The annual Galway Science & Technology Festival Exhibition is tomorrow!

I'm just home from spending an enjoyable day helping the hardworking and visionary Galway Science & Technology Festival (GSTF) committee and dozens and dozens of volunteers get the University of Galway campus ready for tomorrow's Exhibition Day. With 20,000+ visitors, it represents the largest one day STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Maths) celebration in Ireland and opens a two week festival that this year has the theme of 'Regeneration'. Appropriately then the festival will finish on a high note on June 23rd with the planting of heritage orchards in fields within Terryland Forest Park comprising varieties of fruits that almost disappeared from the Irish landscape where it not for the great efforts of Irish Seed Savers Association.

As always, Sunday's interactive fair will involve all sectors from Galway city and county society including the corporate sector, indigenous companies, primary schools, secondary schools, science education centres such as Galway Atlantaquaria, university research institutes from both universities in Galway, art events such as drawing workshops hosted by artists Margaret Nolan and Richard Chapman, and the ever-present Origami stand workshops with Thomas Cuffe... The list goes on and on!

Galway is internationally renowned not just as a City of Arts but also as a City of Science. Now in its 27 year, the annual GSTF festival has played a key role in earning Galway this accolade.

2024 will represent my 23rd year as an active member of the organising team. Hopefully I will be around for a few more!

Photo shows my lovely wife Cepta with the Origami maestro Tom Cuffe at a previous GSTF Exhibition Day.

The World Deserves Better than Harris & Trump

Donald Trump is a narcissistic racist misogynist who has been convicted in a US court of sexual assault, has helped transform social media into a realm of hate, wants to undermine the United Nations and has openly declared war on the planet and all living things by dismissing the overwhelming scientific consensus on the Climate Crisis, calling it a ‘hoax’ invented by China. For him, the world and all of its species exists solely to serve and to be exploited for the benefit of the rich and powerful amongst the homo sapiens.

Kamala Harris is Vice President of a US administration that has given unhindered political, financial and military support to an Israeli government to allow it to conduct a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide which has reduced Gaza to rubble, destroyed huge swathes of Lebanon, aided the racist colonial Zionist settlers to continue to confiscate Palestinian lands in the West Bank, left nearly 50,000 people mainly women and children dead, and forced over 3 million civilians to flee their homes and become refugees.

Having lived there for a while and visited many times, I love so much about the USA- its music, its arts, its grassroots environmentalism, its innovations, its technologies and lots more. But its people must know better. The world deserves better.

I cannot in all honesty understand how any one of good character can justify voting for either of these politicians.

Today I enjoyed Dancing with a Lovely & Happy Partner on a Virtual Reality dance floor!

This morning/afternoon, my brilliant friend Luke Porwol (right of photo) gave a training session to his colleagues who have volunteered to mentor workshops on Virtual Reality (VR) to schools visiting our Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics at the University of Galway as part of theGalway Science and Technology Festival.

Whilst I have always been a strong advocate of learning through real life experiences especially within the natural world through the Outdoor Classroom and field studies, nevertheless I have for years passionately believed that Virtual Reality will provide a new, exciting, engaging and immersive dimension to young people in multiple subjects across the Irish educational curriculum. For instance if you are studying Ancient Egypt in History class, wouldn't it be wonderful if you could travel back in time as an avatar into a VR world and experience the pyramids of Giza when they were being constructed over 4,600 years ago; or if you are studying the Human Body in Biology class wouldn't it be so beneficial if you could move around the veins, arteries and heart of the Circulatory System; or in Geography Class be able to paddle a canoe along the Amazonian River in VR and see the causes and impact of deforestation.

As part of the training session today I danced with a lovely avatar who brought so many of the senses alive (sight, sound and touch!). When I finally had to leave the VR dance hall and return to the real world, my dance partner looked so sad that I actually got a bit emotional! For It was really nice to meet someone (or something!) that actually appreciates my dance moves

Creating a 'Fairy Ring' in a sacred Oak Grove in the Heart of the Forest

On March 12th 2000, some of the 3,000+ volunteers, working under the auspices of Galway Corporation (now council) Parks department and its superintendent the recently appointed Stephen Walsh with a multi-sectoral committee, created a wonderful oak grove on the first day that Terryland Forest Park opened. Twenty oak saplings were planted in a circle surrounding a single oak sapling, giving recognition to the Celtic pagan druids and early Christians, especially Saint Brigid of Kildare (Cill Dara, Irish for 'church of oak') fame, who worshiped amongst nature and gave due respect to the largest of our native tree species. The ancient ones often knew more than modern society gives them credit for. For they understood the significance of trees and plants in maintaining life on the planet which science is helping us to rediscover in the last century or so.

Over the decades, we have held community family picnics, school classes and festivals in this wonderful circle of life.

Yesterday a small team of Tuatha volunteers working in the park laid the foundations for a circle of giant toadstools that will form a Fairy Ring to serve as an enchanting forest-themed Outdoor Classroom for the benefit of visiting schools and other groups.

A circle of fungi is a beautiful natural phenomena in nature that is the surface representation of a network of small threads, called mycelium, that form part of what we now refer to as the Wood Wide Web, a mutually beneficial underground communications and resource-sharing system connecting the trees of a forest.

In mythology these mushroom circles were known as Fairy Rings where the 'little people' merrily danced in the woods under the moonlight. WB Yeats mentions this in his poem The Stolen Child:

"...We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances Mingling hands and mingling glances Till the moon has taken flight..."

The concrete toadstools were made by our good friend, the highly talented Michael McDonnell of Cumann na bhFear. Their installation and painting will be done over the next few weeks by the Tuatha volunteers supported by the Just 3 programme of the University of Galway as part of the Galway National Park City initiative.

The first phase of this exciting new creation will be readied later this month in time for the Galway Science and Technology Festival.

Finally, new volunteers are always welcome every Saturday to help us continue to develop the park as an Outdoor Classroom, a heritage hub and as a biodiversity sanctuary.

Rendezvous on Saturday is 10am at An Nead (Irish = The Nest) at the Sandy Road entrance to the Terryland Forest Park. Google map coordinates are

 https://maps.app.goo.gl/Gc334KY6JoBt6Fw96