Picto Diary - 16 April 2019 - Ballymaloe
Above: Cobh, County Cork, Ireland. 16 April 2019.
Cobh...formerly Queenstown.
Departure port indentured servants West Indies 1600's
Departure port transported prisoners 17th century.
Departure port potato famine emigrants 19th century
Titanic last port of call 11 April 1912.
Lusitania sunk 20 miles off coast 07 May 1915. — at Cobh Port, Ireland.
Above: Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris France. Ablaze. 16 April 2019.
I was shocked, but not really surprised, to see, today, that Notre Dame Cathedral had gone up in flames. I have spent two years resident (between 1965 and 1968) in the Paris area and understand the iconic place Notre Dame has in the Paris physical and cultural landscape.
But, in a way, Notre Dame's destruction was inevitable. Christian churches have been suffering damage throughout Europe recently... a real time metaphor of Christianity's decline in Europe in the face of overpowering radical secularism, and, to a lesser extent, radical secularism's ally, resurgent Islam. It was only a matter of time that august Notre Dame would be tarnished.
Notwithstanding the waning influence of Catholicism in France today, a number of French billionaires have announced their intent to finance a reconstruction of Notre Dame.
The question is why?
France is a radically secular nation today. Very few French practice Catholicism. In fact, what remains of Catholic France is under assault. Paris' number two cathedral, St. Suplice, was torched by an arsonist a couple of weeks ago. Some eighty odd French churches have been vandalized in the last six months. Are the billionaires going to fund reparations for all of the damaged churches?
Likely, reenergizing France's religious sensibilities is not the motive of the billionaires. Rather the French moguls see Notre Dame as a secular symbol of the modern French state.... kind of like Tour Eifel, or Pont Neuf, or Les Halles… Like these other secular, cultural symbols, Notre Dame is emblazoned into Paris imagery. Notre Dame attracts tourists. To let it go would have adverse economic impact. Therefore, for practical, economic, if not religious, reasons, Notre Dame must be rebuilt.
Secular Europe has waning cultural energy. Notre Dame's reconstruction as a Catholic cathedral has little chance of arresting secular Europe's ongoing cultural and economic decline. France had cultural energy when its national identity was inextricably intertwined, like a double helix, with the Catholic Church. The Church is now a paper tiger, having little cultural impact on things French.
Secular Europe, today, including secular France, stands, culturally, for nothing more than untrammeled right of individual self expression within the broader context of growing, centralized, faceless bureaucratic control from the European Union of means of production and consumption. The result, among secular Europeans, is hopelessness about the future, a resultant decline in family formation, and falling birthrates.... "frog in the pot" cultural suicide over time.
In today's cultural miasma, dispirited Europeans resort to self centered carpe diem. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. I recently read an article in the Economist, where the author was puzzled that notwithstanding apparent economic prosperity, Germans, crying in their beer, seemed unmoored... unhappy. It has to do with secularism's displacing old culture... with... a vacuum... and nothing uplifting or uniting more than freedom of self expression and submission to the growing, faceless, anodyne, administrative state. Is that all there is?
Islamic immigrants to France, and other parts of secular Europe, look at this growing, appalling cultural vacuum and say "no thanks, we'll stay true to our own cultural traditions even as we benefit from host country economic opportunity.
With its cultural energy and high birth rate, it's only a matter of a generation before Islam becomes the dominant culture of Western Europe. Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Are the five pillars of Islam so bad? 1. Honor God. 2. One haaj to Mecca. 3. Alms to the poor. 4. Five times daily prayer. 5. Ramadan fast. Discipline emanating from religious belief correlates to cultural energy. Some culture is better than no culture, right? Christianity in Europe has run out of gas. Christianity's resurrection does not seem imminent. Maybe, culturally energetic Islam can pick up the slack.
Think, say, Abu Dhabi, where capitalistic prosperity and energized Islamic culture co-exist. A clone of Abu Dhabi's magnificent Sheikh El Zayad mosque, in fact, would be a fitting replacement for the destroyed Notre Dame cathedral, the recent destruction of which is more a symbol of Western cultural decay than it is of an aspirational future.
Istanbul, remember, was once Constantinople.
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
Above: Cobh Cathedral. Cobh, County Cork, Ireland. 16 April 2019.
Some 80% of Irish profess Catholicism, but, Church attendance is down in Ireland as it is in much of the rest of the Western world.
I sat quietly meditating in this beautiful edifice about the destruction of Notre Dame de Paris. In the foregoing commentary I noted, saddened, that Christianity had 'run out of gas.' There is a caveat. Christianity surges in many parts of the world. Asia. Africa. To some extent, Latin America. Perhaps, as those non western Christian congregations grow, they will send missionaries to revive Europe's dispirited and fraying culture. A dispirited Europe will "bite," and... the age old cultural rivalry between Christianity and Islam will be revived.
Above: Jameson Distillery. Midleton, County Cork, Ireland. 16 April 2019.
Image: TIMDT and Bronx Girl.
Basic Product: Irish Whiskey
Blend.
Triple distilled (pot still), 100% barley malt (60%)
Triple distilled (steam still) corn/barley malt (40%)
Aged 3 years, 2 yrs, used Spanish sherry cask, 1 yr, used US bourbon cask.
Many variations. Up to 18 years aging, 40% barrel evaporation, priced at upwards of $200 a fifth. — at The Jameson Experience Midleton Ireland.
The tour through the distillery was fascinating. Bourbon is singled distilled. Single malt Scotch is double distilled, malt heated with peat for smoky taste. Irish malt is is triple distilled with no peat or other "flavor" used in the malt heating process.
There was a very good exhibit showing how whiskey evaporates during the aging process. The evaporation is called angel breath. A full barrel of whisky immediately after distillation will only be 60% full when aged 21 years.
In Jameson's main aging warehouse there are 1.5 million barrels aging. If you were to go into this warehouse without filtering mask, you would be inebriated on angel breath after two minutes.
The Irish whiskey equivalent to Scotch single malt, is called triple pot still. Irish triple pot still is one barley batch distilled three times. Scotch, is one barley batch, malt heated with peat, distilled twice.
All very interesting. The tour was very well done.
Above: Ballymaloe House. County Cork, Ireland. 16 April 2019.
Irish country dining with Hoops, Bronx Girl and TIMDT.
Worth spending more time here. Delightful cocktail period in drawing room of this old farm house converted to a hotel. Professional bar service, deep, cushy easy chairs, high ceilings, windows looking out to green fields, fire in the fire place, chatting with good friends.
Then fabulous country style dinner:
Sangeovese
Potato soup
Terrine
Lamb and vegies
Assorted cheeses
Desert cart — at Ballymaloe House.
Addendum:
Hi Steve,
I started my banking career with my first posting being Citibank Dublin. At that point it was a small branch located across St. Stephen’s Green from the Shelbourne. As an aside, my first son was conceived in the Shelbourne as we were housed there for a month when we first arrived in Dublin. He was baptized in the same church as Yeats, the poet.
Times have changed. Citibank has established a major European Headquarters in Dublin employing several thousand people. There is a great Citi alumni group in Dublin headed by Jim Farrell. I keep in touch with several of them, and visited a couple of years ago. The old branch was a great place to work as a young banker.
Enjoy Ireland, and the Guiness! While the weather may not be the best, it is a beautiful prosperous country with a booming economy and friendly people.
Thanks for sharing and have a great visit.
FlyingFish
Miami
Please add to your picto diary. Your account of the first two days is terrific. The entire trip with you and Margaret was terrific and great fun. You are both wonderful friends.
Hoops,
Pelham, NY