To: Mac Con Ulaidh who wrote (101766 ) 4/25/2005 6:08:34 PM From: Grainne Respond to Thanks for posting that Colm Toibin article about "progress" in Ireland. I really enjoyed reading it. Toibin is one of my favorite contemporary Irish writers. It is a bit unusual in that he is gay. There is a huge gay scene in Dublin and most other places large enough to support one, not a scene thought of as typically Irish, though. Like the stupid highway being built near Tara! When I was in Ireland we drove that road every day because we were staying at a cottage in the Wicklow Mountains. The protesters were very active at that point trying to save the forest. Toibin is right when he suggests that everything is for sale in Ireland, if politicians profit (and there is a lot of money that passes hands under the table). Tara is unbelievably beautiful and magical, rolling green hills and little houses tucked in here and there in the trees. Newgrange, a much better ancient sunworshipping site than Stonehenge ever was, is nearby. When I was there you had to take buses a long, long way from parking lots to get to Newgrange, and I hoped that environmental sensitivity would continue. I guess not! Progress is always sad in its ruination of the slow pace of life. But it is too bad the Irish have just gone crazy. Dublin is exciting in a very modern way, but cars are whizzing everywhere, gridlocked sort of like Los Angeles at rush hour. There are parts of the countryside that are better, but people are willing to live two or three hours away from Dublin to commute, so large parts of the countryside are being degraded. You would really have to visit just the west of Ireland now to get any sense of its old crumbly charms.
