December 5, 2019

If you are a rich and famous prince, does that mean that you are entitled to have sex with 17 year old girls?

Apparently the answer to that question was yes for Prince Andrew of Great Britain, who is being accused of sexually abusing and assaulting underage girls some years ago. While the sordid details of those events are now being replayed in the press, I find myself feeling sorry for the trauma that those teen girls had to endure. And I also find myself feeling sorry for the thoughtless, inconsiderate, and possibly cold-hearted member of the British royal family who inflicted such pain, confusion, and suffering upon naive teenagers. How could he be so heartless and selfish? How could he be so out of touch with his humanity, his soul, to exploit innocent children?

But then I remember how, when I was in my twenties, I had sex with at least three women who were 19 years old. They were adults, not underage girls. But I can’t help but wonder if I had been as wealthy and privileged as Prince Andrew, would I have been so blinded by my desires that I would not have noticed the vulnerability and plight of such exploited and possibly trafficked sex slaves?

Sometimes being an obscure member of the working class has its advantages.

So I don’t want to be too judgemental about Andrew, as I can’t be sure how I would have behaved under similar circumstances. I’d like to think that I would have been more compassionate and respectful and therefore more standoffish toward the girls, but who knows? The closest I ever came to a similar situation was when I had sex with a 19 year old prostitute when I was 28 (see my personal essay Limousine Love elsewhere on this website). I don’t regret that incident, as I believe that I treated her with kindness. But maybe she would tell a different story.

Speaking of kindness, the Bay Area has its own example of royal behavior, and I’m pleased to report that our onetime ruler was in many ways an admirable man.

Joshua Abraham Norton came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush of 1849, and at first he enjoyed success as an investor. But when his efforts to corner the rice market ended in bankruptcy, the failure of his greed caused something inside him to snap, and not long after he declared himself to be Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. Somehow his greed was transmuted into a gentle and benevolent madness, and San Franciscans not only humored him, they embraced him. According to Gary Kamiya of the San Francisco Chronicle, “Emperor Norton was, is, and shall ever remain the greatest, and most beloved, nut in the history of San Francisco.”

Emperor Norton graced the streets of San Francisco in a military coat with brass buttons, ribbons, medals, and epaulettes. He wore a beaver hat with ostrich plumes, and he sported a saber at his side. The monarch issued his own currency, and ate for free at local restaurants in exchange for the restaurants’ right to post an imperial seal of approval that read, “By Appointment to his Imperial Majesty, Norton I.” Police officers saluted him in public.

But His Royal Highness was not just a ceremonial ruler, but something of a visionary as well. He called for the fair treatment of Chinese, African-Americans, and American Indians, and he was an advocate for women’s right to vote. And according to the U.S. Department of Transportation, “On August 18, 1869, Emperor Norton issued a proclamation ordering construction of what are now called the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge”. Many people laughed at the harmless madman, and rightfully so, because as everyone knows, it’s impossible to build a bridge across the treacherous waters of the Golden Gate.

Thanks to Evan Andrews at History.com I learned that “Mark Twain, who worked as a journalist in San Francisco during Norton’s reign, used Norton as a model for his comical royal imposter the ‘King’ in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.“

And when San Francisco’s quirky, oddball, delusional Don Quixote died in 1880, ten thousand people turned out for the Emperor’s funeral. He may have been eccentric, but he was also kind-hearted, and the wealthy and the working class people of San Francisco loved him. Prince Andrew, take note.

Arguably the most beloved ruler of all time is a princess I fell in love with as a boy. And she’s still as young and beautiful as she was when I first encountered her, because she’s immortal. I’m speaking of course of Her Royal Highness Princess Ozma of Oz.

Most people don’t realize that after L. Frank Baum, the Royal Historian of Oz, wrote his first Oz book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he then wrote another dozen or so books about Oz. And Ozma is lovingly portrayed in all of those subsequent books, along with her best friend Dorothy, who returned to Oz again and again until she took up permanent residence there along with her dog Toto and her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em.

I appreciate Ozma’s youth and beauty, and I admire her magnificent Royal Palace in the Emerald City, and I respect her magical powers. But what I love about Ozma is her nobility of spirit, her generosity toward her people and her friends. As the Royal Historian recorded in Tik-Tok of Oz, Ozma said “Our Land of Oz is a Land of Love, and here friendship outranks every other quality.”

I hope that Prince Andrew can find a way to redeem himself, perhaps by engaging in some self reflection and sincerely apologizing to the women he harmed when they were girls. He could certainly learn some lessons in kindness from Emperor Norton and Princess Ozma. As the prince is learning the hard way, social status and celebrity are not the same as integrity and depth of character. But even we commoners can learn valuable lessons from the missteps of the wealthy and powerful. Andrew, like so many of us, was looking for love in all the wrong places.

May Andrew and those he mistreated find, as Norton and Ozma did, the love within.

November 21, 2019

Five weeks ago I was uprooted from my home of 34 years. Last week my old friend Judy died and my current friend Karen had a heart attack. I’m starting to understand how the white nationalists feel.

When I was young I thought that change was exciting. New music, ethnic diversity, political upheaval, and romantic relationships appealed to my sense of adventure. Now…well, let’s just say that the status quo no longer feels like the enemy it once did. Serenity and stability are sexier than political or romantic drama.

Funny how age can change your perspective.

A couple of nights ago I watched The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a thoughtful if depressing movie about gentrification, race, and class. It reminded me of Blindspotting, another edgy and dark recent film about gentrification, race, and class but set in nearby Oakland. Both movies lamented the plight of local black men who grew up in San Francisco’s Fillmore District and West Oakland respectively, but who now have to navigate the economic and cultural changes brought about by shifting demographics as upscale white people move into their previously black neighborhoods.

These stories of social upheaval are as old as the human race. Here in California successive waves of migrants from Asia displaced one another over the centuries. These migrants, later known as American Indians or Native Americans, were in turn displaced by Spanish colonialists whose conquests were then usurped by Mexicans, who in turn gave way to American invaders.

I’ve been rather amused to hear of Latinos in San Francisco’s Mission District objecting to whites and Asians moving into that district. The Latinos insist that the Mission is their neighborhood, conveniently forgetting that it was originally an Irish neighborhood before Latinos moved in.

And now white nationalists are once again in the news as they commit acts of violence against non-white immigrants and others in the name of the survival of the white race. Interestingly, the black separatist group Nation of Islam was accused in 1965 by Malcolm X of being in cahoots with the white separatist groups the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

While I’m not sympathetic to identity politics on either the right or the left of the political spectrum, I do empathize with their resistance to change. Change can be scary, unsettling, threatening, destabilizing. Whether it’s losing a job, a home, a relationship, a sense of community, or the biggest transformation of all – death – change is not something that most of us welcome. Of course, we are happy to embrace change if it is something that we consider to be positive – new love, more money, better health. But change usually involves uncertainty, and the older I get, the less I like surprises.

So I don’t want my friends to die, I don’t want to move out of my home again, and I want to be able to continue to hike and travel and do as I please. Memo to God: don’t rock my boat!

On the other hand, resistance to change creates suffering, and suffering isn’t fun. There’s something to be said for going with the flow, and allowing or trusting the Force to unfold in ways that are ultimately beneficial even if that unfoldment is uncomfortable for our egos in the short term.

So I boldly say to my soul: bring on the changes!

Just not right now.

October 30, 2019

I never knew that the sound of bombers taking off could be so reassuring. And I never knew that the sound of tinkling chimes could be so ominous.

A massive wildfire here in Sonoma County has been threatening several of our communities for a week now. I’ve been without power for five days, as our utility company PG&E has intentionally cut power to hundreds of thousands of people to avoid having power lines spark new fires. But the scary part has been the winds.

Everyone here remembers the deadly Santa Rosa fire two years ago in which 22 people were killed and over 5,000 homes were destroyed. Those deaths and that destruction were caused by high winds driving the fire to race down from the hills upon unsuspecting residents. And a couple of days ago those Diablo (devil) winds came roaring back, creating great anxiety and near panic as 200,000 people were ordered to evacuate their homes to escape the possibility of impending doom.

We knew the winds were coming, and when the wind chimes began to ring their gentle vibrations, it was not the lovely music that one associates with those pipes. It was a threat, and we knew it.

Later that night, at 3 am, my next door neighbor knocked on my bedroom window to announce that he and his wife were fleeing to safer ground, and he urged me to get out while I still could. I had already packed my car with my passport, photo albums, computer, and other valuables, and now in the darkness and amidst the wildly swaying trees I had a decision to make: heed the warning sirens and evacuation orders and head south to stay with family, or stay and risk being burned alive.

But despite all the cell phone alerts and wailing sirens and news media fear mongering, I wondered how much danger I was really facing. The fire was maybe 30 miles away, and even if the worst case scenario occurred and the devil winds rained fire and brimstone upon our town, I should still have enough time to escape. Unless I didn’t. Was it worth risking my life in order to feel comfortable in my new apartment? Was I really risking my life, or was that belief just a part of mass hysteria?

I recalled sitting in front of my Buddhist altar earlier that evening and breathing, meditating, and chanting with the intention of listening to my inner being and trusting whatever guidance I received as to the wisest course of action. And then, after an hour of worrying, I went back to sleep.

I awakened at 7 am with a reassuring dream: Outside my apartment heavy winds were blowing. There were two tall towers outside my window, one wood and one metal, and the wind toppled first the wood tower and then the metal tower and each crashed next to our building but didn’t damage it. I was greatly relieved to have avoided death and/or devastation, and as I awakened I knew that I was safe and that all would be well in my world.

In the last two days since that dream I have been comforted by the rumbling of Cal Fire bombers taking off nearby to drop fire retardant and water on the huge fire that as of now is about 50% contained. And thankfully the wind chimes are silent. To my knowledge no one has been killed. We’re not out of the woods yet, and we still have no power. But today is a sunny day, and life is good.

Sometimes it is smart to listen to external warnings. And always it is wise to listen to the stillness within.

October 21, 2019

Hiking with friends is a dangerous pastime. No, I’m not talking about breaking bones, or sunstroke, or rattlesnakes. I’m talking about conversations that cause one to face one’s own hypocrisy.

Recently about a dozen fellow hikers and I were enjoying a lunch break during a nine mile hike near Austin Creek State Park in Sonoma County. Warren, a climate scientist, mentioned that he had just purchased two round trip tickets from San Francisco to London for $350 each. Impressed, I said that I was tempted to see if I could get the same deal, with the thought of taking a short trip to the British capital to catch a few plays.

But then I thought of Greta Thunberg, the 16 year old Swedish girl and climate activist who recently took a boat from Europe to New York to underscore the importance of avoiding air travel and its significant contribution to global warming. And I remembered reading about a new concept called flygskam (Swedish: flight shame), where well-meaning people forego air travel in favor of taking trains to their destinations.

When I mentioned to my hiking friends that I was torn between my love of travel and my concern about the well being of the planet, Cynthia smiled and said, “You know what to do. But will you do it?”

She’s right. I do know what to do. I’ll take a train from San Francisco to London.

I don’t believe in guilt or shame, but I do believe in being guided by my conscience in order to live wisely and compassionately. So what does my conscience say about whether or not I should continue to fly? Apparently my conscience is as conflicted as the rest of me. Part of me (my conscience?) feels like I should sacrifice my love of travel on the altar of climate correctness. When I mentioned that possibility to my friends, Warren commented, “If you give up your airline seat, someone else will take that seat.” In other words, my sacrifice would be symbolic only, and make no difference in the warming of the planet.

We talked about the larger causes of global warming: too many people on the planet, deforestation in the Amazon and Indonesia and elsewhere, the internal combustion engines in cars buses and trucks, etc. Maybe we were really just looking for a rationale to keep traveling by plane.

Shortly after our hike and lunchtime conversation I was somewhat relieved to read an opinion piece in Time Magazine by Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science. Here are a couple of brief exerpts:

There is a lot of talk these days about the need to lead lower-carbon lifestyles. There is also a lot of finger-pointing going on and, some argue, virtue signaling. But who is truly walking the climate walk? The carnivore who doesn’t fly? The vegan who travels to see family abroad? If nobody is without carbon sin, who gets to cast the first lump of coal?

…the true solution, pricing carbon, requires policy change. There is a long history of industry-funded “deflection campaigns” aimed to divert attention from big polluters and place the burden on individuals. Individual action is important and something we should all champion…The bigger issue is that focusing on individual choices around air travel and beef consumption heightens the risk of losing sight of the gorilla in the room: civilization’s reliance on fossil fuels for energy and transport overall, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of global carbon emissions. We need systemic changes that will reduce everyone’s carbon footprint, whether or not they care.

After much soul searching, I’ve finally concluded that Cynthia is right – I do know what to do. And so I’ve made a difficult and painful decision: I’m going to stop flying.

One of these years.

September 17, 2019

Is it just me, or does it seem that there’s an increasing need for an etiquette advice columnist to teach people how to behave in public?

Four nights ago I was ushering at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa for a sold out performance of the rock n roll band Steely Dan. The crowd seemed unusually restless, even for rock fans, though rock and country music audiences are not known for being as well behaved as classical music aficionados.

Even so, I was surprised when an agitated woman approached me and demanded that I eject eight people sitting in the row in front of her for continually getting up in the middle of songs to buy beer or wine or go to the bathroom or otherwise fail to sit still. I commiserated with her, agreeing that it’s inconsiderate and rude to continually disrupt another person’s view, but I had to explain that we can’t kick people out of the venue just for being thoughtless.

Later in the show, many people stood up to dance in front of their seats, blocking the view of the stage for the people behind them. The more courteous patrons moved to the aisles or to the back of the hall to dance.

Since the complaining woman, the people in front of her, and 99% of the patrons were all white, racial and cultural factors were not an issue in this instance. But sometimes race and culture do play a role in social frictions.

About four years ago an incident on the Napa Valley Wine Train received national attention when a group of mostly black women were kicked off the train for being too noisy. They claimed that it was racial discrimination, but one of their detractors said that their “ghetto” behavior was at fault. Sounds to me like it might have been more of a class issue than a race issue, though cultural differences probably played a role as well. But who decides what is appropriate behavior in public? Can we agree on what constitutes respectful conduct and good manners, or in a multicultural society is it impossible to achieve such a consensus?

Several years ago I was in Jaipur, India, with a tour group. Our tour guide Bishal wanted us to have the experience of seeing a Bollywood movie in a theater packed with locals. He told us to forget about the plot and just watch the audience and their reactions, and sure enough the audience was a big part of the show. The sold out theater was full of families and teenagers. As the romantic film began and the male and female leads appeared, cheers and whistles and applause erupted and continued sporadically throughout the movie. These folks were loaded for bear. Bishal later said that had the movie been a comedy or action flick, the audience would have been even more raucous. As it was, the young men in front of us continually checked their cell phones, and the lighted phone screens were a major distraction. Not that I could understand the Hindi dialogue, though I did want to watch the dances and listen to the music. The teenage boys behind us were loud jerks throughout the movie, but fortunately I had made up my mind to let go of expectations and just enjoy the entire experience, so I was successful in not resisting the inconsiderate behavior of the rowdies and therefore had a good time.

While visiting Bombay the following year I was invited to attend a more elegant Bollywood event, and there the educated and refined Indians behaved as politely as one would expect from their economic class, in sharp contrast to their more plebeian countrymen in Jaipur. Once again it seems that education and social class are better predictors of personal conduct than are nationality or race.

But the current occupant of the White House is the worst model of social behavior that I’ve ever seen in a public figure, and he has the advantages of wealth and privilege that make his lack of manners inexcusable. Character trumps class. And character trumps Trump.

Whether it’s at a concert venue in Santa Rosa, a movie theater in Jaipur, a wine train in Napa, or the White House in Washington, I appreciate respect for others in communal situations. I may be a snob, or simply a dinosaur, but I prefer decorum in public. Agreeing upon what constitutes respectful and acceptable social behavior, however, is an eternally debatable proposition. But I think that most folks would agree that more etiquette would be helpful.

Forget the Democrats and Republicans. I’m voting for Miss Manners for President.

August 27, 2019

Aviemore, Scotland

What happens to your identity when you live in a little land with a long military tradition and no one to fight? The Scots are in the process of figuring that out now.

I don’t know that I’ve ever visited a small country so proud of its military heritage. The Israelis are rightfully pleased with their military prowess, but they are a young country with a short history of self defense. The Irish appreciate their centuries of fighting the Vikings, Anglo Normans, and British, but while they served in large numbers in British and American armies, they could not field highly organized units against their English overlords.

Neither could the Scots. So they figured, if we can’t beat ‘em, let’s join ‘em.” And join ‘em they did.

Until I arrived in Scotland five days ago, I couldn’t understand how or why the Scots would so willingly embrace their hated English enemies. A Celtic people like their Irish cousins, the Scots bitterly resisted invasions by their more powerful English neighbors to the south. Heroes such as William Wallace and Robert the Bruce fought valiantly against superior English numbers. And today I visited the Culloden battlefield near Inverness, where the Highland warriors of Bonnie Prince Charlie were destroyed by English forces in 1746 in a devastating loss that crushed the Scottish clans and Gaelic culture once and for all.

So what made the Scots change their minds?

In a word, opportunity.

Two days ago I was in the National War Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh Castle, and that’s where I learned much of what I now know about Scottish military history.

It turns out that Scottish businessmen were lured by access to English trade with its colonies. “Scotland alone could not compete for dominance or empire. England’s growing power depended on the stability of the whole of mainland Britain. The 1707 Union between Scotland and England offered Scotland a share in England’s wealth and power. In return, England gained greater military security.”

It didn’t hurt that, unlike the Irish, the Scots were Protestants, and so were able to assimilate more easily into English society than were the detested Irish Catholics.

A career or even a shorter stint in the English military offered Scottish young men employment, advancement, discipline, pride, ritual, pomp and circumstance, and a sense of adventure, purpose, and identity. The Scots redirected their fighting spirit in the cause of their new-found membership in something greater than Scotland or England: the British Empire.

“Military service had become a powerful expression of Scottish identity…The Scottish military legacy still stands as a symbol of Scottish identity…The essence of Scotland is its military tradition.”

This tradition is celebrated most notably in the annual Edinburgh Military Tattoo performance at Edinburgh Castle each August that features mostly military bands and especially bagpipers. And the pipers always play that great classic, Scotland the Brave.

But after 148,000 Scottish soldiers were killed in World War I, and another 58,000 in World War II, the British Empire collapsed and large numbers of Scots emigrated to Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. The British military has reduced its size and eliminated many decorated Scottish regiments. And if the United Kingdom leaves the European Union via Brexit in a couple of months, the Scottish National Party may call for another referendum on having Scotland leave the United Kingdom to become an independent nation.

If “the essence of Scotland is its military tradition,” what happens if its military mostly disappears?

Maybe the Scots will find a new way to channel their fighting spirit into a cause greater than themselves. If so, I’ll be curious to see what that cause might be. Fighting climate change? Combatting fear and ignorance? Becoming the champions of love and tolerance?

May the Scottish bravehearts find a worthy opponent.

August 22, 2019

Belfast, Northern Ireland

Your neighbor is your other self dwelling behind a wall. Khalil Gibran

Sometimes people just can’t get along. Sometimes divorce is unavoidable. Sometimes it’s necessary to build fences and walls to keep human beings from killing or harming each other. And sometimes the time is right to remove such barriers and allow folks to come together when they are ready to do so.

The always interesting question of appropriate boundaries between individuals and between groups of people occurred to me yesterday as I walked along the “peace walls” of Belfast. These fences and walls, some of which date back to 1969, were built during the violence of the “Troubles” of 1968 – 1998 to separate warring Catholics and Protestants in Belfast, Derry, and other Northern Irish towns and cities. But since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 officially ended the Troubles (thanks in large part to President Bill Clinton and Senator George Mitchell), the violence between Protestants and Catholics has greatly subsided, and some of these walls built to keep peace through separation have been dismantled.

The local government of Northern Ireland has vowed to remove the last of these walls by 2023. But according to our tour guide Lynn, the majority of both Catholics and Protestants in these adjacent working class neighborhoods want to keep the walls in place, because they don’t trust each other to refrain from violence. They feel safe and secure in their homes and neighborhoods because they feel protected from each other.

Northern Ireland has been transformed by the 1998 peace agreement. The last time I was in this British province, in 1986, Belfast and Derry were patrolled by armed British soldiers, and the tension and fear in the air were palpable. But now the soldiers, their Land Rovers, the barbed wire, and the checkpoints are long gone, and tourism is booming. Cruise ships now regularly dock in Belfast, and people come to see the Titanic museum, various film locations of the Game of Thrones TV series, and the murals and graffiti that decorate or deface the peace walls. Northern Ireland, like the rest of Ireland, is thriving.

Brexit could do serious short term damage to the economy of Ireland, both in the British-ruled north and in the independent Irish Republic in the south. But beyond the immediate social, political, and economic trends, something positive is happening on this island. The people here seem to be evolving toward a more tolerant, more internationalist, more conscious world view. So even though tribalism is alive and well in Northern Ireland (nationalist Catholics vs unionist Protestants), the peace and prosperity that the Northern Irish have enjoyed for the last 21 years have convinced most people here that the violent extremists on both sides must not be allowed to turn back the clock and bring back the bad old days.

In 1968, when I was 16 years old, I wrote a 10 page paper about Ireland for my Modern European History class. Entitled “On the Possibility of the Reunification of Ireland,” that paper concluded that Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland would one day be reunited because of demographic change. That is, although Protestants outnumbered Catholics by a two to one ratio in 1968, Catholics had (and still have) a higher birth rate than Protestants, so eventually Catholics would outnumber Protestants in the north as they already did in the south. And that high school prediction of mine is about to come true, as Catholics are now approximately 50% of the population of Northern Ireland. Part of the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 stipulates that if and when a majority of the people of Northern Ireland vote to leave the United Kingdom and unite with the Republic of Ireland in the south, the UK will not stand in the way of the will of the Irish people.

The Irish here in the north are not quite ready to tear down all the walls that divide them. But they are making good progress in that direction. For now I think it best to leave the peace walls in place until such time as the folks in those neighborhoods feel safe and secure enough to voluntarily remove them.

Boundaries, borders, fences, and walls between people are necessary – until they are obsolete. And I hope that I live long enough to see the Northern Irish transcend their limited loyalties in favor of more inclusive identities. One of these days I might even try to do the same thing myself.

August 12, 2019

Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland

Tonight in this colorfully painted little coastal town there’s a ghost walking tour. It’s reputed to be more about comedy than ghosts, so I think I’ll skip it. I’m more interested in real ghosts.

Ireland is a haunted country. I’m not necessarily talking about Halloween-style ghosts, misty white-robed apparitions floating about and spooking humans, though this island may have its share of those beings for all I know.

Rather, I’m referring to a nation haunted by its memory and its imagination. A nation that bears the scars of history, the scars of An Gorta Mor (The Great Famine) of the 1840’s, the scars of political violence inflicted upon it by a foreign occupation and its aftermath. And a culture that for centuries has imagined supernatural forces at work in its landscape.

In the last couple weeks I’ve been moved by two outdoor sculptures by renowned Irish artist Rowan Gillespie. “Famine” is a group of several bronze figures next to the River Liffey in Dublin. The emaciated, anguished, and despairing figures dressed in rags commemorate a 100 mile walk by 1,490 starving people in 1847 from County Roscommon to Dublin to get aboard ships bound for Canada. “Proclamation” is located opposite the infamous Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. Its 14 blindfolded, bullet-ridden bronze figures stand in a circle around a metal table inscribed with the words of the 1916 proclamation of Irish independence. The sculpture honors the 14 rebel leaders of the Easter Rising who were shot to death by British soldiers in the jail across the road. The circle of figures is also reminiscent of ancient stone circles found in various parts of Ireland, circles thought by some to have special power.

The ghosts of the famine victims, the executed rebel leaders, and other heroes (Daniel O’Connell, Michael Collins, Charles Stewart Parnell, Roger Casement, et al) occupy a prominent place in the collective Irish psyche. In Dublin’s beautiful Glasnevin Cemetery, where several of the political chiefs are buried, the number of dead interred there is about 1.5 million, approximately triple the population of living Dubliners. Many graves there are marked by Celtic crosses, which are crosses with pagan circles representing the sun and the moon superimposed upon them. Ireland may be a Christian country, but pagan beliefs in nature, magic, and fairies lie not far beneath the surface of the conscious national mind.

The Tuatha de Danaan (people of the goddess Danu) are said to be an immortal race of supernatural beings, beautiful to look upon: tall, with red or golden hair, blue or green eyes, and pale skin. They are the guardians of Tir na Nog, the Land of Eternal Youth, where time stands still. It is sometimes said that these beings later became the Good People, also known as the Gentry, better known to us as the Fairy People.

When I was last in Ireland in 1986, Irish currency (before the Euro) featured Maeve, Queen of the Fairies, on the one pound note. Can you imagine the American dollar bill having a fairy on it? Neither can I. But it was no problem for the Irish.

W.B. Yeats, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, believed in magic and the occult, and wrote about Irish myths and fairies in his poetry. One famous poem, “The Stolen Child,” includes this refrain: “Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild, with a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.”

Tomorrow my tour group is headed to the west coast, but we’re stopping along the way in Kenmare, County Kerry, to visit a prehistoric stone circle and the sacred hawthorn tree next to it that, like all hawthorn trees in Ireland, is said to be a meeting place for fairies. Even the Irish government has been forced by public opinion to reroute roads in order to avoid cutting down fairy trees. Our tour guide has given each of us a card upon which to write a wish, a card that we will then tie to the hawthorn tree. I haven’t yet decided what to wish for. But I’m inclined to summon all the ghosts of the Emerald Isle, both real and imagined, and to call upon those invisible people to help heal this magical green island in the deep blue sea.

August 7, 2019

Dublin, Ireland

When is it worth dying for Ireland, or the United States, or any country?

I’ve been pondering that question here in Bailé Atha Cliath (Irish: The City on the River), also known as Dublin. Everywhere in the Irish capital there are reminders of the sacrifices made by patriots as they resisted invasions by Vikings, Anglo Normans, and ultimately, British colonialists. Street names, statues, songs, exhibits, and museums celebrate the heroes of the Easter 1916 Rising that eventually led to a modicum of independence in 1922, and greater autonomy in 1949 with the establishment of the Irish Republic.

While a quarter of a million Irish soldiers were fighting for the British army against Germany in World War I, a small group of Irish poets and philosophers led a band of 1600 rebels in Dublin in attempting to overthrow 700 years of British colonial rule. Hundreds of people were killed, half of them civilians, as British cannons and machine guns slaughtered Dubliners and crushed the rebellion. At first, many locals blamed the rebels for the death and destruction, and even nationalist poet W.B. Yeats questioned the futility of the attempted revolution, asking in his poem Easter 1916: “Was it needless death after all?” Speaking of the movement’s leaders, he went on to say in the same poem, “We know their dream; enough to know they dreamed and are dead.”

But when the British government made the mistake of executing 14 rebel leaders by firing squad, Irish public opinion changed, and Yeats honored four of the leaders by naming them in his poem: “MacDonough and MacBride and Connolly and Pearse, now and in time to be, wherever green is worn, are changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born.”

The death and destruction were the “terrible” price that the rebels and civilians had to pay, but the “beauty” was in the ultimate result of political freedom from oppression of the Irish nation. In the words of songwriter Tommy Makem in his song Freedom’s Sons, “A poet’s dream had sparked a flame. A raging fire it soon became. And from that fire of destiny, there rose a nation proud and free.”

Ireland consistently ranks among the most patriotic of nations, according to the International Social Survey Program, probably because they had to earn their freedom through centuries of battles and uprisings against overwhelming odds. The United States also ranks highly for patriotism in that same survey, probably for the same reason: a bloody revolution by underdog colonies against a mighty empire.

But was it necessary for the Irish and the Americans to use violence to achieve their ends? George Washington certainly felt so, as did the colonists who stood up to the British at Lexington, Concord, Boston, and elsewhere. And the martyrs who died violently in Dublin hoped, correctly as it turned out, that their deaths would inspire their people to rise up and “trade their chains for guns,” as Tommy Makem sang in Freedom’s Sons.

Yet nonviolence might have accomplished the same goals. Britain eventually allowed Canada, India, and other colonies to achieve their independence peacefully. In Ireland’s case, Winston Churchill was an early supporter of Irish independence, and the British government was planning to allow some form of Home Rule for Ireland until they were distracted y the outbreak of World War I. But American and Irish independence were achieved sooner by bloodshed than they would have been if those colonies had waited for England to see the light. And sometimes you just have to stand up to bullies, as we and the rest of the world found out in World War II when appeasement failed to deter Hitler and violent self defense became necessary.

As a hot-headed young man in 1776 or 1916, I might have picked up a gun and joined the revolts. Would I be willing to die for my country now? I doubt it. I’d have to be convinced that there was no alternative, and that the cause was just and righteous. Even then, as I near the end of my life, I don’t feel that I’d be willing to kill anybody for the cause of nationalism or for any other cause. I do appreciate the sacrifices made by those who died for Irish and American freedom. But as Yeats said in Easter 1916, “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart.” I’m not willing to turn my heart into stone.

I’m pleased to report that Ireland is prospering both culturally and economically. Clearly they are benefiting from the fruits of their long struggle for freedom. But I hope they never again have to give birth to a terrible beauty.

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July 31, 2019

Dublin, Ireland

I’m not entirely sure what the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats meant by the above line when he wrote it in his 1931 poem Coole Park and Ballylee. But here and now in the Irish capital, it feels like a great metaphor for this nation in contemporary times.

Dublin has changed dramatically since last I was here in 1986. At that time, the city was a charming European backwater, the provincial capital of a country mired in economic doldrums with a high unemployment rate. It was also the whitest big city that I’ve ever seen. Almost everyone was white, and almost everyone was either a local or a tourist. There were no immigrants because there were no jobs to be had; in fact, Irish people had been emigrating to the U.S., Britain, and elsewhere for generations in order to find work. The vast majority of the buildings were brick or stone structures leftover from British colonial rule.

When I arrived here three days ago, I was immediately struck by the cosmopolitan appearance of the city. Instead of the one black man that I saw in 1986, I observed scores of Africans, numerous Asian faces, and a number of women wearing the Muslim hijab. I heard a wide variety of languages, including Spanish, Polish, French, Arabic, and Asian and African tongues. Modern buildings abound, with construction cranes everywhere, adding economic vitality to the old Georgian and Victorian architecture.

What happened?

The short answer is that Ireland opened to the world. It opened to change.

For centuries Ireland had been dominated by London and Rome. Its British colonial masters had kept the island isolated from the rest of the world, and the Roman Catholic Church had kept the people captive to religious dogma and control. Even after independence from Britain was achieved in 1922, it took time for the Irish psyche to break free from the bonds of dependence upon their former overlords. But joining the European Union broadened Irish horizons both economically and psychologically, as did the decision, circa 1990, to invite foreign investment on a large scale with significant tax breaks.

The result? An economic boom, known as the Celtic Tiger, that lasted from about 1990 to 2008, until the global recession burst the local real estate bubble and temporarily wrecked the economy. Now the economy is growing rapidly again, and is once more attracting temporary workers and permanent immigrants from all over the world. Meanwhile, major scandals involving pedophile priests and abusive nuns have rocked the Catholic Church and badly damaged its standing in this former bastion of Catholicism, leading to increasing secularization, gay rights, and abortion rights.

But the impending departure of Britain from the European Union, known as Brexit, could deal a serious blow to the Irish economy. Britain is still a major Irish trading partner, and if the British economy suffers as expected from leaving the European common market, that would have significant repercussions for Irish exports to Britain.

Great change, both economic and social, has come to this country in the last 33 years. For now, the Emerald Isle is thriving. Prosperity, materialism, and demographic diversity have enriched the island and its culture. But beneath the graceful Irish swan is a darkening flood of economic uncertainty, climate change, tribalism, and world turmoil.

The time may come when the swan will have to find another river.