A 1930 promotional poster from the ‘Sally L. Steinberg collection of doughnut ephemera’ at the National Musuem of American History.
From top: Donegal cottage, 1930s: Dan Boyle
Austerity now.
Austerity Then.
The similarities are not just superficial.
Dan Boyle writes:
It was The Mother’s birthday last weekend. She was born in the 1930s. It occurred to me that the time span between now and then, when applied to before her birth, would have brought her life towards the end of The Great Famine in Ireland and before the start of the American Civil War. So much history enveloped into two life spans.
Thinking of when she was born brought to mind that distinctly harrowing decade of the 1930s. A lot of parallels seem to exist between then and now. It was a decade entered into on the back of a collapse in the global economy, made worse in Ireland. Then we were engaged in an economic war with the British. Now we are economically in thrall to the whims of the Germans. We seem to have lived with austerity more often than we’re prepared to admit.
Then the coming force in Irish politics was a group of people, who several years previously, believed their political goals were best delivered through the barrel of a gun. The leader of that group, patrician like, sought to distance himself from such grubby activity. Thankfully shameless re-positioning like this isn’t practiced any longer in Irish politics.
Then, throughout the rest of Europe, the complacent centre was failing to hold. The disenfranchised and the dispossessed were being attracted to extremes both of the right and the left. Now rejecting old certainties is the reaction of the day.
The comparisons between then and now are largely superficial though. Take the example of poverty. Then poverty was absolute, now it tends to be relative. Then social needs were unmet because of a lack of resources. Now they exist because resources are misallocated.
My mother’s childhood was cloaked in a middle class comfort. Her dad, my grandfather, worked with the newly formed Electricity Supply Board. Apparently it was possible then to establish a state owned company, responsible for the fair and efficient distribution of a public utility.
My own Dad was at the same time living in another Ireland. On another island, Arranmore off the coast of Donegal, in a family home without electricity or plumbing.
How we remember history, especially our personal histories, determines how we make sense of the present. It’s the scale we often get wrong. The relationship between past, present and future isn’t necessarily linear, but it has tended to be progressive.
Are there still flaws? Many, with continuing injustices in place. Are we dealing with these with a sufficient sense of urgency? No, but the amount of what is wrong has been reduced.
In Ireland we have evolved as a society and have progressed as an economy. There have been steps back that have been followed by leaps forward. There have been collective qualities we have lost that we should seek to regain. Technology has helped make life easier but has also made life more complicated.
The future will always be uncertain. We shouldn’t burden it with prophecies of doom. We have no reason to believe that the journey from now to the future will be any less successful than the journey we have made from the past to now.
We should hope though that we don’t choose the route chosen by the rest of the World to escape the torpor of the 1930s. World War Three would be the last in that series.
Dan Boyle is a former Green Party Senator.
Top pic via irish Archaeology
An impressive demonstration of age reducing visual effects software (NUKE) applied to actress Michele Valley by visual effects artist Rousselos Aravantinos.
Shrug Life – Funderland
Like is a wobbly indoor rollercoaster.
Danny Carroll, of Shrug Life, writes:
Filmed in Dublin involving mime-face, office drudgery and LUAS struggles. We’re releasing our debut EP via Popical Island this Saturday 25th of July with a gig in Bello Bar, [Portobello, Dublin]….
Directed by Dave Knox.
Featuring Thom McDermott as ‘ass**** office manager’ and Fiona Lucia McGarry as ‘Girl On Bench’.
Dan from the Slow Mo Guys inserts himself into a heavy duty balloon, Gav fills it with water and, when the time is right, switches on the high speed camera.
A very satisfying spectacle indeed, from start to finish.
Chaos Theory
at
A suffragette sleepover, 1911.
A ‘can’t vote, won’t register’ sinister fringe.
Is your great granny among them?
Padraig O Morain writes:
Didn’t strike me until today that the Census of 1911, which Irish people pore over in search of their recent ancestors, excludes those suffragettes who refused to fill in the form because of the failure to extend the vote to women.
Refusal was illegal and at one meeting suffragettes informed a policeman present that they intended to hire submarines and airplanes to take them out of the country on census night…Plans for night-time picnics in the Dublin mountains, so that they could evade the census takers (who, in Ireland, were policemen), didn’t materialise because of bad weather.
Some women did, however, sleep out in non-residential buildings that night so that they wouldn’t be home when the policeman called – the photo, above [supplied by the author] shows a group of them. The point, anyway, is that if you can’t find your great-granny in the Census returns she was probably a Women’s Libber.
Fight!
Census Day 1911 (The National Archives)
Thanks Ciaran
The Bike Institute, Lower Dorset Street, during BikestandGate, Summer 2013
FIVE ‘top notch’ Gold Star rating MasterLocks were up for grabs to the five sorriest tenderest bike pinching anecdotes.
The Bike Institute, Dublin’s premier thief-loathing bike shop, supplied the locks and the judges.
So what tales left them howling with empathy, their very souls punctured?
The five lock winners.
Art Vandelay: “My poor wife is single handedly keeping the bike thieves in Dublin in business I’m afraid. She is on the worst run of luck Ive ever heard of. She’s had THREE bikes stolen in the last month. The first was a very good second hand LaPierre road bike that was stolen due to her being a numpty and locking it terribly one day in town, whereby I then lectured her for days afterwards about how to lock a bike (this smugness came back to bite me on the bottom). No less than 2 days later her absolute pride and joy, a ludicrously expensive (sure what else it the cycle to work scheme for?!) LaPierre mountain bike that she bought 2 years ago was stolen from our underground car park. It was locked but still not that well and what with it being in a “secure” car park she had planned on waiting until the weekend to lock it with a better lock. We had recently moved from a house into this apartment complex which is why the lock was so crap because we used to always have it inside the house but the complex has a strict no bikes inside the building rule.
She swore off bikes forever, but after about 3 weeks of me nagging her to get back on the horse and convincing her to get one of her mates who wouldn’t use the CTW scheme to get a another decent bike and off we went to cycle superstore and got her the cheapest (and still decent) womens bike that the shop had. As adverse to locks as she is, she bought the dearest one they had in the shop, 120 quid and brought the bike home.
My wife then proceeded to spray paint the bike matt black so that it had no recognisable features at all. That added to my “lessons” on how to lock a bike, we were sure this one was going to be around for the long haul. Not so. One flaming week and it was taken from the underground car park. Angle grinded off (Cue me having to explain that my locking technique only made it harder to steal, not impossible, as apparently my smug tone lead her to believe it was going to be).
I have no idea what they will do with that bike as it has no markings. The worst part about that last bike is that our elderly neighbour interrupted the two dudes that were stealing the last bike and they threatened to cut his throat if he didnt feck off. He rang the Garda and they arrived. 4 hours later.” So thats that. 1 month, 3 bikes and a lady who swears she wont ever use a bike again. (I plan to get her one for her birthday on the QT so hopefully she doesnt read this).”
Ronan:“Used to commute on old road bikes I bought cheap as I REALLY didn’t want to get one stolen. After doing this for 5+ years I finally got sick of it and wanted a new decent bike as I really enjoy cycling. Saved the pennies and picked out a nice Cannondale, supplemented by the bike to work scheme. Loved the bike, but was terrified of having it stolen. I have always had two decent locks, U-lock and cable lock, even so, I just didn’t want to let it out of my sight (can you guess where this is going?) anyway, with bikes not allowed in our office, I used to arrive to work early, bring it in, hide it in fire escapes, utility closets, anywhere but outside, getting periodically reprimanded along the way. After several months, and on my last warning, if I finally had to bite the bullet and lock it up outside. Left it there in the morning, checking out the window every 15/20 minutes that it was still there, sometime around 3.15pm some f–king toe-rag got it, first day I locked it up. Heart-breaking and still paying for bike I don’t have.”
Edelicious: “Years and years ago, while I was still in college, I came back to my bike after classes to find that some toe-rag had gone and nicked the front wheel off my bike. While I was standing there bemoaning the fact that I was going to have to awkwardly walk my one-wheeled bike home, another student walked up to the bike rack to find that everything BUT his (quick release) front wheel had been stolen! Obviously the thief had seen that yer man’s bike was only locked through the front wheel and so had quickly unbolted my (non-quick release) front wheel and made off with the other lad’s bike and my wheel. I tried to convince the other lad to give me his wheel, since he wouldn’t be needing it anymore, but he was having none of it and stormed off with wheel in hand.”
Ally M: “(insert setting the scene here) I got my bike robbed whilst cycling it. The little thieves were lying in wait as I rounded a corner in Stoneybatter. Rang the Guards from Centra (took my phone as well), got picked up from there and went bike thieve chasing – without success.This isn’t a failed locking story but I got locked after though, miss that bike.”
Rowland: “My wife and I bought two bikes on the bike to work scheme and we were only a couple of weeks into paying for them. We were out for the day and locked them both, using the one lock, to a pole outside a swimming pool we were visiting. We came out 20 minutes later and found that the lock was broken and my bike was gone but my wife’s luminous pink bike remained. They had to lift her bike out of the way to get to mine. It’s a rare thief that can steal your bike and insult your wife’s taste in bikes all at the same time!”
Thanks all.
Sally O’Brien (a different one) writes:
Winners can call into The Bike Instituteto claim their prize and are welcome to regale us further with more tearful stories (bike related) if they wish.
Yesterday: Let’s Get Seriously Locked
Garda notice about profiteering off the backs of forgetful cyclists cycle safety.
Paul Edmunds writes:
Spotted by my eagle-eyed colleague Kevin Donohoe…Can’t decide whether to break #4 or #7 first…
With a free day at the Galway Races followed by a ‘slap-up’ meal at the newly-opened McGettigan’s Bar, Prospect Hill, Galway on the ‘cards’ WE asked:
What was your most memorable Galway Races experience?
One preferably not involving a tent.
Runners up:
Smashmouth: “My Most memorable Galway Races experience involved a shetland Pony, a bottle of Jack Daniels and an ill tempered steward.”
Christy: “My most memorable Galway Races experience involved my whole family. I was 8 my brother was 7. We both picked a number for a horse which my mother backed. She gave me my brothers ticket and my brother mine. My brothers horse won. Woo hoo i had his ticket. This led to a massive fight but luckily my father and grandfather intervened. All was sorted with ice cream for both of us and a go on the carousel. Ah happy days.”
STP: “My most memorable Galway Races experience involved not going.”
The Old Boy: “My most memorable Galway Races experience involved a chance meeting with an old acquaintance in a West London bar, strategy meetings in smoky back-rooms, a man disguised as a labourer with the Department of Posts and Telegraphs committing an act of sabotage, a portmanteau filled with neatly bundled fifty-pound notes, and several unsuspecting turf accountants.”
Winner:
Clampers Outside:‘My Most memorable Galway Races experience involved working a few weeks of the summer (of 1992/93 I think) in the Corrib Great Southern Hotel as a bar man and silver service waiter…. I got to see ‘Woman’s Heart’ play three nights in a row… which was not as bad as it sounds, in fairness… but best of all were the tips from jockeys and trainers at the hotel. I arrived home on the Thursday early afternoon having completed the morning shift and the first two races were already over. I checked my bit of paper with my tips and saw the first two tips were the first two winners. Myself and my three dole friends headed to the bookies and by evening we each had IR£70 to IR£80 each on a IR£5 punt.”
Thanks all.
Previously: Going To Galway?
Thanks Nicole