The keynotes, by independent journalists from Oaxaca and Palestine, were humbling and inspiring. I look forward to downloading the promised audio soon and making it available through A Critical Ear.

The food… the food was abundant and delicious. Props to the various caterers and restaurants used. The scenery, in Portland and on the train journey from and to Seattle, was beautiful and refreshing. Powell’s was a rare treat (as was a return visit to Left Bank Books in Seattle this afternoon).

Finally, the KBOO studios were impressive and inspiring. Their audio archive – with 40 years of public affairs tapes, cassettes, and more, from independent and radical sources – is the sort of place I’d love to have an opportunity to ensconce myself in for a considerable period.

More detail when I return to Urbana and am able to compile some of my notes and recordings from the event. Until then, a fair summary is: inspiring and useful. Both Portland and GRC demand return visits.

Last year I was invited to speak to La Casa about my thoughts, and I’m doing the same again this year, in an event co-sponsored by the Asian American Cultural Center, the Office of Women’s Programs, the African American Cultural Center and the Office of LGBT Resources. If you’re in the Urbana-Champaign area, feel free to come by Monday (25 February) at 12pm. (La Casa Cultural Latina is at 1203 W Nevada.) If you can’t be there you may still be interested in a statement I issued last year, which is once again to be published in the Daily Illini by the Office of the Dean of Students – I’ll add a link to that later today. 

The trip here was largely uneventful, though a delayed train from Champaign did cause me to worry briefly that my recent travel woes (most recently, a non-existent Greyhound bus from Champaign, which caused me to miss a flight to Toronto) were going to continue. All was well, however, as the train actually made up much its time en route to Chicago.

I don’t think I’ve taken United for some time, so I was mildly amused when watching their on-board entertainment, that they actually interrupt TV shows with advertisements (primarily to promote BNC shows and some films); with at least 4 such interruptions during a single episode of The Office. On one level, it’s as if viewers wouldn’t be able to comprehend TV-like content without these interruptions. On another, of course, it’s clear that the primary goal of the content is not to entertain passengers, but rather to treat them as a captive audience to be marketed to. Maybe its my usual channel-surfing approach to TV, but I felt there were even more commercial interruptions than would be usual on US television – which, itself, is a shock to anyone coming from Ireland, where there are legal limits on the number and duration of interruptions in any time period.

Vancouver itself is an interesting and enjoyable town. So many of the reviews on sites like TripAdvisor stress the presence of social problems – a large homeless population, open drug use in certain areas – and while there is definitely some truth to that, I haven’t felt particularly nervous as I’ve been travelling around the city. Of course, I have avoided those areas (such as East Hastings street) which get the most flak from visitors, but areas like Robson street and Granville (both quite different from each other) have a good mixture of restaurants, shops, and nightlife.

There was the slightest of tremors visible, and he wasn’t as spry as he might have been in years past. At the same time, his ability to build an environment purely through body movement was amazing – there he was walking through a park, watching some birds, now watching some dogs at play. It was an honour to see him, and the audience knew it was probably their last opportunity, as they gave him three (well-deserved) standing ovations at the end.

May he rest in peace.

He was a fine man, and as I sit here I hear again his voice, slightly hoarse but still melodic and strident, a faint echo of mischief and challenge in it, and see him standing, always so admirably upright. My mind traces back to an early memory. He had come to Galway for a conference, the Labour Party in 1983 (or was it ’82?). During one session he brings me into the hall, to Leisureland, and I’m sure to the balcony at the back. And as I stretch back in my mind I realize it’s two memories fused. Another conference, this time the Credit Unions, a few years later, also Leisureland. Which time was it that he introduced me to people? “Willie! Is this your grandson?” “You take after your grandfather” (of course) and “You must be proud of him” (me of him). This last, the wording, probably not right, the event recedes just beyond sight, in the fog of the past, but there’s an essential truth to the sentiment. And I was – proud – especially seeing him there, where he was, as they say, in his element. I who was, as yet, too young to understand fully the notion of a ‘conference’, to participate as anything other than “Willie’s grandson”, could yet appreciate the admiration, the sense of purpose as he spoke with others, seeming to know so many and to float so easily through this space.

There were more conferences, of course, and many more groups and committees. One of my uncles read through the list at his funeral – choirs and church-groups – ones I knew and some I’d forgotten – credit union and harbour board – groups that kept him busy late into the evenings – Party and trade union – threading through the very fabric of his life – service members associations, senior citizens’ parliament – and underpinning his commitment to service and community. He was a Catholic, took his faith seriously, and drew on that faith to inform his work.

Or so I’m told. It’s amazing how a memory can so often be reduced to a collection of facts and assertions, gleaned and reframed from sermons and eulogies. As I rode the train to my grandfather’s funeral I read Banville’s The Sea, a powerful pondering on the past, and it fed into my own thought process. What was it of my memories that spoke, truly of my grandfather, of Granddad? Was it the careful accounting of public achievements – his lifetime achievement recognition from the Louth People of the Year Awards – and estimation of total hours spent here, or there? At the funeral – before the funeral, at the house – I got to meet one of the men he represented in the union, and we spoke of his triumphs, his successes that made differences to the lives of so many. These discussions, and the honor guards from groups he had served, reminded me again of why I was proud of him, of why I strive so often to emulate him. As I write these words again, that feeling, that pride, comes again – not that he worked alone, a quixotic hero, but perhaps that’s an even greater challenge; to work with and alongside others, subsuming in some manner your personal struggle, to build these things so they are more than the condensed will of a single individual.

But there’s more, and I too travel to a seaside scene. They – he, my grandmother – bring us – my sisters, myself – out to the beach where their children had once played. Or standing (so straight) directing me as I run around a track. Or he’s laying out tea in their house, or again the voice. Always the voice. We closed his funeral with a tribute that brought to mind that voice, as we sang Joe Hill. And while it’s tempting to close, then, with that admonition of “Don’t Mourn, Organize!” I think, instead of that other slogan – this one not from Joe – that we fight for bread, but roses too.

I’ll post more about my grandfather in time, but will just say now that he was a good man who worked unceasingly for his community. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dilis.