Month: February 2016

27/02/2015 Saturday

This week has been mainly about preparation for going into classes at St Philip’s College as well as a presentation about Corrymeela during the Lent evening service during the coming week.

Yvonne will be in a Social Psychology class looking at Identity and Belonging and also a Humanities class looking at how quotations inspire us.  For this second class Yvonne has chosen a quotation about Fair Trade and will use a puppet play she has written.  (Fair Trade Fortnight starts on Monday).

Saturday night (27/03) we took a table with Andy and Mary Lyn Hill at the Annual Dinner of the San Antonio Chapter of the Fulbright Association. We were joined by Dr Adena Loston, President of St Philip’s College, Cyndy Prior, Dean of Social Sciences at St Philip’s College, Matt Fuller also St Philip’s College and Migdalia Garcia from North West Vista College. Matt, of course is well known in Corrymeela and Magdalia has been to Corrymeela as a group leader with Andy.

There were about 90 guests at the dinner consisting of Fulbright Alumni and Fulbright friends. The distinguished guests included a retired Ambassador and two Congressmen.  The first speaker during the meal was Gerónimo Gutiérrez CEO of the North American Development Bank. This bank is a Green bank set up by the US and Mexican governments to develop and support green infrastructure along the US/Mexican border. Much of the work has been in the area of securing and protecting water sources and development of green energy production.  Money from the governments is used to leverage private investment.

The main speaker was Congressman Joaquin Castro who has followed in his father’s footsteps as Democratic Congressman for San Antonio. He serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and he spoke about some of the issues that he has been working on recently. There is definitely a big contrast between the desire to develop cross-border relationships with Mexico and the rhetoric that is coming from the Republican camp and Donald Trump in particular. The speech was certainly optimistic and inclusive in tone.

The Argyle Club served up a good meal in very comfortable surroundings. I had a sense that it may be leaning towards its 19th century past.

Yvonne and I are now exactly half way through our stay in Texas.  How time flies when you are having fun! We have met lots of wonderful people from all sections of this very mixed community.  As in N.I. people, generally, get on very well together and, as in N.I., there is still much to do to break down all the barriers.

24/02/2016 Wednesday

This week turns out to rather quiet but we still managed to get out on a cultural visit.  Andy took us out to Bandera, “Cowboy capital of the world”. This is a small (pop. 860) but busy little town. Our main purpose of the visit was to go horse riding and eat (again!).  We went out to the Twin Elm Guest Ranch where wrangler Jim got us saddled up and led us out on a trail for an hour or so.  The horses were very gentle and just followed each other in a line. This was a first time experience for me and something that I have always wanted to do. Our trek took us through little wooded river beds and across the Medina river.  There was evidence of the massive flood of last summer but today it was sunny and cool with signs of spring and a little more green after the rain of the previous two nights. What a wonderful way to experience nature but from the back of a horse!

After the riding we went back into town for lunch at “The Old Spanish Trail” restaurant.  The décor honours old western movie stars.  We ate in the John Wayne Room. We then visited the General Store before getting back for Andy’s lecture.

Eating in the Old Spanish Trail

20/02/2016 – Saturday & Sunday

After the Sankofa Lecture we met up with Noel Busch Armandariz, Larry Armandariz and their son Daniel.  Noel is the daughter of our good friends and current house-sitters Mary Anne & Chris Busch.  They were down in San Antonio for a meeting and to take Daniel to the Rodeo and musical show. We met up at Rosarios a Mexican restaurant in downtown San Antonio.  We will be going to stay with at their home in Austin in early April.

Sunday morning we were at church (Christ’s Episcopal).  After communion Yvonne went off to help in the Sunday school (age 9 to 11) with some singing and activity on the theme of communities that are in a minority.

In the afternoon we went to the Witte Museum.  This had a number of parts but we looked mainly at the South Texas Heritage section.  This told the story of the settlement of Texas through the stories of some of the families particularly those who established the Texas cattle industry after the Civil War.

20/02/2016 Saturday

The Sankofa Institute for African American Pastoral Leadership was described by Dr Alton Pollard as embracing all faiths, ethnicity, gender and age.  To summarise: it is dedicated to the margins and bringing down the walls of division.  The talk was divided into two parts: firstly life in the valley of the shadow of death.  He described a number of examples of how black people had been treated. For African Americans the spectre of death is everywhere. Much and little changes. Martin Luther King described the US (world?) as a sick nation.  In the second part he examined our ethical and moral calling in the light gospels.  He told how people coming through this suffering can bring healing through forgiveness whiltest referring to Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela to name a few.  He urged us to have courage to change things that we cannot accept.  “We are the ones we have been waiting for”. He commended the Sankofa Institute as a safe place to have difficult conversations.  There were a lot of connections with Corrymeela in this talk.

Sankofa – “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forgot.” It teaches us that we must go back to our roots in order to move forward. That is, we should reach back and gather the best of what our past has to teach us, so that we can achieve our full potential as we move forward.

18/02/2016 – Thursday

We returned to St Mary’s University and spent a very pleasant afternoon with Charlie Cottrell and his political science class.  We were joined by Andy Hill’s wife Mary Lynne.  We introduced them to the Corrymeela and a bit of Northen Ireland politics.  The discussion centred round the Civil Rights movement, internment, gerrymandering and the slide into violence.  We encouraged them to see connections with situations and events in the USA.

At least two members of the class were very interested in Corrymeela’s volunteering programme.

We did not discover until after the event that Charlie had retired from being the first lay President of the University in 2012 and is now back to teaching as the President Emiritus. Thankyou Charlie!

17/02/2016 Wednesday

As part of Christ’s Episcopal Church lent program we gathered for tea followed by Communion.  The sermon took the form of a talk by David Pate, a retired major and member of the church, on War, Religion and the Worried – what is a just war?  He argued that war was unholy and in the realm of politics and not religion. War could only be decided by heads of state because of this.  This is counter to Thomas Aquinas’ view who said that only the Pope could decide on war and this would make it a holy war. David said that it was his view that war was necessary at times.  There was a lot more to what David had to say but it was delivered at break-neck speed because of a time restraint. This was a pity for a complex subject like this.

After the meeting we offered the possibility of looking at David Stevens’ bible study “Breaking the reciprocity of conflict”. Watch this space!

17/02/2016 Wednesday

We had another beautiful day out, firstly to New Braunfels then onto Gruene.  Exploring the history of these places we visited a railway museum, the oldest dance hall in Texas and an old grist mill.

The railway museum was closed but volunteers who were working on the site insisted on showing us round when they heard where we were from. Part of the exhibition was an elaborate model railway built inside an old box car. This was the pride and joy of Bud, a 70+ railway geek! When we mentioned some of the places we intended to visit before he was able to give us details of all the model railway installations that we should go and see!

We ate at the Gristmill in New Braunfels. Open chicken sandwich and burger both on sourdough bread.

 

20/02/2016 – Saturday

A report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center that has been well covered by the media, makes disturbing reading.  It states that 2015 may have been the most volatile year the United States has seen since 1968. Mark Potok, author of the report, has said “Last year was an incredibly dramatic year, marked by very high levels of political violence, genuine growth of hate groups and a level of hate speech in mainstream politics that we have not seen in decades”.

The concern seems to be about the rise in number and membership of white supremacy group and militias or hate groups. Potok tries to explain this: “The bulk of that anger is coming from beleaguered working-class and, to a lesser extent, middle-class white people, especially the less educated — the very same groups that most vociferously support Trump,” Potok writes. “They are angry over the coming loss of a white majority (predicted for 2043 by the Census Bureau), the falling fortunes of the white working class, worsening income inequality, the rise of left-wing movements like Black Lives Matter, major advances for LGBT people, growing numbers of refugees and undocumented workers, terrorism, and more.”

It seems to me that Donald Trump and others are the new Grand Old Duke of York who will probably leave his followers at the top of the hill. Remember this in Northern Ireland?

Here is a link to a Yahoo News item that includes an interview with Potok.

16/02/2016 – Tuesday

Yvonne spent an hour with Sandra Snavely’s Psychology class.  The class was looking at Child Development in the area of identity and belonging. Yvonne started off with an activity using social and cultural objects as triggers. Reflecting on this activity afterwards the students said that it was the first time that they had a conversation with each other as a class.

The class then broke into groups of three, one to act as recorder and the other two to exchange stories based the puppet characters that they had been given. After this all the stories were shared by the whole group.

The class was very varied in background from Syrian and Afghan refugees to conservative white republican and evangelical liberal African-american from a hard childhood.  There was a woman doctor from Iraq who had delivered a Chinese woman of a baby on the plane from Iraq. Also there were a number of Mexican immigrants in the class.

The issues that surface in the discussion were mainly about immigration, the gun laws and some of the barriers to friendship and hospitality.

16/02/2016 Tuesday evening

A Taize service was held at the University of the Incarnate Word in Our Lady’s Chapel.  The service was led by a choir of about twenty including soloists and readers and followed the traditional Taize form.

The attached mp3 was recorded on a mobile phone so the quality is questionable.  The recording of the singing and music is tolerable but the spoken word is difficult to hear.