Oiche Samhna (Halloween night)

The Irish celebrate Halloween with fireworks, as Americans would Independence Day -- as we found out when we first moved here a few days before Halloween with a new baby.

Sometimes neighbours will light a bonfire in the field nearby, as people used to to celebrate Samhain (Halloween).

Old well near our home

It's tucked into the corner of someone else's property, so I don't know how useable it is -- but it is next to a stream, so it must tap a water table. Properties around here -- and perhaps where you live -- have all kinds of half-forgotten resources like this, waiting to be used again.

Thatch cottage near our home

Straw-roofed homes like this used to be the norm around here, and a few still remain in every town. They would not work in a dry climate, and they have to be updated every ten or twenty years, but there is no cheaper or more sustainable roofing material. After a while, moss grows on the roof, adding to the protection and the charm.

Hearteningly, a number of the dilapidated thatch cottages near our home have been restored recently, and I have seen entire hillsides of new thatch roofs in County Clare. There are few thatchers left, but they have had good business lately, and their numbers might increase as the method returns.

Feile na Samhain

For hundreds of years, harvest festivals have brought neighbours together as a community, to talk, trade and celebrate the plentiful food before the beginning of the long nights of winter. To help bring back that kind of community network and local crafts, my group, FADA, will organize a Feile na Samhain (Halloween festival) Nov. 1.

As part of the day-long family festival, we will host workshops where local people can learn to:

* make felt out of wool,

* make a basket out of willow branches,

* use a bow and arrow.

We will also have children's theatre, storytelling and puppetry, and children's workshops where the kids can:

* learn about worms and how to make a wormery;

* make their own small windmills;

* weave willow together to make baskets,

* make their own masks.

We will also have booths on gardening, seed saving, bee keeping and forests, while Colaiste Gaol students will offer an exhibition on what County Kildare was like in the early 20^th century, based on their interviews with elderly residents.

Theresa Carter, of FADA and Kildare Transition Town, will talk about the Transition Town movement, which is moving hundreds of communities away from fossil fuel dependence. Davie Philip, of the Dublin organization Cultivate, will speak about the methods communities are using to do this. Eleanor Sutherland will talk about using hedgerow plants to stay healthy, and I will talk about peak oil and the world’s future.

All these are baby steps -- five people might learn how to line boots, ten people might meet and follow up the relationship, a few kids might think differently about the world. But out of threads like this is a community woven. The events of the last few weeks have frightened so many people because their fortunes - their food, housing, relationships, entertainment, everything in their lives -- rise and fall with the fortunes of Wall Street gamblers. The more we restore a free-standing, functional community that feeds and supplies itself, the less dependent we are on an economy composed of a froth of bubbles.

Top Photo: County

Wicklow in the fall.

Bottom photo: Irish musicians and mummers at Donadea forest last December.