Greystones

We woke up to a gray rainy morning, but set out on the DART train to Greystones in County Wicklow nonetheless. I have some family records that say that the Doyles and Connors (my great-grandparents' people) lived near Greystones - in Kilquade, Kilcoole, and Delgany. The Connors, according to Aunt Kitty, lived and worked on a place called Spring Farm. I didn't set out with a clear goal of finding anything specific, just wanted to "walk the ground" on my first visit to Ireland...and wanted to attempt the "Cliff Walk".

We wandered around the town a bit, and I bought a lovely green dress from Deirdre in the "swapshop" and a super-cool soccer (football) sticker book for Torben. Had some coffee in the Starbucks of Ireland, Insomnia (good coffee though). As we wandered, I asked whomever we chatted with about Spring Farm, to little avail. I noticed that we'd wandered ourselves right in front of the Greystones library. Feeling a bit shy, I poked around a bit, and seeing a poster about the Greystones "historical and archeological journal", I asked one of the librarians where I could get a copy. She suggested a grocery shop (Leo Ireton's) and also said that the librarian who best knew the history of the town would be in shortly. We puttered around a bit, using the internet and looking at the La Touche family exhibit, but were about to give up and head to the bookshop when Helen arrived. Oh, I think we have some things about Spring Farm in the files, says Helen.

No, I didn't find ancient photos of relatives or a map to buried Doyle treasure. But she did have contact with a woman named Eve from the UK whose family owned Spring Farm when my family worked there. She'd visited last year and had found her way to the grounds and managed to get in and take some pictures (the current owner being notoriously private). She also had a copy from the Irish Times archive of an auction of Spring Farm - and Eve's emails suggested that the estate had been "stolen" from her family. I'll be emailing her shortly! We also found some maps and old book about Kilquade that mentions Spring Farm. Not having a car, we couldn't journey out to search, sadly, but there will certainly have to be a return trip with the family.

After my lovely chat with Helen, we headed off to the Happy Pear for a veggie lunch, and then on to the Cliff Walk.

Here are some pictures (more to follow but this is all I can upload tonight). There's so so much I didn't get to see, but the grass, ferns, flowers, cliffs (and snails) were just amazing.

We ended our hike at Martello's in

Hospitals Tour

Today we visited three children's hospitals:
Tallaght - on the southwest corner of Dublin, in view of the Wicklow mountains,
Our Lady's at Crumlin,
and the University Children's Hospital at Temple Street.
We learned a lot about the Irish health care system and found plenty of similarities. One striking difference is that social workers DON'T deal with the nuts and bolts of discharge planning; their role is much more of providing support, and deaingl with child protection and socio-economic issues, than of ordering supplies and homecare. Sounds kind of "grand" now, doesn't it?

(For the record, the brogues are mild here, but there's a certain inflection that's hard not to pick up)

There are plans afoot for a centralized National Children's Hospital to be built in 2014 that will consolidate the three we saw today, but there seems to be much political wrangling ahead before that actually happened. We hope our Irish colleagues will come a visit us in NYC. (Particularly Jenny, who sent us on to a lovely dinner at the Ely HQ Gastro Pub

Not many pictures, but here's one of the mountains by Tallaght (from one of our lengthy bus rides) and the registration desk at Crumlin, basically telling people they have to wait their turn.

























Our Rock Star of the Day: The Edge, who's a benefactor of Crumlin. Didn't see him, but cool to feel the presence.

Conference Day

The Changing Health conference opened with a speech by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese. Our sense is that while the role of president is mostly that of figurehead, she seems both knowledgeable and engaging, and seems thoroughly well liked (note to self, learn more about Irish system of government).



























We spent the morning at Reilly Hall on the UCD campus, and then headed over to the Health Sciences building for parallel sessions, where both Rhonda and Allison were presenting. Allison and I stopped for a picture in front of Noah's Egg, in honor of our reproductive technology research.














The sessions I attending were interesting - one set about involving presenters from children's hospitals in the US, Zurich, and Singapore. The presenter from Zurich presented about poverty in child health - somewhat funny in that only 4% of their population are every considered to be "working poor", and that statistically, working poverty is generally inducing by HAVING children. The next session included an overly academic presentation by one of my NYU faculty members followed by some good presentations about "clinical data mining" (basically, using hospital records as sources of data) and encouraging better partnerships between academics and practitioners. The Dublin hospital that did this succeeded by...hiring a PhD to coordinate research! Ahem, Montefiore...

Some problematic things about the conference - sessions were scheduled so that all pediatric topics were on one day, and all geriatric on the other. Many (if not most) attendees were also presented or at least had a poster - so then lost time to see others' work. And one had to choose which of several good sessions to attend and which to pass up.

On the positive, it's a rare occasion that the people actually doing the work, setting the policy, and doing the research, are all in one room. It was also nice to read the IFSW's Statement on Health - primarily a statement that health is a matter of basic human rights.

So after all the talking, thinking, question-asking, and trying-hard-not-to-fall-asleep-from-jetlag, we tossed our pashminas around our shoulders, and headed off to an evening at Dublin Castle...

Our Rock Star of the Day: President Mary McAleese

Tuesday

Conference Opening

First, we walked from Schoolhouse to Roly's in Ballsbridge for a tasty potato-leek soup and onion tart - and coffee. Then a walk to UCD (oh, about 20 minutes on up that way) for the afternoon's opening sessions, and a special performance by the Garde Band (serious trombones, gentlemen!)









From UCD we caught a bus up to St. Stephen's Green, and spend a half hour wandering around with the president-elect of NASW trying to find Allison's hotel (Number 31) and to find some beer and burgers. (As I said to Rhonda, I don't mind the walking, but I don't want to be responsible for Jean Anastas getting lost in Dublin). We ended up at the Barge Inn along the Grand Canal - and I found myself drinking a surprisingly American pint of Guinness while watching Brazil trounce Chile in the World Cup. Despite its inappropriate chill, I was drinking a pint and watching footie in Ireland! Check!

From our walk to UCD and our walk around Dublin, we are realizing that the cliche is true - the Irish never tell the truth when they give directions. Everything is "just up the road" or "just about 10 minutes" or "oh, see those trees over there". Though we're not averse to walk, we're a wee bit tired!

Getting to Dublin

Took the Airtrain to JFK for my Aer Lingus flight. Found myself in a window seat in row 10 next to the lovely Sister Mary O'Hallaran. We talked about her nieces and nephews, and when she found out that I was a "mum", she told me, "no, child, you must live with the fairies, you're way too young to have a wee one". You don't get more Irish than that. Delays on the tarmac in New York evaporated in the chilly wind that lofted us across. So I had a blessed flight, and a blessed though slightly cramped sleep across the Atlantic, to land in a grey and rainy but still green Dublin.

Got an Aircoach bus from the airport straight the hotel -well, nearly straight after a fuss about not having a printed copy of my confirmation number (to get ON the bus) and then missing my stop to get OFF. A quick walk though brought me back to the Schoolhouse Hotel which though also a tad cramped is lovely... particularly "grand" is having a bathtub to soak in after a LONG day of walking.

Conference

http://www.changinghealthdublin2010.com/