AS I WAS SAYING...
Statistics claim that there has been a 30% fall in tourists this Summer. I wish there was a similar decline in traffic in the city. It is just impossible to get around by car now. (And how many can now afford a bike?!) I think I quoted that statistic from the British Motorists Association: in 1901, the average speed of a car in central London was 10 miles per hour. In 2001, the average speed of a car in central London was 10 miles per hour! However, despite the best efforts of the Greens and related environmentalists, the car is now part of life and it will remain so. Its proliferation is simply one of the side effects of consumerism. In fact the car is a badge of consumerism. Your success in the consumerist race will be revealed by the quality of your car. Your car is now your trophy!
But the infernal car is just one item in the large web that has been woven by consumerism. A serious -and obviously related - development is the residential depopulation of the inner city of Galway. This development is not of course confined to Galway. Other large Irish cities, like Dublin, Cork, and Limerick have been similarly denuded. Apartments have in the main, replaced family homes. When urban redevelopment begins, families come under tremendous pressures to move on. Financial pressures are obvious enough. A business enterprise, or a pub, is far more lucrative financially than a family home. The developer is in a position to pay well. The family can then locate in a far more commodious home in the suburbs. So all are winners then?
Not so, I fear. There are other obvious reasons why families would wish to move. As clubs and pubs proliferate -as they will in any commercially successful city- the late-night decibels tend to rise. The incentive to move increases greatly. The inner city is no longer 'family friendly'. Just look at the twenty steps leading up to Commerce Court apartments in Flood Street? Who is going to push a buggy or a wheelchair up those steps? From the point of view of consumerism, Galway has been tremendously successful. But 'consumerism', obviously, is a notoriously ambiguous animal. Its success depends upon its ability to gobble up its competitors. And its victims are not confined to the city itself. The provincial towns have suffered. The consumer today can move with ease to the point where prices are most attractive. For instance, a small chemist's shop in Tuam or Loughrea can hardly hope to compete with a multinational outfit like Boots.
A city centre that has lost its residents is in danger of losing its soul. And a city that loses its soul becomes a dangerous place. One of the sure signals of this 'loss of soul' is the closing of inner city churches. They simply open for Service and close for the remainder of the day. This has happened to most of the inner city churches in Dublin, on the south side of the river at any rate. A caller to the Priory here during the week claimed that his mother no longer came to the Augustinian here because beggars within the church itself had frightened her. If the offending beggars were not removed promptly, he would sue the Augustinians on behalf of his mother! I believe he was being somewhat alarmist, but then I wasn't intimidated. It's a dangerous development. We should do nothing whatsoever to encourage it.
-Dick Lyng.
EVENTS THIS WEEK
- GOBÁN SAOR: Armageddon approaches! We are on stage Wednesday week next, July 24, and again on Thursday and Friday. So things are getting rather serious. We will have our rehearsal as usual on Monday night next, July 15th at 8.00pm. But I guess the Producer will demand a few extra gatherings in the course of the following days. The learning of lines has suddenly become a priority
- STAGE SETS: As was the case with its dramatic predecessors, the play will be performed in the Church. That is entirely fitting since the subject matter of the play hinged centrally on the construction of the monastic settlement at Skellig. The making of the sets absorbed a lot of time. But it was well worth it since they are quite spectacular. Just wait for the night itself!
- OUR ARTISTS: Our Mid Summer Festival had a very fruitful 'spin-off' in the form of five young women artists. These volunteered to paint some of the monastic sets for the stage. A few times this week the Priory dining room was transformed into a studio as these young ladies got to work on the Book of Kells. You will see some of the results of their sterling efforts around the Priory. Thanks very much ladies.
- VOLUNTEERS REQUIRED: So we are facing into a couple of very busy weeks, obviously. But extra hands will lighten the load. We need people to sell tickets, to put up posters around the city, to help with the costumes, to give a hand with the stage, and a million and one other chores. Give your names to Gerry Ferguson, to one of the priests, or to the person in the Priory Office.
- KNOCK: Saturday next, July 20th, is the Augustinian pilgrimage to Knock. Buses will travel. See posters at the back of the church for details.
PHOTOGRAPHIC DISPLAY
Photographs from our Mid Summer Festival are now on display at the back of the church. If you wish to have a copy of any of the photographs, just make your wish known.
OUTDOOR COLLECTION TODAY
The Irish Kidney Foundation will hold their annual Outdoor Collection this weekend. Please be generous to them.
BATTLE FOR THE HUMAN HEART
"Children appear the unintended victims of two enormous forces at large in the world. One is economic, the other technological. The ratcheting up of competitiveness in the global market place means that today's generation of parents has to work harder and longer to maintain the same standard of living as their parents. Consequently they have less time to spend with their own children. Mobility means that fewer families have relatives nearby to help with day-care, and too many families live in neighbourhoods where they are afraid to let their play outside unsupervised.
So today's children spend much time on their own. One way they fill that time amounts to an unprecedented experiment with the world's youth: never before in human history have so many children spend to much time staring at a video monitor. Whatever is on that monitor, it does mean they are not out playing with other children. And the way we have passed on social and emotional skills is in life: from our parents, relatives, neighbours and peers. This transfer of basic life skills simply does not happen as well as it used to."
-From "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman.
ON REACHING THE AGE OF EIGHTY-FIVE
Gone are the days of youth
No more returning.
This is the simple truth,
No point yearning.
First it's the eyes that go,
Then it's the knees;
Then comes the cruelest blow,
Brain starts to freeze.
Hideous the body grows,
Face even worse;
Time to turn up one's toes.
Ring for the hearse!
-Dolly Eltenton.
HOPE
High hopes keep the farmer floating in his field,
Bo Peep gone to the canyons for her strays -
crop-walkers, talkers would be better off in Brussels,
bindweed creeps over trellises of tears
in the wandering of her ways.
Tillage is too much toil,
scalping the soil with a swinish spade,
folding furrows in the forehead of her brow,
stern as the scrape of a big swing plough -
I propose to plant a vineyard vainly,
plainly impossible on so flat a field
and too cold to grow good grapes -
I traipse through tangled hedgerows,
beating bushes with my blackthorn
stick to what you know
might be a motto for a madman,
too foolish a fellow to follow
so desperate a dictum -
he's gone to gather wool on the watery slopes,
he hopes to meet Saint Michael the Archangel
searching for his sword,
he has thorns in his hair, he's quare -
there - that's them there at the window -
strange as it seems, he teems tears.
-Patrick Carton.
MEMORABLE QUOTES
- "The salvation of mankind lies only in making everything the concern of all." - Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
- "The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel!" -Horace Walpole.
- "There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval." -George Santayana.
- "The love of justice in most men is simply the fear of suffering injustice." -Duc de la Rochefoucauld.
- "Diseases are the tax on pleasures." -John Ray.
- "Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations." -Edward de Bono.
- "Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure." -Tony Benn.
- "A good many inconveniences attend play-going in any large city, but the greatest of them is usually the play itself ." -Kenneth Tynan.
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