THE HANDSTAND

AUGUST 2007

 

There is relentless confirmation from many professionals that politicians in Europe, the UK and USA are competetive, aggressive, cocks of the walk and that Party Politics are run by rigid strategies.

There is a massive ongoing debate in Ireland about a motorway destined to destroy one of the richest archaeological landscapes in Europe. The expanded route for the M3 motorway goes through the heart of the Gabhra Valley, between the hills of Tara and Skryne. Legend records that St. Patrick set ablaze his Pascal fire on the Hill of Slane, just as the pagan fire was to be lighted on Tara. Successive Irish kings were crowned there. History lies deep. In a week when Irish politicians come to America bearing bowls of shamrock, it’s interesting to ponder that they’re going back to dreams of concrete.Los Angeles Times

We have seen last week that Minister Gormley of the Green Party evidently ordered members to be absent from the Protest March and meeting for the Tara/Skyrne Valley where a road is being driven over thirty two un-investigated ancient sites all signed off by Minister Roche, of Fianna Fail's previous Government (they are in Government again now), as of no special interest or significance worth recording. We all remember that Charles Haughey despised his own country, its history and people - for if he could have dragged over the monastic sites on Skelligs as a Rock Garden to his island off Kerry he would have done.

And for cynicism I add - REMEMBER? Peat bogs are not the only places with naturally preservative conditions, though they may be the best known. "The very high levels of preservation at Wood Quay (Viking site in Central Dublin where the city's Civic offices are now located after its destruction) resulted from the fact that there is an iron pan layer which has built up on top of the subsoil which has inhibited drainage," says Eamonn Kelly. "So you have conditions which mirror those in bogs to a certain extent. In fact in the 19th century some of the writers of the period wrote that Dublin was built on a bog, but what they were commenting on were the preserved archaeological deposits of medieval and Viking Dublin, which they presumed to be from a bog."

Looking at a film this week,on the EU negotiations planning to deceive us all with a disguised Constitution, a Treaty which will creat a mini USA or USE, someone roared at the camera - What has to be recognised at the heel of the hunt is that the Treaty will not be voted on for CONTENT but for Political Strategy.

It is exhausting, I am weary of all this crime, war and death introduced to a new millenium with such a fanfare - we have all gone to sleep to dream our lives away, as have so many generations before us. We live in a society that teaches us we are solitary individuals with no religion, with an authoritarian social safety system, and no dream to realise. Those who make it through to "freedom" will have only money and complicity with this social system , that aids them to despise, as did Charles Haughey, their region, their nation and even their families. Infact the tactics of this system, as we see ,if studying those at the top, is now thoroughly undermined by a natural tribalism, or by a religious nationalism, that we now perceive as the main aid to really achieve the blessings of untrammeled finance.Who is on the track for such elevation? Not likely dear reader that you and I who may be among the thousands who have not trashed our family responsibilities, who have a surging interest in history as we read more intensively as we grow older, or who joined the social commitment of reality. We might take a surreptitious look at the "individuals" we must emulate who strove to communicate their instinctive understanding of the mistakes and errors of our society; individuals who may have been solitary in their habits but individuals with a great reserve of energy and affection for people of all walks of life.
What tunnel am I in, and is there a light at the end of it? Or shall I, indeed, have I, taken the rough road over a different terrain that enables me talk to 'everyman' but ensures I am not ruled , nor rule anyone, in my turn.

Recently discoveries of animal and human altruism that apparently lie at the root of all survival give us new understanding that those who rule by finance and violence are not developed individuals. They are parasites.
Parasites with a long tongue and a thick skin? WOW!

The only people in our ancient societies accepted and blessed with a long tongue where those considered to be poets.... Think of the wonderful stories they invented surrounding their human favourites with myths and symbols that shall never be forgotten and remain today enthralling stories. There is no possibility that the shattered remains of a Rothko painting ,that one-time fell on the floor of the Tate Gallery in London, or that Bacon's portraits will be extolled as the dedications and trophies of modern heroes. The entire mess of notions that contrived "concepts", enriching a cove like Damien Hirst who continues to thrive on the vulgarity of his spots, lines and trophies full of blood, will not long be accepted as artists within the next few years - the young have become disillusioned.









A sculpture, a shape; a painting, a colour ; they have ,with music and the poet's lines, suddenly been brought to our eyes by recent museum exhibitions largely rooted from the marvellous displays some years ago of material from Tutenkahmen's Egyptian tomb -





Bronze achieved by the lost wax method. African art at its apogee. art that was also found superb among the Yoruba in Nigeria where there is a celebrated temple that ,photographed from the air, resembles in its form the child in a womb( regret I cannot reproduce as Vista and CanonN65OU are incompatible);


money (copper);

Queen Idia


and also , in Latin America

Olmec Head 6ft,tall




ss

Figures in this scene have been restored to the original positions they had been found
in at La Venta, Tabasco.











We watch but who shall we Trust?J.Braddell, editor