Eamonn Mac Giolla Dorcha project---revised and expanded
This has been altered and expanded as new ideas have come to me over the weekend.
In some recent good news, the Eamonn Mac Giolla Dorcha project has been going well. It is still rather scattered, since I have not been writing the story "in order," but have skipped around in Eamonn's life telling different aspects of his story as the bits and pieces have come to me. I made the tentative decision this morning to actually begin the story in the cabin in the mountains of Mexico---the section I posted the other day---with Eamonn on the run and beginning to lose faith that he even knows what he has been fighting for all these years. Where I will go from there I do not really know at this point. Part of the problem is that a notebook in which I had written a sketch of an outline of his life, alongside a timeline of revolutionary events of the time period, along with a lot of other biographical information, has gone missing and I really have no idea where it is. I have also written two sections that both take place in New Orleans, in the mid-to-late 1920's, after Eamonn became disgusted with the brutality of the Irish Civil War in the wake of the death of Michael Collins, and went back to the US. I also have a section that takes place in 1910-11, when Eamonn first travels to Mexico and fights with Zapata for the first time, then when he leaves Mexico and travels by motorcycle through Central America, and a section that takes place in 1912 when he arrives in New Orleans for the first time---this may change, since I am now reconsidering my original idea that Eamonn was born in Hell's Kitchen, NYC, in favor of having him born and raised in The Crescent City---and meets a pilot named Stephan Mosier, who becomes a life-long friend, drinking buddy, and comrade---unbeknownst to both of them is the fact that they are actually distant cousins on Eamonn's paternal grandfather's side. In addition to these, I have a few pages that deal with Eamonn's death in Spain during the Spanish Civil War---and I have firmly decided that he does die at the hands of the NKVD, the Stalinist secret police who were busily liquidating anti-Stalinists (Trotskyists and Anarchists in particular) in the midst of the international struggle against Fascism.
I am currently in search of a good book on Irish Republican activity in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries---Tim Pat Coogan's The IRA A History gives some very intriguing and tantalizing information about the Fenians, the Clann na Gael, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the US, the many splits that took place within their ranks, etc., but since this is not the principal area of interest for this particular book, he only discusses those events and people who were directly involved with recruiting or raising money (especially the latter) for the struggle in Ireland. Unfortunately, his bibliography was no help either. I am very interested in learning more about the radical milieu of New Orleans in this time period---especially the IWW and anarchist activity---since I have now decided to set a great portion of Eamonn's American activities there. I want to know about Irish radicalism in The Crescent City---when Kelly and I were there in January, we took an Irish history tour (fittingly, it rained the entire time!) and learned quite a bit about the Irish in N'awlins, and I really want to talk with our tour guide (Charles Patrick Duffy III) about the influence of Republicanism in that community (unfortunately, in the wake of Hurrican Katrina, I have been unable to contact him). Also, did James Connolly---founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party, leader of the Irish Citizen's Army in the Easter Rising of 1916---ever visit, or have any contact with, New Orleans when he was in the US---he was an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World, which blows my mind! I'm also interested in IWW activity in Mexico, which I know existed. My god, there is so much more to be learned!
Here's an intriguing connection one can draw between different groups in resistance to the established order of the late 19th century: the Plains Indians of the US and Canada (including the Sioux, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Cree, and Ojibway)--the Metis rebels of Western Canada--the Irish Republican Brotherhood/Fenians (who actually invaded Canada in 1867)--the IWW--the Zapata and Villa revolutionary armies in Mexico. Now, I am not making any claims as to cooperation between any or all of these groups, except on a local and conditional level, but the possibilities are breathtaking.
Well, that's all for the moment.