The Information about Ireland Site Newsletter
    August 2003


    The Newsletter for people interested in Ireland

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    Copyright (C) 2003
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    		IN THIS ISSUE
    ~~~ Foreword
    ~~~ News Snaps from Ireland 
    ~~~ New free resources at the site
    ~~~ Getting Connected           by John B. McCabe
    ~~~ Irish Winners of the Medal of Honor 
    			  by John J. Concannon
    ~~~ Gaelic phrases of the month
    ~~~ Noticeboard
    ~~~ Monthly free competition result
    
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    FOREWORD
    ~~~~~~~~
    
    Hello again from a very sunny Ireland where we 
    are enjoying our best Summer in years. People are 
    beginning to miss the rain - a sure sign that 
    torrential downpours are on the way!
    
    We have had to abandon our email address of 6 
    years standing. Due to the countless viruses and 
    spam that pervade the web we have resorted to an 
    online method of communication. If you want to 
    contact us then simply visit our website and fill 
    out the simple form - easy!
    
    You can help to keep us alive by making a purchase 
    at our online shop. As a special offer to readers 
    of this newsletter we are giving 5% off all 
    purchases made before 10th September. And you 
    still get free worldwide delivery!
    
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    are asked to insert 'any additional information'.
    
    Visit https://www.irishnation.com
    
    Until the next time,
    
    Michael
    
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    NEWS SNAPS FROM IRELAND
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    
    HOSPITALITY GROUPS WANT SMOKING BAN POSTPONED
    
    With the complete ban on smoking and pubs in 
    Ireland due to be enforced in just a few months, 
    owners of pubs, restaurants and hotels have 
    formed a group aimed at lobbying local government 
    representatives to try to have the new laws 
    postponed.
    
    They want the ban put off until 2006 during which 
    time new ventilation systems can be installed in 
    premises that do not have them.
    
    The increasing desperation of those opposed to the 
    ban is starting to show. Predictions of thousands 
    of job losses and a collapse in the tourist 
    economy have been followed up with scaremongering 
    about the danger to women who leave a pub to have 
    a cigarette, and also the fact that their drink 
    might be spiked when they get back.
    
    The Government however, are unmoved and barring a 
    major about-turn the blanket ban on smoking in 
    pubs and restaurants will come into effect on 
    January 1st 2004.
    
    SELLAFIELD MAY CLOSE IN 2010
    
    Reports in British newspapers have stated that 
    Sellafield is to close its reprocessing operations 
    by the year 2010. British Nuclear Fuels (BNF) who 
    run the controversial plant are to convert the 
    facility into a nuclear waste handling operation. 
    It is reported that there are over 75 tonnes of 
    Plutonium and over 3000 tonnes of Uranium at the 
    site. BNF is seriously in debt and has been 
    running at a loss for several years.
    
    NATIONAL TRAFFIC CORP SCRAPED DUE TO CUTBACKS
    
    Government plans for a dedicated national Garda 
    Traffic Corps have been postponed due to the 
    sweeping cutbacks taking place throughout most 
    Government Departments. 
    
    The Government has undertaken other ideas in its 
    attempts to lower the rate of road traffic deaths. 
    The Penalty Points system has been extended to 
    include drivers who fail to wear seat belts. 
    Drivers who accumulate 12 points will be 
    disqualified. Compulsory lessons are planned 
    for learner drivers of both cars and motorbikes.
    
    IMPROVEMENT IN US ECONOMY TO HELP IRELAND
    
    The recent improvement in the US economy and the 
    consequent rise in value of the dollar is good 
    news for the Irish economy which is so heavily 
    dependent on US investment. The value of Irish 
    exports to the US have also been boosted by the 
    rebound of the American currency, which has gained
    nearly 9% against the EURO in recent weeks.
    
    DRINKING LAWS MODIFIED AGAIN
    
    New regulations have been introduced in an effort 
    to combat excessive and teenage drinking.
    'Happy Hours' and other pub promotions have been 
    completely banned. Thursday closing time will 
    revert to 11:30 pm. No form of entertainment can 
    be offered by Pubs during 'drinking up' times. 
    Breaches of these regulations by Publicans could 
    see their premises closed.
    
    IRISH SUCCESS AT ATHLETICS FINALS
    
    Gillian O'Sullivan from County Kerry won a silver 
    medal in the 10,000 walking event at the World 
    Championships in Paris.
    
    
    Voice your opinion on these news issues here:
    
     https://www.ireland-information.com/cgi-bin/newsletterboardindex.cgi
    
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    NEW FREE RESOURCES AT THE SITE
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    
    NEW COATS OF ARMS ADDED TO THE GALLERY:
    
    The following 5 coats of arms images and family
    history details have been added to the Gallery:
    
    D: Dixon
    E: Ewing
    H: Hodge
    R: Ridge
    V: McVey
    
    View the Gallery here:
    
     http://www.irishsurnames.com/coatsofarms/gm.htm
    
    We now have over 100,000 worldwide names available.
    Get the Coat of Arms Print, Claddagh Ring,
    Screensaver, Watch, T-Shirt Transfer or Clock for
    your name at:
    
     https://www.irishnation.com/familycrestgifts.htm
    
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    You can help to keep this FREE newsletter alive!
    
    Visit https://www.irishnation.com
    
    where you can get great Irish gifts, prints, 
    claddagh jewellery, engraved glassware and 
    much more.
    
    5% off all purchases made before 10th September. 
    Free worldwide delivery!
    
    To avail of this offer simply insert the phrase 
    'AUGUST OFFER' into the online web form when you 
    are asked to insert 'any additional information'.
    
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    GETTING CONNECTED		by John B. McCabe
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    
    Dear Michael
    
    Enclosed find new article for your newsletter.
    In America the Electricity has been around for a 
    long time. We owe it to the great inventor Thomas 
    Alva Edison. In Ireland we have harnessed the 
    waterways and have caught up with the rest of the 
    world. 
     
    However in the 1950's many parts of the country 
    had no electricity. The 'Rurual Electricifation 
    Scheme' was initiated in the late nineteen 
    fifties. Our home was connected in 1959. The 
    enclosed article recounts the excitement of that 
    event.
    
    Hope this article evokes many memories for your 
    Irish readers.
     
    Regards
     
    John B.
    
    ~~~
    
    Some moments are burned into the soul and remain 
    as permanent reference points for a life time. 
    They are as great watersheds between distinct 
    periods of evolution where nothing will ever be 
    the same again. Such was the summer of nineteen 
    fifty nine which saw the arrival of the rural 
    electrification scheme to south Monaghan. Great 
    debates were held about the advantages and costs 
    involved in being connected up and many an 
    argument raged among the townlands about whether 
    or not to 'take the electricity'. My father who 
    lived with a terrible fear of penury, a nervous 
    disposition which left him indecisive and prone 
    to forebodings of imminent disasters, advised 
    against it. The expense was too much and he 
    firmly believed that once people were lured into 
    acceptance by the initial low cost attraction 
    the price would soar and 'drive us out of house 
    and home'.
    
    Mammy was more optimistic and her determination 
    and pride which would not allow us to be 'behind 
    the times' won the day. She took the matter into 
    her own hands and rode her bicycle all the way to 
    Ballybay where she engaged an electrician to wire 
    the house and be ready for connection when the 
    power lines were switched on.
    
    It was a scorching summer and longer than any I 
    had ever remembered. Meteorological records can 
    easily prove otherwise but for me it was the first 
    summer of real awareness, of excitement, of new 
    beginnings and so much was happening that year 
    that it seemed like I had never been alive before 
    or else had stepped over an unseen border into a 
    more vibrant world.
    
    Men came and put down marking pegs along the 
    roadside verges and at intervals across the fields 
    to indicate where holes were to be dug for the 
    poles. Soon the countryside was littered with 
    mounds of clay as if enormous rabbits had scooped 
    out giant burrows in the night.
    
    All was not throbbing with the pulse of progress. 
    The rabbits had bred like wildfire in the previous 
    months and populated the area in plague 
    proportions, destroying crops, cratering the 
    fields and fouling the pastures with millions of 
    droppings.
    
    Mixamatosis was introduced to eradicate the rabbit 
    population with devastating consequences. The 
    disease caused horrible swelling in the head and 
    eyes of these animals and they wandered stupidly 
    to their death, sometimes killed in their hundreds 
    on the road way. We watched these pitiable 
    creatures with their gigantic death laden eyes 
    huddled in their dying thousands in every field 
    and country laneway.
    
    The electricity board had delivered supplies of 
    pylons, stacked in groups of five or six at 
    strategic intervals along the road. The scorching 
    sun raised blisters of oozing tar from their pores. 
    Nineteen fifty nine forever in my mind recalls the 
    smell of melting tar and the feted stench of 
    decomposing rabbits on the road.
    
    A new craze took hold of every boy in our area that 
    year. The magic of digging holes, erecting pylons, 
    coupled with the giddy adventure of being an 
    overhead linesman caught the imagination. 
    Everywhere on farms holes were dug, strings strung 
    from tree to tree and old lids and polish boxes 
    improvised as switches.
    
    My mother was none too pleased when my brother and 
    I paused from our exertions of digging yet another 
    great hole and tore our vests so we could more 
    accurately mimic the sweating workers with their 
    manly chests exposed to the sun.
    
    When at last the power was switched on we were 
    high with excitement and my father warned us of 
    the dangers of electrocution. 'It's no toy to be 
    tampered with', he said, as we argued which of us 
    should switch on the light. Eventually we took it 
    in turns to do so, night about, until it had lost 
    its novelty.
    	
    I have always been amazed at how important changes 
    within ourselves happen so unconsciously that we 
    are never aware of the small day to day 
    developments. Growing up, growing old, growing 
    tall or growing fat - these are not observed in 
    the gradual daily progress which is too small to 
    measure but in relation to other objects, people 
    or environments. The phenomenological reference for 
    my growing up pertains to that simple exercise of 
    putting on the light. Initially I had to stand on 
    a chair, later on tip-toes and later again it was 
    but a hand stretch away. I have much cause to 
    wonder at the many other changes which have 
    happened to me as imperceptibly but equally 
    dramatically as the process of growing up.
    
    The following year the Shankill power lines were 
    begun. This was a new development linking two 
    generating stations and brought new drama to my 
    world.
    
    Huge steel giants strode across the hills, 
    towering over the tallest trees, marching through 
    swamps and straddling ditches. They carried heavy 
    power lines that hissed and sizzled in the frost. 
    I had broken my wrist that year and I remember 
    standing outside the back of our house watching 
    these pylons being erected. They were planted in 
    a concrete base and built piece by piece until the 
    two great arms branched out to carry the top 
    section. The one in our field was nearly eighty 
    feet tall and it stood there begging to be 
    climbed. And climbed it was! My brother did it - 
    I only went up as far as the arms. He had a better 
    head for heights than me and up he went until he 
    was a small dark speck - ten years old and 
    dangling his feet from the triangular corner with 
    nothing beneath him but the certainty of death. 
    He got down safely and I have nightmares to this 
    day to prove it happened.
    
    One Sunday we conquered a smaller pylon on 
    Trainor's Hill and my uncle bellowed from half a 
    mile away to 'come down ou'are that before yiz get 
    kilt'. His grammar was off but his concern was 
    genuine!
    
    The giants are still standing and hissing at the 
    sky - ugly and un-magical, monuments to a blind 
    progress which so disfigures the beauty of the 
    country's face.
    
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    You can help to keep this FREE newsletter alive!
    
    Visit https://www.irishnation.com
    
    where you can get great Irish gifts, prints, 
    claddagh jewellery, engraved glassware and 
    much more.
    
    5% off all purchases made before 10th September. 
    Free worldwide delivery!
    
    To avail of this offer simply insert the phrase 
    'AUGUST OFFER' into the online web form when you 
    are asked to insert 'any additional information'.
    
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    IRISH WINNERS OF THE MEDAL OF HONOR 
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    			    By John J. Concannon
    
    By a stroke of good fortune, I became involved in 
    an Irish/Irish American book writing project that 
    is dear to my heart. 
    
    Since I was a youngster, I have been fascinated by 
    heroes, men who have risked life and limb to save 
    another human, or defied death to accomplish a 
    perilous mission. 
    
    A colleague, the late Gerard F. White of 
    Lindenhurst, N.Y., and I worked on an unfinished 
    book that would, for the first time, tell the full 
    story of Irishmen who have 'won', that is, been 
    awarded the Medal of Honor. The honor, bestowed in 
    the name of Congress, is the top award that 'a 
    grateful nation can bestow' to recognize valorous 
    acts in battle 'above and beyond the call of duty'. 
    
    White, who labored in the Medal of Honor vineyard 
    for more than 36 years, was a military historian 
    and former secretary of the Congressional Medal of 
    Honor Society. In 1995, White and associates 
    George Lang (a Medal of Honor recipient) and 
    Raymond Collins compiled the premier book on the 
    subject, a two-volume, 1,334-page history titled 
    'Medal of Honor Recipients 1863-1994'.
    
    The books list the 3,401 men who had received the 
    Medal through 1994. Thirty-three countries are 
    listed as birthplaces of medal recipients. And I 
    don't have to tell you that Ireland is the country 
    with the largest number of medal winners, by far, 
    with 258. Germany/Prussia is second with 128 
    recipients. 
      
    Of the 258 immigrants who noted on their 
    enlistment papers that they were born in Ireland, 
    134 also provided their county, town or townland 
    of birth. Cork leads the honor list with 19 
    medalists, followed by Dublin and Tipperary with 
    11 each. Limerick has 10, Kerry eight, Galway 
    seven, Antrim and Tyrone tied with six, Kilkenny 
    and Sligo each have five. 
    
    We Irish can proudly note that five of the 19 
    fighting men who won a second Medal of Honor were 
    born in Ireland. They are Henry Hogan from County 
    Clare, John Laverty from Tyrone, Dublin's John 
    Cooper, whose name at birth was John Laver Mather, 
    John King and Patrick Mullen. Three double winners 
    of the Medal were Irish-Americans: the indomitable 
    Marine, Daniel Daly, the U.S. Navy's John McCloy, 
    and the fighting Marine from Chicago, John Joseph 
    Kelly. 
    
    Over the years, the Ancient Order of Hibernians 
    has had strong associations with the Medal. At 
    least two AOH divisions have been named after 
    Medal recipients, including Colonel James Quinlan 
    Division #3 of Warwick, in Orange County, N.Y. 
    Quinlan, a native of Clonmel, County Tipperary, 
    was awarded the Medal for gallantry 'against 
    overwhelming numbers' while leading the Irish 
    Brigade's 88th New York in the battle of Savage 
    Station, Virginia, during the American Civil War.
    
    Then there's the remarkable 'super survivor', 
    Michael Dougherty, from Falcarragh, County Donegal. 
    Dougherty, a private in the 13th Pennsylvania 
    Cavalry in the Union Army, won the Medal for 
    leading a group of comrades against a hidden 
    Confederate detachment at Jefferson, Virginia, 
    ultimately routing it. The official report noted 
    that 'Dougherty's action prevented the Confederates 
    from flanking the Union forces and saved 2,500 
    lives'. Later, Dougherty and 126 members of his 
    regiment were captured and spent 23 months in 
    various Southern prisons, finally arriving in 
    Georgia at the notorious Andersonville death-camp. 
    
    Of the 127, Dougherty alone survived the ordeal, 
    'a mere skeleton', barely able to walk. But he 
    walked aboard the homeward-bound steamship 
    'Sultana', crowded with more than 2,000 
    passengers, six times its designated capacity. 
    The crammed steamship was slowly moving up the 
    Mississippi River toward St. Louis, when, on the 
    fourth night out, the boilers exploded, cracking 
    the ship in two and tossing Dougherty and the 
    other passengers into the Mississippi. Only 900 
    survived, including Dougherty, who somehow found 
    the strength to swim to a small island, where he 
    was rescued the next morning. 
    
    Finally, after an absence of four years, the 
    21-year-old Union veteran reached his hometown, 
    Bristol, Pennsylvania. That's why AOH Division #1 
    of Bristol, in Bucks County, is known as the 
    Michael Dougherty Division. 
    
    ~~~
    
    This article has been adapted from an 
    article at the 'Wild Geese Today' Webzine,
    a leading Irish history and heritage Internet 
    site, established in 1997 with the purpose of
    sharing 'The Epic History and Heritage of the 
    Irish' with the immense number of individuals 
    of Irish ancestry found worldwide.
    
    http://www.thewildgeese.com
    
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    GAELIC PHRASES OF THE MONTH
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    
    PHRASE: 		An feidir liom cabhru leat?
    PRONOUNCED:	on fay/durr lum cow/roo latt
    MEANING:		May I help you? 
    
    PHRASE:		An gno pearsanta no oifigiuil e?
    PRONOUNCED:	on no par/san/tha no iff/igg/ool ae
    MEANING:		Is it personal or official? 
    
    PHRASE:		Cad is ainm duit, le do thoil?
    PRONOUNCED:	cod iss an/imm dwit, leh duh hull
    MEANING:		What is your name, please? 
    
    View the archive of phrases here:
    
     https://www.ireland-information.com/irishphrases.htm
    
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    NOTICEBOARD:	
    
    The next Gathering of the Crowley Clan will be 
    September 3, 4, and 5, 2004. The venue is the 
    Westlodge Hotel in Bantry, Co Cork. The Crowley 
    Clan is a voluntary organization of Crowleys from 
    around the world. We meet every 3 years in County 
    Cork. Further information at our website 
    www.crowleyclan.com
    
    Slán, Thomas Crowley, An Taoiseach, Crowley Clan 
    
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    AUGUST COMPETITION RESULT
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    
    The winner was: anna_martinez71@hotmail.com
    who will receive the following: 
    
    A Single Family Crest Print (decorative) 
    (US$19.99 value)
    
    Send us an email to claim your prize, and well 
    done! Remember that all subscribers to this 
    newsletter are automatically entered into the 
    competition every time. 
    
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    You can help to keep this FREE newsletter alive!
    
    Visit https://www.irishnation.com
    
    where you can get great Irish gifts, prints, 
    claddagh jewellery, engraved glassware and 
    much more.
    
    5% off all purchases made before 10th September. 
    Free worldwide delivery!
    
    To avail of this offer simply insert the phrase 
    'AUGUST OFFER' into the online web form when you 
    are asked to insert 'any additional information'.
    
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    I hope that you have enjoyed this issue.
    
    Until next time,
    
    Stay Safe!
    
    
    Michael Green,
    Editor,
    The Information about Ireland Site.
    
    https://www.ireland-information.com
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