Intercultural- Year of Ireland

    I attended the seminar with Dr. Corrie who focused on conflict and peace that took place in Northern Ireland. Dr. Corrie talked about the East Belfast Mission. She worked at Emory University and traveled to Northern Ireland in 2011. Her trip was affiliated with Emory’s journeys of reconciliation program. She is extremely knowledgeable about the conflict that took place and then she covered how the mending went. I will discuss a few of the points she presented and what I found interesting.

• Dr. Corrie talked about the portion in 1921 in Northern Ireland and how it is still separate. 
• The Northern Ireland and the non-violent movement happened. The British Army then entered and in 1972, when Bloody Sunday happened. 
• The non-violent march happened to go wrong and twenty six people were killed. All of the civilians were shot in the back and were said to be innocent.
•  In 1998, the Good Friday Peace Agreement was signed. Everyone was pressured to vote. When the Peace Agreement was eventually signed a bombing ended up happening. 
• The Titanic was built in Northern Ireland, they were very proud. Everyone was very excited about the ship being built because 63% of those around the shipyard are now employed. A titanic quarter is now being made that is suppose to be for the future. 
• Inner East Belfast is the most impoverished neighborhood. 
• Skainos is a Irish word that means tent. It was very interesting to find out that you can go your whole life being segregated. 

Curt Lindquist signed my paper to prove I was there. 

My next event I attended was the Ghost Stories told by Betsy Doty. She told tales from Ireland that described the many superstitions they have.The one tale she told was about  two monsters named, Lunachar and Munachar. They would carefully pick berries and Lunachar use to eat all of them. Munachar had enough and decided to hang Lunachar. She was very animated in describing all of the different levels, Munachar had to go through to hang Lunachar. He needed an axe to cut the limb and a limb to make a gallow and a gallow to hang Muncahar is a small part of the list he needed to go through to finish his mission. After all he went through Lunachar ended up exploding from eating too many berries so he ended up not being hung. 

The next story is about a woman who looks for a lonely soul to take back with her to her land. She searched all of the world for a soul. She found a farmer whom she awoke and then took his soul.  

The Librarian signed my paper to prove I was there.