heritageatplay

Archive for the ‘Reflections’ Category

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Iced Chocolate, Digestives & Tea: A Sweet Tooth’s Ireland

In Culture, Reflections on July 10, 2010 at 3:28 pm

Colleen eagerly awaits her Iced Chocolate

I’ve been pretty chipper throughout this project — one large reason why is that I’ve had access to massive amounts of chocolate. I believe I inherited this deep and never-ending craving for chocolate from my mother, who also loves Ireland and keeps a constant stock of dark chocolate in a cabinet in our laundry room.

Ireland has many habits, stores, and cafes to fit the chocoholic’s fancies. For one, their daily “cuppa tea” time is never without biscuits and digestives — two mysteriously healthy terms for basically chocolate cookies or Kit Kat bars. The digestifs are suited for dipping in tea, but Zack and I have gotten in the habit of buying logs of these cookies and snacking on them throughout the day.

But the real joys of chocolate access happen in these delicious cafes that abound in Dublin, called Butler’s Chocolate Cafes. Butler’s is chocolate heaven: an inviting gold and glass decor with glittering gold-wrapped truffles sells a variety of coffees, drinks, and freshly made chocolates. They have the standard cafe fare, like cappuccinos and cafe mochas, but some new favorites which have blown my chocolate addicted mind. The most ambitious being the hot cookie chocolate, an iced mocha with bits of oreos thrown in for good measure.

But the best kept secret was the “iced chocolate”, and is just what you expect: smooth creamy chocolate melted down and mixed with milk, but served chilled and icy. Why has this not been invented in the US?! Why are we so satisfied with the “hot” chocolate? I am indignant. And desperate to start my own chain of Butler’s in the US, which I am certain will spread like chocolate, procreating bunnies.

The first time I went into a Butler’s I ordered an “iced chocolate”. I handed over the 3 euro to the cashier, who handed me back a small gold-wrapped truffle. “It’s complimentary: to go with your drink.” she said.

Oh, how kind of you! Yes, one dose of chocolate in the form of creamy delicious drinkability isn’t enough. I needed a milk chocolate truffle, the espresso shot of candies, to complete the experience. Thank you, Ireland, for knowing exactly how to charm me and my taste buds.

As if the iced chocolate wasn’t delicious and creamy and freshly made enough, the truffle melted into a gooey center like only straight-from-the-chocolate-shop candies can be. Truffles stored in boxes or cabinets in laundry rooms for a few weeks, or even a few days, become hard and loose their sparkle. They’re still delicious. But why should we settle for less?

-CB

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Outside the Archive

In History, News, Politics, Reflections on July 8, 2010 at 1:12 pm

No work of historical documentary aspirations seems complete without the insertion of archival material. Nodding towards the film work that has preceded it, movies feel more researched and investigative when archival footage makes its way into the film acknowledging previous efforts.

Wanting this effect, I called the Irish Film Institute on a rainy Tuesday morning. We didn’t have any specific plans for the day, so an afternoon running through the Irish government’s film holdings seemed not only practical, but romantic.

My conversation with the administration at the Irish Film Archive began well enough. We exchanged pleasantries, I explained about our Heritage at Play project, and the Archivist seemed genuinely sure she could help us out.

But then came the problem: money.

“And what kind of a budget are you on?” inquired the archivist.

“A very tight one,” I explained, “we’ve barely the money to cover our transportation and living costs. It is a student documentary project after all, and we are American students so just getting here was expensive.”

She assured me she understood. She would waive certain preliminary fees. I thanked her.

“But we will have to charge you the non-commercial footage fee,” she explained.

“And what’s that?” I asked.

“200 euro a minute.”

We exchanged pleasantries, I told her I would check our budget and get back to her. She said she hoped to speak with me soon.

With the call ended I exploded in disgust. 200 Euro a minute! What a ridiculous fee! Here was an archive filled with materials that in point of fact belong to the Irish people as public domain materials. They are free to use, and free to be remixed/recycled/rediscovered. But at the cost that one would need to pay to breath the same air as these hallowed collections, its evident that they rarely get used. And why should they? With a policy like 200 euro a minute, they have been chained behind a financial cage from the people most eager, excited, (and impoverished) to use them.

This short episode recalls what Students for Free Culture and the Creative Commons movement have so right. Things that are free ought to truly be so. The licensing of the Irish Archives is that of objects like fields in a public park: you have every right to use them. But prohibitive cost of access is ostensibly the same barrier to use as copyright or restrictive licensing. So while Heritage at Play yearns for the wisdom of the archive, we will have to do with the pleasures of the park, where the free live in the moment unrestricted and unencumbered.

Note: out of respect for exactly this problem, all of the Heritage at Play materials are licensed Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution. Enjoy!

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On being Irish-American (Part Two)

In Culture, History, Reflections on July 7, 2010 at 2:38 pm

I want to be Irish. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s simply of consequence of American buffet style identity politics. You must be something in America, and it’s very hard to be American. No one is American, unless, well you are Native American and that’s not exactly American is it? American is the identity that some (white) people forced over those Native Americans, a supra-identity that was more club membership than a definition of character and heritage.

So friends and teachers and employers always recognized me as Irish. It was my “Mc” name and my brown hair and my writerly disposition. Americans have reacted to me as though there were some intrinsic Irishness that I couldn’t root out, a genetic expression rendered subtly in my personality.

But the Irish remind me I am not Irish. That identity is past recollecting, except in the general abstract recollection of the entire Irish people. Except in being Irish rather that from Cork or Munster or members of the Fianna (once upon a time). This is why St. Patrick’s Day is so popular in America: it isn’t just that “everyone’s Irish” on St. Patrick’s Day, it’s that on St. Patrick’s Day it is perfectly acceptable to honor your heritage in the most abstracted manner. No one remembers the feast days for the patron saints of their villages, everyone celebrates Patrick, and drinks Guinness (rather than a more local brew) and laughs about fairies, lepherchauns, and green things. One day for an identity lost. Raise your glasses!

No, my family were not there to be Fenians in the late 1880’s or Provisionals at the Easter Uprising. They didn’t wage guerilla war on British Black & Tans. They did not defiantly speak Irish. They did not ratify the treaty that bifurcated Ireland. They never voted in an Irish election.

I have never heard a family member recite Irish. We speak English. We hold American passports, and vote in American elections.

And all the while, we carry forward names whose previous holders we can only thinly see as we look back over the sea wondering at an origin.

-ZM

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