Ireland: One Island, No Borders – George F. Thompson Publishing

$45.00 U.S. (trade discount)
No e-book has been authorized.
Hardcover with jacket
192 pages with 150 color photographs
9.0″ x 11.0″ (upright/portrait)
ISBN: 978–1–938086–14–4

Published in August 2014
Distributed by Casemate/IPM
www.casemateipm.com

ABOUT AUTHOR
PRAISE
SLIDE SHOW

Events and Exhibitions
Monday, March 16, 2015, from 6-8pm
McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, New York, NY
Book talk and signing with author Elizabeth Billups, and Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein & representative to the Irish Parliament

October 2, 2014
Collected Works Bookstore
Santa Fe, NM
Book Talk

Book Information Sheet (pdf)

by Elizabeth Billups
with additional stories and tales by Gerry Adams

Nominated for a 2015 IPPY Award from the Independent Publishers Association.

Ireland is a place of mystical, enduring appeal, especially for the many millions of Americans who claim its special heritage, more than one in six according to the last U.S. Census. But Ireland has also become an international place of pilgrimage and discovery for all who venture there.

This unique collaboration between Elizabeth Billups, a Santa-Fe-based photographer and activist, and Gerry Adams, the renowned leader of Sinn Fein, reveals a side of Ireland―and of Gerry Adams―not often portrayed in the guidebooks or magazines or news media. In this special book, the two kindred spirits wander the country together and share a deep love of the land and its people, with Ms. Billups taking gorgeous photographs and sharing her experiences and Mr. Adams contributing additional stories, tales, and facts about his country and his family’s history.

While Mr. Adams has written many acclaimed books concerning his political vision for Ireland, until now he has refrained from sharing his affection for his native land. And so, with Ms. Billups, we are able travel to his and her favorite places, the places that, to them, bespeak of Ireland as one island without borders.

Looking at Ms. Billups’s beautiful and captivating photographs—and reading her text and Mr. Adams’s family stories, personal anecdotes, and relevant historical details, legends, and myths—we come to understand why Ireland is such a special place and why he fought so long and hard to achieve peace for the many generations to come.

About

About the Author
Elizabeth Billups is a photographer, philanthropist, and activist from Santa Fe who has worked with the American Indian Movement and International Indian Treaty Council. Currently, she is on the Alliance for the Earth’s guiding council and on Nuclear Watch New Mexico’s steering committee. Her political activism led her to Ireland, her family’s native land, where she met and became friends with Gerry Adams. Ms. Billups’s photographs have been exhibited in both Ireland and the United States.

About the Essayist
Gerry Adams has been President of Sinn Fein, the fastest-growing political party in Ireland, north and south, since 1983. He has also served as a member of Parliament for West Belfast from 1983 to 1992 and 1997 to 2011. Since 2011 he has represented Louth in the Irish Parliament (the Dáil) in Dublin. Heralded as “a gifted writer” by The New York Times, Mr. Adams is the author of a work of fiction, The Street and Other Stories (Brandon Books, 1993), and several works of nonfiction, including the noteworthy A Farther Shore: Ireland’s Long Road to Peace (Random House, 2003). Mr. Adams lives in Belfast and visits President Obama every St. Patrick’s Day.

Slide Show

A sunlit horse in County Claire overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. Ponies and horses have always been an integral part of life in Ireland.
The Cliffs of Moher, one of Ireland's many designated heritage sites, rise to 700 feet (213 meters) in some places.
The Drumbeg stone circle, located east of Glandore in County Cook, is one of Ireland's most visited megalithic sites.
Doolin is a noted center of traditional Irish music, often played in its fabulous pubs.
Hurling is Ireland's national sport. Fans from all over attended the finals of an All-Ireland Poc Fada Hurling and Camogie Championship in the magnificent Cooley Mountains in northern Louth.
This impressive holy well is located near Ballyvaughan, a small village on the shores of Galway Bay.
Swans delight in the waters of Galway City, Ireland's fifth most populous city and one of the country's cultural centers.
Colorful doors are a distinctive feature of downtown Dublin.
A street performer on Dublin's Grafton Street.
This grand yew tree is one of 20,000 living plants in the National Botanic Gardens, founded in 1795 by the Dublin Society.
The Giant's Causeway, three miles from Bushmills where the famous whiskey is distilled, consists of 40,000 interlocking basalt columns that stretch for twenty-four miles.
Happy are the Irish dancers at the annual Feile Parade in Belfast.
This mural in Belfast depicts Ché Guevara and Cuban life. Che was half-Irish.
Window shrines, such as this one in Inishbofin Island off the west coast, are popular all over Ireland.
Blackface sheep adorn the landscapes of Achill Island, where settlements began between BCE 3000-4000.
Glencar Waterfall, near Glencar Lake west of Manorhamilton in County Leitrim, was the inspiration for William Butler Yeats's famous poem, "Stolen Child."

My Place

I have loved many places in my life. The first would be my home growing up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Bay St. Louis. My most poignant memories of that time are of magnolia, gardenia, and mimosa flowers that imbue the salty sea air with their lovely sweetness, though I just visited the bay, and it remains quite devastated from Hurricane Katrina.

My home for the last twenty-seven years has been Santa Fe, New Mexico. The air here is rich with the smells of sage, cedar, and pine, and the place is full of unique adobe buildings fading into the earth under bright-blue skies.

I love these places, but where I feel most at home is riding through the jungle on the back of an elephant. I fell in love with elephants on a trip to Thailand in 2011, and I ended up adopting one in a sanctuary at Anantara Resort in the Golden Triangle. I did a training in which I learned how to ride like a mahout, an elephant caretaker. It’s very high up there, and it takes several mahouts to push you up and on the elephant’s back. Your legs are behind her ears while you ride, and you tap your feet to give directions, all the while being held on by her big ears, which is a wonderful feeling!

Riding behind the neck offers a great view of the foliage elephants like to eat. They reach back constantly with their fabulous, flexible trunks to browse or to accept a banana or some sugar cane. But they have the most fun in water. They sit on the bottom of the pond in the sanctuary where I ride for quite awhile, not even breathing. Often, in a playful mode, they will spray you in the face with the water! I love their vocalizations: rumbles, trumpets, and other sounds, which they emit as they communicate with each other and with me.

They are truly amazing creatures, soulful, funny, caring, and very dear. Being with the elephants was one of the most profound experiences I have ever had, and I long to go “home” again and spend time with these life-long friends.