Archive News
Rearing children is the one way to turn us fifty shades of grey
Date Published: 13-Mar-2013
You only have to look at the photos from his inauguration the first time to see just how Barack Obama has aged – and that’s most apparent of all when it comes to the colour of his hair.
It started out with flecks of grey, but the snow is now firmly ensconced on the roof.
The assumption would be that his changing colour is down to the trials and tribulations of being the world’s most powerful man, of dealing with economic catastrophe, war on various fronts and getting re-elected.
But you’d be wrong – because his wife says it’s down to the stresses of fathering their two daughters, Malia, 14 and Sasha, 11.
And suddenly the world can empathise with the planet’s most powerful man – because it’s not running the world that makes you grey….it’s having children.
It starts with not sleeping and works through teething and tantrums.
You discover the art of moving your valuables up a shelf every six months in the way that homes prone to flooding live on the first floor; you find yourself in casualty for all sorts of bumps and bruises to the point that you’re waiting for a social worker to call to the door.
You discover a new Olympic sport called competitive sleep deprivation, a contest between parents who both believe they haven’t had as much as forty winks in the last 24 hours.
Then it’s crèche and school – and head lice and split lips and grazed knees and trying to mind 15 kids belonging to other parents in some ‘adventure centre’ or fast food restaurant when it’s your turn to host a kids’ birthday party.
After that come the peaceful years when you’re lured into a false sense of security because they’ll old enough to communicate with you and not old enough to tell you to feck off; they don’t mind being seen with you, and you don’t have to have eyes in the back of your head to watch them.
But just as life seems to be moving onto an even keel, there dawns the teenage years – and suddenly the world is turned upside down on its axis.
Welcome to hormones; acne; mitching school; drinking Buckfast or Bulmers; sleeping all day, awake all night – the call it the teenage time zone – girls; boys; broken hearts; broken noses….you could go on.
You used to be the one out at two in the morning; now you’re listening for the creak on the stairs to tell you that the next generation have made it home.
Your only involvement with nightclubs is to sit outside them – or around the corner so you don’t embarrass anyone – so that you can collect them in the free family taxi.
So you can understand what the First Lady means when she admits that Barack’s grey hair has nothing to do with a nuclear crisis – it’s the ticking time bomb going off in the corridors of the White House.
The domestic policy he’s most pre-occupied with doesn’t involve Congress at all – he’s his own Director of Homeland Security as well as the most powerful leader in the world.
“There’s nothing like the look on his face when Malia dresses up for a party, and is heading out. You can see his face just drop a little bit,” Michelle Obama told ABC – and any parent out there can empathise with that feeling.
Because while most of us will never know what it’s like to invade Afghanistan or Iraq or to have to deal with a budget that runs to trillions of dollars, we do know what it’s like to have children.
The only saving grace for the President is that he’s only fading to grey – at least he still isn’t pulling his hair out.
For more, read this week’s Connacht 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
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