the farm

Thought I would give you the rundown of the farm when I was still there I wrote this for blogger but now it seems that it is just a document for my sake to keep a record of my time there .
I’m currently sitting in a nice house in Ireland on Claire island. I arrived here in Tuesday and it is now Thursday . Claire is the home of grace O’Malley. Grace was a pirate queen in the times of Elizabeth the first. She basically gave Lizzie a run for her money. I really never thought I would be working on organic farm learning about natural ways to plant plants and I would be up my knees in mud. There is a general clam that has come over me.

I’m living in house with an aussie girl named Paula we have our own rooms an a very nice two story house without internet thus the reason for not posting this on the Thursday and now on the Friday lol !
I have to go to a bench to post these updates so I think in the next week there is not going to be much updating if you get me . Cause well it is outside and I really don’t want to be dropping this computer in the mud . so this land is owned by a family . They have 240 acres of land . Yes mom you can drink the water they have a natural spring and there is no water conservation here. It is really neat what we hear for lunch and supper we are left to our own devices. Paula said I can cook I can get a signed statement if you don’t believe me mom! We are eating all organic and natural it has made a big difference on my body i feel so much more awake and alive by eating so healthy.
Let’s give you all a rundown of the day we are up at 830 am and working by 930 am and off at half five . it is hard work . today me and Paula hauled bags of brecan all over the fields and up and down the road so they can put it on the plants .. I well sign off now cause my body is sick with soreness from all the work I have done

grace omalleys grave

Hey everyone

So I’ve been back in Galway for a few days. I was working on a farm on Claire Island but it did not work out for reasons I’m still confused about. I was given the afternoon off on Friday to go see grace O’Malley grave. it was a long walk up to the abbey but I did get there . I was on my way and had a little friend his name was bran. He followed me all the way to an abbey and all the way back. The owners of the farm where a bit mad that bran had gone with me and said I should have told them he was with me.

I have been reading about grace O’Malley for a number of years now. she was a pirate queen in the time of Elizabeth the first . it is said that she died in the same year as the queen . it is not sure certain when she died . I’m going to link a movie so that you call can watch about grace O’Malley and the usual wiki information for you all. When I got to the abbey i was told to go find a guy named Bernie winters. I looked around to find this man but was not having much luck so on my way down to the store to see where he was i found him by mistake .


He was a really nice old man that also takes people in for woofing in the spring. He lives in the oldest house on Claire Island. He is the friendliest person I met on Claire Island. We walked up to the old abbey and he was pointing out all the O’Malley that were in fact related to the great grace O’Malley. When we got into the abbey I had a dead rock star feeling come over me i was standing in the place were the most powerful Irish women of her time was buried . if you all know me you know that i read lots about warrior women and have tons of books in my stash on them . this abbey was very tiny and did not have much space in it . When we got in Bernie told me that they have xmas eve mass in this church every year . They have since built in lights and put a new roof on the abbey. He told me that it was left open to the elements for almost 80 years till someone in 1952 decided to raise money to restore and save the abbey. There are many frescos on the walls in the part were grace is buried. Bernie told me that they have not had anyone come in and restore the ceiling because of cost and they can’t pay for it.


Though out the hour that I was in the abbey Bernie told me all of the graves that were in the floor and also about grace and translated lots of the Irish writing for me . I really think that Bernie should become a tour guide. graces grave has a coat of arms of the O’Malley family beside her grave which Bernie translated to “powerful O’Malley on sea and land “ gives you an idea of how powerful she was . It was also said that grace gave birth to one of her sons on a ship in the middle of a battle that she was leading against the English. Now that is guts for you eh. I really felt connected to grace in away. Ok now the good part Lucy Lawless (xena warrior princess) had stood in the spot of graces grave for a documentary that I watched a few years back on discovery channel. Bernie said that she had the most captivating eyes he had ever seen.

Now i must talk about Bernie. He is a Claire island farmer who does everything the old way. He uses no machinery to help him do anything at all with the farming. I imagine he is between 65 and 80. He is nice and loves to talk to strangers that come through to see graces grave, Bernie is the keeper of the key for the abbey on Claire Island . so i need to ask anyone out there have a picture of some hay bails that you could loan my mom to photocopy so she could mail it to Bernie on Claire island . The funny thing that got me about Bernie was as soon as I told him were in Canada i was from he piped up and said Gordon Lightfoot Alberta Bound. Do we all remember the family gathering in Cochrane were we sang that song for the time we were there? In 1997 or 1998? Susan can correct this date if I’m wrong or grams smith well . So now I leave you with a movie that is 10 mins in the end of a movie about grace O’Malley . Just let it load and then watch the end of it you can see the abbey and Bernie’s dog shep in the end when lucy is at Claire island here is a pic of the abbey and the walls and celiing of the abbey for you all to see and last but not least graces grave .






OK so that grace post was long so i edited it down to the web Addy so you can go there and read about her. here

roving gypsy boy

I feel like a nomad right now. I have no home all I care about is camera and iPod and computer my only lifeblood’s. Ok fine my camera is the lifeblood I care about. I almost bought a new lens for it today I was so tempted to get another one to futz around with.

I spoke to a friend today for the first time since emailing her every day for the last week. She is someone that is close to me in life and knows who I am. She told me that I sound different maybe I do. Do we all change and grow in different places? I know that in the coming months two of my closest friends are going to have babies and life will never be the same. I met this girl in a pub after she had stole my gay man hat . she talked of life and lovers that she had lost and what she had gained from everyone of them . she seemed to have a real grip on what she wanted in life . I am the one in my family that has chosen the nomadic life style for now. I say Amy and Nicole chose mortgages and bf I choose to be free for now. I am starting to take this traveling thing as it comes and not to get flipped out over small things .ok I don’t get the job on some farm oh well not a biggie there are 184 more to email and find out if i can work there. I’m going to miss the little normality’s of Galway when I leave but i have to keep moving till i find what I’m looking for whatever that maybe ?



ill leave you with the lyrics of jimmy rankin beacause that is how i feel right now !

Roving Gypsy Boy"
By Jimmy Rankin

Autumn leaves are falling
The eagle takes to flight
The open road is a'calling
As day breaks slowly from the night
Day breaks slowly from the night

At the breaking of dawn he stepped to the road
In the soft early morn he stepped lightly
Humming a song to himself surely ode
And all through the day he stepped highly
All through the day he stepped highly

They call him the roving gypsy boy
He'll never choose to stay
They call him the roving gypsy boy
A rambler in his day (x2)

Ten thousand miles away from home
Ten thousand miles or more
Ten thousand miles he chose to roam
Like an eagle he did soar
Coast to coast and shore to shore

He rose up in the east and he set for the west
Travelling the whole world all over
Searching for something that he loved the best
Like a free living gypsy wild rover
A free living gypsy wild rover

They call him the roving gypsy boy
He'll never choose to stay
They call him the roving gypsy boy
A rambler in his day (x2)

He left the high road to live on the low
And all different kinds he met there
Plenty were the good folk
Many were the foe
But they all were his friends when he left there

There's a lot more to gain from this living than wealth
There's a lesson to learn with devotion
Be kind to all others as well as yourself
Or you'll drift like a boat out on the ocean
Drifting like a boat out on the ocean

They call him the roving gypsy boy
He'll never choose to stay
They call him the roving gypsy boy
A rambler in his day (x2)

They call him the roving gypsy boy
He'll never choose to stay
They call him the roving gypsy boy
A rambler in his day
A rambler in his day....

famliys found and lost and created

Hey everyone
So I’ve been here in Galway for just over two weeks. I have come to love this place! I think I well return here when I come back from the yoga center! I know you all must be a little peeved I moved the blog . I had to move it due to a person here that I did not want to have it enough said there ! so Galway is great the people here are wonderful and friendly . I’ve made a few friends one of which made me feel so good yesterday . She works at the market in a flower stall and she walked up to me and said happy V-day Kimberly and hugged me .
There is also a girl who works at the hostel she is so nice and she took me out for coffee one day with her friends. I feel so at home here it is not even funny . i have been lucky enough to have met friendly people here and had wonderful memories .
There is a group of us at the hostel who have come to be a temp family .I have never really had one of these in my travels yet but have been lucky to have found it this time. There is Jamie from aus, rafa from brazil , bee from Quebec and Shane from Ireland . We have gone out a few nights in the last few weeks to the pub or watched movies in the common room together. It is funny how you can make a temp family in strange ways we well keep in touch or lose one another over time . as life goes on they are memories that are kept in my mind forever .


There is welsh guy in the pub who i have seen five times how and just ran into this Moring in the square when going to get 2 euro pasta that was on sale . There is the flower seller name jean who smiles at me and says hi and tells me to keep fighting to work in Galway. She was happy that i got a temp job for a few weeks on the island so that is good. Now when you meet someone in a bar and they want to keep in touch it is are you on face book lol!


I’m getting really excited to go to Claire Island as it the base of grace O’Malley the pirate queen of Ireland who gave Elizabeth the first a run for her money . i well try to update this in the next two weeks if i cant you well have a lot of reading to do in few weeks
Wish me luck and all be seeing you all in few weeks

Galway is the place

Hello everyone
It has been a while has it not! so I’m going to update you all on Galway Ireland . i have been here for just over a week and i think I’m staying here ! Hopefully I’ll get a job here soon had one interview for a nanny job but it won’t work out so on to new things i guess! I’ve found that i really like wondering around this city to see things and people watch. I have really grown to like this market on Saturday’s very near the hostel that I’m staying at! This market sells food so cheap and it is healthy food. I had sushi for 3 euro and some vegan curry for 2 Euros. I have to post the pics later on tonight. so on Monday i met this interesting aussie guy in the kitchen i ended up going out till 1am with this guy and talking for 6 hours about whatever we could think of he then asked me out again the next night .


So I met him the next night. We met up with one of his friends in a random pub and ended up bar hopping for the rest of the night to all these different pubs and drinking. Me I had 1 pint and water and tea ! at the last pub we met these Irish girls and started talking with them about what I forget they were so nice and invited me out for Thursday night I did not go cause I was so worn out ! I’ve met some interesting people here in the hostel. There are these two girls who have been living here for few weeks and have been some entertainment for everyone in the hostel. lets just say i don’t miss days of our lives that’s how interesting they are .

there was a Magdalene Asylum here in Galway and there is a statue to it there is info below to anyone that wants to read it . I’m also still on my grace O’Malley quest to find her grave. If anyone is interested I think grandma has my book or it is in the cupboard with all my books in my room you are welcome to borrow it is Kathy’s story about her time in the laundries .

Right here is the Magdalene Asylums information i took it from here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Asylum

Magdalene Asylums were institutions for so-called fallen women, most of them operated by different orders of the Roman Catholic Church. In most asylums, the inmates were required to undertake hard physical labour such as laundry work. In Ireland, such asylums were known as Magdalene Laundries. It has been estimated that 30,000 women were admitted during the 150-year history of these institutions, often against their will. The last Magdalene Asylum in Ireland closed on September 25, 1996.
History
Magdalene Asylums grew out of the rescue movement in Britain and Ireland in the 19th century, which had as its formal goal the rehabilitation of women who had worked as prostitutes. In Ireland, the institutions were named for St. Mary Magdalene, who according to Catholic tradition, repented her sins and became one of Jesus' closest followers.
The Magdalene movement in Ireland was quickly appropriated by the Catholic Church, and the homes, which were initially intended to be merely short-term refuges, increasingly turned into long-term institutions. Penitents were required to work, primarily in laundries.
As the Magdalene movement became increasingly distant from the original ideas of the Rescue Movement, that is, to take prostitutes off the streets who would not find regular employment because of their background, the Asylums took on an increasingly prison-like character. Supervising nuns were instructed to enact strong measures that would discourage women from leaving and instead encourage them into penance. The Congregation of the Sisters of Misericordiae, for example, is described by the Catholic Encyclopedia thus:
In receiving patients no discrimination is made in regard to religion, colour, or nationality. After their convalescence, those who desire to remain in the home are placed under a special sister and are known as "Daughters of St. Margaret". They follow a certain rule of life but contract no religious obligations. Should they desire to remain in the convent, after a period of probation, they are allowed to become Magdalenes and eventually take the vows of the Magdalene order.
Asylum records show that in the early history of the Magdalene movement, many women entered and left the institutions on their own accord, sometimes repeatedly. Lu Ann De Cunzo wrote in her book, Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of Institutions; The Magdalene Society of Philadelphia, 1800-1850 (published in Historical Archeology, the journal of the Society for Historical Archaeology), that the women in Philadelphia's Protestant asylum, "sought a refuge and a respite from disease, the prison or almshouse, unhappy family situations, abusive men and dire economic circumstances."
Because of their background as prostitutes, inmates were regarded as "in need of penitence":
"The woman who has never known the pollution of a single wicked thought - the woman whose virgin bosom has never been crossed by the shadow of a thought of sin! - the woman breathing purity, innocence and grace, receives the woman whose breath is the pestilence of hell!" [Catriona Clear, Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Ireland, p.153; cited from Finnegan, p.20]
Inmates were required until the 1970s to address all staff regardless of age, as "mother", and were called "children". As one priest wrote in 1931: "It may be only a white-veiled novice with no vows as yet; and it may be an old white-haired penitent giving back to God but the dregs of a life spent in sin. It matters not. In the Home of the Good Shepherd the one is ever the 'Mother' while the other is always the 'Child'." [Finnegan, p.42]
To enforce order and maintain a monastic atmosphere, the inmates were required to observe strict silence for much of the day. "The Rule of Silence was a major feature of the women's lives and continues well into the second half of the twentieth century." [Finnegan, p. 24] Corporal punishment was common, and passive-aggression was simply ignored:
"A sullen temper, often shown by refusing food, is best dealt with by silence. When a girl wakes up to the fact that no one takes any notice, nor is troubled (apparently at least) by her self-starvation, she gets weary of her self-imposed martyrdom and learns sense." [Arthur J. S. Maddison, Hints on Rescue Work, A Handbook for Missionaries and Superintendants of Homes (1898); cited from Finnegan, p.31]
As the phenomenon became more widespread, it extended beyond prostitution, to unmarried mothers, developmentally-challenged women and abused girls. Even young girls who were considered too promiscuous and flirtatious, or too beautiful, were sent to an asylum. This paralleled the practice in state-run asylums in Britain and Ireland in the same period, where many people with alleged "social dysfunction" were committed to asylums.
The women were typically admitted to these institutions at the request of family members or priests. Without a family member on the outside who would vouch for them, some penitents would stay in the asylums for the rest of their lives, many of them taking religious vows.
Given Ireland's conservative sexual values, Magdalene Asylums were a generally accepted social institution until well into the second half of the 20th century. They disappeared with the changes in sexual mores - or, as Frances Finnegan suggests, as they ceased to be profitable: "Possibly the advent of the washing machine has been as instrumental in closing these laundries as have changing attitudes."
The sending of wayward women to Magdalene Asylums was an example of what many feminists regard as the phenomenon in which even suspected sexual misconduct by women is punished more harshly than sexual misconduct by men.
[edit] Revelation
The existence of the asylums was little thought of until, in 1993, an order of nuns in Dublin sold part of their convent to a real estate developer. The remains of 155 inmates, which had been buried in unmarked graves on the property, were exhumed and, except for one body, cremated and reburied in a mass grave in Glasnevin Cemetery. This triggered a public scandal and became local and national news. In 1999 Mary Norris, Josephine McCarthy and Mary-Jo McDonagh, all asylum inmates, gave accounts of their treatment. The 1998 Channel 4 documentary Sex in a Cold Climate interviewed former inmates of Magdalene Asylums who testified to continued sexual, psychological and physical abuse while being isolated from the outside world for an indefinite amount of time. The conditions of the convents and the treatment of the inmates was shown in the acclaimed film The Magdalene Sisters (2002), written and directed by Peter Mullan. However the accuracy of this portrayal has been challenged. In addition, the story of one of the most famous alleged victims of the Magdalen asylums has been charged by relatives and investigators with being largely an invention.[1]
Similar instances of abuse have been reported in Ireland's industrial schools. As a group these institutions were exposed in an RTÉ (Ireland's national broadcaster) series by reporter Mary Raftery in 1999. Despite the Irish government convening of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, attempts to obtain compensation for the victims of the system have proven frustrating. [1] [2] Essentially, to be eligible for compensation, a victim must have been resident in one of a number of specifically listed institutions; no Magdalene Laundries are included on this list

photo post for you

hey everyone ill update the blog with stories about galway in few days here are few photos for you to see

galway and arran islands

Hello everyone in out there in space . so i guess it is time i updated this blog . Friday after a long ride on a bus to Galway i arrived here . When I got here i was carrying three bags so you can imagine how pissed off i was with three bags and it was pissing rain. I got here and thought ok find hostel and get out to see the streets for a few hours before it gets too dark to see anything. I think I now should have listened to Norma on the packing too much! So i got to my room to have a bunk that i could lift my head up at all . i went back up to the desk and asked to be moved to a new bed which was not hard . i got a new bed in a room that is massive . so i wondered most of the first night found my Chinese soup and a book and settled down and read and went to sleep for while . The next Moring I met a girl from Canada we ended up going all around Galway for the day and having a great time it was nice to be around a person from \bc she was so sweet . her name is Celia she is great . I got some great shots of her on the rocks at the beach . it was so funny cause we had the same idea, find ocean and jump in and walk along the shore . i guess the bc runs deep in me . we ended the night off having dinner at a Chinese place and then going out for beer well for her i had water ! till she bought me a beer sweet girl .

On Sunday i took in the Aran islands it was one amazing things to see . i got on the bus and talked to an American women who was over for 3 months with her prof husband and 2 kids . then i got on the ferry and slept for a good 20 mins . it was ok ride over and the boat looks like a giant speed boat . you had to take a bus from Galway to the terminal then a ferry to one of the two islands that are open in the winter . When I landed i needed some food and drink and was thinking i was going to land on a remote over priced resort . I was so wrong cause they have atm and spar .very much like hornby island in the way the people live only difference is they don’t speak English and they are an old generation . i was walking down the hill from spar and found that the bus tours had all gone and was a bit disappointed but the Irish were on my side a bus was passing by i stopped it and got in . it was funny cause i ended up with the American s i had met in the spar shop . so off we went on a tour the first stop was the old fort it is massive in size I can get the name out of my lonely planet book later . Yes mom i did buy a book on the island and it is great. So up to this site we went and wow i have seen many sites it was amazing to look over the sides of the cliffs and see the ocean. this place dates back to the fifth century so all of you that know me know i was in heaven there . There was one prob the entire museum was in irish lol ! i took pictures of all the signs to see if one day someone can translate them for me one day .
After we had been up on the site and walked a bit to get there we went down to the craft shop were i was suckered by the cold and the lady to get a pair of mitts . this lady has her stuff worn by stars in Hollywood like Sharon stone and yes it is true. So we got back to were the bus was going to meet us and granger and sonny the Americans were eating lunch in the cafe . i walked in and said the bus is here granger yelled Kim you got to try the bread ill pay for it whatever you want get it . so i was going to get some but it had heaps of buttermilk in it so i was out of luck . we ended up going to another site were there were crosses of seventh century priests buried . it was one amazing place . i got 500 pics of the island and sonny and granger were so good about me asking the guide to stop so i could take tons of pics . So we got to see a seal colonies they were neat to watch and see . i also got to stand as close to home as i could get in Ireland . Granger and sonny are two great people that pretty much adopted me for the day. They even offered to give me a ride back to the hostel! i had a great day and it was so worth it to come out to the Aran islands for the day . The ferry ride back was so bad i almost tossed my cookies till next time im off to hear a great band tonight with an aussie guy i met!