RHUBARB

these past few days my diet has consisted primarily of spinach and rhubarb.  they are the only two crops in the garden that are ready to harvest.  i didn't plant anything else early enough in the greenhouse... :(  in any case, i've been eating a lot of spinach & lettuce salads and sandwiches with hummus, and baking up a rhubarb storm in the kitchen!  unfortunately for him, Mike hasn't aquired the taste for rhubarb yet, because there's LOADS of it in the garden...
two weeks ago it was a rhubarb pie. 
so far this week i've made:
rhubarb crisp
rhubarb coffee cake
strawberry-rhubarb pie
and have plans for a rhubarb custard tart.
i won't have time to make rhubarb sauce or jam, or that would definitely be next on my list!

i certainly can't eat all of these things singlehandedly before i leave in two days!  i guess i'll have some happy co-workers... 

this is why Europe is cool:

it has ancient things.
like 500-year-old castles.
and 1000-year-old monasteries.
and 5000-year-old megalithic sites.
LOTS of them.

I've been having fun exploring them, particularly now that we have a car to drive!

Dunluce, Enniskillen, Kinbane, Carrickfergus...
Dungiven, Bonamarghy,...
stone circles and cairns and raths and forts and tombs and crannogs...

and you'll find them unexpectedly off the side of a road, on a cliff's edge, in the middle of a neighborhood or a field with sheep grazing on it, not listed in the guidebook, sometimes without a signmarker.  just there.  still.  300, 900, 2000, 5000 years later...

Being from Oregon, I remember thinking structures from the 1800s were super-old, and things from before that were ancient!  On the East Coast, I loved seeing things from the 1700s and was awed by things from the 1600s.  (I've been plenty exposed to Native American dwellings, artifacts, structures, etc., which of course are much much older than any of that, but I'm not used to "western architecture" that's as old as that).

Kids in school complain about history class all the time - but as far as the United States goes, there's so little history to learn compared with countries in Europe!  (if you're talking official US history and "Western civilization," which is generally what's taught, with maybe a few global history/ancient civilizations classes thrown in for good measure).

Here, it's kind of disappointing to come across a castle or church that's "only" from the 15- or 1600s!  (a regular house, like a fisherman's cottage, that's different...).  Now, 11th or 12th century, that's more like it!  I'd be really excited to see something from the 4- or 800s...and a stone circle from 5,000 years ago would do nicely...

Of course, it's all fascinating to look at, but it really doesn't have much of an impact unless you know the stories...which I guess is why historic buildings in the US can be just as cool as historic buildings here - because we know the stories about the events that took place there; the people that were there; and that's what gives it meaning, no matter what era it's from.

still...









pretty cool, huh?

to build a forest...

back in January, Conn got excited about trees.  so excited that he applied for a free community tree pack from the Woodland Trust - a pack of native trees for wood-burning: cherry, rowan, birch, ash, and oak.  420 of them.

it fell to Mike and me to carry out the project.  to figure out where to put them, how to lay them out and space them, choose a method for planting, and organize/lead group tree planting events.  and figure out what to do with all of the extra ones!  because what Conn didn't know when he ordered them was that only 200 of them would fit in the field he had allocated for them.  there was a lot of excitement but not a lot of forethought put into this decision...

the trees were delivered on March 10.  it took us two more weeks before we were prepared to plant any of them.  on Monday, April 18th, the last of the trees were finally potted (we managed to get about 300 around the site!  the remainder have been potted).  In between, volunteers and friends of Kilcranny came by to help plant them, and we had three groups from the community: an eco-club from a local elementary school, a pre-school playgroup, and a teenagers in a job training program. 

the group plantings were exciting because i got to use skills that i haven't had a chance to since last summer, and the folks here got to see me in a different role, too.  organizing logistics, coordinating an event, leading a group...none of them was perfectly smooth and flawless, but they all went over well and everyone had fun!  the most chaotic by far was the 4-year-olds playgroup, which included parents and baby/toddler siblings and totalled about 50 people...

we invited people to make dedications, to name a tree in honor of a person, place, or concept, and it's been a really great aspect of the project, particularly to see the young people getting excited about dedicating a tree to someone they love or to their future children, or to peace -- they will not just have a cool memory about planting a tree, they've formed a meaningful connection between themselves and the earth...

so Kilcranny (which is Irish for "church (cille) of the place of many trees (crannagh)) finally has its own Cranagh!  Plus a row of cherry trees near the entrance and a tree-lined path around back.  And two volunteers who have finally figured out how to work together.  :)  

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This may surprise you, especially if you live in Boston or Chicago, but it's not as easy to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Northern Ireland as you may think it would be. Like so many other things here, whether you celebrate it or have the day off of work or school has religious/political overtones. It is seen as a mostly Catholic Nationalist holiday, and schools and businesses have the choice to remain open or not. Coleraine, being a Plantation town, is still primarily Protestant, and there were no city-wide, city-sponsored events, although some community organizations and schools had programs.

I had thought of going to [London]Derry (another religious/political distinction), which has a much larger Catholic population and a big outdoor festival with music and a parade – but I got a late start because it was rainy this morning, only to learn that the buses and trains were on holiday schedules, which ended up making it unfeasible for me to get there in time for the festivities.

So instead I went to Portstewart, wandered the cold and windy Promenade, and sat in on the last hour of a community music and dance concert at the town hall, which was filled with families and little noisy kids running around. That was followed by some coffee and a chocolate-filled croissant in a cafe on the Promenade, reading my book, and walking along the shore a bit more. By this time, the sky had cleared, the sun had come out, and the evening was calm and beautiful, and I got to watch the sun set over the water. At 6:15 I hopped on the bus to Portrush, wandered the [very quiet] streets a bit, and then headed back to Coleraine and Kilcranny.

I bought some Guinness on the way home to share with Mike, since he'd decided not to go out, and we celebrated in style with our cans of Guinness and some freshly baked Irish soda bread...because if you're going to be in Ireland on St. Patrick's Day, you have to do something Irish!

Tomorrow - planting potatoes? That seems to be the farmers' Paddy's Day tradition!

flight

i watch the birds – crows and gulls, mostly, but also that striking black and white one whose name i do not know – i watch them in the air on these windy days; how the gusts and gales push them about faster, slower, up, down, sideways, even backwards, wreaking havoc on their usually graceful flight. i imagine what it might feel like, this experience of surrendering to the powerful, unpredictable wind.

Do they find it frustrating because it only serves to make their hunt for food more difficult? Or do they choose to take wing just for the fun of it? Do they fly only because they have to, or also because they want to?

Do birds feel joy?

Flying on a day like this seems like it would be so much more exciting than on a calm day...more exhilarating, requiring more skill and awareness. It's hard to believe they do it purely out of necessity, because they make such graceful patterns in the sky, rarely seeming to have a destination. Do they know that they are beautiful?

seeing them soar always makes me wish i could fly, but instead i just watch and imagine...can i live my earth-bound life with the same kind of grace, joy, and dependency on god's wind-spirit? time to practice being a bird...

happy international women's day!

in honor of international women's day, I thought I would share this reflection that I wrote last week:

I just watched “Stardust” - a whimsical, funny, sweet, fairy-tale. (Robert deNiro's gay pirate captain was the best character of the movie, but that's not what prompted me to write this...)

The self-proclaimed theme of the movie is that it's the story of how a young man grew up from a boy into a man. That's all fine and good, but later on I got to thinking...

I'm a young woman, and I'm at the stage of my life right now where I'm trying to grow up from a girl into a woman. The movie inspired that line of thought, but that's where it ended – I couldn't follow it any further, because unlike the premise of the movie, I'm not trying to become a man...

So where are the movies about young women growing up, and if they exist, what do they look like? Because they certainly don't look anything like this one or the other hundreds of coming-of-age movies about boys learning how to be men, finding themselves, becoming chivalrous and honorable... And Hollywood can make romantic comedies out of these stories. But how does the story change if the main character is female? It doesn't work to just switch the roles. If anything, the movies that do exist about women facing reality and growing up are generally not presented as comedies or fun, inspiring tales. Usually they're serious, if not depressing.

Any thoughts or movie recommendations?

on finding, settling, sorting, and being happy

i have been in northern ireland for exactly one month, so i figure it's about time for a progress report from me... i will frame it with four questions that have been echoing in my ears these past four weeks.

(*pronunciation guide: how = a mix between who/hue/hie; to = tie/toy; you = yu/yi)

"how are you findin' things?"

As Mike likes to quip, "we just look, and there they are." (however, it's difficult to find tofu, molasses, caraway, or cornmeal...)

It's a good way to avoid answering the question when you have a less than glowing review, and I think both he and I found things a little less...favourable than we anticipated. That is to say, when the reality of what our lives and work would be like here sunk in, it was rather disenchanting - which simply means, not as enchanting as the description looks in print or in the expectations you've build up in your head. It's just, well, kind of normal...a very small, somewhat disorganized, financially strained non-profit organization in a period of transition, with all the blessings and curses that that brings...

To give an example: I wasn't aware until I arrived that the whole accommodation block - which is where we host groups for residential reconciliation programs - was out of commission, having been flooded due to burst pipes in December - and will be until late April, which means no residential groups until then.

"how are you settlin'?"

you don't settle in here, you just settle. It's a slow process. Especially when Mike and I are pretty much left completely to our own devices as far as figuring out how to work and live together and be a community (or not) is concerned. and that's made even more challenging by the fact that we both have very similar quiet, introverted personalities. but after four weeks, we're beginning to settle into the schedule, the expectations, our roles, our surroundings. i've been enjoying exploring the local vicinity from Castlerock to Coleraine to Portstewart, getting a feel for my geographic place on this planet and a bit of a taste for the local culture.
Northern Ireland being a "first-world" English-speaking country, I haven't experienced too much in the way of culture shock, so the adjustment has been much faster and easier than, say, if I'd gone to...well, almost anywhere else that doesn't speak English. Of course, it also makes me very aware of the few things that are quite different, because they stand out more (like the vocabulary or the almost tabloidesque newspapers, or the funny-looking street signs, or the lack of a farmer's/local food market...).

"we'll need to get yous guys sorted"

and you don't get sorted out, just sorted. Sorted for food money, background checks, and trainings (and laundry, banking, health care, driving lessons and a car, tv antenna, keys...none of which are sorted yet). The washing machine is broken, the tv guy hasn't shown up yet, the car has been fixed but can't be picked up for inspection yet because the repair shop wants to get paid first and Kilcranny doesn't have the money to pay for it until a few more checks come through...

we've gone through a child protection training course, a 1st aid course, and a food safety & hygiene course, so we're all sorted for those, although they're not very useful yet, since we don't really have groups coming in...

"are you happy enough with that?"

(this was the question continually posed to us by our 1st aid trainer and our food safety instructor. you just showed me a picture of a laceration and i'm supposed to be happy? now i'm responsible for making sure myself and others follow a bunch of procedures that i think are ridiculous or unnecessary, and you're asking if i'm happy?)

i am. i am happy enough. i am happy enough for now.

it's a matter of finding a way to take things as they come, let them be what they are, and figure out how to create happiness within that framework, rather than dwelling on how things are not and wishing the circumstances were different. and so i will make do with what i've been given, take what life has presented me with, and make the most of it. be independent, make my own decisions, make friends, ask questions, do my best, give thanks for the blessings, pray, and laugh as much as possible.

paperboy

The other night, I attended a book reading by local author Tony Macauley. It did exactly what those kinds of things are meant to do, which is make you want to read the book. In this case, the book is Paperboy, a memoir about Tony's life in the Shankill, Belfast as a 12-14-year-old paperboy from 1974-6.

Read it. I plan to, whenever Conn gets around to bringing his copy by.

And, in a few years, go see the movie (screenplay in process).

Conn had asked last week if we were interested in going, talking it up as one of Northern Ireland's favorite and famous authors. He neglected to mention that Tony was also a personal friend of his. Turns out, Tony's primary work has been with peace & reconciliation programs, particularly for youth, in Northern Ireland. Also turns out, he was Conn's first boss after Conn finished his degree, hiring him to run a new program he had just started. (sorry about how vague that is -- i'll try to find out the actual details...)

Northern Ireland is a small place.

Portstewart

If you read a tourist guidebook for Ireland, you likely won't find Portstewart in it. Or at least, not for its own sake. It's a small coastal town, overshadowed by its larger neighbor Portrush, which is the launching point for sites of interest further east - namely, Dunluce Castle, the Giant's Causeway, and the Bushmills Distillery. In fact, besides Belfast and Derry, the Antrim coast is the only other place in Northern Ireland deserving of mention in many guidebooks. Perhaps that's because they don't seem to make guidebooks solely for Northern Ireland... In any case, I haven't made it to any of those other places yet, but I DID make it to Portstewart on Saturday! And I'm so glad I did.

The weather around here makes it difficult to plan outings. When I went to bed on Friday night, it was rainy, windy, and stormy. I had no plans for the weekend because I knew that I wouldn't want to do anything at all if the weather didn't change. But Saturday arrived clear and calm, so all of a sudden I was left wondering what to do and where to go! I had a slow enough morning that I knew a train ride to Derry wasn't in the cards, and besides, I was limited by having to incorporate a 45-minute walk into Coleraine and back in order to go anywhere. So I looked up the bus schedules to Portrush and Portstewart and decided, well, I'll at least go into town, and once I'm there I'll decide whether to catch a bus or not.

On my way out, I stopped to chat with our part-time groundskeeper who was working in his garden allotment, saying I hadn't decided if I would go in to Portstewart or not - but before I could even finish my sentence, he said, so matter-of-factly, "Oh, you'll go!" Well, then, that settled it. He even offered to drive me to the bus station.

£2.90 and a 10-minute bus ride later, I stepped off the bus in Portstewart and spent 2 1/2 hours traversing its jagged, rocky coastline, complete with beach, 1600s fisherman's cottage, 1830s castle, and golf course. The coolest part was the walk along the edge of the cliff under the castle/convent/college. The shoreline and promenade were teeming with people, and of course it was absolutely beautiful. It was simply a magnificent, splendid, sunny and breezy 50-degree afternoon. Topped off by some "chips with curry" (fries with curry sauce!) to devour on the bus ride back.

And that's what a wee bit of encouragement can do to a wee idea.

You can view the photo album here.

digging in the dirt

today = fabulous.

Sunny and warm, it felt like April or a warm March day, and I got to dig in the dirt! :) my endorphins are happy.

A lot of people were here today working in their allotments, just like me, beginning to prepare the beds (Kilcranny has 13 plots rented out). I'm so energized and excited about gardening! I had forgotten how good it makes me feel.

In this case, I think it makes me extra-happy because it gives me a project I can take [at least partial] ownership of, and gives me a sense of purpose and direction that I've been lacking so far. With no one else assigning me tasks or schedules, it gives me something to do that I know how to do and that I can structure my day around.

and it's spring! (at least compared to being buried under snow in Boston!)

day one

Day one of information overload and overstimulation.

I met all of the staff and got talked talked talked at all morning long. Well, all day really, until about 3pm, and then we were supposed to meet with Rachel to find out about her Future Communities project, but my brain couldn't handle it and I took a nap instead.

Later, rejuvinated, Mike and I walked into Coleraine so he could do some money changing and shopping. It was a nice, 45-minute walk each way. I'm looking forward to having a bike, because there are so many towns and interesting places nearby, but not quite within walking distance. having a car will be nice too, but I'm particularly interested in getting the bike cleaned up and in working order -- apparently it's in the stone barn covered with toxic pigeon feces...

Right now I'm feeling rather constrained and unenthusiastic about life here and muy job description. I hope that changes as the week goes on with its orientations, trainings, and conversations! Because I want to love it here, and I want to have fun. :)

Boston to Belfast, and beyond!

My journey into the damp northerly lands has begun.

At 12:45PM on Saturday, I walked off the airplane that I'd been on for 10 hours into a perfectly typical drizzly 45-degree day and rode through the Northern Irish countryside to Kilcranny House, a drive that felt oddly familiar to my senses after all those trips home to Oregon from Minnesota at Christmastime. Well, except for the fact that we were driving on the wrong side of the road and the signs were white with blue or red, not yellow with black.

Kilcranny is located just outside of Coleraine, close to the western banks of the River Bann. Portstewart is to the north of us on the opposite side of the river and Portrush farther north and east along the Antrim coast, in the direction of the Giant's Causeway and Dunluce Castle. From the top of the drive, we can see where the river runs into the sea, and the town of Castlerock across the bay. We're about 90 minutes northwest of Belfast and 45 minutes east of Derry.

This is where I'll be for the next three months, living in the newly renovated farmhouse with my compatriot Mike, from Pennsylvania, who's here for a year through the Brethren Volunteer Service. Our main duties as residential volunteers are to be caretakers of the buildings and grounds (including gardening) and hosts to the groups that use the facilities. I am also looking forward to being able to participate in some of the peace & reconciliation programs that they do out in the community, especially with schoolchildren. For now, please go to Kilcranny'swebsite to learn more about the organization and what they do -- you'll get more first-hand impressions and accounts from me later on!