Mitchell Scholar Blogs

I finally did it.

My (admittedly mild) goal of touching something older than the United States finally came in the form of an Irish castle that had very little in the way of description or formal marking. These enormous stone ruins were found in a nondescript field that had little aside from a couple lounging in the grass and some dogs playing at their feet. Nobody seemed to give much care about the castle.

A few yards away from them, I could feel my memory recording every detail of the time I stood in its midst. As I walked through the building’s skeleton, I thought of the conversations of gossip, jokes, or politics that must have taken place within these walls centuries ago. I was fascinated. As I left the room, I asked one of my companions about what this place was called.

“I’m not sure,” she replied. “It’s just some castle.”

A quick search on Google Maps revealed that it was, indeed, just “some castle.”  The casualness of it all and the utter lack of information surrounding the place didn’t leave my mind for the rest of the day. How could people live amongst such astounding history with the same sense of indifference one might take towards having multiple banks in your neighborhood? Perhaps it’s merely the natural byproduct of living in a world saturated by these relics.

Coming from Kansas, our greatest sources of excitement are typically focused on what’s new in town. Merely an ocean away, the most common tangible forms of “ancient history” in my life might come in the form of an old tractor or a disconnected payphone. That day, however, the idea of living in a country where there are pubs that have served pints since before the United States was even an idea, let alone a nation, finally sunk in. Although the varying levels of COVID-19 lockdowns have prevented much of us within the Mitchell cohort from exploring a lot of what Ireland has to offer, the lesson that the presence of these ancient buildings strewn across the rolling green hills remains: time simply trudges on.

Although it hardly needs to be said, 2020 has been an incredibly unique year to move to a new country. Watching the consequences of wide-scale political upheaval, record-setting hurricanes and wildfires, and the continuing devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic has hardly been easy to do away from friends and family. At times, the onslaught of this year has felt so unprecedented that it feels like maybe the world is, in fact, ending. But in the days and nights that I can explore my own corners of Ireland overwhelmed and amazed, standing in the aftermath of such great history has been a continually surprising source of immense comfort.

This land has persevered through its own set of plagues, revolutions, and conflicts. Even after a few turbulent weeks in Ireland, I’m confident that we can all do the same.

Like all international arrivals, upon arriving in Belfast, I had to complete a two week self isolation. With the exception of accidentally ordering four bags of sweet potatoes instead of four individual sweet potatoes, it went extremely uneventfully. 

So instead, here are fourteen eventful days from after my release:

Day 1: My first day out of self isolation — I had a coffee inside of a cafe and bought a king size duvet for my double bed. My memories of the day are dark at the corners from sun squinting. It was a rare sunny afternoon and I spent all of it wandering the various squares and picturesque entries — small alleys that open into internal courtyards. I think the memory is more overexposed from the influx of new people and scenery scrawled over months of the same four walls of my high school bedroom. 

Day 2: On the evening before classes start, a bunch of classmates organized a meeting at a nearby pub. It’s mostly empty, hard to tell if that was because it was a Monday or a pandemic. We therefore got the full attention of the MC during the drag performance that was occurring behind a plexiglass barrier.

Day 3. My first day of in person class is on Tuesday. Arriving for the first time feels not dissimilar to an airport. I follow the one way only signs to my classroom where I scan a contact tracing QR code with my phone and then buckle my seatbelt and sit down for six hours. Before lockdown suspended in person classes in mid October, we would sit at our computers six feet away from each other wearing masks and jackets (the room’s required ventilation flushes all the heat out of the open door.) Despite all the protective measures, I feel incredibly lucky to benefit from the classroom community during my art practice.

Day 4: I finally finished the sweet potatoes I had ordered in quarantine by making an enormous soup. 

Day 5: It is Yom Kippur. I take a bus to East Belfast thereby doubling its Jewish population. Ella and I watched a live streamed synagogue service from two twin beds in the spare bedroom of her airbnb. 

Day 6: I’m on a break from virtual class when I got a text from my friend to look at Cave Hill (one of those quintessentially Irish, rolling green ones) asking if I can see him from my window. He says he’s between the two radio towers and is jumping up and down and waving. I don’t think I can make him out, but I do tell him It looks like there’s a big cloud growing ominously behind him and the weather website says it’s about to start pouring. 

Day 7: I finally finished the enormous soup that I made to finish the sweet potatoes I had ordered in quarantine. 

Day 8: I woke up in the dark on this Tuesday to walk forty minutes to a bakery in Ormeau with a friend to buy olive sourdough right when it came out of the oven. Forty minutes and our daily 10,000 steps later, we inhaled the loaf in the public park outside the university before class started. Like all good things (in-person classes, pub night, bakeoff, and 3 for 5£ tacos) olive bread occurs only on Tuesdays. While time has lost most meaning during the pandemic, there is definitely a weekly structure emerging which divides the week roughly into Tuesday and anticipation-for-the-next-Tues-day. Of those two days, my favorite day is Tuesday.

Day 9: Northern Ireland announces a four week circuit breaker lockdown.

Day 10: In a book store I picked up “Nobber” by Oisin Fagan because the back jacket promised a tale about a noble traveling the Irish countryside in 1348 “using the advantage of the plague which has collapsed society to buy up large swaths of land.” I’m quite glad of this purchase as in lockdown I’ve been looking for new hobbies that one can do in plague-ridden Ireland.

Day 11: I’ve been running a lot since I arrived in Belfast. On Sunday I woke up around seven and ran to the Botanic Gardens through the city center. The streets were almost entirely empty at the time and without the lively throngs of people I realized that Belfast was a lot smaller than I had thought. I’ve been growing more aware of the different neighborhoods in the city that are carefully subdivided, and stacked side-by-side. Murals and street art give particularly potent insight into a given street’s residents and histories.

Day 12: I wondered if I should cut my own hair. 

Day 13: I decided not to cut my own hair. 

Day 14: Election day has been the longest Tuesday yet. While I had a lot to learn about Irish politics (which I’ve been learning about mostly from friends in my course during our weekly pub trips) almost everyone I had met was in step with every update about the American election. The man at the security desk of my building was refreshing the CNN website faster than I was and when a maintenance man came to fix my floor, he asked if there were any updates on Philadelphia’s ballot count. When I found out the election was finally called, almost simultaneously I heard shouts of joy from a nearby group of Irish teenagers. A group of friends joined me in celebrating outside by the river where we struggled to uncork a bottle of prosecco and hid from spots of rain and from slugs on the outdoor benches. Although I was looking at America from afar, it was a night that made me feel at home here. 

As an outsider looking in, nothing seems more fundamentally representative of Irish culture than the Irish wake. Ubiquitous in Irish literature, music, theater, and storytelling, the celebratory assembly of the community following a death seems to encapsulate the social, cultural, and historical spirit of Ireland. When the social distancing measures were put in place in early March, I began to see article after article discussing the implications of COVID-19 for Irish funerary rituals, all pointing out that there is perhaps nothing more antithetical to the circumstances of our new global reality than the Irish wake. I was brought to tears by one story of a community in Ballyferriter, County Kerry. Unable to gather for a wake, the entire parish lined the 2km street to the cemetery (all keeping a safe 2m distance, of course) to sing “Óró Sé Do Bheatha ‘Bhaile,” one of my favorite traditional Irish melodies.

Just several days after reading this story, my 93-year-old grandfather (a survivor of the Holocaust) passed away of natural causes unrelated to COVID-19. Unable to return home, my family held a “Zoom funeral,” an unfortunate reality that has become more and more common in the age of COVID-19. This virtual gathering was no replacement for a real one. Out of the isolation of that experience, I came to realize just how irreplaceable the act of assembly is. In these “socially-distanced” community wakes, like the one in Ballyferriter, the Irish people have demonstrated that they fully understand, appreciate, and embody the art of assembly.

As a theater director, public assembly is very much my business. As we find ourselves at this unnerving moment in which assembly is no longer possible, we must reconsider, and indeed reimagine, what it means to be together with our communities for comfort, for celebration, and for grieving. Perhaps it is this unique quality of Irish culture that drew me to Irish theater in the first place.

Unlike many research-based graduate programs, the practical, hands-on nature of my program (an MFA in Theatre Directing) is nearly impossible to accomplish digitally. Instead of conducting courses virtually, the Lir is still holding out hope that we might be able to complete our coursework, and our thesis productions (in my case, a staging of Oscar Wilde’s Salome), in person by the end of the summer.

We have, however, been asked to prepare ourselves for the more than likely scenario that the actors will not be allowed to have any physical contact with one another and the productions will be performed without an audience. As daunting as this task may be, it has prompted me to reassess what I understand theater to be, and how I understand its intersection with culture and civic life at the broadest level.

Above all, I have come to understand how deeply I cherish the act of assembly and what a precious gift it has been to spend this year immersed in a culture that shares that love.

“…you can’t predict the weather,” laments Andre 3000 on OutKast’s classic record, “Ms. Jackson.” Three Stack’s iconic line made me chuckle during one of my runs along the River Lee, a favorite route to lose myself in miles of music and Cork’s desktop-background-worthy landscapes. Had, in an alternate universe, Erykah Badu’s mother been Irish, and the song titled something like “Ms. Murphy” or “Ms. O’Connor,” I doubt Andre’s verse would have read the same—you can predict the weather in Ireland; it will rain.

Though I’d been wise enough not to plan any picnics, OutKast’s song made me reflect on the joys that came with the Irish climate: the un-planned picnics (or your outing of choice) that accompanied the unexpected sunny days. A blue sky was not taken for granted. Parting clouds immediately summoned flocks of undergrads to lay out at Fitzgerald Park and coaxed researchers to abandon their pipettes and lab coats for the outdoors. In my case, a blue sky spurred me on my much-loved distance runs throughout Cork.

After hearing it on my run, I had planned on blogging about Andre 3000’s verse to harp on the unexpected joys I’d grown to love throughout my time in Ireland: Cork’s vibrant English Market where I discovered glorious Gubbeen cheese, UCC’s International Student Society where I’d made dear friends, warm and upbeat trad nights at Sin É. But boarding a plane to JFK from Dublin, on the city’s quietest St. Patrick’s Day in recent history, it struck me that Andre’s memorable line perfectly encapsulated the feeling of leaving Ireland four months early in the face of the global pandemic.

It was a timely year to pursue a Master’s in Public Health. I did not anticipate that, weeks after my Infectious Disease Epidemiology modules at UCC, I would be hearing about attack rates and case-fatality rates again as countries around the world enacted public health measures of varying efficacy to contain the spread of COVID-19. If it wasn’t clear before, the need for effective and organized public health leadership has been laid bare in the wake of preventable suffering at the hands of coronavirus.

While I’m heartbroken to have left Cork so early and abruptly, I am lucky to have fallen in love with a city that made leaving so hard, and am endlessly grateful to the Mitchell Scholarship for a life-changing year. I’m going to miss reuniting for one last adventure with my fellow Mitchells in Tipperary, but I know that in them, I’ve made lasting friends. Though the future seems especially unpredictable, I’ll be back, Ireland—no matter the weather.

This term, I had felt like I had found my communities in Ireland. My classmates and I had become much closer, as we helped each other with group work and spent ample time together after class. My suitemates and I had begun frequently eating lunch and dinner together and sharing details about our lives. Finally, I had learned how to best experience and utilise Dublin for my own interests.

I had been commuting into Dublin city centre semi-weekly to participate in open mic nights at several comedy clubs. These clubs were hosted in or attached to pubs, so the audience was comprised of an organic mix of comedians, passers-by, regulars to the pub, and bartenders.

This was in stark contrast to my performances on campus at NUI Maynooth run by the Maynooth Comedy Society, where my jokes fell on the ears exclusively of other students. As I frequented both comedy circuits, I discovered a warm and intimate community of other comedians that would perform at the same venues regularly. This community, along with that of my classmates and suitemates, had me positioned to have an incredible spring term. However, by now we know how this story ends.

Due to the progression of the COVID pandemic in February and March, I, along with other Mitchell Scholars, made the incredibly tough decision to leave Ireland early for the year in mid-March. Everyone’s experiences with COVID are different, and I appreciate the tough familial, medical, economic, and emotional circumstances the pandemic has put everyone through. Therefore, I will not speak for anyone else’s experiences but my own, as I recount what I have been most thankful for as my swift departure from the island unfolded.

As I packed up my dorm, I received ample help from my suitemates. I asked for advice regarding check-out procedure, and they allowed me to clutter the public spaces with my many suitcases as I packed up my dorm to move out definitively. Once I was done packing, I shared goodbyes with some classmates who travelled to campus to see me off and share one final Guinness with me (this was before quarantine protocol had been discussed in Ireland). We shared our experiences with the program, had some laughs, discussed our homes (namely California, Ontario, and the Greater Dublin Area), and reflected on how we had gotten very close. I messaged comedian friends in Maynooth and Dublin updating them with my departure status. Finally, I said goodbye to my suitemate, after we discussed plans to see each other again back in the US. Though my departure was haste, it gave me the opportunity to reflect on the communities I had been privileged to become a part of. The pain involved in each goodbye occurred only because I had enjoyed great experiences here, and for that I am incredibly grateful. I will almost certainly be back. Therefore, I do not say goodbye, but see you later, Ireland.

It is always hard to move on from a home, but there is something especially difficult and jarring about having to do so at a moment’s notice. Unfortunately, our experience in Ireland ended abruptly for many of the Mitchell Scholars due to the ongoing pandemic. Faced with the prospect of being isolated in our tiny UCD dorm rooms for months on end and the prospect of closing borders and further travel restrictions, Annabel and I decided together that we needed to return to the US. Within 36 hours, we were both on flights back to America.

Being in self-isolation has felt like a state of limbo. I left my life in Ireland behind—I even cancelled my housing contract with UCD as it looks unlikely that I will be able to return to Ireland over the summer. Despite the permanence of my departure, I left with so many loose ends that my time in Ireland feels unfinished. Classes are continuing online, meaning that while I will still be able to earn my degree it will be without the intellectual engagement and access to academic facilities that is necessary to thrive. My classes had just fallen into the steady balance of participation and professor facilitation that is the hallmark of any good seminar, and I am disappointed that our time in the classroom has been cut short. I have scaled back my nascent thesis project to account for the fact that I can’t be in Ireland to do my research. Blossoming friendships with my Irish classmates now feel stuck in purgatory—Facebook messenger and WhatsApp are poor substitutes for the quality time that is needed to forge a closer bond. Trips—to Croatia, Liechtenstein, Wicklow, Isle of Man, and the south of France—that were being planned just two and a half weeks ago are now dreams for a nearly unimaginable future in which we can go outside, board a plane, and frequent rooftop bars and quaint wineries without fear of getting sick. The pandemic also means that I am unable to go through the motions of returning from a stint abroad—no reunions with friends or family, no meals at my favorite restaurants in my home town. As a result, it feels like life has been put on pause, like I am stuck between life in Ireland and whatever comes next.

When I find myself in the midst of a quarantine malaise (which is often), I think about one of my favorite weekends of the entire year. Annabel, Rohan, and I had travelled to the Isle of Man for a weekend spent hiking and imbibing in the charming environment of Foraging Vintners, a local winery that we had long admired via Instagram. After a catastrophic hike that ruined Rohan’s hiking boots, we finally reached Foraging Vintners, and despite the day’s many misadventures we felt contented, reassured that yes, it is possible to make friends like this after college. Although our time in Ireland has been cut short, we can now rely on our friendship to get us through the dark days ahead. I’m thankful for the many friends and memories that have filled my heart over this last year. I’ll see you soon.  

Nobody needs me to tell them that we’re living in a very strange time. Many of my fellow Mitchell Scholars have left Ireland and returned to their homes in the US, and we’re all taking classes virtually now that social distancing protocols are firmly in place across the Ireland and the UK. There are certainly a lot of downsides to a global pandemic, but I’m trying to stay focused on the things that make me grateful to still be in Derry.

I am grateful for my health and the health of my housemates here and my family back home. I am grateful for a cozy wee house (see my previous blog post for details), my cat, and the fact that my fiancé is holed up with me here. I am grateful for occasional drives along the north coast when we desperately need to get out of the house.

I could talk at great length about all of these things, but I want to spend this post focused on my gratitude for Stage Beyond Theatre Company, with whom I have been working since January. The shape of that work has changed significantly in the past few weeks, but the community and joy attached to it remain.

Stage Beyond is a theatre company made up of adults with learning disabilities. My first day with them was the day they auditioned company members for a new video game inspired adaptation of Hamlet, written by Colin Murphy, that was scheduled to tour around Ireland this May. (Unfortunately, the tour was canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak).  I’ve been working with the group on Hamlet: Call of Duty for ten hours a week since auditions, and have been blown away by the ensemble’s enthusiasm, adaptability, and raw talent.

The group welcomed me with open arms, lots of questions about New York City, occasional chocolate bars and sausage rolls from the Centra around the corner, endless puns and riddles, caricatures drawn in Sharpie, Fortnite flossing lessons, and serious excitement about the American drama games I taught them. When I missed one day of rehearsal because of a class, every single company member approached me the next morning and asked me whether I was feeling alright and told me they missed me. I felt so at home with the Stage Beyond company, and that feeling only grew when the coronavirus scare began. The company’s director offered me a spare room in her house and the actors checked in every day to see how everyone was feeling. On the last day of rehearsal before programming stopped for social distancing, we spent the day reviewing games we’d learned together and shared impressions from movies over tea. We tossed around the idea of doing a radio play version of Hamlet – stay tuned; it might happen! And while we all wanted to hug on our way out at the end of the day, we tapped elbows and wished each other our best instead.

I miss my Stage Beyond pals every day I’m in isolation, and hope I’ll be able to work with them again this summer before I head back to the states. I’m so grateful to have been welcomed into their community and for their support during this bizarre and scary time.

            We hear it each day – that today is unlike any other point in history. In New York, Andrew Cuomo recites it nightly to his brother on CNN. In Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill and Arlene Foster compete to see who can reel off more platitudes in a single day. To some degree, we have all internalized this refrain. Some have turned to raiding supermarkets to stockpile toilet paper (newsflash: toilet paper actually won’t save you from the Coronavirus). Others have turned to Instagram to detail their daily routines (I feel a duty to say that unless it it’s gourmet, people aren’t interested in what you had for breakfast). And more than a few have responded to the current bleakness by turning to gin (I may or may not be referring to myself here).

            Thus far I have resisted the more destructive behaviors that forced quarantine can generate. It’s probably a bit worrying how easily I’ve adapted to living in a police state that controls our movement, but that’s a topic for a different blog. In a quest to remain sane in this unprecedented time, I’ve turned to running.

            Now, this is surprising for multiple reasons. I am a generally sedentary individual. I have never had an affinity for physical activity that doesn’t involve a racquet. And I ascribe to the personal philosophy of “Why run when I can take an Uber?”

            But as we are told daily, this isn’t a normal time. In Northern Ireland, we are allowed to leave the house for a daily run or walk (while maintaining a safe distance from others of course), and I’ve jumped at the chance to be outside.

            Running through the city these past few weeks has shown that me Belfast is a city of neighborhoods. Starting in the woods of Belvoir Park Forest, I make my way through South Belfast, transfixed by the mansions of elusive BT9 postcode. Then I’ll loop through the Botanic Gardens and eye the now empty classrooms of Queen’s. I might cross the river and jog along Ormeau, daydreaming about when some of the area’s bohemian pubs will reopen. From there I’ll run through East Belfast, where I’ll be confronted by union jacks and UVF murals, and I’ll take a detour to run by the peace wall near Cluan Place. Then I’ll jog back to the river and up to Titanic Quarter, gazing up at the giant industrial steel buildings and the millions of dollars poured in by the government to create the ‘new Belfast.’

            I am constantly struck by the fact that even a five minute walk in Belfast can lead you to a totally different neighborhood – one with different allegiances, a different history, and a different hope for the future. I will leave my Mitchell year with the understanding that to live in a city offers the opportunity to be both constantly curious and constantly learning. At least, that has been my experience in Belfast.

I had never been to an interfaith tree planting before this winter and as I rode the bus to County Meath for my first I wondered what it might entail. It was Tu B’Shevat, a Jewish holiday often compared to Earth Day that celebrates nature, and as an active participant in Dublin’s small, but energetic Jewish community since arriving on the island, I had been invited to join in the festivities. I was thrilled with what I encountered: rather than marking the holiday alone, we were joined by Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, and others to plant trees in the Ireland’s fertile soil, burying their roots in the earth together. Enthused about the event, I learned it was the work of the Dublin City Interfaith Forum. Soon after, I was excited to join the organization’s Youth Board as the new representative of Dublin’s Jewish faith community.

My second term at Trinity College was a chance to plant my own roots deeper into Dublin, getting involved in the community in new and exciting ways. In addition to classes, travel, and joining the Interfaith Forum Youth Board, I also embraced an exciting opportunity to appear as a recurring commentator on an RTÉ News program. After becoming active with the Ireland chapter of Democrats Abroad, I was connected with an RTÉ journalist named Jackie Fox who was starting a new podcast for the network about American politics called “States of Mind.” The day after Super Tuesday, I took the bus to RTÉ’s studios to record a pilot episode, analyzing the results and talking about my support for Joe Biden. When the show was green-lit, I took a second trip to the studio to record commentary for the first official episode of the show.

However, by Super Tuesday, when I volunteered with Democrats Abroad Ireland to help run the primary voting center in Dublin by checking in voters and tallying ballots, one of my duties already included donning sanitary gloves to periodically wipe down the voting stations, protecting voters from transmitting the coronavirus that had begun to seize headlines and stoke fears. As St. Patrick’s Day approached, the growing pandemic increasingly derailed my plans until I had no choice but to make a difficult decision. With Trinity encouraging students to leave  on-campus accommodations, my travel health insurance noting that it would no longer cover COVID-19 cases, and travel suspensions announced by the US and EU, I packed my things and headed back home to the USA, leaving my heart behind in Ireland.

If the time between January to March was about planting deeper roots in Ireland, this crisis marks the beginning of a new chapter in my relationship with Ireland, focusing on maintaining and nurturing those roots while far away. I am lucky that with all classes at Trinity moved online, I am still set to complete my master’s degree and graduate on schedule, even if the time difference between Ireland and the United States means that my class schedule in self-isolation has been anything but normal. Yet, I’ve been even more grateful to have been able to stay engaged with Ireland from afar through the organizations I remain active with there.

Despite being back in the US, I have still been able to join RTÉ’s “States of Mind” podcast, calling on by phone on the podcast’s second episode. In fact, in a surprise twist, I brought my grandfather onto the show as well, recording an episode in which he and I debate Trump’s response to the pandemic. In this way not only have I been able to stay engaged with Ireland, but I have also been able to engage Ireland with the United States, giving our Irish audiences insight into America’s politics.

Still, during these difficult times, I am thankful to have drawn strength and faith from my ongoing connection with Ireland. Just yesterday, I helped run a special Virtual Interfaith Prayer Gathering for the Dublin City Interfaith Forum. As a common darkness descended on each of our faith communities, seven faith groups in Dublin joined together online to create a common light, sharing prayers for resilience, healing, and hope together. With dozens joining together on Zoom, I led attendees in singing Mi Sheberach, the Jewish prayer for healing, while listening in gratitude as other faith communities shared their own prayers. While we might not have all been sharing the same physical space together like we did planting trees in County Meath, the virtual space was abuzz with the same spiritual energy that comes from such solidarity. In my case, I could feel it across the ocean.

I don’t know when to quit. 

I never have. I think that’s part of the reason why I made such a good organizer—I feel like to work in abortion access in places like Kansas you have to have a sometimes foolish, never-going-to-give-this-up stubbornness. I will be the first to admit I sometimes make reckless choices, and that I identify spiritually with the meme “the risk I took was calculated, but man, am I bad at math.” This is a very roundabout way of saying that I made the decision to stay in Ireland despite a global pandemic.

I don’t have US health insurance. I have one of those fun pre-existing conditions that impacts my lungs. I know if I get COVID-19 there’s a greater chance than most 22-year-olds I will need hospitalization, probably for pneumonia. I cannot afford to spend days in a hospital and wind up with a $73,000 bill as the cost of keeping me alive and comfortable. I cannot return to the country I was born in and lived in for 22 years because of political decisions that systemically replaced the welfare state with massive personal debt. I’m not going to say that isn’t painful. So, I had to stay.

I love Ireland. I love the way I feel in the countryside, going on hikes in the green, hearing the lovely lilting accent, and feeling the history wrapped into the cairns and bogs. I love staring at the sea in the middle of a hike. I love the way the constant rain makes the world feel so alive. I love the resilience. I love the people. 

Those who say Irish are distant to foreigners have never seen them come together in a crisis. Ladies in my cohort have asked me if I need to move in with them and their kids. A dear friend has offered me a room in the house she’s renovating—a friend on the border in Co. Monaghan told me her parents (who have never met me!) want me to come up if living in Dublin gets too precarious. My master’s cohort has plans to deliver groceries and supplies to each other via bikes if someone living alone gets sick.

I wish instead of writing this sad, sad, post I was getting ready for cans at a friend’s place. I wish that I was still able to walk into my kitchen and run into Annabel, I wish that the last time Keshav, Matt, and I had pints wasn’t the last time. I wish this year had a satisfying conclusion instead of this interminable stasis. But, although my friends are scattered, we are all more-or-less safe, and that is something to be grateful for now. 

If the point of the Mitchell year was to make connections in Ireland, I feel like I did alright. At the end of the day, all we have is each other. All we have is the connections we’ve made and the people we love and who love us. I’m grateful for how many connections I’ve made and how many people are keeping an eye on me now both here and virtually. I’m grateful to this country for taking me in, and I’m in gracious awe that even though I can’t be with my parents, or back in the United States, I get to spend my pandemic in Ireland.

In the past weeks, as efforts to curb the novel coronavirus pandemic placed most people across Europe and the United States under indefinite stay-at-home orders, and as I returned to Connecticut in anticipation of impending travel restrictions, I began to see images on social media of Irish houses and hedges draped with banners bearing the same Seamus Heaney quote:

“If we winter this one out, we can summer anywhere.”

The quote is from a 1972 interview associated with Heaney’s poetry volume Wintering Out, much of which alludes to the turmoil of the Northern Irish Troubles. Now, in a very different crisis, it seems many in Ireland are again finding in Heaney’s poetry what he called in a 1974 lecture, “images and symbols adequate to our predicament.” 

This semester, I had a lot of time to think about Heaney during my internship at the National Library of Ireland. On Mondays and Thursdays, I took the bus from UCD to the city centre, getting off around the corner from the library’s dignified columned stone building.

As an intern in the Education, Learning, and Programming Department, I was working on several different projects. I was cataloguing the rare books, manuscripts, and objects on display in the permanent “W.B. Yeats: The Life and Works” exhibition and preparing a report with suggestions of curatorial changes to bring the exhibition up to date, particularly in its portrayal of the women with whom Yeats surrounded himself.  I was working on a study guide for secondary school students related to the “Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again” exhibition currently on display just down the street from the main library building at the Bank of Ireland Cultural Centre. And, I was conducting research in the library’s archives with the aim of writing and delivering a public lecture on Heaney’s relationship to Yeats. The lecture was to focus on how Heaney found in Yeats a model of the poet as someone who provides light in times of political darkness.

It is somewhat ironic that, as this topic seems even more prescient, my time working at the National Library has been forced to an early end. Certain aspects of my internship experience can’t be replicated as I shelter at home across the Atlantic. I will miss the impromptu office discussions with my colleagues about Irish history and politics, and I will no longer be able to hold Yeats’ original unpublished letters in my hands. But I am doing my best to complete what aspects of my projects can be done from a distance, including recording a virtual version of my talk. I am optimistic I will one day find myself back under the luminous windowed blue dome of the Main Reading Room, one of my favorite places in Dublin.

For now, I am keeping in mind Heaney’s famous last words, sent in a text to his wife from his hospital bed:

“NOLI TIMERE”

—or, translated from the Latin, “Do not be afraid.”