Archive News
Catching up with advances in technology Ð 30 years late
Date Published: {J}
I must have been living on the moon for the past number of years, so changed has the modern business become . . . like all people with a lack of information, the world of shopping came crashing in on me when I went looking for the simplest item and found out that I was 30 years behind the times.
Someone had given me a present of the Brendan Balfe Production The Irish Voice, a three-parter which featured everything from the Titanic loss to the Flanagan Brothers, to Micheal MacLiammoir.
Can I digress for a moment to say what an extraordinary production this is, with real gems such as Patrick Kavanagh’s Spraying of the Potatoes, The Spinning Wheel by Delia Murphy, the brilliant Eamon Morrisey reciting Flann O’Brien’s The Workman’s Friend, and even Josef Locke singing Hear my Song Violetta.
But this piece is not about the joys of the three disc set, though I will return to it later. It’s about the extraordinary business of deciding that you might like to see or hear something and suddenly you find yourself in the middle of a new world of shopping which is based around a new world of computers and phones.
As I said, someone had given me a present of the three disc set, but I wanted something simple to play the tracks on. All sorts of options were put to me, including transferring tracks to a computer and then onto an iPod, but like all traditionalists, I wanted something simple with as few controls or buttons as possible. In other words; one to stop it, one to make it play, one to reverse it, one to make it go forward and one to eject the disc.
So, one of my resident computer experts suggested we check what was in the shops. I said that meant traipsing around the shops over the next few days and for my pains got an indulgent smile at how I could be so out of date. He pulled out his phone and began shopping, as I looked on like some kind of thicko from another generation.
My resident genius connected to a series of shops in Galway to find out if they had one of the cheap manually operated CD players with the five buttons . . . in other words eminently suitable for an electronic thicko who still listens to the radio and who would not know in a million years how to programme a television or a video to record anytime in the next fortnight.
My resident genius announced that there was a player available in Argos, which seemed eminently suited to my prehistoric mindset – the player had five buttons, the discs were manually inserted and extracted, the stereo sound I found more than adequate, even for John McCormack and, above all, it seemed ‘idiot proof, which is a very important feature when dealing with ‘cavemen’ who have survived into the electronic era.
But the thing which most caught my eye was the fact that you could dial into a shop’s system, find out if they had one in stock, get the price of the item and reserve the item for a few days if you wished to pick it up. Oh yes, you could also get a picture of the player.
With the whole of that information, I have to confess that I felt like a bit of a ‘ludramán’ . . . even an offer to explain how these things work was turned down . . . dammit, my life is complicated enough without having to learn how to use the full panoply of services which the modern phone brings.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
images/files/images/x3_Courthouse.jpg
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
