Boots outside front door, Anam Cara ©2002 Janet Maher   Scene from breakfast nook to another view outside, Anam Cara ©2002 Janet Maher   Scene from my window, Anam Cara ©2002 Janet Maher   Rocks of Coulagh Bay ©2002 Janet Maher

excerpts from our IRELAND LETTER - August, 2002 www.artmattersonline.net Images and Text ©2002 Janet Maher (w/Paul Powichroski in italics) What a time it was! Two weeks at the writers' and artists' retreat, Anam Cara, on the far west coast of Beara Peninsula, followed by one week of exploring Beara, Dingle, and the southern coast of my ancestral Ireland with Paul (left-side-of-the-road driver, navigational genius and love of my life), on our return trip to Cork via Cobh... Anam Cara was an experience of its own--a quieter, more introspective one, with it's separate stories, a collection of rocks and shells, and a partial assemblage of found metal scraps from the road, to be completed as an artwork someday. A clear glass globe, stiff white metal slinky-type coil at its base, containing a statue of Padre Pio surrounded by yellow flowers sits on my home altar now. This is reminiscent of my mother and the graveyard across the road from Sue's place that I wandered through and could see from the kitchen window. I was fascinated by the tradition of saints in water-filled globes which decorate the Irish garden graves of loved ones gone. Mom's one-year anniversary occurred while I was at Anam Cara, and my search for a globe was a way of marking that. She would have loved these places where her tour buses could not have brought her. I feel she vicariously came along... ...I became deeply connected with the beautiful rocky coast of the Beara Peninsula, the lovely colorful houses we would see all over Ireland, and the ease of being with strangers unlike anything I've experienced in quite the same way... Would log online after 6pm to retrieve Paul's email messages before dinner, and keep in contact with New Mexico friends, Michelle and Rick, our predecessors for romantic traipsing in Ireland. This routine would often be followed by Linda's and my video screening from Sue's great collection of films. We tried to alternate gut-wrenching with light from night to night--a real indulgence for those of us who don't watch T.V. regularly and rarely even remember to get to the movies or pick one up for home. Other nights we heard live music in a bar in Allihies, and went to the opening of the Beara Arts Festival, which Sue helped organize, followed by dancing up a storm with the whole community to old American jazz covers by a group in Castletownbere. My Ireland, page 2:   Upstairs in Margaret's yoga room, ©2002 Janet Maher

Cemetary across the street from Anam Cara ©2002 Janet Maher   Scene from breakfast nook to cemetary and chicken coop, Anam Cara ©2002 Janet Maher   Tide pool at Coulagh Bay ©2002 Janet Maher   Scene from Anam Cara conservatory doorway to back yard, where river and waterfalls wait beyond ©2002 Janet Maher