things will remain on the upswing next week.
Today (Saturday) I had two goals. One was to eat fish and chips and the second was to successfully navigate myself to the evening's Christy Moore show. I've heard that Jackie Lennox's is the best chipper in Cork, so naturally I had to try it. It was about a 15-20 min walk from where I'm staying, but there was an extra 15-20 minutes spent looking for an ATM before I was able to dine. 
In the States there's an ATM on every corner and in every convenience store. Not here. Apparently that part of convenience hasn't gotten over here yet. Oh well. I got a piece of cod and some curry chips. Both were very delicious. Like Burdock's in Dublin, I had no need to eat for the rest of the day after scarfing the huge amount of food I was served. Since I've been living off of ramen and pasta it was a nice change of pace to have a filling meal. I happily took a picture of the vestiges of my meal. Mmm.... I spent the rest of the afternoon tooling around the city center and managed to finally have a few pints in Cork. I went for a few Murphy's although I generally prefer Guinness, but when in Cork.... I was so full from Lennox's that I had 
only had room for 2 pints, that, and my wallet would only acquiese to 2 pints as well. I had about an hour and a half to get to the gig so I figured I'd take my time walking there. I neglected to bring a map with me because I generally knew where to go. I ended up getting lost of course, so it's good that I left myself ample time. Now The Marquee was the venue where Christy was playing. Apparently there is a whole series of shows there this summer. Eric Clapton and Jay-Z already played there and Paul Simon will be there later this week. What I wouldn't give to see Paul Simon again - one of the best live shows you will ever see. Period. Anyway, I got there and they hadn't opened the doors yet. That included to the parking lot. Now there was no where to go and hang out in the area, so why with 90 minutes to showtime they weren't letting cars park, I have no idea. It seemed a bit overkill to me.
In the States there's an ATM on every corner and in every convenience store. Not here. Apparently that part of convenience hasn't gotten over here yet. Oh well. I got a piece of cod and some curry chips. Both were very delicious. Like Burdock's in Dublin, I had no need to eat for the rest of the day after scarfing the huge amount of food I was served. Since I've been living off of ramen and pasta it was a nice change of pace to have a filling meal. I happily took a picture of the vestiges of my meal. Mmm.... I spent the rest of the afternoon tooling around the city center and managed to finally have a few pints in Cork. I went for a few Murphy's although I generally prefer Guinness, but when in Cork.... I was so full from Lennox's that I had 
Christy came on at 8:15pm and played until about 10pm. It was a really good show. I haven't been to too many concerts recently and this was defintely worth the price of admission. I tried to take some pictures, but I was far enough back that I had to use the digital zoom so they didn't come out too well. C'est la vie. I ended up walking back to the apartment from the venue, which took about 50 minutes and was clear on the other side of the city. But it was a decent night out and the walk wasn't too bad. All-in-all, it was a good day. So things are looking up in Cork: good work getting done, good music, good brew. All for now.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Don't Mess With... Cork?
Cork is rebel country. The People's Republic of Cork. I gotta get me one of them t-shirts. It should come as no surprise that a large number of men from Cork enlisted in the British Army during the First World War given Cork's role as Ireland's "second city." Furthermore, it is also not surprising that there is little information here on the men who served in the British Army. At least little that I've found so far. The strength of Republicanism in Cork would probably prevent veterans with weak political allegiances from vocalizing their past service for fear of reprisal, especially in the early 1920s.
Oh well. Such is life. I spent two days at the Cork City and County Archive and have about 7 pages worth of typed notes to show for it. None of which is very meaty. I did get an idea for another project based on one of the sources there, but that does me little good for the current undertaking. Instead of wasting more time at the CCCA, I'm moving on and by moving on I mean going back to newspapers.
This time I'll head to the Cork County Library because I can get more time on the microfilm readers. It's about a 15-20 minute walk from where I'm staying, so it's probably a little bit closer than the city library. Plus you don't have to pay to use their computers there. What library makes people pay to use their computers? Isn't that the point of the library, to get those basic services for free? (Ok, so libraries serve a much broader and significant purpose, but you know what I mean.)
On the bright side, the weather here in Cork was much improved over yesterday when all it did was rain whenever I set foot outside with 20mph winds to boot. I think tomorrow is going to be crappy too, but I believe things should shape up a bit on Saturday when I go see Christy Moore perform. Now THAT will definitely be a good time.
I've got the remainder of this week to do research here and next week as well. I have a feeling that unless I find a real gold mine next week when I go to the Boole Library, I won't need to come back to Cork in the future - at least for research purposes. It's a shame. It's a nice city. I like it much better than Dublin. I'd rather work here, but the sources, or lack thereof I should say, makes such a proposition unrealistic.
On to another subject: sports. I've never really been a soccer fan. It's been growing on me since the last World Cup, but I can only get into "good" games. Some soccer games are like watching the 1995 New Jersey Devils, and that's just plain painful. Yes they won the Cup, but they set the NHL back 10 years in the process. See, nothing good comes from New Jersey. Anyway, like I mentioned before the European Cup, or Euro 2008, or whatever it's called is going on now. I've watched a handful of games and the number one thing that stick out to me are the announcers. It's no secret that I hate most sports announcers in the States. Outside of Mickey Redmond, I'm hard pressed to find someone I actually like. CBC is good for hockey because the commentators don't talk over the entire game. The same is true of soccer in Europe. The commentators basically tell you who has the ball. That's it. There is NO discussion of players' personal history, trade history, or any other hogwash your typical American commentator spouts off. There are no stupid graphics or sound clips of the player shown simultaneously with the game. No. It's just the game. The commentators respect the audience enough to let them watch in peace. It's a welcome change to the CONSTANT banter of sports commentary in the States. Since I watch a lot of hockey, I can say that the various teams on Versus are atrocious. The same is true of ESPN's coverage of lacrosse - professional and college. Most of that is due to the verbal vomiting of Quint Kessenich. For lax, I understand why they do it - not a lot of people are familiar with the sport and the players. But for those that ARE familiar, it's like running your ears over a cheese grater. Sportscasters pandering to the lowest common denominator gets really old, really quickly.
Oh well. Such is life. I spent two days at the Cork City and County Archive and have about 7 pages worth of typed notes to show for it. None of which is very meaty. I did get an idea for another project based on one of the sources there, but that does me little good for the current undertaking. Instead of wasting more time at the CCCA, I'm moving on and by moving on I mean going back to newspapers.
This time I'll head to the Cork County Library because I can get more time on the microfilm readers. It's about a 15-20 minute walk from where I'm staying, so it's probably a little bit closer than the city library. Plus you don't have to pay to use their computers there. What library makes people pay to use their computers? Isn't that the point of the library, to get those basic services for free? (Ok, so libraries serve a much broader and significant purpose, but you know what I mean.)On the bright side, the weather here in Cork was much improved over yesterday when all it did was rain whenever I set foot outside with 20mph winds to boot. I think tomorrow is going to be crappy too, but I believe things should shape up a bit on Saturday when I go see Christy Moore perform. Now THAT will definitely be a good time.
I've got the remainder of this week to do research here and next week as well. I have a feeling that unless I find a real gold mine next week when I go to the Boole Library, I won't need to come back to Cork in the future - at least for research purposes. It's a shame. It's a nice city. I like it much better than Dublin. I'd rather work here, but the sources, or lack thereof I should say, makes such a proposition unrealistic.
On to another subject: sports. I've never really been a soccer fan. It's been growing on me since the last World Cup, but I can only get into "good" games. Some soccer games are like watching the 1995 New Jersey Devils, and that's just plain painful. Yes they won the Cup, but they set the NHL back 10 years in the process. See, nothing good comes from New Jersey. Anyway, like I mentioned before the European Cup, or Euro 2008, or whatever it's called is going on now. I've watched a handful of games and the number one thing that stick out to me are the announcers. It's no secret that I hate most sports announcers in the States. Outside of Mickey Redmond, I'm hard pressed to find someone I actually like. CBC is good for hockey because the commentators don't talk over the entire game. The same is true of soccer in Europe. The commentators basically tell you who has the ball. That's it. There is NO discussion of players' personal history, trade history, or any other hogwash your typical American commentator spouts off. There are no stupid graphics or sound clips of the player shown simultaneously with the game. No. It's just the game. The commentators respect the audience enough to let them watch in peace. It's a welcome change to the CONSTANT banter of sports commentary in the States. Since I watch a lot of hockey, I can say that the various teams on Versus are atrocious. The same is true of ESPN's coverage of lacrosse - professional and college. Most of that is due to the verbal vomiting of Quint Kessenich. For lax, I understand why they do it - not a lot of people are familiar with the sport and the players. But for those that ARE familiar, it's like running your ears over a cheese grater. Sportscasters pandering to the lowest common denominator gets really old, really quickly.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Cork, Ireland
So I finally made it to Cork on Sunday. Not much happening here. The ride down was uneventful. I spent most of the time reading "Back To The Front" by Stephen O'Shea. A good read. The scenery driving through Tipperary and Cork was very nice. They're the sort of places you'd imagine retiring to if you wanted to retire in the Irish countryside. The most random thing I saw on the way to Cork was an Aldi. Who knew they had Aldi in Ireland? I didn't. I should have asked the bus driver if he'd pull over so I can get some cheap Ramen noodles (there's no 10 for $1 here, it's about 0.85Euro per pack. Oy!). The place I'm staying is much nicer than UCD. However, there is one key element missing from the residence at UCC. There is no internet access in the apartment. Apparently, they turned off the internet for the summer and have four computers (three of which currently function properly) for everyone staying here to use. Needless to say, it's ridiculously inefficient. I'm trying to see what I can get done about possibly getting something in my room, but I'm not holding my breath.
In terms of research, today was somewhat productive. I went to the City Library and went through some newspapers. They put limits on how long people can use the microfilm readers, which sucks, but they only have two of them so it's somewhat understandable. Regardless, today was a relatively slow day there so I got to use the machines longer than the allotted time. I also spent some time in the morning calling a few places in Northern Ireland to make sure everything was in place for my visits there. There is still more work to be done in that regard, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Tomorrow I'll go to the city and county archive and hopefully get some good stuff done. They're not open Mondays, which is why I didn't go today.
This trip has been very trying in a number of respects already. It's hard to focus when there are so many little things getting in the way and distracting me, all of which are beyond my control. But, one of the main goals of this trip, in addition to collecting materials, obviously, is to learn the lay of the land, so to speak, and I think that aim is certainly being reached for better or for worse. In general, I like Cork a lot better than Dublin. I just wish I had internet access in my room, and not the inconsistent wireless network that randomly pops up. That's about it for the moment. More developments as they happen.
In terms of research, today was somewhat productive. I went to the City Library and went through some newspapers. They put limits on how long people can use the microfilm readers, which sucks, but they only have two of them so it's somewhat understandable. Regardless, today was a relatively slow day there so I got to use the machines longer than the allotted time. I also spent some time in the morning calling a few places in Northern Ireland to make sure everything was in place for my visits there. There is still more work to be done in that regard, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Tomorrow I'll go to the city and county archive and hopefully get some good stuff done. They're not open Mondays, which is why I didn't go today.
This trip has been very trying in a number of respects already. It's hard to focus when there are so many little things getting in the way and distracting me, all of which are beyond my control. But, one of the main goals of this trip, in addition to collecting materials, obviously, is to learn the lay of the land, so to speak, and I think that aim is certainly being reached for better or for worse. In general, I like Cork a lot better than Dublin. I just wish I had internet access in my room, and not the inconsistent wireless network that randomly pops up. That's about it for the moment. More developments as they happen.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
5 Singles for a Rainy Day
Today was laundry day and since everything (archive-wise) is closed on Saturday there's not much to do today. It's also pouring rain outside. So here are 5 tracks for a rainy day. Since I certainly have my d'ruthers I'll try to keep it to songs you might not know, even if you know the artist.
Christy Moore - "Little Musgrave." Whether solo, or with Irish supergroup Planxty this is a soft, mellow song that has a great melody. A song about infidelity and retribution. Timeless themes, which is evident that the lyrics come from a 17th or 18th century poem (or something along those lines). The story is in the clip. Check it out.
Wake The Dead - "Sugaree." Originally a Hunter-Garcia song, this band plays Dead tunes with Celtic arrangements and instruments. Very cool.
Paul Pena - "Center of Asia." Paul Pena was an amazing individual and songwriter. He wrote the original "Jet Airliner," the song made famous by The Steve Miller Band. Pena was blind and taught himself Tuvan throat-singing. The documentary Ghengis Blues documents his trip to Tuva, where Paul wrote and performed this song.
Eric Clapton - "Over The Rainbow." Sure, I know what you're thinking - the Lunchbox has gone soft. But Clapton does a great version of this classic. I remember seeing him on the Reptile tour at the Palace of Auburn Hills. He finished his set with a blistering "Sunshine For Your Love" then came back for an encore, pulled out a stool, grabbed an acoustic guitar [at least I thought at the time. Looking at the above clip it's actually a hollow body electric, but that's a mere formality], and played this jazzy version of "Over The Rainbow." I was floored. It was pure genius. A version is available on the live album "One More Car, One More Rider."
Pearl Jam - "Thumbing My Way." I'm most familiar with the version from "Live at Benaroyal Hall" but the original is on "Riot Act," which I understand might not be one of their best records. I think it's fine though. Regardless, this is a great song.
So there you have it. By no means a "Top 5" a la High Fidelity, but a good list for what it's worth (not the Buffalo Springfield song, of course).
Christy Moore - "Little Musgrave." Whether solo, or with Irish supergroup Planxty this is a soft, mellow song that has a great melody. A song about infidelity and retribution. Timeless themes, which is evident that the lyrics come from a 17th or 18th century poem (or something along those lines). The story is in the clip. Check it out.
Wake The Dead - "Sugaree." Originally a Hunter-Garcia song, this band plays Dead tunes with Celtic arrangements and instruments. Very cool.
Paul Pena - "Center of Asia." Paul Pena was an amazing individual and songwriter. He wrote the original "Jet Airliner," the song made famous by The Steve Miller Band. Pena was blind and taught himself Tuvan throat-singing. The documentary Ghengis Blues documents his trip to Tuva, where Paul wrote and performed this song.
Eric Clapton - "Over The Rainbow." Sure, I know what you're thinking - the Lunchbox has gone soft. But Clapton does a great version of this classic. I remember seeing him on the Reptile tour at the Palace of Auburn Hills. He finished his set with a blistering "Sunshine For Your Love" then came back for an encore, pulled out a stool, grabbed an acoustic guitar [at least I thought at the time. Looking at the above clip it's actually a hollow body electric, but that's a mere formality], and played this jazzy version of "Over The Rainbow." I was floored. It was pure genius. A version is available on the live album "One More Car, One More Rider."
Pearl Jam - "Thumbing My Way." I'm most familiar with the version from "Live at Benaroyal Hall" but the original is on "Riot Act," which I understand might not be one of their best records. I think it's fine though. Regardless, this is a great song.
So there you have it. By no means a "Top 5" a la High Fidelity, but a good list for what it's worth (not the Buffalo Springfield song, of course).
Friday, June 20, 2008
...and then it hit the fan.
Wednesday was a bit better at the NLI. I was able to get through more films, I talked to the librarians and they cleared the hogs off the printing machines, and I met Diarmaid Ferriter. He wrote The Transformation of Ireland, a mammoth tome that's basically a survey of twentieth century Ireland through a social and cultural lens rather than the standard political narrative. So I got to speak with him briefly and tell him that I really enjoyed his book. He gave me his email and told me to keep in touch in regards to my project. Very cool. I ended up leaving the NLI about an hour earlier than I planned because I was dying after looking at microfilm for 3 days straight. I came home and went through the Irish Times online to make up for the time lost.
Thursday I spent at the UCD archive, just a short jaunt across campus. The bonus was that I got to sleep in an extra hour. In terms of how the archive is setup and run, it was hands-down the best archive I've been to over here. Unfortunately, they don't have much material that is useful for my project. So I went through what I could, which took up the bulk of the day, and decided I'd work on a gameplan for Friday later in the evening. On my way back I stopped at one of the bookstores on campus to pick up something. This is where things started to go downhill. I knew that two productive days wouldn't come without repercussions, at least with the way this trip is going.
So I get what I want and go to the register to pay. The guy runs my card twice and it's not going through. One of the other folks there says maybe the credit card company (USAA) saw a bunch of charges in Ireland, figured it was stolen, and turned it off. That sounds feasible so I ask them to hold the materials so I can come back and get them once I get credit card this straightened out. I came back to my room and went about trying to contact USAA. The toll-free number they listed on their website for folks calling from Ireland did not work and wasn't toll-free. Since my credit card is my primary form of financial support here, I decided to bit the bullet and use my cell phone. To my surprise, the call won't go through. So I send them an email and get a response a few hours later. Here's what happened: In May I signed up for new card in an effort to upgrade my current credit card. I called USAA before I left and told them I only wanted one card and they said they wanted me to cancel the one I already had and use the new one. I told them that was fine, but I was leaving the country in a few days and if the new one didn't show up in time I'd have no choice but to use the old one. The guy at USAA told me that it'd be fine to use the old one until I started using the new one. Ok. Good. I'm set for Europe. Fast forward to yesterday evening, and I get a response from USAA saying that the old card automatically shuts off 20 days after the new card is sent. This is contradictory to what the representative told me earlier. So now I'm stuck in Ireland without a credit card. It wouldn't be a huge deal if I weren't packing up and moving to Cork on Sunday. That means I have to put an $800 housing charge on my debit card, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid at present. So most of today was wasted trying to get this situation resolved, which it still is not. This is really aggravating because 1) I'm in Ireland and can't do anything about it, 2) USAA has, in the past, been nothing but an amazing company, and 3) they don't appear willing to help the situation in an amenable way despite the extraordinary circumstances that were explained to them. Needless to say I'm pretty pissed at the moment. If it's not one thing on this trip it's another. As my Dad said in an email, it's two-steps forward and one-step back on this trip. Well that's exactly the kind of bullshit I don't need. I've got little time here, it's expensive as hell, and I can't afford (in more ways than one) these types of setbacks. Ireland seems to hate me at the moment and that just plain sucks.
Thursday I spent at the UCD archive, just a short jaunt across campus. The bonus was that I got to sleep in an extra hour. In terms of how the archive is setup and run, it was hands-down the best archive I've been to over here. Unfortunately, they don't have much material that is useful for my project. So I went through what I could, which took up the bulk of the day, and decided I'd work on a gameplan for Friday later in the evening. On my way back I stopped at one of the bookstores on campus to pick up something. This is where things started to go downhill. I knew that two productive days wouldn't come without repercussions, at least with the way this trip is going.
So I get what I want and go to the register to pay. The guy runs my card twice and it's not going through. One of the other folks there says maybe the credit card company (USAA) saw a bunch of charges in Ireland, figured it was stolen, and turned it off. That sounds feasible so I ask them to hold the materials so I can come back and get them once I get credit card this straightened out. I came back to my room and went about trying to contact USAA. The toll-free number they listed on their website for folks calling from Ireland did not work and wasn't toll-free. Since my credit card is my primary form of financial support here, I decided to bit the bullet and use my cell phone. To my surprise, the call won't go through. So I send them an email and get a response a few hours later. Here's what happened: In May I signed up for new card in an effort to upgrade my current credit card. I called USAA before I left and told them I only wanted one card and they said they wanted me to cancel the one I already had and use the new one. I told them that was fine, but I was leaving the country in a few days and if the new one didn't show up in time I'd have no choice but to use the old one. The guy at USAA told me that it'd be fine to use the old one until I started using the new one. Ok. Good. I'm set for Europe. Fast forward to yesterday evening, and I get a response from USAA saying that the old card automatically shuts off 20 days after the new card is sent. This is contradictory to what the representative told me earlier. So now I'm stuck in Ireland without a credit card. It wouldn't be a huge deal if I weren't packing up and moving to Cork on Sunday. That means I have to put an $800 housing charge on my debit card, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid at present. So most of today was wasted trying to get this situation resolved, which it still is not. This is really aggravating because 1) I'm in Ireland and can't do anything about it, 2) USAA has, in the past, been nothing but an amazing company, and 3) they don't appear willing to help the situation in an amenable way despite the extraordinary circumstances that were explained to them. Needless to say I'm pretty pissed at the moment. If it's not one thing on this trip it's another. As my Dad said in an email, it's two-steps forward and one-step back on this trip. Well that's exactly the kind of bullshit I don't need. I've got little time here, it's expensive as hell, and I can't afford (in more ways than one) these types of setbacks. Ireland seems to hate me at the moment and that just plain sucks.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Futbol, not football (Otherwise known as soccer)
This weekend I decided to take it easy. The National Library was only open from 9:30-1pm, so I figured by the time I got there an got settled it'd be time for me to go anyway. Tomorrow will bring a full day there regardless. So I went into the city to knock a few things off of my To Do list. Namely, I went to Leo Burdock's Fish & Chips. I got a huge piece of fish and fries. It was amazing and was the first filling meal I've had in a week. Living off Peanut Butter & Jelly gets a bit old. (Even the Ramen noodles here are a rip off - almost $2US for a single package! Are you kidding me? $2 will get 20 in the States!!! But I digress.) Having gone to the city with my Finnish roommate, she wanted to get a pint after the Fish & Chips since Burdocks is a take-out only place. So we walked around Grafton St. and got a pint. Then we found our way to what is the closest thing to a sports bar in Dublin (I would assume) to watch the European Cup or whatever the current soccer (futbol, not football) tournament is called. Sweden was playing Spain and it was actually a pretty entertaining game. We had gone to watch The Netherlands vs. France on Friday evening and that game wasn't very exciting. But it was definitely an experience to watch soccer at a crowded bar in Europe. The people here really love their football. By the time the game was over we had spent enough time in the city and headed back to UCD. I spent the remainder of the evening looking through the Irish Times online archive and found some useful articles. So the day wasn't a complete academic waste!Sunday looks like it will be pretty lazy. No real plans for the day, just taking it easy. We'll see.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Week 1 in the books
The last couple of days have been pretty productive. I think I've got some good material, but only time will tell if my time in Dublin has been worthwhile. Mine is a difficult topic to get at, so hopefully some of my tangential approaches will pay off. That's to be seen though.
Thursday morning I went back to the National Archive and took some pictures in the morning. By the time I had finished that and gone through a few more files it was time for me to go. I had an appointment at the Guinness Storehouse at 1pm. I walked over to Guinness where I had a huge amount of files to go through. Most of them pertained to the actual war years with very little discussing the long-term effects of the war or the company's attitude toward it. There was, however, some very good material on the creation of the company's Roll of Honour, which I'm sure I will be able to use.
Earlier in the week I went to the grocery store and bought some granola bars to serve as a lunch substitute. Of course, I forgot to bring any on Thursday. Needless to say I was exhausted by the time I was done at Guinness (probably 4:30-4:45). Since it was still kind of early I decided it would be prudent to go to the main bus station to get a bus ticket for Cork next week. So I walked to the main bus station from Guinness, which is clear on the other side of the city. When I got to the bus station the person at the ticket window tickets had to be bought the day of your trip. Poop and pee. Then I walked from the main bus station to my bus stop, which was probably another 15-20 minutes.
Today was much simpler. I made sure to pack a granola bar and went to the National Archive. I think I've looked at pretty much everything I need to see there, at least for the time being. The National Library is open tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'm going to go there or not. I need to go through some of my materials and see how things stand. Perhaps I'll do a half day and allow myself to sleep in a bit. Regardless, I'll probably be there on Monday.
I'm not really sure what I'll do this weekend otherwise. I'm sure I can find some cost-effective entertainment. I was talking to a couple of the guys who work at the desk at the National Archive today and they were saying how expensive Dublin is, and that I might even be able to afford a pint when I go to Cork. Let's hope so!
Thursday morning I went back to the National Archive and took some pictures in the morning. By the time I had finished that and gone through a few more files it was time for me to go. I had an appointment at the Guinness Storehouse at 1pm. I walked over to Guinness where I had a huge amount of files to go through. Most of them pertained to the actual war years with very little discussing the long-term effects of the war or the company's attitude toward it. There was, however, some very good material on the creation of the company's Roll of Honour, which I'm sure I will be able to use.
Earlier in the week I went to the grocery store and bought some granola bars to serve as a lunch substitute. Of course, I forgot to bring any on Thursday. Needless to say I was exhausted by the time I was done at Guinness (probably 4:30-4:45). Since it was still kind of early I decided it would be prudent to go to the main bus station to get a bus ticket for Cork next week. So I walked to the main bus station from Guinness, which is clear on the other side of the city. When I got to the bus station the person at the ticket window tickets had to be bought the day of your trip. Poop and pee. Then I walked from the main bus station to my bus stop, which was probably another 15-20 minutes.
Today was much simpler. I made sure to pack a granola bar and went to the National Archive. I think I've looked at pretty much everything I need to see there, at least for the time being. The National Library is open tomorrow, but I'm not sure if I'm going to go there or not. I need to go through some of my materials and see how things stand. Perhaps I'll do a half day and allow myself to sleep in a bit. Regardless, I'll probably be there on Monday.
I'm not really sure what I'll do this weekend otherwise. I'm sure I can find some cost-effective entertainment. I was talking to a couple of the guys who work at the desk at the National Archive today and they were saying how expensive Dublin is, and that I might even be able to afford a pint when I go to Cork. Let's hope so!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Train kept a rollin'
Not a whole lot to report today. Another productive day at the archive. I was able to finish photographing everything I needed from the first box of ex-servicemen records. I'll try to move on to the second box tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll actually be splitting time between the National Archive and the Guinness Archive. I had an email when I got home from the Guinness archivist stating that they wouldn't be open at 9:30am as previously communicated, but tomorrow would open at 1pm. That kind of messes up my plan, but oh well. I'm sure I'll manage. I was able to look at some Taoiseach files, some of which might be of use and I'll plan to photograph them tomorrow. That way, in the very least, I'll get most, if not all of the small files out of the way, and can concentrate on the big boxes of ex-servicemen records. For not having very much on WWI, the National Archive has proved to be a worthwhile stop for me, at least it seems that way at the moment. I think I was told there are something around 12-13 boxes of the ex-servicemen records, which I doubt I'll get through on this trip. One of the archivists also told me they have a collection of WWI ex-servicemen's wills, but like the Defense Forces archive, they were temporarily unavailable. Apparently they plan to put them on CD and make them available to people. That would be a cost effective alternative than a return trip. So I'll keep my eyes out for those. All-in-all, it was a good day. Going through archives makes one feel more like an historian than going through newspapers on microfilm, which is more of a needle-in-a-haystack way of doing history. Someday, decades from now, everything will be fully digitized and searchable, until then we have microfilm apparently.
After the archives I decided to lay low for the evening. Now extra work tonight. I watched "The Commitments" which I brought with me - always a good flick. I also spent a good part of the evening talking with Carlo, my roommate from Italy. Interesting guy. I got an email from Katie, my fiancee, this morning that really made my day a few times over. She said that she went running with the dog, and when he stopped to relieve himself, instead of doing that he simply plopped down on the ground. The thought of this, and the look I know was on his face, made me laugh to myself a few times today. Oh Buca. I'm also trying to find a convenient time to go to Burdock's Fish & Chips. I was going to go tomorrow, but the time change at Guinness threw my timetables off. Perhaps I will go this weekend with Carlo. All for now. More tomorrow?
After the archives I decided to lay low for the evening. Now extra work tonight. I watched "The Commitments" which I brought with me - always a good flick. I also spent a good part of the evening talking with Carlo, my roommate from Italy. Interesting guy. I got an email from Katie, my fiancee, this morning that really made my day a few times over. She said that she went running with the dog, and when he stopped to relieve himself, instead of doing that he simply plopped down on the ground. The thought of this, and the look I know was on his face, made me laugh to myself a few times today. Oh Buca. I'm also trying to find a convenient time to go to Burdock's Fish & Chips. I was going to go tomorrow, but the time change at Guinness threw my timetables off. Perhaps I will go this weekend with Carlo. All for now. More tomorrow?
Sunday, June 8, 2008
New York Blackout: Dublin Style
Saturday and Sunday were a busy couple of days. I got up on time Saturday, no thanks to my alarm clock, and got to the Dublin City Archive about 15 minutes after it opened. Not bad. I continued going through their online newspaper collections, but that hit a snag when I lost the use of my email. I forgot that Loyola was doing maintenance to their servers on Saturday, and so the process of emailing files to myself came to a halt for the day since I couldn't access email. Once I realized what happened, I spent some time going through city council minute books. There really wasn't much there and I was hoping for more. Oh well. By the end of the day I had begun to go through some newspapers on microfilm. On Monday, I'll finishing emailing myself the documents I have left and hit the microfilm hard. Luckily the library is open until 8pm during the week so I should be able to get a good deal done. We'll see. The whole process is over-whelming because I have so much to see, so little time, copies are so expensive, and the use of my digital camera is prohibited.
When I finally got home from the archive I started going through the Irish Times website on my laptop. Now having American appliances in Europe can be a challenge. Most expensive items have power come with power converters (the box on the cable). I bought a separate converter for the trip as well, and have a number of different plug adapters that do not convert current. So because of all this, I have a Ireland:UK adapter followed by a UK:US adapter, which I plug my laptop into. The plug on my laptop is a little loose so for added stability, I removed the UK:US adapter and plugged my UK:US converter into the IE/UK adapter. Sound confusing?
It is. I figure that the two converters back to back shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong. After a while I heard a big pop and the lights go out. My converter had blown.
Fortunately, the fuse in the IE:UK adapter didn't blow (that happened on Friday to my first adapter. The second one is much higher quality), but the surge completely knocked out the power in the entire apartment. This was probably around 7-8pm. We try to flip the circuit breakers and nothing happens. After several trips to reception and an offer to switch apartments, we all decide to stay the night without power. Everyone I'm sharing with is here for at least two weeks and had no interest in packing in the dark. Reception said they'd have someone come out and fix the power today (Sunday). In the meantime, the lack of power provided everyone an opportunity to talk and we did so until the wee hours of the morning.
apartment. The proposed solution didn't work. So I decided to go be a tourist for a bit instead of sitting around all day waiting for a fix. I got onCome Sunday morning, the folks from reception come and fidget with the buttons in the the bus and went downtown. I planned to buy an alarm clock - the time delay issue was related to current variations, my engineer roommate speculated - which I did. Then I set out down the River Liffey (picture above) to the National Museum of Ireland. There was an exhibit about Irish militarism I wanted to see. The exhibit was interesting and had some displays I could probably use for my diss. I bought some books at the museum bookstore as well as the official literature on the Soldier Chiefs exhibit. From the national museum I set out for the Irish National War Memorial at Islandbridge.
After a 15-20 minute walk I finally arrived at the park. It consists of a number of open spaces, a few sports pitches, and the main memorial area. The center of the memorial area had a large stone monument with two poppy wreathes laid on it. To the east and west of the main area were fountains and additional stone work that led into a memorial garden at each end. Straight ahead was the main cenotaph. The stone work on the wall behind the cenotaph bore an inscription dedicating the memorial to those who died in the war. I've included pictures of the center monument with the cenotaph in the back ground as well as an image of the western memorial
garden. The park in general was very relaxing and pleasant, quite the antithesis of the conflict it commemorates. I'm sure that was the idea. It was nice to see that there were a fair number of people using the park. I'm sure it would be an even greater destination for families and other events if it were more centrally located.
When I left the park I made my way back through Dublin. I went past Kilmainhaim Jail, where the '16 rebels were shot, but I didn't go in or take any pictures. I made my way past the Guinness Storehouse on the way across town to the bus stop. It wasn't too long before a bus came and I was back to UCD. Upon entering the apartment I tried the light switch and the power had, in fact, not been restored. My walking for the day was not done yet.
Poop. I went down to reception and was given a key for a new apartment. Fortunately, it was in the same building on the ground floor so it wasn't a laborious move. I got myself re-settled in the new place and had some dinner consisting of Peanut Butter & Jelly - my first food since breakfast - and some carrots. All things considered it was a busy day, but I got a lot done and saw a lot of the city. The sore knees and ankles are a small price to pay in the end. Tomorrow I'll head back to the Dublin City Archive, and perhaps try to persuade them to let me use my camera. We'll see. More to come.
When I finally got home from the archive I started going through the Irish Times website on my laptop. Now having American appliances in Europe can be a challenge. Most expensive items have power come with power converters (the box on the cable). I bought a separate converter for the trip as well, and have a number of different plug adapters that do not convert current. So because of all this, I have a Ireland:UK adapter followed by a UK:US adapter, which I plug my laptop into. The plug on my laptop is a little loose so for added stability, I removed the UK:US adapter and plugged my UK:US converter into the IE/UK adapter. Sound confusing?
It is. I figure that the two converters back to back shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong. After a while I heard a big pop and the lights go out. My converter had blown.
Fortunately, the fuse in the IE:UK adapter didn't blow (that happened on Friday to my first adapter. The second one is much higher quality), but the surge completely knocked out the power in the entire apartment. This was probably around 7-8pm. We try to flip the circuit breakers and nothing happens. After several trips to reception and an offer to switch apartments, we all decide to stay the night without power. Everyone I'm sharing with is here for at least two weeks and had no interest in packing in the dark. Reception said they'd have someone come out and fix the power today (Sunday). In the meantime, the lack of power provided everyone an opportunity to talk and we did so until the wee hours of the morning.apartment. The proposed solution didn't work. So I decided to go be a tourist for a bit instead of sitting around all day waiting for a fix. I got onCome Sunday morning, the folks from reception come and fidget with the buttons in the the bus and went downtown. I planned to buy an alarm clock - the time delay issue was related to current variations, my engineer roommate speculated - which I did. Then I set out down the River Liffey (picture above) to the National Museum of Ireland. There was an exhibit about Irish militarism I wanted to see. The exhibit was interesting and had some displays I could probably use for my diss. I bought some books at the museum bookstore as well as the official literature on the Soldier Chiefs exhibit. From the national museum I set out for the Irish National War Memorial at Islandbridge.
After a 15-20 minute walk I finally arrived at the park. It consists of a number of open spaces, a few sports pitches, and the main memorial area. The center of the memorial area had a large stone monument with two poppy wreathes laid on it. To the east and west of the main area were fountains and additional stone work that led into a memorial garden at each end. Straight ahead was the main cenotaph. The stone work on the wall behind the cenotaph bore an inscription dedicating the memorial to those who died in the war. I've included pictures of the center monument with the cenotaph in the back ground as well as an image of the western memorial
garden. The park in general was very relaxing and pleasant, quite the antithesis of the conflict it commemorates. I'm sure that was the idea. It was nice to see that there were a fair number of people using the park. I'm sure it would be an even greater destination for families and other events if it were more centrally located.When I left the park I made my way back through Dublin. I went past Kilmainhaim Jail, where the '16 rebels were shot, but I didn't go in or take any pictures. I made my way past the Guinness Storehouse on the way across town to the bus stop. It wasn't too long before a bus came and I was back to UCD. Upon entering the apartment I tried the light switch and the power had, in fact, not been restored. My walking for the day was not done yet.
Poop. I went down to reception and was given a key for a new apartment. Fortunately, it was in the same building on the ground floor so it wasn't a laborious move. I got myself re-settled in the new place and had some dinner consisting of Peanut Butter & Jelly - my first food since breakfast - and some carrots. All things considered it was a busy day, but I got a lot done and saw a lot of the city. The sore knees and ankles are a small price to pay in the end. Tomorrow I'll head back to the Dublin City Archive, and perhaps try to persuade them to let me use my camera. We'll see. More to come.
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