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Cead Mile Failte! (Irish for “A Hundred Thousand Welcomes!”)
Let’s start this one with a classic, “The Old Man”, by John McDermott. You can tell he gets emotional over this as do I, for we both miss our fathers.
My dad died almost ten years ago, on March 11, 2012. I remember that outside the old stone Catholic Church after the funeral it was drizzling slightly and I said ”God’s crying.” The U.S. Marines sent over an Honor Guard to the local cemetery where my father, my mother and my younger brother (who died tragically young at the age of 17) are buried, and they presented me with the American Flag, me being the eldest, since he had served on Iwo Jima during WW2. I passed it on to one of my other younger brothers who had served in the Marine Reserves (my mom and dad loved kids and they had eight children, a typical Irish Catholic family in those days).
My dad loved Notre Dame “Fighting Irish” football and we hung the large banner flag he had on the wall of his home office in the hall of the Funeral Home at the urging of my cousin’s husband. As a child I remember sitting with him under the old apple tree in the back yard listening to Fighting Irish football on the radio. Later the game on TV was a weekly ritual during the Fall and on New Year’s Day (since they were generally in a big Bowl). When the technology had progressed, he would tape the games (or I would if I was there as I often was, since I was good at editing out the commercials). If the Irish won he would relive the game several times that week, but if they lost he would tape over the game. Here’s a leprechaun dancing the Irish Jig in celebration of a victory. Go Irish!
Dad was a P.E. Civil Engineer who started his own company with a friend of his when I was about 10. With his old construction company he worked on major highway projects like the New York State Thruway (which brought the new family after I was born in the early 50’s to Kingston, near Poughkeepsie), and the new clover leafs near the New York World’s Fair during the early 60’s. With his partner they designed, drafted and surveyed (with several surveying teams on board) some major municipal and private buildings, including laying out the foundations, swimming pools, roads and parking lots. Later as business waned during the recession of of the late 70’s the partnership dissolved and my father specialized in private residence septic system design, which he could do with either me or my younger brothers (when they got older) doing “perc tests” (percolation rates of the soil), which determined how many square feet of septic system were required, and we also helped with some surveying. After my dropping out of college and going to India to study with a guru (another long story), I spent six months as a rod man on a surveying team working on the new Tarrytown Hilton before returning to college in earnest.
After graduating with my Ph.D. in mathematics in North Carolina and returning to New York to become an actuary in NYC, I would tutor my father with various math topics, including non-Euclidean Geometry, which totally eluded him. Here is an “obituary” I wrote shortly after my father’s death.
Dad, The Euclidean Man
My siblings and I have been sharing memories of my dad. Here's a rather abstruse one I have of him. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, don't worry about it.
As some of you may know, over the last two dozen years or so I've given my dad many books on mathematics and mathematicians to read. I also gave him many tutorials on mathematical topics, sometimes spread out over a series of weeks or months. He was very tolerant of me. He had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and was generally very logical.
One of my series of topics about twenty years ago was non-Euclidean geometry. I took an elementary book on the subject and together we delved into it over a series of months. For those of you unfamiliar with the difference between Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry, Euclidean geometry is the geometry we study in 10th grade in New York State: straight lines intersecting at angles or being parallel, triangles, etc. This geometry was developed by the Greek mathematicians over two thousand years ago and was written down with logical proofs by Euclid in his "Elements". For close to two thousand years the mark of an educated person was having studied Euclid, and the geometry he systematized was considered the epitome of a logically coherent system. From a series of "self-evident" postulates and the rules of logic the entire edifice of geometry is built. There were ten postulates. For two thousand years the first nine of these stood the test of close scrutiny, but the tenth, the "parallel" postulate. began receiving some scrutiny during the Middle Ages. This says basically that parallel lines never meet and that given a line and a point not on that line the parallel line through the point is always a fixed distance from the other line. The great philosopher Immanuel Kant believed and taught in his writings that what was logical was real and therefore since Euclidean geometry was logical it must be real, i.e., the real world must be Euclidean.
All of this began to crumble in the Nineteenth Century. Three mathematicians, Gauss, Bolyai and Lobachevsky, independently developed geometries where parallel lines could approach one another as you went to infinity, so-called hyperbolic geometries. In the Twentieth Century Einstein used these hyperbolic geometrical ideas in his Theory of Relativity. No longer could we believe that what was logical was real since there were competing geometrical systems which were both logical. It was possible that the real world is non-Euclidean, not Euclidean.
To get back to my dad, he could never understand how two parallel lines might approach one another at infinity. Being a surveyor and an engineer, Euclidean ideas were so ingrained in him that a non-Euclidean world was incomprehensible to him.
By the way, going again along the train of thought that we all need a laugh sometimes, here is a funny video and song by the comedian Tom Lehrer. A bit of background: as I mentioned above, Gauss, Bolyai and Lobachevsky independently developed non-Euclidean geometry in the Nineteenth Century. But some claim that Bolyai and particularly Lobachevsky stole the idea from Gauss. Thus Tom Lehrer's humorous exhortation to "Plagiarize!" (Three minutes)
Here’s John McDermott with “The Old Man”, with lyrics (five minutes). This one’s for you, dad!
On a more slightly more cheerful but still sad note, my dad’s favorite Irish song was “Danny Boy”. Since it was his favorite I think it deserves two versions.
The first is an old classic by Bing Crosby, with some beautiful Irish scenery (three minutes). My parents remarked that they had never seen so many sheep after returning from a trip to Ireland traveling about but centered on the annual Shamrock Classic Game, which that year was between Notre Dame and Navy and was held in Dublin.
The second is by Ella Roberts and has a great video accompanying it. (Four and a half minutes)
On a more whimsical note, here’s “Las Vegas in the Hills of Donegal” by one of my favorite bands performing Irish music, Scythian, who I saw live a number of times in NYC. This was a real crowd pleaser in the Irish pubs in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. (Three minutes)
For a bit of Irish Rebel music, here’s Scythian again with the classic “Come Out You Black and Tan”. I used to see them at an Irish pub near Madison Square Garden a dozen years ago. Founded by brothers Alexander and Danylo Fedoryka who are first-generation sons of Ukrainian immigrants, Scythian from the start has been a search and love for the "old time, good time music" of many cultures. They were inspired by a tale told by their 92-year-old grandmother of a roving fiddler who came into her farming village every six months or so. Once he was spotted, messengers were sent to all the outlying fields and mills and worked ceased; everyone gathered in the barn where they danced all night and danced their cares away. (four minutes)
When I was in Ireland, the bands and audience in the Irish pubs all loved it when “The Yank” would request this song!
And lastly, here’s some lovely young Irish lasses (unknown who or when) dancing to the song “Walking On Stones”. (Four minutes)
Erin Go Bragh! (Irish for “Ireland till the end of time”) Frank (“Proinséas” in Irish)
