Neighborhood play off the table, we headed back to the Giant's Causeway for just a while. Kaia had been asking to go back, and it gave us a chance to find the Wishing Chair and me a chance to take a photo of the Granny Stone, so I could tell you the story.
First, the chair.
Almost every bit of information we read about the Giant's Causeway included some mention of the Wishing Chair. People say that if you sit in the chair and make a wish, it will come true. But while the story was invariably accompanied by a photo of some happy child sitting in the chair, nowhere was there any indication of where the chair might be at this enormous site full of rock formations that essentially all look the same. I had promised Kai and Tess we'd go to the chair and make a wish, but when we got to the main section I realized there were around a thousand sections of rock that looked like a chair. I'm pretty sure I'm not exaggerating too much, there. So I picked a spot that I thought could have been the Wishing Chair, we climbed on up, and wished away.
It occurred to me as Kai and I were getting ready to climb another section that the ranger nearby might know where the chair was. Sure enough he did. It was not the chair where we'd done our wishing. So I called Michael and Tess over, and Kaia and Tess climbed into the official Wishing Chair, and they made their wishes over again. Not for nothing, but I think my choice for a wishing chair is much more interesting.
We also, from the Wishing Chair, had a great view of the Granny Rock. Here is Granny's tragic tale:
You remember, I'm sure, the giant Finn McCool. Well, Finn had a granny who lived with him, and she did like her drink! Every night she'd come home, drunk and banging around, making all kinds of racket. She woke poor Finn up from his sleep every night. Finally, fed up with being woken over and over, Finn roared at his granny, "If you wake me up one more night, I'll turn you to stone!!" The very next night, Granny went out and had herself a few drinks and came back, banging around, sure enough waking up Finn.
And if you look near the top left of the hillside in the photo below, you can see her- an old woman wrapped in a cloak frozen in place as she stumbles her way up- a warning to us all, that, as the guide explained to us, "if you have too much to drink, you're like to get stoned."
Groan.
I admit I'm not sure how old the legend of the Granny Sone is. The last tag might be a recent addition to an older tale, or maybe it's all a more recent creation. But it's a great story, nevertheless!
On a less humorous note, we got an email last night from our swap family, mentioning that he was sorry we were up here during the violence in Belfast and Derry. I had no idea what he was talking about- with limited internet (we bought air time for our stay), no phone, and no newspaper, we are pretty cut off from what's going on around us. So I looked it up on line, and discovered that, on the eve of Marching Day, there had been a riot in Belfast, with about 200 protesters throwing petrol bombs, etc. Violence continued into the next day, in the area around Falls Road (which is where we took the photos of the murals). There was also a riot in Derry, and violence in Ballymena. Here are a couple links to articles about the Belfast riot:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/police-officers-torched-and-targeted-with-lasers-in-belfast-riot-rampage-16022598.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/13/belfast-riots-nigel-dodds-blames-militant-republicans
Pretty horrible.
I'm wary of commenting on something I understand at such a superficial level, but it did set me to thinking about the nature of cycles of violence in general. So here are some thoughts (coherence alert- they're rambling thoughts. It's 2 am here):
It seems really clear that the vast, vast majority of people here do not support the use of violence. There were pleas from all sides before Marching Day for a peaceful event. And judging by the outraged response here to the riots, again from all sides, lots of people have worked really, really hard at the peace process and are committed to seeing it through. It doesn't seem likely to me that the riots are going to change their minds.
But if you read enough articles, you can see how some people have just barely relaxed into peace- still quick to make assumptions about the intentions of those on the "other" side. It's this group I wonder about in the face of something like the riots. How much does it take to tip people out of being tentatively committed to peace and into tentatively being committed to stepping into a new cycle of violence?
Police were specifically targeted in Belfast. Now they have to decide- do they allow themselves to be carried back into that cycle and begin again to view Nationalists and Catholics as a potential threat? And I don't know ( I mean I really don't know) how much of that is even a conscious choice. Aren't we wired to learn from experience and change our behavior accordingly? We're rational creatures and can over-ride our knee-jerk (or learned) responses...except when we can't.
And how many Catholics will now assume that the police will be harsher with them in retaliation, and will therefore see that behavior (and react accordingly) regardless of whether or not it was there? I read an article that quoted a Catholic Priest who was questioning why the police used a water cannon on people. "Regular people are wondering that," he said. He acknowledged that bricks were being thrown, but still didn't understand police response. Ah, Father? They were throwing bombs along with those bricks. And also shooting cops. But I believe absolutely that people are voicing distrust of police.
And of course, if you read the comments to the articles, there are those few people who think the cops should be shooting protestors to kill, or at least be given license to break a lot of bones. Ok, I admit I found that strangely heartening, because I'd always assumed, based on comments on US news stories, that American culture was bottoming out. But here I see it's not the US, it's human nature for some.
Anyway, it's infuriating to me that such a small group of people- and it was truly a small group of people- have even the possibility of such power, but it's often the way.
I'm too tired to include a lengthy discourse on the good news here, about how we do the work anyway, and slowly we do in fact remake the world into a place of greater peace and justice. Suffice it to say that I believe it's true, and I think that most of the folks living in this beautiful place believe it, too.
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