Category Archives: Features

Pendulums and Prodigies: Sorry Love, You Just Don’t Get It Yet.

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Last Friday night I grabbed some plastic clothes hangers from my wardrobe. I cut some string and attached to it a blob of red playdough. Then I tied the string to the hanger and asked my mum to hold it high and steady as I set my little pendulum a-oscillating. I was preparing for my Psychology class the following morning, where I was to introduce my prodigies to Piaget’s theory of child development.

Piaget believed that cognitive development happens in distinct stages. Fundamental shifts in thinking patterns lead to the simultaneous development of ever more sophisticated competencies. For example, when a baby is born, it relies entirely on its reflexes; it clutches and sucks to survive. In the months that follow, it learns that it is a phsyical entity separate from its surroundings, that objects continue to exist even when out of sight and that control can be exercised over the same objects. These realisations, or shifts allow the baby to experiment with its toys, to imitate those around them and to co-ordinate its movements to achieve a goal. 

Piaget also believed that the developing child is active in its own development. No blank canvas, salivating stimulus-response theory for him, thank goodness. He proposed that at age 11 or 12, children reach the most sophisticated cognitive stage, which changes little into adulthood. He called this stage the Formal Operation period and characterised it by the ability to think in the abstract, to hypothesise, to form ideals and to employ the scientific method.

To test whether children had reached this stage of reasoning, he devised The Pendulum Problem, which brings me right back to my plastic coat hangers, playdough and string. Piaget set children the task of investigating what factor affects how quickly a pendulum swings from side to side. He gave them strings of different lengths and provided them with objects of various weights, alongside professional-looking hooks rather than plastic clothes hangers. If the children were able to test each factor (weight, string length and force) by keeping all other factors constant, and come up with the correct answer: that oscillation rate depends only on string length, he deemed them Formal Operataionalists and capable of learning algebra, pondering human existence and reasoning empirically.

As I stand at the front of the class on Saturday morning, armed with my coathangers, playdough and string, I am amused at the uniformly perplexed expression on the faces in front of me. Before I distribute my materials, I ask sneakily, as if it is an aside, whether anybody in the class is under 11. Three put up their hands. As I am dividing them into groups, I unite, casually the three youngest, and watch with pleasure my very own scientific method in progress.

An older group of boys in front isolates the potential factors immediately and adds a further variable to the equation; the position on the coat hanger from which the string swings. Another group is moulding its playdough into the shape of feline heads, but sensibly keeping their size and weight constant. I alight at the youngest group and watch them operate. I am steering the groups, without giving anything away. “So what factors may you have to change?” I prompt them “Weight”, says one. “Good!” say I, “what else?” “The length of the string!”, says another. “Let’s change them both”, choruses the third. I watch in facsination as they take a short piece of string, attach to it a light weight, before comparing it to a long piece of string with a heavy weight.

 I never dreamed that I would vindicate old Piaget. Of course it wasn’t super-scientific, but it made me think seriously about whether fundamental shifts in thinking may really occur throughout the lifespan. David Anderegg, an American child therapist blogged last year about the death of developmental psychology. He describes a kindergarden teacher, who with the best intentions, refuses to allow her charges to move around the room because they are getting ready for school, where they will have to sit quietely. Rather than allowing the little ones to enjoy the challanges of their natural developmental stage, he argues that this policy only robs children of the intrinsic joy associated with exploring more about themselves and their environment.

As I am explaining all this to my scholars, I wonder whether the Under 11s are insulted by Piaget’s inference that: Sorry Love, You Just Don’t Get It Yet.

The Which Blair Project

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 In matters of business and politics I share the bewilderment of E.M. Forster’s character Mrs Wilcox, who asks, “Why do people who have enough money try to get more money?” and claims that she is “sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.”

Mrs Wilcox’s desire to understand motivation and personal responsibility in business and politics is less naïve and unsophisticated than is suggested by the author of Howards End. As Tony Blair releases his aptly-named “A Journey”, the spotlight is cast firmly toward the mind and away from the body politic.

As if Tony Blair’s premiership has retrospectively been subjected to a magnifying glass of the mundane, the rubber gloves of the Queen and half bottle of wine before bed, as well as the bickering with Brown become intimately linked to revelations about WMD, sexed up dossiers and the ban on fox hunting.  

The documentation of conflict between the public and private self has existed for centuries if not millennia and semblance of their successful co-existence remains the hallmark of a media savvy politician. President Obama courted the idea of a blurred distinction between public and private as he invited the world to accompany him in his choice of the perfect puppy to install in the White House and his wife as she watered the patches of her organic vegetable garden. The habit of familiarity backfired however when he referred in an interview to his bowling skills as akin to those of competitors in the Special Olympics. It was a particularly poignant moment for those of us who had believed that Obama struck a rare balance between the public and the private. But oh how we relish the untoward entry of private mumblings into the public sphere! When a stressed Gordan Brown entered into his car during the election trail and muttered that a supporter he had just encountered was a “bigoted woman”, reporters on the scene became breathless with excitement.

While Blair succeeds in couching his public performance in a language of (albeit formal) familiarity, Brown, whom Blair accuses of having “zero” emotional intelligence does not. Emotional intelligence should not however be mistaken for empathy; particularly not in a political context. One suspects that when David Cameron lost a child, Brown’s move to cancel Prime Minister’s Questions  was motivated by no more than the indiscriminate sympathy of one who has endured a tragedy for another that now encounters it. Empathy is unbridled; emotional intelligence stores up for release the cleverly latent bi-product of self-preservation. Blair’s memoirs are an expression of emotional intelligence. Battling against his branding as war criminal, he fights for his name by supplying details of intimate conversations and personal weaknesses. 

Curiosity has got the better of me and though I share Mrs Wilcox’s self-consciously confused conclusions about the world, I should not mind taking a gander to Easons with her this Saturday to catch a single glimpse of the man’s many faces.

Asylum in Ireland: The Ins and Outs

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I have learnt about ice cream made from snow gathered in the Afghan mountains. A graduate of nutrition has regarded my nails and accused me of a deficiency in calcium. I have seen images of bombings transmitted through a mobile phone and I have sung the English alphabet with two Ghanaian men. Hatch Hall, just off Harcourt Street is Victorian redbrick and full of stories. Until 2004 it provided Jesuit residence for male students of UCD and it is now a centre for asylum seekers. I know it only on a Wednesday night but each week it is a new place.

There assembles at the entrance to the Trinity College Arts Block each week (as part of the Suas mentoring programme) a group that makes its way to Hatch Hall. A security guard buzzes us in and we make the walk through the entrance hall across the lawn and into the dining hall where there lingers in the air canteen curry and orange squash. There is a shuffling buzz as soon as the door is opened. Some familiar with the programme are seated already at a table waiting to be assigned a teacher and others, new stand alone at the periphery or chat in small groups. There are snippets of French but otherwise I recognise in the surrounding languages only sounds.

At present, an asylum seeker in Ireland receives €19.10 a week and €9.60 for their children. The system of direct provision, which has been in place since 1999, assigns the asylum seeker to specified accommodation on a full board basis rather than providing them with an allowance to live independently. In October 2009, when I first visited Hatch Hall and for which the statistics are now available, there were 54 direct provision centres in Ireland. The centres with the highest capacity are hostels, hotels and former colleges or nursing homes though a mobile home park is also in operation with a capacity of 350. In October there were 6650 people being accommodated under direct provision, which represented almost 85% of the maximum capacity of 7779. The publication of the Free Legal Advice Centre (FLAC) report on 18 February revealed that many asylum seekers are spending over three years in direct provision centres waiting for their cases to be processed. In fact the largest proportion of residents (32%) have spent over three years in these facilities. That’s 2156 people. It’s the length of our Undergraduate college years and contrary to the Government’s vision of residence in these centres occurring on “a short-term basis (not more than six months)”. Those in the legal profession are aware that asylum cases represent a lucrative business. A barrister is likely to earn €1000 per tribunal ruling on asylum. The nickname Mr Njet has been given to one barrister notorious for his refusal of asylum. Word outside the chamber is that he has a few politician friends in high places. Undisputed is that he earns per ruling 50 times more than what those, whose fate he decides have to spend each week.

The moment you sit down opposite one of these 6650 people, their facts and figures evaporate into the curry sauce and orange squash air. They look you in the eye, they shake your hand, they smile: they are human. They’re no longer seeking asylum but a conversation. Some time ago a bright-eyed Afghan man with a killer white smile produced for me a photo of a gleaming red sports car and a bright-eyed Afghan man with a killer white a smile. I looked at it, then at him. ‘Is this your car?’ I asked. ‘Are you a model?’ I thought. He grinned. ‘I do photoshop’ he replied impishly. He used to work in software.    

Each week a sheet is passed from table to table where pupils and teachers sign their names. The first day I meet Mark he takes the pen and while he signs it I talk to his friend Dag. I am talking a long time and I sneak a glance over. He is forming the ‘A’ of M –A-R-K. We spend the next half hour singing and writing the alphabet and the following week he connects letters to sounds and a world begins to open up before him. Sometimes I’m asked if I believe in God and other times I have been told that Allah created everything. Quite often I’ve been asked to explain why the Irish drink so much and why so many young girls smoke. I’m still working on an answer. There are compliments too. Nowhere are the people so kind and friendly as in Ireland. Nowhere do they care so much.

Rafiq graduated with a degree in nutrition in Pakistan and speaks impeccable English. He suffers however from ‘hesitancy’. He had some difficulties in the Ilac Library last week because he came 5 minutes too late for the internet time he had booked on the computer. All he needed, he tells me were 15 minutes, but the computer had been given away by the time he arrived. To overcome his shyness we practise some role- plays and I do my best to inspire confidence with my outrageous rudeness. He notices that I don’t take sugar in my tea and asks if I have a general aversion to sweetness. I certainly do not. Next week, he promises to bring me some Pakistani treats, which he is ‘sure’ I will like. 

Before Christmas an Iranian polyglot came to the class simply to socialise. He learnt his French from time spent in prison in France and picked up Italian, German and Spanish somewhere along the way. With fluent English under his belt, and TG4 available in Hatch Hall it seems natural that he wants to learn Irish also. In three minutes he has learnt the personal pronouns and is eager to begin the pronominal declensions. He makes etymological connections at alarming speeds and smiles with glee while he does it. In another world he is working in translation for the EU or in the department of Linguistics at Harvard. The class is over and he bids me ‘Slán leat’. He could have said ‘Au Revoir’ but I have not seen him since.

We Just Clicked: Why Internet Dating is a Hit and Miss Afair

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KJKJ2 wishes there were more women like me in the world and Makemyday tells me I look amazing and adds, “you defo must be run off your feet here big time”. Having joined the dating site plentyoffish.com a few hours ago, I’m already navigating a swarming inbox of amorous epistles. I am one of 11 million users of the world’s largest free online dating website and as I write there are 101,482 of us online. My details have been cybernetically ordered so that my profile appears primarily to local gentleman. The number of Dubliners that have already contacted me is startling. 

Preconceptions are dispelled when I meet Anthony: a sandy-haired 22 year-old graduate of Business at DIT. He joined two online dating communities in November 2007 after the break-up of a relationship. “Initially, it was a reaction to that”, he tells me, “but now it’s just a way of putting myself out there”. ‘Putting himself out there’ is evidently not something Anthony has difficulty with. We meet on a Friday afternoon and he’s craving a night in after being out socializing every other night of the past week. “I need an evening off”, he says and laughs when I suggest curling up to Ryan Tubbers with a tubbers of Ben&Jerrys best cookie dough.

“It’s not a case of not being able to meet girls” Anthony elaborates, “it’s more the matter of finding it difficult to gauge what they’re looking for”. On a dating site, intentions are selected from a drop-down menu. In person, you need to attend a traffic light ball for the boundaries between stop and go to be established. Anthony refuses all communication from those looking for the euphemistically-described “intimate encounter”. “I’ve no interest in people seeking casual sex… I’m looking for dating that leads to a relationship” he tells me.

Looking for dating was seemingly also Dippy_Duck who contacted Anthony about a year ago. Their first encounter was “a really quick conversation as I had to go out-we swapped numbers quickly so we could keep chatting”. After exchanging texts and phonecalls, Anthony and Dippy_Duck decided to meet in person: “From her pictures, I thought she was cute, but to be honest, her photos were a bit different from what she looked like in reality”. Anthony (nice guy) is quick to qualify “I don’t mean that in a bad way, she just literally looked a bit different in real life!”

So how was Dippy_Duck in real life? “I’m sorry to say it”, Anthony says “but she was an absolute nutjob”. “She only met people online”, he recalls “and she was just looking to hook up casually…she had extraordinarily low self esteem and I was uncomfortable with her calling me seven or eight times a day”. Needless to say, they did not meet again.

The duck’s approach of Anthony is uncharacteristic of the politics of dating sites: “these places very much follow the rules of engagement.. it’s up to the man to make the first move, that is to send the first message”.   In line with expectation therefore, the gentlemen writing to me make their advances with varying degrees of charm and evidence of good character:

hi…

was just wondering around on website search looking for online people. and i saw you online so just wanted to throw hi….

ya can read about me in my profile.. it aint that bad neither am i. so hope you will consider messaging me back and that really would be more than appreciated.

peace to you

cuteypie3

Hello Anna,

My Name is William, and I too enjoy the poetry of Milton. I haven’t been on this site for too long, but I suspect that there aren’t too many others out there that read metaphysical poetry.

I’m also someone who enjoys writing, even if I never fully seem to get the time. So what sort of stuff do you write?

Dreamman14

Just browsin, haven’t been on here in a while but saw your pic and..well just have to say hi. And what’s the bets you’re cuter in person J go on say hi J

Durlangon

It’s never easy to know how to begin. Anthony usually picks up on something that was listed as an interest or hobby (kudos, Dreamman14) and makes a comment on it. It’s also important not to sound too dull: “hello, how are you?” is a bit boring, muses Anthony, “you don’t want to sound like everyone else”.

Flattered as I am by these poetic pursuits, what are the chances that cuteypie3 is in fact pseudosuitor72, creating a fraudulent identity à la ‘Anna’ (who does, incidentally, share many of my interests and personality traits)? According to Anthony, it’s quite easy to identify the scammers: “pictures that are very obviously photo-shopped and very general descriptions are a sure sign that you’re not dealing with a genuine person”.

Regardless of genuine people, there is genuine money to be made. The Online Publishers Association (OPA) reports that cyber dating comes second only to pornography as the largest segment of ‘paid content’ on the internet. In 2005, Americans paid in excess of $500 million to become members of online dating communities. In Ireland, users are split between paid services such as maybefriends.com and match.com and the free global sites financed exclusively by advertising such as okcupid.com and plentyoffish.com. According to a 2002 Wired Magazine article, finding a partner online is akin to a searching a library catalogue for a book rather than hoping the perfect title will fly off the shelves and into your hands: “Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets”, they say and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient. It’s no wonder that Anthony’s business acumen and openness combine to put him ahead of the crowd. Searching for a soulmate online beats naval gazing and it takes resolve to make your intentions be known. 

With more and more envelopes appearing in my inbox for “Anna”, I begin to feel uneasy. I consider myself a conscientious correspondent and I feel a pang of guilt at each unanswered missive. It’s all about passion though and to Dreamman14, if you are reading, this is the kind of thing I like to write.

Working the Streets: Part 2 – The Night Shift

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Ranelagh Luas Stop

Vodka swishes in their Evian bottles and amidst ‘Is Jack coming?’…. ‘Yeah I texted Alice but she’s babysitting or something’ their phones buzz incessantly. Their toes point to the carriage floor: their heels hoist them far above me. They smell honey sweet. It’s post pre-drinks and The Palace is free in. They hop off at Harcourt and I lose their trail.

Sailing down Harcourt Street

There is a group of English girls and they are dressed as sailors who would freeze at sea. Having built up an enormous appetite crossing the Irish channel, they lean into the Chinese man behind the counter of a hot dog van. Intimately and with an air of confession they seek from him a double cheese burger. He obliges as they navigate their way through foreign currency, stumbling and biting, excited and raring to explore unchartered waters.

I approach him with caution and request the price of a hot chocolate. It is extortionate and so I buy a 7 Up. I stay there watching. ‘Do you like your work? I ask him finally. ‘Not much’, he mutters. ‘I just saw those girls’ I offer. The insinuation is lost in his worldliness and he replies, ‘at this time it is still okay, later on, people are even drunker and then they become difficult and break things’. One preagnant pause later he walks away to the corner of his van where he talks to a co-worker. I wander away.

The Rickshaw Driver: Grafton Street

He’s got a UCD hoodie and a cart. Before I give him a proper look, I have begun my spiel: ‘Hi… I’m writing a feature on people that work at night…I would love to know what it’s like pulling a rickshaw’. ‘No problem, Kate’, he grins. Scarlet, I recognize him as a former colleague. (Memories are context dependent). Redeeming myself I offer him a take-out coffee in exchange for a chat: ‘No, no, you’re grand’ is his gallant reply.  

 King of Security: Grafton Street

He’s enormous in his reflector jacket and he won’t let me into Burger King with my can of 7 Up. I stop at the entrance and explain that I’m a student, from just over there who would love to ask him about his job. He regards me a moment: ‘You understand, I get paid to work, to protect this place and not to have chats’. He has a point and so I apologize. He looks at me quite kindly as I make to walk away.

The Rickshaw Driver

Our paths cross again. ‘It’s a handy student job’, he tells me. ‘I’m employed by a company from which I effectively ‘rent’ the rickshaw. When times were good, you could earn €300-400 a night, but that’s gone down recently. Still, the money’s not bad’. But what about the stories? ‘There are too many to tell’ he laughs. ‘Once I ended up hoisted up with my rickshaw into the garden of somebody’s party.’ Is it not dangerous? ‘I only take direct routes. Generally I stay around the city centre. I don’t go down back roads and lanes. There’s enough work around here not to make it worth it’. Apropos enough work to be getting on with, I leave him and tell him to look out for the sailor girls.

The Ladies in Doyles

I drain the can and bin it outside Doyles.  Inside, a hand assembles a row of deodorant spray cans behind the wash-hand basin. A mass of Chubachubs and gums are piled already in a little wicker basket: sweet and fresh. I emerge from the toilet cubicle and she hands me a paper towel. I take it, awkwardly. ‘It’s getting cold’ she says remarking on my purple winter coat. I smile in agreement ‘Yes, it’s that time of year again’. ‘It’s still quiet here’ she says. ‘It’ll pick up in an hour or two’ I reply and imagine heels and lollipops and deodorant and tissue paper on the floor. I wonder if she knows winter from home and whether her family waits up for her.

The Rickshaw Driver

He’s sure doing his rounds. We wave and he’s kind enough to stop, again. What’s the relationship with the other rickshaw drivers like? I want to know. ‘It’s great fun’, he tells me ‘we know each other and greet one another on the way’. The problems we have had are with the horse and cart drivers. They feel we’re taking their business away and so they have tried to run us off the streets. At one point, the Guards had to come and sort out the trouble. It’s quite competitive out here. There’s a lot of money to be made from this kind of thing.’

Temple Bar

A can of Bavaria bathes in a pool of vomit and an entrepreneur challenges punters to ride a colourful bicycle past a line of white selotape. They queue in an orderly fashion and fall off, one by one. ‘Come on now, four gos for a fiver to win 20 quid if you pass the line’: ‘oye could do da. Gissa shot!”.  ‘It looks easier than it is: the handlebars are reversed’ remarks a shewd young woman: ‘that’s why it’s so hard!’. A bronze blond in a puffy red jacket hands out fliers for a lap-dancing club. It pays the rent.

 The Rickshaw Driver

He’s just dropped off another group of satisfied customers. ‘You must be exhausted’. ‘Ah, I’m okay’. Are you sure you won’t have that coffee?’ Ah, go on so’. A Maccy D’s muffin and a double espresso later, he’s stoically avoiding the 1 am slump and we’re discussing how to pimp his ride.

I’m back at the hot dog van in Harcourt Street. An intoxicated passer-by bashes in the door and leaves the vendor pick up the pieces: he has seen it all before. The night is only getting started but I toddle soberly home.

Nun The Wiser

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A google image search of ‘nun’ reveals a plethora of results: some humorous, some sordid and some artistic. After all, the ‘veiled’ has a tendency to appeal to the imagination. A veiled remark can cause consternation and when an identity is unveiled its suggestive power is lost. Ireland may not experience the image of a nun as pervasively as it once did but she remains a solid presence in the consciousness of the population. Maeve Binchy who was educated at the Convent of the Holy Child in Killarney realised that “nuns are great box office material” and added that “people are very entertained by nuns’ stories and we all make them much more horrific than they were”. The inclination is to view nuns as characters in costume rather than women in a lifelong habit.

I bear this in mind as I climb the steps into a grand Georgian Convent House where I am to meet Sister Bernadette who entered the sisterhood 48 years ago, at the tender age of 18.

She exudes an extraordinary dignity and is not dressed in a veil, or any form of religious garment. She welcomes me with unconditional warmth and I sense only the smallest trace of guardedness. I am surprised by the surroundings of the convent house. There are no dark corners and no hard wooden benches. All is bright, colourful, cosy. She leads me downstairs to a beautiful basement sitting room where she has prepared a tray of tea and muffins. I sit down and we talk. Not as a prying journalist to a religious instructor but as a young woman to an older and wiser one.

Sister Bernadette had known from the age of 13 that she wanted to become a nun. But what effect did this decision have on her family- especially her brother and two sisters? “I suppose they would have missed me a bit”, she considers modestly. There were four or five from her class who took the same route. “It was an option”, she says simply.

It is an extraordinary decision to make at 18 and one that puts today’s drama of filling out the CAO form into perspective. She agrees that the present-day 18 year-old is far ‘younger’ than it was in generations past. Nevertheless she muses, “It is a time of searching”. Hers was a life-changing decision. Was she not scared? When she made her final vow: yes, a little bit.

Having trained as a primary school teacher, she spent many years teaching at the school attached to the convent. She would encourage all incoming sisters to pursue some form of study or training before entering an order. Her approach is both practical and honest and she doesn’t shroud her life in a religious mystique. I ask her if she would encourage a young woman today to become a nun. She pauses. “It’s a question we ask ourselves constantly”.

The honesty of the response hits hard. I consider the religious outlook of my contemporaries. Would there be any candidates for the religious life? Of the young people I associate with, some are born-again Christians that believe the world was created in seven days somewhere around 6000 years ago. Others are atheists, ardent in their non- belief. Most are just not sure. In our media-driven, western world, we have the opportunity to challenge the meta-narratives in which the generations before us were steeped. At least, we like to think so.

The conversation moves to the place of religion in global politics. I mention Tony Blair’s recent conversion to Roman Catholicism and the constant reference to God in the rhetoric of the candidates in the American election. Is it dangerous for the world’s leaders to bring God into politics? “It’s hard to know”, she says. “On one hand, it is good that they stand up for what they believe”. She points out that Americans have a much more public outlook to faith: “In Ireland, faith is a more private matter”.

However ‘private’ faith may be, the convent setting surely organises its routine around it. So what does the daily life of a nun entail? Sister Maura, a Belfast-based nun with whom I speak on the phone explains that “it varies from convent to convent”. She rises at around 6.30 and engages in “some light exercise before meditating for an hour”. The sisters then pray and have breakfast together. She is a trained teacher and counsellor and spends two days a week working with the community. There is regular communication with their sisters in England and America and at the end of each month regional assemblies are held where themes such as communication and leadership are discussed. She and others are interested in broadening the idea of ‘vocation’ to include the secular professions.

I ask her whether her order has any new incumbents. “There is a young woman about to join us”, she tells me. What must she do to become a nun?

First she must pursue a period of candidacy that can last anything from 9 months to 2 years. Interestingly, she must also pass a medical and psychological assessment.

As a ‘novitiate’ she spends two years living in a convent after which she makes her first professions. The final profession usually takes place a year or two after the first profession. She stresses that the woman may pursue training for other qualifications during this time.

The idea of experiencing life beyond the convent walls was fuelled by Vatican II, Sister Bernadette tells me. With greater emphasis on free- thinking in the Roman Catholic Church, a spirit of independence among its followers was incited. Herself far from single-minded, Sister Bernadette has certainly not been shielded from the world. She speaks of her experience as a missionary in Georgia after the collapse of the Iron Curtain. There she had to cope with a language barrier and the reality that there already existed the well-established Orthodox religion. She cites the appeal of music in establishing congregations. “The organ was one of the biggest appeals to new members”. For her, there are no limits to the art forms that should be executed in the expression of faith- so long as rituals are maintained.

After an hour’s chat and still comfortable in my squishy armchair in the convent house, I finish my tea and thank Sister Bernadette for her time. As I am leaving, she offers me an impromptu tour of the building. In the room next to the magnificent drawing room is a chapel. She opens the door tentatively. We poke our heads inside, only to retract them quickly as we find a nun sitting there in contemplative silence. walk home in the crisp autumnal air and look back at the convent house with a new, unveiled reverence.