Category Archives: Inspiration

by

A new look!

It’s time to strip the old away and make way for the new in 2015, so this blog has a whole new look. After a few readers gave me some input about the black background being harder to read, I opted to change it a little. Hopefully this makes things easier and brighter for everyone.

That goes for next year too. I think we all need easier and brighter happenings in 2015 – and I wish you all an even better year, full of excitement, learning, and joy. Thank you for making this new blog a constant source of merriment for me in its first year – and now on to the second!!

Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh!

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,100 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 35 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

by

The great Maud Gonne

Edith Maud Gonne has been hailed as one of the greatest activists and fighters of her time. Her beauty has been recorded and immortalized by one of Ireland’s greatest poets. History has compared her to Joan of Arc and she’s one of the best known women in the books, in no small part due to her own inflated memoirs and creative storytelling. She is largely considered to be an Irish hero—which is a great feat for a woman—particularly one who wasn’t Irish born and who grew up as a member of a wealthy, loyal, British family. So was she a true revolutionary, or a fraud in it for the fame and her own idea of who she wanted to be? Either way, she did enough to leave her mark on Irish history and one thing is undisputed – Maud Gonne chose the green and was most certainly not born to it.

Continue reading →

by

2016 take 3

now here’s a proper ad for the 2016 centenary. At least this one has the actual thing that is supposed to be celebrated in it.

by

Joseph Mary Plunkett

On this day in Irish history a mighty warrior poet was born. Joseph Mary Plunkett was born in one of the wealthiest parts of Dublin with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth. He should have had a wonderful childhood, surrounded by wealth and adventure—and in some ways he did—but a terrible case of Tuberculosis threw a wrench into many roads he may have otherwise wandered. The disease was something that affected him for his whole life, leaving him weak and infirm in many ways but it also gave him focus and determination. Joseph became a journalist and a prolific poet. Later in life his study of  languages, the written word, and a love for theater brought him into a close friendship with Thomas MacDonagh, another poet and politically charged man. Thomas was married to a woman named Muriel, who had a charming sister named Grace. She would become the love of Plunkett’s life. Aside from their mutual infatuation with the Gifford girls, the men were also active in the Gaelic League, the Irish Volunteers, and the secretive Irish Republican Brotherhood. In addition, they co-founded the Irish Theatre, bringing their love of drama to the stage.
Continue reading →

by

F%CK Cancer

I had a lot of things to write about this week such as the birth of one of my greatest inspirations, Padraig Pearse, the conviction and suicide attempt of Wolfe Tone, and last Saturday marked the anniversary of the people of Ireland electing its first woman President too. I dropped the ball on all of them – which makes me really sad, but I have a good reason. Last week my friend and housemate had a double mastectomy while pregnant in an attempt to be cancer free and spare her unborn any radiation treatment.  I am one of her primary caretakers for her long recovery. As you might imagine, I have not had a lot of creativity in me during the last week and writing is a luxury that I can’t seem to find the time for at this moment.

I hope to return to it next week – particularly since there is so much to write about right now, such as the Ballymurphy decision, the Irish Water debacle, the awful bigotry against the Irish language and a ton of historical anniversaries. It’s making me crazy to skip some of these important topics and my hope is that people are still learning about them and fighting the good fight anyway.

Speaking of fighting, cancer sucks. Please donate to your favorite science group who is attempting to defeat it. There is no reason that we shouldn’t be able to battle it better than we have or why drastic measures are still the only way to go in that fight. My strong American Irish roommate is a great inspiration and warrior woman in this fight, but if we had more research, she and others like her might not have to go through things like this. It’s high time we find a new weapon against cancer and everyone in the world can help make that happen.

It’s also time to hold your loved ones close and appreciate all the things and people you have in your life. This blog, and those that read it occasionally are high on that list for me – so thank you for stopping by. I promise to return as soon as my brainpower can make that happen.

Go raibh maith agaibh

paint-it-pink-290x137 copy

by

Remembering Agnes O’Farrelly

Agnes O’Farrelly was a mighty woman in the realm of aademia during a time when that was highly unusual. She was a suffragette committed to improving the role of women in society and a staunch supporter of the Irish language. She has the important distinction of being the first woman to publish multiple novels in Irish. She was not a native speaker and did not learn it until she went to university – in fact, she was the reason that language lessons were revived there. Eoin MacNeill was her mentor in the language and eventually he sent her to the Gaeltacht area in the Aran Islands to further her education in Irish.  Though she did not speak it from birth, this trip only reinforced her love for it. Eventually, she became a professor in Modern Irish and she continued speaking, teaching, and writing it for the rest of her life.

Ms. O’Farrelly presided over the inaugural meeting of Cumann Na mBan in Dublin, however she did not stay involved for long. While she was in favor of an independent Ireland and a supporter of Irish Nationalism, she felt that the women’s organization should be dedicated to arming and supporting the men of the Irish Volunteers, rather than joining the fight directly. It may seem like a peculiar stance for someone who wanted equal rights for women but she also believed in peace. As Cumann Na mBan became more militant in their own right, she withdrew from her leadership role and returned to academia – still fighting for women and an independent Ireland in her own ways, such as reviving the language and history, becoming an influential member of the Gaelic League and convincing other women to join her.

In 1916, she used her powerful gift of the written word and her scholarly position in an attempt to save her good friend Roger Casement from execution. She started a petition and sent a lot of correspondence but in the end, she was unable to persuade the authorities to spare his life. In 1922, she was part of a group of women who tried to convince the IRA leadership to avoid the upcoming civil war. That too, failed. Despite these setbacks, Agnes O’Farrelly remained influential in Dublin for many years and continued to be one of the most prominent female activists of the time.

Her devotion to the Irish language, to education, and to peace left little room in her life for romantic attachments. She remained an independent woman her whole life and never married. She died on this day, Nov. 5th, in 1951 and was buried in Deans Grange Cemetery. Her funeral was attended by many former colleagues, students, political activists, authors, rebels and the Taoiseach himself. She is remembered for being one of the most profound advocates for the Irish language in recent memory and has been credited for being one of the reasons that the number of women in academia swelled greatly at the time and ever since.

by

Remembering Máire Drumm

And now for a different Máire.  Máire Drumm was born into a staunchly Republican family. She was lucky enough to have had a mother who was active in the War for Independence and the Irish Civil War, so the concept of strong women who could fight and lead was instilled in her from birth. Perhaps it was also the reason she knew she could grow up to be a commander in Cumann Na mBan and the Vice President of Sinn Fein.  She settled in Belfast in 1942 and began fighting on behalf of Republican prisoners, which she did for many years to come. It was in this role that she met Jimmy Drumm, a Republican prisoner who would later become her husband.

Continue reading →

by

Remembering Margaret Skinnider

Margaret Skinnider was a woman who should have died long before she did, but like a cat with nine lives she nearly always landed on her feet. She did not die while learning to shoot weapons and build bombs in her home town of Glasgow. She did not have a fatal accident while smuggling explosives under her hat and detonators under her dress from Scotland to Ireland in 1915. She did not blow herself up while spending many afternoons testing dynamite in the hills around Dublin and she was not killed while acting as a courier between rebel outposts during the Easter Rising of 1916. On the contrary, between delivery missions on her bicycle, she joined the men on a roof over Stephen’s Green with a rifle and took her own deadly aim. She was proud of her sniper abilities and famously said, “More than once I saw the man I aimed at fall.”
Continue reading →

by

Guildford

On October 5th in 1974, two bombs rocked Guildford, an area south of London. The Provisional Irish Republican Army’s bombing campaign had begun in England and it was brutal and effective. The Guildford pubs were targeted because they were popular with the British Army and the explosions injured about 75 people and killed a handful more. This highly publicized incident aided in the passage of the far-reaching Prevention of Terrorism Act in the United Kingdom shortly thereafter.

Some of the most widely abused provisions under this act were that anyone could be stopped and searched and those arrested could be detained for up to 7 days, rather than the original limit of 48 hours. During that detention, many rights were misplaced and extensive and brutal methods of interrogation were used in an attempt to get confessions from prisoners. As the bombing campaign continued, it led to suspicion, violence and racism within the communities, whether the authorities were involved or not. It was not a good or safe time to be Irish in Britain.

Continue reading →

by

Mrs. Tom Clarke

On this day in 1972 Ireland lost a valiant soldier in its continued quest for freedom. Mrs. Tom Clarke was how she preferred to be addressed in spite of being a staunch suffragist. She gave up her fight on September 29th at the ripe old age of 94, after living a life that would have sent anyone else to the grave much sooner.

Continue reading →