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Ireland - Limerick

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Limerick

Limerick is an even more familiar name.  It's reasonably certain that the notorious verse form that takes its name from this city stems from a group of poets, or wits, from this region.  The rhyme scheme AABBA is found in some longer poems but from the early 18th century onwards limericks have generally stood alone as a single stanza and as one anonymous wit observed:

The limerick’s an art form complex
That's content runs mainly to sex;
It’s famous for virgins
And masculine urgin’s
And vulgar erotic effects
 

It's an art form that reached its peaks of popularity during the two World Wars

A spy huntress of English nativity 
Had a bottom of rare sensitivity
She could sit on the lap;
Of a Nazi or Jap
And detect his fifth-column activity
 

but it's still loved by many, if the Internet is any guide.  At one time I knew quite a few, some original, and still do.

Like Dublin, Waterford and Cork, Limerick began as a Viking town, this time at the mouth of the Shannon River, and like other towns along the coast was later fortified by the Normans.  There is still a substantial Norman/Tudor fort near the centre of town on St Johns Island that we spent some time exploring and is well worth a visit.

See the Ireland Album - Click Here...  

As the fourth most populous city on the 'island of Ireland', Limerick was particularly badly impacted by the potato famine (see the history above...) and it's the setting for Frank McCourt's book: Angela's Ashes, about the consequent poverty of the lower classes in the slums of Ireland, that was later made into a harrowing film.

Nevertheless, the city was not poor everywhere and has some fine buildings including some of the best preserved Georgian townhouses in Ireland, the construction of which must have provided much needed employment. 

As I had it in mind that Angela's Ashes was set in Dublin we omitted to look for McCourt's slum house in Limerick. But that's just as well. According to The Irish Times the slums are long gone:

Slums of `Angela's Ashes' reborn as heritage attraction

No sooner have the Limerick slums been demolished than they are being reconstructed again as the city begins its love affair with Angela's Ashes in earnest.
Shannon Development and Limerick Civic Trust have recreated the home of Frank McCourt's youth in an £80,000 tourism development, ironically in the stables of a refurbished Georgian house, the home of a wealthy family in the 1940s and 1950s.

THE IRISH TIMES Jun 22, 2000

 

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Travel

The United Kingdom

 

In May and Early June 2013 we again spent some time in the UK on our way to Russia. First stop London. On the surface London seems quite like Australia. Walking about the streets; buying meals; travelling on public transport; staying in hotels; watching TV; going to a play; visiting friends; shopping; going to the movies in London seems mundane compared to travel to most other countries.  Signs are in English; most people speak a version of our language, depending on their region of origin. Electricity is the same and we drive on the same side or the street.  Bott Wendy and I have lived in London in previous lives, so it's like another home.

But look as you might, nowhere in Australia is really like London.

Read more: The United Kingdom

Fiction, Recollections & News

More on 'herd immunity'

 

 

In my paper Love in the time of Coronavirus I suggested that an option for managing Covid-19 was to sequester the vulnerable in isolation and allow the remainder of the population to achieve 'Natural Herd Immunity'.

Both the UK and Sweden announced that this was the strategy they preferred although the UK was soon equivocal.

The other option I suggested was isolation of every case with comprehensive contact tracing and testing; supported by closed borders to all but essential travellers and strict quarantine.   

New Zealand; South Korea; Taiwan; Vietnam and, with reservations, Australia opted for this course - along with several other countries, including China - accepting the economic and social costs involved in saving tens of thousands of lives as the lesser of two evils.  

Yet this is a gamble as these populations will remain totally vulnerable until a vaccine is available and distributed to sufficient people to confer 'Herd Immunity'.

In the event, every country in which the virus has taken hold has been obliged to implement some degree of social distancing to manage the number of deaths and has thus suffered the corresponding economic costs of jobs lost or suspended; rents unpaid; incomes lost; and as yet unquantified psychological injury.

Read more: More on 'herd immunity'

Opinions and Philosophy

The Prospect of Eternal Life

 

 

 

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
… But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

[1]

 

 

 

 

When I first began to write about this subject, the idea that Hamlet’s fear was still current in today’s day and age seemed to me as bizarre as the fear of falling off the earth if you sail too far to the west.  And yet several people have identified the prospect of an 'undiscovered country from whose realm no traveller returns' as an important consideration when contemplating death.  This is, apparently, neither the rational existential desire to avoid annihilation; nor the animal imperative to keep living under any circumstances; but a fear of what lies beyond.

 

Read more: The Prospect of Eternal Life

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