#poor scoty

[croweswings-a]

Character Study. Scott Halpritt

Tagged by @vandewaltmorf​ (thank u sm!)

FULL NAME.     Scott Leroy Halpritt (Hilbert) MEANING.     SCOTT: “from an english and scottish surname which referred to a person from scotland or a person who spoke scottish gaelic. it is derived from latin scoti meaning "gaelic speaker", with the ultimate origin uncertain.”    LEROY: “from the french nickname le roi meaning "the king".”    HALPRITT: made-up alias he created for himself. real surname is hilbert: germanic, means "bright battle". NICKNAME.     scottie ( doesn’t really enjoy nicknames ) GENDER.   male. HEIGHT.  5ft 8in. AGE.     verse dependent ( b. 1940 ) ZODIAC.     aries. SPOKEN LANGUAGES.   english, spanish.

P H Y S I C A L   C H A R A C T E R I S T I C S .

HAIR COLOUR.   golden blond. EYE COLOUR.   slate blue. SKIN TONE.   lightly tan, freckled. BODY TYPE.     toned, not thin, strong legged. ACCENT.  very generic learned TV american accent. doesn’t seem to fit any region. VOICE.     oaky tones, somewhat soft, carefully enunciated. DOMINANT HAND.   left. POSTURE.     tendency to keep his weight on one side, often has arms folded defensively. SCARS.     scar on chin, origin unknown. TATTOOS.   n/a. MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S).     striking gaze, curly hair (past 1968), sharp nose.

C H I L D H O O D .

PLACE OF BIRTH.     location unknown. HOMETOWN.   staten island NY / monterey CA. BIRTH WEIGHT.     N/A. BIRTH HEIGHT.     N/A. MANNER OF BIRTH.   delivered while family was on the road travelling. FIRST WORDS.    the generic “mama”. SIBLINGS.  younger sister, anna, born 1941. PARENTS.     deceased. adoptive parents: jonathan & magdalene stanton. PARENT INVOLVEMENT.     was only 4 when his biological parents passed away. adoptive parents were very kind and supportive, musician father encouraged him to take up music as a hobby and he excelled fantastically.

A D U L T   L I F E .

OCCUPATION.     manager/session musician for CA folk rock band crowe’s wings. CURRENT RESIDENCE.   topanga, CA. CLOSE FRIENDS.  trevett allen, mark crowe, his sister anna. RELATIONSHIP STATUS.     single. FINANCIAL STATUS.   middle class. DRIVER’S LICENSE.  yes. CRIMINAL RECORD.    n/a. VICES.     smoking.

S E X   A N D   R O M A N C E .

SEXUAL ORIENTATION.   presumed heterosexual, open to exploration. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION.     undetermined. PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE.     provider, supporter. PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE.   dominant, though it usually depends on mood. LIBIDO.   fluctuates depending on business. TURN ON’S.    confidence, “dirty talk”, ample amount of foreplay, balanced amount of giving and receiving, sometimes getting a little rough, eye contact, women with lots of curves, men with pretty eyes/eyelashes TURN OFF’S.     any extreme bdsm, leather, age difference, etc - just nothing super taboo. he’s not extremely adventurous. LOVE LANGUAGE.   expressed with less words and more actions. he’s considerate and often thinks of the other person throughout the day which leads to little gifts or favours. the sort that will prepare a relaxing weekend off for his partner. good at understanding boundaries but can get moody if the communication is poor. RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES.   very few, unsurprisingly. he doesn’t easily trust others and if he dates, the other usually finds his privateness to be frustrating to endure and breaks up with him within a month or so. he doesn’t seek out relationships and prefers to let things happen gradually. he’d rather have a relationship with someone he knows well.

M I S C E L L A N E O U S .

CHARACTER THEME SONG.     outside chance - the turtles HOBBIES TO PASS TIME.     playing/tuning/fixing instruments, long walks in the evening, smoking pot and listening to music, sewing. MENTAL ILLNESSES.     mild depression, mild parasomnia (sleep terrors) PHYSICAL ILLNESSES.    n/a. LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED.     left brained. PHOBIAS.   claustrophobic.  SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL.   8/10. VULNERABILITIES.   once he opens up to you, he’s trusting you completely. break that trust and he holds grudges for a long time because he’s easily wounded by betrayal. very affected by people who are considerate of his work life and what he has to put up with.

Tagging: @camillelafaye @hasflown :^)

[hallsp]

Myths

Nations are forged in the fires of history but they remain molten, recast with each generation in the imperfect furnace of memory and imagination.

The controversial French philologist Ernest Renan was right when he once remarked that: “In order for a nation to exist, it had to remember certain things, and also forget certain things.”

The remembering of history often involves simplification, whereas I’d rather reflect its true complexity, with the result that the “agreed-upon facts,” to borrow a phrase from Gore Vidal, regularly need re-examination.

The most critical event in Irish history, without doubt, was the Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169. This was the beginning of English rule in Ireland, which would continue, in one form or another, down to the present day.

The 12th century “Anglo-Norman” conquest of Ireland was, in point of fact, largely Franco-Hibernian in nature. It consisted in an alliance of the Angevin King Henry II (Court Manteau) and the exiled King of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough.

Henry II was born in France, spoke Norman French, married Eleanor of Acquitane, and spent fully two-thirds of his reign on the continent. The French Normans, in the person of William the Conquerer, had invaded Britain just a century earlier, defeating Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

Dermot MacMurrough allied himself with Henry II because he wanted to regain the Kingdom of Leinster, which had been taken from him by Rory O’Connor, the last High King of Ireland.

Jonathan Swift jokingly said that Henry had arrived in Ireland “half by force, half by consent.” The Irish History Reader, published by the Christian Brothers in 1905, puts it succinctly: “Ireland was once an independent nation. She lost her independence not so much through the power of her enemies, as by the folly of her sons.”

Interestingly, one of the first references to Ireland in the historical record, courtesy of Tacitus, the Roman historian, mentions a very similar scenario, in which an unnamed Irish chief, possibly Túathal Techtmar, exiled in the first century, sought refuge with General Agricola, who also thought of invading the Land of Winter.

The Normans were not the only invading power in the British Isles. Scots (Scoti in Latin) was the term used by Roman Britons in referring to the marauding Irish Gaels. In the 6th century, Dál Riata, a Gaelic kingdom in Northern Ireland and Scotland, became so powerful that Gaelic became the language of Northern Britain, hence the provenance of Scottish Gaelic and the etymology of Scotland itself. So, the Normans might have brought English (which is half Norman French anyway) to Ireland, but the Irish brought Gaelic to Scotland. And while we may not speak much Gaelic anymore, at least it’s survived. The Scots (in Scotland) can’t say the same about poor old Pictish. One other example: in 1111, Domnall Ua Briain, the great-grandson of Brian Boru, famous High King of Ireland, became King of the Isles (Hebrides, isles of the Firth of Clyde, and the Isle of Man) by sheer force of arms.

Indeed, the Normans weren’t the only ones boldly interfering in the affairs of a neighbouring kingdom. In 1051, prior to the Norman conquest of England itself, Harold Godwinson sought refuge in Ireland, with Diarmait mac Maíl-na-mBó in Leinster. Harold’s sons, Godwine and Edmund, fled here in 1066, and attempted to retake Britain from their base in Ireland, with fleets supplied by Diarmait, in 1068 and 1069. The colonial history of these islands might have been reversed in the event of their success.

The Vikings were not the only raiders and plunderers on the island of Ireland. According to the Annals, for example, Clonmacnoise was much more often attacked by the native Irish than by the Vikings. Indeed, even the monasteries themselves went to war with one another. Clonmacnoise went to war with Birr in 760, and with Durrow in 764. In 817, during a battle between the monasteries of Taghmon and Ferns, four hundred were slain.

The Battle of Clontarf, in 1014, is often imagined as the last stand of the Gaelic High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, against the marauding foreigner, the Norse King of Dublin, Sigtrygg Silkbeard. In actual fact, Sigtrygg was born in Ireland; he was also married to Brian Boru’s daughter. Brian himself was supported by Vikings from Limerick; and Sigtrygg was supported by Máel Mórda, King of Leinster, and Sigtrygg’s uncle!

The island of Ireland was not politically united until after the arrival of the Anglo-Normans, notwithstanding the exceptional High Kingships of Brian Boru and Rory O’Connor. There never existed a unified political entity called Ireland until about the 16th century, with the Tudor Conquest, the establishment of the Kingdom of Ireland, and the legal process of Surrender and Regrant; even then it took centuries of consolidation. Clearly there was a common heritage amongst the inhabitants of our little island prior to this, in terms of language and customs, but the country was made up of rival kingdoms, each vying for power and glory, just like everywhere else on God’s green Earth.

The omnipresent Catholic Church actually gave its imprematur to the Norman invasion of Ireland, as Henry II was granted the Lordship of Ireland by Pope Adrian IV, the first (and last) English Bishop of Rome. Laudabiliter, the papal bull granting this privilege, is extremely controversial, with many claiming it as a forgery. It matters not. The “Donation of Adrian” was subsequently recognised in many official writings. For example, in 1318, Domhnall O’Neill, along with other Irish kings, appealed to Pope John XXII in an attempt to overthrow Laudabiliter, a copy of which they enclosed. The Pope simply wrote to King Edward II of England urging him to redress some of the grievances of the Irish.

The Irish Rebellion of 1641, a result of anger at plantation and subjugation, gave rise to the Irish Catholic Confederation, which pledged its allegiance to the Royalists in the English Civil War. This is what brought Cromwell to Ireland, and though he was brutal (vicious, really) in his campaign, he was not the first military leader to massacre innocents, and exacerbate famine in Ireland. Robert the Bruce, and his brother Edward, who was proclaimed High King of Ireland in 1315, invaded the North and engaged in total war with the Anglo-Irish, slaughtering all of the inhabitants of Dundalk, for example.

Maurice Fitzgerald, who led one of the Cambro-Norman families which accompanied Strongbow in his invasion of Ireland, founded a famous dynasty in Kildare. The Fitzgeralds, like many of the Old English, eventually became “more Irish than the Irish themselves,” Hiberniores Hibernis ipsis. In fact, two descendants, separated by more than two-hundred years, would lead the Irish in rebellion against the crown: “Silken” Thomas Fitzgerald, in 1534, and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, in 1798. Such are the vagaries of history.

I like to remind Nationalists and Unionists alike that, during the 1680s, Pope Alexander VIII supported William of Orange, the Protestant usurper, in his battle for the English Crown, against the legitimate (though Catholic) King James II. The Orange Order, which refuses Catholic members, should make an honourary exception for the Pope. The Catholic Church, not for the first time in history, placed its own interests to the fore, as a member of the Grand Alliance, the League of Augsburg. The Battle of the Boyne in 1690 more or less decided the outcome of this conflict in favour of William.

This “Glorious Revolution,” so-called, is often celebrated as a victory for the liberal co-regency of William and Mary, over the authoritarian regime of James II. Edmund Burke thought of it as a final settlement and as freedom in full fruition. James was indeed an advocate for absolutist monarchy and a believer in the Divine Right of Kings.

However, it was James who made the declaration of indulgence, otherwise known as liberty of conscience, in 1687, a first step towards the freedom of religion. Indeed, the Patriot Parliament, which met in Dublin for the first and only time in 1689, granted full freedom of worship and civic and political equality for Roman Catholics and Dissenters. And yet, the indulgence also reaffirmed the king as absolute, so these pronouncements depended on the will of the monarch. (They were also made with a view to reinforcing support for his reign amongst Catholics and Dissenters.)

The founding members of the United Irishmen, the fons et origo of Irish republicanism, were all Protestant. This was an astonishing development. In the wake of the American and French revolutions, the Protestant planters, who had been brought to Ireland to pacify the country and bring it under English control, were now making common cause with the Gaelic and Old English Catholics to throw off the yoke of external domination. Wolfe Tone would state his aims boldly:

To subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country – these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman, in the place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter – these were my means.

In the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion, Catholics supported the Act of Union, because they believed that Catholic emancipation would be more easily achieved through Westminster than through College Green.

Daniel O’Connell, a native speaker of Irish, was utilitarian enough to “witness without a sigh the gradual disuse” of the language. Rather surprisingly, it was not the Duke of Wellington who said that being born in a stable — Ireland — does not make one a horse, it was the Liberator, speaking about the Duke, at trial in 1843.

O’Connell desired Catholic emancipation, of course, and the re-establishment of the Irish Parliament, but he wasn’t a separatist. In fact, he actually coined, or at the very least popularised, the term “West Brit,” then understood in a wholly positive sense. Here he is speaking in the House of Commons in 1832:

The people of Ireland are ready to become a portion of the Empire, provided they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to become a kind of West Britons if made so in benefits and in justice; but if not, we are Irishmen again.

O’Connell, who witnessed the beginning of la terreur in France, believed in peaceful agitation for change, “moral force” nationalism, and wholeheartedly rejected violence. “Let our agitation be peaceful,” he said, “legal, and constitutional.”

The principle of my political life…is that all ameliorations and improvements in political institutions can be obtained by persevering in a perfectly peaceable and legal course, and cannot be obtained by forcible means, or if they could be got by forcible means, such means create more evils than they cure, and leave the country worse than they found it.

In his non-violence he would be an example to Gandhi and to Martin Luther King, but not to the rebels of 1916. Strangely, though, you can find Robert Emmet’s blunderbuss in O’Connell’s home in Derrynane.

Two UK prime ministers were born and raised on the island of Ireland, part of the Protestant ascendancy: William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelbourne (1782-1783) and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1828-1830). These men also share the distinction of being the only two prime ministers who were also army generals. Wellington is not well-remembered in Ireland, because he was a staunch unionist and opposed to parliamentary reform (the reason Lord Byron called him Villainton), but he was Prime Minister during the passage of the 1829 Catholic Relief Act, and it would not have passed without his forthright support. The Wellington Testimonial in the Phoenix Park celebrates, somewhat amusingly, his encouragement of religious and civil liberty.

Irish soldiers fought with the British Army in almost every battle in the Empire’s history, including a large contingent in the Napoleonic wars alongside Wellington and, of course, in the Great War. At least 200,000 Irish soldiers fought in the First World War, all of them volunteers. Conscription for Ireland was eventually passed in 1918, but never enforced. The history of the British Empire is also our history, whether we like it or not. In fact, many of the troops who battled with the rebels in 1916 were fellow Irishmen, particularly from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

Ireland being an integral part of the Empire meant, for example, that the bugle used to sound the Charge of the Light Brigade at the famous Battle of Balaclava in 1854 was made in Dublin, at McNeill’s on Capel Street, and sounded by a Dubliner, Billy Brittain. It meant too that Winston Churchill’s “first coherent memory” is of cavalry on parade in the Phoenix Park in Dublin, when his grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough, was Viceroy. (Speaking of historical myths: it’s actually Lord Kitchener, as Secretary of War, and not Churchill, who bears most responsibility for the disaster which was the campaign in Gallipoli. He was the chief advocate for a naval attack in the first place and for a subsequent landing of ground troops.)

The Ulster unionists, latter-day proponents of democracy, law, and order, would do well to remember that it was their forebears who first introduced the gun into Irish politics in the 20th century, with the Larne gun-running in 1914. These were German guns for the Ulster Volunteer Force, who were determined to oppose Home Rule, the democratic will of the majority, by any means necessary.

The Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), the majority nationalist party at Westminster, was opposed to partition, but acquiesced in the creation of Northern Ireland as a stop-gap in securing Home Rule for Ireland, which was delayed until after the First World War. John Morley, previously Chief Secretary for Ireland, wrote to Asquith in 1914 very wisely telling him that his special plan for Ulster “would not work,” because “there is a strong Catholic minority, and the effect would be to reproduce in Ulster, with a reversal of the political conditions, the very antagonisms that you now hope to relieve.” The creation of “a Protestant Government for a Protestant people” in Northern Ireland would lead directly to the so-called Troubles, in which Catholics were thwarted in their pursuit of basic civil rights.

The 1916 Rising was organised while Home Rule was on the statute books. The best defense of this action was probably given by Roger Casement, the campaigning British consul who had exposed the human rights abuses in the Congo and Peru, at his trial in 1916 before he was hanged for treason:

If small nationalities were to be the pawns in this game of embattled giants [the Great War], I saw no reason why Ireland should shed her blood in any cause but her own, and if that be treason beyond the seas I am not ashamed to avow it or to answer for it here with my life.

Tom Clarke, the mastermind of the Rising, had been arrested in London in 1883, found in possession of large quantities of nitroglycerin, intent on bombing London Bridge, the busiest part of the city.

Arthur Griffith, the founder of Sinn Féin, had suggested the formation of a dual monarchy, in emulation of Hungary’s settlement with Austria, essentially a return to the constitution of 1782, prior to the union of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, and he had opposed all physical force nationalism in favour of passive resistance and abstentionism.

Patrick Pearse talked in the language of race theory, and welcomed the spilling of blood in the world war: “the old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.” One might dismiss this as representative of the militarism of the age, but there were many who completely disagreed. James Connolly condemned this sentiment as belonging to that of a “blithering idiot.” Indeed, Pearse was “half-cracked,” according to Yeats, and a man “made dangerous by the Vertigo of Self Sacrifice.”

It must also be remembered, though, that John Redmond also called for a blood sacrifice, in encouraging the Irish Volunteers to join the war effort on the continent: “No people can be said to have rightly proved their nationhood and their power to maintain it until they have demonstrated their military prowess.”

Independence finally came in 1922, with the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the formation of the Free State. The Dáil ratified the Treaty, and the 1922 general election was a de facto referendum resulting in a clear majority in favour of the Treaty. The anti-Treaty republicans rejected this result, and brought the country to civil war. This anti-democratic element of republicanism is discussed not nearly enough.

Was the Treaty a worthy intermediate, a legitimate stepping stone to full independence? or was it a simple betrayal of the Republic? If you believe it was for the Irish people to decide, the Treaty was their choice. If, however, you believe that the Republic itself takes precedence over the voice of the people, then the fight would go on. Margaret Pearse rubbished the Treaty because she was haunted by the “ghosts of her sons.” In the end, the Republic was declared in 1949, not through force of arms, but through legislation.

In retrospect, the old unionist concern that Home Rule meant Rome Rule wasn’t entirely unfounded. Our constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, which was written in 1937, defined the state as explicitly secular, and, remarkably, provided recognition to the “Jewish congregations,” then under increasing attack in Europe. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church had inordinate influence on social policy. This would drive a wedge into the midst of the nation, to paraphrase W. B. Yeats. A 1925 prohibition on divorce prompted Yeats, then a senator in Seanad Éireann, to give an impressive speech.

I think it is tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence we should be discussing a measure which a minority of this nation considers to be grossly oppressive.

Ironically, in the office of the ultra-Catholic Patrick Pearse at St. Enda’s in Rathfarnham sits a bust of the poet John Milton. It was Milton who had written so powerfully in favour of divorce in the 17th century, and Yeats invokes his name in support of the rights of the Protestant people.

The prohibition went ahead anyway, having a predictable effect on progressive society: in 1951, for example, the state rejected the donation of a painting from Louis le Brocquy, Ireland’s foremost artist. A Family was a pessimistic depiction which he painted while going through a public divorce in the UK.

Yeats predicted that the ban would eventually be removed. “There is no use quarreling with icebergs in warm water,” he said. “I have no doubt whatever that, when the iceberg melts [Ireland] will become an exceedingly tolerant country.” The iceberg finally melted in 1995, when divorce was legalised, by the smallest of margins, through popular referendum.

In the 1950s, in the wake of the failure of the “controversial” Mother and Child Scheme, which witnessed overt interference from the Catholic Church in the affairs of a supposedly secular state, and following the resignation of the courageous Dr. Noel Browne, then Minister of Health, Taoiseach John A. Costello was bold enough to state:

I am an Irishman second, I am Catholic first, and I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong.

Is it really any wonder that Catholics were viewed with suspicion by protestants in the UK and elsewhere? Indeed, Martin Luther King Sr., a Baptist pastor and the father of the great civil rights leader, could not bring himself to support John F. Kennedy in the presidential race of 1960 solely because he was a Catholic. Kennedy eventually settled this matter once and for all in a brilliant speech to an antagonistic audience, all members of the Protestant Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He said, in essence, the complete opposite to John A. Costello.

In the 1960s, the provisional IRA gained a foothold providing protection to the Catholic community in the North who were agitating for basic civil rights. They abandoned their moral high-ground, though, by exploding bombs and killing civilians. In 1885, the Fenians had simultaneously bombed the Tower of London and the House of Commons; in 1974, the provisional IRA did the exact same thing. Again echoing history, their goal of a united republic was never achieved. The old IRA had fought for a Republic but settled for a Free State, the provisional IRA fought for a Republic but settled for a Power Sharing Executive.

The Irish History Reader, reflecting on the divisions of the past, encourages its students to “avoid dissension, and shun all that might tend to create disunion.” I would suggest the opposite, we are a diverse nation of contradictions. There’s room for all points of view. We should give oxygen to all traces of disagreement, welcome any tentative hints of polarisation. After all, friction creates heat and heat produces light.