2006spring

4 GLENSTAL NEWSLETTER Spring 2006

SPECIAL NEEDS at Glenstal T

he Special Needs Department was set up in Glenstal Abbey School in September 2005. While its location is still rather modest, it is housed in a small portacabin with 2 rooms, the department has nevertheless made a major impact in the first 5 months of its operation. It is a very welcome new development in the school. Already 40 students receive some level of support in their learning, which represents 20% of our student population. Special needs is thus not a sideline activity but already is part of regular school teaching and is seen as such by the entire teaching and student body. The level of support varies from 1 to 7 class periods, support being graded according to need. This allows these students to more fully participate in the academic program of the school and also has the added benefit of making their learning a more pleasant activity. Our goal at Glenstal is for every

ELECTED At the World Congress of Gastroenterology in Montreal, Canada (October 2005), Professor Eamonn Quigley (1970) was unanimously elected President of the World Gastroenterology Organisation.

OLD BOYS TIES New Style pure silk old Boys ties available from Fr. Andrew. €35 post free worldwide.

Let Us Remember John Dawson (1951-1955). John Thunder (1940-1945). Gerald Richards (1941-1947). Anne Ryan, wife of Michael, mother of Conor. Veronica Kearney, mother of Peter, Kevin and Bill. Pauline Woulfe-Flanagan, wife of Peter. Mary McElhinney, mother of Paul, Karl, and Mark. Liam O’Callaghan, father of Paul and Nicholas. Domhnall Heraughty, father of Domhnall Kevin Booth, father of Rory. Edited by Andrew Nugent osb Layout & Print by INTYPE Ltd.

student to get the most out of his school years and the special needs provisions are certainly facilitating this for many. Everybody wants to learn. We all have a natural curiosity to discover and learn new things. Some however meet certain obstacles on their way and this can often lead to discouragement. Our job in the Special Needs Department is to identify these obstacles and bypass them using compensating strategies and make learning the enjoyable activity it ought to be. I would like to take this opportunity to thank both students and teachers for their great response to this new initiative. It says something of our school that such major change was possible with a minimum of fuss, due largely to the flexibility and generosity of the teaching staff. Once again a sincere thank you. Luke MacNamara osb (1983-1988)

AGM

Disaster ( 5K), Nigerian Monastry (3K), School Rugby Tour (1K).

Sun. Oct. 23rd 2005

Particular appreciation was expressed to those members who actively participated in making the annual events of the last two years so successful: Henry Anderson, Tom O’Connor, Corrie Mc Namara, PJ Crerar, Josh Nugent, Tom Reilly, Mark Roche Garland, Ian Lynam, Stephen Kieran. A special word of appreciation to Greg Ashe who maintains and supports the Ubique online database and the Society website www.myubique.com

n enthusiastic gathering of ca. 30 members attended which included A Abbot Christopher and Abbot Celestine. Gearoid Bradley President, reported that the Annual Dinner and the Golf Outing were well attended in 2005, and in particular the Society is now communicating more effectively with the younger members and the Society Members as a whole via email and with the support of a small active young committee. The new members tie was launched in August and the first two batches have already been sold out. More have become available since. The developments with the website and the Ubique online, where all members now have full ownership / responsibility for their own details is supported very well by the Society. A notable feature of the online database is that todate no security or spamming problems have been encountered. A challenge for the Society going forward is to consider what “focus” the Society should take on now, now that we have the ability to communicate more effectively with the members. The demands on the Solidarity Fund have been relatively modest, but it is important that such a fund should exist and be supported. Contributions made on behalf of the Society during the year were Solidarity Fund (5K), Tsumani

John Coyle (1966) from Galway was confirmed as President of the Society, with Fergal Duff (1968) and Geoff MacEnroe (1959) being elected to the committee.

OLYMPICS 2008 Sam Hunt 1995-2001 “In January 2005, I was asked by Gerald Owens, Irish sailings top international competitor and a successful representative of Ireland at the Athens Olympics, to join him in a sailing campaign for the 2008 Olympic Games. The Olympic class which we will compete in is the 470 dinghy. A sixteen foot, fast and light, two person dinghy, with a trapeze and spinnaker. The 470 Class is internationally recognized as the toughest two handed Olympic class.”

www.myubique.com info@myubique.com

In Sri Lanka and Niger with GOAL he morning after handing up my thesis in early February, recovering from the previous night’s excess, I was pondering my route to financial success. This dream was interrupted by a call from GOAL and a week later I was in Sri Lanka sourcing $250, 000 of fishing nets for small fishermen affected by the tsunami.

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I spent the following six months working as a logistician, initially based in the capital Colombo, and later in three other GOAL offices around the coast hit by the tsunami. My time was split between procurement (The dictionary has various definitions for this – all my work was honourable!), transport and warehousing. The most rewarding project in which I was involved was the construction of temporary shelters. In any humanitarian emergency, displaced people are initially provided with tents. It can take years to build permanent accommodation, so cheap but sturdy temporary shelters are often provided in the interim. In Sri Lanka, these resembled large garden sheds with a concrete floor, galvanized roof and wooden frame wrapped in thick plastic sheeting. Within four months of the tsunami, GOAL had built 3,000 of these shelters, providing a deg ree of security for some of the 900, 000 people displaced in Sri Lanka.

In August, GOAL sent a team to Niger to assess the threat of the predicted famine. Each year Niger’s population experiences a ‘hunger gap’ at the end of the summer. This is caused as the previous season’s food stocks are used up and before the next crop can be harvested. 2005 started with a severe drought, which together with a swarm of locusts, destroyed the harvest and prolonged this hunger gap. Two of our offices in Sri Lanka were combining at the time and I jumped on the opportunity to move to Niger. Soon my petit peu de français and Fr John’s French idioms were being used to explain how we would conduct food distributions in the middle of the Sahara. With the help of sponsorship from the World Food Program, GOAL organised a food distribution to 200,000 people around the city of Zinder, 600 km east of the capital, Niamey. Distributing the 3,000 tons of food necessary meant handing out 100 tons of maize and beans to as many as 2,000 families a day for a month. I spent the morning of 22nd August setting up two distribution sites an hour west of Zinder. On the way back to the office our car spun out of control, flipped across the road and landed upside down in the sand. Nazeer, who was driving, and I were

dragged from the wreckage and the next car to stop took us to Zinder’s hospital. Nazeer’s shoulder was dislocated, while I could hardly move. Realising my neck was damaged but with minimal facilities available, a GOAL doctor took no chances and taped my head to the only flat surface available – a door! Three days later I arrived back in Dublin and was taken to the Mater where they confirmed that one of my ver tebrae was shattered with 5 fractures. Thankfully I have made a full recovery and have had unlimited time to make outrageous plans for my future- oh for some career guidance from Br Timothy! The Glenstal Society and many of you made donations to both the Tsunami and the famine in Niger. On behalf of GOAL, thank you for this support; I can guarantee that your money was well spent. GOAL is always grateful for support from the public, which it especially needs at the start of emergency prog rams before institutional funding is released. For every euro donated by the public GOAL is able to raise another nine euro from governments and the UN. If you would like to make a donation you can contact GOAL on 01-2809779 or at www.goal.ie Fred Tottenham (1997)

DATES TO REMEMBER

Sam needs sponsorship and people who will take an interest. Contact him at irish470team@gmail.com or contact me at andrew@glenstal.org

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ANNUAL DINNER

ANNUAL GOLF OUTING

Friday, March 3rd 2006, at the Westbury Hotel (off Grafton Street). Reception at 19.15, Dinner at 20.00 (sharp). Continue the success of the last few years. Why not organise a table? Special terms for those who left Glenstal in 1998 or more recently. Contact John Coyle or Gearoid Bradley.

Friday, July 7th 2006, Castle Golf Club, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14. Further details will be available on www.myubique.com nearer the date. Contact PJ Crerar or Gearoid Bradley

Contacts John Coyle: Gearoid Bradley: Peter Crerar: Fr. Andrew

johncoyle@renvyle.iol.ie bradleyg@prospective.ie peter@tclplastics.ie andrew@glenstal.org

m. 087-2565863 m. 086-2544647 m. 087-2264077 061-386103-118

2 GLENSTAL NEWSLETTER Spring 2006

Spring 2006 GLENSTAL NEWSLETTER 3

Life in NEW DELHI

Class of ’95 Reunion T

he weekend started on the evening Friday, September 30th in the relaxed surroundings of Brendan Grace’s pub in Kilaloe where seven pillars of wisdom kicked off the marathon of nostalgia that was inevitably to follow. Throughout Saturday there were numerous sightings in the greater Kilaloe area of bands of late twenty something men who, though slightly weathered by ten years experience in the big bad world, still carried themselves with the same wide eyed curiosity and barely suppressed excitement that continues to be the unmistakable hallmark of a Glenstal Boy with a weekend pass to freedom. In a very enjoyable round of Golf at the East Clare Club, organised by the King of the Fairways, Sean Barnes, all skill levels were catered for. We made our way round the course in quintessentially Irish conditions: sun followed by dark, followed by rain, followed by wind, followed by sun again. Just like the shampoo bottle says: “Rinse and Repeat!”

I then said a few words on behalf of “the Boys”. Fortunately, I was armed with the “secret writings” of a member of our class who hails from the sunny South East and is now a rising star in the medical world. This sensitive soul kept a “diary” of his first few years in Glenstal. Extracts provided an effective in reminder that we were not always the strong, composed and self confident men who now sat at the dinner table. Once, in the not too distant past, we had all been scared, timid, homesick boys, wanting nothing so much as a hug from our Mums. After dinner, we retired to the hotel bar until the wee small hours of the morning. Stories and memories flowed as freely as the drinks. It was very satisfying to see, ten years on, the whole group slipping back so easily into the old routines and banter: proof positive of the tie that attending Glenstal creates between people fortunate enough to have schooled there.

The formal part of the weekend’s festivities took place on Saturday evening where 28 members of the Class of ‘95 together with their guests, Abbot Christopher, Br. Denis, Br. Timothy and Anne O’Reilly sat down to a fantastic dinner in the Kincora Hall Hotel. Unfortunately, Leo McGrath was unable to attend due to ill health. We wished him a speedy recovery and drank his health.

Amazingly, some of the Lads even managed to painfully crawl out of their beds in time for Sunday mass at the School with many taking a walking trip down memory lane around the school and grounds much to the dismay of the current crop who were aghast at the site of this dishevelled looking rabble wandering around their halls and corridors. They feared for their own futures when told that this tired looking group were Old Boys with a mere ten years behind them.

After the meal provided by Matt Sherlock and his excellent staff, Br. Denis provided the obligatory “cupla focal” as our former Housemaster, Teacher, and Rugby Coach. He pointed out that, since it was 10 years since we had left the school, it was 16 years since we had arrived, in September 1989. We were all a bit taken aback by how quickly the time has passed.

Huge thanks must go to the staff of the Kincora Hall Hotel, to Antoine Gallagher for putting the organisational wheels in motion, Sean Barnes for taking care of the Golf and to Mark Roche-Garland who did a remarkable job of stage managing the entire occasion from the other side of the Atlantic. James Blake Class of ‘95

KYLEMORE ABBEY CHAPLAINCY Abbot Celestine has taken over the chaplaincy at Kylemore Abbey, exercised so diligently by Dom Paul for a quarter of a century. We wish him, too, at least a quarter of a century in office. His address is Kylemore Abbey, Connemara, Co. Galway. e- celestinecullen@yahoo.ie

LAW SOCIETY In November 2005, John O’Connor (1974) was elected to the council of the Law Society of Ireland.

Ubique 2007

W

e are working towards a new edition of Ubique early next year. PLEASE update your entry, and indeed any entry that you know to be faulty or outdated. You, individually and collectively are our only sources of hard information. You can do this by letter, telephone, or e-mail to Fr. Andrew (andrew@glenstal.org) Better still, you can register or update your own entry yourself by going online at myubique.com

Wedding Bells REMI DILLON (1989) & KATHLEEN MORRIS. RICHARD TIERNEY (1988) & RACHILL CAHILL. MARK DEMPSEY (1995) & GESINA VEGA AYVAR. MATTHEW COGHLAN (1995) & JOELLE HUET. DAVID FITZGIBBON (1994) & AISLING CREED.

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he extraordinary thing about India is that no matter how much you try and shut it out - and, believe me, there are days when you really need to – it comes looking for you. There is no hiding from India, from the sounds, thesmells, the heat, the sheer India-ness of it all.

through the house looking for Tamsin, I wondered what I should tell my wife when she returned from her work trip. I need not have worried - the baby had squeezed out through the bars and was playing on a carpet in the sitting room.

By early May, the temperature will be hitting 35 degrees and the first sound you are likely to hear on waking is the thrum of an air conditioner and the whirr of an overhead fan. But in the lovely months between February and April, the music of India is all around, even in Golf Links, the sedate ‘colony’ or neighbourhood where we have lived for the past few years.

It is outside the gates of the colony that the real India starts. You’ll have to be careful crossing the road. The notions of drivers stopping at pedestrian crossings or keeping to a single traffic lane are unheard of. As for giving way as you drive on to a round-about, forget it. If you’re big enough and going fast enough, you’ll get through. Indicators? What are they for? Use your horn instead, everyone else does. And watch out for the cows.

Having been awakened by the shopkeeper raising the shutter of the little store by our back door - or more probably by the nagging ‘Get up, get up’ of our two children - I might hear the sounds of chanting and bells ringing in the nearby ‘gurdwara’ (Sikh temple). There will also be the scratching of sweepers wielding their brooms up and down the laneway. The first caller of the day will be the fruit ‘wallah’ who comes by on a bicycle loaded with paniers of mangoes, paw-paw and melons. He will present us with a large orange-ripe paw-paw which will be weighed with great ritual on an old set of rusty scales. All around, the colony will be coming to life with ‘malis’ (gardeners) watering the plants and dogs being walked (in some cases, by servants in white livery). Green parakeets will be flitting overhead and squirrels chattering in the trees. From the distance might come the raucous cry of a peacock. From here on, the acoustics get steadily worse - or that is the way things have been going for the past two years. Bang, bang, thump, thump, screeeeeech! First of all, the landlord of the property next door knocked down the entire house and rebuilt it as luxury flats. This being India and labour being cheap, the whole operation was performed by dozens of men wielding sledgehammers and women in bright saris carrying trays of bricks on their heads. With not a digger or crane in sight, the only concession to modern methods was an ear-splitting marble grinder and, by the sound of it, there was enough marble fitted to rival the Taj Mahal. During the course of the day, a constant stream of callers will appear at our front door. The intrusions are not always welcome but, so used have I become to the procession of various ‘wallahs’, that I think I’d miss them were they to stop. The only ones I really object to are the man with the dancing monkeys and the jewel-bedecked ‘hijra’ or eunuchs. One morning, after a group of them had come banging on the door looking for money, I discovered my daughter’s cot empty. My immediate thought was that the ‘hijra’ had kidnapped her - a notunknown practice among eunuchs. As I ran panic-stricken

The children take it all in their stride: Cartoon Network in Hindi, elephants at birthday parties, uniformed hotel employees holding parasols over the heads when they walk outside in the sun. The only thing that enrages Alexander is when Indians come up to him in the park, tweak his cheek and insist he pose in their family snaps. Today’s Delhi - the most recent incarnation of a city whose history can be traced back 2,500 years through seven civilisations - is a vast sprawl of indifferent suburbia intermingled with miserable slums and magnificent Moghul ruins. At its centre is New Delhi, the imperial capital completed by the British in 1931, whose stately government buildings, imposing monuments and elegant white-washed bungalows flank huge open spaces and tree-lined boulevards. We tend to avoid Old Delhi with its teeming multitudes and crowded alleyways though there was a time, when we were going through the process of adopting Tamsin, that we often visited the Missionaries of Charity who run an orphanage there. If we want to buy some presents or need to savour the Orient, however, we still make for the lanes and bazaars around the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque – and wonder why we don’t go there more often. There are many things that would drive you mad about life here: the petty bureaucracy and rubber-stamping of the ‘babus’ (government officials); the lack of any sense of personal space (stand at the counter of the post office and you’ll soon be apoplectic as people shove in front or thrust their hands over your shoulders); the burping and hawking and spitting of betel nut juice all over the place. But what I like about India is the people’s calmness, their easy-going charm. And I love those evenings, when it’s not too hot or too mosquito-ridden, when you sit out with a sundowner as night closes in and all the sounds and smells of the place drift towards you. David Orr (1975) Sunday Telegraph and freelance journalist.