We are in the town of BALLYMONEY. I have a strong sense that my great grandparents David McDowell and Ellen Connelly were born somewhere in the larger district also called Ballymoney. Since their names are not in the church records in the town, it’s pretty likely they weren’t born in the town. But we were close… I think!!!
Having completed our 28 day artist residency, Brian and I hopped in Joseph’s car for “more than just a ride” to Ballymoney. Joseph gave us in-depth insights about the countryside and its history. He could read the landscape as if it were a book. We stopped by this stream and I saw three dragonflies. Joseph said it was very unusual to see dragonflies there. As the dragonfly is my symbol for the ancestors, I felt we were on the right track!
Now we knew where Terry had procured the turf that he dropped off at the tower for us every few days!
ON TO BALLYMONEY: There were more sights to be seen between the place pictured above and and Ballymoney. Take a look at the map of County Antrim to see Cushendall and Ballymoney. Ballymoney is nearly directly west of Cushendall. The ride would have been perhaps an hour and half without the interesting stops we made along the way.
http://www.northern-ireland-travel.com/county-antrim-map.html
ARRIVAL AT BALLYMONEY: One of the first places we explored was this graveyard. The Church of Our Lady and St. Patrick is the only Catholic Church in the town of Ballymoney. We were hoping against hope that the names of my great grandparents David McDowell and Ellen Connelly would be in the baptism and marriage records there. I had visited their grave sites in the cemetery of St. Rose of Lima Church in DeSoto, Missouri, but I thought perhaps there might be a headstone with the McDowell or Connelly name on it. This was not the case. However, the exhilaration of the search was definitely present.
MORE TO COME!
I have given myself permission to do one thing a day for the sole purpose of my personal joy. I love finding pictures for the blog! Here’s to today and to JOY!
Pam
Joseph drove us to Ballymoney for our ancestor search. We took a cab back to Cushendall, and the driver was most gracious to give us a side trip to the famed Dark Hedges of County Antrim. It was indeed a spot unlike anything I had seen before anywhere! It is a row of beech trees clearly planted with intention. The question remains: what was the intention?
Okay, so this is with the telephoto lens and it’s a bit blurry. No way was I going to walk onto the fairy hill to check it out up close. I felt I was brave to merely walk around the back of the hill on the lonely road by myself. What does it look like to you? Is this strange, or what?
Here’s a nook in a hedge on the edge of a property on the road into town. I wondered, “Who sits there and what do they do there?”
One day, on the same road, I think, we were walking into town. To our amazement and amusement, a man popped out of a hedge right in front of us and said good day. He had carved a hole in the tall hedge along the road, where he sat on a bench watching the passers-by. He said he was the brother of someone we had met in town. When asked, the man in town said yes, this was his brother. But I couldn’t help but wonder if they were pulling the wool over our eyes. Maybe the man was, after all, really a leprechaun.
Okay, so what could be more quirky or strange than the tower itself? It had impressed me that way when we first saw it in July 2009. When we became residents, that impression remained! That said, I fell in love with it! The kitchen was built about ten years ago, and its skylight affords a comfortable view of the tower’s heights.
It makes me feel good when I hear that friends are checking the blog. To review the whole thing would probably take some time, but I do want to mention that it’s a long blog. If you want to walk the road from the beginning, you will have to keep clicking on “older posts.” (10 clicks back to the beginning). Also, don’t forget to click on the places on the top bar.
The blog began on March 5, 2011. From then on I did one drawing a week (through the time in Cushendall) and posted it on the blog. When we arrived in Cushendall, I began to add photos. The foundation of the blog was meant to be my drawings. I am ALMOST finished with the red book of drawings, which I will photograph and put in a post soon! I will send this book with John Hirst when he goes to Cushendall in August.
Thanks SO much for taking the time to check out the blog!
Pam
We waited patiently until Christmas Eve to burn some of the turf that Terry gave us– which we somehow managed to get back to Alaska. Brian smudged the house with it to give the carolers a whiff of Ireland, then placed it back in the fireplace. I imagined a whiff of smoke making its way to Cushendall to weave itself in with the turf smoke there on Christmas Day.
And, yes, we had tunes AND an Irish dancer in front of our turf fire! Her name is Mary, and she is indeed lovely!
The season rolled on with a ceili on St. Stephen’s Day at McGinley’s.
We wish our friends in Cushendall a Happy Christmas season and a Happy New Year! We miss you!
A few of you have already come to see us, and we begin to hope that one day the steamers across the Atlantic will not go out full, but come back full, until some of you find your real home is here, and say as some of us say, like Finn to the woman of enchantments: “We would not give up our own country– Ireland– if we were to get the whole world as an estate, and the Country of the Young with it.”
— Augusta Gregory
This resonates with my own heart. When I visited Cushendall, I felt like I was coming home. The friends we made there felt like true friends, though we had less than a month to get to know them. The photos don’t include everyone we befriended. I wish we had a photo of each one.
Here’s a note from Anda about her LA Portrait Project. There’s one up so far, and more on the way! You need to follow the instructions in order to see all of the portraits.
http://andasaylor.com/
November 2011, Los Angeles, CA
I’ll be drawing portraits on paper in the Echo Park/ Silver Lake area of Los Angeles for the next couple of weeks. Each project participant will receive their original portrait in a protective plastic envelope after I scan it with my handy portable scanner. Images to be updated daily in the gallery link: The Los Angeles Portrait Project (Internet connection permitting). This project is about time, creating intimate space and exploring the intersection of the expansive and the particular. Thank you Karen Smith for being my very first participant!
Don’t forget to click on the top bar of this blog for her Cushendall portraits. More blog entries coming. We miss you, Cushendall! Pam
My feet are barely on the ground in Anchorage, yet I must have left my heart in Cushendall… we must have taken thousands of photos when we were there, as well as a lot of video footage, so please forgive me if I go on a bit.
I felt drawn to the tower niche. I could have painted a horse, as I learned that horses used to drink from the fountain that was there, but something else came forth.
After Anda and I washed and scrubbed it clean and added potted pansies from Spar Market, I painted a “chimney pot” scene and a sky behind it, all on cardboard. It kept evolving for the month, with the phases of the moon becoming a theme. Here are some photos of the niche, which document the promise I made to myself to keep attending to it the entire time we were in the tower.
…Inspires
It’s up! Go to the top bar to access the stop-motion animation we completed on site in Cushendall.
