Good-place, No-place, My Place or Yours? : Herland

The first Utopia was written by Sir Thomas More in 1516, the name coined from the Greek eu-topos, meaning ‘a good place’ – or perhaps ou-topos meaning ‘no place’. As this inherently conflicted word moved beyond the original text into common parlance describing any perfect society, we owe a debt to More’s original pun – for can there ever be such a thing? Over at the feminist classics reading project, April’s read is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist utopian novel Herland, first published in 1915.

As with all utopian literature, plot-wise the reader is in no fear of passing out from excitement – lengthy descriptions of societal structures are key to the entire purpose of Herland. In a nutshell, three young male Americans, fresh from a tipoff from a “savage” on a previous exploration, set off in a “flying machine” to discover a fabled country comprised only of women. Terry is bulging of bicep and majestic of mustache and very much a ‘man’s man’, which then as now is a nice way of saying ‘arrogant lout’. Jeff, bless ‘im, is a southern gentleman who places the fairer sex on a pedestal (to his credit, not to look up their skirts), while our narrator, Van, is a sociologist more than a little blinded to how partial his “scientific” thinking can be. Upon arriving in Herland, they soon encounter the ‘natives’, whom they find to be dignified, rational and alarmingly athletic. Our intrepid trio are taken prisoner in the nicest way possible (“…we were borne inside, struggling manfully, but held secure most womanfully in spite of our best endeavours”) and are taught the native language while simultaneously teaching their appointed guides English. It transpires that all the men of Herland were wiped out in a catastrophe some 2000 years ago. Shortly after this, one young woman discovered she could reproduce by parthenogenesis and the current population of some three million women are all descended from her. The Herlanders have no history of or interest in sexual intercourse with the men, yet motherhood is the cornerstone of the Herland culture, and children treasured. Their society is without classes or competitiveness, vanity, illness, war, greed or crime.

Griffeen Youth Centre festival fit with MegaFest relaunch

On March 4^th, MegaFest ’11 brought all the fun of a festival, but none of the mud, to Griffeen Youth Centre as the first event of the year for newly reopened Mega-bites Youth Café. The line-up included local bands and rap artists MFM, Humdrum Flounder, and Triple Input, all of whom received a rapturous welcome. Rapper Ghost’s set also included special guests Skittles, Barry Duff and Sarah Jane Doyle, while headline act The Riptide Movement took to the stage the night before the launch of their new single and their sold-out gig in Dublin’s Academy. Adding festival food, juggling and face-painting into the mix made MegaFest ’11 a relaunch to be reckoned with, and a sign that the youth committee are full of fresh ideas for the year ahead.

Mega-bites Youth Café is the first youth café in Lucan, created by young people for young people opening on Friday nights from 8-11pm providing a supervised, alcohol-free, drug-free, safe environment. The most frequented of Lucan Youth Service’s programmes, Mega-bites has developed from a concept to an established and innovative community resource, and has been recognised as a model for new youth cafés. Its relaunch was made possible by the hard work of the small staff of LYS, the enthusiasm and dedication of the adult volunteers essential to the running of the café, and the ongoing support shown by the Lucan community for a vital resource.

MegaFest ’11 was not the only launch in Griffeen Youth Centre this month, as the programmes and activities for young people aged from 10-21years were unveiled, with opportunities for young people and adults alike. Three ‘drop-ins’ for various age groups weekly; football, table-tennis, hiking, kayaking and cliff-jumping and more; music, art, dance and drama groups as well as the opportunity to take part in creative technology projects and learn sound and lighting production are just a selection of the activities on offer. Adult support, training and education are also available in the youth centre – including Summer Project Training beginning on March 28^th. Aimed at those interested in running activities over the summer months, training in kiln pottery making, beading and face-painting etc will be provided. This training leads into the Griffeen Summer Project, entering its fourth year, which Lucan Youth Service will run in Griffeen Youth Centre for six weeks from July 4^th.

If you would like to volunteer with Mega-bites Youth Café , or find out more about the range of youth programmes and training opportunities currently on offer at Griffeen Youth Centre please contact Lucan Youth Service on 01-6217640, or by email lucanyouthservice@gmail.com

Cover story of the March 2011 edition of Lucan Informer

I know why the caged bird sings – A Doll’s House

In the period before writing A Doll’s House Henrik Ibsen expressed his concern over “these women of the modern age, mistreated as daughters, as sisters, as wives, not educated in accordance with their talents, debarred from following their real mission, deprived of their inheritance, embittered in mind – these are the ones who supply the mothers for the next generation. What will result from this?” The introduction to my version of the play (Oxford World’s Classics) also says that he believed that men and women were different creatures, with completely different consciences, and “he pointed to the inevitable confusion over matters of right and wrong that inescapably follows when a woman is judged by man’s law, and when in consequence her natural instincts are brought into conflict with the notions of authority she has grown up with”. The play which emerged from his musings on the subject provoked heated sociological debates and ascribed didactic qualities to Ibsen as a playwright. A Doll’s House follows Nora and Torvald Helmer as they prepare for Christmas, with the reappearance of an old acquaintance (Mrs Linde) and Nora’s secret debt to Mr. Krogstad due to an illicit loan starting a quick chain of events that see Nora walking out on her family in the final scene. Thoughts about Nora’s departure from her doll’s house became the pivot around which 1890’s conversation revolved – so much so that dinner invitations often requested that the play was not mentioned. Leaving aside that the ‘shocking’ ending of the play is simply not so shocking to the modern audience, reading the play I was struck by how many clues to this ‘shock’ ending were lying around the stage even in Act 1. Granted, Ibsen did use melodramatic form and present what appears to be a perfect couple in Act 1, both of which work to subvert the naturalistic element of his drama; however the road to what is to come is signposted clearly in the marked dichotomy evolved between the couples words and their actions. I first read A Doll’s House as a teenager, and to be honest it made little impression on me, although I remember being shocked at how shocking the play was deemed to be on first performance. What a difference a decade makes – after rereading as part of A Year of Feminist Classics I can see the performative nature of gender roles and a dichotomy between words in actions shining through from the very beginning of the action.

Of the most fundamental importance to A Doll’s House are the onstage movements of the characters. In the body language of the Helmers we see the truth of their marriage played out while the Helmers pay lip service to happy families. The pathetically cutsie first interplay between the couple shows the male breadwinner, pen in hand, lecturing his picture perfect wife on the virtues of household economy. While the doll plays the role of a “little bird” with her speeches, the audience can see the first earmarks of the farcical element of her role. Nora does not want to hear what Torvald has to say (doubtless she has heard it all before anyway) and cuts off his speech by [putting her hand over his mouth]. Only a few moments later Nora stealthily manipulates Torvald into letting her have her way by use of sexual innuendo [toying with his coat buttons, and without looking at him]. The audience see before them a couple who have an entire conversation without ever actually talking to each other – Nora is self-consciously playing the role of ‘wife Torwald wants’, while hubby dearest is pleased to assert dominance and bestow favours on a child/bird/pet/doll but certainly not with a sentient woman! Within moments of first encountering Nora, we see how fundamental deception is to her performance as wife, as the stage directions tell us [she walks stealthily across] and within moments she is glibly lying to her husband. As Torvald refers to Nora as “his precious little singing bird”, it is hard not to to think of Wollstencraft’s gilded cage and Olive Schreiner’s question “if the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar, and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?”

Not a Rat’s Chance in Hell’s Challenge

Despite the mounting blog backlog, I couldn’t resist signing up to a challenge I came across recently at Bookaroundthecorner. A big selling point is the lack of a timeframe, but even more so, this was the first unique challenge I have come across in ages. Rather than a ‘who’s who’ of the big ‘important’ reads, these lists are bound to be personal and interesting – head over to creator and host Sarah’s page for more details! The clue is in the name really – this is about pushing you out of your comfort zone. Ten unique books, one in each category – these are my initial thoughts but they may change as the challenge unfolds…

1. A book that has been previously abandoned.

As a general rule, I am not an abandoner – I have struggled to the end of books I have loathed in a bizarre battle of wills with inanimate objects, in the hope that somehow the ending will make good on the majority being insufferable (so rarely the case!). I am only recently starting to give in to the temptation to abandon, and have never done so with the level of relish that I physically flung Eat, Pray, Love across my bedroom after having reached self-absorption breaking point (me, me, me, lovely me, poor me, poor lovely me, pizza, me, Italian lessons, me, poor me, yoga, me…). Truly there has never been such a First World ode to odious self as that pile of tosh. I couldn’t begin to gather the strength to return to Elizabeth’s navel to find out what happens next, so I’m left to decide between selecting On Beauty by Zadie Smith (just didn’t warm to it) and Confessions of an Eco-Sinner by Fred Pearce (which I started, loaned to someone who really wanted it and then shelved when it was returned). Leaning strongly towards the latter.

2. A re-read. Didn’t quite get it/thought there was more/made promise to self to re-read? Time to make good.

The first thing I thought of was a book I didn’t know if I could even find! Treasured as only the forbidden can be, I was obsessed with my elder siblings Beaver Book of Horror, the cover of which alone struck terror into my four year old self. I remember it as ceaselessly thrilling, with condensed versions of classic horror stories and a grisly ‘true horrors’ section describing Vlad the Impaler and Sawney Bean etc in lurid detail. I hope grown-up me is still impressed and ghoulishly fascinated!

3. A book that has sat on the shelf, like, forever. (Decades.)

I don’t really have many books that I haven’t read, and certainly none that have been languishing on a shelf for decades (but oh for a library space so big that could happen!). The closest I can get to fulfilling this is to go to the relatively recent (but sadly growing) ‘to read’ shelf and pick the one there longest, which is An Intimate History of Humanity by Theodore Zeldin. I have had this for over a year, but the reason I haven’t read it yet is the same reason I am hesitant to commit to reading it now – there’s boobies on the cover, and I read a lot on the train. Given the shocking lack of frequent trains on my line, I meet the same people in the same carriages day-in, day-out, and I have only just completely gotten rid of the guy who used to sit beside me, fall asleep and try to spoon me…Not sure this sends out the right message! So I will either try to read this at home, or skip to the next veteran of the to-read shelf The Other Queen by Philippa Gregory (but she is always such a rollicking easy read it feels a bit of a cheat to include her in a challenge).

4. A book that paralyses one with dread.

Easy Peasey – The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson (or ‘odious turdman’, or ‘tragic waste of good oxygen’, or ‘ that chest-wigged cock-jockey’ as he will always be to me). I was going to put this under #9, with the genre as ‘dick-lit’, but here is more apt as I can’t imagine anything more appalling than committing valuable time of my life on his pseudo-alpha-male, arrogant word vomit. I will feel the fear and do it anyway – only by supporting my local library and not by lining his overstuffed coffers, as sadly his ill-fitting-denim fund doesn’t seem to have run out yet. The dinosaur.

5. Investigate a canonical writer hitherto most shamefully overlooked.

I have never read anything by Flann O’Brien and there really is no excuse for it as an Irish fan of Beckett – I just never got around to it. A bit like not visiting somewhere close to you thinking “oh I could go anytime I want” and so somehow never going, I suppose.

6. Seek out a book by an author who has earned ostracism by being so good that any further novel could surely never measure up…?

I am a bit of a fanboy really, and tend to read everything I can find by someone if I love the first thing I read by them – Rupert Thomson and Glen Duncan for instance. After years of avoiding Terry Pratchett because so many people I loathed/were creeped out by read him, my loverly friend Margaret convinced me to read Reaper Man when we first met living together in Cork– and I loved it so much I read every Discworld novel then written in the next year… So the only one I can think of for this is Lionel Shriver, as I absolutely adored We Need to Talk about Kevin but I haven’t yet got round to reading anything else by her.

7. And the opposite… That author who was supposed to be really good, but didn’t go down too well? Give him/her another go!

I don’t know if anyone has ever claimed he was really good, but certainly the huge popularity of Frank McCourt baffles me beyond my powers of description. Angela’s Ashes is one of the worse things I have ever read. I am no fan of Salman Rushdie, and Jonathan Franzen seems staggeringly overrated to me. Since I could have included it under #1 here, I will give The Corrections another go.

8. Take a chance. Read a book which you would rather not. For instance when the OH says ‘you’ll really like this’ and you’re thinking ‘no, I really won’t…’

I really, really, really, really don’t want to read any of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, for many reasons – chief among them the fact Bella sounds to me like a wimpy whingey waste of space that teenage girls really shouldn’t aspire towards being, and the fact that every time I see awards ceremonies featuring the smug gormless head of R-Patz or the mumbling ill-postured grump-festing of Kristen Stewart I have an overwhelming desire to punch them both in the face. Yet my friend Kathryn insists I would love them if I tried them, so I will. Although I may be wishing to read the words “And then Buffy staked Edward. The End” the entire time.

9. A book from an unfamiliar genre

I studiously avoid ‘misery lit’ – I just don’t understand the appeal at all. Biographies can include truly harrowing stories of abuse but not fall into this category (such as Bridge Across my Sorrows by the extraordinary Christina Noble). However, once you have titles such as Ma, He Sold me For a Few Cigarettes on bestseller lists, I can’t help feeling that all of this wallowing in misery lit is both devaluing real abuse and coming dangerously close to misery porn. Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest and David Pelzer’s A Child Called ‘It’ have both been ‘credited’ with starting this publishing phenomenon, so I will probably attempt whichever one is free in the library the day I am brave enough to try this one.

10. Ask a friend (preferably a person of impeccable taste, and definitely not someone who might have an axe to grind) to choose a book that you will, in their opinion, like. (This does not mean ask a dozen people until you get the right answer!)

I hadn’t gotten an answer from the friend I had asked about this yet when my colleague Alice met me on the stairs in work the other day and spontaneously recommended The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which she had just finished reading and loaned to me that day. Alice is both a person of impeccable taste and almost supernaturally lovely, so I am looking forward to this – although if the original friend gets back with a recommendation I may change this selection…

Little Miss Giles and the 1000 Novel Challenge…

Back in the day, I didn’t earn the Little Miss Giles nickname by watching tv (although I did do that too). Having a ‘real’ job instead of academia, getting a cat (that somehow became three cats), commuting sagas and living with a partner and hence losing my iron grip over sound and lighting levels in the bedroom are all factors in reading less than I used to, but I have noticed an enormous dip in volume of digested reads. I have become that creature I could never fathom – I have a build up of books I own and haven’t read! To be fair, the majority of these are Christmas gifts that I haven’t been able to read thanks to a near apocalyptic combination of swine flu/pneumonia/ear infection/trigeminal neuralgia/copious and freakishly strong amounts of medication to deal with same – but it still rankles. Literally watching television as I couldn’t hear what was going on, and too sick and drugged to read, I realised just how much I missed books. Having not really registered New Year at all thanks to the dreaded swine, I made a belated resolution to get back on the reading horse (if you will excuse me turns of phrase that don’t work on still being a pharmaceutical guinea-pig grounds).

In early 2009, The Guardian published ’1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list’ causing the stir that only labeling something ‘definitive’ can. The Guardian website was flooded with comments demanding to know why their preferred tomes were not included, querying the selection process, and questioning the gender imbalances in terms of author selection, and the ensuing debates, justifications, articles and trivia are well worth your time. Nonetheless, I was interested to find that as formerly voracious reader I was not able to cross as many as I would like off the list, and found precious few of my own most enjoyed on there. I did find the dreaded Pamela, which makes me worried about how much I am going to enjoy this challenge… Granted, it is not the list of the most loved novels, but still… Ian Fleming novels? More McEwan than Murakami? Six PG Wodehouses? Only one volume of the Gormenghast trilogy?

Gogarty calls for community response in Willsbrook

Dublin Mid West TD Paul Gogarty has become synonymous with the word ‘controversial’ in recent years – occasionally understandable in terms of his outspokenness, and yet the automatic association of the man to the adjective has often meant that only that which fits this association are mentioned. The Informer spoke to Paul Gogarty about his reaction to the latest controversy attached to his name, and his current areas of action in the Lucan area.

Although only in the recent past, the presence of 19-month Daisy Gogarty on her father’s lap at the press conference announcing that the Green Party were pulling out of the coalition government has already passed into infamy. Deputy Gogarty balks at the accusations that this was a PR stunt, stating simply that Daisy was brought with him as no alternative childcare arrangements could be made at short notice and “she was not interfering with [his] work”. A Liveline grilling as to his motivations followed, which Gogarty described as “horrific”, adding “to accuse me of trying to make political gain out of my child is scurrilous”. Despite media coverage being overwhelmingly negative, Gogarty’s blog was flooded with messages of support in the days after the Liveline show, he believes proving that “the cute hoors and bankers that messed up the country” are more worthy of scrutiny than his childcare arrangements.

In local terms, Gogarty plans to follow-on from the public meeting he hosted in September with the community and Dublin Bus about the then proposed changes to the bus services in the area. Teething problems with the changes are already all too apparent in the first week of the new timetable, with the 25x Superquinn stop already sorely missed, while the early starts in Foxborough estate causing both noise and fume pollution close to houses. Referencing Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘The Tipping Point’ Deputy Gogarty told the Informer that he will be focusing on “getting concerted action” on the high levels of anti-social behaviour in Willsbrook Park, where intimidation and even attacks requiring stitches have been reported. In early December, he intends to call door-to-door to survey the estates around the park to get a clearer picture of the community’s “experiences of the park which may have gone unreported to get a clear understanding of the depth of the problem”. Deputy Gogarty will then call for a “community response for a volunteer wardens scheme” ensuring that “the place is always kept observed” as the council are unable to provide salaried wardens.

Cover story of Dec 2010 edition of Lucan Informer

Fingal excellence in local government?

In light of the national economic picture, Fingal County Council has been newsworthy for very different reasons of late. The Council recently received four awards at the 2010 Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Awards, including the coveted ‘Local Authority of the Year’. The Council also won the ‘Partnership with Business’ award for www.fingalworks.ie, the ‘Innovation in Technology’ award for the Fingal Works Viewer, and the ‘Joint Local Authority Initiative’ award along with the Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown county council for the Development Plan Submissions Online. So far, so positive – although the huge number of unemployed, the CRAG group and their supporters, and the parents worried about the lack of school places in the region may not agree with the council being hailed as the paragon of excellence in local government.

Despite the accolades, Fingal County Council has also been the focus of questionable expenditure, perhaps most notably the decision to hire a photographer and have photos taken of the 24 newly elected or re-elected county councillors which were then printed and framed at a cost of €9,471. Socialist MEP Joe Higgins recently decried this as “an indefensible extravagance”, stating also that the councillors themselves “were entirely unwitting participants” in this expenditure.

Councillors are however willing and active participants in the meetings, conferences and seminars which, inclusive of telephone and internet expenses, cost €772,388 last year. The two largest expenditures locally were Fine Gael’s Cllr. Kieran Dennison and Fianna Fail’s Cllr. Mags Murray, who clocked up €9,406.41 expenses in a mere six months between them. Two local Socialist Party councillors – Ruth Coppinger and Matt Waine – along with Labour’s Patrick Nulty and Fianna Fail’s David McGuinness claimed no expenses during the same year. Speaking about the lack of expenses claimed, David McGuinness stated “it is important to remember that in these difficult times, local councillors need to lead by example and show leadership by operating in a way that does not burden taxpayers and provides local representation at a reasonable cost”. The full breakdown of expenses claimed by individual councillors is available in the ‘your local council’ section of the Fingal County Council website.

Cover story of Dec 2010 edition of Blanch Informer