Frozen at a Crossroads of History

Just occasionally, we find ourselves at an historical crossroads of such moment that we may feel overwhelmed by it. Even our familial and day-to-day relationships can become paralysed; there is no escape unless one is very adept indeed at burying one's head in the sand! So let me attempt to summarise some of these polarized perspectives:-

Scenario a):- President Putin is an evil dictator, and if he is not emphatically defeated he will go on to threaten at least the Baltic States, Moldova, probably Poland and the whole of the old Soviet Empire. Tyrants everywhere will be emboldened, especially Chi in China who will take Taiwan. Even President Trump himself will achieve his dream of becoming a dictator. The rule of law and all moral principles in international relations will be irreparably damaged. The West must stand up to tyranny just as it did in WW2. We must get behind President Zelensky and enable him to win. 

Scenario b):- Putin may be a dictator and Russia corrupt, but there is some doubt as to whether things are so very much better in Ukraine. Instead of embarking on a quixotic campaign, we need to be realistic and pragmatic about the facts of power  politics. It is the height of folly to risk the mother of all forever wars, possibly ending in nuclear armageddon. We also need to take the beam out of our own eyes before trying to get the splinter out of our neighbour's. There will be time enough to build the great new world order if people can only be stopped from blowing each other to bits. Trump may be a bit rough, but at least he is focussed on stopping the killing and not toboganning into unsustainable debt....

Let us, for once and for all, try the Gospel trick mentioned above. The war in Ukraine is by no means a simple matter of Russian aggression. Professor Jeffrey Sachs in his address to the European parliament spelt it out much more authoritively than I could. However getting our head around the big picture, in which that part of the world has been fought over since time immemorial, is frankly beyond most of us. What is clearly unacceptable is to go on fighting over it, especially with modern technology. Trusting that peace will allow us to improve our relationship with neighbours is infinitely preferable to destroying our country by fighting over it. This is a truth that we in Ireland should have learned the hard way! 

Instead of indulging the widespread russophobia, we need to renew our efforts to understand and appreciate Russia. There are the great works of literature to revisit. There is the obvious and simple truth that European prosperity and security requires us to live in peace together with our big neighbour to the East.

Let us also accept that it is long passed time to recognise that Western, aka American, policy needs a radical overhaul, to say the least. Must we everlastingly remind ourselves of the litany of disaster,- Vietnam, Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, Syria, Gaza etc? We may take comfort in the heroic stand against Hitler; we remember with gratitude the role of America then, but let us remind ourselves also of the massive part played by Russia. When we are told that Putin is not to be trusted and it is a waste of time talking to him, let us remind ourselves of the role played by one Joseph Stalin. I daresay the British were not too nice to address him with diplomatic courtesies when it suited them, but I fear that people whose whole worldview is shaped by nostalgia for those heroic times, when 'Britain stood alone against tyranny', are apt to forget this.

Whether one may be peering through murk to take the bearings of some established marks, or using a machine that takes the bearings of satellites, the more cross-bearings, the better.  One may wonder why it is that a person's orientation with regard to the above bears a strong relationship to their attitude to a few other big issues, unrelated as they may appear to be, such as covid and climate change. In the case of covid, the situation is still evolving fast; much that used to be 'disinformation' has been quietly shelved, but let us consider the official narrative from start to finish:-

Scenario a) - The virus was a spill-over from nature. The vaccines were a triumph of technology that saved countless lives, and not alone protected the recipient, but prevented the disease from being passed on. The lockdowns were nonetheless essential for nearly two years, and together with the vaccines eventually defeated the virus. The chatter about vaccine harm is largely disinformation.

Scenario b) -'The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media and international agencies.' - Russell L. Blaylock in February, 2022. Anyone who still believes those lies no longer has much excuse for doing so, thanks to the 'disinformation' provided by a courageous minority of scientists and doctors on the internet - for which let us thank God. Here is just one recent example. 

What a long way we have come since I wrote 'Sorry Doc, I won't be taking the Vaccination' on this blog back in January '21! How innocent I was! I had no idea how horrific the extent of the deception was, and how I would be gradually forced to recognize that there is a World Economic Forum and World Health Organisation cabal out there, including people like Gates and Fauci, who managed to subborn all the so-called democratic governments. Furthermore, they mean what they say about reducing the world's population, in the grand Rockerfella tradition of eugenics. 

Actually they have made no secret of their intentions. Pandemics and wars mean nothing to such people,- ordinary humanity can suffer and die, while they adeptly make money every way. If there is war, they make money out of arms while getting rid of plenty of people; if there is peace, they are capable of orchestrating a fake pandemic with a remedy that kills far more people than the disease. The same crowd are making vast fortunes while driving the masses into poverty, and meanwhile are busy buying up farmland and making people eat their extremely dodgy food.

A particularly disturbing aspect of it all is the way it is bound up with the narrative of climate change, as in Gates' Ted Talk in which he made the curious boast about 'using vaccines to reduce the world population'. That we have a severe problem of pollution and bio-diversity loss is undeniable, but the proposition that addressing it is mainly a matter of radically reducing the world's population, or even of attempting to reduce emissions to net zero, is highly questionable to say the least. Unless one considers that one's own folks are exempt from the cull, or one is just deep into nihilism, such a proposition will only alienate one from the tasks in hand.

In short, scenario a) tends, whatever the grand intentions, to actually mean death, ill health, dreadful food, ugliness, environmental degradation, extreme individualisation coupled with totalitarian control, polarisation, the collapse of families and general misery.

Scenario b) offers life, health and well-being, real organic food, beauty, sustainability, harmony with thriving nature, reconciliation, community life, freedom, family and fun all round.

'I set before you life and death, saith the Lord. Choose life!' (Deuteronomy 30:19)

It comes down to a choice between the idolatrous worship of technology and power, or the love of one's neighbour and of God,- an exercise that, indeed and alas, is by no means free of cost!

                          

Of Emperors and Fishes.

I have just responded to the request for input to the upcoming review of the CFP (Common Fisheries Policy). This may seem to be an esoteric matter, but hang in, dear reader, and you may see it as archetypal, and of very immediate relevence to our more general concerns. Besides having a very real impact on the lives of small coastal communities such as my own, it sheds light on our day to day struggle to keep our lives together, and other ways in which the overall politics of today affect our lives.

    I realise that even if some minion in the Commission actually gets around to reading it, and even if that minion broadly accepts the truth of it, one can just imagine him saying to himself 'Hum, he may be right, but pushing that kind of stuff up the line is not going to get anywhere'! Yet, especially in times like these, I believe that everyone who can raise their heads above day-to-day tribulations and trivialities must do so, and then try to make the results of their experience heard. Here are the comments which I submitted:-

CFP Review

While I retired as a full-time fishing skipper in 1998, I have remained in close contact with Irish west coast fishing communities, through having lived in three of them. I continue to do so, through the fact that I have a son still actively engaged as a commercial fishing skipper, along with a more general involvement with matters of the Gannets' Way and sailing.

    It was already obvious towards the end of the 20th century that the fishing industry had serious problems, stemming in part from the same kind of factors that have brought about the general biodiversity crisis, and especially from the brake-neck pace of technological development, particularly in the context of hungry capital anxious to facilitate and promote it in the name of Profit and Progress. Evidently our sense of self-restraint and communal responsibility was failing to keep up. In spite of many fine intentions about conservation and subsidiarity, instead of seeking out a different path, the EU responded in the only way it apparently knew how, with an elaborate system of Command and Control, quite beyond the mind-set of an artisanal fisher.

    The results are clear and are not good. All around the coast, the fishing communities are in a state of decline and demoralisation. Ownership of fishing vessels has become only accessible to big companies or the very well-off; and they need the resources to conduct lawfare, because it is frequently impossible to make a living within the law! Our seafood restaurants now mainly get their fish from many miles away, and it is very expensive, despite the fact that here on the Loop Head peninsula for example we are nearly surrounded by the sea. There are precious few young fishermen hereabouts; they have gone away while some have sadly even taken their own lives. The navy and other maritime industries will not find the young recruits that they used to from these communities.

    There are other paths open to us. Somehow a sense of fun and adventure needs to be rediscovered. ‘Small is Beautiful’ and intermediate technologies may be revisited. Here at Gannetsway Marine Services, we want to develop a sail/electric fishing vessel for fishing with hooks or traps, with the propeller charging the batteries when under sail. Every small port around the coast could support a fleet of such craft. The concept of the skipper/owner, which as of now has all but died out, could be resurrected. Fishermen would no longer need to work to pay for diesel fuel for up to half their time, nor would they need to worry about the notions of distant bureaucrats telling them to stop catching this or that species all of a sudden, while tons of good fish get thrown away dead.

    Conservation measures need to reconnect with the fishers, but any real responsibility depends on a sense of ownership. Subsidiarity is a vital principle for any solidarity, yet it has been mainly honoured with neglect. All this is of course part of a wider malaise. As a supporter of the European project, I consider that real solutions need to come as part of a massive change of attitude; otherwise the EU will not survive the erosion, not to say collapse, of its popular support, which is already occurring. Let us hope that this CFP review may be part of a genuine change of heart and of direction. If it is not, it is very doubtful if there will be another chance!

*****

    

    The CFP for sure has failed to deliver good results for Irish fishermen, yet when one comes to consider what they have been doing wrong, and might do better, one has a problem with recommending alternatives other than pulling out. I have to conlude that a better future can only come from a radical paradigm shift,- a change of attitude and approach which is not perhaps so very far apart from that which we are 

witnessing in the USA lately. 

    Let it be remembered that the CFP, like the EU itself, was full of the grandest intentions. I now have considerable difficulty in defending both the one and the other to many, probably most, of the people I meet from day to day. I suspect it would now be the same on the ground in most of the member states, especially in the heartlands of France and Germany, and we have already witnessed Brexit. J.D.Vance was spot on in Munich the other day when he recommended that Europe had better figure out what it really stands for, if it wants to prevail in the forthcoming struggles.

    Can there even be some sense to President Trump's statements about Gaza and Ukraine, let alone relevence to the future of the CFP, and what can Europeans possibly have to glean from them? We are in a weird situation, likened by a wise Spaniard, whom I came across online, to a new variant of The Emperor's New Clothes, in which it is the Emperor himself who is saying,- Can't you see that I'm naked?

    Here in Ireland, the bien pensants, the right-thinking people, are busy wringing their hands, and sadly will probably be among the last to get the message.  Some working people who do after all remain in contact with reality, will remember that if Ireland has one valuable role, it is to act as a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic. Yet we Irish, who pride ourselves on our ability to relate to other people and to handle big-wigs to boot, know only too well how to keep our mouths shut. 'Say nothing!' may after all be better than 'Tell 'em plenty lies!'

    Today the largest political party in Ireland, Sinn Fein, is going to boycott Washington DC on St Patrick's Day,-  but whatever one thinks of President Trump's habit of making somewhat wild, provocative and over-the-top statements, surely this kind of folly in the grand cause of virtue signalling is hardly sensible either? I recall that in covid times, not content with urging measures to 'ensure maximal access and vaccine uptake', Sinn Fein actually wanted to prolong the lock-down, when at last our Government was bringing it to an end.

    Mention of covid brings me to a matter that is rather more germane to the current crisis of meaning than the CFP, even for myself. We observe how this crisis divides not just America, nor just Europe from America, nor just so many families and communities, but even one Donald J. Trump himself, who in his last presidency boasted about Operation Warp Speed getting out ill-tested vaccines so fast, and in his current presidency appointed Bobby Kennedy as his health czar.  Just tacking with the wind, or a genuine change of heart and policy, Mr President? If so, the world deserves an explanation and an apology! But even Pope Francis flunked his prophetic role, when he urged us all to get the shots. I would humbly suggest that an apology would be good for himself and the whole world, before he goes to meet his Maker! 

    We are in a weird situation, likened by a wise Spaniard whom I came across online, to a new variant of The Emperor's New Clothes, in which it is the Emperor himself who is saying,- Can't you see that I'm naked? But precisely who or what is this naked Emperor? How may we identify and characterise him? We must take care not to be projecting stereotypes onto anyone, but I cannot think of any civilisation without some kind of emperor; we also need a pope who is ready to defy him!

    In this little blog, I can only offer a few suggestions. Firstly, as indications of the old naked emperor's presence, we can look wherever someone is resorting to demonising, cancelling, locking-up, murdering or otherwise attempting to do away with their enemies, other than by engaging with them and seeing if indeed there is any chance of appreciating each other's vestments, or perhaps one might say, respecting each other's investments? But what then happens, when they only seem to do harm, when for instance these investments are in arms, of either the explosive or injected varieties? What happens when the people find that the fruits of them are bitter or downright poisonous? Where do we turn for a more befitting emperor and a more effective pope? Well, a spot of retrospection all round might help! -

                  

Salamanca cathedral.

    

Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad,    

    let the sea and all within it thunder praise,

let the land and all it bears rejoice,

    all the trees of the wood shout for joy

at the presence of the Lord for he comes, 

    he comes to rule the earth.

With justice he will rule the world,

    he will judge the peoples with his truth.

- Psalm 95.

    

The Turn of the Tide?

The River Rother at Rye Harbour in East Sussex dries out at low tide, so that one could wade across it. My father used to keep his boat tied up to the Admiralty Jetty, a long wooden structure that had been constructed  during WW2 to accomodate air/sea rescue vessels, since there was much action in the Channel off Rye, where a lot of pilots were shot down in the dog-fights of the Battle of Britain. Such memories were still very fresh in those years of the 1950s. Anyway his boat and those of the little community of sailors there used to dry out leaning against the piles of this structure, and only float for about three hours either side of high water.

    It's easy to imagine how the whole atmosphere of the place changed with the rhythm of the tides. Unfortunately the fishing boats from Rye, another couple of miles up the river, were inclined to belt up against the ebb at the last minute possible, just when those wooden sailing boats were taking the rather firm bottom. That ebb was at its strongest, probably around four or five knots,- the fishing boats would make a big wash, which frequently lifted the sailing boats off the bottom and thumped them down on it again. The yachtsmen would curse and the fishermen would not take a blind bit of notice. Class warfare, you might call it.

    It's not easy for toilers on the sea to respect those who go there for pleasure, and especially those who merely play at it, but just occasionally the fellowship of the sea and mutual respect prevails over such little problems. Fishermen may sometimes find it in their hearts to recognise that toilers in offices have their problems too, that they too are necessary, and might possibly do their jobs a lot better if they retain grounding in physical realities such as especially the sea. I reckon that our politicians and civil servants would do a much better job if they spent more time with Nature and less chasing their tails, trying to please everyone and for the most part failing to do so! 

    I'm somewhat fascinated to watch where the Trumpian change in the political tide will take us. I would be happier if he went sailing rather than playing golf, yet I could not but admire his fighting spirit! I tried my hand at the political game briefly, after I gave up fishing. The experience brought home to me how 'fighting the tide' is to be avoided if possible, despite the necessity of keeping faith when the tide is out, preparing for the next flood. We should beware of those trying to force their way against the ebb, who may lift you for a moment and then dump you on the bottom again, shivering those timbers! 

    I am disgusted to see Palestinian representatives who fail to condemn the October 7th attack, continuing to attack Israel while playing the victim tune for all its worth. How on earth did they expect the Israelis to react,- which is not to condone what they have done either! Jesus surely had the only answer, which is to love our enemies. Apparently impossible, but there really isn't anywhere else to turn!

    The eternal rhythms go on and on,- home and away, friend and enemy, day and night, summer and winter, calm and storm, health and sickness, wealth and poverty, strength and weakness, life and death, - mostly sadly out of sync. Indeed they can make a ghastly cacophony, pulling one this way and that; it is a life's work, and an extraordinary feat, to learn to embrace both sides, so that we can get them in sync and learn to dance to the cosmic beat. As good a place to start as any may be in a sailing boat that does not assume the power of beating that tide by force, but is content to work with it and use it, with humility. However one way or the other one does have to come to terms with contrary currents, even if this inevitably involves fighting them! 

    There's not much sign of a strong fair tide for the Anna M yet, still no sign of finance for the electric drive project, but nonetheless I hope to be in a position to sail her home to Ireland this year. Then either the Gannetsway Sailing Association and Marine Services will shape up, or I fear she will have to be sold. Meanwhile, however, perhaps you too might like to adopt the sobrequet 'Gannet', indicative of an attitude of encounter to all dancers on the waves of the 'Gannetsway'. We still have to clarify what this will involve, but it is significant for me of an attitude that, though based on the sea, transcends it,- of a cultural and spiritual dance that reconciles all those opposites. 

    Our photographer friend Nutan, with whom I sailed the West coast of Ireland making his photographic book about them, bestowed that sobrequet on our family long ago, though especially on our Luke, because of the way he pounced on food. They had a great time slagging each other off. Little did 'Swami Nutan' realise what fun I would have with it in due course! 

    To enable you, dear reader, to follow and perhaps participate in this effort, Dominic Peer and I are getting a podcast together. Here is the link:- https://www.youtube.com/@FollowtheGannetsway/videos

And here is the link for the talk in Kilkee:-

https://vimeo.com/1051930066/6566a46337?&login=true#_=_

Self with Dr Simon Berrow of the IWDG and John O'Mahony of Belco Marine electronics 
on stage in the Sweeney Library, Kilkee.

Layered Like an Onion

 

25 years ago at Carrigaholt

In the photo above the 'Anna M' is tied alongside my old fishing boat, the 'Whitebank', the ice plant indicates that some fish is being landed, thanks to Finbarr Murphy, recently deceased, God rest him. Ahead is Geoff & Sue Magee's (then) new dolphin-watching boat, the 'Driocht', and as well as the fishing boats there is a new sea-angling boat that I was involved with. I handed on the 'Whitebank' to our son Luke, but after a few years, he felt the fishing was getting too problematic and found easier ways to earn a crust, including his angling boat the 'Clare Dragoon', B&B and beef. 

    My own living, which principally was a matter of taking people dolphin-watching under sail, also involved various efforts like taking Nutan on a cruise to make a photographic book on the 'Islands of Ireland', and Tony Whelan to the Cape Verde Islands with the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group  to research and film breeding humpback whales. All these were exciting and fun, but did not exactly add up to a viable living,- too much of the '60s, not enough '80s, you may say. 

    I also engaged in various other somewhat fruitless activities, such as standing for the Christian Solidarity Party in a general election, and writing a novel that nobody wanted to publish. (I did get some copies of 'Wavedancing' printed myself, and will be giving them away at my forthcoming talk on Wednesday 15th January at 7.30pm in the Sweeney Library, Kilkee.)

    We ended up selling the lovely house we had built beside the sea near the castle, but we bought a cottage in a magical spot overlooking Horsehoe Bay on Sherkin Island in West Cork, where we were able to keep 'Anna M' moored in front of the house, doing sailing trips and B&B. We lived there very happily for 16 years, many of them with no car, and of course eventually found we were in a great place to live through a pandemic. Luckily we were on the pension trip by then,- 'a whole new journey', said the lady in the social welfare office; 'Ay,' says I, 'with a one-way ticket!'  Then this house in Rahona near Carrigaholt, between two sons and their families, came on the market, and it was too good not to take. I have always been advocating living in clachans, and here at last we are doing so!

    I don't fancy myself as a politician, nor hardly as a writer, but the preoccupation has stayed with me all my adult life of pondering how the presence of God, and catholic Christian culture, might be better mediated in our present world. Frankly I underestimated the resilience of the present cultural set-up, with its chronic individualism, consumerism and materialism, but now as I run more or less the last lap of my life, I am hoping that the world may have become more receptive to my way of thinking, and I had better make another effort!

    I have to confess myself at this stage somewhat encouraged by my bizarre but extraordinary contemporary, Donald Trump. Having poured scorn on him as 'the Ducky', I have come to hope that he may succeed in turning some kind of a corner for America, and also for the rest of us, in Europe and the world as a whole. It is very encouraging that he seems to have given up the hankering to try to do so as a one man band, which would indeed set him on a Putinesque path, but also that, with his coterie of lapsed Democrats, he has practically collapsed the now tedious and irrelevent left/ right wing political party thing. Still,  this new beginning cannot be achieved by a handful of men and women any more than by just one man, so his famous 'fight, fight, fight' struck a new and welcome note for myself and I hope many others.

    So what is this corner to be turned? I would rather not over-dramatise, but I did come to Ireland in 1973 somewhat in the spirit of a defeated revolutionary. In the late sixties, I had been at Cambridge University at the height of that cultural and spiritual upheaval that was popularly trivialised into 'flower power' and 'the sexual revolution'. For a time, it had held out hope of collapsing the barriers to human freedom and autonomy, of liberating great potential from the storehouse of our collective subconscious, until it collapsed into the rather miserable seventies, to be followed by the even worse eighties. Mamon ruled, get back to 'reality' and making money!

    Well, what goes round comes round, but now indeed we find ourselves peering into the abyss of war and societal collapse. Making money is only working for an ever-decreasing minority. The inadequacy, not to say impotence or incompetence of governments everywhere is being revealed more and more starkly. At which point, you may be asking what has all this got to do with dolphin-watching under sail?

    For a start, one of the basic tenets of our famous flower power was that whatever one does, let it be fun, but there are other considerations,- for example, instead of getting bogged down on a left wing which claimed to take its stand on social responsibility, or a right wing that champions the individual, we have to find out how to harmonize them both. Dolphins and whales seem pretty good at doing so. They seem to be highly socialized,

even in the case of some whales when they are many miles apart, but also they seem to be the epitome of autonomy. Add to this another theme, that of 'getting back to Nature', or let us say in harmony with Her, and you have enough to be going on with!

   


As for the sailing bit, there is a huge difference between just going places under power as one wills- as a consumer of thrills- and subjecting oneself to Nature's whims, working with the wind and currents, and humbly seeking relationship with nature, and those creatures at the head of the natural pyramid. It is in this spirit that I champion the transition from diesel engine to electric drive, especially when one uses the sails to generate the power for it. Not that there aren't plenty of other reasons which I could expatiate on, and indeed have done in previous blogs. 

    Meanwhile it is a very serious proposition to make a hub for developing and implementing this transition here in the Shannon estuary. I'm all for making jobs and for sound industrial development, and most surely developing our own power supplies is fundamental, but vigilant environmental sensitivity must be in there too, so as to avoid disasters such as that at Aughinish, where they are still busy making alumina for Russia,- a good example of environmental vandalism going hand in hand with health damage and injustice too, as well as hypocrisy!

    The way things are shaping now, we will have a Gannetsway Marine Services Ltd to

Our onions

develop and fit electric drives, and a Gannetsway Sailing Association to administer trips in the 'Anna M' and cooperate with the Marine Services. We might take note of the way the Kerry Group is structured,- the cooperative which it came from is still in there, its members having shares and representation on the Board. Brittany Ferries, initiated and as far as I know still run by a farmers' cooperative, is another inspirational company for me. They have come a long way from the Breton farmers who took their onions over to England on fishing boats after WW2, and whom I recall going round the streets selling them hanging in strings over the handlebars of their bicycles,- I'm still inspired by them!

    

     

    

The Call of the Sea

The Fishing Beach at Hastings, Sussex, 1920s?.

As a young lad, I lived in the old town of Hastings, in Sussex, England, with a fine view of the beach where the clinker-built wooden fishing boats hauled out, with their beautifully crafted elliptic sterns, specially designed to give buoyancy when they were pushed backwards into the sea. The beach had a bit of shelter from the prevailing south-west wind blowing up-Channel, in the form of a broken-down harbour arm,- it was straightforward enough to launch and recover the boats when the tide reached the steep shingle part of it, but not easy if it was only on the lower, flat, sandy part. Although the close-knit fishing community tended to keep to themselves, I was welcome enough to take an interest when they were landing and gutting fish, or mending their nets, or indeed making whole trawl-nets, as some old guys would spend long hours doing.

There was big excitement when the boom of maroons summoned the crew for a launch of the lifeboat, and not just the crew, but anyone who was free to help with the launch, because all available manpower was needed to help haul the boat across the beach, by means of long, thick ropes attached on either side. She slid on greased railway sleepers across the flat in front of her shed, was poised at the top of the steep part with sleepers laid in front of her, and with engine running, props turning and crew attached in their positions, was heaved with a mighty ‘all together, heave’ into the surf, and so hopefully through it.

Only on one occasion, the tide was too low and she didn’t make it; and what’s more, we could see the broken-down casualty dragging her anchor towards the rocks half a mile away. The lifeboat broached in the breakers, and the men were reduced to heaving and shoving up to their necks in the water. Some of them rushed off and launched a fishing-boat, which fortunately succeeded in effecting the rescue, just in time. I was about ten at the time, and my first account of this story was one of my very first bits of writing, and is somewhere in the annals of the ‘Worth Diary’.

Looking back today, it clearly belongs to a bygone era. There are not the same tight-knit communities, there are no maroons, no people rushing to the beach, no heaving on ropes, and most importantly, none of that spontaneous action based on clear perception of the situation  and listening to those voices who spoke with the authority that comes from being recognised as knowing what one is talking about. The ropes and the manpower have long been replaced by an elaborate tractor and trailer set-up, that is able to go into the surf, but costing a great deal of money, and that's not to mention helicopters. 'The public' is simply asked to keep out of the way, and preferably put some cash into the collection box. We generally have to turn to sport for the thrill of being caught up in communal effort, and it really isn't the same as real action.

At least the R.N.L.I. is a charity depending on voluntary contributions and community effort. In Ireland even the local rescue outfits have devolved into dependence on the Government, although the same Government has failed to get its act together with regard to the sea, in very many ways. I’m not going to try cataloguing these failures now, but anyone who is familiar with any aspect of the marine scene here will know what I am talking about. It is fragmented into little fiefdoms run mostly by civil servants with little knowledge of the sea, and even less real experience of it. I do not wish to decry the benefits of technology, nor do I necessarily decry the opening-up of old communities,- but some vital elements of them are in danger of disappearing into the past, so we need to figure out how to give them a new lease of life.

In some Irish coastal communities, notably in my experience in Donegal, there is a visceral interest in the sea, but all too often it is left to a very small minority. The cultural and political reasons for this are no doubt complex and diverse; suffice to say that the situation here contrasts starkly with that, for instance, in Brittany and the north of Spain. What is for sure is that it is high time we changed it. Would not many of us prefer an economy which is less dependent on big tech and pharma, and more geared to our marine resources? But what are the deep-seated cultural issues that need to be addressed for us to do so?

Sitting here in Co.Clare on a winter’s morning of driving wind and rain, it is not hard to conclude that, for one thing, the climate is against it. However here am I, just back from a fortnight of pleasant weather in Nazaré, Portugal, working on the Anna M. It really isn’t a big deal getting back and forth, especially in winter, provided one is not unlucky with the weather. Bilbao to Rosslare on Brittany Ferries’ Galicia, car and cabin, cost €273, and of course flying is a lot cheaper. Instead of getting excited and resentful of all the fish they get from Irish waters, which won’t get us anywhere, it is more fruitful to concentrate on building community with our Atlantic neighbours. It is interesting to note Irish skippers buying into the French industry,- boats, quota and all. It may be good for the conflicts concerning nationality to become irrelevent, but it will still be necessary to stand up for local communities and artisanal fisheries.

No doubt they have their struggles with remote power structures on the Continent too. Until very recently, it seemed we were all irrevocably stuck with shadowy powers who were able to manipulate our information and to make puppets of our local politicians, judging above all by the way they handled covid; however, perhaps they over-reached there, and so now at last there may be a change in direction.  It is represented primarily, and amazingly, by the Trumpistas,- though one might ask, what’s to stop them becoming perhaps just more overtly over-bearing? It has been strange and very interesting to watch how the ‘right wing’ in America has transmogrified into the more convincing representative of ‘the people’, while the ‘left’ has largely become the plaything of an obscure power elite. 

In the present crisis in France, is it possible that ‘the left’ and ‘the right’ will manage to coalesce into a coherent popular movement? It would be very sweet, in France of all places, to see that sterile old narrative, beloved of academics and journalists, which opposes ‘progress’ and ‘tradition’, ‘left’ and ‘right’, collapse so dramatically! Not that achieving the right blend of personal and social, and of local and universal responsibility isn’t always a problem and a challenge, as I suppose it will always be until the end of time. To my mind, 'globalists' need to be converted into 'catholics'. It is a problem that God alone can fully resolve,- and for myself, I cannot envisage any path to being fully myself, as an individual, and at the same time a fully paid-up member of humanity, but in the love of Jesus.

    Meanwhile, Anna M continues to progress towards action again next year. I intend to sail her home to the Shannon Estuary in the spring, electric drive or not. We shall fit something here if necessary. At least she is now wired, with lights, fridge, pumps, electronics all powered off three solar panels, thanks to a great fortnight’s work by John O’Mahony, who drove down with me and lived aboard,- and got interested in the electric drive idea. Exactly how it will all work out remains to be seen; this is a work in hand, - but I am calling a meeting, provisionally on Wednesday 15th January, in Kilkee and online, to see what we might make of the Gannetsway Sailing Association, to whose members it is intended to offer dolphin-watching under sail and electric drive in the Shannon estuary and beyond,- next summer.

Please send an email to gannetsway@gmail.com if you wish to be kept informed.

Thank you America.

 

Cloud-face over the Shannon Estuary.

Thank you America, for a really thrilling piece of political theatre (or maybe I should write ‘theater’, but that would be a bridge too far). I am in Ireland after all, where these days the golden rule is to say as little as possible that might upset the apple cart, and we keep our politics boring, impotent and largely decorously irrelevant. Whatever else Trump is or is not, he’s a great showman, and surely his turning of the soil will do some good! He’s not boring anyway, and maybe he will even liven things up here.

I hasten to add that I would not relish the prospect of all that American capital going home.  The pension might become very shabby. We are fortunate in that it affords Fiona and I the leisure necessary to  watch all those pod-casts, - Joe Rogan, Megan Kelly, Jordan Peterson and the rest. What fun it is to feel that we have a ring-side seat at all the drama! What I don’t understand is how busy people who have a family to rear find time to do it; still apparently many millions do so, even while working or travelling I suppose. One must also conclude that they do not waste time looking at newspapers or TV, and I cannot claim I’m sorry about that, even if I worry about putting too much power in the hands of a few billionaires, notably Elon Musk. It is certainly an issue to watch carefully. 

We have had a stern warning, in the way censorship prevailed during covid, and the desire on the part of so many governments, including the putative one of Kamala Harris, to ‘regulate’ the internet, but there is hope in the very nature of the new technology. ‘The Media is the Massage’, and it is a lot easier for anyone to participate in the new media, which has brought a level of intensity to the ‘noosphere’ that everyone who cares about the world has to participate in, and it won’t do to just write it off as ‘globalism’. But now that the owner of Starlink and X is in there with Trump, he may make censorship impossible, or put it on steroids. Too much depends on those men for my liking! Yet they are nothing without our support. To the degree to which everyone is free to participate, we may be hopeful - it’s that First Amendment thing again.

Personally I lost faith in the legacy media, if I ever had any, around 60 years ago, when I tried my hand at working for them. I had for instance  my little go at reporting how the barricades in Derry and Belfast were thrown up in pure terror at the B Specials, who had run amok, shooting up Nationalist areas from their Saracen armoured cars. A sub-editor only has to leave some things out, change other bits round, stick on a misleading headline, and the great British public remain as uninformed and cosy in their prejudice as ever! I met the bloke who produced that excellent little film ‘The War Game’, which simply but effectively tried to convey something of the reality of nuclear war. The BBC pulled it, under Government pressure. But the level of censorship in those days was tin-pot compared to that potentially exercised by Trump/Musk. 

Anyway I decided against spending my life working for that lot in London in my day, and am very glad that I did so, for it would have been horribly frustrating.  Had I taken to the kind of career that my father expected of me, the combination of Brexit and the covid affair would have been a very sorry culmination of it. But was there anything more to that cultural atrophy in London besides what might be expected from the demise of the British Empire, something which afflicted more than Great Britain? 

Such a possibility started to figure in my mind when at my then impressionable age we witnessed the assassination of President Kennedy. One cannot understand the impact it had unless one also understands how tall he stood for peace and justice. It took many years, however, for the realisation to dawn that ‘conspiracy theories’ about the deep state, the CIA etc were likely true, and that President Kennedy was maybe indeed assassinated because he had decided, for instance, to pull out of Vietnam and refused to invade Cuba. I must admit to being delighted that the Trumpistas won so convincingly if for no other reason than that I hope that after all these years, the truth will finally be laid before the world.

I followed Bobby Kennedy jnr into the Trumpista camp. Now I am looking forward to an even more  consequential act in the American political drama! Will ‘The Ducky’, as I like to call him, be willing and able to follow through with his chat, particularly about peace and dismantling censorship? At least the world has already taken one step back from the brink of WW3, but only one step! Will this brash man, who if the mantra ‘we are what we eat’ were true, is mainly hamburger and coca-cola, really be able to get us back to the place of relative peace that prevailed during his first chaotic term of office? Will he genuinely honour the partnership with Kennedy in regard to Big Pharma? 

Will he be true to his words, for instance in not paying attention to windy ideas that speak of winning wars?  Unfortunately, too many people are stuck in a mind-set inherited from WW2, which is about as far as their concept of good and evil gets. It may just have been viable to think in terms of winning wars then, but it is certainly not so today. Well, ‘Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereof’, and let’s concentrate on putting a stop to them. Let’s deal with the situation as it is today, dealing with real, flawed human beings. Let’s refrain from demonising them, even when they behave very badly, but concentrate first of all on getting the motes out of our own eyes, and then follow the show very critically!

If Trump lays bare the chicanery of the CIA, that might be a good way of setting about sorting out the Ukraine war. In the case of Israel, he will have to somehow get back to those Abraham Accords. If they had been pursued with vigour and determination, maybe this senseless war in Israel could have been avoided. In the event, there was  no other way that the Israelis could have been expected to respond to the vicious and depraved attack they suffered, as Hamas knew too well, while Biden just bleated about restraint and gave more weapons. If on the other hand Trump’s partnership with the Arabs were to prevail, then perhaps Israel and Iran could be induced to settle down. The present situation only strengthens the position of dodgier leaders there! 

When it comes to the domestic agenda, would not we all love, in Ireland as in America, to see less dependence on multi-national or even national corporate entities, and more localised production and responsibility? Is this a contradiction at the heart of Trumpism? Again, the USA is such a big, multi-ethnic and diverse confederation that maybe the renewal of nationalism there is OK. The nature of the beast will not allow it to turn excessively on itself. Imagine Elon Musk being told he could only operate there! As for silly old GB, the government had to turn round and hire an extra 80,000 civil servants in the wake of Brexit. Here in Ireland, at least most people understand that we need the EU to have any cost-efficient kind of vibrant, modern society, even while we also think that there is a mammoth task ahead to keep it in its proper place. 

What we do not need is the likes of the WHO and the WEF in on the act, though we do have to keep the Planet in mind, while keeping any global institutions answerable. The Catholic Church provides an excellent model in principle, solidarity and subsidiarity being the key words, though God knows we often fail in practice. Well. Fiona is working on the answerability bit for this institution,  while I’m working on concern for the Planet and reducing dependence on oil in my own little way. It’s better not to depend on high-falutin’ ideas handed down by academics, civil servants or even clerics, nor to give in to fear-mongering and the authoritarianism that thrives on it, but let it all be the one thing that authoritarians hate most,- fun! 

Thanks again, America, for the entertainment - your saving grace is indeed that First Amendment, and we at least hear you over here in Ireland. The drama will run and run,- good job one can follow it anywhere. I’m off to Portugal again next week, for another session on the Anna M before Christmas - general election or no general election! Been there, done that, standing for the Christian Solidarity Party back in the ‘90s. Yet if the Trumpistas really shake things up here, by for instance letting Bobby Kennedy loose on the covid vaccines, one wouldn’t know what might happen,- it’s a good job I’m too old to be seriously interested in politics again, but I do enjoy them when the real issues are in contention!

Whose For Old Men's Dreams?

The waves wash in, a storm out to sea. How do the rocks survive at all? .... There's a disturbed and oppressive world out there that one would rather not think too much about, but which nonetheless tugs at everyone's nerves and saps our energy.... Myself straining to jump through the last hoops for getting the old boat out next year, and wondering whether we shall be even more lashed by world events totally beyond our control than we are already, and where the Nazaré Project will stand then! But how does one dare to hold out any hope at all when so many people are suffering so much?

    Probably most of us know people, old and too frequently young as well, who one way or another are cracking up under such strains. On the personal level as well as the macro, it seems like a race against time, to see if we can get to some sort of sanity and viability before the whole situation is lost; and that's rather the way it is with the Anna M. 

    Where is that crucial tipping point, between where one can reasonably expect to turn something round, even an old car, and where one just has to write it off? Perhaps this is the crucial human dilemma, and one just has to hope that one knows how to respond and decides correctly when each crisis comes up! We all like to think we are rational, but how inadequate our reason is! And as for when we reach that final crisis which we all have to confront sooner or later.... But then perhaps we don't have to, and they are right who spend the best part of their time trying to ignore and avoid ghastly reality!

    Still, it is by confronting all these crises that we grow, and there is no other way. For example, in the midst of his  many crises, it is interesting to see how Donald Trump has grown. He was all over the place in his first term as President, about covid and the vaccines for instance. One moment he was calling the pandemic a hoax, and the next he was boasting about how promptly he rolled the vaccines out, though one had the impression he was only playing politics in the latter case. Now he seems to have acquired some ballast, especially since Bobby Kennedy signed up to his campaign. His courage, resilience and determination have also been impressive. I could not have imagined, four years ago, that I would now be hoping for his election.

    President Biden lost me in the moment he stood up and said 'I promise you, the vaccines are safe and effective'! And that's something the Dems are not going to retract, either, no matter what evidence emerges to the contrary. They have revealed themselves as fully paid up members of the global corporate mafia. On the other hand, the Trump clinched matters for me with his answer to a smart MSM interviewer who asked - 'Do you want Ukraine to win the war?' - 'I don't think in terms of winning wars. I just want to stop people dying!' 

    'Foolish old man with his simplistic populism!' the 'sophisticated' types will say, and the possibly more honest of them may go on to say 'Too bad about those people dying, it's the National Interest that counts etc. Forget about morality! The only reality is Power. It's them or us. Too many people on the planet anyway....' In both the cases of the war and the vaccines, this is sadly the logic of the Dems, with Harris as a decorative mannequin to veil the reality with progressive, 'philanthropic' ideas. Pity she wouldn't go away and read 'War and Peace' and a few other great Russian books, but she seems to be proud of her ignorance of Europe and our literature. Meanwhile the authoritarianism and disdain for freedom of speech of 'the Left' stands revealed in all its horror! 

    So, the race is on. Either way, the chances are, for the time being, that we shall shamble on through our crises, hopefully even our failures will contribute to a final victory. Things will get more and more messy, until and unless we manage to order our lives and our societies with new priorities and ways of working that do not depend on the 'Powers', the big 'industrial complexes', those that would enslave us as isolated minions to Big State and consumerism.

     Trump may be able to turn things round somewhat, Harris definitely won't; meanwhile they keep us entertained with a good morality play, but let's remember that it's in our own lives that we can really make a difference! The worse the level of threat, the more urgent it becomes for us to build resilience and autonomy. The greater the looming horror, the tighter we must stick to bright dreams. As we see death coming nearer, the more we must polish up our hope; and for all its elusive nature, we may find that hope does burn brighter with age! At all events, let us keep our heads up, and cherish beautiful little things!

    So anyway, the Anna M  is becoming pleasant to live in again, the carpentry is pretty well finished, and I'm hoping Alec will have the electric motor running by Christmas and she will be in commission again next year. We have clarified the structure of the whole Nazaré Project, which is based on these three legs:-

    a) Aston, Lammas Research and Development (ALRD) is the investment path for the commercialisation of the prototype. As of now it is an aspirational company to be registered in Ireland, though funds and time have already been invested by Alec Lammas to the value of €50,000 (via NazaréNautica) and Joe Aston to the value of €5,000 (not counting approx €65,000 in Anna M - see below).

b) Alec’s company, NazaréNautica, provides the workshop and engineering services in Nazaré, Portugal, which are currently producing the prototype.

c) The 13.6m schooner Anna M has been completely renovated and prepared for the installation of the prototype. She will be used as a test-bed and demonstration vessel, while sailing the West
coast of Europe showing the motor off and selling it. It is intended to refine the concept to the point where newbuilds will incorporate it, for both leisure and commercial fishing purposes, and eventually to transfer ownership of Anna M to a Gannetsway Sailing Association (GSA). 

If you are interested in 'getting in on the ground floor' with an investment, please contact <gannetsway@gmail.com>

    

    

Base Communities of the Gannetsway?

I will be heading back to Nazaré shortly in the old Citroen, for yet another session getting the Anna M ready for sea. The big uncertainty remains as to when we will manage to get the electric motor finished and installed. As has been increasingly the case, I am under pressure  to convince my wife (and my own conscience) that the expense of money and time will not be in vain. Probably the best argument for Fiona is that at least it helps to keep the old man active, engaged and generally compos mentis,- but frankly that does not satisfy me. The hype about that kind of life-style concern may not be without merit, but I need better motivation than that. So why should an old boy like me put himself through all sorts of contortions, physical, financial and the rest, when he could just stay parked some place in a deckchair? 

    Human motivation is a funny, fascinating business, and we do well to constantly question our own. We may agree with Viktor Frankl that mental health depends on our sense of meaning. A quick Google search confirms that for him, 'meaning comes from three possible sources: purposeful work, love, and courage in the face of difficulty'. That still leaves us with plenty of queries, for instance what might constitute 'purposeful' work and what happens when it appears to clash with 'love'? Maybe I should get around to re-reading Frankl, but I'm thinking that in the end, everyone has to answer such questions for himself. 

    A little voice will say in this case that the only sure thing about an old wooden sailing boat is that she will end up at the bottom of the sea or rotting in the mud. Well, at least the Anna M now has a good chance of outlasting myself, by quite a few years. I hope to eventually pass on the ownership to the long-cogitated Gannetsway Sailing Association, if ever it becomes practically and financially possible, combining opportunities for members to sail, to engage with whales, dolphins and other sea-life, as well as developing and demonstrating the concept of an autonomous boat.

    I have some big ideas in connection with this concept. Most people have at the back of their minds these day that we urgently require more harmonious relationships with nature and with each other,- a more intense and responsible engagement with other people - less consumerism and more activity. Our economies as well as our societies need to be rebuilt from the bottom up, with much more localism all over the globe, perhaps with a beautiful mosaic floor such as the Romans loved, complete with dolphins in there, but I have in mind a mosaic of communities! 

    The Roman bit is important to me, and not just because it happens to be roughly my part of the world, culturally and spiritually speaking.  For all its faults and despite the fact that it crucified Jesus, the Roman Empire provided the physical and political basis for the eventual development of His Church, and indeed Western civilisation. If we are going to avoid the Brave New World of two dystopian, totalitarian blocs everlastingly at war with each other, an alternative has to emerge here in Western Europe, the nations of which are wonderfully complementary.  There are so many lessons to be learned from the past! The psychic and spiritual splits are there to challenge us and to be overcome. Maybe the tension between the northern and southern cultures is a pretty good place to start,- and imagine the effect it could have in America!

    When it comes down to politics and the forthcoming American presidential election, since I have expressed support for Bobby Kennedy jnr, I must say I think he is right to throw his support behind 'the Ducky', as I used to disdainfully refer to President Trump. I still have reservations about him, for instance about his attitude to the EU and Brexit, but I think he has grown in stature and understanding of his basic mission, which is to oppose that descent into dystopia which is sponsored by 'the Blob' and sadly by the modern Democratic party, as was revealed so clearly in the pandemic, with the censorship and suppression of dissent that President Biden presided over. Combined with his toughness and basic if sometimes crude straightforwardness, it seems that Trump and Kennedy really do hold out the possibility of a new start. A very short interview clinched it for me:- a smart msm lady asked Trump, 'Did he want the Ukrainians to win their war?'  He replied 'I don't think in terms of winning wars. I just want to stop the dying!' 

    How practical this is, without pushing the Ukrainians under a bus, I hope we shall soon find out. Trump & Co will probably get it into their heads eventually that we need European solidarity as never before. For all the talk of 'draining the swamp' in Washington, presumably they would not want to do away with the federal Government? In Europe we need federal institutions too. In Britain the Government had to employ an extra 80,000 or so civil servants to cope with Brexit. That doesn't sound like down-sizing the State! But we don't need to get rid of the institutions which have been built up painfully with time, just to make them transparent and truly answerable to their members and electorates. This is not something that any president or political party will be able to bring about of themselves, though they may be able to facilitate it. How about a massive campaign to develop base communities? With solidarity we must have subsidiarity.

    We each have to make a start by bringing responsibility into our own lives, but sometimes the whole paraphanalia of the political and media establishment seems structured to prevent us from doing so. We might understand it as 'saving our souls', and yet it is still meaningful to speak of, for example, 'saving the soul of Europe'. A good place to start may be in demolishing the left wing/right wing narrative, which to my mind mainly serves to divide and disempower people, while diverting our attention from the issues where we really could make a difference. Just imagine how the establishment would hate left and right wing 'populism' to combine! If one must think in dialectic terms, perhaps to be or not to be might suffice? 

    Sailing boats, especially wooden ones, have souls too. Their shape is determined by the elements and the struggle of men with them, as well as by the material of which they are made. I can think of no more exemplary human accomplishment than sailing the sea, nor better combination of skill and endurance, of utility and aesthetics, of immediate practicality and dreams, nor of any better school in all the things that make life really worth living! In other words, sailing the sea is a great training for the anti-zombies so urgently required if we are to escape totalitarianism, and it emphatically should not be left to the mega-rich to play with in their spare time. Not that nature is not capable of looking after herself, and for instance taking out the odd tycoon who thinks he has her taped! Meanwhile, let's keep trying for alternative means to access the great mysteries of the sea.