Brexit and Peace

I am preparing to go, with my whole family this time, to both the Republic and the North in April. The news on Northern Ireland continues to be troubling, with Brexit looming and threatening to create in the land--as poet Nick Laird points out in the most recent New York Review of Books--a place with two hard borders, a Northern Ireland that is neither connected to the Republic nor to the United Kingdom.

We began teaching the Troubles in our Facing History classes at New Haven Academy because we were intrigued by a place where thirty years of war in the streets seemed to be resolved in a satisfying manner through negotiation, through political means. But history continues to move on, and no peace is ever guaranteed forever. In that same Nick Laird article, the poet sees what defined Northern Ireland in the Troubles (identity politics boiled up to the point of tit for tat violence) as having now infected the entire world that we live in today. How could Northern Ireland possibly escape what has enveloped everywhere else?

In teaching about the Holocaust, about South Africa and about the Troubles, we as teachers were trying to shine a light on warning signs from history. But when the Trump administration came in, with Steve Bannon's and Stephen Miller's Us and Them strategizing, all these frightening signals out of history were suddenly much closer to our door step. 

There is a greater urgency now than at any other point in my lifetime to teach peace. We need to understand how to live together as one human family. In this holiday season full of anti-semitic violence in my own country, and with Brexit facing much less political resistance since Boris Johnson's win, I am wondering how well the Unionists and the Nationalists will hold on to their fragile peace as the UK, led by this upper class Prime Minister who really couldn't care less, separates from Europe.

I enclose a link to a video of a story I tell about our Derry/Londonderry tour guide Gleann (who took the photo of me and Dave Senderoff that you see at the top of this blog post). I think Gleann's story illustrates the feeling of fragile peace that exists in that city: Gleann's Story

The Fund for Teachers Grant, Two Years Later

I have left New Haven Academy, the high school at which I first created this blog in 2017, when I and my colleague David Senderoff received our Fund for Teachers grant to enrich our "Troubles" curriculum through travel. I was a Humanities teacher then, incorporating Northern Ireland for many years into a sophomore Facing History course on Separation, Judgment, Justice and Memory. The course goes on, but I will no longer be one of the four educators teaching it.

I am joining the faculty of the ACES Educational Center for the Arts, as the Director of the Creative Writing department.

Besides my new administrative responsibilities, I will continue to teach, but now my subjects will be screenwriting, playwriting and live storytelling/monologues.

Ireland and Northern Ireland stay with me, and continue to inspire my work and life. The grant continues to be a part of me, and as a member of FFT's new Ramsden Project, I will continue to interact with Fellows and advise them and learn from them on how we keep this work alive in our schools.

My new show, I've Heard Those Drums All My Life, is six monologues about the way Ireland has always been an inspiration and a home-away-from-home for me. Each monologue is named for a person who inspired that story. The video below is the title story, but is named for Gleann in the overall piece. It is, of course, a story that could only have come about with the aid of Fund for Teachers.

The link to Gleann's story is here:

"I've Heard Those Drums All My Life"

Maria McManus and the Poetry Jukebox

Image courtesy of the Irish Times

Poet Maria McManus created the Poetry Jukebox in Northern Ireland. You would see these big thick jukeboxes in parks and on sidewalks and you could listen to the words of Northern Irish poets as they tried to put this particular trauma and history and war and memory and healing into words. 

This article about her project is now almost a year old, but still a tremendously powerful statement on the psyche of a country two decades into an uneasy peace. "It is as if we are the children of warring parents," McManus writes. "lying in bed at night, hearing the row (argument) going on downstairs, all over again. We want it to stop. We want everyone to be happy and just get along. We want love to win instead -- but we have no choice but to lie there, still and quiet, waiting for it all to stop. And tomorrow, we will get up and carry on -- get on with the business of not making things worse, knowing all is not well -- but still feel unable to do anything about it."

McManus then makes a powerful argument for the place of literature in all of this, that really paying attention to poetry can be a way to heal. In this week in which we see still more evidence of the power of angry words--usually absorbed on the internet--to spur violent actions, I offer this article in which Maria McManus reminds us that words can also heal us, if we are willing to be sensitive to them.

McManus's article is linked below:

"In the North, we have started to stop sleeping again": A poetry project in the North is an emotional weather report of where society stands 20 years on from Belfast Agreement

Student Suggestions for Content

Some student responses to a survey about what to add to the class next year.

As always, we didn't have time to cover everything we might want to cover about Northern Ireland this year. Time is limited, and there are always certain things that we most want to hit home. The important thing is to educate students about this particular example of how people behave in groups and to show that peace is possible, but it is something that must constantly be worked at.

In response to a few students feeling they still did not know enough about the conflict, I surveyed them to see what more they felt might be important to know. Given three choices of major events in the struggle, it was the Hunger Strikes of 1981 that seemed to universally peak their interest, so the challenge is to figure out a way to fit that piece in next year.

In my own knowledge of this struggle, the hunger strikes were certainly a point when--as a child--the Troubles really appeared very strongly on my radar and America's radar as the newspapers and television were very taken with them. Whatever one thinks of the hunger strikes, that was undeniably a time when the attention of the whole world was very much riveted to the sectarian struggle in Northern Ireland. 

I think our students were right to request it as a key thing for next year's students in this unit to learn about.

Using the Blog Itself as a Teaching Tool

A student reading the "Derry Walls" blog post.

Every Spring, our students examine what was on the table for the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998 and then--in pairs--make decisions about what they would choose as the most important provisions and which provisions they would be willing to let go (power sharing, an end to parades, stopping punishment beatings, decommissioning of weapons, etc.  -- ten provisions in all). Then they compare their decisions to what was actually accomplished, in the 1998 agreement and in the 2007 additions, and what has still not been accomplished. 

Students are often surprised by what was judged as valuable and what was left out. Their plan for peace can be quite different than the choices made in the actual peace agreement.

This year, we want to look past the agreement a little bit and start to judge how things have worked out. This could involve a look at Brexit and some speculation about the changes it will bring. But all of that is still very uncertain. 

What the blog can provide is a feeling of visitation accompanied by some historical context from our own learning. We can at least fill in some of the gaps by exposing students to what we felt and observed while we were over there. It's imperfect of course (we were only there for a week in the summer), but we can at least give a little more of a sense of the feeling in the streets of Derry and Belfast than we could in prior years. 

For a start, I chose the blog posts "Derry Walls" (https://teachingthetroublesatnha.blogspot.com/2017/08/derry-walls.html) and "Stormont and Other Surprises" (https://teachingthetroublesatnha.blogspot.com/2017/08/stormont-and-other-surprises.html). With the Peace Agreement fresh in their minds, I thought these two posts might have the most ambience in terms of the Unionist-Nationalist divide in its current form. In the space of the second half of a block period lesson, this seemed possible to get through.

It was interesting to see who most engaged with these readings by their teachers and who did not. It did not fall along the same lines as the students who most engaged with the other activities. This felt like a very different mode for learning about the conflict. For this reason, I wonder if this blog might be good to use more often, to differentiate for a sort of learner who doesn't always respond to the other sorts of teaching modalities that we typically use in Facing History classes.

A student makes notes based on the blog posts.

How much do you teach? How much do you let students discover?

The Seven Documents

Previously, we would jump into the Northern Ireland unit with an Inquiry Activity. After practicing questioning technique with a single image and a discussion about what makes a good research question, pairs of students--or groups of three--look through seven compelling documents searching for clues to what was going on, making inferences and bringing up questions to be used for further research.

The lesson is good for building curiosity but is also a balancing act. How much do students need to already know about this conflict to make connections between the things they are seeing? How much preliminary information is too much and limits their curiosity?

This year, the inquiry activity comes after the new flag lesson. The students have read a poem about the symbolism of flag burning in Belfast. They have posed some questions about it and found answers. They have looked at photographs captioned with the stories of the Belfast children and teens who took the images, images describing a struggle. They have looked at the Union Jack and the Irish Tricolor. They have drawn them into their journals. They have discovered the difference between the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

So, this year, I wondered if they already knew too much. But they didn't. Overall, I think their enthusiasm for the activity only increased. They knew enough. 

And they needed a little more. To know that "Republican" in Northern Ireland means Nationalist and frequently Catholic, and to know that "Ulster" in an organization's name indicates a Loyalist leaning and usually Protestantism helps them to navigate a document that is a timeline of the murdered: "Wait, this guy is Catholic but was killed by a Republican organization!" "Maybe it's like with gangs... like he snitched..."

The students need to know just a little. Then, they need to embrace the search to know more.

Students engaging with the activity

The final page of the capture sheet, filled out.

Another sample of the final page.

Flags

Union Jack flags, Moorgate Street in East Belfast

Irish Tricolor flags in Derry City Cemetery

"There is no action without an equal but opposite reaction... It was early morning on an August Sunday in 2003 and there were bonfires being built to commemorate the republican men who were interned in the 1970s. Internment-remembering bonfires burn the Union Flag in an equal but opposite reaction to the Boyne-remembering bonfires burning the Irish Tricolour. It felt as predictable as the seasons and as dependable. The only motion is on an axis of its own." -- from "Welcome to Belfast," a prose poem by Padraig O Tuama.

Flags weigh heavy on Belfast and Derry. In the summer, particularly in Belfast, you pass through neighborhoods draped in them. They set a tone for pedestrians. You might feel they are beautiful flapping in the breeze, or you may be intimidated. Flags ask you to pick a side. If they are the Irish Tricolor and the Union Jack, they will rarely be seen together, except in some sort of conflict.

At NHA, we are struggling with how to introduce this foreign but meaningful conflict in a way that invites inquiry. How do we reveal just enough to invite questions, without revealing so much that the process of student-led education is stifled? We are thinking maybe the questions should start by looking at the flags themselves, and also looking at Padraig O Tuama's prose poem "Welcome to Belfast," that relates the experience of arrival in Belfast through observation of its young citizens' relationship to those flags. 

Our new first lesson will begin with these details and the questions they raise: What is internment? What is the Boyne? Why are flags being burnt? Why are flags being protected?

We will also use photographic images taken and explained by children (acquired at the Wave Trauma Centre in Belfast) in a gallery walk that we hope will make our students feel the way the symbolism of the conflict makes people feel in the streets of Northern Ireland's cities. This lesson may also include images of everyday objects transformed by the "Troubles" (acquired from Healing Through Remembering, also in Belfast). 

We hope that questions will be raised and feelings will be felt that can be furthered as they learn more in future lessons. But the first step is to feel what the conflict feels like, and to start to question how it came to be so.

Doing the Work

Donal at work at the Institute Library in New Haven

One of the benefits of doing research in Ireland and Northern Ireland was to meet up with Donal O'Hagan again and to get back to work on our play, Fathers Without Sons. A grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland has followed, and now Donal and I are working together to further revise our play draft in New Haven.

More information on the play can be found here:

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/fussiner_ohagan/

...and here:

http://facingtoday.facinghistory.org/after-parkland-this-play-by-two-teachers-is-more-relevant-than-ever

I will add to this blog as the play and possible productions develop, and of course I will add to the blog as we begin to teach our New Haven Academy Northern Ireland unit again in the Spring.

Kate Turner: Healing Through Remembering

Kate in her Belfast offices, with Saul and Dave

When we met Kate Turner, she was packing up her offices on Ormeau Avenue in Belfast. Her small nonprofit, Healing Through Remembering (it consists of only four employees and a handful of interns) was downsizing. She made us tea and we sat around in a circle as she gave us a generous supply of teaching materials and pedagogical handbooks that her organization has produced. We promised we wouldn't keep her long, that this was just the beginning of what we hoped would be a long and fruitful conversation and partnership over time.

We were made aware of Kate and her organization through Alan McBride, our friend at the WAVE Trauma Centre, who dedicated his own life to trauma work after the death of his wife in the Shankill Road bombing. He is a founding board member and adviser for this organization.

Kate described her organization's mission as a question, "How do we deal with conflict?" They have developed core principles under three headings: Society; Process; and Individual.

Under Society, the core principles are Commitment to a Better Future; Not Forgetting; Healing and Hurt; Centrality of Truth; and Realistic and Hopeful Goals.

Under Process, the core principles are Language and Terminology; Structured and Holistic Approach; Trust, Transparency and Engagement; Independence and Political Commitment; Recognition and Appreciation of Existing Work; and Flexibility.

Under Individual, the core principle is Inclusive, Diverse and Participative: "This is an issue for all of society and across these islands. The approach must be participatory to enable everyone to have ownership so that the lessons learned can be understood and shared amongst the widest possible cross-section of society." In everything they do, Healing Through Remembering makes sure the group is diverse, "but no head counts."

When they surveyed Northern Irish people to ask what sort of memorial they would need, the overwhelming response was that "the memorial people wanted was that it never happen again." So the organization's mission is making remembering an active and present activity, not just something about the past, but something that informs actions in the present, something that stays with you. "How you are remembering is about the here and now."

The organization has declared every June 21st, the longest day of the year, as a "Day of Reflection" and has prepared a guide for how to approach this day. "It is... an inclusive and positive experience that emphasizes a commitment to a peaceful new society. It provides a voluntary opportunity for everyone in Northern Ireland, The Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and further afield to reflect upon the conflict in and about Northern Ireland and the future that is before us."

When talking about the period of greatest sectarian violence (roughly 1968 to 1998 and a little beyond), Kate says it is important that each individual use whatever term they are most comfortable with: The Troubles; the War; the Terrorist Campaign; the Conflict; et cetera. 

"What do you call it?" I asked Kate. 

"We call it the Conflict in and around Northern Ireland. This emphasizes that it happened beyond just here. It did happen here, and also in the Republic, and in Britain, and in Europe, and in the World." 

Storytelling is central to Kate's vision, and she has organized a storytelling sub-group consisting of fourteen or fifteen people, who have issued reports and were the authors of the core ethical principles listed above. Kate's own background, before becoming Director, is in Psychology and administrative work in the voluntary sector.

"Some people want a Truth and Reconciliation Commission," Kate says, referring to the South African judicial process that is also a central part of our teaching at NHA. "But that's not the question. The question is, 'What will work for us?' We already have truth recovery, but the question is whether we can do something better."

Healing Through Remembering's voluminous "Conversation Guide to Dealing with the Past" includes beautiful images from its traveling exhibition "Ordinary Objects Transformed by the Troubles": a milk bottle used as a petrol bomb; a CS canister made into a lamp; a tobacco tin transformed into art at Crumlin Road Prison; a political T-shirt; photographs of burned out cars and buildings; PO boxes re-painted all-green or in the tricolors of the Union Jack; defaced coins; "Ulster says No" matchboxes; "We are the spongers" badges from 1974; a baby doll marred by a rubber bullet; a shrapnel fragment from the IRA bombing of the London Post Office tower; 1970's platform shoes used to smuggle bullets into prison; and on and on. This material just begs to be used by any teacher hoping to teach the Troubles period. Like a good playwright or storyteller, Kate's organization has recognized the revelation that is the character's relationship to an object. The Troubles are opened up and made everyday, so that we may feel empathy and impact all these years later, so that we may learn from it all as inquisitive and thoughtful students.

She put her hand on the enormous binder of materials she was giving us for free. "We are using objects as a way of opening up to story sharing."

While trauma work is a serious business, Kate maintains a great sense of humor. Dave pointed out that the back windows of her office seem to face the windows of the Adelaide Street flat we had rented just three days earlier. "You may have seen me coming out of the shower in a towel," he joked.

"Could be," she said, "I thought I felt a twinge of excitement the other day." 

It could not have been anywhere near as powerful as the twinge of excitement Dave and I both felt when we realized that Kate was actually giving us these teaching materials, which we both instantly recognized as a key to a magical door that will make this period both relevant and present in the minds of the students of NHA.

Gorgeously presented and deep materials donated to us by Kate

Still more amazing materials from Kate

Bringing it all Back Home

Some materials donated to Saul and Dave's classrooms by the WAVE Trauma Centre

Speak Your Mind, a collection of stories and photography by Belfast children and teens

Danielle's photograph in Speak Your Mind

Page facing Danielle's photo in Speak Your Mind

My lifelong friend Anastasia, a dual citizen from Texas now living in Tobercurry, County Sligo, recalls the way that Ireland saved her from a life she never wanted. She was a producer at HBO at the time. She had just spent a solid day choosing among naked women for a stripper sequence on a show and she was sick of that life. She quit, bought a ticket for Shannon Airport and was in Galway the following day, name-dropping and buying every round at the Quays in the Latin Quarter until her friend grabbed her by the arm and pulled her out onto the cobblestone streets to tell her she was making an arse of herself, that this was Galway, not Hollywood. That no one name-drops here, that no one buys every single round. That moment was a major turning point for her, a lecture she feels she needed to hear. "Galway" became a synonym in her mind for living honestly and humbly, for being real. She lived there for many years after, and met her husband, a tech director at the Druid Theatre. They moved up to a lovely farmhouse in Tobercurry just a few months ago, with a beautiful blonde German Shepherd puppy.

We learn lessons from Ireland, and carry them in our hearts. Once Ireland gets inside you, it doesn't go away. Today's post will be the first of several in which I discuss how the grant will affect our teaching here in the States.

Alan McBride at the WAVE Trauma Centre gave us a suitcase worth of materials of an intimacy and accessibility that we would not be able to find anywhere else. Scores of ordinary citizens of Belfast attempt to heal themselves by telling the stories of their wounded and dead and also the stories of what they love about Belfast. 

So far, I am especially taken by the book Speak Your Mind. It is a collection of photographs and very short writings by children and teenagers living in Belfast. I saw it as an opportunity for an inquiry activity in which our students bring up questions about Belfast based on what they see in this text early in the unit, questions that will help them guide their own learning about Northern Ireland, sectarianism and the Troubles as the unit progresses. 

But my colleague Kirk had an even better idea. Our students should do their own photos and explanations of their own inner-city neighborhoods, creating documents of their New Haven that can later be used to help them understand and empathize with these other young people and their Belfast. Two cities full of both love and violence, as all cities are. Understandings across race and sect, getting at what is universally human underneath it all.

I will continue to report on the use of these and other materials as we begin to apply them in our classes.

Saul and Anastasia at her farmhouse in Tobercurry, County Sligo

Belfast to Dublin

Saul and Daibheid Joyce at Glasnevin Cemetery

Cobblestone Pub Signage

Saul and Dave at the Cobblestone

In the morning, it was hard to say goodbye to Donal. He was our fair-minded sociologist/anthropologist of the Troubles, our patient interpreter of all things Northern Ireland, our tour guide, my writing partner, our gracious host, our running partner, our connection to Stormont, my drinking buddy, and the doctor healing Dave of his homesickness. Dave just kept saying, "Donal is a really great guy" as we drove out of the city. At the last stop petrol station, I spent all of my remaining British Pounds on Cadbury, Polo and Trebor candies for my kids, and we put the Pogues station back on Pandora as we speeded back down towards the Republic.

The last two things we had wanted to hit in Dublin were Kilmainham Gaol and Glasnevin Cemetery, but we only had the energy to do one today. We chose Glasnevin simply because it is the one closest to where our friend Daibheid Joyce is situated. He met us for tea and then took us to see his ancestor's mysterious and unmarked grave. We then had the official tour, taking us to the graves (or sometimes just the marker, for those buried at jails elsewhere) of O'Connell, Casement, Parnell, De Valera, Plunkett and other luminaries.  

At the end of the tour, a reenactor delivered Easter Rising leader, poet and Irish language activist Patrick (Padraeg) Pearse's fiery speech over the grave of his friend Rosa which includes the lines: "The fools, the fools, the fools! They have left us our Fenian dead. And while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace!" 

I recorded the entire long speech on the Go Pro, and I will post it into this blog at a later time.

In many places on our journey, people have lamented the Irish education system's unwillingness to bring the most difficult parts of Irish history into the schools. Some told us it is the psychology of a colonized people; others blamed the censoriousness of the Catholic church; others said it was to prevent the inevitable fights that would break out. But whether it is in the schools or not, that history is everywhere in this country: from pictures and clippings about the Easter Rising on pub walls, to the songs full of references to events, to the way in which a cemetery or a jail or even a Post Office becomes a richly detailed historical museum. Meanwhile, sit down for a pint in any Irish pub and you will get a history and politics lesson that may refer to figures like Cromwell or Parnell or Connolly or even Edmund Spenser so vividly that it's as if they were alive today.

In the evening, we strolled around the city, had dinner at an excellent Thai place in Temple Bar (it can't be bangers and black pudding all the time) and found our way back to the Cobblestone, for a final night of excellent music. I even got up and sang a song with the musicians (there's a video of this now up on Facebook). I'm not a great singer, but it was our last night in Ireland and I didn't want to go home without singing.

Saul at the Cobblestone

Padraig Pearse Reenactor at Glasnevin

Stormont and Other Surprises

Saul, Colin and David in the Assembly Chamber at Stormont

Saul and Dave with Kate from Healing Through Remembering

Stormont image courtesy of Discover Northern Ireland

The day began at Stormont, the Northern Irish Parliament currently in a long recess due to the fallout from a green energy scandal and the resulting feud between the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party, the leading Unionist political party) and Sinn Fein (the leading Nationalist party at the moment). We were served tea and desserts as we sat around in comfy arm chairs and had an almost two hour chat with Colin McGrath, the MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) representing Downpatrick and its surrounding small towns. 

Stormont, an impressive government building in Belfast approached on a long wide driveway flanked by park land on each side, was a target of Nazi planes during World War Two and had to be camouflaged by manure. There is a saying that "Stormont was covered in cow shit, and ever since it's been covered in bullshit."

Colin is a member of the political party SDLP (Social Democratic and Labour Party), once the leading Nationalist Party, but now very badly damaged by a failure of messaging that has given Sinn Fein most of the credit for many of their triumphs. The SDLP just recently lost all three of their seats at Westminster (the British Parliament), while the abstentionist Sinn Fein gained seats that it will refuse to occupy over there. Some Irish have already accepted a death sentence for the SDLP. But Colin is young and vibrant, and very responsive to the needs of his constituents in the Downpatrick area. Colin convinced us that the SDLP is very much alive, and just needs to get back on track. As a way of sussing out where he is coming from politically, I asked him if he would have voted Sanders or Clinton if he was an American. He said his own political views were more in line with Sanders.

Our host, Donal O'Hagan, had arranged this meeting for us, and we brought his son Naoise (pronounced "Naysha") with us. Naoise was less interested in Northern Irish politics than the rest of us, but he liked the tea and cake, and he was a good sport about the proceedings.

Colin was having none of my belief that the Good Friday Agreement was a master triumph of politics in the 20th Century. From a SDLP perspective, the peace should have happened in 1974, when the SDLP and Ulster Unionists were ready for it, but was hopelessly delayed by Sinn Fein and the DUP, thereby causing twenty-four additional years of carnage and war.  

Colin explained that he is a very locally oriented legislator, and he allowed that he probably--as a practitioner--knows less about politics at large than teachers who study it do. That said, he is a marvelous politician, open and attentive. He was never a lawyer (he actually looked surprised that I might think that he was) and he rose in politics through what the Northern Irish call "youth work" (organizing large government-sponsored afterschool programs for young people that sometimes run from 3 PM to 10 PM five days a week). Youth work is one of the truly positive legacies of the Troubles. He pointed us to the Education Authority website to look at the "widening horizons" curriculum employed by the youth work movement.

In thinking about the larger political scene in the world, Colin suggested that we are living in a time where the world order will fall apart, and we will some day see it as a crucial period in all of the history books.

For the SDLP, Colin says their mission was always to deliver the peace, and now that a peace has descended on the country (unless Brexit and its ripples mess that all up), they are struggling to brand their identity for the Ulster masses.

"The RHI scandal (green power scandal) just arrived at the right time," he says. The parties were already at each other's throats. Colin is now concerned that Stormont may soon be closed down for good. "There's a danger that Sinn Fein owns the Irish language now," he says. Where they go, the Nationalist masses follow. And some of their own are not cautious enough politicians.

So what does the SDLP want now, as the party of communication in this more stratified political world? Four things: Irish language promotion; Irish legacy; marriage equality; and respect. I pressed Colin on what respect means. He said that it means a civil tone toward each other as political parties. The SDLP--whether you love it or hate it, and some do hate it--seems to be the party of political negotiation and communication, in Colin's perception.

Recent SDLP tasks have been pushing of the Equal Marriage bill and authoring a leaflet on the issue of "Fake News" and its effect on democracy. They seem to oppose school "selection" (described in my previous blog posts). In Colin's jurisdiction, the Catholic Church has come out against Selection, but the Catholic Schools still embrace it. "They're saying (to eleven and twelve year olds) you're special. You're chosen. It's a form of child abuse." He smiled and sipped his tea. "I'm despised in the upper echelons of the education system."

While Sinn Fein politicians tend to claim that the 1967-'74 Catholic Civil Rights Movement was a failure, SDLP thinking sees it as a success, but one that was destroyed by outside forces around the time of the government collapse in the mid '70's. The Housing Executive, established in 1973, is for Colin one of the lasting successes of the movement.

"Sinn Fein doesn't want to admit that Civil Rights succeeded, because that wouldn't support their 'blood sacrifice' narrative," said Colin. I felt a desire to get a Sinn Fein politician into the room to see this history from another perspective. But my guess is that Colin might win the debate. He has an open, rational and unpretentious manner that is very convincing.

For more on Colin McGrath:
http://www.sdlp.ie/people/cllr-colin-mcgrath/

We raced from Stormont to Healing Through Remembering, a small but dedicated nonprofit education and outreach organization. Director Kate Turner had a sit down with Dave and me, while Naoise went off to meet his mother in City Centre and Donal went off into a separate room to chat with a lawyer who is the father of one of Donal's top former students, now a burgeoning international human rights worker in his own right.

We have had many invaluable experiences in Ireland, but Kate (Healing Through Remembering) and Alan (WAVE Trauma Centre) may have the most lasting effect of all on our teaching practice in the classroom. Both provided us with primary documents of a greater intimacy and usefulness than we could have found anywhere else in the world. From Alan, it was the volumes of short personal stories and children's art and remembrance. From Cate, we received an entire curriculum binder based on her organization's remarkable exhibition on everyday objects from the Troubles. Included are the philosophy of their pedagogy and process, and full color reproductions of the artifacts (which include a bullet-proof clipboard used by the RUC, milk bottles of the kind used for petrol/sugar bombs, and a lamp made from an old CS canister used for crowd control). The possibility for inquiry-based lessons and empathy work was staggering, as was Kate's generosity at sharing this materials. They were in the process of packing up their office for a move, so we didn't want to keep Kate long, but we all agreed that this was just the beginning of a long and fruitful conversation.

Among the materials not yet boxed in the office, I spotted several copies of the documentary Upstanders, directed by our young friend Sean Pettis of Corrymeela.

For more on Kate's organization:
www.healingthroughremembering.org

In the evening, we headed over to the John Hewitt Pub, a hangout of more liberal Protestants that is named for the Belfast poet and social activist. A band was playing great rock 'n roll and the crowd was cheery and enjoyable if not as raucously celebratory as some of the Catholic music clubs we have gotten used to. Alan McBride seems to come here every Thursday night with his inner circle of friends, including the well known Catholic-raised humanist Northern Irish comedian Tim McGarry and other writers and human rights workers, and it felt good to be invited into the fold.

Legendary punk rock record store owner and music promoter Terri Hooley ambled in, and Alan insisted I go up and talk to him. That exchange was a somewhat awkward, "The Undertones were a good band, but I really have not much else to say to you" kind of a thing, but the rest of the night was very good craic if one can say that about a Protestant establishment.

Alan and I hugged it out and then Dave, Donal and I returned to our rented flat in the University area. University and grammar exam results had just been released, so we were headed home along streets full of celebratory revelry as we stopped by the local Queens University food truck and joked with the top notch comedy team making the munchies, a sort of Laurel and Hardy or Morcambe and Wise of burgers and chips, about the foibles of Belfast and the college crowd.

My heart and mind were full today. Belfast had delivered one of the finest nights of our trip.

Our Thursday night table at John Hewitt Pub in Belfast

Saul and Naoise in the tea room at Stormont

Belfast to Downpatrick

Dundrum Castle, seen from the door of Mark's weapons shack

The rubber bullet scar on Pat McGovern's hand

Anti-Racist banner preserved at Linen Hall Library. Interestingly, the street address is from a Unionist neighborhood

This morning, Dave and I met our brother-from-another mother Donal O'Hagan and proceeded on a black cab tour of the Shankill and Falls neighborhoods and the peace line. When we first got in the cab, our guide sat down in the pull-down seat in front of us to do his introduction. "Youse are teachers, eh? Ya' wouldn't happen to be History teachers, now would'ja? Ya' are? Oh, crap."

Though he felt a little intimidated at the depth of knowledge represented by Donal, Dave and me, our guide nonetheless did a nice job filling in a few of the gaps anyway, such as the symbolism of the William of Orange mural in the center of the flats (William's horse's hooves are off the ground, symbolizing that he died in battle, when he actually died by falling from his horse) or the fact that the machine guns of one mural follow you no matter where you stand to look at them. And he gave us an excuse to stand and stare at the absolutely insane sectarian graffiti all around the Shankill. Somehow, a Catholic friend of Donal's was allowed to create his own mural in the Protestant-Unionist-Loyalist Shankill flats area. We had to dance around much un-bagged dog poop in the untended park to get a good look at it.

Donal is a teacher at Nendrum College just outside of Belfast, and an award-winning playwright as well. He and I are collaborating on a play that deals with a juxtaposition of the trauma of the Troubles and the agonizing pain around Race in America. 

Donal's father was Des O'Hagan, interned IRA man, founding member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, prominent member of the Worker's Party, Sociology Professor and author of Letters from Long Kesh. His mother came from Protestant stock, but was an active Communist. Donal's mixed parentage produced in him a reflexive need to correct the mythology on both sides and to seek objective truth. He has been an incredible source for me for years, always sending me links to resources that balance my thinking whenever I seem to be going too far over to one side of the other.

After the tour and lunch, Donal took us on his own tour of the Falls Road neighborhood, including a visit to the political offices of Sinn Fein, where I purchased a copy of Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, a book about the Bogside by our Derry guide Gleann Doherty's brother (This Man's Wee Boy by Tony Doherty), and a copy of Uncomfortable Conversations, a Sinn Fein publication on reconciliation related to the Troubles where the title evokes for me the book on talking about Race in America called Courageous Conversations by Glenn Singleton.

As I was leaving, the woman at the bookstore counter--Pat McGovern--showed me the almost fifty year old rubber bullet scar she received while playing the drum at a protest on the Falls.

One recent political nuance that Donal helped us appreciate was the gay pride bunting up around the Donegall Road Unionist area and the Falls Road Nationalist area. He questioned whether either side really cared so much about the issue, or if they were perhaps just trying to outdo one another at being on the right side of the fight.

Another insider observation from Donal occurred as he drove us past Queens University, an ostensibly Unionist institution now overtaken by Nationalists. How do you know they're Nationalists? Every second person seems to be wearing a GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) jersey from somewhere or other.

Donal then drove us through the campus of the grammar school he attended and spoke of the Protestant brain drain that sent many of his brightest classmates to foreign countries rather than staying in the North (and sent him to London for quite some time, though he is not Protestant).

Donal broke down the "selection" issue in UK schools for us, as it works in Northern Ireland. Based on an exam at 11, students move on to either "Grammar" or "Secondary" school. Those who get into Grammar will be at University, be lawyers, doctors, teachers, etc. Those who end up in Secondary will be in the trades. The Troubles actually provided a lot of jobs for tradesmen in security forces.

After we had driven back to Donal's area of Downpatrick in County Down (he actually lives in a nearby hamlet called Saul, believe it or not), which is 95% Catholic, Donal made sure to show us some Protestant suffering to balance against the myth of the Protestant haves and Catholic have-nots in this country. By the hilltop is a Protestant slum known for drug dealing. The secondary school gate opens up to the dole (unemployment) office across the street, symbolizing a progression from school days to days of hopelessness.

We rounded down the hills into the valley below Saint Patrick's original church, where Donal's idyllic house filled with books, dogs and good cheer kept us cozy for the night.

The following day would bring us from Norman history in the 1170's via Down Cathedral to the 1200's Dundrum Castle in Newcastle to ages of local history in the Down County Museum to World War I at the Somme Museum just outside Belfast. Along the way, we would meet a medieval weapons specialist named Mark, employed by Game of Thrones, and hold a few of his swords in our hands. His office is a small shack at the foot of the hill at Dundrum Castle. Donal says this about him: "He's worked there for twenty years with little recognition or support, but every summer he educates hundreds of kids (by) bringing medieval weaponry to life at the foot of one of the great medieval castles in Ulster."

We walked up to Dundrum Castle, into it and onto its highest terraces in a lashing rain and blowing wind. "If you can see the hills, it means it's going to rain," said Mark. "If you can't see the hills, it means it already is."

Our second night in Downpatrick featured a four mile run along the lough and a reading of the first act of our play and some excellent ideas for Acts Two and Three suggested by our captive audience of Dave and Donal's wife Liz. 

On the morning of the 17th, we would return to Belfast.

Marker at Saint Patrick's Church in Saul

Dave holds Arya Stark's sword in a shed beside Dundrum Castle

Dave in the Hound's helmet, holding Ned Stark's sword

First Day in Belfast

Dave and Saul with Alan McBride at WAVE

Dave on the Falls Road, with the mural for hunger striker Bobby Sands

Saul tagging the Peace Line in Belfast

We were filled with nervous excitement as we headed down to Belfast for the first time. Our first stop was the Wave Trauma Centre, where we were going to meet one of our heroes, Alan McBride. Alan's wife was killed when the IRA bombed the Protestant Unionist stronghold Shankill Road in 1993. He lived in complete rage for two or three years after. Then he decided it was time for peace. Formerly a butcher, Alan became a youth worker for young people affected by trauma caused by the Troubles on both sides. He has continued that work, although now he mainly works with adults. His Wave Trauma Centre is a remarkably full service organization, providing psychotherapy, art classes, massage, naturopathic medicine and many other services all centered around healing from Sectarian trauma. New entrants start with a hour to hour and a half session, in which they are asked, "What do you need?" The Centre also produces very high quality publications, such as a glossy monthly newsletter and books based on art and writing projects they have done.

According to Alan, Wave was started at least five years before he got involved. This was 1991, and it was a very small operation at first. At that time, a Catholic woman whose husband had died in the Troubles was looking for a therapeutic experience in Belfast and not finding anything. She found a nun named Sister Mary McNeise, and they began a morning coffee support group. In 1993, looking to soothe his own trauma, Alan spent time up at Corrymeela Peace Community, which we had just driven from in the morning. That was the beginning of his own healing.

Over twenty years later, Wave has partnered with Queens University in Belfast to provide a Masters in Trauma Studies. They also have a partnership with a similar program at the University of Harrisburg in America.

Some of Alan's own books include The Troubles and Other Losses (which tells twenty-five stories of deaths by heart attacks caused by the Troubles, as well as deaths from drugs and drink in Troubles-affected families) and The Disappeared (which details the cases of disappeared individuals during the Troubles). Fourteen of the seventeen disappeared bodies have been found at this point. The most famous of these cases was Jean McConville, a mother of ten who was tortured, killed and buried in a secret grave for the "crime" of offering comfort to a dying British soldier on the Falls Road. A tree and plaque in her honor hold a featured place in the tranquil gardens at the Wave. Trauma followed her family, as her children became wards of the state and her son Billy was repeatedly sexually abused by a Priest in his orphanage.

The pivotal moment in Alan's own journey came when an IRA man finally apologized to him without equivocation. His earlier letters to Gerry Adams got responses that always had a "but you must understand" after the apology. "Whenever someone tries to justify what they do," Alan says. "That puts up a barrier. It wasn't until I got that apology, that I started to do things differently."

Alan isn't an overly effusive person, but I think he was moved that we see him as such a big star in our teaching of the Troubles. He gave us about twenty or more books and periodicals related to the Wave's work to take back to our classrooms, and he arranged for us to meet with the woman who runs the Healing Through Remembering program affiliated with the Queens University education department and Facing History in Northern Ireland. He also recommended other books and movies to us, and invited us out to the pub with him for Thursday, to meet his friend Tim McGarry, a comedian who used satire to talk about the Troubles with the comedy troupe "Hole in the Wall Gang."

After we got settled into our flat and had lunch, Padraig O Tuama met us at a lovely spacious coffee shop filled with long brown picnic tables in the Queens University neighborhood of Belfast. Padraig is a poet and holds the position of "leader" at Corrymeela Peace Community. He wanted to talk to us about the Troubles from a new angle, that of the colonization and destruction of language. He began with the gaelic sayings "a land without a language is a land without a soul" (Tir gan teanga tir gan anam) and "broken Irish is better than perfect English" (Is fearr Gaeilge brote na bearla cliste). 

He picked out codes hidden from English ears within Irish song, agricultural metaphors having to do with the distribution of land (I thought of the song "Four Green Fields"). He also spoke of "aisling," a word meaning "dream" that is used in a genre of poem where the poet awakens to lament his lost lover at sea, but the lover stands as a metaphor for Ireland. He mentioned the field of study of Hiberno-English, that looks at the syntactical and structural influence of Irish on English language and culture in Ireland. He emphasized that the Troubles are more than bombs and the narrow time frame; the Troubles started from a destruction of language, but the language has persisted.

"In Irish, there is no word for yes or no, so you must repeat the phrase to answer in the affirmative or negative," he said. "We see this when the Irish speak English as well."

"Can you give me an example of that?"

"I can."

"So can you give me an example?"

"I can."

"Oh, you are giving me the example?"

"I am." 

Padraig recommended Lisa Goldenberg's 2002 book The Symbolic Significance of the Irish Language in the Northern Ireland Conflict. He then described his role at Corrymeela: he is the lead "vision caster." What he is working on right now is a cross-border examination of the Book of Ruth with Christian faith leaders, so that they can say to politicians, "Within the context of our traditions, this is what borders mean." He has also worked on making Corrymeela the public voice of faith-based LGBTQI inclusion in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and he has recently invited Judaic scholar Aviva Zornberg (author of Moses: A Human Life) to teach at Corrymeela about trauma in the biblical story of Moses.

Padraig insisted on buying our coffees, despite my protests. "It's culturally appropriate," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. 

"If you are buying our coffees, then I will buy a copy of one of your books," I bargained. He agreed that this was a fair deal and led us to the nearby independent bookstore No Alibis. 

"Get Sorry for your Troubles," he advised. "It's my one about the Troubles."

In the evening, we reconnected with Sean Pettis (mentioned in the blog post about Corymeela, "Where All Suffering is Honored") one last time before he leaves for Spain on holiday. His wife Sharon also joined us. We went to a lovely restaurant right near our flat in City Centre and then to a famous pub called the Crown, that features large cozy booths around most of the tables.

Sharon Pettis works with children on the Autism spectrum who have multiple diagnoses. Daily breakthroughs are small, but she is very attentive to them. She inspired me with what she said about bucking the curriculum when she can see a better way: "I do listening moreso than teaching. I didn't want to be a 'teacher.' I wanted to work with these kids." I like that sentiment.

As we departed on the street, a group of tipsy young Scotsmen came around to ask us where the craic was. We pointed out that we had heard some Irish music playing boisterously at a nearby pub, and we gave them directions. "Irish music... that's just what we're looking for," one of them said, and they moved on.

"That could go really well, or really poorly," Sean said, with a bemused smile, as he watched them pass along.

We went home soon after leaving Mr. and Mrs. Pettis. It was Monday night, after midnight. From our balcony, we could hear the sounds of Belfast partying on.

"Life is Holy, and Every Moment Precious": Playground at WAVE

WAVE Trauma Centre

The Crown in Belfast, with an open booth door in the background.

Link to Instagram photograph of Dave with Sean and Sharon Pettis in a booth at the Crown:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BX0S9UHDCd_/?taken-by=fuzyner