Sir, - I've received a copy of an article by Dick Hogan (Southern Report, May 30th) about me and the book I am writing about a journey I've recently made on foot from Malin Head to Kinsale.
Dick Hogan is a journalist whose reporting from the southwest I've long respected, and he was most helpful to me in Cork. In most of its particulars, his report based on a conversation with me is accurate. But the overall impression the general reader would have from it - starting with the healine "US writer casts a cold eye on modern Ireland" - is that I found much fault with Ireland on my journey. On the contrary, I greatly enjoyed my experience, and told Dick Hogan that; I already look forward to my next sojourn in Ireland, and have recently told friends travelling to Ireland of people, events and places they should not fail to enjoy.
Yes, I saw some problems and will say so: threats to the environment (common to much of the world); and building developments that struck me as blights, fuelled by tax incentives. But I also saw the vast improvement in the standard of living - new or improved homes, communications, transport, shopping, cuisine, etc. - since my first stays in Ireland nearly 50 years ago. Dick Hogan writes: "It was a poorer Ireland then but there was more common civility, [Ginna] says, adding that he has noticed over the years in the letters page of The Irish Times how concern is growing about the decline in this facet of Irish life."
I believe I brought up the letters about the decline in civility, but I don't think I claimed that there was more common civility decades ago. Life then, though poorer monetarily, was surely more leisurely; people perhaps took more time to gab and to yarn, which was pleasurable to hear; today the Irish are hustling, though they still find the time to linger in pubs, watch football matches, play golf or go racing. On my tramp, with long stops here and there and scores of encounters with people of every stripe, I met with kindness from a host of people and had only one encounter I would call uncivil.
Ireland remains a county of often heart-stopping beauty, with a people whose natural courtesy I have not met the like in my travels through many lands; it is a sportsman's paradise; there is an explosion of Irish achievements in science, technology, and the arts; the country's history, culture, and unquenchable spirit I find nourishing. My book will be an account of what I saw, but I think readers will find I cast a warm eye on modern Ireland.
Small corrections for the record: I did make radio programmes with Sean O'Casey, also appeared with him in a film for television and was co-producer of Young Cassidy, a film for MGM based on the first four volumes of his autobiography. I was an early associate editor of Horizon, not a founder, and an editor of Scientific American, not the editor. Dick Hogan writes that I believe my name, Ginna, "may be a variant of McKenna". In The Surnames of Ireland, under MacKenna, Edward MacLysaght writes: "Locally in Clare and Kerry the last syllable is stressed, giving the variants Kennaw, Ginna, Gna, etc." I might note that at Ardmore, Co Waterford, the castle ruin known as McKenna's Castle is properly named Ardoginna. -Yours, etc.,
Robert Emmett Ginna, Proctor Road, Jaffrey Center, New Hampshire, USA.