From: "Anne-Maree Whitaker"
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor

The Bolivian hero is clearly named in honour of Sir Francis Burdett!


- ----Original Message Follows----
From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Reply-To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor
Date: 08 July 2002 06:00

From: patrick maume
Subject: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor

From: Patrick Maume
A book by James Dunkerley WARRIORS AND SCRIBES - ESSAYS ON THE
HISTORY AND POLITICS OF LATIN AMERICA includes an essay on
Francesco Burdett O'Connor, brother of Feargus the Chartist, who
became a national hero in Bolivia.
See review on the REVIEWS IN HISTORY website

Best wishes,
Patrick

----------------------
patrick maume







Dr Anne-Maree Whitaker FRHistS

P O Box 63

Edgecliff NSW 2027

Australia

ph (+61-2) 9356 4929 fax (+61-2) 9356 2065

mobile 0408 405 025

email ahcwhitaker[at]hotmail.com

website http://www.geocities.com/joseph_foveaux


_________________________________________________________________
Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
http://www.hotmail.com

From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Dymphna=20Lonergan?=
Subject: Re: Ir-D Irish stockings 5

There is some discussion of Irish dress in the book
'Teague, Shenkin and Sawney', Bartley, J.O. Cork
University Press, 1954. The Irish truibhas were
'tight hose fitting closely to the whole leg'. The
tight fitting aspect may be what distinguised the
Irish stocking. Another quote points to this factor
too 'Their breeches are so close, as they expose to
full view, not only the noble, but also the shameful
parts'.(p. 12) And so later they are serious stockings and
highly recommended for the serious traveller!

Dymphna Lonergan
Flinders Univeristy of South Australia

=====
Go raibh tú daibhir i mí-áidh/May you be poor in ill-luck
Agus saibhir i mbeannachtaí/rich in blessings
Go mall ag déanamh namhaid/slow to make enemies
go luath a déanamh carad/quick to make friends

From: Hilary Robinson
Subject: Re: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor 3

a tangent but does anyone know where James Dunkerley is these days? I
knew him about 15-20 years ago and lost contact (please reply to my
private email h.robinson[at]ulster.ac.uk - thanks!)
Hilary

>From: Oliver Marshall
>Subject: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor
>
>James Dunkerley's extremely entertaining piece on Francesco Burdett
O'Connor
>was first published in the Institute of Latin American Studies' (London)
>Occasional Papers series (no. 20) ñ a real bargain at UK£3 a copy! You can
>order it via: http://www.sas.ac.uk/ilas/publicat.htm
>
>

Dr. Hilary Robinson
School of Art and Design
University of Ulster at Belfast
York Street
Belfast BT15 1ED
Northern Ireland
UK


direct phone/fax: (+44) (0) 28 9026.7291

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

The organisers of the Fr. Joe Taaffe Summer School, Mayo, and the Mayo
Emigrant Liasion Committee, have sent us material about the Summer School,
Castlebar, Mayo, Friday August 23 to Sunday August 25.

The theme is
Irish Emigration in the Third Millennium

Speakers include Breda Gray, Nessa Winson, Paula O'Sullivan (of Emigrant
Advice). The Keynote Spreaker on Saturday night is Tim Pat Coogan - the
Guest of Honour is Roy Walters, the Lord Mayor of Manchester.

Contact
Mayo Emigrant Liasion Committee
PO Box 67
Castlebar
Co. Mayp

Tel 094 38937

P.O'S.

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

The full schedule of the Merriman Summer School 2002 has been forwarded to
us by Liam Irwin, the Director.

And I have pasted it in below because I am sure it will be of interest. It
certainly interests me - I am going to be there for the Monday and the
Tuesday. I wish I could be there for the whole week.

P.O'S.



http://www.merriman.ie/school/index.html

Merriman Summer School 2002

Ennistymon, Co. Clare
17 - 24 August 2002
(Saturday to Saturday)

Director
Liam Irwin
Mary Immaculate College
University of Limerick




Merriman Summer School 2002

Programme

Exiles and Strangers: Immigrants to and from Ireland

Saturday 17 August 2002

5.00 p.m. Clárú / Registration at Falls Hotel
7.00 p.m. Fáiltiú / Reception

8.30 p.m. Oscailt na Scoile / Opening of School
Seosamh Mac Donncha, Chair, National Anti- Racism Awareness Campaign.

10.30 p.m. Club Merriman: dancing to the Four Courts Céilí Band

Sunday 18 August

12.00 noon Clare/Polka Sets and Two-Hand Dances 1 , with
Johnny Morrissey and Betty Mc Coy.

3.00 p.m. Lecture: The Celtic and Roman ?Invasions? of
Ireland: Fact or Fiction, Richard Warner.

8.30 p.m. Lecture: Beyond Tolerance: Towards Irish
Models of Multiculturalism? Piaras Mac Éinrí.

10.30 p.m. Club Merriman: dancing to the Four Courts Céilí Band
Monday 19 August
Monday 19 August

10.00 a.m. Seimineáir Ghaeilge. Cathaoirleach:
Liam Ó Dochartaigh.
Seimineár 1: Ionnarbadh agus Imirce in Éirinn sa Luathré,
Máire Ní Mhaonaigh.
10.00 a.m. (a) Renew your Irish 1 with Eoghan Ó hAnluain.
(b) Local History 1: The Macnamaras of Ennistymon, Michael McMahon.
12.00 noon: Sets and Two-Hand Dances 2

3.00 p.m. Lecture: Identity and Imperialism: The Irish in
Spain, Austria, and Flanders, Declan Downey.

8.30 p.m. Lecture: The Politics of Asylum and Immigration in Ireland:
Justice Delayed or Injustice Expedited? Donncha O?Connell.

10.30 p.m. Club Merriman: dancing to the
Four Courts Céilí Band
Tuesday 20 August
Tuesday 20 August

10.00 a.m. Seimineár 2: An Imir ce go hAlbain: Imir ce an
Riachtanais, Pádraig Ó Baoighill.
10.00 a.m. (a) Renew your Irish 2 with Eoghan Ó hAnluain.
(b) Local History 2 : The Craic was Good in
Cricklewood: Songs and Poems of the Irish
Navvies, Ultan Cowley.
12.00 noon: Sets and Two-Hand Dances 3

3.00 p.m. Lecture: Re-thinking the History of the Irish of
London: Patterns and Sources,
Patrick O?Sullivan.

5.00 p.m. EU Reception for participants.
Host: Peter Doyle (EU).

8.30 p.m. Lecture: The Irish in Australia, Ruán O?Donnell.

10.30 p.m. Club Merriman: dancing to the
Four Courts Céilí Band
Wednesday 21 August

10.00 a.m. Turas: Tour to Killaloe led by Liam Irwin,
Michael Mc Mahon, Pat Wallace & Seán Kierse.

3.00 p.m. Lecture: Brian Boru, Pat Wallace.
(Venue: Killaloe Cathedral).

8.30 p.m. Lecture: Connaughtmen and Horned Cattle to
the Far Platform: Irish Navvies and the Culture of
Migration, Ultan Cowley.

10.30 p.m. Club Merriman: dancing to the
Four Courts Céilí Band
Thursday 22 August
Thursday 22 August

10.00 a.m. Seimineár 3: Mac Amhlaigh agus a
Chomrádaithe: na Fir Shluasad Deiridh, Proinsias
Mac Aonghusa
10.00 a.m. (a) Renew your Irish 3 with Eoghan Ó hAnluain.
(b) Local History 3: GAA Ballads of Munster ,
Jimmy Smyth.
12.00 noon Sets and Two-Hand Dances 4

3.00 p.m. Léacht: Gaelachas agus Gaeilgeoireacht - Na
Gaeil i Meiriceá, Úna Ní Bhroiméil.

8.30 p.m. Lecture: Me and Mamie O?Rourke: The Irish in
NY, Maureen Murphy.

10.30 p.m. Club Merriman: dancing to the
Four Courts Céilí Band
Friday 23 August
Friday 23 August

10.00 a.m. Seimineár 4: Aniar thar na Bánta,
Seosamh Ó Méalóid.
10.00 a.m. (a) Renew your Irish 4 with Eoghan Ó hAnluain.
(b) Local History 4: The Famine in West Clare,
Matthew Lynch.
12.00 noon: Sets and Two-Hand Dances 5

3.00 p.m. Lecture: Emigration: Then and Now,
Fr Paul Byrne.

8.30 p.m. Lecture: The Changing Irish Mind: An Immigrant
Psychiatrist?s Viewpoint , Moosajee Bhamjee.

10.30 p.m. Club Merriman: dancing to the
Four Courts Céilí Band
Saturday 24 August
Saturday 24 August

10.15 a.m. Reacaireacht / poetry reading presented by
Eoghan Ó hAnluain and Doireann Ní Bhriain,
researched by Máire Ní Mhur chú.

From: Oliver Marshall
Subject: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor

James Dunkerley's extremely entertaining piece on Francesco Burdett O'Connor
was first published in the Institute of Latin American Studies' (London)
Occasional Papers series (no. 20) ? a real bargain at UK£3 a copy! You can
order it via: http://www.sas.ac.uk/ilas/publicat.htm

The following description is given:

The Third Man: Francisco Burdett O'Connor and the Emancipation of the
Americas
James Dunkerley (1999)
Francisco Burdett O'Connor came from a Cork family prominent in the radical
politics of the British Isles during the ?era of revolutions? from 1780 to
1850. His uncle, Arthur, was a leader of the United Irishmen and his brother
Feargus was the most famous of the Chartists. Francisco himself left Dublin
for Venezuela in 1819 and never returned to Europe. He served as a cavalry
commander for Bolivar and Sucre and then as chief of staff of the united
patriot army in Peru for the last phase of the War of Independence. Settling
in 1827 in Tarija, Bolivia, O'Connor spent the rest of his long life
farming, with occasional periods of military service. This brief biography,
delivered as an inaugural lecture in June 1999, reviews a singular life in
terms of its family context and the modern debates on globalisation and
political change. O'Connor left a rich set of diaries, selections of which
the Institute plans to publish in the future.


Oliver Marshall

Centre for Brazilian Studies
University of Oxford



In message
irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk writes:
>
>
> From: "Anne-Maree Whitaker"
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor
>
> The Bolivian hero is clearly named in honour of Sir Francis Burdett!
>
>
> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> Reply-To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
> Subject: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor
> Date: 08 July 2002 06:00
>
> From: patrick maume
> Subject: Ir-D Francesco Burdett O'Connor
>
> From: Patrick Maume
> A book by James Dunkerley WARRIORS AND SCRIBES - ESSAYS ON THE
> HISTORY AND POLITICS OF LATIN AMERICA includes an essay on
> Francesco Burdett O'Connor, brother of Feargus the Chartist, who
> became a national hero in Bolivia.
> See review on the REVIEWS IN HISTORY website
>
> Best wishes,
> Patrick
>
> ----------------------
> patrick maume
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dr Anne-Maree Whitaker FRHistS
>
> P O Box 63
>
> Edgecliff NSW 2027
>
> Australia
>
> ph (+61-2) 9356 4929 fax (+61-2) 9356 2065
>
> mobile 0408 405 025
>
> email ahcwhitaker[at]hotmail.com
>
> website http://www.geocities.com/joseph_foveaux
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Join the world?s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail.
> http://www.hotmail.com
>
>

From: Oliver Marshall
Subject: Ir-D John J Byrne-Newell?

While on Bolivia.....

I spent the day in Dublin yesterday divided between the National Archives
and the National Library. In the Library I came across four quite bulky
files of articles (several dozen) on aspects of the Irish presence in South
America (mainly Bolivia and Argentina, but other countries too) written in
the 1930s and 1940s by John J Byrne-Newell. Many of the articles (some
unpublished, but most having appeared in Buenos Aires, Dublin and Irish
provincial newspapers) are quite fascinating and I couldn't help but think
that there ought to be a "Collected South American Works of JJB-N"! But who
was Byrne-Newell? Any information would be gratefully received.

Oliver Marshall

Centre for Brazilian Studies
University of Oxford

From: Elizabeth Malcolm
Subject: Irish stockings

Mairead Dunlevy's excellent book 'Dress in Ireland'. London:
Batsford, 1989, has a lot to say about Irish stockings and includes
some interesting pictures of early stockings recovered from bogs.

The manufacture and export of stockings was apparently a significant
industry in Ireland during the 17th century. One 'manufactory'
established by the earl of Orrery in Cork exported 24,667 pairs of
'coarse' stockings in 1685. But aside from 'coarse' stockings,
Ireland also produced extremely valuable silk stockings, which
sometimes incorporated gold or silver thread. There are examples of
silk stockings being traded in the late 17th century in Ireland for
land! In 1688 the hosiers were powerful enough to separate from the
Tailors Guild and form their own guild, the Guild of St George (p.88).

Elizabeth Malcolm


Professor Elizabeth Malcolm Tel: +61-3-8344 3924
Department of History Fax: +61-3-8344 7894
University of Melbourne email: e.malcolm[at]unimelb.edu.au
Parkville, Victoria
Australia 3010

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

We have been asked by the Irish World Heritage Centre, Manchester, to
forward two messages to the Irish-Diaspora list.

These messages follow immediately after this one.

Note that although the messages say that 'you' are on the IWHC mailing list,
the Irish-Diaspora list is not on the IWHC mailing list. I have suggested
instead that the IWHC send its messages to me, and I will forward them to
the Irish-Diaspora list, as need be...

These messages are forwarded for information, since a number of people have
asked me for information and comment on this project.

P.O'S.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

Forwarded on behalf of
Patrick Marmion
office[at]iwhc.com

IWHC Newsletter

This newsletter is used to keep you up-to-date on the progress of the Irish
World Heritage Centre Project. If you wish to be removed from our mailing
list please e.mail remove[at]iwhc.com and we will remove your details.

The Irish Emigrant Book of Honour

The Irish Emigrant Book of Honour is a unique opportunity for every member
of the Irish Diaspora to honour his or her family.

The Irish Emigrant Book of Honour will be placed in the Irish Diaspora
Museum, which will stand as a constant reminder of Ireland?s emigrant
history where the inspiring story of the total emigration experience will be
told. The Museum itself will be a prominent part of the Irish World Heritage
Centre and by contributing to this story you will be funding the creation of
this flagship project. In return you will receive a personalised certificate
with the name and country of the person you choose to honour. This official
document will take its place alongside your family?s most precious
heirlooms.

This is a unique opportunity for every member of the Irish Diaspora to
honour his or her family. In years to come children who visit the Irish
World Heritage Centre will be proud to find the story of their grandparents
or great-grandparents recorded with others celebrating the Irish global
family.

Whether you choose to record your own emigration story or that of an
emigrant ancestor, individual or family, by reserving your page now you will
ensure that your chosen story stands as a constant reminder of Ireland?s
emigration history.

Guidelines for Registration

The following guidelines should be read carefully to ensure accurate
registration of your family?s story.

Act now to avoid disappointment.

Fill in the registration form below ensuring that all information is printed
clearly. You can choose to either pay by cheque or by credit card (do not
send cash). If you choose to pay by credit card please fill in the credit
card information section ensuring that you include all requested
information. Then return your completed form with your £25stg (or $50)
payment to The Irish Diaspora Foundation, 10 Queens Rd, Cheetham Hill,
Manchester. M8 8UF. UK.

Once your form and payment has been received we will reserve your page for
you. You will then receive information and help on how to complete your
story. Once completed an A4 page summary of your story will be bound into
the book of honour, which will be placed on public display.

Other opportunities

If you are a UK taxpayer you can reclaim tax on any donation made to the
Irish Diaspora Foundation. In order to do this you must complete a Gift Aid
Declaration. This will also allow the Irish Diaspora Foundation to claim 28p
for every pound you give. The Irish Diaspora Foundation also has 501 ( c )
(3) registration through its membership of The American Fund for Charities.

You may also choose to become a regular supporter of the Irish Diaspora
Foundation. A convenient way of doing this is to set up a standing order,
which will allow you to make monthly, quarterly or even yearly payments to
the Foundation. These payments can start at as little as £5 per month. If
you wish to make regular donations to the Foundation you need to complete a
Bank Standing Order Mandate.

Gift Aid Declarations, 501 ( c) (3) Donation Forms and Mandates for Bank
Standing Orders are available from the Foundation on request.

The Irish Diaspora Foundation is currently seeking private and corporate
donations and has packages for all budgets, for more information on how your
past can be part of our future please contact Patrick at;

The Irish Diaspora Foundation, 10 Queens Rd, Cheetham Hill, Manchester, M8
8UF, UK

Tel: 00 44 (0) 161 202 1200, Fax: 00 44 (0) 161 205 9285, E-mail:
honour[at]iwhc.com

Website: www.iwhc.com

Registration Form:


Name: _______________________________________________


Address: _____________________________________________


_____________________________________________________


____________________________________________________


_____________________________________________________


Daytime Tel No: _______________________________________


Evening Tel No: _______________________________________


E-mail: ______________________________________________


Payment Details:

Please tick

? Cheque (please make cheques payable to the Irish Diaspora
Foundation)


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I authorise my credit card account to be billed


______________________________________________________


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Expiry Date: ___________________________________________


Signature: ____________________________________________


Please print name as on credit card:


______________________________________________________

From: "Ruth-Ann M. Harris"
Subject: Re: Ir-D Irish stockings 7

Dear Elizabeth,
Your message has just the information I needed. Thanks so much, and all
the best,
Ruth-Ann

Ruth-Ann M. Harris, Adjunct Prof of History and Irish Studies, Boston
College
Note new e-mail address: harrisrd[at]bc.edu
Home Phone: (617)522-4361; FAX:(617)983-0328; Office Phone:(617)552-1571
Summer and Weekend Number: (Phone) (603) 938-2660

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

Forwarded on behalf of
Patrick Marmion
office[at]iwhc.com

Subject: Irish World Heritage Centre

IWHC Welcome Newsletter

Welcome to the Irish Diaspora Foundations Newsletter. This newsletter will
be used to keep you up-to-date on the progress of the Irish World Heritage
Centre Project. If you wish to be removed from our mailing list please
e.mail remove[at]iwhc.com and we will remove your details.

What is the Irish Diaspora Foundation?

Part of the Irish World Heritage Centre, the Irish Diaspora Foundation is a
registered charity dedicated to the achievements and cultural legacies of
those Irish men and women, now largely forgotten, who over the centuries
have contributed to world progress.

The Foundations vision is the establishment of a centre of excellence
outside Ireland which will provide unique visitor facilities, exhibitions,
entertainment, sport and accommodation, supported by the most advanced
multimedia and information technology systems, It will be a celebration of
the success of Irish emigrants and a continuity of Ireland?s story while
embracing the Irish global family of 70 million people.

This flagship project will house a museum which will celebrate the Diaspora
worldwide. This museum will collect, document, preserve, research, exhibit
and interpret the material evidence and associated information illustrative
of the history of emigration and the development of the universal Irish
family.

Adjacent to the museum will be the oral history studio and the emigrants
living theatre, where the dramatic emigrant saga will be brought back to
life.

Manchester City Council have donated a 13.5 acre site overlooking the City
Centre. The Irish Government has donated £2million (£1 million from it?s
millennium fund). Major financial support has been received from the
Manchester and Salford Regeneration Initiative. Negotiations are ongoing
with other statutory bodies and significant private and corporate pledges
have also been made.

The Foundation is based at the current Irish World Heritage Centre in
Manchester and employs a full time Foundation Manager, who should be
contacted if any further information is sought. The contact details are as
follows.

Patrick Marmion

Foundation Manager

10 Queens Rd

Cheetham Hill

Manchester

M8 8UF

England



Telephone: (+44) 0161 202 1200

Fax: (+44) 0161 205 9285

Email: office[at]iwhc.com



Further information can be found on our website www.iwhc.com

The Irish Diaspora Foundation is currently seeking private and corporate
donations and has packages for all budgets, for more information on how your
past can be part of our future please contact Patrick Marmion (details
above).

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

http://www.beyondthecommons.com/index.html

This website provides access to the Ph.D. thesis of Anthony McCann. The
thesis was awarded by the University of Limerick, Ireland, in February 2002.
This site contains the thesis in full. Anthony McCann is now based at the
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Washington DC.

This is just one example of the very interesting work produced by scholars
at the University of Limerick's Irish World Music Centre
http://www.ul.ie/~iwmc/

P.O'S.

Beyond the Commons
by Anthony McCann

ABSTRACT
This thesis provides a theoretical analysis of the expansion of the Irish
Music Rights Organisation (IMRO) during the period 1995-2000. Since
achieving independence in 1995, the Irish Music Rights Organisation has
emerged as the sole performing rights collection agency in the Irish state.
From 1995-1998 the organisation met often fierce resistance as it sought to
expand the base of its licensing operations. Since that time, however,
resistance has subsided, and the Irish Music Rights Organisation now holds a
position of unchallenged dominance. Discourse relating to the expansion of
IMRO is needed.

"Beyond the Commons" explores the relational implications of the hegemonic
authority of this performing rights organisation. To this end, the expansion
of the organisation is characterised as an example of "enclosure". Enclosure
has been variously understood in opposition to the commons, common right, or
common property. This thesis provides an analysis of the process and
practices of enclosure itself. IMRO's expansion is examined as an example of
enclosure without taking recourse to the concept of the commons.

Expansion is the dominant feature of IMRO's activities during the period
1995-2000. In this thesis a descriptive model is used to show that this
expansion follows a cycle. It is characterised by expansion, resistance to
that expansion, and legitimation of the expansion, followed by further
expansion. By drawing correlations between the political dynamics of IMRO
and what economist John Kenneth Galbraith terms the "Planning System", a
contribution to an explanatory understanding of this cycle of expansion is
explored in which an underlying and pervasive organisational tendency
towards the elimination of uncertainty is identified. To move from
organisational analysis to an analysis of the relational implications of
enclosure, a dynamic theory of "negotiation" in social interaction is
proposed, incorporating uncertainty, meaning, power, and expectation.

Building on theories of critical legal studies, social interactionism,
social psychology, and the work of Michel Foucault, it is argued that
enclosure can be characterised as a consistency of expectations, that is, a
"disposition". The disposition of enclosure is that of a tendency towards
the elimination of uncertainty. It is disclosed by the evidence of
"attitude", that is, consistency of expectation as evidenced in social
interaction. The attitude of enclosure, as evidenced by IMRO's expansionary
practices described herein, is characterised by strategies of framing
(monologic generalisation, closure, and separation), expansion
(representation and resistance), and consolidation (displacement,
legitimation, and hegemony).

The dynamic model of enclosure presented in this thesis deconstructs IMRO's
expansion, revealing the relational implications of copyright and performing
rights in social interaction. It also discloses the implicit complexity in
any claims to definitive collective authority from this relational
perspective. An awareness of these implications raises ethical questions
concerning power, authority, and agency relational to an unquestioned
acceptance of the Irish Music Rights Organisation.

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Road to Perdition


I just saw the movie. It's Oscar quality for photography, artwork,
sets, costumes and maybe directing. It's set in northern Illinois and
Chicago in 1931--
I lived in that area most of my life, and the scenery, especially city
scenes, are stunningly realistic.
The language--rather dubious.
But as a story it's not nearly as good as the Godfather series. It's
far less realistic than the Sopranos, a TV series about Italian
gangsters. The movie gets the Irish wrong--not enough solidarity, not
enough ethnic color. The wake & religious scenes are ok, but there is
far too
much gratuitous violence.

Scenes of gangsters in a whorehouse are about right, but swank hotels,
and depictions of high-level gangster meetings as something more
sophisticated than WorldCom board meetings is simply false.

Richard Jensen

for an opposite view:

MY TIMES July 12, 2002
A Hell for Fathers and Sons
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

EARLY in "Road to Perdition," a period gangster film that achieves the
grandeur of a classic Hollywood western, John Rooney (Paul Newman),
the crusty old Irish mob boss in a town somewhere outside Chicago,
growls a lament that echoes through the movie like a subterranean
rumble: "Sons are put on the earth to trouble their fathers."

Rooney is decrying the trigger-happy behavior of his corrupt,
hot-headed son, Connor (Daniel Craig), who in a fit of paranoid rage
impulsively murdered one of Rooney's loyal lieutenants. The ear into
which Rooney pours his frustration belongs to Michael Sullivan (Tom
Hanks), his personal hit man, who witnessed the killing. An orphan
whom Rooney brought up as a surrogate son and who has married and
fathered two boys, Sullivan is in some ways more beloved to Rooney
than his own flesh and blood. He is certainly more trustworthy.

But as the film shows, Rooney's bitter observation about fathers and
sons also works in reverse: fathers are eternal mysteries put on the
earth to trouble their sons as well as teach them. The story is
narrated by the older of Sullivan's two boys, 12-year-old Michael Jr.
(Tyler Hoechlin), who in a prologue establishes the movie's tone and
setting (most of the events take place over six weeks in the winter of
1931) and invites us to decide, once his tale has been told, whether
his father was "a decent man" or "no good at all."

"Road to Perdition," which opens today nationwide, is the second
feature film directed by Sam Mendes, the British theatrical maestro
who landed at the top of Hollywood's A-list with his cinematic debut,
"American Beauty." The new movie re-teams him with Conrad L. Hall, the
brilliant cinematographer responsible for that film's surreal
classicist shimmer. With "Road to Perdition" they have created a truly
majestic visual tone poem, one that is so much more stylized than its
forerunner that it inspires a continuing and deeply satisfying
awareness of the best movies as monumental "picture shows."

Because Sullivan is played by Mr. Hanks, an actor who invariably
exudes conscientiousness and decency, his son's question lends the
fable a profound moral ambiguity. "Road to Perdition" ponders some of
the same questions as "The Sopranos," a comparably great work of
popular art, whose protagonist is also a gangster and a devoted family
man. But far from a self-pitying boor lumbering around a suburban
basement in his undershirt, Mr. Hanks's antihero is a stern, taciturn
killer who projects a tortured nobility. Acutely aware of his sins,
Sullivan is determined that his son, who takes after him
temperamentally, not follow in his murderous footsteps. Yet when
driven to the brink, Sullivan gives his son a gun with instructions to
use it, if necessary, and enlists him to drive his getaway car.

In surveying the world through Michael Jr.'s eyes, the movie captures,
like no film I've seen, the fear-tinged awe with which young boys
regard their fathers and the degree to which that awe continues to
reverberate into adult life. Viewed through his son's eyes, Sullivan,
whose face is half-shadowed much of the time by the brim of his
fedora, is a largely silent deity, the benign but fearsome source of
all knowledge and wisdom. An unsmiling Mr. Hanks does a powerful job
of conveying the conflicting emotions roiling beneath Sullivan's
grimly purposeful exterior as he tries to save his son and himself
from mob execution. It's all done with facial muscles.

Yet Sullivan is also beholden to his own surrogate father, who has
nurtured and protected him since childhood. Mr. Newman's Rooney, with
his ferocious hawklike glare, sepulchral rasp and thunderous temper,
has the ultimate power to bestow praise and shame, to bless and to
curse. The role, for which the 77-year-old actor adopts a softened
Irish brogue, is one of Mr. Newman's most farsighted, anguished
performances.

What triggers the movie's tragic chain of events is Michael Jr.'s
worshipful curiosity about his father. Desperate to see what his dad
actually does for a living, he hides in the back of the car that
Sullivan drives to the fatal meeting at which Connor goes haywire.
After the boy is caught spying, Connor, who hates and envies Sullivan,
decides without consulting Rooney that the boy can't be trusted to
keep silent and must die. He steals into Sullivan's house and shoots
his wife, Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and his other son, Peter (Liam
Aiken), mistaking Peter for Michael Jr., who returns on his bicycle as
the murders are taking place.

Arriving home, Sullivan finds his surviving son sitting alone in the
dark, and as the camera waits downstairs, Sullivan climbs to the
second floor and discovers the bodies. As his world shatters, all we
hear is a far-off strangled cry of grief and horror. Minutes later he
is frantically packing Michael Jr. into a car, and the two become
fugitives, making one deadly stop before heading toward Chicago where
Sullivan hopes to work for Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci), Al Capone's
right-hand man. For the rest of the movie, Sullivan plots his revenge
on Connor, who remains secreted in a Chicago hotel room, protected by
Rooney. Sullivan's plan involves a Robin Hood-style scheme of robbing
banks but stealing only mob money.

The film, adapted from a comic-book novel by Max Allan Collins with
illustrations by Richard Piers Rayner, portrays the conflicts as a
sort of contemporary Bible story with associations to Abraham and
Isaac, and Cain and Abel. The very word perdition, a fancy term for
hell, is meant to weigh heavily, and it does.

True to the austere moral code of classic westerns, the film believes
in heaven and hell and in the possibility of redemption. In that
spirit its characters retain the somewhat remote, mythic aura of
figures in a western, and the movie's stately tone and vision of
gunmen striding to their fates through an empty Depression-era
landscape seems intentionally to recall "High Noon," "Shane" and
"Unforgiven." When the characters speak in David Self's screenplay,
their pronouncements often have the gravity of epigraphs carved into
stone.

A scary wild card slithering and hissing like a coiled snake through
the second half of the film is Maguire (Jude Law), a ghoulish hit man
and photojournalist with a fanatical devotion to taking pictures of
dead bodies. When he opens fire, his cold saucer-eyed leer and
bottled-up volatility explode into frenzied seizures that suggest a
demonically dancing puppet. And just when you have almost forgotten
the character, he reappears like an avenging fury.

The look of the film maintains a scrupulous balance between the pop
illustration of a graphic novel (Michael Jr. himself is shown reading
one, "The Lone Ranger") and Depression-era paintings, especially the
bare, desolate canvases of Edward Hopper. The camera moves with
serene, stealthy deliberation (nothing is rushed or jagged), while the
lighting sustains a wintry atmosphere of funereal gloom. Mr. Hall
embraces shadow as hungrily as Gordon Willis in the "Godfather"
movies, but where the ruddy palette of "The Godfather" suggested a
hidden, sensual, blood-spattered twilight, "Road to Perdition" comes
in shades of gray fading to black.

Those shades are matched by Thomas Newman's symphonic score, which
infuses a sweeping Coplandesque evocation of the American flatlands
with Irish folk motifs.

In the flashiest of many visually indelible moments, a cluster of
gangsters silhouetted in a heavy rain are systemically mowed down on a
Chicago street in a volley of machine-gun flashes that seem to erupt
out of nowhere from an unseen assassin. But no shots or voices are
heard. The eerie silence is filled by the solemn swell of Mr. Newman's
score. It is one of many scenes of violence in which the camera
maintains a discreet aesthetic distance from the carnage.

Although "Road to Perdition" is not without gore, it chooses its
bloodier moments with exquisite care. The aftermath of another
cold-blooded murder is seen only for an instant in the swing of a
mirrored bathroom door. Another is shown as a reflection on a window
overlooking an idyllic beach on which a boy frisks with a dog. Here
the overlapping images evoke more than any words the characters'
tragic apprehension of having to choose between two simultaneous,
colliding worlds. One is a heaven on earth, the other hell.

From: "jamesam"
Subject: Irish Hunger Memorial to be dedicated in New York

Friends and colleagues,

This is from this week's edition of the Irish Echo.

Slan go foil,

Patricia


Editorial: Irish Hunger Memorial opens=20
July 10-16, 2002
The Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park City =
will be unveiled Tuesday, July 16, at 11 a.m., by President Mary =
McAleese of Ireland, New York Gov. George Pataki, and other Irish and =
Irish-American dignitaries.=20
Members of the public will be allowed to visit =
the site immediately after the ceremonial opening, and the memorial =
will be open to the public daily.=20
A sloping quarter-acre site that re-creates in =
Lower Manhattan an abandoned stone cottage from western Mayo, this =
memorial is bound to attract considerable attention and comment, and not =
just within the Irish community. Its basic theme is clear: it represents =
on one level how the Irish were ripped from their native land and =
replanted in America and elsewhere because of starvation.=20
Nothing on this scale, or with such vision, has =
been attempted before.
Both timeless, yet rooted in one terrible time of =
famine, the memorial's stone cottage and pathway will be allowed to grow =
wild with 85 species of grasses, bushes and flowers taken as seed from =
the same site in County Mayo: Attymas, the first parish to report deaths =
from starvation in the 1840s.=20
This will be no representational park or memorial =
garden. As the sloping field changes with the seasons, the memorial's =
artist has included in its granite and glass base, changing lines of =
text that speak of not just the
Irish Famine, but of hunger around the world to the present day.=20
The viewer, standing upon the re-created fields =
and potato beds, will therefore become the subject, his or her unique =
reactions tempered by the knowledge of the fragility of memory itself.=20
Already, questions have been raised by some as to =
how successful the
memorial will be. Indeed, with its Vesey Street location a mere two =
blocks to the west of where 1 World Trade Center stood until Sept. 11, =
it is
possible that this memorial could be overshadowed by whatever will =
commemorate the lives lost on that day.=20
However, this is unlikely. The memorial's success =
may lie in its changing,
ambiguous state, for it has taken 150 years to commemorate and event =
about which Irish and Irish Americans still hold differing opinions, and
which often raises different emotions.=20
It must be hoped that this memorial will fulfill =
the artist's desire to do more than commemorate Ireland's hunger. It =
will leave each visitor with an understanding of how so many in the =
world experience the privations of hunger to this day.=20
=20
(c) 2002 Irish Echo Newspaper Corp.

From: "Maria McGarrity"
To:
Subject: Ir-D William Paulet Carey

Can anyone provide information or insight on William Paulet Carey (b.1759
Dublin -d. 1839 Birmingham), the engraver and art critic/dealer. The DNB
lists him as a reputed United Irishman. He testified against William
Drennan on trial for treason in 1792. I have been asked to write a brief
introduction of his Critical Description of Stothard's Canterbury Pilgrims.
I am looking for information regarding his art criticism, assessments of his
art criticism, and his general biography (including his political
perspective and its impact on his work).

Thank you.

Maria McGarrity

From: Elizabeth Malcolm
Subject: William Paulet Carey

I don't have any information on his achievements in the arts, but his
career as a United Irishman is fairly well documented. He founded a
radical newspaper in Dublin in 1791 to advance the UI cause, but
became disillusioned with the UI and testified against William
Drennan in 1794. Drennan has a lot to say about him in his letters to
his sister, Martha McTier. The letters are published in 3 volumes,
edited by Jean Agnew, as 'The Drennan-McTier Letters, 1776-1819',
Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1999.

His brother Matthew Carey (1760-1839) was also a radical, a printer
and bookseller, who went to Philadelphia and pursued a career there
as a politician and philanthropist. Another brother, Dr John Carey
(1756-1829), was a classicist, who translated and published numerous
Latin works (see Alfred Webb's 'A Compendium of Irish Biography',
Dublin: Gill, 1878).

ELM



Professor Elizabeth Malcolm Tel: +61-3-8344 3924
Department of History Fax: +61-3-8344 7894
University of Melbourne email: e.malcolm[at]unimelb.edu.au
Parkville, Victoria
Australia 3010

From: Sean Campbell
Subject: Irish football team

Following on from the recent discussion about the Irish football team, I
thought that list members might be interested in the current issue of the
e-journal Media and Culture Reviews, which includes a number of articles on
Ireland and the World Cup.

The website address for the journal is
http://www.media-culture.org.au/reviews. Clicking on "Mediating Football's
World Cup" provides a full list of article titles. The articles dealing
with Irish-related issues include Alan Bairner, "Wearing the World Cup:
Gender, Fashion and Football in Northern Ireland"; Carlton Brick, "Boom
Boom: Roy Keane and the Footballing Dinosaur"; Rodney Sharkey, "Reading
Cultures: Mediating Power"; and my own contribution, "Qualifying 'Nation':
Plasticity, Diaspora and the Republic of Ireland".

Best,
Sean Campbell.

Department of Communication Studies, APU, Cambridge, UK.

From: DanCas1[at]aol.com
Subject: Fwd: NYTimes.com Article: A Memorial Remembers the Hungry

This article is from NYTimes.com
A Memorial Remembers the Hungry

July 16, 2002
By ROBERTA SMITH

The Irish Hunger Memorial opening today on the edge of the
Hudson River near Manhattan's southern tip could be New
York City's equivalent of the Vietnam War Memorial in
Washington, an unconventional work of public art that
strikes a deep emotional chord, sums up its artistic moment
for a broad audience and expands the understanding of what
a public memorial can be.

The work commemorates a 150-year-old tragedy, the great
Irish famine of 1845-52. Although the subject lacks the
national scope and immediacy of the war in Vietnam, the
Hunger Memorial, which is in Battery Park City, illuminates
Ireland's tragedy in undeniable human, even universal,
terms; it can grip the viewer with its combination of
information and spatial experience.

The new memorial is a startlingly realistic quarter-acre
replication of an Irish hillside, complete with fallow
potato furrows, stone walls, indigenous grasses and
wildflowers and a real abandoned Irish fieldstone cottage.
The 96-by-170-foot field rests on a giant concrete slab
that is raised up and tilted on a huge wedge-shape base. It
slopes upward from street level to a height of 25 feet. A
packed dirt path winds up the slope, culminating in a
hilltop with sweeping views of Ellis Island and the Statue
of Liberty.

The field is a walk-in relic of a distant time and place
tenderly inserted into the modern world almost as if it
were an offering. From the riverside, the towering end wall
of the plinth is shadowed by the broad overhang of the
concrete slab, and cut by a ramped entrance that leads into
the back of the cottage. Intended to resemble an Irish
burial mound, or tumulus, it also suggests that the
landscape has been flown in on a large spaceship -
especially at night, when it is lighted from inside,
creating an eerie glow. From its inception, the memorial
was also intended to be a reminder of world hunger. The
plinth is lined with glass-covered bands of text that
mingle terse facts about the Irish famine with similarly
disturbing statistics about world hunger today, along with
quotations from Irish poetry and songs.

But the work's potential for contemporary resonance may be
unusually great: today's dedication ceremony occurs in a
city that saw history change course a short distance away
less than six months after the groundbreaking for the
memorial on March 15, 2001.

Located two blocks from ground zero, the Irish Hunger
Memorial is likely to be embraced by many as a symbol of
the hundreds of firefighters, police officers, rescue
personnel and office workers of Irish descent who died in
the World Trade Center attack. It was half completed when
the attack came, and its earth-moving equipment and raw
materials were commandeered during the rescue effort. But
local police officers and firefighters familiar with the
project protectively guarded the half-finished memorial
from inadvertent damage or dismantling.

The Hunger Memorial will almost certainly add to the
growing debate about the future use of the land on which
the World Trade Center once stood. By coincidence, six
proposals for the redevelopment of ground zero, each
including plans for a 9/11 memorial, are about to go on
view at Federal Hall National Monument.

Perhaps most important, the memorial has arrived at a time
when Americans, especially young Americans, have a deeper
understanding of tragedy and grief, of fate's
capriciousness and of the complexities of power.

The work, which was created by Brian Tolle, a 38-year-old
New York sculptor, exemplifies contemporary art's ability
to meet the public's need for meaningful monuments with an
appropriateness that may surprise both advocates and
opponents of the new. While the low-lying black marble
wedges of the Vietnam Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, might
be called populist Minimal Art, Mr. Tolle's memorial is a
form of populist postmodernism, a combination of reality
and simulacra, of high and low, a layering of different
historical periods and contrasting points of view. It is
also a typically postmodern blend of existing art styles -
Realism, Conceptual Art and Earth Art - bound together by
historical fact and physical accuracy.

The work may cause a rolling of eyes among the original
Earthwork artists. Their works tend to be hewn from the
vast expanses of Nevada and New Mexico, miles from anywhere
or anyone. In contrast, the memorial has a slight
theme-park preciousness and detail. It is earthwork as Pop
Art, a miniature at full scale.

But it also belongs to the tradition of the war memorial in
the form of a deserted battlefield. Like those at Verdun
and Gettysburg, it is a figure-less terrain in which the
viewer stands in for the heroic statue. It commemorates
human failure, human loss and human perseverance in a war
fought with land, food and political might at the cost of
at least one million lives.

The piece brings to fruition efforts dating back several
decades to build a memorial to the famine in New York,
where so many Irish immigrated to escape its reach. It
began to take shape when Timothy S. Carey, president and
chief executive of the Battery Park City Authority
accompanied Governor George E. Pataki on a trip to Ireland,
and the two men began to discuss Vesey Green, a half-acre
square in Battery Park City, as a possible site. Upon their
return, after the authority was formally charged with
creating a monument, Mr. Carey selected a steering
committee and hired Joyce Pomerantz Schwartz, an
experienced art consultant, to guide the process of
selecting the artist.

Battery Park City's 155 acres already include 13
large-scale public artworks, the Museum of Jewish Heritage
(A Living Memorial to the Holocaust) and the New York City
Police Memorial. Financed by the Battery Park City
Authority, the new piece has only slightly run over its
original $5 million budget, Mr. Carey said.

Mr. Tolle was among 13 artists selected from an initial
review of 150 portfolios and one of five awarded a $10,000
stipend to create a model and proposal for the site. The
selection of his scale model - like the budget projection,
it's surprisingly close to the final outcome - was all but
unanimous. He chose as collaborators Juergen Riehm and
David Piscuskas of 1100 Architects of New York and Gail
Wittwer-Laird, a landscape architect.

The only conditions were that the memorial be a
contemplative space, retain the harbor view and incorporate
text. The third condition reflected Mr. Carey's view that
too many memorials and monuments become mute because they
contain so little specific information about the events
they commemorate.

Both Mr. Carey and Mr. Tolle relish the idea that the
memorial can change and grow. Paths that form through the
grass will be kept. Mr. Tolle devised an ingeniously
flexible method of mounting the texts: they are
silk-screened onto strips of clear Plexiglas that are
simply leaned against the glass bands from the inside. When
lighted, they appear to be etched, but they can be easily
changed, injecting new facts about world hunger or
additional history about the famine.

Mr. Tolle says that the project is "a synthesis of my
interest in history, architecture and trying to make a
memorial for a particular event that also lends itself to
adaptation." He describes the memorial as "a little
fragment of Ireland built on a heap of language," and this
is almost literally true. Excluding the tons of earth that
blanket the tilted concrete shelf and the irrigation system
buried in it, nearly every particle of the monument has an
Irish origin and a historical logic.

The 62 plants - including wild yellow iris, nettle and
blackthorn - are specific to the Connacht boglands in
County Mayo, whose rural landscape inspired Mr. Tolle. The
fieldstone house and walls were imported stone by stone
from a farm in the area belonging to Tom Slack, a cousin of
Mr. Tolle's partner, Brian Clyne. (Built in the 1820's, the
house had a dirt floor until 1945 and was occupied until
1960; it was donated to the memorial by the Slack family.)

The slope of the memorial is dotted with 32 large stones,
one from each of Ireland's counties, and an ancient pilgrim
stone, carved with an early Irish Cross of Arcs. The
surrounding plaza and the base are clad with Kilkenny
limestone, a green-gray stone that is studded with small,
white, featherlike coils - fossils from the ancient Irish
seabed.

The quarter-acre size of the monument adheres to the
infamous Gregory Clause passed by the British Parliament in
1847, which decreed that cottiers whose plots exceeded that
size would not be eligible for relief. The cottage is
roofless because many farmers tore the thatches off their
homes to prove destitution and qualify for relief.

The sentences that gird the limestone base from bottom to
top have been gleaned from contemporary reports, newspaper
editorials, parliamentary debate and parish priests and
show how many people in the midst of the tragedy grasped
its awful proportions. And also how many did not. In one
line, the recipe for the soup ladled out in British-run
soup kitchens (12 1/2 pounds of beef to 100 gallons of
water) is compared with the recipe used in the soup
kitchens established for victims of the famine by American
Quakers (75 pounds of beef to 100 gallons of water).

The question of whether this elaborate artwork will have
meaning beyond Irish history, or even beyond world hunger,
is largely moot. It shows one instance and one cause of the
immigration that has shaped and continues to shape New York
City. It shows instances of suffering, prejudice and
mismanagement so specific that they can't help but
reverberate into our own time.

Mr. Tolle said he considered the tilt of the work crucial
in separating the memorial from its setting. Without it, he
said recently, "the piece would be a folly." But the slant
that isolates the Hunger Memorial from its setting also
establishes a crucial similarity. The Irish farmers tilled
their land so intently that it became close to man-made,
just like Manhattan. The crampedness, oldness and ekedness
of the field, so unlike most American terra firma, itself
communicates a sense of human determination and toil. It is
a fragment from a man-made island placed upon another
man-made island, one symbol of endurance atop another.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/16/arts/design/16NOTE.html?ex=1027831666&ei=1
&en=94bb038eea44d135

From: "Patrick O'Sullivan"

The latest issue of Irish University Review (Spring/Summer 2002) Vol. 32 No.
1, Editor: Anthony Roche, is now being distributed. Copies go automaticaly
to IASAIL members, and the full list of contents usually appears in due
course on the IASAIL web site.

This issue is a Thomas Kilroy special - and is an excellent volume, drawing
attention to the quality of critical comment that the playwright Kilroy has
attracted. Kilroy enters the standard accounts, I suppose, as the writer
from The South who becomes associated with Field Day - this association is
the subject of an article by Martine Pelletier. That theme is explored
further in Anne Fogarty's piece, which compares Kilroy's The O'Neill with
Friel's Making History. And 'remaking history' is the subject of W. Nial
Osborough's account of the historical background, the case of O'Keefe v
Cullen, to Kilroy's published novel - The Big Chapel.

There are Irish Diaspora elements to Kilroy's work - I think first of the
pattern of hidden, or abandoned, 'Irishnesses' in Double Cross - studied in
an article by Hiroko Mikami. There is the wider issue of the international
status of Irish writers like Kilroy - he emerges as a very European figure.
I think here of theatre director Patrick Mason's article, about working with
Kilroy's texts. I remark that none of the contributors is based in or comes
from North America - is this just Irish networks in action? But is Kilroy
the kind of Irish writer that interests Americans?

Much, much of interest. An interview with Kilroy by Anthony Roche himself,
and an up to date bibliography by Ophelia Byrne make this a very useful
volume.

P.O'S.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
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