Money Changes Everything

After thoroughly checking out Brussels, I got a wild hare. One hundred dollars poorer, I was on my way to Dublin to see my pal Molly for about 24 hours of Guinness drinking, leprechaun chasing and french fry comparison. Ryan Air is built for people like me... cheapskates who only take carry-on luggage, don't wanna eat a prepackaged turkey sandwich, and would rather rake vomit bags back and forth across their eyeballs than watch a Hugh Grant romantic comedy.

I stepped off the plane into the Irish afternoon. Walking across the tarmac toward the gate, I thought how much more natural it is to exit an airplane this way... instead of into a hermetically sealed docking chamber. Sun filtered through the blustering gray skies, and I was greeted by an honest-to-goodness rainbow. Ireland was offering up its natural beauty in a welcoming embrace.



Molly and I drove the long way around the city (so that I might better appreciate my surroundings) and then back to her Wicklow abode. There we met up with George and Lola and promptly headed off to The Horse and Hound for pints.

I was informed that I had arrived on an auspicious day for Ireland. Apparently it was a day of national peacemaking as figureheads from Northern Ireland and the Rest of Ireland were shaking hands, smiling and posing for photographs. I wondered aloud, what could have happened to engender this kind of conciliatory attitude between such bitter enemies?

The answer, I was informed, has everything to do with money. Ireland, unlike big sister England, jumped aboard the EEU when given the chance. Somehow this resulted in crazy low interest rates, tons of foreign investment, and a booming economy for the Catholic half of Ireland. The Celtic Tiger was born, and people historically forced to eat raw potatoes (and occasionally their own children,) were suddenly finding their property values quintupling. This created two important dynamics. Poor people, always the backbone of angry societies, suddenly weren't so poor... and thus, suddenly weren't so angry. Instead, they were figuring out how to buy one of those cool no-mess espresso machines that work on cartridges. Secondly, middle-class Northerners stopped being disdainful, and started scheming on how they could possibly get a better coffee maker as well.

I'll be fascinated to see how this plays out. If a long, bloody cultural clash winds up reduced to inconsequence simply by someone dumping a ton of cash on the poor people... well, that says a thing or two about resource inequities in the world, and how we might undo some of the violence that threatens us all. Either way, coffee pot makers look to make a killing on this.