 IRISH EYES:
HOLY CROSS: A Mother's Lament
DAN VANDEMORTEL
 During a phone conversation a few days ago, my mother wept for the children of Northern Ireland.
My mother is 70 years old and has lived her entire life in the quiet Upstate New York town of Phelps, population 2,000, where local farming issues, snowfall, heat waves, town gossip, marriages, and grandchildren are the predominant conversation topics amongst her peers. To her knowledge, her lineage is Dutch, with perhaps a sprinkling of French. None of her friends are Irish or of heavy Irish descent. She has never traveled to Ireland or the United Kingdom, and it is unlikely she ever will. Her sole connection to this beautiful but turbulent corner of the world is through my travels and experiences there.
Over the years, my mother has either read or heard directly from my impassioned perspective about internment, week-long police interrogations without access to a solicitor, juryless courts, the Omagh bombing of Protestant and Catholic civilians, the murder of attorney Rosemary Nelson, and countless incidents of harassment or deaths of citizens at the hands of the governing security forces or outlawed paramilitary organizations. None of this made her shed tears. Not even close. My mother raised herself economically out of Depression-era surroundings, and consequently is a woman of moderate political views and an avid believer in personal responsibility. She is tolerant of others, but is not easily swayed by "causes" or "movements" or "rights." Living in Phelps, where the population is 99% white and static, itıs hard for her at times to completely reach out mentally to other parts of the world when those parts of the world do not enter into her daily reality as they would if she lived in cosmopolitan cities such as New York or San Francisco.
Last week, all that changed. .. More
ESSAYS ON CULTURE:
BLAME
KEVIN CAREY
Blame is a major factor in social and economic efficiency. You only have to remember how much time was wasted at school with teachers trying to find out who did something rather than putting right what was wrong.
The theory behind this was that we should learn to "Own up" to our misdemeanours but that was a tough order to carry out in the face of almost certain physical violence. I learned early in life that the only cohort of women more brutal than the Sisters of Charity were the Sisters of Mercy. Later the punishments were meted out by men, with the priests being as vigorous as the rest. This kind of violence has largely been abandoned but more out of fear of litigation than because it was seen to be a morally bankrupt method of helping children to understand the importance of honesty. ... More
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"I heard someone say on TV this morning that the eagle was selected as a symbol because the eagle wasn't afraid to fly during a storm.
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