Archive News
Store your memories in your head Ð not on your mobile
Date Published: {J}
The curse of the mobile phone was bad enough when it just meant there was no longer anywhere to escape to – but since they added so many apps and facilities, it has turned into a complete nightmare.
Take the video facility on your average smart phone – and I wish to God somebody would. You cannot go to a concert now without a sea of the bloody things in the air recording whatever performer is on stage from a distance you couldn’t make out your own mother from.
Once they waved cigarette lighters in the air; now it’s a sea of phones – and I’ve yet to meet anyone who has subsequently watched the fruit of their cinematography talents once the recording has been saved into the phone.
The other one – which is equally annoying if you’re standing beside the person or you’re the recipient of their largesse and stuck at home – is when a concert-goer thinks that what someone half asleep at home really needs is a quick blast of audio from a gig they didn’t actually want to go to.
So you ring them as Blondie launches into Heart of Glass at the Arts Festival Big Top and you tell your friend to just shut up and listen as you give them a blast of the classic on a dodgy phone when, if they really wanted to hear it, they could play the album in surround sound stereo at home.
But I’ve a solution for this one which I deploy at every opportunity – as soon as our phone recorder swings into action and holds his mobile in the air for full acoustic effect, I launch into an off-key version of the song with only half the words so that he or she quickly pulls away the phone with a look of disdain of their face and a sense of achievement on mine.
Of course you cannot blame this phenomenon entirely on the phone – there are mini-recorders, Flip cameras, little digital recorders that make James Bond’s gadgets look like something out of The Flintstones.
The aforementioned Flip, for example, is about the size of a large cigarette lighter but can store two hours of material before you have to download it onto your computer and store it in a place you are never likely to access again.
You go to any sporting occasion now and everyone’s a photographer; as the professional snapper lines up the teams he or she is swept aside by a sea of parents who cameras and phones to give an U-12 challenge match all of the importance of a World Cup Final.
The phone means you’re never out of touch which can be a good thing – but it should be taken off people if they’re going to have a few drinks. Because to adapt an old TV message about drinking and driving, a phone in the hands of a drunk is a dangerous weapon.
Of course, the real dangers are in texting either current or ex wives or girlfriends and telling them something for better or worse that you wouldn’t have the heart or courage to do in the cold light of day – but that’s a column for another time.
This is about bothering them in your
deluded notion that they’d much rather be out there with you than tucked up under the duvet asleep and taking the mature approach to work in the morning.
And yet, after giving out about them all, I have to admit that I too have phoned sleeping people from the O2 when Paul McCartney was belting out the best of the Beatles; I’ve videoed Leonard Cohen from three fields away, and I have audio recordings on my phone that have all of the acoustic brilliance of a karaoke night in a very crowded pub.
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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