March 24, 2011

Dear Julie,

If in a matter of a few years one-fourth of the people in Cape Girardeau died of starvation or disease or moved away, the city would be devastated economically, socially and psychologically. That happened to Ireland on a much larger scale, and the country is still getting over it.

The Great Famine is the defining event in the nation's history. About 1 million people died of starvation or disease in the middle of the 19th century. Another million, many of them young men and women, left the country, hoping to find any kind of work and send money back to their starving families still in Ireland.

It's all about potatoes and tyranny.

Potatoes were served at almost every meal while I was in Ireland last week. They like potatoes, but the potato is more than a spud to the Irish.

Here's the tyranny part. Until the laws were repealed at the beginning of the 19th century, Irish Catholics could not own or lease land, vote or hold political office. By the middle of the 19th century, much of the land in Ireland still was owned by wealthy people who lived in England and rented to Irish farmers at high prices.

The best land was devoted to grazing cattle and growing grain to be shipped back to England. But potatoes would grow almost anywhere, and that's what impoverished Irish farmers grew to feed their families. Many were just scraping by on tiny scraps of land when the potato blight hit in 1845.

The disease killed as much as 50 percent of the harvest that year. That increased to about 75 percent the following year.

English laws made the potato dependency necessary, and Nature brought the blight, but the English government's indifference to the Irish people brought on the famine. While Ireland's people starved, the government in London continued exporting Irish food to England. Irish famers who couldn't pay the high rents were evicted from their land.

Some have called the English policies genocide. In any case, the Irish people were used and mistreated by the British. Americans know something of how they feel.

Irish history is divided between the pre-Famine and post-Famine years. Ireland lost a whole generation to starvation, disease and displacement. To me Ireland seemed like a country with a broken heart.

Heartbreak -- romantic and spiritual -- infuses the lyrics of Ireland's biggest band, U2. Heartbreak drives James Joyce's "Eveline," a short story about a young woman who must choose between her dutifully unhappy life in Dublin and other possibilities.

The tsunami and the nuclear crisis could be the same kind of watershed event for Japan. How will the country recover from such devastation?

Nature brought the tsunami to Japan, but the potential nuclear meltdown is a disaster borne of our appetite for power. It plays tricks on our memories of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

We don't know what to do with spent radioactive fuel but have hundreds of thousands of years to figure it out. We thought we knew how to design nuclear power plants to withstand earthquakes, and then a really big earthquake came along.

For Japan to trust nuclear energy after the suffering at Hiroshima and Nagasaki transcends irony.

On the way to the Dublin airport to leave Ireland, our cab driver talked excitedly about the Ireland-England rugby match to be played later that day. The Irish team had nothing to gain except spoiling Britain's chances to win the championship. But that was enough. Any victory over England makes Ireland feel better.

Someday, Japan may heal from the tsunami and nuclear destruction. For now, Japanese hearts break every day.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.