This week's INM Irish regional newspapers' column.
Michael Commane
They called it the American Wake. Young Irish people forced to leave Ireland to get work in far off places such as the US, Canada and Australia said good bye to their family and friends before leaving home. They never expected to be back in Ireland so the goodbyes were in a real sense a final farewell, hence the 'Wake'.
Aer Lingus began to fly across the Atlantic in 1958 with Constellation aircraft and then two years later they acquired Boeing 720s, which allowed them fly from Dublin and Shannon to New York and Boston in approximately seven hours.
The introduction of the jet plane was the final nail in the coffin of the American Wake. The world was getting smaller and people were finding it easier and quicker to get back home.
I went to Rome in 1974 and knew when I was flying out from Dublin Airport that it would be a year before I'd be back home.
Nothing is simple and the pendulum goes back and forth. The jet engine facilitated our fast travel but terrorism is now slowing it down.
These days Rome is one of the many cities which is a weekend destination for large numbers of people.
The world has become a small place and in one sense there is no longer anywhere on the planet that is 'exotic'. Airplanes and cheaper fares mean the world is our oyster.
If we can't physically be on the other side of the world we can have instant communication with anyone anywhere in the world. Back in 1974 I couldn't phone home without having to go through an operator. The letter from Dublin was one of the highlights of the week.
The first years of the Eurovision Song Contest was sensational television because it was our first time to see live what was happening in far off paces. That was an essential ingredient to the magic of the event. It's passé today.
A colleague of mine is just back from a weekend in Dubrovnik. He wisely pointed out how it is somewhere that was once geographically, politically and culturally so far away and now it's a hop-step-and-jump away. Easily 'doable' over a long weekend.So the world is our oyster. Or is it?
The Euros begin in Paris on June 10. Thousands of Irish people are planning to travel to France to support both Irish teams. Yet there will be many who have decided not to travel in fear of being victims of a terrorist attack.
These days anytime I travel abroad there is somewhere at the back of my head a lingering fear that I could be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Of course it can happen anywhere, anytime.
As the world becomes that global village we are forced to reconsider where we can and cannot go. I doubt if many people are going to Syria this year and favourite holiday destinations such as Turkey and Egypt are being crossed off the places-to-go by many people.
Even the intrepid adventurer might be slow to trek across Afghanistan. I knew someone who in 1977 bused it from the Indian border to Iran.
So too with all our modern communication. At least in western democracies there was little chance that our letters were being read. These days we have no idea who is scanning our emails or reading our SMSs.It seems it's part of the human condition that there's
always a snag somewhere.
Robert Burns' lines come to mind: 'The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.'
No perfection on earth?
No comments:
Post a Comment