Hello friends. I hope you’re all well, I miss you!
Today was a little bit odd. For
the first time in eleven years, I sat through three lectures and not one
professor acknowledged the date. It’s strange to think of September 11th
as being just another date on the calendar, when all my friends from home have
been posting statuses all day in remembrance. Even stranger, last week a professor
made a reference to “the heroic fire-fighters of 9/11,” completely in passing.
He was lecturing about the 1916 Rising in Ireland and casually cited the fire-fighters
in comparison. It struck me how odd it was to hear the half-sentence as a
passing thought, spoken with an Irish brogue. In America we never talk about
9/11 just as a reference point. We might quickly cite it in a “before v. after”
context, but I can’t remember ever hearing someone talk about the fire-fighters
so casually. It’s not history for us yet. It’s hard to believe that someday it
will be.
Words like selflessness, heroism and brotherhood have become
part of the 9/11 vernacular. In Irish
history there is a small story of a completely different context, but in the
same vein of human compassion. It’s not monumental, like the fall of the Twin
Towers, and it won’t be found in many history books. But it does show the best
there is of humanity.
1847 came to be known by the Irish as Black ’47, after the devastation
of the Great Famine. Starvation and disease on a mass scale blighted the
country and forced thousands to emigrate. The global community was aware of
Ireland’s suffering and sent millions in aid. But perhaps the most generous
donation came from a humble source. The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma sent $170 to
the relief effort (some records claim $710, but the amount is almost
irrelevant). Only 16 years before, the Choctaws had been displaced from their
homeland by President Andrew Jackson; half died on the Trail of Tears to
Oklahoma. After all their sorrows, the tribe still had the heart and the compassion
to feel not just their own pain, but that of others. Even with an ocean between them, they
understood the grief of the Irish: to have their lands exploited, their autonomy
stripped, and their people left to starve. The Choctaw Donation has not been
well-remembered until recently, but it should be. It reveals something deep in
the human capacity to love and protect one another. For that, tonight seems to
be an appropriate moment to remember their gift.
Love from Ireland,
Lauren
"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."
~Sean O'Casey
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