Where Do I Go From Here?

So, at this point I'm going to try to do a little more catch-up. Don't know if I'll be particularly successful, but I'm going to try anyway. Here goes . . .

The weekend after I returned from Italy I again made my way off the mountain, this time for the Tallaght Community Arts Centre's "Big Draw". Tallaght is the "subburb" of Dublin that is the closest to Glencree. The Big Draw was an event designed to involve the community in the arts and was comprised of about 6 different parts. Krystal, Kari, and I went from Glencree to help them out for the day in the beginnings of establishing a working relation between the two organizations.

Of the activities, the main one was a request from the community for credit card sized drawings which were then mounted on acetate and displayed in the windows. A really easy, yet impactful idea.

This picture includes my drawing - any guesses?

Another activity was body mapping, which was basically a body outline or two filled in as you like, usually in a somewhat abstract way such as this

Some of the other activities where more "artsy" including a collection of panels that were displayed a the mall throughout the week. Each day a local landmark was painted with transluscent paint and after people would sign it. The next day the panels were reassembled in a different order and then painted and signed again. This continued for six days, which left a really great layered piece that spoke a lot of the city.

One of my favorite activities was perhaps also the simplest at heart. It was a "magic carpet" mosaic made up purely of stencils and pastels. Here's a photo of Krystal and Kari working on it.

It was a truely great day, filled with lots of enjoyable people, time off the mountain, and time being artistic - what more can a girl ask for?

To keep things in order, just after this is when the ceili and the trip to Johnie Fox's happened, but as I've already blogged about that no need for more random blabbing on about it.

The end of October and beginning of November were very busy for me. For a week, ending on the 4th of November we had a group of Sri Lankan Human Rights Workers here. They were a mix of lawyers, data collectors, and "activists" who were incredibly kind and wonderful, and whom are greatly missed. The funny thing being that they were gone to Dublin every day from 8:30 a.m. until 7:00 p.m. and yet I felt I got to know them much better than most of our guests. Of the group of eight only two were women. One of these two was a complete riot and always good for a laugh. She was a single mother of a teenaged son and quite the talker. Every day she dressed in beautiful saris with short sleeves. One day I mentioned that she must be cold as the weather was quite chilly and she told me no, she wasn't cold because she was so "mad inside" (aka angry) that it kept her warm The other woman was about my age and I got to know her very well during thier parting dinner on Friday night (even though they didn't leave until Sunday) when I sat next to her. We talked during most of the dinner and she told me at the end, that I was the only person she had a conversation with all week. Apparently she was worried about her English and thusly didn't want to talk. Strange as she is a remarkably fearless woman in her day to day life as she rides through town on her minibike taking documentation of human rights violations that have happened to people. Not at all a safe job. On Saturday at dinner, she takes me aside and hands me a beautiful bracelet as a thank you. It serves as a reminder to me that the little things in life can make a big difference.

At the very end of October I spent a day out and about with Ken and Megan J. (aka Canadian Megan) visiting some ancient sites around the area. We first headed off to Newgrange and Knowth which are both passage tombs dating way back to the Stone Age. They are pretty incredible and show how industrious, artistic and smart people were back in the day. Here's a photo of the outside of Knowth.

Overall, these things are huge and line up astrologically so that at certain times of the year (Summer and/or Winter Solstice) the sun shine directly in and lights up the inner cavern. They also have a ton of interesting carvings on them including this one at Knowth.

Next up is a photo of the entrance to Newgrange, which includes another carved kerbstone that is particularly special as it holds one of the two original trispirals. Very cool!

If you'd like more accurate information on all of this please visit www.knowth.com as I'm sure I've thouroughly confused you at this point.

After these two sites our day was mostly gone, but we decided to try to fit in the Hill of Tara since we were already out that way. While I didn't know much about this site (and still don't, I really should do some reading up) it was completely intriguing and pretty cool. Apparently there's talk of destroying it to run a highway through there. Seems absolutely crazy (in a bad way) to me, but apparently it's not a designated historical site. While there we saw the main "attraction" the Lia Fail or Stone of Destiny, which according to Megan is the most important stone in the world. Some might say she was a little too excited to see this rock, and a little too angry at the people who were nonchalantly leaning against, but so it goes. Here's a picture of it in all it's glory.

On our way out I snapped a photo of the statue of St. Patrick located outside the church at the edge of the Hill of Tara, and since Ireland is pretty much all about St. Pat I thought I'd include that pic here too.

That's all you get for today. More to come on the Big Trip up North!