On the Green

So far, I’ve walked through St. Stephen’s Green a couple of times. Thursday afternoon, it looked like the drizzle had stopped, so I suited up and went out. As soon as I got out of the hotel, it started pissing down rain. So yesterday, in the sun, I went back. Today’s post is a tale of two parks.

I won’t go into the history of St. Stephen’s Green, but it was a key site in the Easter Uprising of 1916. Today it’s a gorgeous green space, with a couple of ponds, a playground, and shady and open areas. When I went on Thursday, there were a few folks dawdling, but mostly they were just walking as fast as they good to get from one place to another. So I was kind of surprised yesterday to find about a squillion people out, lounging on the grass, sitting on benches, feeding the seagulls and the pigeons and playing in the playground. Here are some images.

First, Thursday’s drenched outing.

NB: the video is a little jumpy because I was shooting while holding an umbrella. The sound you hear is the rain hitting the umbrella.

Even the seagull looked uncomfortable.

There’s this one swan, which I only saw in the rain:

Note the expanse of no people:

There are several statues. Here’s one called Famine:

And this one, from the former Federal Republic of Germany, commemorates post-WWII aid sent to German children by the Irish:

It depicts the three Fates, spinning the destiny of humans. In the second shot you may be able to see the rain running down their faces, as though they’re weeping.

Moving on to yesterday, let’s start with the statuary. You saw the Fates in the rain, here they are in the sunshine:

The famine group is a little harder to distinguish:

And here’s one behind Famine: Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish Republicanism, who died in British custody, having been sentenced to hang for his part in the Rebellion of 1798. He’d been denied his request to be shot; it’s in dispute whether he committed suicide or was murdered by his jailors.

And an interesting, techy touch:

A lot of people were, uh, interacting with the pigeons:

Frankly, I don’t know why you’d want to do that; they’re just disease transmitters. But, hey…

Remember that wet, empty grass from Thursday? Here’s what I found yesterday:

And I really loved these fountains, which I hadn’t even seen the day before:

Summing up, we have benches from Thursday:

And an art fair that appeared on the railings yesterday. They were taking a chance that it wouldn’t be pissing down rain again:

High spirits in Dublin

Today’s post is about whiskey. If you’re teetotal, walk on by.

I’d booked a tour at the Pearse Lyons Distillery in The Liberties essentially on the recommendation of the head concierge at my hotel. The barman here seconded it, and both of them are well known to the PLD folks.

I believe it was a good choice. As it turns out I had a private tour, as no one else seems to have booked for that time slot, so I had Bernard, my guide, and James, the tasting master, to myself.

And it was a good choice because of the history of the enterprise. Pearse Lyons was an Irish biochemist and entrepreneur who built a multi-billion-dollar business in fermentation science and animal nutrition, based in Lexington, Ky. Part of his empire was brewing beer and distilling whiskeys, and he decided to bring his experience to bear on Irish whiskey. He bought a deconsecrated church across from the Guinness brewery and, with his wife, set out to build a distilling business.

The Liberties has a history of making booze; it contains the Golden Triangle of distilleries—more than 40 in a one-mile radius at one time (including the big guns, Powers and Jameson). Lyons (who died last year) viewed PLD as more than a business operation; it’s an investment in Dublin and The Liberties. Bernard told me that the St. James church cost €700K about five years ago, and there’s been several million spent on renovating the dilapidated structure and building out the whiskey business. While Lyons’ first enterprise, Alltech, made a profit in months, his distillery here may not for a long time, but its mission was to revive local history, and not to drive revenues.

Okay, that got my attention.

Not a small portion of that multi-million euro investment is archaeological work in the graveyard, uncovering centuries of burials:

The original church was part of an abbey complex constructed by Henry II as part of his penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket, in 1177. It was a point of origin for pilgrims headed to Santiago de Compostela, and the distillery honors that in some of the stained glass windows they put in. If you have a pilgrim’s passport to Santiago, you can still get a stamp there.

(There’s another St. James church down the road—the PLD one was converted to Church of Ireland in the time of Henry VIII, when its associated abbey was dissolved. That church seems to have taken over the pilgrimage business:)

All that history was before we even walked into the distillery. The instant we walked into the building, I was hit by the odor of the mash fermenting. As it happens, in this vat:

The two pot stills were brought over from Kentucky; the larger one (initial pass) on the left is Mighty Molly, the smaller one (finishing) is Little Lizzie.

Evidently it’s the custom to give stills women’s names. I don’t make this stuff up, I just report it.

Two thousand liters of mash from that vat go into Molly; eventually 190 liters emerge from Lizzie. They go into bourbon barrels (and some on to sherry barrels) from the Lexington distillery (since you can only use a bourbon barrel once for making bourbon but you can re-use them several times for making Irish whiskey), and age.

At that point, Bernard handed me off to James, and I sampled five whiskeys (plus a bit of in-process stuff that the distiller brought over). I liked one of them very much, and another couple okay. Two were not “my profile”, as my whiskey mentor would say.

Turns out they also make gin, and I tried their rhubarb gin, which was surprisingly good. (I’m not a gin drinker.)

Sadly, it didn’t occur to me to take pictures, so you just have to imagine.

However, I really was only partly there for the tasting, as it happens. I mean—trying a new whiskey is attractive, but the history really took over the tour for me and the tasting was just a perk. The most impressive thing about this was that every single PLD employee I spoke with, from the pensioner class to the 20-somethings, was absolutely, joyfully passionate about what they and the company are doing. I don’t know when I’ve come across that.

So I’m going to leave you with shots of the chandeliers, which—in keeping with the history of pilgrims—have the Templars cross on their sides (visible in the third photo), who protected those traveling to holy places.

High finance in Northern Ireland

Second report from Belfast, on just miscellaneous stuff.

I started out my day with the Irish breakfast at my hotel:

Scrambled eggs, bacon (looks like ham to Americans), pork sausages, blood sausages and sourdough toast. I told my server to forget the baked beans. Even if they’re “chipotle baked beans”.

Sadly I had not anticipated the quantities, and left about half of it. I hate wasting food, but I had reached the vanishing point.

All the GBP I had have been made obsolete by HM government some time in the 10 years I was last there. I had £35 that wouldn’t spend. Stevie, my taxi guide, told me that any of the banks in the town center could swap them out for current-issue notes. The first bank I came upon was Barclays. The queue for “counter service” was almost out the door. And there was a total of exactly two windows, so the maximum bandwidth of customer service their counter could give was two. But for part of the time, there was only one person working.

Seriously, I was in line for 20 minutes. During which time I saw a notice to the effect that, starting last November, if you want to pay cash into your account at the “counter service”, you have to have a preprinted cash payment slip or (I think) an ATM card. I thought this is an extraordinary position to take by an institution that basically deals in money. “No, no—we’re British. No cash.” The Barclays motto seems to be: you're our customers now. Suck it.

When I got up to the counter and pulled out my notes, the guy wasn’t best pleased. Where was I from? The US. Where do I bank? Scuse me? I bank with a credit union. Not Bank of America? No. Apparently they have some kind of reciprocal agreement with BofA, but I have absolutely no notion of what that might have to do with swapping old British currency for new British currency.

Anyhow, after a bit of faffing about, he counted out a twenty and three fivers, counted my twenty and three fivers, and recounted the twenty and three fivers.

(And now, Twitter is recommending that I follow Barclay's Investment Bank. Eat dirt and die, Twitter. And you, too, Barclays.)

But later, when I was paying the server at the bar at the top of the hotel, I discovered that my pound coins are also obsolete. WTF? Who does that? (Apparently the Brits.) But my two pound coin was still valid, so I used that.

That bar, on the 23^rd floor, has very nice views of Belfast. Here, for example is the City Hall.

And here is another building that clearly doesn’t get much sun; that green stuff is moss.

I do not know what’s up with that bar. They serve afternoon tea (for £10 more than the £30 charged at the bar on the first floor), but you have to book 24 hours in advance. Also, the only way you can get up to the bar is to be escorted in the special elevator by one of the concierges. I don’t know why.

The fella who took me up, the older by far of the two I’ve seen working, had recommended earlier that I visit St. Malachy’s church. I’d asked about a residential area nearby, which seemed to flummox both of the concierges, but St. Malachy’s was near such a neighborhood, so I stopped in. The exterior of the place was unimpressive; looks like all the inner city churches I’ve seen in Chicago or Boston. But the interior was indeed pretty, although I didn’t get any pix because I got there just as the 1300 mass was starting.

Anyway, on our way up to the 23^rd floor, we chatted about St. Malachy’s. He said he likes churches. He mentioned the Clonard monastery, which I’d seen as part of my taxi tour. During WWII, the Redemptorists offered their basement as an air raid shelter. Protestants refused to go there because: Catholic. The head Redemptorist pointed out that Luftwaffe bombs don’t distinguish between Protestant and Catholic, so they eventually agreed to seek shelter there. But they had to be kept separate from the Catholics.

During the 80s, groups representing Unionist and Republican factions met there in secret to lay the groundwork for the peace process that eventually led to the Good Friday Agreement.

Stevie told me I should check out the organ, and it was impressive:

The walls also had very interesting mosaics, which isn’t something I usually associate with Irish ecclesiastical decorative arts:

And here was one of those little details you come across: an air freshener device in the priest's confessional booth. What stories do you think prompted that addition?

After Clonard, the concierge fella said St. Anne’s church is quite nice, and then muttered, “They charge a fee.” I told him I got in for free because I walked the labyrinth. I don’t think he knew about the labyrinth, and I do think he leans more towards Catholicism than Church of Ireland.

I decided to try the Observatory bar at the top of the hotel basically because my room still hadn’t been cleaned by 1430, and I needed somewhere to think and write. The views there were indeed impressive, and the place was practically empty. They had a lot of what looked to me like expensive froofy cocktails, but there was also a list of Irish whiskeys. I was going to go with the Bushmills 12-year (Bushmills being distilled somewhere near Belfast), but the barman brought out the triple distilled, and I thought, why not have a go at that.

It was truly lovely. Just aromatic, smooth, and with the tiniest hint of sweetness. I was also pleasantly pleased to discover that, at £6, it was less than half the price of all the other whiskeys on the menu.

The rest of my evening was writing my tour post, getting some dinner and reading Max Hastings’ Armageddon, a the history of the last months in the war against Germany. Just as I started writing this paragraph, I noticed I was getting a little sleepy. So time to pack it in.

Good times, man.

Touring the Troubles

Okay, well—the tour of the Troubles. It was the fastest 90 minutes of my life. So much crammed into that short time.

And here’s the thing: despite the 6.5-mile, gazillion feet-high wall separating the Protestant from the Catholic neighborhoods, with corrugated metal gate openings that are closed essentially at dusk cutting off access, it’s clear to me that life is vastly safer and more congenial since the Good Friday Agreement of 21 years ago. Except for that wall, I almost could not believe they were the same places I’d visited in 1994. And even though the day was crappy weather-wise, the whole place looked vastly brighter and decidedly less grody than the last time I was there.

For one thing, the murals have become much less incendiary—the in-your-face-surrender-or-die stuff has been painted over with images that show community and heritage. Viz:

This portrait of a to-the-core leader of Ulster Defence Association (UDA) paramilitaries (which is on the side of the house where he lived) who was assassinated in October 1981 replaces one that was way more militant:

My guide, Stevie, did not mention that the UDA guy’s son, born in July 1981, was also a Unionist fanatic. He was killed in 2003; two bullets to the head.

These three pictures are of murals that were replaced:

The Maze prison, AKA H Blocks, where convicted paramilitaries from both sides were sent to do their time. (Although they were kept in separate cell blocks.)

The Belfast Mona Lisa, so named because the UDA paramilitary’s gun barrel follows you around. (I don't know whether it's good or bad that this has been defaced.)

This one was a full-wall mural of a UDA leader. You can't really see them, but there are three crosses in the background of the Grim Reaper. The name of an IRA fighter is on each of the crosses. According to Stevie, this was a warning that the UDA was going to get those three guys. Pretty in-your-face to put that up permanently on a wall, letting your enemies know specifically that they're walking targets. (As it happens, the three IRA men survived.)

Most of the murals feature men and their view of the fighting. But here’s a piece commissioned to commemorate the women caught up in the conflict:

Oh—so you know, not all murals are political. This was on a building next to the UDA guy’s house:

On the Catholic side, you mostly see things like this mural of Bobby Sands, who died while on a hunger strike in the Maze.

It’s painted on the side of the building that houses Sínn Fein, the Republican political party.

Something that I found extraordinary was that Gerry Adams, the Sínn Fein leader, was elected to (British) Parliament in 1983, from West Belfast. West Belfast is the district that encompasses both the Shankill and Falls Road enclaves of Protestants and Catholics.

The thing everyone remembers from Belfast (aside, these days, from Titanic and Game of Thrones) is the Peace Wall, which runs between the sectarian neighborhoods.

Belfast has commissioned local artists to create murals along it.

For perspective, those are two-story houses, on the Catholic side, behind the wall.

One section also has ribbons of quotations:

From Khahil Gibran

From a Belfast children’s song.

And a quote from Bill Clinton, who visited the wall while in office. (I didn’t shoot it.)

There are some segments that are also open to the public for comment:

Stevie offered me a marking pen, so my contribution was from Robert Frost: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”

What’s interesting is that in front of the wall on the Protestant side, there’s a street and space. From the Catholic side, however, the wall cuts right through people’s back yards. And some of them have had to build small-mesh fencing (similar to the fortified police stations) around their entire gardens to defend against Molotov cocktails and the like being launched over that wall.

Imagine growing up with that. It's really very similar to the Berlin Wall.

At the end of a street bisected by the wall, local (Catholic) residents planted trees to hide it:

They must have been fast-growing trees.

And here’s a set of gates next two another installation of murals in the Catholic neighborhood. Notice both vehicular and pedestrian gates, with a kind of no-man’s-land between them:

These murals are more about hope:

Much of the Republican strategy was modeled on the African American civil rights struggle, and this one pays tribute to the likes of Mandela, Ali, King and Douglass.

This one may not be entirely hopeful, but it does depict the blindingly obvious.

And this one—well, I just dunno.

But, see what I mean about a lot to process?

One of the hopeful things about this all is that taxi tours of the sectarian areas are a booming business. I mean—fleets of them beetling about with tourists and passing on the history. I’m pretty sure Stevie comes from the Catholic area; he didn’t exactly call the UDA crowd rat bastards, but his choice of verbs and modifiers leaned against the Loyalists.

However, I imagine there are Protestant drivers who give the same tour with different applications of verbs and modifiers.

Also, while we were at the wall, Stevie said that there are walking tours of both areas, led by former fighters in the neighborhoods they know best. If you started on the Falls side, your guide hands you off to an ex-UDF guy at the wall; if vice versa, your guide hands you off to an ex-IRA guy. They all form a confraternity of oral history—Stevie recognized one of the guides coming in from Shankill—and they all work together.

I am not a little concerned, however, that the idiocy that is Brexit, in which Britain is happy to violate the Good Friday Agreement WRT the border between the Republic and Ulster if that's what gets May her "deal", may deal a major blow to this hard-won progress. But for the time being, things are pretty good here.

Peace out from Belfast, then.