The Cycle of Life
Thoughts about life in Ireland, cycling and what I've learned along the way
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Letter from Cambodia
I have been in Cambodia for three weeks, mostly working with SeeBeyondBorders, an NGO working to develop teaching capability in early grade primary schools. Cambodia is a country of contrasts. The people here are among the most friendly you will ever meet and yet they were subjected to a terrible genocide in the last decades of the 20th Century. The countryside is flat, characterised by jungle, rice fields and Asian cattle wandering the roadsides. And yet there is a vibrancy in the towns and cities like Siem Reap, Phnom Penh and Battambang. Everywhere you see the juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern. The banking system is good and you…
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Away with the fairies
Our ancestors realised that we cannot explain everything. We see only part of the world and there is more beyond our reach. Long ago young people had much to learn, dangers to be avoided, knowledge and skills to be acquired and lessons on how to survive and succeed. Wisdom resided in the old people but there were no schools of colleges. Stories were the backbone of learning and an important means of preserving culture and tradition.
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The Cycle of Life
Next Friday 28th of March I will take part in the Galway Cycle. This involves a cycle from Maynooth to Galway in one day. This will be by far and a way the longest and most challenging cycle I have done. I have trained and prepared well but admit to being nervous and apprehensive. I am in my mid-fifties and not blessed with an athletic physique. The journey is about 180 kilometers and I will need to keep up with the 25kph pace. The Maynooth Galway Cycle has been running for many years and each year thousands of Euro is raised for a designated charity. This year’s charity is the…
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Richard Hannaford An Extraordinary Teacher
Some people are natural teachers. I don’t mean ‘teachers’ in the everyday sense as in those who work in schools or colleges. I mean people who show us things and who we learn from in all manner of ways. Richard Hannaford was such a person. I noticed this many years ago when I first met him as my sister Norah’s partner and later husband. Over the years I became more convinced this was the case, never more so than in the weeks leading up to his untimely death one month ago. Richard probably did not realise that we were all learning from him and I know that he would be…
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The Common Good
The Concept of the Common Good I have argued elsewhere that the current debate on Ireland’s crisis needs to move away from economist dominated reasoning and be replaced by something more fundamental–a deeper and altogether more important consideration of the basic principles that we should use to organise our society. This week saw the publication of a document called From Crisis to Hope: Working to Achieve the Common Good by The Council for Justice and Peace of the Irish Episcopal Conference. This is a welcome and much needed addition to the current discourse. It is a thoughtful exposition of what it means to think ethically about the current situation particularly…
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The Election Count- A Learning Opportunity
Why School Students Should Manage the Election and the Counting of Votes In Ireland voting in the general election takes place this Friday and this means a weekend of ballot boxes, exit polls, tally men and counting. We use a system of proportional representation (PR) that is very fair but very complex. When you vote you mark candidates in order of preference on the ballot paper. You can go through all the candidates assigning a number to indicate 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th preferences and so on. You can influence the outcome of who gets elected by means of your later preferences. It is not unusual for the whole process to…
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The Two Hour Club
It works like a book club but with a twist…. I have been working with some friends here in Maynooth to establish The Two Hour Club. I think this is something that could catch on. It’s a simple idea the goal is to provide a format for groups to get together frequently to discuss meaningful issues. I think this is a useful format for learning and it evolves from my interpretation of some of the ideas of Jurgan Habermas. I have described this to other friends and colleagues and a number have indicated that they would like to establish their own version. To help this I have created some video…
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The English (Poets) Graveyard in Rome
If you’ve been to Rome as I have many times you begin to look beyond the usual tourist haunts for places of interest. Of course there is no shortage of these–the city has layer upon layer of stories to tell. One such place of interest is the English Graveyard, or more precisely the graveyard for non-Catholics. There are two famous poets buried here Keats and Shelly. I loved poetry as a teenager. Reams of beautiful words, gifts from my school days, are still available to me. There is certainly something to be said for learning poetry ‘off by heart’. Ode to a Nightingale My heart aches, and a drowsy…
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Betty Casey One Life Happy Birthday
My sister Betty died this year. At the time I could not bring myself to write about it but today, the 23rd of December, is Betty Casey’s birthday and I feel the need to comment. Betty was the eldest of six children, I came in the middle, number three in line. There was something magic about our childhood. We were reared in the Phoenix Park a vast enclosed piece of country located in the heart of the city of Dublin. Our father Harry was a gate keeper and we lived in a gate lodge. While I was young the universe was packed into that small lodge and its environs. What…
