NOSTALGIA for Ireland among exiles perhaps conjures occasionally unrealistic images of a distant past in which we are all living in quaint thatched cottages, kneeling in a circle in the living room to say the rosary together each evening.
And that Ireland is not so far in the past that some older people cannot recall it.
There may indeed be a thatched cottage somewhere on the west coast where children gather at the beckoning of a pious mother, fetch their beads from their pockets and take turns at leading the prayers, perhaps even in Irish.
But this could not be a representative image of the Ireland of today.
Yet, if cultural change has overtaken the customs of my grandparents, much of the landscape they knew is still intact.
The rugged rocky coastlines of Donegal and Kerry are going nowhere.
The Sperrins and Mourne mountains that were rounded off by the ice ten thousand years ago still retain their shapes and will in another ten thousand years, whatever else happens. There are no volcanoes or earthquakes in the forecast.
Ireland is at least geologically stable. And if you are a young American whose grandparents have been telling you about the blaze of a Mayo sunset or the glory of Errigal, be assured they will still be there when you come.
Topography doesn’t change much, nor the course of the planet’s path around the Sun, but little else stays the same.
One of the wonders of our home island has been the preeminence of nature.
The grass is indeed greener than in many other countries because we get more rain than they do.
The air is fresher when the wind from the west scatters the pollution from our cities and factory farms.
What I love most about an Irish summer is the long day. Where we are placed, we do get a short night, unlike our northern neighbours who get no night at all in summer and no day in winter.
At this time of year darkness descends at about five in the evening.
The late sunrise and early sunset make driving hazardous, for when the sun is low in the sky on a crisp clear winter day it is dazzling.
I’ve never heard anyone relate the low winter sun to accident statistics but I have often had to slow almost to a stop with the Sun in front of me and a line of cars behind, even with some game to overtake and take the chance that that light will be the last thing they’ll ever see.
Ireland is fortunately located, well away from the ring of fire that produces upsets in the Earth’s mantle. It is an island whose neighbour England is about ten times more densely populated.
So it should be a credit to nature, more rural than urban, a clean and healthy environment. It isn’t.
We are under the same onus as others to slow down global warming but our contribution on a planetary scale can only be negligible. The big offenders are the United States, India and China.
But we should be an example to the world of how a country can manage its affairs, maintain a quality of life in a bountiful and beautiful environment.
Not a bit of it.
The filth from farms runs into our rivers and gathers in our lakes and kills them.
The largest lake in this and the neighbouring island, Lough Neagh, is green with toxic algae that thrives on that filth.
In Northern Ireland the guardians of the environment are also the protectors of the farmers and the food industry.
A new environment minister who seemed genuinely disturbed by the cess he had inherited is now merely consulting on the prospect of an independent environment agency when he could be taking more direct action.
In the Republic, the Green Party which had been a coalition party in government and the custodian of the national conscience in relation to the environment has lost all but one of its Dáil seats in the recent election.
And though, being so small we have little to contribute to stabilising global climate, we will have to adapt to the effects of a jet-stream that is now looping more erratically over and around us.
This coursing of air through the upper atmosphere marks the boundary between arctic air to the north of us and balmy warm air from the equatorial region.
It also forms the pathway along which twirling storms lunge at us from the Gulf of Mexico or thereabouts.
As a consequence of this erratic reshaping of the jet-stream we have had dramatic changes in weather. Two years ago we had heat over forty degrees in summertime. This year we have endured almost incessant rain.
So Ireland is changing and the people who govern both parts of the country seem as oblivious to that as the most nostalgic grandchild of 19th and 20th century migrants from here.