Auntie in Ireland

My music-loving, sporty, rosy cheeked, dimpled and charming nephew, Adam, is not just a bunch of Irish stereotypes rolled into one adorable package. But on a recent trip to Belfast to visit my sister Sarah, bro-in-law Mike and their aforementioned Leprechaun-sized cutie, I realized that Ireland and Irish culture is now a significant part of my immediate family's heritage. It is the home of my sister, and the native land of my nephew, his future siblings and their father. Of course, I've known this for years now (Sarah and Mike have been married since 2003), but it hit me during this trip in a way it hasn't before.

Alas, there is no Blarney in my ethnic make up (it being entirely English, Scottish and Dutch), which has always bothered me. No one ever says, Kiss me, I'm English! (That'd make those stiff upper lips quiver...) In fact, I remember lying outright in middle school, figuring that there must be some renegade branch of the family tree that crossed the Irish Sea (it's not that far, after all), but there is no evidence to back up this claim.

Now, however, I'm Auntie Ray to a true Irish lad who will grow up in the land of green hedges and white sheep, gray rainclouds and old stone. (Ireland, of course, is also home to grocery stores, gas stations, schools, stadiums, concert halls and movie theaters, most of which are super modern as oppose to ye olde.) He will say "boot" instead of "trunk" and "bin" instead of "garbage can" and "ice lolly" when he means popsicle. His American cousins (future children of my siblings) will marvel at his accent, as he will, no doubt, remark upon theirs. When we go to Ireland it will not be to tour old castles and buy bulky wool sweaters, but to visit family, as I did last week. We will take walks around neighborhoods and visit public parks and rec centers. We will run errands, see movies and download coupons to local restaurants. We may even eventually witness school plays and sporting events. Ireland will feel as homey as anywhere else family lives and Sarah's kids will be our guides, laughing at our Americanisms and teaching us about their lives, now a part of our shared family culture.

And this culture may include the following very cool things about Ireland I grew to appreciate this trip:

1) Cool public pools. We visited a rec center in a nearby town with not one but four high-quality and elaborate water slides. Of course, it was all inside since even in July Ireland is not the tropics. But the slides wound all around the building, blue and green tubes that spun, twirled and plummeted. All this and a pirate ship for the little ones.

2) High-quality universal health care. My sister pays nothing to take my nephew to the doctor and nothing for his prescriptions. This eliminates the often-agonizing internal debate parents in the States must have. (Is s/he really that sick? Is it worth taking him in?) It's not a choice we should ask people to make when their children are involved. It cost Sarah exactly nothing to have a baby, and it costs @ 40 Euro for her to visit her doctor (this acts as a co-pay and includes any procedures she may need as a result of the visit). She never has to wait in ridiculous lines and considers her care of the highest quality. What's not to love? (And, yes, let's all keep pushing for universal health care in the States!)

3) Hedges in general and hedge mazes in particular. Drive a mile (or less!) out of any Irish city and you will soon be motoring past a grass-green countryside stitched with dark-green hedges. Ridiculously picturesque. A deep knowledge of hedge cultivation also leads to hedge mazes! We visited one near Sarah's. It was so cool! If I ever win the lottery, I am so building my own hedge maze.

4) Round towers. I love these things. Built to protect people and valuables of a village or monastery against marauding Vikings (of which there were many in the 800-900s). Now, ancient signposts of the Dark Ages, still standing secure amid the rolling hills. I didn't see any this visit, but I have to put in a plug here.

5) Real fries (ie: chips). Fries that are thick and well cut. Fries that clearly were once potatoes and might even have the skin still on them. Fries fried to golden perfection.

6) St. Georges Market, Belfast. A farmers market held in a Victorian market hall (cause things in Ireland can't be held outside. Pretty much ever). Organic everything, a European Union's worth of food, cute, non-kitchy crafts, live music, homemade chocolate, local cheeses. All under one roof.

I'm still getting used to many things in Ireland (the narrow roads, the near-constant gray, the wee-ness of almost everything), but this visit has put me well on my way to being a member of a fully bi-cultural family as Adam's favorite auntie!

(If you want me, I'll be under the table avoiding the barrage of protests from Adam's four other aunties...)

The Kindle report

Will you read it curled in bed? Will you crave a page instead?
Will you miss the booky smell? Will a screen do just as well?

With a tip of the hat to Dr. Seuss, these are all questions I've received from curious bibliophiles since purchasing the Amazon Kindle. As most of you know, the Kindle is much like an iPod for books. You download what you want from Amazon, then can read the books on a specially designed screen. The device weighs less than a pound and stores up to 1,500 texts (be they books, magazines, newspapers, etc.).

My decision to purchase a Kindle was not taken lightly, and it has changed the way I think about books. But not in a bad way. While I was making up my mind, I worried the Kindle was a souless device that takes the bookiness out of books. It is silent (no more rustling pages), odorless and plastic. What in the name of heaven will they think of next?



You may agree. Books are more than the sum of their parts, so how can reading one on a screen be the same as reading a page as Guttenberg intended?

Let me assure you that it is. You're halfway there if you already think of books as more than objects.

Even before we get philosophical, I should add that a Kindle has a lot of features that successfully mimic books. Most importantly, the screen is not back-lit. Unlike your computer screen, you can't read a Kindle in the dark. This diminshes completely the threat of headaches and swimming eyes that we all experience after too many hours in front of our trusty laptops. The words in a Kindle edition book are sharply defined, the screen is many-pixeled and the font is easy on the eyes. I have had no problem reading my Kindle far into the night, as I would with any traditional book.

Moreover, Kindles operated in the good, ol' USA have a direct, wireless link to the Kindle store on Amazon, making downloading books frightfully quick and easy. I mean 'frightfully' in the literal sense. It is scary how easy it is to spend money on books. (Kindle editions cost @ $10 a pop.) This has always been an issue for me, but I was previously limited by transportation, bookstore opening hours, book availability and other now-obsolete book-buying concerns.

But back to the big ideas: if you love books as objects then the Kindle is not for you. On a Kindle, all books look like a sleek, white plastic-and-metal device with a Mac-influenced aesthetic and a cute, round-buttoned keyboard. If you delight in filling your bookshelves with distinctive colors, varying widths and eye-catching bindings, then stop reading now.

However, if a book is what transports you to an alternate universe or state of being wherein the text acts as a guide and bridge, then there might be something to this Kindle thing. If, like me, you love books, but don't quite know what to do with them after you've finished; if your bookshelves are full to overflowing; if you don't have infinite space to expand your library or if you travel a lot, read quickly and/or move more than once every 10 years then you might want to acknowledge that, no, in fact, you don't really love books as objects. You love books as text, as story, as knowledge, as imagination. In short, you love reading.

And you can read perfectly well on a Kindle.

Owning a Kindle has given me greater insight into what I loved so much about books in the first place and what I can continue to love, all the while removing stacks of stuff from my life and saving time, money and paper, not to mention the lugging, moving and shipping I will not have to do. It's one of the best purchases I've ever made, and an excellent use of technology we use every day. I highly recommend it to all you readers out there.

I will read it curled in bed! It was never about the page instead!
I do not miss the booky smell! In fact, a screen does just as well!

Reach out and...

I'm sure there is a term for what happens when a once-universal ability falls into disuse as a result of a technological advance. It's a term we could apply to not being able to start effective fires without a match or sew whole outfits or walk barefoot for very long. All of these skills came in handy a generation or so ago (and remain so in many places today). Yet stop 50 people on the street and chances are, none of them has ever laid hands on a flint or a sewing machine.

We can apply this same term to the ability to meet up with someone when one or both parties is lacking a cell phone. My memory assures me that I (along with most of you) once possessed this skill as recently as 7-8 years ago. I can recall connecting with folks for lunch, meeting people at airports (really!), making and changing plans all without the use of a mobile device--and with very little attendant anxiety.

Yet this summer, I haven't had a cell phone. Mine works on the other side of the world, and I didn't get around to renting one. What this means is that my smart, well-educated and brilliantly reliable friends and family can't reach me while I'm on my way to meet them. It seems like a little thing, but we have had to re-train ourselves to be comfortable with this. In some ways, it's easier for me. After all, I know I'm getting there, even if they don't. In other ways, I've genuinely felt bad for forcing my loved ones back into the days when we just made plans and followed them, without a phone call to say that we're leaving, or have been minutely delayed or have almost arrived.

It's made me consider the true benefit of cell phones, which are legion. I'm not trying to be a cranky Luddite here. But I will make a claim that we overuse them because it really has not been a disaster to arrange to meet with someone one day and connect with them the next. Have we, as a society, become less trusting that things will proceed as planned? Are we simply glad to be able to reach out on the lonely road en route to socializing? Are we less concerned about being on time because we can always call and explain away our lateness rather than risk stranding someone for a few extra minutes? Or are we thankful for the opportunity to be considerate?

It took my mom and I about 10 minutes of conversation (face to face) to figure out how we were going to meet up after I went out to dinner with a friend and she attended her weekly art class. We were both so out of practice, but we eventually realized that if we both did our darnedest to get to the meeting point at the assigned time, then we'd probably be OK. The worse that could happen would be that one of us would have to wait for a few minutes. But maybe that would be a "worst thing" to many people. Maybe this all has less to do with cell phones than with technology in general and its ceaseless drive to save us time, including two minutes when you could be doing __________ instead of waiting around.

Summer challenge: arrange to meet someone in 24 hours or more from now. Do not use a wireless mobile device to communicate with them about this meeting at any point after you make your plans (unless you must cancel). Have the next time you interact with them be face to face at your meeting point. Report any problems here.