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    Half-barbecued Human evolution depended on cooking according to an accessible but occasionally self-indulgent history of the decline of nutrition, that is unradical about meat-eating. Review by Frank Armstrong

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    Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation Michael Pollan Penguin, New York, 2013 ‘before our ancestors learned to cook they would have had to devote fully half their waking hours to the act of chewing. Cooking gave our species an extra four hours a day’ ‘Pollan seemed to be saying: “just go to a farmers’ market rather than Walmart and it’ll be ok’ Michael Pollan is the darling of mainstream gastronomy. John McKenna in the Irish Times dubs him the “Martin Luther King of Food”. But the question haunting his opus is whether he simply celebrates a form of bourgeois gluttony or is a genuine radical, intent on shifting the dysfunctional relationship between eater and eaten. Martin Luther King did not go as far in his rhetoric as Stockley Carmichael and the Black Panthers but he remained a committed radical. What of Pollan? The contradictions within contemporary food production and consumption have been scrupulously explored by Pollan himself in his seminal work The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006). Foremost is excessive greenhouse-gas emission from livestock production, transportation and refrigeration; and waste. He recognised too accelerating species loss through pervasive monocultures, and horrendous treatment of animals in factory farms. As a consequence of the over-production of empty calories, especially refined sugars, many children in the West confront lower life expectancy than their parents for the first time since the Industrial Revolution: a global obesity pandemic brings the premature onset of chronic illnesses like heart disease, cancer and metabolic syndrome. The deterioration in the nutritional quality of food, linked to the decline of home cooking is the subject-matter of Pollan’s latest book. Research has established a strong correlation between food preparation, or lack of it, and obesity. A 2003 Harvard study attributed much of the increase in obesity in America over recent decades to the ascent of food preparation outside the home: “Mass production has driven down the cost of many foods, not only in terms of purchase price but, perhaps even more importantly, in the amount of time required to obtain them”. Another 1992 study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that poor women who routinely cooked were likely to enjoy a more healthy diet than well-to-do women who did not. Moreover, a 2012 Public Health nutrition study found a strong correlation between regular cooking and superior health and longevity Until World War II, throughout the West, women prepared meals in most families. But since 1945 time spent on food preparation in America has fallen by 40 per cent. This trend was greeted with approval by second-wave feminists like Betty Friedan who viewed housework as a form of oppression. The shift from home cooking was helped by developments in battle-field rations which were seized upon by the food industry. TV provided the perfect medium for advertising these nutritionally-deficient and relatively tasteless offerings. During the 1950s TV dinners became the mark of a proudly modern household. Pollan is careful to avoid blaming women for this, arguing instead: ‘”men and children need to be in the kitchen too, and not just for reasons of fairness and equity but because they have much to gain by being there”. In Cooked, as in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, we are introduced to Pollan’s domestic life, especially his filial relationship. But the purpose of the associated homely anecdotes is unclear. Are we supposed to distil universal truths from the bonds forged by the twosome barbecuing a pig’s carcass? It is useful to derive general lessons from particular experience – as memorably in The Omnivore’s Dilemma when Pollan demonstrates how 19% of US meals are consumed, by bolting a fast-food ‘meal’ in his car at 60 mph. But in Cooked this technique lapses into uninteresting family yarns. Pollan’s particular skill is to render grizzled cuts of scientific research into accessible reading material for his devotees. Cooked manifests real percipience on the importance of cooking in human evolution. It seems we evolved to cook and find it challenging to live on an exclusively raw-food diet. In one study he cites about the impact of such a regimen, half of the female participants stopped menstruating and most found it difficult to maintain their body weight He says: “Cooking is by now baked into our biology (as it were) something we have no choice but to do if we are to feed our big, energy-guzzling brains. For our species, cooking is not a turn away from nature – it is our nature, by now as obligatory as nest building is for a bird”. Tartare can only be for special occasions. According to Richard Wragham, who he quotes at length, before our ancestors learned to cook they would have had to devote fully half their waking hours to the act of chewing. Cooking gave our species an extra four hours a day. Pollan grapples with the hot potato of meat-consumption. The Omnivore’s Dilemma provided a thorough critique of current farming practices, especially the ubiquity of corn in the food chain. He resolved it by endorsing a model of mixed farming which purportedly involved a co-evolution between man, cattle and grass. In so doing Pollan offered omnivores virtual carte blanche. Unfortunately, he failed to address the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions or the extent to which meat consumption is damaging to our health as shown by the recent Oxford Vegetarian Study. Pollan seemed to be saying: “just go to a farmers’ market rather than Walmart and it’ll be ok”. However, the expense of nourishing seven billion, or even 300 million Americans on such a diet was essentially ignored. Cooked is also leery about carnivorousness Although the first half of the book is devoted to barbecuing and stewing meat, a gnawing guilt remains: “Specialisation makes it easy to forget about … the hog that lived and died so I can enjoy my bacon”. Adding: “however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity”.. He refers to a visit he paid to a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) as “a

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    Alternative agriculture as important as alternative energy.

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    RTÉ and other media celebrate the current doomed agricultural model as sacrosanct. By Frank Armstrong No journalist can claim impartiality. We arrive from different vantages, preferences and predilections. To deny this displays a lack of awareness of the specificities of time and place, and encourages fixed ideas in our understanding of the world. It is like saying: ‘I don’t have an accent but everyone else does’. But individual partiality should not coalesce into an editorial consensus whereby certain points of view go unrepresented that are contrary to a dominant discourse. Often it is the narrow interest of revenue or profit that inhibits enquiry, but attitudes can stem from cultural norms, such as religious conviction. A case in point is the absence of investigations into the conduct of members of the Catholic Church in Ireland before the 1990s. Often cultural and economic factors intertwine. It is my contention that such an editorial consensus is evident at many levels in the Irish media when it comes to reporting on the livestock industry, and Irish farming in general. Reports on Irish agriculture and food exhibit undue deference, and avoid negative stories unless there is an overwhelming obligation to report. I would be interested to know how many Irish people are aware that at least 30% of our greenhouse gas emissions emanate from livestock production, the highest proportion of any country in the world except New Zealand. Vegetarians and vegan viewpoints are almost entirely unrepresented in the national conversation despite a growing constituency of adherents, and powerful environmental, ethical and health arguments. This bias extends to newspapers, radio, and television. It is noteworthy that the horse-beef scandal was broken by the FSA and that follow-up investigations derived principally from foreign media especially The Guardian. It is apparent that the national broadcaster in particular extends a protective attitude towards ‘our’ farmers. One recent example is a report carried on RTÉ’s Drivetime on Wednesday, 2nd of October about the connection between livestock and climate change. It began with Mary Wilson stating: “A UN report [Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock] on the contribution of livestock to greenhouse gas emissions has been rubbished as misleading and outdated by JBS, the world’s largest producer of beef”. Now why, in the first instance would the presenter not have started with a fair commentary on the contents of the report? There followed a four-minute interview between Damien O’Reilly and Gerry O’Callaghan the chief Executive of JBS, a Brazilian company heavily implicated in the destruction of rainforests. O’Callaghan was given free reign to question the veracity of the report and impugn the credibility of its “out of touch”, “academic” authors. O’Callaghan claimed de-forestation was “being managed really well” and “only a fraction of it is associated with the meat industry”; claims many environmentalists would contest. He contended that the research used in the report was out of date and that industry is making “great strides” in reducing its footprint. Back in the studio Mary Wilson proceeded to interview Oisín Coghlan of Friends of the Earth. The credibility of the report was immediately questioned again: “Does he have a point. Does it devalue the impact of the report?”, she asked. Surprisingly Coghlan proceeded to defend the report stating it is in fact a good news story for the industry. Coghlan said: “Better pastures and better grasses – we are seeing that in Ireland too”. Rather than calling for a reduction in production and mitigation through substitution with more environmentally friendly and healthier alternatives Coghlan served up an uncritical evaluation of Irish agriculture. There was little to distinguish between Coghlan’s and O’Callaghan’s contributions. The news item displayed a worrying lack of balance and the report received no scientific evaluation. Best practice would surely have been for the lead findings of the report to be presented at least neutrally, before the interview with the spokesman for the beef industry who could have no claim to objectivity. In fact the FAO’s analysis has been criticised by leading environmentalists including Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang for under-representing emissions from livestock production. RTÉ could easily have featured a participant questioning the accuracy of the report from the other side. Perhaps it was anticipated that Coghlan would perform this role, in which case questions need to be asked. Or perhaps they chose an environmentalist who would not demur from the dominant narrative. Far from being opposed to the industry the FAO report acknowledges a pro-industry inclination, explicit in its title: ‘Tackling Climate Change through Livestock Production’. It argues that “livestock-dependent livelihoods cannot be put at risk when alternatives are lacking”. Note the focus on “livelihood”, i.e. monetary income, rather than adequate nutrition. The report acknowledges that it “does not discuss possible mitigation options on the consumption side”. Although it cites reports by Stehfast et al (2009) and Smith et al (2013) which “demonstrate the substantial mitigation effect, and its relatively low cost compared with alternative mitigation strategies”. In other words a global shift to increased plant-based nutrition would make more sense, but we aren’t going to examine how to achieve this. The FAO report claims that by 2050: “The demand for meat and milk is projected to grow by 73 and 58 percent respectively, from their levels in 2010”. Instead of suggesting that the implications of this for humanity will be a stark increase in emissions, the authors blithely claim that: “A 30 percent reduction of Greenhouse Gas emissions would be possible, for example, if producers in a given system, region and climate adopted the technologies and practice currently used by the 10 percent of producers with the lowest emission intensity”. This is rather like saying that if we all changed our economies to be like Luxembourg’s we’d all be wealthy. It assumes that environmental management practices are applicable in varying locations and that the cattle industry which has been responsible for some of the most damaging environmental conduct over the past two hundred years will contemplate any actions that jeopardise its profits. The report has been greeted

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    Non-violence demands veganism

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    By Frank Armstrong ‘The term “gatherer-hunter” is less often used although more accurate’. ‘On a moral level, all animal use is the same. It is wrong’ ‘I believe that human beings can tolerate a small amount of animal flesh in their diet but there is no NEED for it’ What prompted you to become a vegan? In the late 1970s I was active with the British Hunt Saboteurs Association and other ‘sabs’ gave me literature about other “animal issues” such as vivisection, circuses, and factory farming. Having read up about the latter issue, I did not turn to vegetarianism, as many do, but went vegan within 3 months. How has the vegan movement changed since then? There was a Vegan Society in those days but no vegan movement as such. There is currently a serious if uneven push to establish veganism as the moral baseline of the animal advocacy movement – or at least the rights-based part of it. However, in the 1980s we were all involved in single-issue campaigning and virtually no-one talked about veganism as a philosophy about violence or a campaign in its own right. How do you feel about vegetarians? From a vegan perspective, vegetarianism includes a form of animal use. Having said that, many people argue that vegetarianism is a “gateway” to veganism. Many animal advocates who were vegetarian before vegan report their regret that they were ignorant, often for many years, about how eggs and dairy are produced. It should also be remembered that veganism is more than just diet, one that is wholly plant-composed. It includes an overarching philosophy about human relations with other animals, each other, and the planet on which we live. Some feel that vegetarians and vegans are on the same journey. However, the philosophical positions of vegetarians and vegans are different: the former opposed to animal use, the latter not opposed to animal use. So they are not really saying the same things about human/non-human relations. Is there a contradiction between animal rights and animal welfare? Yes. The crude distinction can be said to be the difference between treatment and use. Essentially, animal welfare is about improving the conditions of other animals who are used for a variety of human purposes, while animal rights opposes the human use of other animals. Moreover, the property status of other animals compromises welfare initiatives on their behalf. Why should we care so much about animals when there is so much human suffering in the world? We should care about ALL the suffering in the world, and the issues are interlinked. Veganism is essentially about non-violence. A vegan world should mean less violence in terms of human/non-human relations and human-human interaction. Research data on the vegan animal-advocacy community indicates that the majority of people in it are employed as carers, teachers, doctors, etc in the service sector, rather than in the private sector, which tends to belie the stereotype that “animal people” care nothing for humanity. We can and should care about all sufferers. We have been eating meat since time immemorial. Is it natural for us to go without it? I believe that human beings can tolerate a small amount of animal flesh in their diet but there is no NEED for it. Although we may be able to tolerate a modest amount of animal flesh in our diet, there is sustained evidence that the amounts consumed in “developed” countries are damaging to human health. There is a question about whether humans are “natural” herbivores or omnivores. Dr Milton Mills argues that we are, physiologically, the former. Increasingly the term “cultural omnivorousness” is being used to describe our practice of eating animal flesh and other animal products. There is quite a lot of ideology behind such questions. For example, we tend to adhere to a picture-book image of “early Man”, armed with spears, surrounding and killing a mammoth or whatever. The term “hunter-gatherer” is used commonly, including in sociological textbooks. The term “gatherer-hunter” is less often used although, quantitatively, that would be much more accurate. A modern term used to describe early humanity is “forager”. In ideological terms, however, we prefer to think of ourselves as skilful and brave hunters, rather than more akin to scavengers. What do you say to someone who is advised by a doctor to eat meat for their health, if say, they are low in protein, iron or vitamin B12? The glib reply is “change your doctor”. Many people are deficient in B12 – it is not, however, a problem confined to the vegan part of the human population. Vitamin B12 is derived from bacteria, so plant-based sources are available. There are several long-term (30-year-plus) vegans who have never supplemented their diet with any synthetic vitamins, although the general recommendation is that they should. There are plenty of plant-based sources of both protein (vegetables, grains, beans, nuts, lentils, etc) and iron (nuts, green leafy vegetables, wholemeal bread, some fruits, etc): indeed, some claim that plant-based sources are superior to others. What should happen to the millions of domesticated animals if we give up animal husbandry? They will not exist, certainly not in the huge numbers that they do now – billions. We need to understand that humans deliberately breed these animals in order to exploit them. There is, for example, a large industry in artificial insemination here in Ireland. In a vegan world, we would stop breeding them, so there would be a phase-out period. I think a vegan society would be prepared to fund sanctuaries for the bred animals that exist at the time. However, it would have to prevent them from naturally procreating, which raises ethical questions. There is also the possibility that some domesticates may well be able to exist as free-living beings. Is it consistent for a vegan to own a cat or a dog? Assuming that the vegan in question is an adherent of animal-rights philosophy, then no. Having said that, many vegan animal advocates care for other animals. At the

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    Ultraleft must change the rhetoric and modernise the ideology.

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    Rory Hearne’s piece in the last issue of Village was certainly provocative – as all hymns to revolution will be – though it seldom rose beyond the predictable and even most Village readers will have probably filed it under evidence-free Marxist rant. Those not sympathetic to his, sadly not untypical, analysis-cum-diatribe will have probably glazed over its paragraphs and turned the page. A heavily centralised government of the kind supported by Hearne may run contrary to my own idea of a free society but radical agitation at least serves to prevent establishment politicos from getting too comfortable. As a result, I am strangely disposed to seeing the left in Ireland achieve at least some success despite their incoherent vision. It is therefore with a sense of being constructive that this attempt is made to delve into the meaning and consequences of what Hearne actually says. As early as his second paragraph we get our first mention of Marx and it’s from this point that it is beyond doubt that Hearne’s piece will not be breaking from normal – discredited – ultraleft conventions. During a crisis when many are engaged in ad hoc struggles the establishment of universals is going to be a challenge – but Hearne’s continued emphasis on nineteenth-century ideology makes this challenge almost insurmountable. This is an ideology that has been discredited by most since it was based on false predictions of revolution in the industrialised nations. Where it did find space to manifest, the demise of the Soviet Union and the ongoing problems in Venezuela have encouraged little in the way of international sympathy. We are further subjected to the declaration that “neo-Marxist thinkers like David Harvey, Erik Olin Wright and Hardt and Negri (first names unspecified) show that international capitalist globalisation” underpin the social catastrophes of “oppression, inequality, environmental destruction and climate change.” There is no supporting evidence offered for any of these claims. It is as though the mere invocation of the names of those who propose them should be enough for us to accept their veracity. Bear in mind Hearne has a PhD. Also worth noting is that none of these four “catastrophes” are particular to “neo-liberalism” and all can be found in states who have advocated, or continue to advocate, Marxism and its derivatives. Another assumption seems to be revolutionary nationalism. “Is this neo-liberalism”, Hearne asks, “what the leaders, particularly James Connolly, fought and died for?” Apparently this is a “fundamental, and for some, wrenching, question”. I would argue that it is instead an example of tired nationalist romanticism that is in keeping with his and the left’s apparent refusal to join the rest of us in the twenty-first century. It would have been edifying instead to read of his support for some recent acknowledged leaders of the left. His brief inclusion of Naomi Klein is a start but what about other populist leftists? Martin Luther King, Mandela, even Russell Brand! What about Scandinavia? Ultraleftism needs all the back-up it can find as, while capitalism may be currently under the microscope, fully-fledged resistance to it has been notably desultory. In Ireland there was mindless acceptance of it under the boom, but little principled resistance through bust and alleged rebirth. Massive, stressful growth followed by depression is hardly what the public wants but people remember that that a relatively free-market appeared to deliver full employment during the boom. As the economy ostensibly improves it is time that revolutionaries accept that their failure to take a discernible advantage of either the crisis – or the ideological space created by the uselessness of our political parties – imposes a giant question mark over the entire left. They failed to score in an open goal. A common complaint by radical leftists laments their difficulties in communicating their message to the traditional working-class they claim as their kin. This is not due to any intellectual disadvantage, of course, but simply as a result of a lack of interest. Hearne is all about the people but the view he offers is one the people have long and resoundingly rejected. Where is the democracy and the grassroots in that? Beyond the issues themselves, the language used by Hearne is distinctly disaffecting. Here I revert to a parallel essay by the same author in the Irish Left Review which bears a striking resemblance to the Village rendering – though with a lot more clichés. Mercifully the ‘neo-liberalism’ count in Village came down from a full twenty in the Review piece, which did the tour from Pinochet to McDowell via Reagan and Thatcher (the solution was Zapatistism), and culminated in the view that Ireland is a “neo-colony of neo-liberal capitalism.” Above all, the problem with the likes of Rory Hearne is just how unmodern their approach is. There is the lack of attention to effective communication, the absence of evidence or factuality and the use of jargon. There are then the straw opinions (mostly attributed to ‘neo-liberals’ – though no-one would ever describe themselves as a neo-liberal) and the enthusiastic use of terminology that is almost designed to be alienating (‘class’, ‘collapse’, ‘fight’, ‘revolution’). It’s unclear whether he expects his vision to be shared and his goals to be achieved or whether he even expects to be treated seriously. But the tendancy to alienate is much more than just a communication problem. In his enthusiasm for his people he manages to be entirely disparaging about everyone else. Indeed, he implausibly lumps them all together. So the ‘state’ includes “its key civil servants and its main political parties, business, NESC, IBEC etc” who all tiringly prescribe ‘neo-liberalism’. As to those on the left he’s not much more enthusiastic. There is a sense of fractiousness in his assertion that civil society and the usually Labour-supporting Unions – stoic, passive, oppressed and with a negative self-image – are “indistinguishable, enmeshed in dependency and the ideology of the elite”. His Review article also notes: “The radical left, as the collapse of the United Left Alliance

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    Irish Times doesn’t necessarily correct mistakes. By Michael Smith

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    It is essential in a democracy that the press reports the facts, distinguishes facts from opinions and corrects errors. The Irish Times styles itself the newspaper of reference. It used to call itself the newspaper of record but no longer can. It no longer aims to correct all the errors it prints. This article is perhaps challengingly over-detailed but it’s in an effort to make the above case, by describing my own experiences over the last few weeks, and years. I believe the case is representative. In the August-Sept edition of Village I made a mistake in saying Green Concillor, Mark Dearey, voted for a rezoning in Louth in 2007. Elsewhere in the article unconscionable activity involving other people and withdrawal of an appeal for a large payment is described. Mr Dearey feels the taint embraced him, I think not. He is suing for defamation but that is not the point here. At issue is a court report in the IT (8 October), by Ray Managh, on the defamation case Dearey is taking in the Circuit Court case against Village which was interesting, if certainly neither fair nor accurate. Indeed I feel it may be defamatory of me and so unfair and inaccurate, particularly as to the case I made, as to leave the truth of the proceedings hidden. First, it reported that the article I wrote is in fact defamatory, even though this is the issue to be determined by the court. This seems like it could be tritely damaging/defamatory of me and of Village in what purported to be a report of a court proceeding in a serious newspaper which “above all else commits itself to accuracy”. The court report stated: “Mr Mohan, who appeared with James McCullough, had also sought an order directing the defendants to publish a correction comparable to the false and defamatory material about Mr Dearey in the August-September edition of Village”. Grammatically, putting “the” in front of a word or phrase denominates it as being real. If an order is sought for anything counterfactual the reporter must use quotes or “allegedly”. That’s elementary to defamation and elementary to (court) reporting. Second, Mr Dearey is not seeking damages, as the Irish Times’ subheading prominently but inaccurately stated, but rather a declaration of defamation under a relatively new procedure designed for cases where a publisher fails or refuses to make an apology. This apparent basic mistake implies Ormond Quay Publishing Ltd and I may be open to enforced payments on a scale entirely different to what is in fact possible. Third, the article was not, as the Times reported, “about” Mr Dearey who is mentioned once in passing (in a seven-word sentence in a 1400-word article), but about large payments to third-party appellants to withdraw appeals they’d made to An Bord Pleanála. Fourth, the article was not a “corruption special”. There was a corruption special within the magazine which embraced three articles, not including the allegedly defamatory one. Fifth, the Irish Times reported it as fact that the article “had alleged criminal conduct and misfeasance in public office against a large number of individuals mentioned”. In fact nowhere in the Village article is there such an “allegation against anyone, least of all the councillors who voted for the material contravention. Sixth, contrary to the report, Judge Linnane did not in fact ask if Ormond Quay Publishing Ltd was impecunious. I stated it was, in a successful effort to get the judge to include costs as an issue in discussions she was encouraging between me and the plaintiff’s lawyers. And seventh, Ray Managh misreported what I said about that company. I stated it operated on a shoestring, not that it was on a shoestring. The latter version, repeated in a caption elsewhere in the article, seems to impute fragility rather than frugality and has the effect of damaging the financial standing of the magazine. More generally, though the report refers to the entirety of the case for the plaintiff, it fails to report the essence of my case, stated succinctly and in unvarying terms on a number of occasions. I told the court my case was procedural and substantive. The report ignores this. The procedural point made is that s28 of the 2009 Defamation Act does not apply in cases, as here, where an apology has been offered (indeed given). The substantive point made is that the comment is not defamatory – that the article describes unusual events surrounding the withdrawal of appeals to An Bord Pleanála at a cost of nearly €1 million, events that involve a difference process and different actors from the process – material contravention – about which the article made a mistake concerning Mr Dearey. Reflecting the Irish Times’ lack of interest in the seven mistakes it made in the Dearey report, matters whose seriousness should have been arresting, it failed to print or acknowledge a letter concerning some of them that I sent for publication. Inevitably then the ferret-like Phoenix magazine picked up the thrust of the Irish Times article, without calling for my view on it. This is not the first time I have been the object of grand-scale misreporting of my involvement in important and serious judicial or quasi-judicial proceedings, by the Irish Times, in reports that purported to be definitive and factual. In 2006 the Irish Times unfairly misreported my evidence to the Mahon Tribunal, and in 2011 and 2012 it serially misreported my evidence and then the decision of the Standards in Public Office Commission, concerning a successful complaint I had taken against Councillor Oisín Quinn. In the report of one of only three decisions in eleven years that went against someone in public office the Irish Times misreported the central facts, made eight errors and chose to ventilate the views of the Councillor, even though SIPO had decided against those views. The Irish Times misreported the matter three times through its political correspondents but did publish one reasonable effort by Tim O’Brien, the day

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    Rock Star, Artist, Man. Is Guggi any goodi?

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    By Maggie Armstrong.   One of the wallflowers in Woody Allen’s ‘Bullets Over Broadway’ notes the danger that we “fall in love with the artist, not the man”. With the artist Guggi, the opposite seems to be the problem. Nearly everyone, most lastingly Bono, falls for him, the man that is. Europe fell for him back in his shrieking post-punk youth, New York fell for him when he did a somersault in a SoHo gallery; Louis le Brocquy cherished him. This is despite Guggi having the oiliest hair in showbiz, a reptile collection and an oeuvre of little else but pretty vessels and obscure Cyrillic writing. Who then, is Guggi, who is the artist behind this man? If you know anything about Guggi you will know, almost as much as you know he is a friend of Bono, what  he looks like – the waist-long wispy hair, the effete snakeskin boots, the ironically rose-tinted glasses. Google throws Guggi up as an “avant-garde” artist, an old-fashioned word showing he is such an anomaly that somebody couldn’t think of what to say about him (the source, it turns out, is Village magazine in 2005). Guggi.com shows a photograph of a severely contemplative elf, while YouTube yields a number of clips of a mannerly, idle interviewee whose voice is corroded by rollie cigarettes. He is a Christian with, he says, a “simple faith”. His wife and sons Moses, Noah, Eliah, Caleb and Gidean grew their hair as long as his (though some have since rebelled and cut it). “I love that we look more like a tribe than a family”, he has said, confirming that his family have been shaped into extensions of his brand. In the gossip columns where he is so often to be found, he is described as “the artist Guggi”, as if he is the only artist. In a way he is. Guggi stands alone, outside the art establishment, grazing on tobacco and Champagne-party chats with the celebrities. It is not because he chooses to stand outside it, but because maybe his is just a less stringent world. Born in 1959, he was christened boring old Derek Rowan. His father was a severe man who was part of a Christian Brethren sect, and who cut his ten children’s hair using a pudding bowl, something which was to haunt the artist’s infinite paintings of empty crockery for life. He grew up on north Dublin’s Cedarwood road beside Paul Hewson (Bono) and Fionan Harvey (Gavin Friday). The cover of U2’s ‘Boy’ features Guggi’s little brother. In their teens they were part of a boyish cult called Lypton Village. They amused themselves by coining words to describe how people looked. “Bono” “Gavin Friday” and “Guggi” were thus born, more figments than people, with names designed to repulse, to alienate, to clear rooms. And look what happened instead. Guggi’s life has been an exercise in living up to, and in hiding behind, his weird name (Solomon Guggenheim’s mistress Hella used to nickname him Guggi, but it didn’t catch). In 1976 Guggi and Gavin formed ‘The Virgin Prunes’, an obscene musical act in the end responsible for Marilyn Manson. The Prunes wore drag and did gothic mimes and horrid stunts with dolls and pigs’ heads. Guggi excelled himself. The movements! The vocals! They were stark and splenetic, jerking beyond the macabre into something elegiac and often beautiful. Though he doesn’t like this, Guggi will always be known as a former post-punk minor rock star. The band parted in 1984 and Guggi began to paint. Bob Dylan paints but nobody really cares. Guggi is defiant though. “I was told I was crap at everything in school except I had a basic understanding of mathematics…I really deep down believed that I had an incredibly special gift”, he has said. In 1988 he did a group show with Bono at the Kerlin Gallery. That got them a bit of coverage. His paintings of bowl-like (yes bowls, again) faces were snapped up by the actor Richard Harris who set the standard for his clients from then on. That year he moved into a studio with a rising painter, Sybille Ungers from Cologne. She was beautiful, and she became his wife. Success, mediated by celebrity, has led him gently by the hand. In 2001 Tony Shafrazi brought him to his glittering New York gallery. Guggi has globe-trotted and conquered corporate, private and state collections, one being IMMA. He has lately accomplished a bowl sculpture the size of a small nightclub, for Château la Coste, the exclusive French vineyard space. Bono uncritically and unashamedly talks up and peddles his best friend’s work. From the current exhibition in the Kerlin he assured Irish Independent readers that Guggi is “just getting better and better every time, we’re all [all?] so proud of him. He’s extraordinary”.  Blah blah blah. However, discomfitingly, it is not in fact axiomatic that Guggi is famous only for what he did and for who his friends are. Like it or not, he has mastered the motif. Some of his bowls are disarmingly lovely, using exploratory shades, of cream, ash, speckled blue or coppery gold. Guggi can at least give uninteresting things aura, over and over again. The repetition hinges between Andy Warhol’s cynical pop-art panels and Orla Kiely’s shrewdly innocuous leaf prints, with something of the romantic innocence of William Scott. Still, they are just empty bowls. Each one is a forgery of the last. Guggi says he got his vessel obsession from the jugs that used to sit in his grandmother’s “dingy, dark little basement”. He says he used to “hate” the jugs. Who hates jugs? These emblems of poverty and functionality have become his commercial triumph. “I have left series that I could have sold like hotcakes”, he told the Sunday Independent in 2009, saying he went from “broke” to “loaded” during the boom years.  Not surprisingly, given the circles where he now hangs, money seems to be a factor. After 25 years his work

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    Aos Dana

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    Cosy cartel if not secret society, Aosdána is an independent group which serves itself from without the bursary system administered by the Arts Council. Since its founding in the 1980s the primary function of Aosdána has been to ensure its membership continues siphoning off the cnuas – a pass-affording Gaelic term, they all are – for the yearly hand-out of €17,180 to the self-elected members. Other arts practitioners seeking Arts Council funding must formally apply for a bursary in competition with fellow artists. Bursaries are far less in monetary value than a cnuas. Gaining a bursary means disbarment for succeeding years. Aosdána is therefore a protectorate that has unjustly placed itself above the fair system of bursary application. Last year, the Arts Council had its budget slashed by a quarter to €61 million from €80 million. Yet Aosdána’s 150+ members in receipt of the annual €17,180 suffered no reduction in their hand-out. The Arts Council Report (2011) reveals that 152 individual creative practitioners received bursaries amounting to €1.5 million. In the same year, 156 Aosdána members drew down the cnuas totalling €2.7 million – almost twice as much – in total and per head – in funding as the amount in bursaries granted to individuals. Aosdána’s hallmark is members voting in family or friends. Louis le Brocquy, his sister Melanie le Brocquy, and his wife Anne Madden are the exemplar. Anthony Cronin, founder member of Aosdána receives his cnuas along with his partner, Anne Haverty as there are many couples who have nominated and voted each other in. Others in this couples-category include Theo Dorgan and Paula Meehan, Dermot Seymour and Maud Cotter, and in the past, Deirdre Madden and Harry Clifton, Shelley McNamara and Michael Kane, John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy. Stalwarts of the cnuas since its set-up include Leland Bardwell, Ulick O’Connor, Paul Durcan, Patrick Hall, John Montague and Richard Murphy. Another issue of injustice concerning the 155 ‘Aosdánaí’ drawing down their Merrion Square arts-dole is that it exceeds the welfare benefit. Also the 155 names are meant to represent persons devoted full-time to their so-called art as judged by themselves in the first place. As one reads the list bafflement sets in as to the identity of even a minority of those on the list. Then there are dangers of insiderism as where cnuas recipient Pat Boran also operates a publishing venture, Dedalus, subsidised by the Arts Council. Dedalus has published many books by Boran himself. Similarly, Peter Fallon’s Gallery Press is aided by the Arts Council and publishes many fellow members of Aosdána just as Dedalus does. Fallon has also published himself on many occasions using Gallery. The wheeling of this collective within the Arts Council draws a certain inspiration from CJ Haughey, the instigator of Aosdána. The Haughey ethos resonates still. In the early 1980s, only fifty members received a cnuas worth IR£5,000 per annum but with much conniving and their insider-voting-in system more than thirty years later members tenaciously hold onto their annual stipend which they have puffed to its current level of €17,180, subject to an until recently unspecified income threshold. The form obsessives at the Arts Council now require production of tax-clearance and revenue-assessment forms, and worse still, income of less than €25,770 annually. Formerly recipients just had to make a “declaration” that the grant would make it possible for them to give “full-time attention to creative work”. The title of Saoi (lit. “wise one”) is the highest honour that Aosdána can bestow upon a fellow member. No more than seven living members can be so honoured at the same time. The current wise ones are Seoirse Bodley, Brian Friel, Patrick Scott, Camille Souter and perhaps wisest of all, Anthony Cronin. Aosdána was named by Máire de Paor of the Arts Council Board in the 1980s. They went with the smokescreen term Aosdána instead of An Torc which was the initial and equally ridiculous suggestion. The torc based on the ancient Irish gold necklace remains in Aosdána as an honour conferred on certain members by a vote of all members. It comes as no surprise that founder-member, Anthony Cronin was voted to receive a torc himself which makes him a ‘High-Saoi’ or ‘wise one’ according to Aosdána’s terminology. Wise one indeed, since with Haughey’s assistance, Cronin secured an arts-advisor job coincidentally at the time of Aosdána’s being founded. Cronin has been a board member of Aosdána for years, or in their parlance, one of the toscairí. The pomposity and self-regard often provides farce. For instance, Aosdána’s wild goose chase in trying to bestow a torc on Samuel Beckett at a proposed ceremony in Áras an Uachtaráin to be presided over by President Patrick Hillery. Year after year, Aosdána implored Beckett to come home from Paris for his torc, so much so that by 1985 the Arts Council announced: “The Beckett Saoi Torc presentation [is] still unresolved”. Finally, without Beckett present, a dinner was held in Dublin by the toscairí and the torc conferred in his absence on the writer’s 80th birthday. The bullying of Beckett into accepting a torc by Aosdána’s registrar, Adrian Munnelly as Director of the Arts Council who had supplanted Colm Ó’Briain with Cronin in the background was demeaning for all. Originally, Aosdána came into being through Cronin and a clique of unknowns surrounding themselves with writers and artists of repute including Samuel Beckett, Seán Ó’Faolain, Benedict Kiely, Francis Stuart, Denis Johnston, Anne Yeats and Charles Brady. Not only Beckett but to the present writer’s knowledge these invited members felt bullied into joining Aosdána by Haughey’s acolytes. The darker side of Aosdána includes its close relationship with the university system through mutual cultural collusion as well as its harbouring and granting cnuas support to payroll academics such as Nigel Rolfe, and for instance Maeve McGuckian of QUB. Aosdána consistently has had members on the board of the Arts Council, including Colm Tóibín. The Arts Council has often been pushed into using adjudicators from among Aosdána’s ranks while such

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    Prayer between the bogs

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    Hunched into the summit of a steep drumlin close to Glaslough village is Donagh old graveyard. Like many old ecclesiastical sites called Donagh, which means church, it is believed to be of Patrician foundation. Less than 15 miles from Armagh, where St Patrick was based between 440 and 490 AD, this lofty site in the county of Monaghan was referred to as the “church between the bogs” in the Annals of the Four Masters and is located between the Mountain Water River and Glaslough Lake. The trick to locating the old burial ground is to keep an eye out for the incongruous verdant yew trees that surround it among the workaday agriculture green, and then follow your nose. It is peaceful. Once you have slotted back the latch on the groaning wrought-iron gate and entered the graveyard, there is a palpable feeling of isolation and serenity. The headstones are hosts to multifarious vividly coloured and textured lichens, solidifying the carved words and hand-inscribed cursive letters with splashes of bright hues. In autumn, the fallen leaves create a camouflage with the deep litter piled around nature’s painted stones. The earliest headstone, bearing the date 1666 inscribed like a row of upside-down commas, is close to the base of a high cross that is always full with water husbanded for local cures. Other cross bases dot the site and speak of its former importance. The wheeled cross that does remain standing has a large discoid head with non-pierced segments so that it is is still one solid piece. It is decorated with a sunburst reminiscent of a sundial with a centred crucifixation scene. Before the site was fossilised as a burial ground, there was a church here. All that remains now is a small rectangular unroofed ruin built with large masonry blocks, probably reconstructed many times over the years. Nature is claiming it back and it has become part tree. Carved onto the edges of the eighteenth century headstones at the old graveyard, are rows of solemn praying figures, stacked one on top of the next and clothed in pleated skirts, with neat joined hands, downcast eyes and submissive humble expressions. They continue curved around the shoulders of the headstones, constantly offering prayers for the souls of the deceased and reminding visitors to pray for their salvation. The faces and backs of the stones are also decorated, at the base with happy looking Adam and Eve figures standing in the orans position either side of the tree of life. Standing with arms outstretched, this is the oldest known position for prayer and generally used for thanksgiving and blessings. Close to the top of the stones are winged heads or cherubs, symbolising the soul or spirit ascending to heaven. Deeply cut in relief on the back faces of the stones are macabre skulls and crossed bones, coffins, bells and hour glasses. These carved symbols of mortality remind the visitor that everyone is mortal, earthly time will run out, and the bell will toll. All this weighty symbolism succeeds St Patrick by a thousand years, when Donagh sat on a height between the bogs. Like most of the wetlands in Ireland, these have mostly disappeared in the vicinity save for in a few damp corners and rushy fields, where Patrick’s friend Brigid seems to be holding on. Just. The bulrush or reedmace common in Ireland in swamps and marshes comes into its own at this time of year, particularly in oblique early-morning light when its flower-heads stand like mini-sculptures dipped in sugar. Its scientific name Typha latifolia categorises it as a member of the aquatic reed family but its Irish name Coigeal na mBan Sí or ‘Fairywoman’s Spindle’ seems apt, to me at least. The glottal, glarry ground spoken of by Seamus Heaney in his interviews with Dennis O’Driscoll in the book ‘Stepping Stones’, is Ireland’s fertile soggy bottom. Wetlands, ponds and small woods are recognised as “stepping stones” in the landscape that are beloved of fauna and flora. These are often outside of the bigger protected sites but perform a very important supporting role. The European Habitats Directive emphasises the importance of stepping stones for conserving biodiversity, specifically referring to their role in maintaining a coherent ecological network or green infrastructure. Wetlands, often with their heads above water and their roots below, are particularly vital and generous to many ecological systems. They are rain gardens, water filters, composters, sediment traps, nutrient cyclers, flood buffers, carbon sinks and homes for an amazing range of habitats, plants and animals. Most of the threatened plants in Ireland are wetland dwellers, not the adaptive Fairywoman’s Spindle or St Brigid’s rushes but rarer sensitive specialist species. Losing plants from a site means a loss of diversity or species richness. As a rule, the more the species the merrier, for a loss of species will eventually lead to a reduction in ecological function. Nature is no monologue. St Brigid famously cross connects to the common rushes of Ireland. Her feast day on the 1st February – Imbolc, the start of the Irish spring – spills into World Wetlands Day on the 2nd. This is the international campaign day organised by the Ramsar Convention, which seeks to ensure the maintenance of the ecological character of wetlands, their wise use and an ecosystem approach to their management, as well as the designation of particular large wetlands as International Ramsar Sites. In Ireland, there are forty-five such sites but Ramsar is good fodder for all wetlands, big or small. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ Inversnaid seems the wisest plea: What would the world be, once bereft Of wet and of wildness ? Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet ; Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet Shirley Clerkin

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