At Issue: In Ireland

at issue in era you good evening and welcome to this special edition of at issue I'm Twyla Young and this this is Dublin capital city of Ireland mother to literary giants treasure trove for bargain seekers and home base during a recent 10 days for more than 200 friendship force ambassador's from the heart of Iowa this was the scene at Dublin Airport as those ambassador's along with reporters and assorted other travelers arrived were welcomed and expedited through Irish customs then they met their host families the friendship force based in Atlanta Georgia is a nonprofit organization designed to get people from different countries acquainted in a personal home based kind of way it is the brainchild of an Atlanta businessman a friend of Jimmy Carter and a person apparently capable of conceiving the logistical labyrinth of getting a couple of hundred individuals and families paired up with and into the homes of another couple of hundred families in a foreign country although a long list of volunteers in Des Moines did the nearly endless dirty work in getting this group literally off the ground these people from Des Moines represent the second friendship force entourage the first was from Atlanta several months ago and within the next few months groups from Nashville Tennessee Hartford Connecticut North Dakota Arizona New Mexico and Nebraska will have traveled to as many different countries in the world honorary state chair of the project and leader of this delegation was Iowa's first lady Billy Ray a special guest on the journey traveling with the group in part to emphasize her son's endorsement of the project and in part as a famous and very popular person in her own right was President Carter's mother Lillian Carter known invariably in this country and now in Ireland as well as miss Lillian and it was mrs. ray and mrs. Carter who spoke to the crowds and the television cameras and who stood in the eye of the hurricane of publicity it is with great pleasure that I present to you our first guest speaker this evening mrs. Billy Ray First Lady of the state of Iowa thank you want to say hi from 254 very happy Americans mostly Iowans we're just gonna Marcus wide long time on the fight she had expended a wonderful evening together but the hoopla and there was a lot of it was not the point of this journey the point expressed by the Iowa organizers Joe grubs and west bolt by mrs. ray and mrs. Carter by representatives from the Atlanta Friendship forest office and by most of the people involved in the flight itself was friendship this was an opportunity to get to know how individuals in this other city in this other country live their lives to find out how they feel about the world and about themselves and to see them from a new perspective to be a traveler but not a tourist to give more than tourist trade and to take more than goods and services so while there was plenty of opportunity to see the sights a lot of the Iowans on this trip saw some things and did some things one wouldn't ordinarily see and do in a new country one example of this kind of peek at behind-the-scenes Irish Life came in the form of the opening of a new supermarket in one of Dublin's suburbs William Irving a naval architect hosted warren and evelyn kate ron and their sons jim the four of them trekked down the road from the irving home to look over what may have appeared quite similar to commonplace supermarkets in this country but which to a certain degree is still a bit unusual in ireland this suburb essentially built within the last year so is a manifestation of the massive surge of population from the outlying country into dublin the dublin metropolitan area holds fully 1/3 of Ireland's total population the reason for this influx is the painfully high unemployment rampant in the country and so the very things that make this store seem familiar to Iowan eyes its soup to nuts it's crowds of suburbanite shoppers are the things that make it unusual in the normal stream of Irish life and certainly a departure from the aspects of Irish life the one generally reads about in travel books one of the most significant differences between ordinary tourist travel and the friendship force journey turned out to be the opportunity to be with and to talk to people who ordinarily have little contact with tourists that kind of contact alters a travelers perspective shifts the viewpoint and when you look more closely at someone else's way of living you can see the detail as well as the general outline as mrs. Catrin discovered being a mother of six children I am intrigued and the way the mothers care for their babies here they all ride in prams and being that Ireland is quite wet the prams have a zippered type of rain gear so they keep their babies dry and warm all the time this really impressed me and of course Jim Catrin made a discovery that should surprise no one what do you suppose he liked best about Ireland the girl and it's very interesting yes home the kitchen the experiences during that ten days in Ireland were as varied as the hosts and guests themselves Maddy may cut right and Helen Williams found themselves guests in the home of Bernadette Doran a retired but by no means retiring woman who lives just south of Dublin on the Seacoast mrs. Doran took her visitors on many kinds of trips not the least of which was a whirlwind tour by way of lively conversation through her fascinating past but she also took them on a spin through the economically important and historically rich Seacoast area around done Larry these docks and piers serve as the major point of arrival and departure by sea for passenger travel and cargo going in and out of Dublin Bay but step through a break in the seawall and you're in the world of pleasure bathing and romantic seascapes mrs. Doran took some delight in pointing out the jet of land that hides the infamous 40-foot for years a gentleman's nude swimming area and more recently a favorite picketing place for members of the women's movement but besides learning a bit about the different styles of commerce between seacoast Ireland and landlocked Iowa these people also learned a little about each other they learned that by living together one can discover differences and similarities which may seem by themselves trivial but which taken as a whole helped make up the fabric of understanding yes for example this morning when I had my breakfast my host served me a egg in a little egg cup and normally when I have my ball there get home I don't put it in a cup I just put it on the table and peel it and take a fork and proceed but this morning I had a little spoon with a little egg cup and that was quite different what has been your primary impression of your guests so far well of course I think I have the most wonderful guests this came from Des Moines I've been having a mindless time with them and we have discovered that we're very very alike women are the same the world over meri discovered that I never know where I parked the car it's always lost but soon as I leave it and she says I reverse justified as well as she does and that's not good on Sunday evening of their stay in Dublin the Iowans went to what was billed as craft night set up in one of the historic building for the Royal Dublin Society that's where you'd go for the really big horse shows of the season it included entertainment and ample opportunity to spend some American dollars on everything from the famous Aran sweaters and Irish crystal to picture postcards the Irish music was from the Carole brothers and the crafts were from all over the country this is harder made her entrance at the crash site accompanied as usual by bodyguards and important personages and as usual managing to overcome the entourage aspect of her getting about and to make her contact with everyone she met a very personal one Lillian Carter garnered the lion's share of publicity while the group was in Dublin such as the lot of the mother of the President of the United States there was always the conflict between the purpose of the trip and the realities of mrs. Carter's celebrity her presence was intended according to those who were running the show to added credence to this people-to-people style exchange to emphasize its importance to bring the friendship force of 214 ambassador's and their mission into the spotlight when in fact it was she on whom the spotlight was constantly trained this was as nearly as an observer could tell neither her fault nor her intention in the words of one person on the trip miss Lillian is everything she's cracked up to be warm friendly and candid she is also in the words of the newspaper world good copy and her every move was dogged by reporters and photographers often particularly in the Irish media to the exclusion or at least the neglect of the rest of the friendship force we should hasten to add at this point that this situation caused very little alarm among most of the Iowans in general they were as charmed by mrs. Carter as were the Irish the craft knife marked the end of the first phase of the journey the next morning the guests would leave their host poems and begin the second phase either travel or a stay in a second home for nearly everyone this was a parting of New Found close friends but for some of the ambassadors and no doubt for some of the hosts it was a relief as is to be expected when undertaking this kind of project and arrangement which forces total strangers into the intimacy of a private home no amount of pre-planning can anticipate all of the problems on one end of the spectrum was the rather straightforward situation that most everyone had to face of getting used to the Irish way of heating or not heating their homes on the other end specific problems problems that resulted from misunderstandings miscommunication disappointed expectations emergencies and the inevitable problem of that occasional instance where the guest and host simply were not cut out to share the same roof no matter how short the time as uncomfortable as some guests and hosts may have been sometimes times that were on the whole few and far between the point of this project was to learn about the Irish Way of life to get a taste of what it's like to live in this country not simply to be a tourist passing through it and even those individuals whose experiences were not unalloyed would tell you that they learned a great deal about Ireland learning though can take on many faces and several people found one day of their stay that an outing can hold all the promise of being a light-hearted trek into an entertaining afternoon and at the same time give the participant quite an insight into the Irish Way of life this particular outing was to Leopards Town racetrack one of Ireland's largest and most popular we went with Debbie Felton of Des Moines and her Dublin friends Pat Kelly and Eddie McSweeney laughs I love you - crazy to detail with oxide content automatically deployed huge until we brought under four and six like Jackie one on today thank you that's the brief about the hypothesis label right there thank God everyone thought the final type paint after all the height of the entire Oh Oh one thing that Pat Kelly pointed out to Debbie was how male the racetrack crowd is that provided the starting point of a continuing discussion on social roles in Ireland - long way to talk debbie is something of a horse enthusiast herself and was able to ponder the differences and similarities of Irish and American horse racing up close we've got one right we're young thank you and she discovered that people interested in gambling a bit on the horses can get the betting system of most any country explained to them the entertainment was not all provided by the Irish the West Des Moines Dixieland band came along on the trip and added greatly to both the entertainment and the Enlightenment of everyone associated with the friendship forth and a lot of other people in Dublin besides as unusual a combination as Dublin and Dixieland may seem Dubliners all over town at college concerts at receptions and at sessions like this one in one of Dublin's larger hotels took the band and its music to heart