Posts Tagged Under ‘Ireland’

I Come to Praise the Irish-Food Quarter-Aisle

Erin Go Bragh, dudes.

It being St. Patrick’s Day — at least in one hour — I’d like all of you still living in NYC to take a moment at your local grocery establishment and appreciate the 1/4 of an aisle devoted to feeding the Irish immigrant masses, those still moving to New York after all these centuries. It’s one of the things you don’t really get here in D.C. — the last one I saw was when I went to visit Boston a few weeks back — and it’s much missed by your correspondent. Having lived in Queens, where there’s an immigrant community for every nationality known to man, I’ve gotten to know and love the Irish-food section while perusing the aisles of Sunnyside, Astoria and Woodside.

You’ll know you’ve found the aisle when you see Barry’s Tea, in the familiar red box at the top of the section. It’s meant to be drunk in the Irish style, meaning strong enough that you mistake it for coffee. Also known as “the bomb”. Next to that they’ll keep the breakfast theme going with some McCann’s Irish Oatmeal. They should probably change the name from “steel cut” to “oat gravel”. For real, it’s stony. For those who like their biscuits named for what happens after you eat them, we have my grandma’s favorite Digestives tea cookies from Burton’s. It all finishes off with some Chivers jam and Fruitfield Orange Marmalade. We in America eat normal fruit preserves like grapes, peaches or strawberries, but in Ireland they like to invent weird fruits like “gooseberry”, “bramble” and “lemon curd” (?), pack them in sugar and sell them to toast fans who don’t know better. Watch out for these, they’re strange.

Under your breakfast stuff comes the Knorr and Erin soup. I’m down with Irish potato, but a little wary of the brown tomato. You can top your soup off with some HP Curry Sauce or maybe some Bisto White-Sauce Granules — what discerning eater doesn’t love granules? Also a winner is Chef brown sauce, which comes in a handy 2.5 liter (or “litre”) container for those times when you need to dip 200 dozen french fries (or “chips”) at once.

Below the Cadbury chocolates, the beauty of which I have already described, you have the junk food — a personal favorite. We all enjoy Tayto cheese ‘n onion crisps, but the real pleasure is washing it down with a cool, sugary glass of Club orange. This stuff is definitely the best-tasting orange pop in the universe, but I will concur with my friend John who said it probably shouldn’t be drunk out of the bottle, lest the world’s most well-fed bacteria colony grow in its incredibly high-fructose medium. Club lemon and Club rock shandy (again, ?) are a little disappointing, but you won’t go wrong with pop made from real orange juice. Fizzy orange: favorite of both me and my bro.

On another Irish food note, the one thing missing from the Irish food aisle is the best Irish food of all, the breakfast bangers. You have to special order them in the U.S., but they make a great gift for your family porkosseur this March.

To end on another Queens food note, the poultry market in Flushing, across the street from the U-Haul, is the proud home of the worst smell in the world. That is all.

The Ireland / Middle East Parallel

Back from the Slate retreat at Mohonk House, readaz. It was a good time: lots of smart-writer conversation, lake swimming and board games. Why is it that every time someone proposes board or parlor games, I think, “This is mad lame,” only to end up having mad fun instead?

At least this stereotype is
enjoyable

Anyway, my friend Steve and I were getting our IM on today and talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as we seem to often do. A number of people see things over there and compare them to what’s happened in Northern Ireland. (In fact, there’s allegorical evidence that the PLO and the IRA have worked together in the past.) I think people who make that analogy aren’t going far enough back in their comparison, because the Palestinian situation today is a lot more relatable to that of the Irish directly after World War I.

Back then, you had a similar situation to what’s going on in the occupied territories today: there was a general consensus among rational people on both sides that the British shouldn’t be occupying land where they were a tiny minority, and that required a system which discriminated against the ethnically-different majority. Despite this, the charged atmosphere and radicals on both sides made a negotiated settlement essentially impossible. There was a serious attempt by the British to give Home Rule to the Irish in 1913-14, but the Protestant British settlers in Ulster were so fanatical that they were openly threatening violence against their countrymen if forced to relinquish control over the land they had “settled”. (Hmm.) If not for WWI, this could very well have happened: The population back home in Britain was split on whether to give a state to the Irish and undercut their more violent countrymen, or to crack down harder on those savage and stupid Irish, who only understood force and demagoguery. (Hmm II: The Return)

After WWI, the negotiations were essentially dead. The IRA, knowing it couldn’t stand up directly to Britain’s military, started a guerrilla war against the established order. The British sent in tough veterans (the Black and Tans) to put down the guerrillas, but the Tans’ constant interference in the community and their discriminatory tactics only succeeded in turning more and more of the population against the British and in favor of the IRA. After a few years of this, the British finally reached for an end to the long headache of occupying Ireland and offered the Irish a deal: a Free State for the 26 counties of the south, but six Protestant-dominated counties of Ulster would remain part of the UK.

He does kinda look like Liam Neeson

Many Irish were furious that the British would carve up their ancestral homeland to protect the interests of a fanatical, religiously paranoid settler minority, and these Irish demanded the continuation of anti-British violence: all 32 counties or none at all. (Hmm 3: Son of Hmm.) Clearly this ignored the mighty British military reality, and more practical elements of the Irish nation thought differently: taking the deal would be a path to full independence and a potential chance to gain the other six counties through later diplomacy and governmental negotiation, instead of violence. Leading the Free Staters was Michael Collins, an IRA commander from extra-rebellious western Ireland who led the guerrilla campaign. Ultimately the conflict led to a civil war between the Republicans and the Free Staters, with the Free Staters eventually victorious. Michael Collins, however, was assassinated by Republican snipers, perhaps the war’s most prominent victim. (For a good movie, check out the obviously named Michael Collins sometime, even if Julia Roberts’ Irish accent is worse than that of the Lucky Charms spokesprechaun.)

The Collins dude is where the parallel has its biggest hole: who’s the Palestinian equivalent? I guess the closest they’ve had is Arafat, but dude was more than willing to keep up the violence to score political points, rather than making the tough choices to give his people a shot at their own rule. With him gone, though, forget it. In the past few days we’ve seen 1922 Irish-style civil-war action between the Palestinian Free-Staters (Fatah) and Republicans (Hamas), but this time the “keep up the struggle” Republicans are winning and are in control of the government, while the Free Stater not-equivalents in Gaza and the West Bank are corrupt, weak and hardly viewed by their people as a worthy leadership. Also, you can’t ignore the fact that it took another 75 years and many deaths before the North of Ireland calmed down. Not encouraging for the Israeli settlement areas, even in the nigh-impossible scenario that everything else does play out similar to Ireland.

Still, while it likely will never happen, at least the Irish experience offers the Palestinians a model with some hope for the future. It may have taken 800 years for the Irish to reach a settlement, and the Palestinians have been in their predicament since 1948, but if recent history repeats itself, maybe we’ll be lucky enough to see a sensible reduction of violence sometime soon.

Probably not, though.

Ireland in 2007 : America in 1996-1998

Hey readaship.

We’re all down for analogies. Sometimes they make you feel like some illness is on the horizon, like how G-Unit Dubs Bizzle is sadly similar to Alcibiades back in the Athens day, goading mugs into a poorly-planned military venture that then spins out of control. Other times though you watch some stuff and just can’t help but note the inherent similarity to other stuff.

That’s how it is with this Fianna Fáil re-election victory in Ireland, because the voters in Ireland essentially re-elected a guy surrounded by scandal because he was doing a good job of keeping their wallets fat. (See also Chicago, Illinois.)

Bertie (there’s a name that would never fly in American politics) Ahern took some heat recently over questionable financial decisions that included accepting gifts and cash from different developers and businessmen during and after his time as Finance Minister, even though he insists it was all legit. Plus, he took a lot of heat for letting the American military land and refuel at Shannon Airport in 2003 on their way to Iraq. While all this stuff hurt him in the public eye (my cousin never tired of IMing me from County Kerry to tell me how much he hated Ahern), housing prices in Ireland recently have been off the chizain—the average new Irish house costs 304,000 euros, which is nearly $409,000. These are smaller Euro houses too, not the crazy McPalaces we got here in the American exurbs. And Ireland, notorious for sending people like Grandma and Grandpa Stack abroad in search of employment, is actually importing hella workers from Europe and elsewhere.

So, the people overlooked that non-economic drama and the fears of rising crime and declining education to re-elect Ahern and keep the economy humming. Sometimes you gotta just ride the wave, I guess, and make sure to look like you’re the bomb at surfing even while the ocean could take its toll in pwnage at any moment.

• Also, Sinn Fein rolls pretty strangely. They won all of four seats in the Irish Dáil assembly out of 166, hardly a big showing. I don’t really know why they think Southern Irish republicanism is going to make some sort of comeback when it hasn’t been fashionable since the 1960s or so, not to mention they’re still quasi-Marxist and, as I just mentioned, mugs voted with their pocketbooks. But more than that, like my cousins say, most of the people in the Republic still just wish they could “be rid of that crazy lot up there.” So, SF: get your gear in order in the Northern Assembly before you try to roll out on some Dublin dudes.