We finally have a campaign underway dealing with this matter.

http://www.safeandlegalinireland.ie/

The Discriminatory Nature of Ireland’s Abortion Ban

On a daily basis IFPA counsellors witness how a woman’s age, her mental capacity, and her other life circumstances affect her decision whether to carry a pregnancy to term and her ability to do so. Yet, the laws restricting abortion disregard all such factors.

Refugee, Asylum Seeking and migrant women

Women who are refugees, asylum seekers or unregistered migrants face particularly difficult challenges in travelling for an abortion resulting in increased delay, expense, unnecessary hardship and stigma. Refugees or asylum seekers who wish to travel to England for abortion services must apply to the Department of Justice for a visa to re-enter the country. This process is time-consuming and burdensome.

Women often need assistance to negotiate through the bureaucratic visa process with State authorities; for example, needing help to expedite requests, find translation services, and fax documents from a private fax. Apart from the severe burden that the uncertainty of this process imposes upon women, the fees and cost of travel to Dublin add an additional financial burden on refugee or asylum seeker women who are often surviving on state grants of only 19.50 per week.

For migrant women who do not have a work permit or refugee or asylum seeker status, this process of applying for permission to travel can be impossible and can jeopardise their right to be in Ireland. Women may resort to illegal abortion providers or attempt to travel without legal documentation. In the past year the Garda Siochana have found evidence of a return to illegal, unsafe abortion not seen since the early 1950’s.

Women on Low Income

Women on low income are particularly adversely impacted by the ban on abortion. Women living in poverty who are holders of valid medical cards issued by the Health Services Executive are entitled to free health care service for all medical services other than abortion. The IFPA sees a great many women who seek counselling assistance not because they are uncertain about their options but because they are in need of financial assistance. Many women experiencing poverty turn to moneylenders who charge extortionate rates for short-term loans to cover the cost of abortion and required travel.

Young Women

For young women the experience of travel itself can be very difficult or intimidating. They have increased difficulties raising funds and often remain isolated because they fear telling anyone about their situation. Sometimes young women are accompanied to counselling by a parent or other relative or a friend. However, many young women travel without first seeking counselling or informing anyone that they are leaving the country. Young women in particular often do not feel comfortable consulting their family doctor or general practitioner (“GP”) for fear they will be judged for being pregnant or considering abortion or that their confidentiality will be breached.

Those women who have Irish citizenship but who lack a passport or driver’s license face additional difficulties travelling. To seek a passport on an expedited basis requires a woman to disclose that she is travelling to seek an abortion, a disclosure that often remains in her file at her local passport office.

Women in Care or in the Control of the State

Those in care or in the control of the state face additional barriers in accessing services abroad. (Expand).

http://www.youtube.com/user/SafeAndLegalIreland

There is that feeling on the air, the promise of summer to come.
It’s not to bright or too warm, the breeze is refreshing and at last not cutting.
It was a hell of an intresting week just gone and I am looking forward to a few more low key days
before the run up to the bank holiday weekend of just enjoying being alive and smiling.

So my brats are sitting at the kitchen table and eating pickles; they love pickles and consider them a treat, I can get more jobs done around the house by promising them pickles then I can ice-cream. I am folding and sorting the washing and putting it in piles and somehow the toy car one of them had brought to the tables goes missing.

A hunt en sues for the car which threatens to render all the sorting of the washing back into chaos I yell for them to stop and find the car for them. “Ah ha” says my daughter “It was hiding” holding it up triumphantly, “Nope” retorts her bother,
“Yes it was “she insists and ‘hides’ the car again behind her pile of washing and turns to him and says “See?” “It’s not hiding it’s concealed.” He declares and munches on another pickle. “Huh? What is the difference?” she asks.

My ten year old then goes on to explain that hiding is an act of will, that a person or animal has to choose to hide or be complicit in the hiding were as an object can not.
A person can by choosing to do hide an object by concealing it but the object is concealed, cos objects can’t choose to hide and can’t unhide themselves there for they can only be concealed and then discovered.

It was one of those bright and happy moments when I got to see how just not normal my eldest is a good way which lead me to ponder is his ‘difference’ hidden or concealed? I don’t think it has been hidden, he never choose to hide it and now we know about that fact that he has aspergers and it is no longer concealed behind other behaviours or reasons for him being the way he is I like to think that it’s just him being him and does not change the fact I love every hair on his head even when he
has had a bad day and both of our stress levels have gone through the roof and we both go to bed grumpy.

I don’t see the point in hiding it either; I grew up with people being neurologically different from my dad with this epilepsy and a close family friend who is bipolar.
Sure there are days when he can strop out completely and sulk and get overwhelmed emotionally and cry and all in public and all with in a few minutes and so what that is how he is and he is learning to manage and I am learning how to manage him.
Not contain, correct, or prevent but to understand what it is like for him so that I can
help him manage what is going on with him for himself.

A lot of this is keeping an eye on his stressors and stress levels but he is learning how to do that for himself and will come to me and tell me that he is stressed, where his level is at and can tell me what is causing it and then we start problem solving about what he or we can do about it, lately it has just be him using me as a sounding board while he figures things out which is a vast improvement over the child who would instead throw himself at doors, walls and on the floor in frustration.

So much of it is talking and listening. Letting him know that his communications to me is getting through, actively listening seems to be a great help. That and helping him make sense of different emotions. This evening he nearly finished a book that he has really relished and came to tell me about the ending and was swept away and confused about how he could be so emotionally conflicted with nearly finishing the book.
It’s a pretty big achievement for him considering the book is a little over 500 pages.
But the bitter sweet prospect of finding out what happens and the story ending and it being that pronounced was new to him and hence surprising and confusing.
“ Mam, how can I be smiling and crying ?” he asked. So it became a half hour talk about how that is possible and how you can feel two very strong emotions at the same time and the meaning of the term bittersweet.

He asked me what the most bittersweet thing in life is and I have to say it is for me being a parent. Both of them grow and change so fast, while it is wonderful to see and watch them develop as people and take pride in all those steps and achievements there is the fact that as a parent your job is to make sure that one day they will barely need you. Ok this might be a tad more complicated with my son but it’s the same struggle every parent feels as their kids grow up.

One thing about him being the way he is means we have some of the most interesting conversations not just between the two of us, his sister included and I am grateful for it as long as the communication and trust is there I hope we can all weather the storms of both their adolescences for he is ten and they grow up so quickly.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

John Keats. 1795–1821

625. Ode on a Grecian Urn

THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. 40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ 50

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a poem by John Keats, written in 1819 and first published in January 1820. Its inspiration is considered to be a visit by Keats to the exhibition of Greek artifacts accompanying the display of the “Elgin Marbles” at the British Museum.[citation needed] The poem captures aspects of Keats’s idea of “Negative Capability”, as the reader does not know who the figures are on the urn, what they are doing, or where they are going. Instead, the speaker revels in this mystery, as he does in the final couplet (mentioned below), which does not make immediate, ascertainable sense but continues to have poetic significance nonetheless. The ode ultimately deals with the complexity of art’s relationship with real life.

The poem begins:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

and ends with the famous lines:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

Due to uncertainty over where the punctuation is placed, it is impossible to know whether the last lines are spoken by the urn, or representative of the poet’s view. Also, it may be that only “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” is spoken, and the rest is the poet’s comment. This has led to significant critical division over the meaning of the famous Ode.

Because this ending couplet is in direct contrast to many of Keats’ poems, for example “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” or “Lamia”, in which a man is deceived by a woman’s beauty, literary critics have begun interpreting it in a new way. It is now believed that the narrator, representative of Keats, was criticizing the Urn, saying that all it will ever need to know is that beauty is truth and truth beauty. This is also a sign of jealousy as the narrator admires this simplicity just as he criticizes yet admires the characters on the urn, who will never achieve climax yet are forever passionate.

I remember this poem from when I was in secondary school and I also remember thinking on the argument about the lusty lad with the maiden just out reach being frozen at the peak of supposed passion and ergo being prefect as a heap of rubbish, that there has to be more then that as it is to puritanical and pure idea and really passion to was to my mind messy and would peak and fall and peak again rather then be all down hill but I was unsure as to why exactly and being precocious figured it was cos I did not know enough about life and passion.

Which I then pursued as often as possible and in many different ways discovering many differnt passions, types of passion
And the different way people expression their passion in different ways and for different reasons.

Desire is the start of passion and sometimes it blooms and sometimes it does not. For to be passionate about something or someone you have to know and accept them in all weathers, at least to my mind and that means knowing that while passion can ebb and flow that it does ebb and flow. Passion is what drives people, be it to love, to war, to stand up for others, to do things they dream of and that they are scared of.

Living a passionate life can be as full of sorrow as it can be of joy but doing it while be brutally honest with oneself
makes for a hell of a time. Passion can be quiet as well it is not all huge rows and shouting and loudly laughing, it can be the brisk turn of a page, a held breath, a stitch quietly placed, a floor neatly swept.

Some people are very expressive about their passions they tell people all about them and their intensity pours out of them while they remember and relive, others kept their passions quietly to themselves, hording them rarely sharing keeping them safe and select shared only with a small select few but that does not mean one is more passionate then the other about the things that lights that fire with in them and fuels it.

With desire can come the disappointments and disillusionment but how much of that do we do to ourselves ?
How honest with ourselves are we being if we let desire build to a point where it discolours that which sparked it and the fires of passion never ignites ? That for me is the tragedy of the boy and girl for ever frozen on the urn and for me one the truths I went seeking and in doing so learned more about myself then I ever expected.

“I hope my children will look back on today
and see a mother who had time to play
There will be years for cleaning and cooking,
But Children grow up when we are not looking
Dusting and Scrubbing can wait till tomorrow,
for babies grow fast, we learn to our sorrow
So quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.”

http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0402/ahernb.html?

“Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has announced that he will tender his resignation to President Mary McAleese on 6 May.”

About bloody time too.

It started with a question: How can we inspire people to take action on climate change?

The answer: Ask the people of Sydney to turn off their lights for one hour.

On 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,000 cars off the road for a year.

So far, as well as Sydney, there’ll also be Chicago, Tel
Aviv, Manila, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Brisbane and Toronto all turning off their lights for an hour. And I’m sure there’ll be more cities by March.
Sign up for Earth Hour by visiting http://www.earthhour.org sign-up and join the movement.

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhojojaucwgb/

Dublin is taking part.

Diners at the Four Seasons in Dublin will be digging into their food by candlelight tomorrow night as the hotel’s restaurant switches off its lights for a major global environmental campaign.

Between 8pm and 9pm the capital will join dozens of cities across the globe taking part in Earth Hour to raise awareness about climate change.

The eatery will be plunged into darkness for the entire evening save for candles on the tables while lighting at numerous city landmarks will also be powered off.

Galway and Limerick City Councils as well as 15 town and county councils around the country have also signed up for the initiative