Becoming Irish

Any person who has at least one Irish grandparent can apply for Irish citizenship by descent.  A rather welcoming provision in Irish law, don't you think? 
I first learned of this  when I was in my twenties, and entertained the fantasy of living in Europe and Ireland for a few months.  But being in my 20's and having few marketable skills, not to mention social graces, I was soon distracted by the demands of rent and food costs.

In the intervening years, Ireland joined the EU (not such a great idea, according to some), enabling Irish to travel freely and live and work in any of the other EU member states.  As I approached retirement age, this began to hold a certain attraction to me, and so I took up the task once again.

I would need some proof to present to the consulate:

1.) A copy of my grandmother's birth certificate--the long form, legal birth certificate. 
Unfortunately, she died in 1969 and nobody in the family had a copy of her certificate.  Luckily, there are agencies that can assist someone in this endeavor for a very modest price (in my case $40USD was modest enough).  I just had to provide the agency with her name, place and date of birth, and they did the rest.

In two weeks, an email arrived from Dublin with a partial copy of her birth certificate in pdf form.  Once I forwarded the fee, the actual legal copy of her birth certificate (not unlike Obama's birth certificate--computer generated by scanning) arrived in my mailbox in California. Four days transit time!


Now I needed:
2.) My grandmother's marriage certificate.
3.) My mother's birth certificate.
4.) My mother's marriage certificate.
5.) My grandmother's death certificate.
6.) My birth certificate.
7.) My mother's death certificate.

Luckily, my family settled in San Francisco, and the events certified above all happened there.  It took a week to do the research to get the dates from the family and pick up the certificates.
 With those in hand, I had to fill out an application, provide two passport photos and a copy of my passport.
In addition, I was asked to include a reference from "a bank manager, police officer, member of the clergy" indicating that the photos I was enclosing were really photos of me. 

I filled out the form and was told it would take from 12 to 14 months for processing.  Ok.  Off to the Irish Consulate in San Francisco I went, turned in the forms, paid the fees (about $200),made some corrections suggested by the very helpful and friendly clerk and began my wait.
After 14 months, when I'd heard nothing, I made a call to the consulate.  A recorded message said that the processing time had increased to 14 to 18 months, owing to a downsizing in the government a result of the property bubble bursting and government insolvency.  Well, those weren't the exact words, but the cause was obvious and plastered all over the newspapers.
But hello, after a year and a half, the "Certificate of Foreign Births Registration" arrived (it was dated four months earlier), along with a letter form the Consul General congratulating me on becoming an Irish citizen.

On reading this, I just stood there with my mouth open for a few minutes.  It was a shock.  I was a dual-citizen. 

The next step was to get a passport.  That wasn't included.  There were two ways to go:  Go to Dublin, apply directly and wait one week, or apply at the consulate in San Francisco and wait 8 weeks.  The 8 weeks, which was what I chose, was subsequently stretched to 10 weeks, but it arrived via FedEx.

And that is how one becomes a dual Irish-US citizen.

Uilleann pipes.

A few years ago, I was browsing music videos on YouTube when I was dumbstruck by this:

When he had finished playing, I was wiping tears from my cheeks.  But why?  What was it about the tune, or the player that brought forth this strong emotional response?
It was as if the tune and the instrument transported me back to some primitive dim past--as if it touched something in my Irish DNA--flipped a switch that turned on the music gene.
From that day forth, I was done.  And from Thanksgiving of 2009, I've been struggling to learn the craft so expertly and effortlessly delivered by this heroic piper, Seamus Ennis.

It is not easy.

Ennis himself said that it took 21 years to become a master of the uilleann (formerly called the "Union Pipes", which has to do with pipe construction rather than politics) pipes.  "Seven years of learning, seven years of practice and seven years of playing" to become a master piper.

It is my task to do it all simultaneously, and I only have five years left.  But today, mastering such an arcane instrument is, I feel, easier than it was in the 1930 Ireland of Ennis' time.

Today, we have the benefit of devices like computers, which can play digitized music and different speeds without changing the pitch.  And we have YouTube, with its global transmission of video clips of interest to the piping community.  And in Dublin, there is NPU, Na Piobairi Uilleann, The Piper's Club, which is ground zero for Irish uilleann piping.  Through this organization, one can learn to play the pipes remotely via the internet, or personally by visiting the Henrietta St. offices and classrooms.  They also have a pipemaking shop available for instruction in pipe and reed making.


Still, piping is not without its challenges.

I have played with mixed results in public venues.  As a novice, it's not always known what note the pipes will produce next.  That makes for an exciting adventure in music.  These are reed instruments, and you can't go to a music store and buy a new reed for a set of pipes.  They don't even know what uilleann pipes are in a music store.  My spelling checker doesn't even recognize the word "uilleann".  It is an Irish word meaning "elbow".

I have been taught how to make my own reeds by a pipe-maker in San Anselmo, California.  Luckily, the very material used to make the reeds--a species of the cane plant grows wild at a couple of locations near my home.  Cane doesn't even grow in Ireland.  They have to import it from Spain.

We are being eaten alive.

My Kaiser health plan cost $20,000  in 2009.  And now it's going up.

The same coverage in Ireland costs 1/10th of that.  Why?

Because we want $388 Billion Joint Strike Fighters and $300 Billion flying gas stations, the most powerful naval force in the world and...and...a hypersonic aircraft that can.."..flatten anyone in the world in 1/2 and hour...", according to one defense contractor executive.

We can't afford nationalized health care --- it would bankrupt the country.
And besides, that would be socialism.
And as we know from reading the lunatic blogs of the far right, Hitler was a socialist.

Ridiculous logic, isn't it?  Ireland, with a population of 4 million (a little less than the population of the SF Bay Area) can afford national health care.  We can't. 

Massachusetts can afford universal health care, but for some reason, the USA can't.

Volume economics works in every other aspect of commerce with the exception of health care.  A bigger pool won't get you cheaper health care, according to those in congress, whose campaigns are financed by health care lobbies.
Volume economics works in every other country that has nationalized health care, except the USA.  Here, for some strange reason, the laws of volume discounts breaks down when applied to health care, according to those in congress who already have free universal health care.

I understand the concern of those who say, "It would raise taxes!!".  Yes, stupid.
It would raise your taxes.  I think the numbers I saw were about $120/month for a family of four.  But you wouldn't have to write a check for $800-1000/month to your HMO.

"But I don't want the government in charge of my health care!"
Then why do you have them in charge of your nuclear weapons?  They seem to manage the doomsday devices OK.  You think they'll  screw up on your liposuction?


By hitting the silk, I automatically save myself $20,000/year in healthcare costs.

Where did all that debt come from?

People across the country complain about government spending.  They complain loud and they complain long.  They complain about their taxes, too.  Mostly, in the last month or so, they've been complaining about the DEBT.  The horrendous debt.  As if if rose up out of the ocean and began stomping cities on its path across the nation, the DEBT has become enemy number one. 

But we know the debt didn't rise up out of the ocean.  It was created from a surplus during the Clinton administration by his successors.

Yes, there was a SURPLUS under the previous democratic administration.  Now don't get me wrong, Clinton was a sociopath. Just look at his personal life.  But you can't argue with the Congressional Budget Office. Well, not meaningfully, anyway.

What spawned the debt?  Well, if you increase spending and cut revenue, it pretty much appears automatically.

Increase spending:  Iraq War, Afghanistan War.


Decrease revenue:  Tax cuts, also known as "The Bush Tax Cuts", which gave the nations assets over to the wealthiest people in the country.

Now we have this tremendous debt, you see.  But we don't want to raise taxes.  No, that would cost jobs!
We have to cut spending, but not from where the increased spending started:
We just gave Boeing $360 Billion dollars for flying gas stations to feed the "Joint Strike Fighter".  The Joint Strike Fighter costs another $388 Billion.

So right there you have $1.2 Trillion in debt in only TWO contracts. 

Exxon Mobil didn't pay any taxes on its record profits last year.  In fact, I paid more in taxes than Exxon Mobil did on it's profits. 

Are you beginning to see why I'm getting ready to bail?

Hitting The Silk

The tune was popular during the Vietnam conflict: "We Gotta Get Outta This Place", by Eric Burdon and The Animals.  That's what this is about for me.  Retreat.  Going, going gone.  Let my bones lie on foreign soil.  This picture of Joe Kittinger was snapped a couple of seconds after he bailed out of a helium balloon at and altitude of 126,000 feet (21 miles and change).  That is the ultimate bail-out.  Kicking out of the wave.  Showing your back.  Away wit ye.  Begone.

But why?  Isn't America your home?  Isn't it the land of opportunity? 

It is for some.  For an decreasing number of Americans, opportunity still exists.  It helps, apparently, if you are a sociopath, and an especially greedy one at that.