Tag Archives: Ireland

The Vivid Color of Ixoras

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freedom to pollute with bronze statue of refugee

Statue of Liberty carrying the declaration “Freedom to Pollute” next to a bronze statue of climate change refugee, at the Bonn Climate Change Conference.

It’s been a week since the closing of the Bonn Climate Change Conference. A small victory occurred with the passing of a global insurance plan that by 2020 will help protect 400 million poor and vulnerable people around the world. The project, called the InsuResilience Global Partnership, aims to provide insurance against damage caused by global warming.

Naturally, this project is fraught with controversy. Instead of having the richer nations, who are generally the bigger polluters, pay for climate disaster relief, this initiative actually pushes poor people in poor countries to pay an insurance premium.

016705 Dante on greed

Assagioli’s note on greed from his Archives,

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Stones and Seaweed (Part II of II)

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Paidraich and his wall

Padriach with a bucket of seaweed standing in front of the stone wall he built with his two hands.

Summer is here again, and so I thought I would dig out a story from fifteen years ago, something I wrote while my husband and I spent six weeks on the island of Inishere, Ireland, helping Anita and Paraic with their new B&B and café not to mention their farm and four kids. I will always be grateful to them for their hospitality during the summer of 2001.

This is long story for a blog and comes in two parts. I hope you enjoy it and your summer!

Inishere has one shop, three pubs, and a chipper (a place to buy fried foods), an art center displaying the resident artist’s work, a hotel, and a new library. Groceries were ordered by phone and delivered three times a week. This naturally altered our attitude to shopping and nothing was taken for granted. Still Kees and I had no desire to leave.

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Stones and Seaweed (Part I of II)

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Inishere beach

Seal ag buain duilisg do charraig, seal ag aclaidh, seal ag tabhairt bhídh do bhoctaibh, seal i gcaracair.

(A while gathering dillisk from the rock, a while fishing, a while giving food to the poor, a while in my cell.)   – Irish monk (12th century?)

Summer is here again, and so I thought I would dig out a story from fifteen years ago, something I wrote while my husband and I spent six weeks on the island of Inishere, Ireland, helping Anita and Paraic with their new B&B and café not to mention their farm and four kids. I will always be grateful to them for their hospitality during the summer of 2001.

This is long story for a blog and comes in two parts. I hope you enjoy it and your summer!

An hour by ferryboat from the city of Galway, Inishere (also known as Inis Oírr) means Eastern Island as it is the closest Aran Island to the mainland and the furthest east. This tiny island (2-1/2 by 1-1/2 miles) has been inhabited for 3500 years and Gaelic is the spoken language of the islanders. It has a population of about 300 people, and nearly everyone is related to someone else. Approximately 30,000 visitors descend on the island every year.

Anita, Paraic, and their children were there to meet us in their tractor when we disembarked from the boat. We greeted each other with hugs and kisses, loaded our bags onto the back of their tractor and climbed aboard. Tightly crunched inside the small cab and cushioned by children on our laps, we sighed with relief as the noisy engine pulled us up the hill to their spacious home.

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