Mitchell Scholar Blogs

Source: Reuters

It was only a couple of days after I arrived in Ireland that the images of Alan Kurdi—just three-years-old—lying lifeless on a beach in Turkey made global headlines. The pictures of the boy, who failed to find safety in escaping his war-ravaged home, powerfully amplified the voices of those demanding greater action in the face of the human catastrophe of the Syrian refugee crisis. At the same time, it also drew attention to the ominous storm churning in Central Europe. As hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers desperately made their way to Europe, they were met by populations in Hungary, Poland, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic that were becoming increasingly xenophobic, nationalistic, and hostile. It was with a measure of horror and a feeling of cruel irony that I observed the governments of these countries, which had themselves suffered under fascism and totalitarianism so recently, shut the door to these victims and violate their human rights. In the case of the Czech Republic, the rising tide of xenophobia was even more shocking, since it was not so long ago that its own founding president, Václav Havel, emerged as a global symbol of human rights.

Philosopher, playwright, and political dissident, Havel was a leader of the fight for human rights and democracy in Czechoslovakia, playing a major role in the toppling of communism there. He soon after assumed the presidency, getting reelected in 1993 as the first president of the Czech Republic following Slovak independence. Havel’s essays, plays, and speeches, together with his work to liberate his own country, have cemented his legacy as a powerful and inspirational intellectual on the world stage. And yet, on the year that would have marked Havel’s 80^th birthday, the current president of the Czech Republic is a man who has referred to the influx of refugees as an “organized invasion” and has actively warned against allowing Muslims into Europe. It is in this context that we are challenged to honor the life of Václav Havel—a challenge being met through Havel@80, a joint effort of the Vaclav Havel Library, Art for Amnesty, and Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, which has organized a wealth of events around the world in 2016 to celebrate Havel and his accomplishments.

Having been working with Art for Amnesty and its founder, Bill Shipsey, throughout the year, I met with Pavla Niklová, director of the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation (VHLF) in New York, to discuss how to engage more students in Havel@80. Thinking back to the my first months in Europe, when I saw the growing hostility to refugees in Central Europe, I sought to find some way to draw attention to those in the Czech Republic fighting to keep Havel’s commitment to human rights alive—those treading against the current of anti-immigration populism. It is from this seed that I worked with the VHLF to develop a summer fellowship for undergraduate students in the US to learn from and engage with organizations in the Czech Republic working to carry forward Havel’s legacy in the field of human rights. The Vaclav Havel Library Foundation Fellowship for Human Rights, which was announced last month, will, each year, provide students with a fully-funded opportunity to spend time in Prague, collaborating with human rights organization to develop a project that they will bring back to their home institutions. In this way, we hope to strengthen the transatlantic commitments to human rights that Havel himself, in his frequent shuttling between the US and Europe, helped foster.

As I now prepare to go to Prague to meet with the organizations that will be welcoming the first recipient of the fellowship this coming summer, I feel deeply privileged to be able to commemorate Havel, a person I so greatly respect, in this way. Like the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation Fellowship for Human Rights will honor the memory of a great individual by nurturing his legacy amongst future leaders. In a sense, as a Mitchell Scholar designing this fellowship, I feel as though I am helping, in a modest way, to weave the legacies of these two great figures of the last half a century, Mitchell and Havel, together—and this is an opportunity for which I am profoundly grateful.

A window in the wool-spinning facility at the Pinton workshop in Felletin

Alongside Mitchell Scholar Daniel Listwa, I have been interning under Bill Shipsey and Art for Amnesty (Amnesty International). We are currently working on a project to have the mural El Holocausto by Mexican artist Manuel Lozano translated into tapestry form. The mural is a monumental reflection on the cyclical, inevitable nature of violence despite human yearning for hope. With its gorgeous palette and stark figures, it’s a shame that the stationary mural is viewed by so few. As a tapestry, El Holocausto can travel the world as a banner for human rights.

Working for Bill is exciting. His energy is infectious. A phone call about an idea quickly turns into action. One day he suggested that Daniel and I go to France to document how the tapestries are made, and then next thing I knew, we were on a plane.

Félicie Ferret greeted us in the Pinton showroom in Paris, where we had the opportunity to view finished rugs and tapestries. We then travelled to Felletin to document how the tapestries are made from beginning to end. Unprocessed wool is cleaned, spun into yarn, and dyed.

Pile of wool waiting to be processed into yarn.

We met up with Jacques Bourdeix, who has worked on all the previous Art for Amnesty tapestries. Jacques turns the provided reference painting into a huge ‘cartoon’. Using his genius intuition and decades of experience, he is able to identify every color in the cartoon. He marks sections and numbers onto the cartoon, which is then placed into the loom. Essentially, the weavers who spend months on the tapestry directly follow Jacques’ instructions. Jacque claimed he was an artisan rather than an artist, but when he described all the shades and hues hidden within his favorite color, black, I thought he was one of the most brilliant artists I have ever met. He said that when he sleeps, his mind is filled with dreams of his tapestries.

Yarn being meticulously dyed to match specific color requests,

It takes many weavers several months to transform Jacques’ cartoon into a tapestry. They work methodically and intensely, their fingers dancing and their feet bobbing. I found it charming when we met two of the weavers who were mother and daughter. The Pinton establishment is similarly a longstanding family tradition.

Weavers follow Jacques’ instructions, working right on top of the cartoon.

I have only seen such a process from start to finish once before, in a handmade paper-making factory in India. The differences were stark. Performing all stages of the tapestry onsite in France is an expensive but valuable endeavor. Unlike what I saw in India, with its minimal wages and long hours (where one worker wore a shirt that read “Exercise Daily, Live Clean, Die Anyway”), the Pinton workshop was a friendly and engaging environment. Despite its ventures into the world of fine art and the fast-paced art market, Pinton remains a family company. I was in awe of the level of mastery that went into every aspect of the tapestry-making. I took their lessons of artistry, dedication, and sincerity to heart.

It is hard to believe that my time in Ireland is coming to an end. I began my journey with frustration due to lost luggage, weather delays, and other airport issues. Ultimately, I arrived two days late with a massive headache to show for it. Looking back on my year in Ireland, I would take that trip a million times over without any regret.

Over this past year, I’ve come to appreciate why Maynooth is Ireland’s fastest growing university with over 8,500 students. In particular, there is a major commitment towards international students both academically and personally. In recognition of this commitment, Maynooth students reported the highest satisfaction with their international study experience based on the 2015 StudyPortals International Student Satisfaction Awards. Indeed, my Irish experience would not have been complete without the Irish and international friends I’ve made in Maynooth and across Ireland.

As I highlighted in my past blog entry, I’ve traveled to many destinations with different groups of friends exploring historic sites, tourist destinations, restaurant and even the lovely scenery.

A recent photo of beautiful Irish scenery!

One of my most recent trips was to the Dublin Zoo. I waited until the weather was perfect, optimizing the type of animals and exhibits.

The zoo boast being one of the world’s oldest and most popular zoos, stretching 69 acres of Phoenix Park. The zoo is further divided into areas and provides a very enjoyable trail filled with animals from around the world.

My favorite exhibit by far was the red panda! This endangered species found a spot in my heart!

Beyond traveling to places, I’ve also made it my mission to try a different restaurant everyday. Although my wallet has seen better days, I don’t regret this goal. Dublin is filled with cuisine from around the world, and I’m constantly surprised by the flavors and service. I also enjoy the variety of styles, from fancy sit-down restaurants to food on the go. Last weekend I visited El Bahia, a Moroccan food restaurant and the award winning HopHouse Kimchi, a Korean/Japanese fusion restaurant. At El Bahia, I experienced cow tongue for the first time, among other delicacies. At HopHouse Kimchi, I tried their famous salmon bibimbap. I originally was hesitant to try new foods, but my exploration of Dublin has exposed me to different cultures and allowed me to develop my palate!

My time in Ireland is not all fun and games. My mornings and nights are typically consumed working on projects both academic and personal. For example, it has been an exciting time for Symmetry Therapeutics, a company I co-founded developing novel antiobesity therapeutics. We were recently awarded $300,000 and are looking to continue to raise more money to take our drug to market. I also spend a lot of time meeting other entrepreneurs in the Dublin area. One of the most inspirational has been a Mary Moloney, CEO of CoderDojo, advocate for women, and a mentor to my younger sisters and their organization CoderDojoAnvil.

Beyond my entrepreneurial activities, I’m keeping up with my academic program. The Immunology and Global Health program is a unique combination of science and humanities. I’ve enjoyed my courses, instructors, and topics. However, I’m a little disappointed with the Irish grading system. At Maynooth, we have 40% as the cut-off for passing, as opposed to the traditional 70% passing in America. While theoretically sounding easier, it actually makes it hard to receive high grades in classes because instructors are trying to use the 40% as the baseline for the curve. In addition, all our exams are essay based. The philosophy taught in my department is to write as much as you know about a topic to receive points, as opposed to what I’ve learned in America which is to focus on answering the question and keeping the answer concise. Regardless, I’m trying to make the best out of the situation and scoring well in my courses compared to my peers. Speaking of peers, I had a fellow student make this wonderful artistic representation of me! I’m not sure what to make of it, but I believe she captured my wardrobe quite well, as I typically run off to the gym after a day of classes in my track suit.

The majority of my academic life is now being consumed with my thesis research. This involves many hours of literature review, work in the lab, and close communication with my principal investigator. My goal is to complete my research by the end of the summer and fly back to America by August. Fingers crossed my trip back is not as eventful as the journey to get here. I’m already getting a little sad, but I know this wont be the last time I’m in Ireland. In fact, I’m already looking for opportunities that will bring me back. This year has been an amazing experience, and I’m comfortable with calling Ireland my second home. Most importantly, I hope I’ve convinced at least a few people that not all Americans are like Donald Trump.

2016 is an interesting year to be living in Ireland. I have observed a continuing crescendo of various commemorations of the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising, which will coalesce in the thundering symphony of the hallmark events to take place in Dublin at the end of this month. Everywhere I go, I am reminded of those Fenian dead who challenged an empire in the pursuit of an Irish Republic. I continue to feel, to sense the presence of the dead; their actions and legacies exert an ever-evolving yet continuous influence on the living. As in the blurring of the boundary between the physical and spiritual worlds that occurs annually on the Celtic festival of Samhain, the dead remain with us, having imprinted their labors upon our hearts and minds.

I was in Belfast several weeks ago, a place where the line between the dead and the living is not so much blurred as it is torn asunder. Memorials to those who lost their lives throughout the Troubles line the Falls and the Shankill. Murals depict the anguish, the conflicting aspirations, and the fallen from both sides of the conflict. Here, it seems, the dead not only exert a subconscious influence on the preoccupations of the living, but rather, they roar from beyond the grave, reminding Belfast’s inhabitants of the tragedy borne out by bombings and terror. They serve as grim motivation to maintain the ostensibly tenuous peace, as tragic guardians defending against a return to the militant interpretation of Pearse’s fiery claim that “Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

After I left Belfast, I traveled to the southern reaches of County Down to a small village called Drumaroad, where my great grandmother Josephine Hanna Golden was born in the early years of the 20^th century. I parked beside the small parish church of St. John the Baptist, and just as I have done many times throughout the past few months, I began to explore the graveyard in search of the final resting places of ancestors. I spotted a tall headstone nestled in the shade of an oak tree; the headstone was that of Hugh Hanna, who I later determined to be Grandma Josephine’s uncle (using data recorded in the 1901 census of Ireland).

As I left the graveyard to explore Drumaroad by foot, I admired the beauty of the South Down countryside. It was a brilliant, cloudless day, something I had come to treasure over the past few months of bleak, rainy winter. The emerald pastures gave way to rolling hills on the outskirts of town that rose to form the snow-capped peaks of the towering Mourne Mountains. The landscape brought to mind some more of Pearse’s words, an excerpt from his poem “The Wayfarer,” not as fierce as his graveside oration but no less evocative:

“The beauty of the world hath made me sad,

This beauty that will pass…

Some quiet hill where mountainy man hath sown

And soon would reap; near to the gate of Heaven”

In that moment, I wanted to ask Grandma Josephine about her life as a young girl in County Down. I wanted to know if, in times of turmoil during her adult life in the Bronx far from the rolling hills of Drumaroad, she closed her eyes and pictured a day like this one, when the sun illuminated the azure sky, glistened off the snowy peaks, and warmed the verdant fields. But sadly, I never knew my great grandmother. I never had the chance to ask her these questions, and I never will be able to ask them. And this highlights the enduring hardship of our human condition, of our mortality. Though the dead may at times walk among us, they can never walk with us. They may continue to motivate us, to be with us in various ways, but they are not here with us in the literal sense. We can never sit and have the conversations or uncover all the mysteries surrounding those who have passed beyond the veil into the unknowing void.

We can exert momentary victories over death during those rare times that make us feel most alive, of which I have had many during my months in Ireland. But to achieve lasting victory, to truly conquer death, requires a more nuanced approach that I believe is exemplified best by St. Paul in his most stirring and poetic epistle, his second letter to the Corinthians: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17—18). This sentiment would have resonated particularly strongly with those who willingly gave their lives in the pursuit of a hitherto unrealized Irish Republic during the Easter Rising. And it resonates with me when I think of the hypnotic call, of the mesmerising affinity I feel for those many ancestors who have passed, reaching out from beyond their graves, bidding me to explore the mysteries of this island and engraining in me its unseen and enchanting treasures, all this beauty that will pass.

Go n-éirí an bóthar libh.

Drumaroad in County Down

Signs in the windows of homes directly across from the Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin protest the museum’s proposed renovation.

In this post, I continue my last entry’s exploration of Judaism in Ireland.

By virtue of being an outsider—an American in Dublin—I was allowed in. Walking up five narrow flights of steps, I reached the attic office of a local architect. After writing an op-ed for the Irish Times nearly two years ago, Mr. Kelly was cautiously curious about the foreign student who emailed him asking for him to elaborate on the criticisms he had made of the Irish Jewish Museum’s proposed expansion. Initially uncertain, he came to speak freely of his views, his strategies, his facts, his expectations—telling to this third party observer that which he guarded from the opposition.

At first he asked me repeatedly what my motivations were for investigating this matter—he did not understand what interest an American could have in the zoning dispute between some community members and a local museum. My answers to him were decidedly incomplete, as I did not tell him of the sense of discomfort I felt when I first visited the Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin and was met with signs in every neighboring window: “Museum of Shame,” “Neighbors from Hell,” along with many other similar slogans. Immediately—perhaps too immediately—a twinge of fear passed through me as I wondered the reason for the signs so reminiscent of Anti-Semitic tropes.

The upper floor of the museum was the location of a synagogue built in 1917.

Prior to visiting the museum for the first time, I had read a short article, written some 9 years ago in the Forward, about a journalist’s then-recent trip to Ireland. She spoke of her to visits to the museum—located in a former synagogue in the once highly Jewish area of Portobello—first in 1987 and again in 2006. Her first trip, shortly after the museum’s opening, witnessed an Irish-Jewish community bristling with excitement to tell, through its artifacts and archives, its narrative of proud presence in Ireland. On her return, she found a more sobering scene—its curator, Raphael Siev, aging and the museum aging with him; she notes poor lighting, cracking paint, and a crumbling chimney—the victim of a lack of funds and, perhaps, interest.

A crowded room on the ground floor recreates the setting of a typical Shabbat meal for an early 20th century Jewish family in Dublin.

Almost a decade later, I found the museum to be in not much better of a state. Although fascinating and charming in its own way, there was no denying the sense of decay. While looking at the clustered collages of old photographs documenting the Jewish community that has since shrunken and moved out to the suburbs, it was difficult not to think the physically disappearing museum a reflection of the people whose story it was intended to tell. It was perhaps with the rejection of this metaphor in mind that the board of the museum—with the assistance of the Irish government—pressed forward with a bold and ambitious plan to rebuild the museum into a modern, state-of-the-art institution. Around three years after the plan’s approval, the museum’s future was no less in doubt as the renovations stood frozen. The explanation was at least in part the protests of community members who had hung the signs that first caught my attention.

Banners can be found throughout the Portobello community protesting the museum.

It was investigating these community members’ grievances that brought me to Mr. Kelly’s office. By speaking to him and others, including many involved with the museum and the Jewish community, I have developed a better understanding of the issues at hand as well, in addition to how the situation became what it is today. More than anything else, I have been able to use my perceived position as an outsider to witness the breakdown in communication and trust that has occurred between the different parties. Seeing value in a revitalized museum integrated with the community, it is my hope that I can use this position to, in some capacity, help bridge these faltered relationships by revealing the miscommunication that lie at their heart.

For he comes, the human child
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.
—“The Stolen Child,” WB Yeats

Dia daoibh.

My time in Ireland continues to pass, and it becomes harder for me to believe that I have spent over four months on this island. As classes recommence following travels in Europe and a Cork Christmas spent with my in-laws, a sense of the ordinary begins to take hold. However, this past weekend reminded me that the opportunity to live in Ireland for an entire year resides strictly within the realm of the extraordinary.

My younger brother, John Patrick, will enroll in Officer Candidate School for the United States Navy in several weeks. I am very proud of him for this noble undertaking, but I realize that opportunities for him to visit will dissipate once he joins the Navy. Therefore, I was very pleased to learn in December that he would be visiting us during the first week of January before his schedule becomes significantly more restrictive. When I asked him what he wanted to do during his visit, he unhesitatingly answered with one word: “Easky.”

As I wrote in my previous post, my patrilineal Golden ancestors left Ireland for America in the 1840s during an Gorta Mór, the Great Famine. Every July, my family gathers for a reunion in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, where the Goldens settled when they first arrived from Ireland. This year we celebrated the 76th Annual Golden Family Reunion. The reunion begins in St. Patrick’s Church, Middletown, where everyone attends a memorial Mass for the members of the family who have died during the past year (as my grandfather passed away last year, it was of particular importance to me to attend last summer; I also wished to introduce my new wife to this long-held family tradition of ours). Following the Mass, we always explore the multitude of Golden family tombstones in the graveyard beside the church. The oldest of these tombstones, a thin slab of white marble with faded yet legible writing, reads, “Here lies William Golden, deceased in 1860, aged 65 years, born in the parish of Easky, County Sligo, Ireland.”

William was my fourth great grandfather, and he was the first Golden to emigrate from Ireland to the United States. Born in 1795, he is the eldest ancestor of mine that I have been able to trace. When I came to Ireland with my family for the first time in 1998, we visited the small coastal village of Easky. We also visited the old cemetery in the village, where we were able to find burial plots of several Goldens dating back to the mid 1700s. My brother, who was only 6 at the time of that trip, wanted to return to Easky, the old home of our forebears, to explore the village and the cemetery once more as adults. I had been meaning to ride up there for some time, and my brother’s visit provided the perfect opportunity.

My wife, my brother, and I departed early this past Saturday morning, as the drive from Cork to Easky takes approximately four hours. All throughout the drive, we enjoyed the Irish landscape unfolding before us: the rare stillness of Cork City early on a Saturday; the emerald pastures that stretched to the horizon; the gushing rivers that in some areas had breached their walls and flooded; and finally, the snow-capped Ox Mountains surrounding the harsh ruggedness of the Atlantic coast in Sligo. Easky is a small, coastal village, and though in recent years it has become a popular destination for surfers (even in January), it remains quite remote and removed from the comparatively frenetic pace of places like Cork and Dublin. We walked along the beach and enjoyed the sight of talented surfers gliding over ten foot waves. We stopped in awe at the sight of the remnants of the O’Dowd Castle, built in 1207, and we realized that our forebears would have looked upon the same stone tower during their walks along the coast. We walked along the Easky River, and I remembered the fun I had jumping along the river stones with my brothers nearly twenty years prior. And finally, we arrived at the old graveyard, where we found the tombstone marking the burial site of several Goldens.

That evening, the three of us attended Mass at St. James Church, the Catholic parish of Easky village, the same parish where William Golden was born and raised two hundred years ago. As we sat and prayed, I reflected on the hardship that previous generations had endured for me to arrive at this exact moment. I thought of the courage it took to leave home and begin a new life in a new land. I thought of the determination it took to maintain one’s faith against penal law persecution and attempts at coerced conversion while battling starvation. I was grateful for the traditions, values, and faith passed down between successive generations of my family, and I was reminded of the extraordinary nature of this present opportunity.

The following day, we hiked to the Glencar Waterfall. W.B. Yeats immortalized this waterfall in his poem “The Stolen Child,” from which I quoted the final stanza at the start of this post. I read the poem at the foot of the waterfall, and the words struck me with particular meaning. I thought of William Golden, leaving a famine-ravaged Ireland, a world “full of weeping,” embarking for the “waters and the wild” of the United States. I also thought about a passage from a book about the Great Famine I recently read; the passage noted that the famine created over one million refugees from Ireland who had to leave their home due to disease and starvation. I had never before seen famine emigrants referred to as refugees, and the phrase highlighted the similarities between the crisis that forced my ancestors to seek refuge in a “wild” land and the present day conflict in Iraq and Syria that has similarly created so many refugees in search of somewhere new and safe. I have often wondered what kind of greeting William and his family received when they arrived in New York Harbor; was it one of welcome, or the one popularized by the nativist movement: fear, xenophobia, and verbal assaults on the dangers of the immigrants’ non-mainstream religion? I find some of the rhetoric in the current presidential debates around immigration and refugees alarmingly similar to that line of thinking around the Irish in America 150 years ago. Yet William Golden, that stolen child, eventually found success in America for himself and for his descendants. I pray the same holds true for all those currently fleeing from persecution and distress.

Slán go fóill.

Brothers Golden in Easky