the old days, the old war

Yesterday we went to a museum dedicated to recording and preserving methods of craft from old rural Ireland. The farmers back then lived hardscrabble lives and were incredibly resourceful with the little they had. They made ropes and chairs and thatched roofs from straw, baskets and cradles from reeds. The skills were handed down through the generations from parent to child or master to apprentice. These days, the old skills are dying out because who's going to buy a handcrafted basket when they can just get a plastic bucket from Walmart? Or if they do buy the basket, it's a luxury decorative piece instead of a necessity. And no kid these days aspires to be the village basket weaver (I don't blame them, I wouldn't either). But it's sad to have generations of ingenuity and culture fade from our collective knowledge. So for decades, the museum has been contacting craftspeople who still know the old ways to preserve them.

It was some real tonal whiplash to go from the museum to our four-star luxury hotel manor for the night, the Mount Falcon Estate. Expansive grounds, golf course, helipad, the works. Too bad no helicopters landed while we were there.

Today was another long day of driving. We stopped in the small town of Donegal for lunch, kinda by necessity because there's no highway, just a low way that leads straight through the town. Makes for bad traffic. Eventually they'll have to build a ring road or something. Charming downtown though. Every town has a charming candy-colored center to attract passers-by.

Last weekend was the Kerry-Donegal All Ireland Gaelic football final. Sadly we were in between Kerry and Donegal on the day of the big game. I looked up the rules for Gaelic football and it's really Calvinball-esque. You can carry the ball, dribble it, kick it, or handpass it, but you can't throw it, and you're not allowed to carry it more than five steps or dribble it more than twice in a row. But you can drop it and kick it back into your hands and keep going.

In the afternoon we crossed the border into Northern Ireland. I slept through the border crossing, though I don't think there was much to see; it's an open border, no need even to show passports. We went to a museum chronicling the Troubles between unionists (who wanted Northern Ireland to stay in the UK) and republicans (who wanted a united Ireland) in 1969 to the 1990s.

It made me think of all the Irish on FR celebrating when Margaret Thatcher died. Of course you can't openly celebrate a political figure dying on flight rising dot com, but there was a lot of excitement and posting of crab familiars. One guy did a mass hatch because of "something [he'd] been looking forward to for a very long time" and someone else chimed in, "If it's what I'm thinking of, I've been looking forward to it for a long time too." Interesting to have historical context for all of that.

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Pictured: Sheep crossing the road