I stumbled across this remarkable little clip completely by accident and thought I would share it here. It is part of an interview, broadcast in 1965, with a retired farmer by the name of Michael Fitzpatrick who was 107 when the interview was recorded. Mr Fitzpatrick was born in County Clare but moved to Killeaney, a townland just a couple of miles north of Maynooth, in 1940.
He would have been in his eighties in 1940 and moved as a result of a Land Commission scheme. I guess he moved with his family who would have run the farm and looked after him in his retirement.
He talks about the infamous Bodyke Evictions, which took place in the late 1880s, and which he witnessed personally. It’s amazing to imagine what those old eyes had seen in his lifetime, not only the cruelty and brutality of the system of land ownership in Ireland through the latter half of the 19th Century, the War of Independence and the Civil War of the 1920s, but also the dramatic changes in farming he mentions. Michael Fitzpatrick passed away a couple of years after this interview, at the age of 109.
I posted this in the local history Facebook page for Maynooth and it seems there are people who remember Michael Fitzpatrick and that his grandson, also named Michael, passed away recently after a long life of his own.
I was reminded this morning that it was a year ago yesterday that I received the keys to my house in Maynooth. I didn’t move in straight away as the house was empty and I had paid the rent on the flat I was living in until the end of August, so I moved my things gradually over the course of a week or so. Looking through all the paperwork this morning I found the pictures that the Estate Agent had used to advertise the property. Here are a few of them:
You’ll see that the bookshelves in the sitting room were empty at the time. They mostly still are. I didn’t think this time last year that I’d still be waiting a year later for my belongings to arrive from Cardiff, but at least they are in transit now. Delivery is pencilled in for next week, as a matter of fact; doing the removal on the cheap as a return load meant waiting a few weeks. I am looking forward to filling the shelves with my books (20-odd boxes of them) and putting up my own artwork. I’ve had enough of bare walls.
This morning our weekly Faculty Executive meetings resumed, the main topic of discussion – as it was this time last year – being the plans to return to on-campus teaching next month. I thought it would be interesting to show a comparison between the Covid-19 figures in Ireland on August 25th 2020 and August 25th 2021:
You will see that the daily case numbers in Ireland are currently about a factor 20 higher than they were this time last year: yesterday we had 2051 new Covid-19 cases in Ireland; a year ago there were 92. That is significant because the effect of vaccines in suppressing serious illness is at most 95%. Since the number of cases is up by a factor of 20, in some sense the risk level if everyone in the population were vaccinated would be about the same now as it was this time last year. And of course not everyone actually is vaccinated, and not everyone will be by the time teaching starts again on 20th September.
Last year the case numbers increased substantially between August and September meaning that we went back into lockdown in October. We don’t know whether or not case numbers will increase again this year, of course, but from the point of view of resuming teaching we’re really in no better shape now than we were at this time last year. Our optimism then was misplaced and that may well be true now too. This is why so many people in the University system are nervous about the edicts we have been given to return to full lecture theatres with no social distancing, no mandatory masks, and no vaccination certificates. This seems like asking for trouble.
On a personal note, I am pleased to report that the mild symptoms I mentioned on Monday have completely disappeared and, to no surprise at all, my PCR test came back negative. It may or may not be relevant that the weather has improved greatly over the last two or three days. I have now come to the conclusion that what I had was some form of seasonal allergy, possibly connected with crop harvesting in the area spreading pollen or fungal spores. The latter are more prevalent in damp or humid weather, which might be the reason for reduction in effect now. Or it could just be that a nearby farmer has stopped doing whatever he was doing. I don’t know enough about field theory to be certain.
Anyway, all of this means I can now stop self-isolating and start returning to campus again. To be honest, though, it was rather nice self-isolating at home as I spent most of the time working in the garden…
This time last week I started trying to readjust to working from my office in Maynooth University but I’ve already had to put that on pause (hopefully temporarily).
Over the last several days I’ve been experiencing bouts of sneezing, a frequent runny nose, some sinus pressyre, and uncomfortably dry eyes. These seem to me symptoms of hay-fever (though it is a bit late in the year for that) or some other allergy, rather than Covid-19, but based on what I’ve read about the so-called Delta variant I phoned my GP.
I don’t have the more usual symptoms of Covid-19 (neither cough nor sore throat nor fever) – in fact I don’t really fall unwell at all apart from the sporadic sneezing – so my GP said he thought it was very unlikely to be the Coronavirus. I’m also fully vaccinated, though that doesn’t mean I can be infected. Nevertheless he recommended I self-isolate as a precaution for a few days to see what, if anything, develops. So that is what I am doing.
I’m supposed to be recording video material for orientation week, which I can do just as easily at home. To counter the sneezing I’ll just record everything in small chunks.
As for the symptoms, my money is on some kind of allergy, but I wonder what? I’ve never experienced hay-fever in late August before!
Anyway, I’m glad this has happened before the start of teaching: as we’re supposed to do lectures and tutorials in person from next month, a person who is self-isolating won’t be able to teach and we have so few staff it will be difficult to find cover…
Update: the likeliest explanation seems to be a fungal spore allergy, as the release of fungal spores is triggered by crop harvesting. Maynooth is in an agricultural area and August is harvest time. Allergens of this sort also thrive in humid weather which we certainly have had recently.
The full guidelines on the return to on-campus teaching in September that I referred to on Monday have now been distributed to all staff, not without comment.
Basically the new advice is that in-person teaching will return in September (in fact a month from today in Maynooth) for all forms of class except lectures containing over 250 people, which will be online. Lecture halls and labs will be at full capacity, i.e. with no social distancing requirement. Students will be “asked” to wear face coverings, but we are told not to attempt to enforce this. Importantly, there will be no requirement for students to have been vaccinated in order to attend lectures.
In Ireland there is a vaccination passport system so that those who wish to dine indoors at a bar or restaurant have to show vaccination status. Perhaps someone can explain to me how it makes sense for this to be a requirement in a restaurant while it is not a requirement for a student having to sit for an hour in close proximity to up to 249 others with no social distancing and no mandatory face coverings.
This conundrum is taken to another level of absurdity when you consider that a student wishing to get lunch indoors on campus will presumably have to show their vaccine passport?
There is an article here that argues that a safe return in the presence of the delta-variant requires 90% of the student population to have been vaccinated.
A more acceptable plan would have students show their vaccination status when enrolling on the course. Those who are unvaccinated but willing to have a vaccination shot could be vaccinated there and then and be allowed to attend lectures when the vaccine takes effect. Or I should say “could have been” because the facilities required to do on-campus vaccinations have not been set up and now there probably isn’t time. Those that refuse to have a vaccine should attend lectures online on a permanent basis.
(How such a scheme would be policed is a difficult question: we don’t usually have people on the doors of lecture theatres checking student IDs or anything and there is a far greater rate of traffic at the start of a lecture than you would have at a restaurant…)
There will of course be some students who are at very high risk and should not be attending lectures anyway even if vaccinated. For them we should be providing lecture recordings. Unfortunately I don’t think we have good enough facilities to record live lectures from theatres as there has been inadequate investment in cameras etc. If we’re told we have to provide lecture recordings, for many of us that means doing the lectures twice. And so our workload increases.
On the other hand it seems increasingly likely to me that all this will be irrelevant. New case numbers are running at about 1800 per day, a level that the HSE admits to being “unsustainable”. When the first colleges return in September, a substantial surge can be expected and everything will be back online anyway.
It is now time for a quick public information broadcast.
Did you know about the scheme run jointly between the Royal Society and Science Foundation Ireland that enables early career researchers in Ireland access to University Research Fellowships?
This scheme provides five years of research funding (with the possibility of renewal) and has proved to be a stepping stone to their first permanent academic position for a great many scientists. Here are a couple of items about the eligibility and duration.
Eligibility: The scheme is open to early career Post Doctoral Researchers with between 3-8 years of actual research experience since their PhD (date on which the degree was approved by board of graduate studies) by the closing date. You cannot apply if you hold a permanent post in the university or have held (or currently hold) an equivalent fellowship that provides the opportunity to establish independence. Please see call notes for further details.
Funding and Duration: Funding consists of the research fellow’s salary and research expenses for an initial period of 5 years with the possibility to apply for a further 3 years. Research expenses cover the standard consumables/materials, equipment up to €15,000, travel, training and public engagement in the first year and €13,000 thereafter. Fellowships are expected to have commenced by October 2022.
The scheme covers a wide range of disciplines. including physics and astronomy. Of course if you want to do cosmology, the best place here to do it is here in Maynooth! The deadline if you want to apply to hold a URF from 2022 in Ireland is 28th September 2021, which is a bit later than for the UK version but still not far off, so please get cracking!
P.S. Five years residency in Ireland qualifies you for Irish citizenship. Just saying…
Well, as promised yesterday I went back into my office at Maynooth University this afternoon. I didn’t achieve very much apart from resetting some of the sophisticated equipment (see above) but it’s a start…
To be honest I was a little distracted by the cricket at Lord’s where there was a remarkable turnaround in Indian’s favour on the last day. Looking like they were going to struggle to save the game with six wickets down for 181, a lead of just 154 overnight, and losing two quick wickets in the morning, India went on to declare on 298 for 8, then bowled England out this evening for just 120. It’s been an excellent Test Match, full of twists and turns, ending in a result that seemed very unlikely at the start of the day.
Call me old-fashioned but you can’t beat Test cricket. Nothing compares to it!
It’s been a rather busy weekend as I’ve tried to complete the grading my repeat examinations. I’m almost done but I have six more scripts to do, which I will finish tomorrow morning. Once again I’ve set a bad example by being later than everyone else, but at least I’m not going to miss the deadline. We have our Examination Board on Friday and they’ll all be done and dusted by then.
Friday is 20th August, which means it’s exactly a month from then until the start of teaching in Semester 1 of the new academic year. We have now received draft instructions on how this is planned to start. They are not in final form yet, having been circulated to Heads of Department for comments. I’ll refrain from saying more in public until they are published but in a nutshell we are anticipating more-or-less a full return to on-campus teaching with no reduced capacity in lecture theatres but with slightly shorter lectures and staggered start and end times.
That is if everything is under control in a month. The latest Covid-19 figures are not reassuring. The latest 7-day rolling average is about 1800 new cases to day, which is as high as it was in January. Hospitalizations are increasing, though at a lower level than before presumably because of the vaccination effect. Mortality rates are unclear (to me) because of the continuing disruption to reporting caused by the HSE computer problem. I’m very conscious that all our plans were changed at the last minute at the start of last academic year, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Hopefully the incidence rate will stop rising over the next few weeks.
On Friday I took a prospective PhD student and his family for a walk around campus, mainly to introduce them to the famous Library Cat (who is fine, by the way, but bothered by wasps getting into his dish when I fed him). Most staff and research students in the Department are still working from home, but there were one or two people around to say hello. When I entered my office I saw I hadn’t changed the date on my calendar since June 15th, two months ago. By the look of the sports fields at the back of the college they haven’t been mown for much longer than that: at the moment they look more like hayfields!
I have been fairly content working from home over the summer (with two interruptions for travelling to Cardiff and back), but I really have to get into the habit of going to the office if we’re going to welcome students in person. I think when I’ve finished my marking tomorrow morning I’ll start trying to get back into the routine. For one thing quite a few things we moved before lockdown need to be moved back to their proper places. When I was waiting for the train from Cardiff on Thursday I saw railway workers removing the social distancing signs from the platform. I guess we’ll be doing that too.
I do hope all this isn’t premature, but I have a nagging feeling…
So here I am sitting in a virtually empty house in Cardiff, the bulk of my worldly goods now in transit to Ireland. The house seems a lot bigger with nothing in it. It also feels a bit strange to see all your possessions listed in an inventory.
The 9th and 10th of August were the first opportunities to do the removal from my Pontcanna residence, so I flew over at the weekend to be here to supervise the packing. I paid for the removals firm to do the actual packing, which was well worth the extra money. The company told me it would take two full days to pack up, which surprised me. In fact they did most of it on Monday arriving at 9.30am and departing around 3pm. Yesterday they arrived at 8.30am and were finished by 10.30am. They could easily have done it all in one day but they only had a smallish van which they filled up before leaving on Monday.
My stuff now gets stored in a container in a warehouse for a couple of weeks or so before being delivered to Maynooth by ferry. They’re doing this removal as a return load, which means waiting for a lorry to arrive to the UK from Ireland which would otherwise return empty. Taking my stuff on the return journey makes it more efficient for them and also quite a lot cheaper for me. This seemed the best option as I am not in a particular rush to receive delivery. I’ve waited a year so a couple more weeks won’t matter!
The fact they finished early yesterday got me out of an awkward situation. The powers that be scheduled three repeat examinations simultaneously at 2.30pm yesterday so I assumed I would have to be scrabbling around with my mobile phone in amongst the boxes and packing materials, which might have been awkward.
As it turned out I had plenty time to walk across Bute Park to Cardiff University where a former colleague in the School of Physics & Astronomy was kind enough to let me use an empty office and eduroam did the rest. All three papers passed without incident, and I had the added bonus of a few pints in the Flute and Tankard afterwards.
Yesterday was A-level results day so there was much talk about the new academic year. It seems Cardiff University is going to resume face-to-face teaching in September. I hope the School of Physics & Astronomy gets a good intake of first-years and that all goes well for all students and staff as they prepare to resume some form of normality. Cardiff has been very good to me over the years and I wish everyone there all the best for the future.
Incidentally I popped in to the Data Innovation Research Institute (where I used to work) while I was at the School of Physics and Astronomy, just to see if I could say hello to anyone I used to work with. The office is just over the other side of a car park from the Queen’s Buildings. I found that the folks are being relocated from the old office to a new building along with Mathematics and Computer Science up near Cathays Station. There was only one person there, packing up his stuff for removal…
Working at home all day yesterday I thought I might take a break and go for a walk…
… and then I thought “perhaps not”.
The inclement weather did however remind me of something I should have posted last Sunday, namely that 1st August is regarded in the traditional Celtic calendar as the first day of Autumn. In Irish September is Meán Fómhair (middle of autumn/harvest season) and October is Deireadh Fómhair); August itself is Lúnasa.
Each season lasts approximately three months. Traditionally, winter starts on 1st November and includes November December and January (with the Winter Solstice in the middle). Summer consists of May June and July (with the Summer Solstice in the middle). That period is definitely the best time of the year in Ireland, actually. Spring (February to April) and Autumn (August to October) are likewise roughly bisected by the two equinoxes. It all makes astronomical sense.
This also makes sense of something that puzzled me until yesterday, which is why the repeat examinations held in August (which I should be marking instead of wasting my time blogging) are called the Autumn repeats in Maynooth instead of Summer repeats (which is what they are called everywhere else I’m aware of). That’s because August is in the Autumn.
P. S. The title is meant to be a play on Autumn Leaves…
So here I am sitting at home supervising my first online repeat examination supplemental assessment. I’ve only had a couple of minor queries so I’ve been able to get on with other things, among which I noticed that according to the news Universities and Colleges in Ireland have announced that
The rapid progress in the Covid vaccination programme has injected a new level of confidence about maximising the return to higher education, and preparations are at an advanced stage.
That’s great. Presumably at some point the University authorities will communicate these preparations which are at an advanced stage to the staff who will have to implement them. I would have thought we might get to hear about them before they are presented to the media, but perhaps the details for Maynooth haven’t been worked out yet. In which case they’re not really advanced. Or perhaps the plan will be what it has been throughout the pandemic: leave everything to Heads of Department to sort out.
The press release is here by the way. What it contains is rather vague but it does contain some specific things about staggered start and end times for lectures and contraflow into and out of buildings, so if we’re going to do that we’ll have to know what it involves. I am mindful however of the debacle last year when we made elaborate plans that then had to be ditched when the Covid-19 situation deteriorated. After getting my fingers burned that way last year I’m going to wait until the last possible moment before making concrete plans.
While I’m very happy about the prospect of returning to campus I’ve suddenly realized my positive feelings are tempered with a strange and unfamiliar sense of anxiety. The first teaching sessions of next academic year are in the week beginning September 20th. At that point it will have been 18 months since I last stood up in front of a full lecture theatre. It will be a strange experience after such a long period during which I’ve been doing my teaching by talking into a camera. Will I be able to remember how to do it? I think I’ll be quite nervous, actually. I don’t normally get nervous when giving lectures but already feel it. Perhaps it will pass.
Another thing that occurred to me is that as well as the brand new intake I will have students in my second year whose faces I’ve never seen!
Anyway, all that’s for next month. For the time being it’s back to the repeat examinations. While I’ve been typing this, two have been submitted….
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In the Dark 