“Hot town summer in the city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn’t it a pity
Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city…”
C’mon, Lovin’ Spoonful, what’s a little sweat between friends? Didn’t you know that when the fabulous leave for the traffic-jammed Hamptons New York becomes a playground for the rest of us?
You don’t need deep pockets either. The subway is safe and efficient – well, compared to other eras. It runs 24/7 and is a veritable living theatre chockfull of character actors who would put Jack Nicholson to shame.
The same goes for walking. And there’s so much to see. A smorgasbord of buildings erected over the last four centuries preen and lean against each other without even a nod to conformity.
On a good day even Mr. Trump’s monstrosities have a certain buffoonish charm. You’d have to wonder, though, if The Donald has ever even noticed the Chrysler or Woolworth in their stately elegance?
After scores of visits to the Metropolitan Museum I still marvel that I’m allowed stand within sniffing distance of Van Gogh’s Starry Night; however, if the sheer profusion of masterpieces becomes too much for you, then surrender yourself to the moody serenity of a Vermeer at the more negotiable Frick Museum.
Want to wear the kids out and still feel good when you hit the saloons unencumbered later? The Museum of Natural History is your man. Go early and saturate them with dinosaurs, pharaohs, whales and fossils, they’ll be crying out for a long peaceful evening of Facebook and video games back at the hotel.
But New York is so much more than Manhattan. Take a walk down the West Side to Battery Park and hop aboard the Staten Island Ferry, doesn’t cost a dime.
Even on the most blistering of days it’s cool out in the harbor where you can still sense what it must have been like to arrive on an emigrant ship. You’ll see the skyline and bridges from a whole different angle while the Statue of Liberty will only gain in the grandeur of its scale and message.
When you land at St. George board the train to Tottenville but get off at a couple of the leafy small towns. After an hour or two of a ramble you’ll understand why so many people from Aaron Burr to Keith Richard made their home in this least lauded of boroughs.
Are beaches your thing? Then like Duke Ellington take the A train to the Republic of Rockaway. They do things their own way out on this wave pounded peninsula and my one fear is that someday they’ll pack up their splendor and secede from the city. Cadge an invitation to Breezy Point, the gated Irish Riviera at the west end. Ask for my brother, chances are you’ll find him holding court at the Blarney Castle.
You want music? The axis has shifted from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Try the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg – this unique club prides itself on showcasing musicians from all continents.
And for an authentic Irish-American saloon, where Jimmy Cagney trumps Colin Farrell and Notre Dame football is preferred to its Kerry equivalent, seek out Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook. Seanchai and The Unity Squad pump their fists for culture in the back room every Saturday night.
Do you have a yen for flowers, exotic and otherwise? Then get thee to the only borough on the mainland, The Bronx! The Botanical Gardens are a thing of rare beauty and if you want to go nose to nose with a gorilla the magnificent zoo is close by.
You don’t have tickets for the Yankees game? Go on up anyway and ask if they’ve got any last minute deals. Chances are you’ll get great seats and at a discount too.
Don’t forget Upper Manhattan – it’s a different country. Stroll through the wildness of Inwood Hill Park before hoofing it down to The Cloisters. You’ll fancy you’ve stepped right back into medieval Europe.
That’s New York City - all you need is a subway card, a sense of adventure and a sensible pair of shoes. See you on the town.
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Who'll Be The Last One To Die?
Who’ll be the last one to die?
How long now since John Kerry, a decorated hero, asked that question in relation to the Vietnam War as it lurched to its unseemly conclusion?
Despite the pundits, the military brass and the politicians who enable our support of a civil war in Afghanistan, the die is cast there too. We won’t be leaving tomorrow but the countdown has begun.
So who’ll be the last American to give up his or her life for another country far outside our sphere of influence and with little or no strategic importance? The place was even too forbidding for Osama Bin Laden; far better set up house for his three wives within spitting distance of the US financed Pakistan Army.
Luckily for us, that unremitting hater of all things American, Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, is refusing to let our major thinkers keep us indefinitely enmeshed in Iraq, a country we should never have invaded in the first place.
Pity there’s not an Afghani Muqtada. But that’s hardly on the cards, everyone’s too much on the make, including the corrupt Karzai government and various Taliban allies who offer protection so that roads can be built and those oh-so elusive hearts won.
In the end money too will drive our exit strategy - or rather the lack of it. There was a time we could write blank checks and impose our will on the world; but according to Congressman Paul Ryan we can no longer even afford to cover our seniors’ medical care or the pittance we call social security.
In the meantime, however, we can still pour over a hundred billion a year into Afghanistan and that’s just the military cost. Who even wants to think of the money and lives that have been squandered in Iraq?
Oh, by the way, for those of you who were opposed to bailing out our financial institutions, you ever hear of the Kabul Bank? Well it’s hitting some hard times right now - almost a billion bucks was given out in loans to politically connected shareholders including the president’s brother, Hamid Karzai, already suspected of having a hand in the booming opium trade. It would appear that most of those loans lacked collateral and even documentation.
The government of Afghanistan barely takes in revenues of a billion a year, so it’s highly unlikely they’ll be ponying up; and since we can’t continue propping up the world’s 2nd most corrupt government if their financial system collapses, guess where the buck stops?
And that’s not even taking into account the human dimension. Because we’re fighting a wily resourceful enemy who can melt into the population we continue to kill innocent civilians, often women and children. Even our paid pawn, President Karzai, recently warned that such conduct was unbecoming – of course, he had his hand out at the same time.
So why stay? Bin Laden’s dead and Qaeda prefers beachfront property in Yemen and Somalia.
Many of us came down heavily on President Bush for invading Iraq but we continue to turn a blind eye to President Obama’s endless war in Afghanistan. After all, those horrible Republicans and Tea Partiers would flay him alive if he cut and ran, right?
Perhaps, but when the American Embassy was blown up in Beirut, President Reagan moved the marines out of Lebanon posthaste. No one called him a quitter.
Nor did President Clinton allow us to become enmeshed in Somalia after Black Hawk Down. Those were different days, however, before the National Security cabal committed us to permanent war.
And have all the lives lost and money wasted made us the least bit safer? I think not. Blowing up God-crazed peasants half way around the world does little but line the pockets of corrupt foreign governments and our own military industrial complex.
Together they’ll tease out this endgame until the ultimate question remains - Who’ll be the last one to die?
How long now since John Kerry, a decorated hero, asked that question in relation to the Vietnam War as it lurched to its unseemly conclusion?
Despite the pundits, the military brass and the politicians who enable our support of a civil war in Afghanistan, the die is cast there too. We won’t be leaving tomorrow but the countdown has begun.
So who’ll be the last American to give up his or her life for another country far outside our sphere of influence and with little or no strategic importance? The place was even too forbidding for Osama Bin Laden; far better set up house for his three wives within spitting distance of the US financed Pakistan Army.
Luckily for us, that unremitting hater of all things American, Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, is refusing to let our major thinkers keep us indefinitely enmeshed in Iraq, a country we should never have invaded in the first place.
Pity there’s not an Afghani Muqtada. But that’s hardly on the cards, everyone’s too much on the make, including the corrupt Karzai government and various Taliban allies who offer protection so that roads can be built and those oh-so elusive hearts won.
In the end money too will drive our exit strategy - or rather the lack of it. There was a time we could write blank checks and impose our will on the world; but according to Congressman Paul Ryan we can no longer even afford to cover our seniors’ medical care or the pittance we call social security.
In the meantime, however, we can still pour over a hundred billion a year into Afghanistan and that’s just the military cost. Who even wants to think of the money and lives that have been squandered in Iraq?
Oh, by the way, for those of you who were opposed to bailing out our financial institutions, you ever hear of the Kabul Bank? Well it’s hitting some hard times right now - almost a billion bucks was given out in loans to politically connected shareholders including the president’s brother, Hamid Karzai, already suspected of having a hand in the booming opium trade. It would appear that most of those loans lacked collateral and even documentation.
The government of Afghanistan barely takes in revenues of a billion a year, so it’s highly unlikely they’ll be ponying up; and since we can’t continue propping up the world’s 2nd most corrupt government if their financial system collapses, guess where the buck stops?
And that’s not even taking into account the human dimension. Because we’re fighting a wily resourceful enemy who can melt into the population we continue to kill innocent civilians, often women and children. Even our paid pawn, President Karzai, recently warned that such conduct was unbecoming – of course, he had his hand out at the same time.
So why stay? Bin Laden’s dead and Qaeda prefers beachfront property in Yemen and Somalia.
Many of us came down heavily on President Bush for invading Iraq but we continue to turn a blind eye to President Obama’s endless war in Afghanistan. After all, those horrible Republicans and Tea Partiers would flay him alive if he cut and ran, right?
Perhaps, but when the American Embassy was blown up in Beirut, President Reagan moved the marines out of Lebanon posthaste. No one called him a quitter.
Nor did President Clinton allow us to become enmeshed in Somalia after Black Hawk Down. Those were different days, however, before the National Security cabal committed us to permanent war.
And have all the lives lost and money wasted made us the least bit safer? I think not. Blowing up God-crazed peasants half way around the world does little but line the pockets of corrupt foreign governments and our own military industrial complex.
Together they’ll tease out this endgame until the ultimate question remains - Who’ll be the last one to die?
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Punk Rock Meditations
Black 47 played the recent Joey Ramone birthday party at Irving Plaza.
Now lest you think we were kissing the pinky rings of the men in suits, let me explain that Joey was lead singer for the punk rock band, The Ramones. He tragically passed away ten years ago and proceeds from the annual bash go to the Lymphoma Research Foundation.
Back in the 70’s rock music had become so complicated you needed the chops of a Franz Lizt or Django Reinhart to cop a gig. Then came The Ramones – play loud, fast, hard, simple and to hell with the consequences, the same spirit that had inspired Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent a generation earlier.
The Ramones got their start in CBGB’s, a dump on the Bowery. Coincidentally, I happened to be there for their first performance. They weren’t very good, but who was back then? Debbie Harry had trouble singing in tune; Talking Heads were still searching for a sound.
But The Ramones knew exactly what they were after and within three months they were knocking cobwebs off the walls.
CBGB’s is gone but The Ramones legacy lives on, and at Irving Plaza many survivors of the original bands and audiences strutted their stuff. Most everyone looked in decent shape; then again, the lights were low and shades were de rigueur. Black leather for the men, black lace and micro-skirts for the ladies and it was the 70’s all over again.
Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, Rockaway Beach, I Wanna Be Sedated still sounded fresh and immediate. Those Ramones songs have morphed into nostalgic fun-filled anthems, but how strange to think that a hole-in-the wall scene at CBGB’s had such an effect on music and the general culture.
As I took in the scene from the balcony I was struck by how much things had changed. Although the stage was in full view, many people watched the show through the ubiquitous closed circuit TV monitors. The only television I ever saw in CB’s was the one a near naked Wendy Williams of the Plasmatics chain-sawed through.
The audience was lit up by cell phones held aloft to take pictures while many tapped away on keyboards, no doubt updating their Facebook pages – all well and good, but when I watched The Ramones, Television or the Dead Boys back on the Bowery, all I cared about was being blasted by the white heat that each of those bands was creating. I have no need of pictures; those fiery nights are forever stamped on my consciousness.
I left before the final song. I didn’t care to be there when the lights came up. The past is better preserved in darkness and as I strolled down Broadway through the midnight crowds - most of them hooked to iPods like junkies to the needle - I wondered why people choose to block out the distinctive beat of New York City.
Joey Ramone, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Dion DiMucci tapped into this perpetual poetry in motion. Then again, those guys were all about the music and taking it to another plane - they didn’t give a damn about celebrity, the modern Holy Grail.
The beat of the city turned them on, that holy rhythm that cares nothing for nobody just pulses on regardless. Walt Whitman identified it first; it’s unique and God given and you wonder why people have such a need to shut it out.
Joey, you were many things to many people. There were times I thought you’d stepped full-blooded out of a comic book. You were always a gentleman to me and I have many memories of you, but the best is seeing you stand alone on a hot, rancid East Village street, long, lean and lanky, soaking in the metronomic music of the streets.
Hopefully, there are kids out there who are just as disgusted with today’s music as you were back in the early 70’s. They’ve seen the light, they know just what they want to do; they’ve just got to find their own dump on the Bowery to do it in!
Now lest you think we were kissing the pinky rings of the men in suits, let me explain that Joey was lead singer for the punk rock band, The Ramones. He tragically passed away ten years ago and proceeds from the annual bash go to the Lymphoma Research Foundation.
Back in the 70’s rock music had become so complicated you needed the chops of a Franz Lizt or Django Reinhart to cop a gig. Then came The Ramones – play loud, fast, hard, simple and to hell with the consequences, the same spirit that had inspired Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee Lewis and Gene Vincent a generation earlier.
The Ramones got their start in CBGB’s, a dump on the Bowery. Coincidentally, I happened to be there for their first performance. They weren’t very good, but who was back then? Debbie Harry had trouble singing in tune; Talking Heads were still searching for a sound.
But The Ramones knew exactly what they were after and within three months they were knocking cobwebs off the walls.
CBGB’s is gone but The Ramones legacy lives on, and at Irving Plaza many survivors of the original bands and audiences strutted their stuff. Most everyone looked in decent shape; then again, the lights were low and shades were de rigueur. Black leather for the men, black lace and micro-skirts for the ladies and it was the 70’s all over again.
Sheena Is A Punk Rocker, Rockaway Beach, I Wanna Be Sedated still sounded fresh and immediate. Those Ramones songs have morphed into nostalgic fun-filled anthems, but how strange to think that a hole-in-the wall scene at CBGB’s had such an effect on music and the general culture.
As I took in the scene from the balcony I was struck by how much things had changed. Although the stage was in full view, many people watched the show through the ubiquitous closed circuit TV monitors. The only television I ever saw in CB’s was the one a near naked Wendy Williams of the Plasmatics chain-sawed through.
The audience was lit up by cell phones held aloft to take pictures while many tapped away on keyboards, no doubt updating their Facebook pages – all well and good, but when I watched The Ramones, Television or the Dead Boys back on the Bowery, all I cared about was being blasted by the white heat that each of those bands was creating. I have no need of pictures; those fiery nights are forever stamped on my consciousness.
I left before the final song. I didn’t care to be there when the lights came up. The past is better preserved in darkness and as I strolled down Broadway through the midnight crowds - most of them hooked to iPods like junkies to the needle - I wondered why people choose to block out the distinctive beat of New York City.
Joey Ramone, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Dion DiMucci tapped into this perpetual poetry in motion. Then again, those guys were all about the music and taking it to another plane - they didn’t give a damn about celebrity, the modern Holy Grail.
The beat of the city turned them on, that holy rhythm that cares nothing for nobody just pulses on regardless. Walt Whitman identified it first; it’s unique and God given and you wonder why people have such a need to shut it out.
Joey, you were many things to many people. There were times I thought you’d stepped full-blooded out of a comic book. You were always a gentleman to me and I have many memories of you, but the best is seeing you stand alone on a hot, rancid East Village street, long, lean and lanky, soaking in the metronomic music of the streets.
Hopefully, there are kids out there who are just as disgusted with today’s music as you were back in the early 70’s. They’ve seen the light, they know just what they want to do; they’ve just got to find their own dump on the Bowery to do it in!
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
East Durham Memorial Day Weekend
“The Summer time is coming
And the trees are sweetly blooming
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather
Will you go, lassie, go…”
The lassies will indeed be going, many of the lads too, up to the Irish Alps for Memorial Day Weekend.
East Durham will soon be the dead center of the universe – not to mention Gertie Byrne’s Leeds, a mere stone’s throw down the road.
This will mark my own 18th or 19th consecutive Memorial Weekend spent up there. Pardon the uncertainty but the moment you exit the New York State Thruway you enter an alternate zone where memories and expectations collide and harsh reality doesn’t reassert itself until you fumble for the E-Z pass the following Monday evening.
I sometimes wonder who was the first Irish person to set eyes on the Catskill Mountains, or, more to the point, what Paddy first strode down the dusty lanes around E. Durham? He must have experienced a sense of homecoming.
It doesn’t really look like Ireland up there but the Irish have left their mark. I religiously take a ramble up the back roads beyond The Blackthorne every Memorial Saturday. It’s usually as quiet as the grave; an occasional deer will look up in wonder at the sight of a human.
There’s a wall dividing two small fields long ago constructed by some Clare or Connemara man for I’ve seen its double both on the Burren and around Carna. Overgrown now, wild lilac and dogwood sprouting through its moss, once it was designed to put some manners on the land. The fine fields once hacked from gorse and maple are now almost totally reclaimed by nature.
That’s the way up there. It’s a country for tough, resourceful people who never say die. Take the Handels! The Blackthorne was burnt to the ground last September, but they reopened in late April.
Mountainy men and women have that kind of spirit and they throw open their resorts, motels and hearts to the rest of us for the summer season. And, oh by God, are we ready after long city winters rooting around concrete canyons.
It will be all action up there this coming weekend. Gavin’s, The Shamrock, Erin’s Melody, Weldon House, McKenna’s, McGrath’s and the others will be pulsing, half the people beyond familiar, the others soon to be friends.
Down at the Michael J. Quill Center, Tom McGoldrick has put his usual fine Irish Family Festival together. He’s even persuaded The Whole Shabang to reform for the occasion. Black 47 will have its usual 9pm spot on Saturday night before rushing back to The Blackthorne for a midnight show. They better have the Jameson’s handy!
As ever, though the line up at the E. Durham Festival is stellar, there are no airs or graces and you can rub shoulders with the like of Shilelagh Law, Andy Cooney, The Prodigals, Celtic Cross, Kitty Kelly, Jameson’s Revenge, Brigid’s Cross and a host of others.
I wouldn’t want to omit London’s Bible Code Sundays, Derek Warfield & The Young Wolfe Tones, The Gobshites, Padraig Allen & McLean Avenue and the King of the Catskills, Peter McKiernan, stars in their own right, who won’t make the festival but will rumble the mountains with their powerful joyous din.
There are those who won’t make it. This will be our first Memorial Day without Ginger Handel, housemother to so many musicians. She was always ready for a chat over a cup of tea, a few well-chosen words of advice to lost souls at their wits end, and if none of that worked, then an assurance that an extra dessert or two would not be missed from the pantry.
Yeah, we’ll miss her almost as much as her immediate kin, for she made sure to make us all feel part of a larger family.
The mountains may not be trendy but they’re strong and constant, and their roots run bone deep. If you’re new to the scene, well you won’t be a stranger for long. That’s the way it is up in E. Durham on Memorial Day Weekend.
And the trees are sweetly blooming
And the wild mountain thyme
Grows around the blooming heather
Will you go, lassie, go…”
The lassies will indeed be going, many of the lads too, up to the Irish Alps for Memorial Day Weekend.
East Durham will soon be the dead center of the universe – not to mention Gertie Byrne’s Leeds, a mere stone’s throw down the road.
This will mark my own 18th or 19th consecutive Memorial Weekend spent up there. Pardon the uncertainty but the moment you exit the New York State Thruway you enter an alternate zone where memories and expectations collide and harsh reality doesn’t reassert itself until you fumble for the E-Z pass the following Monday evening.
I sometimes wonder who was the first Irish person to set eyes on the Catskill Mountains, or, more to the point, what Paddy first strode down the dusty lanes around E. Durham? He must have experienced a sense of homecoming.
It doesn’t really look like Ireland up there but the Irish have left their mark. I religiously take a ramble up the back roads beyond The Blackthorne every Memorial Saturday. It’s usually as quiet as the grave; an occasional deer will look up in wonder at the sight of a human.
There’s a wall dividing two small fields long ago constructed by some Clare or Connemara man for I’ve seen its double both on the Burren and around Carna. Overgrown now, wild lilac and dogwood sprouting through its moss, once it was designed to put some manners on the land. The fine fields once hacked from gorse and maple are now almost totally reclaimed by nature.
That’s the way up there. It’s a country for tough, resourceful people who never say die. Take the Handels! The Blackthorne was burnt to the ground last September, but they reopened in late April.
Mountainy men and women have that kind of spirit and they throw open their resorts, motels and hearts to the rest of us for the summer season. And, oh by God, are we ready after long city winters rooting around concrete canyons.
It will be all action up there this coming weekend. Gavin’s, The Shamrock, Erin’s Melody, Weldon House, McKenna’s, McGrath’s and the others will be pulsing, half the people beyond familiar, the others soon to be friends.
Down at the Michael J. Quill Center, Tom McGoldrick has put his usual fine Irish Family Festival together. He’s even persuaded The Whole Shabang to reform for the occasion. Black 47 will have its usual 9pm spot on Saturday night before rushing back to The Blackthorne for a midnight show. They better have the Jameson’s handy!
As ever, though the line up at the E. Durham Festival is stellar, there are no airs or graces and you can rub shoulders with the like of Shilelagh Law, Andy Cooney, The Prodigals, Celtic Cross, Kitty Kelly, Jameson’s Revenge, Brigid’s Cross and a host of others.
I wouldn’t want to omit London’s Bible Code Sundays, Derek Warfield & The Young Wolfe Tones, The Gobshites, Padraig Allen & McLean Avenue and the King of the Catskills, Peter McKiernan, stars in their own right, who won’t make the festival but will rumble the mountains with their powerful joyous din.
There are those who won’t make it. This will be our first Memorial Day without Ginger Handel, housemother to so many musicians. She was always ready for a chat over a cup of tea, a few well-chosen words of advice to lost souls at their wits end, and if none of that worked, then an assurance that an extra dessert or two would not be missed from the pantry.
Yeah, we’ll miss her almost as much as her immediate kin, for she made sure to make us all feel part of a larger family.
The mountains may not be trendy but they’re strong and constant, and their roots run bone deep. If you’re new to the scene, well you won’t be a stranger for long. That’s the way it is up in E. Durham on Memorial Day Weekend.
Tuesday, 17 May 2011
autism spectrum disorder
My father always blamed it on an unacknowledged accident at a nuclear plant in Wales. He didn’t make a big deal about it, just occasionally muttered his suspicions into his pint.
He was referring to the upsurge in Down Syndrome births along the Irish coastline in the early 1960’s – my sister, Anne, among them.
All water under the bridge now, both father and daughter have passed on, but I was reminded of his suspicion recently when learning that the incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the US population is now at a rate of 1 in 110.
As some of you know only too well, when you grow up in a house with a special needs child you become sensitive
to anything of that nature; add that to the fact that some years back a friend’s daughter was diagnosed with autism.
Anyway, it’s a rare person nowadays who doesn’t know, or know of, someone with the condition.
My sister’s Down Syndrome changed the whole dynamics of our family life – my mother’s ongoing fear was that Anne would outlive her, then what?
But at least we all understood exactly what had caused her condition: she had been born with one chromosome too many.
While genetics and heritability appear to be the main causes for autism no one really knows the reason for the recent upsurge. Better testing, of course, has added to the numbers. And for a while there was speculation that the rise might be due to childhood inoculation against measles, mumps and rubella, but that seems to have been ruled out, although many still cite it as a possible cause.
Each case is different, ranging all the way from full-blown intellectual disablement to far milder forms often manifesting as behavioral rigidity or difficulty in dealing with social situations.
That being said, the most alarming feature is autism’s rising prevalence, up from 0.6% in the population in the US in 2007 to 0.9% in 2010. Only last week an exhaustive survey from a city in South Korea placed the figure at a staggering 2.6% of all children from 7 to 12.
Many fear that the environment may be suspect for the upsurge, and this at a time when various politicians would like to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Clean air, unfortunately, is not a given, and in our profit driven world this is one agency in need of more financing rather than less.
Some people worry that the food chain might be compromised and pesticides may be to blame.
Could our over-medicated society be at fault? I don’t know but take a look in your bathroom closet - pills for this, tablets for that. Doctors will now routinely write a prescription for Lipitor rather than tell you to wise up and stop eating the greasy foods that are killing you.
Have we in some way, shape or form managed to bring the heartbreak of autism on ourselves?
While every case is indeed different, you see the same strain in each family member’s eyes. Many are overwhelmed by the problems of delivering adequate care and education. At least last year’s Health Care Reform Act will help resolve some of the health insurance issues.
At the moment there is no cure, only treatment that is costly and time consuming; as a society we are in no way prepared for the increasing incidence that shows no sign of abating.
Nonetheless, there are many wonderful people working in the field both trying to identify the causes and dealing with the consequences of the condition. Hats off to them!
For the rest of us it’s time we faced up to the fact that we may share responsibility for this upsurge in autism. The answers may be a long time in coming but for the sake of these children and their families it’s important that we begin to ask the questions.
He was referring to the upsurge in Down Syndrome births along the Irish coastline in the early 1960’s – my sister, Anne, among them.
All water under the bridge now, both father and daughter have passed on, but I was reminded of his suspicion recently when learning that the incidence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the US population is now at a rate of 1 in 110.
As some of you know only too well, when you grow up in a house with a special needs child you become sensitive
to anything of that nature; add that to the fact that some years back a friend’s daughter was diagnosed with autism.
Anyway, it’s a rare person nowadays who doesn’t know, or know of, someone with the condition.
My sister’s Down Syndrome changed the whole dynamics of our family life – my mother’s ongoing fear was that Anne would outlive her, then what?
But at least we all understood exactly what had caused her condition: she had been born with one chromosome too many.
While genetics and heritability appear to be the main causes for autism no one really knows the reason for the recent upsurge. Better testing, of course, has added to the numbers. And for a while there was speculation that the rise might be due to childhood inoculation against measles, mumps and rubella, but that seems to have been ruled out, although many still cite it as a possible cause.
Each case is different, ranging all the way from full-blown intellectual disablement to far milder forms often manifesting as behavioral rigidity or difficulty in dealing with social situations.
That being said, the most alarming feature is autism’s rising prevalence, up from 0.6% in the population in the US in 2007 to 0.9% in 2010. Only last week an exhaustive survey from a city in South Korea placed the figure at a staggering 2.6% of all children from 7 to 12.
Many fear that the environment may be suspect for the upsurge, and this at a time when various politicians would like to eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Clean air, unfortunately, is not a given, and in our profit driven world this is one agency in need of more financing rather than less.
Some people worry that the food chain might be compromised and pesticides may be to blame.
Could our over-medicated society be at fault? I don’t know but take a look in your bathroom closet - pills for this, tablets for that. Doctors will now routinely write a prescription for Lipitor rather than tell you to wise up and stop eating the greasy foods that are killing you.
Have we in some way, shape or form managed to bring the heartbreak of autism on ourselves?
While every case is indeed different, you see the same strain in each family member’s eyes. Many are overwhelmed by the problems of delivering adequate care and education. At least last year’s Health Care Reform Act will help resolve some of the health insurance issues.
At the moment there is no cure, only treatment that is costly and time consuming; as a society we are in no way prepared for the increasing incidence that shows no sign of abating.
Nonetheless, there are many wonderful people working in the field both trying to identify the causes and dealing with the consequences of the condition. Hats off to them!
For the rest of us it’s time we faced up to the fact that we may share responsibility for this upsurge in autism. The answers may be a long time in coming but for the sake of these children and their families it’s important that we begin to ask the questions.
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
John Spillane
There are singers like Liam Clancy who delight in exploring that magical country between the words of songs that often goes unnoticed. Just as there are writers like Nick Drake who can infuse the least amount of words with the most amount of meaning.
It’s a rare singer/songwriter, however, who melds both those gifts. John Spillane is a past master at the art.
I’m sure it doesn’t come easy. Every word and silence in his best songs is pregnant with meaning and defined by a distinctive sense of place. I’d never heard of the Lobby Bar in Cork and yet I can see, and even feel, it as vividly as if I had been a regular.
“There were magic nights in the lobby Bar
With Brendan Ring playing Madame Bonaparte’s
Every note that the piper would play
Would send me away, send me away
Away through the window, away through the rain
Away 'cross the city, away in the air
To a field by a river where the trees are so green
The deepest of green that you've ever seen…”
Then again Spillane’s songs inhabit their own private universe of memory, loss and longing; he finishes the above verse with the gentle advice that,
“You can go any time, you can go any time
‘Cos it’s only in your mind.”
I came upon John’s music through my ongoing search for unique songs to play on Celtic Crush, my SiriusXM show. Now one would think that with the proliferation of CDs nowadays this would be a simple task, but it’s far from the case.
In fact I’m staring guiltily at two daunting towers of unsolicited CDs. And I’m on the artist’s side - I actually delight in finding great new songs and like to think that Celtic Crush is one of the last bastions of originality where good writing is rewarded regardless of commerciality.
Then, in the midst of all the polished mediocrity you’re forced to plough through, you unearth a diamond the like of Spillane. My last discovery had been Shaz Oye, a gay Irish-Nigerian woman from Dublin’s docklands with a voice a cross between Joan Armatrading and Nina Simone.
These two original Irish performers’ only links are talent and a sense of place. Spillane’s is firmly centered in Co. Cork, a hallowed land he claims to be the center of the universe.
I first stumbled upon Spillane on a CD called The Gaelic Hit Factory - a collaboration with the Gaelic poet, Louis De Paor. The track, “Buile Mo Chroí,” The Beat of my Heart, became one of the twenty all time favorites on Celtic Crush.
Close behind it is another spellbinder called “Báisteach” or Rain.
“Do shiúl thar bráid sa tsráid aréir nóscumaliom mar bháisteach
(She) walked past on the street last night as couldn’t-care-less as rain
Comhartha broinne ar a rúitlín clé is lúba airgid ar a riostaí geanmnaí.
A birthmark on her left ankle and silver bracelets on her untouchable wrists.”
Oh man, I wish I’d come up with those lines - in either language! John has the ambition of many great writers – to single out his ordinary world and wrap it in the “cloths of heaven.” And he often succeeds.
His ode to the “Dunnes Store Girl” was a big hit in Ireland and has caused many of us to look a little closer when we visit these temples of commerce for there may be “rebel streets of our dreams” within.
But his song “Passage West” succeeds where others much more celebrated have notably failed – for he captures the reality of modern Ireland and fuses it with the past many of us strain to touch.
“We watched the ferry come and go
We watched the river ebb and flow
The tide breathe in, the tide breathe out
We watched the Passage flowers grow
The ghostly forms of the hungry years
In sad procession did appear
With hope and sorrow made their way
For their passage west to Amerikay”
In subtle ways, this modern man from Cork, John Spillane, touches the soul with the delicate power of a Yeats or Kavanagh.
It’s a rare singer/songwriter, however, who melds both those gifts. John Spillane is a past master at the art.
I’m sure it doesn’t come easy. Every word and silence in his best songs is pregnant with meaning and defined by a distinctive sense of place. I’d never heard of the Lobby Bar in Cork and yet I can see, and even feel, it as vividly as if I had been a regular.
“There were magic nights in the lobby Bar
With Brendan Ring playing Madame Bonaparte’s
Every note that the piper would play
Would send me away, send me away
Away through the window, away through the rain
Away 'cross the city, away in the air
To a field by a river where the trees are so green
The deepest of green that you've ever seen…”
Then again Spillane’s songs inhabit their own private universe of memory, loss and longing; he finishes the above verse with the gentle advice that,
“You can go any time, you can go any time
‘Cos it’s only in your mind.”
I came upon John’s music through my ongoing search for unique songs to play on Celtic Crush, my SiriusXM show. Now one would think that with the proliferation of CDs nowadays this would be a simple task, but it’s far from the case.
In fact I’m staring guiltily at two daunting towers of unsolicited CDs. And I’m on the artist’s side - I actually delight in finding great new songs and like to think that Celtic Crush is one of the last bastions of originality where good writing is rewarded regardless of commerciality.
Then, in the midst of all the polished mediocrity you’re forced to plough through, you unearth a diamond the like of Spillane. My last discovery had been Shaz Oye, a gay Irish-Nigerian woman from Dublin’s docklands with a voice a cross between Joan Armatrading and Nina Simone.
These two original Irish performers’ only links are talent and a sense of place. Spillane’s is firmly centered in Co. Cork, a hallowed land he claims to be the center of the universe.
I first stumbled upon Spillane on a CD called The Gaelic Hit Factory - a collaboration with the Gaelic poet, Louis De Paor. The track, “Buile Mo Chroí,” The Beat of my Heart, became one of the twenty all time favorites on Celtic Crush.
Close behind it is another spellbinder called “Báisteach” or Rain.
“Do shiúl thar bráid sa tsráid aréir nóscumaliom mar bháisteach
(She) walked past on the street last night as couldn’t-care-less as rain
Comhartha broinne ar a rúitlín clé is lúba airgid ar a riostaí geanmnaí.
A birthmark on her left ankle and silver bracelets on her untouchable wrists.”
Oh man, I wish I’d come up with those lines - in either language! John has the ambition of many great writers – to single out his ordinary world and wrap it in the “cloths of heaven.” And he often succeeds.
His ode to the “Dunnes Store Girl” was a big hit in Ireland and has caused many of us to look a little closer when we visit these temples of commerce for there may be “rebel streets of our dreams” within.
But his song “Passage West” succeeds where others much more celebrated have notably failed – for he captures the reality of modern Ireland and fuses it with the past many of us strain to touch.
“We watched the ferry come and go
We watched the river ebb and flow
The tide breathe in, the tide breathe out
We watched the Passage flowers grow
The ghostly forms of the hungry years
In sad procession did appear
With hope and sorrow made their way
For their passage west to Amerikay”
In subtle ways, this modern man from Cork, John Spillane, touches the soul with the delicate power of a Yeats or Kavanagh.
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Bobby Sands MP
“They came from all over the city, down by subway from Inwood and the Bronx, over the bridges and through the tunnels from Queens and Brooklyn, or by ferry in from Staten Island. They drove or took buses from Jersey, Connecticut, Upstate, Pennsylvania.
They came from far and wide to make their views known and their voices heard outside the British consulate on Third Avenue.
They were all part of the tribe, come to protest the imminent death through voluntary starvation of a young chieftain. And make no mistake Bobby Sands was a leader to these people with more moral authority than any trumped up Taoiseach back in Dublin…”
Thirty years ago today Bobby Sands was on the sixty-fifth day of his hunger strike. Many of us were changed by those strange, foreboding days. The tribe never changed, never forgot either nor forgave.
“Not a lace curtain to hang between them, they were the faithful who kept the flame of Irish Republicanism alive in the back rooms of smoky pubs at Sunday evening socials throbbing with the music of accordions, fiddles and banjos.
They were the hard core who gladly forked out crumpled twenty-dollar bills in the hope that one day a united Ireland might become a reality, and not just another pipe dream fueled by chasers of cheap beer and shots of Powers Whiskey.”
I called them the tribe because you always saw the same faces at protests, although they held widely varying views on the nature of their mythic united Ireland.
Accordingly, they were the first to show up outside the British Consulate when Sands went on hunger strike. They could have made it there blindfolded for many had been tramping up and down Third Avenue since the Troubles flared once more in1968.
“They were an odd bunch: serious and cerebral by times, chatty and cliquish at others, but I liked them and admired both their integrity and single-minded devotion to Irish unity. I suppose they reminded me of my grandfather. One in particular even looked like him: white haired, squat and muscular with a face set in granite, conviction cased in steel, all his instincts tuned to the force of his own moral compass.”
My grandfather had raised me in an old barracks of a house in Wexford. I had ingested his version of Irish history and, at an early age, could debate all the old arguments, though I disappointed him with my love for the “turncoat” Mick Collins.
He had been dead some years and I was now living on the Lower East Side, frequenting CBGBS and other temples of the cool. Long before his passing I had distanced myself from the old ideologies and the violence that attended them. Still every now and then in the back of my mind I’d hear his echo, “Every generation must do their part to solve the British problem in the North of Ireland.”
Bobby Sands had his own mantra, “No one can do everything, but everyone has their part to play.”
Both voices had begun to reassert themselves sixty-five days previously when Sands had invoked an ancient Irish tribal right, “when wronged by your more powerful neighbor go starve yourself on his doorstep until the shame causes him to relent.”
But now the minutes were ticking down and Bobby was sinking fast. The Iron Lady, Mrs. Thatcher, would prevail but it would be a hollow Pyrrhic victory, for a new generation had been politicized by Sands’ protest and would hand down its own folk memory.
There would be many dark and dangerous days before the ballot box would finally replace the Armalite but, oddly enough, the first seeds were scattered on poisoned soil thirty years ago.
“Still the tribe never faltered or lost faith. Right to the bitter end, they came in by subway from Inwood and the Bronx, over the bridges and through the tunnels from Queens and Brooklyn, or by ferry in from Staten Island. They drove or took buses from Jersey, Connecticut, Upstate, Pennsylvania. And I will never forget them.”
Excerpts from “Green Suede Shoes – An Irish-American Odyssey” published by Thunder’s Mouth Press/Avalon.
They came from far and wide to make their views known and their voices heard outside the British consulate on Third Avenue.
They were all part of the tribe, come to protest the imminent death through voluntary starvation of a young chieftain. And make no mistake Bobby Sands was a leader to these people with more moral authority than any trumped up Taoiseach back in Dublin…”
Thirty years ago today Bobby Sands was on the sixty-fifth day of his hunger strike. Many of us were changed by those strange, foreboding days. The tribe never changed, never forgot either nor forgave.
“Not a lace curtain to hang between them, they were the faithful who kept the flame of Irish Republicanism alive in the back rooms of smoky pubs at Sunday evening socials throbbing with the music of accordions, fiddles and banjos.
They were the hard core who gladly forked out crumpled twenty-dollar bills in the hope that one day a united Ireland might become a reality, and not just another pipe dream fueled by chasers of cheap beer and shots of Powers Whiskey.”
I called them the tribe because you always saw the same faces at protests, although they held widely varying views on the nature of their mythic united Ireland.
Accordingly, they were the first to show up outside the British Consulate when Sands went on hunger strike. They could have made it there blindfolded for many had been tramping up and down Third Avenue since the Troubles flared once more in1968.
“They were an odd bunch: serious and cerebral by times, chatty and cliquish at others, but I liked them and admired both their integrity and single-minded devotion to Irish unity. I suppose they reminded me of my grandfather. One in particular even looked like him: white haired, squat and muscular with a face set in granite, conviction cased in steel, all his instincts tuned to the force of his own moral compass.”
My grandfather had raised me in an old barracks of a house in Wexford. I had ingested his version of Irish history and, at an early age, could debate all the old arguments, though I disappointed him with my love for the “turncoat” Mick Collins.
He had been dead some years and I was now living on the Lower East Side, frequenting CBGBS and other temples of the cool. Long before his passing I had distanced myself from the old ideologies and the violence that attended them. Still every now and then in the back of my mind I’d hear his echo, “Every generation must do their part to solve the British problem in the North of Ireland.”
Bobby Sands had his own mantra, “No one can do everything, but everyone has their part to play.”
Both voices had begun to reassert themselves sixty-five days previously when Sands had invoked an ancient Irish tribal right, “when wronged by your more powerful neighbor go starve yourself on his doorstep until the shame causes him to relent.”
But now the minutes were ticking down and Bobby was sinking fast. The Iron Lady, Mrs. Thatcher, would prevail but it would be a hollow Pyrrhic victory, for a new generation had been politicized by Sands’ protest and would hand down its own folk memory.
There would be many dark and dangerous days before the ballot box would finally replace the Armalite but, oddly enough, the first seeds were scattered on poisoned soil thirty years ago.
“Still the tribe never faltered or lost faith. Right to the bitter end, they came in by subway from Inwood and the Bronx, over the bridges and through the tunnels from Queens and Brooklyn, or by ferry in from Staten Island. They drove or took buses from Jersey, Connecticut, Upstate, Pennsylvania. And I will never forget them.”
Excerpts from “Green Suede Shoes – An Irish-American Odyssey” published by Thunder’s Mouth Press/Avalon.
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