"No Irish Need Apply"

Foreword

The Sketch of a Woman and Children represents Bridget O'Donnel. It is a classic Famine Picture very familiar in Irish-American circles -- originally published in the London News on December 22, 1849 in a Christmas Relief Drive

Her story is briefly quoted therein:

We were put out last November; we owed some rent. I was at this time lying in fever. They commenced knocking down the house and had half of it knocked down when two neighbours, women, Nell Spellesley and Kate How, brought me out. I was carried into a cabin and lay there for eight days when I had the creature (the child) born dead. I lay for three weeks after that. The whole of my family got the fever, and one boy thirteen years old died with want and with hunger while we were lying sick.

Powerful anti-Irish sentiments encountered in America by refugees from the Great Starvation were whispered about in my family for years, although in the lowest of possible tones lest children hear. There was a heart wrenching, guilt churning, utterly powerless shame to it all.

In the middle of the 19th Century, more than a million Irish died of starvation as hundreds of thousands more perished on coffin ships.

It was a triumph of Free Enterprise.

"If you go down in the streets today, baby, you'd better open your eyes.

Folk down there really don't care which way the pressure lies,

So I've decided what I'm gonna do now --

And I'm packing my bags for the Misty Mountains, where the spirits go

Over the hills where the spirits fly."

"Misty Mountain Hop" -- Led Zeppelin (1973)

The Misty Mountains of Zeppelin fame are in Wales. They are referenced in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Return Of The King." Robert Plant is a big fan of Tolkien and I’m a big fan of Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham.

Eileen and I moved from Michigan to Oakhurst, California in November of 2006, here to the Misty Mountains of the Sierra.

I've been writing newspaper columns for The Sierra Star, a McClatchy publication covering much of the Yosemite region of Central California.

Much of what follows is from these pieces and other essays I've finally found the time and inspiration to compose. My inspiration?

Horror.

Horror at the threatened destruction of our inherited democracy and long established societal values in the name of freedom.

Horror at thousands of lives and trillions of dollars wasted in war.

Horror at such an abject failure to honor our collective past with proper reflection and restored dedication, being far too involved with lotterys, liposections and Lindsay Lohan.

Yet, with all the miraculous options open in this age of wondrous miracles, I'm so very pleased you're here.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Peter Cavanaugh

December 1, 2012

Oakhurst, California

Where the Spirits Fly

Chapter One -- No Irish Need Apply!

It was a Happy New Year beginning for wealthy corporate interests in Wisconsin last month when newly-elected Republican Governor Scott Walker assumed both office and the delusion that no one would particularly notice when he signed a series of bills in his opening weeks granting $140 million dollars to out-of-state corporations in tax relief. Equally preposterous was Walker’s naiveté in supposing that the $137 million dollar state budget shortfall thus created could be blamed on Wisconsin’s unionized government employees, except several police and firefighter groups which supported him in his recent election campaign, loyalty having its place in pay backs.

Wisconsin is no California. 

Besides winning Super Bowl XLV, beating top-ranked Ohio State in basketball and brewing beer by the boatload, the Badger State proudly waltzed into 2011 with a budget actually in balance, more rare in our times than a good hair day for Donald Trump. That’s until Walker and fellow Republicans in the Wisconsin House and Senate, having ridden November’s Tea Party Wave to super majority status, whacked off that cool 140 million for their friends. Giddy with glee, Walker then proceeded to pronounce Wisconsin’s unionized governmental employees, save those with squad cars or fire trucks, guilty of gross financial malfeasance. How? By being paid according to their union contract. Their penalty? The 2011 Budget Repair Bill (SS 11), introduced and voted on in less than a single week.

SS 11 was designed to strip the ability of Wisconsin public employee unions to bargain over pensions, health insurance and working conditions and would limit those unions to negotiate only on base wages. But there will be no discussions over an immediate increase in forced, arbitrary contributions to health and pension plans amounting to several thousand dollars annually. That’s a done deal. So be it!

The proposal marks a sad and ironic shift for Wisconsin, which in 1959 was the first State to pass a comprehensive collective bargaining law for public employees and was the birthplace in 1932 of Wisconsin State Employees/Council 24. This seed of a dream later grew to become today’s AFSCME, The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, by far the largest national union representing all non-federal public employees.

A bit of honest personal disclosure now seems appropriate and important.

I’ve been on both sides of a picket line.

I was an elected Audit Man for NABET (National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians) Local 46 at WTAC in Flint during the ‘60’s and was President and General Manager of that same facility, negotiating for station ownership against NABET in the late ‘70’s. Mind you, this was in Flint, Michigan, home of the United Auto Workers and site of the historic 1936 Sit-down Strike at General Motors which brought forth an American middle class now endangered as never before. 

I believe I learned three things in Flint:

(1) Unrestrained unionism yields anarchistic chaos. 

(2) Unchecked management breeds aristocratic tyranny.

(3) Blessed is the balance. 

Wisconsin is not alone in what any fair-minded individual should regard as thinly veiled, politically expedient union busting. Similar legislation against collective bargaining by governmental employees, including police and firefighters, is pending in Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana, Nevada and Tennessee.

In 1987, I was honored being asked by the UAW to narrate a live radio and TV broadcast of their 50th Anniversary Parade through the streets of Flint and produce a thirty minute Fireworks Spectacular on the banks of the Flint River in the heart of downtown, complete with lasers and a synchronized symphonic soundtrack. By then, I was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of a seven station non-union group, but had always attempted to be enthusiastically participatory in all community events regardless of worker affiliation or lack thereof. 

In preparing a formal ten-minute recorded introduction to the festivities, I visited UAW archives in Detroit and discovered a dusty old 78 rpm Gramophone disc from 1932, an old activist marching song which I wrote into the script.

On a hot summer night at dusk, through dozens of speakers with thousands of watts pumping into a hundred thousand Michigan ears — came chilling words from a not too distant past — and a title explaining this Cavanaugh’s own powerful reluctance to join any union damning bandwagons of this moment or any other. 

No Irish Need Apply!

I trust such sentiments referencing ANY national origin will forever remain properly abandoned on the trash heap of history, never to be resurrected by thuggish throwbacks to meaner streets and uglier days. Or that time-honored collective bargaining ever be cavalierly condemned by precocious newbie Governors looking for press.

Chapter Two -- Rock ‘n Roll

1992 was the 100th Anniversary of my Great-Grandfather’s death. He had left Ireland during The Famine Years in 1848 and had crossed the North Atlantic to the green fields of America. He was buried under a fine Celtic Cross in a little churchyard just north of Syracuse. His name is engraved in sharp and bold lettering, still clearly distinct with a century gone:

PETER   CAVANAUGH

My namesake’s handwriting appears in an old, worn book on Irish History that was passed down to me by my Uncle Vince. It was all Peter left us in memory.

Cavanaugh

Diocese of Fern

County of Leinster

Town of Ballyoughter

Irish Nobility

Evicted By The English

And Abandoned By God

I had left broadcasting after thirty-six uninterrupted years. I knew where to go. Eileen and I drove to Detroit and caught a flight to Dublin. We rented a car and traveled the land without itinerary or agenda. There was no need. There were spirits everywhere. We were led.

Peter is listed as the son of James and Margaret Cavanaugh, born in the summer of 1816 in Ballyoughter. The town has disappeared. It was located east of Enniscorthy, just south of Dublin in the Wicklow Mountains near the Irish Sea.

Peter was baptized July 15 of that year, according to parish records now miraculously preserved on microfilm at the Library
of Ireland in Dublin. The fancy spelling of the family name Kavanagh with a C and a superfluous u can be attributed
 to the transcribing priest, who wrote in a most graceful and elegant hand. Before and after his stewardship of some thirty
 years, the whole bunch were illiterate Kavanaghs, forbidden to learn reading and writing, own property, vote, practice their religion, hold public office, engage in trade or commerce or possess firearms.

The priest had faithfully noted births, marriages and deaths in the small community during his whole tenure. It is a ledger covered with 
invisible tears. There are five pages per year before The Famine, and five years per page thereafter. Many in our family died of hunger. So did a million fellow countrymen during the time of the Great Starvation with yet another million emigrating on Coffin Ships bound for North America, Australia and New Zealand. Of these, an estimated one out of five died from disease.

Peter made it to America. He was unmarried and in his early thirties. He found an Irish bride in the States. Their son John, my Grandfather, was born in 1854. It was John’s son, Donald, who died on the radio.

Our direct Cavanaugh (Kavanagh) line is traced to the middle of the Twelfth Century and one Donal Kavanagh, who had become very disenchanted with his father, Dermod Mac Murrough, King of Leinster.

Dermod was the Irish King who first let in the English to help extended his power and control over the entire island. He is described as: No hero, but a large, lustful, blustering, hoarse-voiced man, whose name had an evil sound in the ears of the Irish. He was the bad son of a bad father, one who chose rather to be feared than loved. In honor of his friend, King Henry II of England, Dermod thought he’d take an English wife.

King MacMurrough wasn’t much for courtship. He kidnapped Chelsea of the Willows, a beautiful English noblewoman, and dragged her back to Ireland in chains. He married her and impregnation eventually followed. The lovely Chelsea wasn’t a withering willow. She introduced further disrepute into the family picture by poisoning Dermod and burning him alive on their Wedding Anniversary. She torched him with a flaming log, revenge with phallic overtones.  She told King Henry she was sorry and built an Abbey for penance. She was royalty. She cut a good deal.

Eileen and I walked the ruins of the Abbey at sunset. Only the crows cried welcome. 
Donal was born after Dermod’s fiery demise. There was an image problem. Although the family name was later fully redeemed with great honor by Donal’s son Art MacMurrough/Kavanaugh several generations down the road, with a traitor for a father and murderess-mom, Donal felt major disassociation would be highly appropriate and refused to be called a Mac Murrough. He chose Kavanagh as a new surname in honor of his counselor and close friend Cavan (which curiously is historically spelled with a C), a prominent Irish priest and confessor. Cavan was eventually sainted by the Church.

Discussing DNA genetics and what have you, it is striking to note that Dermod and Chelsea’s genes undoubtedly enjoyed constant and particular reinforcement in a most unique manner all the way through to The Great Hunger and Peter’s passage to America. Ballyoughter was less than five miles away from Fern, the ancient Irish capital from which Dermod and his fierce warriors ruled and plundered. Our particular tribal branch, as verified by those parish records in Dublin, thus never seriously strayed away from home for over seven hundred years between Dermod’s smoldering remains and Peter’s farewell to the groves of shillelagh and shamrock. Dermod and Chelsea have just kept on sharing each other, all forgiven. It’s never been otherwise.

Dermod and Chelsea had arrived late in the true Irish sense of things.

The village of Slane is forty-five miles northwest of Dublin. On its ancient castle grounds have played The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springstein, Bob Dylan and U-2. On the Hill of Slane, Saint Patrick proclaimed Ireland to be Christian in 433 A.D. by lighting a paschal fire. The burial chamber at Newgrange is on the banks of the River Boyne a few miles to the east. It is over five thousand years old.

The Newgrange chamber is a huge, circular, man-made mound of white and black boulders, largely covered with earth and grass. It measures two hundred and forty feet across and is forty-four feet high. An entrance overlooks a broad bend in the river. A narrow tunnel leads seventy feet down into the earth. Passage is slow. A central chamber contains three rooms, all openly facing into the center. Water has never penetrated into the surrounding rocks. Construction was by master architects. It was built for the ages. The spiral markings are everywhere. Their meaning is unclear.

A small opening over the entrance is aligned so that the sun’s rays penetrate and illuminate the chamber with a fiery red glow only once each year at the exact point of the Winter Solstice. It is seen as a symbol of rebirth and renewal. The effect lasts less than twenty minutes.

Newgrange was not erected as a tomb. It is a womb.

It is two thousand years older than Stonehenge.

IT IS PERSPECTIVE.

Eileen and I spent some time in England and visited Stonehenge too. We went through the Tower of London and