May 26, 2025

Dateline – Donegal, Ireland

Up far too early this morning to get ready for the major drive of the week, from Dublin in the country’s Southeast to Donegal in the country’s Northwest. Still it wasn’t too bad. Ireland is not a large country. It’s a good deal smaller than Alabama (32,500 square miles including Ulster vs 52,500 square miles). It has a somewhat larger population of about 6.5 miliion compared to Alabama’s 5.2 million. And it definitely has a different climate. It’s been gray and blustery with intermittent rain showers all day (with a couple of gorgeous rainbows when the sun did manage to break through) and it’s just now twilight at 10 PM due to the northern latitude, all in all very like the Seattle of my childhood. I have my Gortex rain jacket and an extra sweater so I’m doing just fine. My traveling companions from California, not so much.

The first leg was from Dublin to a town called Strokestown in the middle of the country. We stopped there to visit Strokestown house, one of the grand old Georgian country manses that survive and to take in the National Famine Museum that it houses. One may ask why the museum commemorating the potato blight and famine of the 1840s is in such an out of the way place and not in Dublin, the answer lies, as it often does, in historical accident. Strokestown house was occupied by one family, the Mahons, for about 300 years as the lands and rents were granted to the family by Oliver Cromwell in his English colonization enterprises of the 1680s and the last member of the family not having vacated until about 1980. The Mahons must have been packrats as the man who bought the estate in the late 70s, intending to raze it, started to rooting around in disused cupboards and found more or less a complete archive and history of the family, the tenants and the workings of the plantation including full documentation of what happened to the 12,000 or so people who lived on the land at the time of the famine. The head of the family at that time, Dennis Mahon, was a piece of work. Profligate and with no interest in the humans who depended on him and the estate to survive, solely in the profits he felt were his due, he was eventually assassinated by the locals, but not before thousands of his tennants died or emigrated (after walking to Dublin), aided by the Mahons as they figured out that paying passage for their dying tennants in coffin ships headed to Canada was cheaper than paying the relief taxes imposed by the need for workhouses and soup kitchens.

Reading the letters and ledgers, carefully preserved, and the callousness with which life and death are discussed as a drain on profits, I could not help but draw parallels to the discussions currently happening in congress regarding the budget bill and its cuts to food assistance and health programs. The language and attitudes are exactly the same. Looking through the exhibits and through the public rooms of the house (very lived in and with an incredibly intact Georgian kitchen), I thought a little bit of my Irish antecedents. I have one great great great grandmother from Ireland by the name of Betsy Nacey. I know next to nothing about her other than she emigrated to Canada where she married a German emigree named Nolop some time in the early to mid 19th century. I don’t know the dates to know if she was running from the famine or came over in a coffin ship or if she arrived before that time. Must do some poking around Ancestry.com when I have some spare time.

Back on the bus and another hour or so and over the border into Northern Ireland and to the town of Enniskellen where we stopped at a 19th century Irish pub known as The Hollow although its real name is The WIlliam Blake. (Poets and Pubs – that’s Ireland). It was chosen as it has a relatively famous carved door. The center for filming of Game of Thrones was Northern Ireland and one of the locations, used as The Kings Road, is an avenue of interlacing beech trees called The Dark Hedges. During production, a windstorm toppled several of the trees. The production took charge of the downed trunks and the craftsmen employed on the show made them into ten carved doors (one for each episode of season six – why season six? I haven’t the foggiest). One ended up in this pub and there’s a whole game where you run all over Northern Ireland trying to collect all ten doors. I am not participating.

Then back on the bus and on to Donegal where we are spending tonight and tomorrow night. Donegal is one of those picturesque little towns with a crumbling old castle, some well used churches, and a large market square/high street that looks like the set of a BBC television series. I took a quick walk around it before dinner but the rain was getting harder so I repaired back to the hotel (modern and comfortable and not crumbling) to eat and to take it easy for a while. We have nothing planned until lunch time tomorrow so I’ll head back into town in the morning. Hopefully the weather will have improved.

I have enjoyed a respite from American political news over the long weekend. I suppose I should start paying attention again tomorrow. From what I can tell, Trump’s big beautiful budget bill is falling apart at the seams as more and more people start to realize what’s actually in it and the Republican’s understand that votes for it will be weaponized in the midterms as people start losing various benefits. Trump himself put out a Memorial Day message that was his usual insulting gobbledygook and seems to have insulted the graduates of West Point by giving a graduation speech focused on trophy wives before he left early so he could play golf. I’m paying no attention to either his words or actions at this point. It’s not possible to get them to make any sort of sense or to ferret out coherent policy. I’m watching the powers behind the throne and what they’re up to. They are far more dangerous. Most of the Irish I’ve met, when they hear my American accent, are a bit standoffish so I’m now adding ‘yes I’m American and I didn’t vote for him’ and they thaw considerably.