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Heritage
at Play
Reections on the project, its oundations, its adventures and its eature flm “Playing Irish”
by Zachary McCune
I
t was still snowing in Providence, Rhode Island when Colleen and I rst had the ideaor Heritage at Play. It was a Saturday evening and with a group o riends we wereshowing Youube clips o this and that. It was too cold to go anywhere, so we enter-tained ourselves by traveling in the ree, networked media o our global age.Aer watching a number o mishap-lled videos, one riend insisted on showing us a clip o something called “Road Bowling.” It was an Irish pastime, he said, and it eatured Irishmeno all ages pitching what appeared to be cannonballs down narrow country lanes. He wasstruck by how wonderully strange the games were, and how happy the players looked. As were we all really. Watching the video, I was reminded o something I had long orgotten; having once worked with a number o Irish sailors at a community boating center in Newport, Rhode Island, Ihad been exposed to an odd Irish game mysel. It eatured a long wooden paddle and a smallleather ball. But what was it called? I couldn’t remember. So I tried a ew queries about Irishgames and wooden paddles beore returning a short video highlight rom a game o hurl-ing. Hurling. Tat was the game. Look at this, I said to my road bowling riend, you want anincredible game? Look at this!Later that evening, with our riends away, Colleen and I went back over the videos. Tehurling had re-opened a long orgotten passion: the powerul excitement o seeing a com- pletely new game and trying to puzzle out its rules, participants, and passion. But no matterhow many videos I loaded, I simply could not make sense o the game. And no matter howmany videos I watched I ound mysel driven to watch more. Tis game was beautiul andremarkable. It seemed completely novel and notably un-globalized. For even while many o my riends including Colleen were Irish-American, the game was a complete enigma. Unlikeshamrocks, Guinness, and St. Patrick, this game simply had not made the voyage across theAtlantic into the popular consciousness o Irish-America.
where ideas come from
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Why?As any American knows, sports are more than just entertainments and exercise. Tey rep-resent an arena o pride and competition. Whether it’s exas county ootball rivals or Cold War hockey show-downs, sports provide a stage or measuring communities against oneanother. As such, the ultimate goal o any sport is to grow. o extend beyond its point o invention or development. For the British, colonization meant replacing native games in In-dia, South Arica and Australia with cricket and rugby. With the Olympic games, the entire world learns the same games in order that they may compete on a series o consistent playing elds.So what were these Irish men doing playing hurling? From the look o their stadiums, these were not small-time events. Tey seemed popular. But why then weren’t they popular any- where else? Why didn’t Irish-Americans know about these games? What did they mean tothe Irish people? What allowed them to perpetuate year aer year in the very ace o global-ization? And how, o course, were they actually played?A series o ortunate events allowed these midnight questions to become more than lost points o inquiry. Indeed, a strange arc o destiny actually allowed Colleen and I to ask Irishcitizens and dedicated Gaelic games players these questions less than six months aer werst thought them up.Te intercession, it would turn out, was the extension o a Brown University campus dead-line or a “New Media Fellowship.” Reading about the $2,500 grant in a campus email, Col-leen and I decided to apply or the Fellowships, but realized we would both need to win theawards in order to make the unding sucient.
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how ideas become more
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