Blogtrotter

Save Tara Campaign




I posted on this last Spring, but as the writer (of the e-mail I copy-and-paste here) and I have commiserated, the Green Party entering into coalition with the eternally corrupt Fianna Fáil since April's protests appears shamefully and frankly not to give a damn either, speaking of another Tara.

(And belatedly after this original post I checked out "SaveTara.org" as opposed to the dot.com address below for the official Tara protest. Well, it's a West Hollywood house threatened by yuppie WeHo developers who rule that enclave of affluent gays, elderly Russian Jews, and those motley trendinistas who flourish thanks to rent control. Likewise, the LA City Council today gives in to real estate magnates who want to Manhattanize our whole city in the name of packing millions more in and somehow expecting them all to take the Red Line. Yeah, I'll see those starstruck newbies sipping lattes on my next subway trip to work as these corporate drones and empty nesters abandon the Hummer and the hottub for rubbing shoulders with those unable to afford WeHo's annoying "house blend" of smug trustafarians and pampered pensioned. I despair at the bulldozing outside my window of what remains of the open spaces of California [as my neighbor to the north notes below]. Irish or Angeleno, Bay Area or Meath, we struggle for keeping our natural heritage-- which passes in my hometown as less than a century rather than of millennia as "old"-- intact.)

Here's Lee Templeton's letter to us; there was apparently a protest last Saturday here even in L.A., not far from Selznick's old studio, that I found out about too late. But, please do what you can to make this issue known. I will be at a conference of lit crit types next week in Tacoma at which the Irish consulate will be present, and plan to do my bit to talk up this issue of cultural preservation. Count me (even if I risk being lumped with those in WeHo) among the "bien-pensant." Over to Lee:

This Kevin Myers over at Independent.ie is a bit of langer isn't he?

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/unleash-the-jcbs-and-finish-off-the-tara-motorway-pronto-1089407.html

Writing on the controversial expansion of the M3 Motorway (that's a 'freeway' to my fellow Norte Americanos on the list), Myers takes up the side of the Irish government and the corporate developers who are eager to plough through a landscape older than Stonehenge. And somehow MY culture gets involved:

quote:
Whenever show business takes sides on any public controversy, the other side is probably right. Let that wisdom be your lodestone. So it was with some gratitude that I saw the actor Stuart Townsend leading the recent objections to the M3 motorway project in Meath. end quote

Dude! What's the deal with harshin' on Hollywood? And it IS Hollywood he's talking about, because the article goes on to say:

quote again:
Twenty minutes' one-way journey-time translates into forty minutes a day, and given a forty-six week working year, this becomes over 150 hours a year: the equivalent of nearly four unnecessary working-weeks sitting in the car, every year, for scores of thousands of commuters.

Now, the smug bien-pensant can easily dismiss the mental health and the family-lives of such lesser types. For these latter are largely unimportant, plain individuals, who probably live in housing estates in Meath and Louth, not in palaces in Hollywood, such as that inhabited by Stuart Townsend and his Oscar-winning girlfriend, Charlize Theron, (who probably doesn't know where or what Tara is, but she backs it anyway).
end quote

Yeah fine. Make this about California. And you really should, because nowhere else in the world could provide Ireland with a sterling example of what happens when a government sets priorities around an auto culture. When it values progress and efficiency at the expense of history and landscape. When it (to borrow again from Myers) becomes a society that views its own archaeological treasures as "the rotting post-holes of settlements that vanished 3,000 years ago."

For some reason, it's the unknowable of Tara that Myers considers a weakness. He says "Notwithstanding that Meath is the home of an extinct civilisation, its archeological riches are unlikely to compare with those, say, of Monte Cassino in Italy, a place I know well."

The kicker here being that the Italian government paved through the Cassino landscape with a motorway of their own. "See," Myers seems to suggest, "if a former empire can do it, why not us?"

Anyway, the slam at Hollywood (and the Oscars! Who can hate the Oscars?) has me good to go on this one. I'm online this morning furiously trying to read up on the past year's worth of history so I can effectively advocate for the preservationist argument of this issue tonight at a academic meeting. I'm also writing a letter to my local branch of the Irish Consulate (something you fellow Norte Americanos might also enjoy doing! I'm using linen stock letterhead and everything! Totally retro. Check out the handy list at the bottom of this email. Read up on the whole story here: http://www.savetara.com/ )

I also encourage any of us who want to discuss or debate this issue to join me or challenge me or whatever it is you political types like to do. After all, it's been very cool that you've read this far.

And remember: If you can't do it for Ireland, do it for David Selznick!

Lee "Hooray for Ballyross" Templeton

P.S. That phone number again:
Embassy of Ireland
2234 Massachusetts Ave. Washington D.C. 20008
tel. (202) 462-3939/ fax. (202) 232-5993

Consulate General of Ireland
Ireland House. 345 Park Avenue - 17th Floor. New York, NY 10154-0037
tel. (212) 319-2555/ fax. (202) 980-9475

Consulate General of Ireland
535 Boylston Street. Boston MA 02116
tel. (617) 267-9330/ fax. (617) 267-6375

Consulate General of Ireland. 400 North Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60611
tel. (312) 337-1868/ fax. (312) 337-1954

Consulate General of Ireland
44 Montgomery Street, Suite 3830. San Francisco CA 94104
tel. (415) 392-4214/ fax. (415) 392-0885