The time was November 1995 and the place was the downtown area of my native Belfast. The Irish Republican Army had called a ceasefire a little over a year before and the sense was building that a real peace might take hold.

That feeling was crystallized by the first visit of a U.S. president to Northern Ireland. Bill Clinton was the attraction that chilly night in November. "All across Northern Ireland, the desire for peace [is] becoming a demand," he said. He was received rapturously.

My memory of the first lady's speech is that it was longer than her husband's, more cerebral but also less capable of holding the massive crowd's attention.

Part of the problem was stylistic. The senator still has limitations as a podium speaker but she was even stiffer back then. The bigger issue was one of political relevance. Neither on that visit, nor during the subsequent period leading up to the landmark Good Friday Agreement of 1998, do I recall her being regarded as anything resembling a critical player in the push for peace.

Exactly what role the senator played in political developments on a small island a decade ago should perhaps be irrelevant to her presidential ambitions. But she has made it relevant – and contentious – by claiming that her involvement in Northern Ireland is one of the things that make her more qualified than Barack Obama to assume the role of commander-in-chief.

"I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland," she told CNN recently. That claim has become part of a campaign narrative that also asserts relevant experience in Bosnia (where Mrs. Clinton made a one-day visit in the wake of the Dayton accords) and in China (where she delivered her famous 'women's rights are human rights' speech in 1995).

Give Clinton her due. She visited Northern Ireland seven times between 1995 and 2004, she is very well-informed about its politics and its problems, and she, like her husband, is generally held in high esteem in Ireland.

But what did she actually do to help achieve peace there? Some say the answer is "not much". And even the answers supplied by her allies tend to be vague.

Earlier this month, David Trimble, who signed up to the Good Friday Agreement as leader of what was then the largest party in Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionists, told London's Daily Telegraph that Clinton was "a wee bit silly" for exaggerating her role.

"I don't want to rain on the thing for her, but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player," Trimble said.

The Telegraph also quoted a negotiator for the Irish Nationalist SDLP party, Conall McDevitt who was an aide to its then-leader John Hume.

"There would have been no contact with her either in person or on the phone," McDevitt recalled.

The Chicago Tribune also carried out its own investigation into Mrs. Clinton's claims. Though former Senator George Mitchell, the man who adroitly guided the peace negotiations to a successful conclusion, graciously allowed that Mrs. Clinton was "very helpful", Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan dissented:

"It was a nice thing to see her there, with the women's groups. It helped, I suppose," Coogan said. "But it was ancillary to the main thing."

The Clinton campaign wasted no time trying to rebut those arguments. But the testimonials they produced were full of generalities. Hume said she "visited Northern Ireland, met with very many people and gave very decisive support to the peace process" – but what was "decisive" about her visits remained unstated.

Elsewhere, Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern told the Times-Tribune of Scranton that Mrs. Clinton had been "hugely helpful." But Ahern went on to say that at the time of the peace negotiations, "She was the first lady of the United States, not a party leader in Northern Ireland. No one would expect her to get into the nitty-gritty of the process."

But isn't an involvement in the nitty and gritty precisely what Clinton is now claiming? After all, she told National Public Radio last week that the role she played was "instrumental.”

Seeking a concrete example of her role, she recently told the Irish Voice that the Vital Voices conference she organized in Belfast in late summer 1998 "helped ensure the women were relating to one another on the ground level, and that enabled them to make personal connections and create the trust and confidence essential for leaders to take the steps they took."

The Good Friday Agreement had already been signed and approved in referenda on both sides of the Irish border by that point. The only political vehicle for the kind of cross-community, female empowerment that Clinton so emphasized was the short-lived Northern Ireland Women's Coalition.

Set up in 1996, the coalition scaled the dizzy heights of winning two seats in the 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly in 1998. At the next assembly elections, both members lost their seats. The party disbanded two years ago.

Hillary Clinton's role in Northern Ireland should not be dismissed. She visited and engaged with the conflict when she did not have to do either. Her presence as first lady augmented the important sense that the White House was invested in a successful outcome to the peace talks. And she has kept herself conversant with Irish issues since then.

But to suggest she was "instrumental" in bringing peace to Ireland -- or to imply any of her experiences in Ireland prepare her for a 3 a.m. crisis call to the White House – is more than a wee bit silly.

After the swearing in over the weekend of a Palestinian unity government, cracks quickly began to appear in the Western diplomatic boycott to which the Palestinians have been subjected since Hamas’ victory in last year’s elections.

Norway’s deputy foreign minister met with Palestinian Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Monday. Britain, Germany and Italy have suggested that their doors are at least ajar to discussions with the Palestinians. And one leftist Israeli politician, Yossi Beilin, has responded positively, suggesting in remarks published yesterday by The New York Sun that the Israeli government should be more amenable to negotiations.

The U.S., for its part, has said that its ban on aid to the Palestinian government will remain intact, but it has also noted that it will not shy away from talks with non-Hamas members of the new coalition.

It is much too early to be celebrating the dawning of a new era, of course. On Monday, an Israeli civilian was shot at a fuel depot about 300 yards from the border with the Gaza Strip. The shooting was claimed by Hamas’ armed wing, which stated that the action was “a response to continued Zionist aggression.”

It is little wonder, given such actions, that Israel is reluctant to engage with the new Palestinian body.

“It is surely a mistake to give legitimacy and recognition to an unreformed extremist,” said Israeli foreign-ministry spokesman Mark Regev, “and it cannot serve the purpose of peace.”

To Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his allies, the changes heralded by the formation of the new government are illusory.

But does the maintenance of a hard-line attitude actually help or hinder Israel’s own interests, and the broader cause of peace in the region? One example from thousands of miles away—the Irish peace process—suggests that such an approach may be both shortsighted and counterproductive.

There are obvious parallels between the current situation in the Middle East and the earliest days of Ireland’s slow and agonizing march toward peace. The formation of the Palestinian unity government, for example, has been greeted with much the same blend of opprobrium and suspicion that met the so-called Hume-Adams talks of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.

That dialogue, between John Hume, then-leader of the moderate Irish nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party, and Gerry Adams, president of the I.R.A.’s political wing, Sinn Féin, is now almost universally acknowledged to have laid the groundwork for a historic peace agreement in 1998.

At the time, however, Mr. Hume was accused, as the moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is now, of legitimizing unreconstructed terrorists.

Suspicion of Mr. Adams—and calls for his exclusion from political negotiations—were even more vituperative, with one British newspaper, for example, referring to him as “one of … the most formidable enemies to peace in Ireland’s bloodstained history.”

Fortunately for the Irish, the U.S. administration of the time didn’t take the naysayers’ view. President Bill Clinton’s decision to grant Mr. Adams a visa to visit the U.S. in 1994—a move made against the advice of the State Department, the Department of Justice and the F.B.I.—is now seen as crucial in persuading Irish militants to join the political process.

There are many other parallels. Hamas’ election triumph last year was widely seen as a disaster for Israel and for U.S. policy in the region. But those pronouncements of doom echo those that followed the election of imprisoned I.R.A. hunger-striker Bobby Sands to the British Parliament in 1981.

At the time, the Sands result was seen purely as strengthening the I.R.A.’s hand. Later, it came to look a lot more like the pivot upon which the conflict turned: It opened Irish militants’ eyes to the potential of participating in the electoral process while simultaneously helping bring the British to an acknowledgment that the conflict could not be ended purely by military or “security” means.

At present, Israeli politicians are demanding the continued isolation of the Palestinian government, in part because of Hamas’ refusal to explicitly recognize Israel, and because the government’s platform includes an assertion of the right to “resistance in all its forms.”

The Israeli concerns are valid—but they are also eerily reminiscent of the attempts of pro-British politicians to exclude Sinn Féin from political negotiations because the I.R.A. had not declared its ceasefire to be permanent.

Mr. Adams and his comrades have never to this day explicitly stated that the state of Northern Ireland is legitimate, nor have they disavowed the I.R.A.’s campaign. Rather, their actions—at present, Martin McGuinness, a onetime I.R.A. commander, is on the verge of becoming the deputy leader of Northern Ireland’s devolved government—have rendered such semantic points moot.

There are, of course, fundamental differences between Hamas and the Irish Republican movement. Perhaps the most significant is that Hamas triumphed in last year’s elections while unambiguously wedded to its military campaign, whereas the I.R.A.’s armed struggle came to be seen as retarding Sinn Féin’s political ambitions.

Nonetheless, the moment is ripe to encourage Palestinian militants to head down a similar path. Over the weekend, Britain’s Sunday Telegraph reported the release of Hamas commander Salah Arouri from an Israeli jail and quoted him as follows: “We are harmed if we target civilians. At the end of the day, the fruit of military actions is political action. All wars end with truces and negotiations.”

It could have been Mr. Adams talking 15 years ago.

Likewise, even before this weekend’s announcement, Hamas’ decision to take part in elections and to take its seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council was more momentous than perhaps even the group’s members fully appreciated.

Almost every armed struggle is underpinned by grandiose claims of ideological purity. Any engagement with the electoral process erodes those justifications, because it brings the would-be revolutionaries into the messy business of realpolitik, however reluctantly, and makes it more difficult for them to ignore the will of the broad mass of people, who are almost never as radical as the guerrillas themselves.

Making peace with erstwhile violent groups is a delicate business: It requires not merely pressure or concessions, but a nerve-wracking combination of both. But now is the time to engage with the Palestinians.

Yasir Arafat used to talk about a “peace of the brave.” He never showed that bravery himself. Neither Israel nor its friends in the West should be found wanting now.

Eliot Spitzer and John Faso favor very, very different approaches to tax policy.

Alan Hevesi leads his opponent, and continues to duck him. The Post editors want the Albany DA investing Hevesi to hurry up.

Brian McLaughlin's wife and two lady friends think the former labor leader is innocent. Some of McLaughlin's constituents don't.

Jeanine Pirro threatened a Republican for supporting a Democrat.

Tonight's Alfred E. Smith Dinner at the Waldorf creates a seating nightmare for party planners.

Mike Bloomberg said the city has already paid its fair share of the CFE school funding decision, which is a different position than Eliot Spitzer has taken.

Tom Reynolds is optimistic about his own re-election and Republican's chances of keeping the House.

John Sweeney asked congress how he should report his 2001 trip a Pacific island paid for by a lobbyist working for Jack Abramoff.

Sue Kelly doesn't plan on attending many debates with her opponent.

John Maine is a hero, just as our John Koblin said he would be.

And the AP Daybook has a majestic typo:

-- Azi Paybarah

It’s a fair bet that most people over the age of 45 will not live to see that day. The war on armed Islamic fundamentalism figures to last as long as Britain’s campaign against armed Irish republicanism—the difference being the new war’s global scale and capacity for slaughter.

There was no shortage of ruthlessness among the I.R.A.’s leaders (though their ferocity was matched and often surpassed by the bigots who run the Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland), but compared with the Islamicists, the I.R.A. fought with kid gloves. The fighting in Northern Ireland produced a body count of about 3,000—nearly half of whom were killed by the British security services or Loyalist murder gangs. On Sept. 11, 2001, the Islamicists killed that many in a dreadful hour or so.

The war on Islamic fascism seems likely to make the British almost nostalgic for the I.R.A.’s methods. Once the I.R.A. purged itself of the butchers who planted bombs in pubs, its tactics in later years included an almost Austen-like comedy of manners: The IRA would contact the police using a prearranged code, the caller would alert the police to the location of a bomb, and the police would respond in time to preserve human life, if not property. It didn’t always work that way—the I.R.A. certainly didn’t warn Margaret Thatcher that it had planted a bomb in her hotel in 1984, nor did it warn the 11 civilians killed while watching a military parade in Enniskillen in 1987.

The I.R.A. actually apologized for the Enniskillen murders, and while this was hardly a comfort to the victims and their loved ones, it at least was a sign that its leaders were susceptible to public opinion. The bin Ladens of the world rejoice in the sorrow they create, and relish the outrage of crusaders and Jews.

The end of the war in Northern Ireland leaves a legacy of lessons for the United States, the United Kingdom, and every other nation targeted for conversion or elimination by bin Laden’s gang. The first remains the trickiest: how to deal with an irregular enemy in an irregular war?

Until Sept. 11, the United States prosecuted its irregular enemies—the people who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and the cleric who inspired them, Omar Abdul Rahman—in conventional fashion. They were brought before a court, publicly tried and defended, and convicted in the usual manner.

In other words, they were treated to the same justice that would be accorded any other criminal, any other murderer.

In that sense, the U.S. was following the path of Mrs. Thatcher, who demanded that I.R.A. members taken prisoner be treated as common criminals. In the case of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the U.S. justice system seemed to agree. (Of course, common criminals generally do not get expert legal counsel from the likes of Lynne Stewart.)

After Sept. 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, however, the U.S. has been eager to give Islamic terrorists the rights and privileges the I.R.A. demanded in the late 1970’s: that of a special category of prisoner. I.R.A. members wished desperately to be treated as enemy combatants and not as common criminals. When we try Islamic terrorists in military tribunals, are we not allowing them a dignity they do not deserve and implicitly recognizing the political nature of their grievances?

The British experience with the I.R.A. also reminds us how important it is for a government to live up to its platitudes. When Britain began to try terrorism suspects in juryless courts, with only a judge deciding the fate of a defendant, it handed the I.R.A. a propaganda victory. Mrs. Thatcher said that I.R.A. members were common criminals, but the juryless courts suggested otherwise. Again, the dilemma: Are our enemies legitimate soldiers in an irregular army, or simply mass killers?

Another lesson that seems irrelevant today but could easily become relevant in future years concerns the mass internment of suspected terrorists and sympathizers. Every Aug. 9, republicans in Northern Ireland commemorate the night in 1971 when the British army raided Catholic homes in that province and hauled off people suspected of either being in the I.R.A. or of being helpful to the cause. They were jailed without charge.

Could that happen here, or perhaps in the U.K. again? The guess here is that we are being provoked to take such a step. What a mistake that would be.

As the I.R.A. trades bullets for ballots, the U.S. would do well to study the mistakes that Britain made over the last 30 years. There is no shortage of them.

It’s a fair bet that most people over the age of 45 will not live to see that day. The war on armed Islamic fundamentalism figures to last as long as Britain’s campaign against armed Irish republicanism—the difference being the new war’s global scale and capacity for slaughter. There was no shortage of ruthlessness among the I.R.A.’s leaders (though their ferocity was matched and often surpassed by the bigots who run the Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland), but compared with the Islamicists, the I.R.A. fought with kid gloves. The fighting in Northern Ireland produced a body count of about 3,000—nearly half of whom were killed by the British security services or Loyalist murder gangs. On Sept. 11, 2001, the Islamicists killed that many in a dreadful hour or so.

The war on Islamic fascism seems likely to make the British almost nostalgic for the I.R.A.’s methods. Once the I.R.A. purged itself of the butchers who planted bombs in pubs, its tactics in later years included an almost Austen-like comedy of manners: The IRA would contact the police using a prearranged code, the caller would alert the police to the location of a bomb, and the police would respond in time to preserve human life, if not property. It didn’t always work that way—the I.R.A. certainly didn’t warn Margaret Thatcher that it had planted a bomb in her hotel in 1984, nor did it warn the 11 civilians killed while watching a military parade in Enniskillen in 1987.

The I.R.A. actually apologized for the Enniskillen murders, and while this was hardly a comfort to the victims and their loved ones, it at least was a sign that its leaders were susceptible to public opinion. The bin Ladens of the world rejoice in the sorrow they create, and relish the outrage of crusaders and Jews.

The end of the war in Northern Ireland leaves a legacy of lessons for the United States, the United Kingdom, and every other nation targeted for conversion or elimination by bin Laden’s gang. The first remains the trickiest: how to deal with an irregular enemy in an irregular war?

Until Sept. 11, the United States prosecuted its irregular enemies—the people who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, and the cleric who inspired them, Omar Abdul Rahman—in conventional fashion. They were brought before a court, publicly tried and defended, and convicted in the usual manner.

In other words, they were treated to the same justice that would be accorded any other criminal, any other murderer.

In that sense, the U.S. was following the path of Mrs. Thatcher, who demanded that I.R.A. members taken prisoner be treated as common criminals. In the case of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the U.S. justice system seemed to agree. (Of course, common criminals generally do not get expert legal counsel from the likes of Lynne Stewart.)

After Sept. 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, however, the U.S. has been eager to give Islamic terrorists the rights and privileges the I.R.A. demanded in the late 1970’s: that of a special category of prisoner. I.R.A. members wished desperately to be treated as enemy combatants and not as common criminals. When we try Islamic terrorists in military tribunals, are we not allowing them a dignity they do not deserve and implicitly recognizing the political nature of their grievances?

The British experience with the I.R.A. also reminds us how important it is for a government to live up to its platitudes. When Britain began to try terrorism suspects in juryless courts, with only a judge deciding the fate of a defendant, it handed the I.R.A. a propaganda victory. Mrs. Thatcher said that I.R.A. members were common criminals, but the juryless courts suggested otherwise. Again, the dilemma: Are our enemies legitimate soldiers in an irregular army, or simply mass killers?

Another lesson that seems irrelevant today but could easily become relevant in future years concerns the mass internment of suspected terrorists and sympathizers. Every Aug. 9, republicans in Northern Ireland commemorate the night in 1971 when the British army raided Catholic homes in that province and hauled off people suspected of either being in the I.R.A. or of being helpful to the cause. They were jailed without charge.

Could that happen here, or perhaps in the U.K. again? The guess here is that we are being provoked to take such a step. What a mistake that would be.

As the I.R.A. trades bullets for ballots, the U.S. would do well to study the mistakes that Britain made over the last 30 years. There is no shortage

Owing to this French connection, Scott's painting remained aloof from the kind of "literary" imagery that is often associated with modern British art. He said of his own work, "I picked up from the tradition of painting in France that I felt most kinship with-the still-life tradition of Chardin and Braque, leading to a certain kind of abstraction which comes directly from that tradition." It was to the not entirely separable interests of still-life and abstraction that he devoted his long and distinguished career.

After 1953, when he first visited New York, the influence of the Abstract Expressionists on Scott's painting is sometimes discernible as well. Scott is said to have been the first British artist to meet Pollock, Rothko, Kline, de Kooning and other luminaries of the New York School, and their influence certainly makes itself felt-especially Kline's-in the black, white and gray still-life painting, Composition III (1954), in the current show.

Elsewhere in Scott's work, however, it's less the facture or the palette of Abstract Expressionism that's evident than the physical scale of New York School painting. For example, I very much doubt that a work like White Painting (1963), measuring 66 by 78 inches, would have been attempted if not for the outsize scale of the Abstract Expressionists. In every other respect, White Painting , with its composition of irregular white rectangles and delicate blue lines occupying a buff-colored canvas, is entirely original, and in my view it's one of the finest abstract paintings of the period. White Painting is composed entirely of subtle shifts of light unbroken by shade, which is all the more remarkable since many of Scott's still-life paintings are notable for their emphatic black forms.

In this respect, I am reminded of something Matisse said, in a 1947 interview, about what he called "the problem of black." He recalled that Pissarro, in speaking of Manet, boldly asserted that "Manet is stronger than us all, he made light with black " (emphasis added). Transforming black into a kind of pictorial light was very much Scott's practice as well, not only in a beautifully legible picture like Still Life with Black Theme (1973), but in the more densely painted black-on-black Still Life of 1957.

This is not to suggest that Scott shied away from brilliant color. In the current show, both the dazzling still-life called Blue Yellow and Brown (1957) and the Orchard of Pears 14 (1976-1977), with its luminous greens, are the work of a master colorist. He had no gift for self-promotion, however. British understatement remained his style, both in conversation and in his painting, and this cost him something in a period when the limelight was dominated by swollen egos and pop-art shenanigans on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is, in any case, one of the curiosities of William Scott's career that he was far better known, both in this country and abroad, in the 1950's, 60's and 70's than he is today. In New York, the Martha Jackson Gallery, then a leading dealership in the international avant-garde, devoted seven solo exhibitions to Scott's work between 1954 and 1979. In that period, too, he was given retrospective exhibitions at the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hanover, Germany, and the Tate Gallery in London. He was also represented in the Venice Biennale and São Paulo Bienal.

The current New York exhibition- William Scott: Works from the Scott Collection, 1950's-1970's -is an excellent introduction to the artist's work, and remains on view at Denise Bibro Fine Art, 529 West 20th Street, through June 5.

show me just how grateful you are!" This might sound like a kinky Biblical

vignette from a Pasolini movie, but it's just me admonishing my father as I

throw armfuls of his favorite things into a Dumpster while simultaneously

demanding his gratitude. Yes, I'm de-accessioning a senior citizen before

moving him to "a more supportive environment," and I have oodles of tips which

I am dying to pass on to you. But first, a little background.

Terence Sydney Doonan, my Welsh-born father, is, at my

insistence, trading in his bijou bungalow in strife-torn Northern Ireland for a

senior crash pad in ultra-trendy Brighton. Don't get me wrong: There's nothing

wrong with Northern Ireland, except perhaps that bizarre regional accent.

Despite a lifelong familiarity with the North Irish twang (we spent our summer

holidays in that very same bungalow with my Guinness-drinkin', off-track

bettin' maternal grandfather), I still can't understand a fucking word they're

saying. For example, my mother's name, Betty Doonan, becomes, at the hands of

one of the locals, " Bahttyeyh

Dyeeyoounionyuh ."

But I digress. The

reason my father is moving to England is not linguistic: He wants to be nearer

to his closest kin, i.e., my caring and alternatively lifestyled sister,

Shelagh. Yes, you guessed it-only two siblings, and both of us are inverts. I

have no explanation, and Terry doesn't seem overly concerned about having

reared two of "them." As Hattie McDaniel, or some such person, once said in a

movie, the name of which escapes me: "Oh, Lord! I guess it's just somethin' the

angels dun plan." Let me also reassure you that we Doonans are not all freaks:

e.g., my uncle Vyvian (no, he's not a tranny-along with Evelyn and Jocelyn,

Vyvian was, at one point in the 20th century, a man's name) and Aunt Marigold

(yes, she's a redhead) are extant and, apart from their names, as normal as they

come. But it's we two homos who constitute Terry's main support system.

Now, a word or two about Terry Doonan, also known as Mike

(when he went to work for the BBC in the news-monitoring service, there already

was another Terry-so, just as in a hair salon, the new arrival was forced to

adopt an arbitrary new moniker). Seventy-six-year-old Terry, who has all of his

marbles and some of his teeth, has had an unconventional life: Handsome

Terry/Mike left home at 15 and enlisted as an aircraft apprentice in the Royal

Air Force. For the last months of the war, he was based in India. Snaps from

this period show he was into a crumpled khaki look: bush shirt and shorts

(cleaned daily), wool ankle socks with chaplis

(Indian sandals), pipe, side-tilted forage cap-i.e., very late-80's Banana Republic. He has always been an odd combo of

the effete and the butch-i.e., he rode a motorbike but wore an ascot.

During my childhood, he worked for the BBC listening to

foreign broadcasts in English-especially from the USSR and Eastern Europe

during the Cold War. He made it into the papers as the first to report the

Kennedy assassination in the U.K. During this period, he sported a 1950's Look Back in Anger groovy-schoolteacher

look-white shirt with knitted tie, battered tweed sport coat with suede elbow

patches, flat-front narrow slacks and Hush Puppies. Adorable, non ?

Fast forward 50 years to

sunny Brighton, the home of Fat Boy Slim and now Terry Doonan. Yes, I'm happy

to report that, after two weeks of caring parental dehumanization and lots of

actressy hissy fits, Terry's relocation is complete.

Here is my guide to senior relocation:

1. As the golden years approach, keep a close eye on the

accumulation of detritus chez vos parents .

I failed to do this and suffered the horrid consequences. I had no idea that Ma

and Pa Kettle/Doonan were obsessively cramming the crannies of that retirement

bungalow with such an unimaginable smorgasrainbow of nonfunctional bits and

bobs. I only became aware of the situation after the sad passing of Bahttyeyh

Dyeeyoounionyuh in 1999, and Terry's move precipitated the de-accessioning

process (occasioning the showdown re feet-washing). Among the more bizarre

accumulations: ancient rubber gloves from which the index fingers had been

amputated; a decaying Pacamac (an ancient and sordid brand of semi-transparent

rainwear); and lots of what I call "Russian-doll secretions"-i.e., a set of

false teeth inside an English Breakfast tea tin, inside a Corn Flakes packet,

inside a 1950's vacuum-cleaner box, inside a cupboard.

Dumpster-filling and de-accessioning is the most stressful

part of S.R. (senior relocation): allow for unending kvetching. Don't expect a

senior to be pleased that you are hurling a moth-eaten wedding dress into an

incinerator or selling World War II memorabilia and using the money to tip the

removal men. You will be subject to what I call "Cruella deVillification"-i.e.,

you will be characterized as the evil turd who chucked out everything useful.

My advice: embrace the role-e.g., if a stubborn female senior won't part with

her old frocks, encourage her, in a caring manner, to make a lovely memory

quilt out of same, and then throw the quilt out when she is taking a nap.

The good news: The jettisoning of debris is a fantastic

exercise, in particular the emptying of an attic; teetering up and down a

ladder while carrying boxes toned my thighs and burned up more calories than

spinning.

2. Try, even with a recalcitrant senior, to maintain a tone

of constructive vivacity. If you are overbearing and impatient, he or she can

always cut you out of his or her will. If there is no dynastic wealth coming

your way, you are still at risk: Resourceful seniors will creatively torture

you by publicly broadcasting cringe-making anecdotes from your past-your

childhood excretorial accident history or, worse still, fond reminiscences of

your chubby years.

3. Encourage obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Many oldsters

find solace in O.C. behaviors, particularly during moments of anxiety (I'm

already a practitioner). Terry is no exception: While I was filling Dumpsters,

T.S. was picking up crumbs off the carpet and polishing his hob (Brit-speak for

"stove top") with Joan Crawford–esque zeal. Encourage it: A busy senior will be

less likely to impede your progress. Encourage naps for the same reason. A nip

of gin in a cup of tea will soon quiet an unruly senior.

4. Don't castrate your senior-i.e., don't be a killjoy if

your senior manifests disinhibited adult behaviors (e.g., staring at

waitresses' boobs). Libidinal vestiges are a sign of a vigorous constitution

and should be encouraged. I am in the process of hiring a comely helper to come

round to Terry's new pad and iron his shirts and, if necessary, polish his hob.

5. Seniors will frequently try to simplify their eating

habits-living on buffet food, pickles and cured meats. The nicest thing you can

do for a senior is cook a good meal. Caution: Dental efficiency varies

dramatically. One man's pizza is another man's long-playing record.

6. Obscenities will slip out (of your mouth) during moments

of frustration-you are only human. Don't apologize: Seniors love smut. Though

seniors themselves tend not to curse as much as they did in more energized

periods of their lives (I have vivid childhood memories of my dad screaming

obscenities at other male drivers), they will usually be amused and de-stressed

by watching you lose your gourd.

7. Dos and don'ts for that stressful trip to the retirement

accommodation: Don't while away the hours trying to get your senior in touch

with his feelings-celebrate their stoicism and try to absorb some of it. Don't

try to resolve old grievances-these epicenters of contention make life worth

living (e.g., I refuse to come to terms with the fact that Terry, who grew up

on a working-class depression diet in Cardiff, is several inches taller than

me, and rail at him for hours about my tinyness. At times, I have even

speculated that I might be the progeny of another. This theory was exacerbated

by the fact that, when I was 30, Betty announced to me that she had been

married to another man before my dad-for several years, mark you. Was he the

short-arse circus midget who fathered me? Happily, my diminished stature was

later revealed to be the result of nothing more serious than my mother's

prenatal nicotine intake-Woodbines being her preferred brand). Do look for

hotels with amusing names: When traveling to Brighton, Terry and I derived

great amusement from finding hostelries with names such as the Trout at

Cockermouth.

8. Don't do it with siblings. Much as I adore my sister

Shelagh, I knew we would rip each other's gizzards out unless we practiced a

strict division-of-labor policy. We tried to divvy up the tasks based on our

individual strengths-e.g., interior decoration, me; anything involving

feelings, Shelagh.

9. When looking for retirement accommodation, make sure the

neighbors are socio-economically comparable to your senior. Yes, it's

classist-so what? Terry is a classy guy; he wears an ascot, for Chrissake!

10. Unearth family secrets. The stress of relocation leaves

a senior exhausted and psychologically undefended: exploit these moments of

vulnerability and use them as opportunities to unravel fetid family secrets.

During Terry's relocation, I found out that my great aunt Flo had been an

amateur ventriloquist. Show business in the family-who knew?

Toward the end of the trip, a haunting family mystery was

solved: After rigorous questioning, I ascertained that it was none other than

my paternal grandfather who had daubed "Auntie Nelly is a skite" on the garden

shed. Both Terry and I are unfamiliar with this horrid word and would be most

grateful for any information regarding its origin and meaning. E-mail "skite"

info to simonsays@observer.com. P.S.: Since Terry's professional-astrologer

father hailed from Australia, this epithet may well have an antipodean origin.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service, under the jurisdiction of Attorney General Janet Reno, is spending taxpayer dollars to split up a family and ship the father back to Northern Ireland-a place he fled a dozen years ago after one of the local death squads fired 25 shots at his children. Though they're not New Yorkers, the family's case has been taken up by most of this state's U.S. Representatives, including some, like Nydia Velázquez, who have no reason to scrounge for Irish-American votes.

Malachy and Bernadette McAllister weren't home on that night in October 1988 when the would-be assassins-members of one of Northern Ireland's more bloodthirsty Loyalist gangs-dropped by for a visit. The gunmen opened fire on the couple's children and Ms. McAllister's mother, who was minding them. Nobody was hurt, but when members of the local police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, showed up to investigate, they curiously found no evidence of an attempted mass murder. Of course they didn't-it turns out that members of the Northern Ireland police force encouraged the murder gang. The family got the hint. They fled Belfast for Canada and then arrived in America in 1996, settling in New Jersey. They filed for the political asylum they would seem to deserve; instead, the Clinton administration-which has done so much to bring peace to Mr. McAllister's native land-is trying to deport him.

I've met Mr. McAllister, a friendly man with a well-trimmed beard. He was the intended target of those gunmen so many years ago, having served four years in prison after he confessed to the attempted murder of a police officer. But that confession (along with dozens like it) was obtained after an interrogation process that has earned the condemnation of human rights organizations throughout Europe. (Those who saw Daniel Day-Lewis' performance in the Jim Sheridan film In the Name of the Father have some idea of what Mr. McAllister went through.) Upon his release, the R.U.C.-a police force so discredited it is in the process of being reorganized-supplied Mr. McAllister's address to its friends and allies in the Protestant-Loyalist murder gangs.

It is because of Mr. McAllister's "record" that the I.N.S. and Ms. Reno wish to put him on the next plane to Belfast. He already has been denied political asylum by a judge in New Jersey who ruled that Mr. McAllister is a British subject, not an Irish citizen. (A tricky matter: Northern Ireland may fall within the confines of the United Kingdom, but anyone born in Ireland is a citizen of the Irish Republic.) As this column is being written (June 16), Ms. McAllister and her children are in a courtroom in Newark, asking the government to grant them political asylum. The government, in its munificence, has divided the case. If Ms. McAllister and her family are, in fact, given asylum, and Mr. McAllister is deported, the family will either have to split up or return to Belfast together to face the dangers they know so well. It is worth noting that two of Mr. McAllister's youngest children have no memory of Belfast; they are thoroughly American kids-in a recent family portrait, one of them is wearing a Jets cap, the other a Yankees shirt. They believe (and why not?) that the gunmen who invaded their home in 1988 are still waiting for them, and in no mood to waste any more ammunition. Yes, there is peace in Northern Ireland these days, but the peace process couldn't save attorney Rosemary Nelson, killed in 1999 when a Loyalist death squad put a bomb in her car- it blew up a few hundred yards from her child's school.

The New York City Council, at the urging of member Kathryn Freed, has taken up the McAllisters' case, with gratifying results. The City Council is an easy target when it takes up the Big Issues that are far from the members' usual humdrum concerns. The spectacle of the council weighing in on international issues via long-winded speeches and righteous resolutions is not, it must be said, unfailingly gratifying.

In this case, however, a number of City Council members have sided with common sense and humanity. The council's international relations committee passed a resolution calling on the Clinton administration to grant the family political asylum, with City Council member José Rivera of the Bronx saying that if Ms. Reno wants the McAllisters deported from New Jersey, he'd be happy to make them welcome in the Bronx.

There's also a picture making the rounds these days of Mr. McAllister shaking hands with a certain Senate candidate with White House connections. Maybe this whole sorry affair will have a happy ending after all.

On this first St. Patrick's Day of the new century, Tommy Makem, the folk singer, poet and onetime owner of a sorely missed mecca of Irish culture on East 57th Street, is embarking on a mission similar to the journeys of Yeats and Company in the 1890's. Mr. Makem is a native of County Armagh in Northern Ireland; more particularly, he is from the southern portion of County Armagh. The area near his hometown of Keady has been under quasi-martial law for nearly three decades. His onetime neighbors have lived in the middle of a low-intensity war between the Irish Republican Army and the British Army, and the soil of south Armagh has been so bitterly contested that the British were forced to supply their barracks by helicopters only.

With the Irish peace process faltering but still intact, Mr. Makem has seized on an opportunity to rediscover the beauty, history and culture of a region that, he says, "has been denigrated and darkened for the past 30 years." He and his friends in Armagh will inaugurate the Tommy Makem International School of Song this June near the lovely Ring of Gullion in south Armagh. The weeklong event, which organizers hope will draw people from around the world, will feature examinations of Irish music, poetry, dance, storytelling, mythology and folk culture. Among the event's patrons are Bob Dylan, Judy Collins and Pete Seeger, friends of Mr. Makem's from the days when he and the Clancy Brothers were entertaining audiences in Greenwich Village with Irish folk songs.

"I would consider this to be the first major cultural benefit of the peace process," Mr. Makem said from his home in New Hampshire. "It's nonsectarian, it's cross-border, it's wide open to all people."

It has nothing to do with politics, and yet everything to do with politics-that is to say, the new kind of politics that people of good will in Ireland are embracing as they put aside the ways of the old millennium. Through culture, through the antiquity of the land the Irish share with the descendants of Scots and English settlers, perhaps the competing traditions in Northern Ireland will find common ground. The Scots Presbyterians of Northern Ireland often reject the very idea that they are Irish, even though their families have been in Ireland since the 17th century. Mr. Makem hopes that through this exploration of culture, the pro-British Unionists in Northern Ireland will learn something about themselves, as well as their Irish Catholic neighbors. "Some Unionist people are afraid of this, they believe that the music of Ireland has nothing to do with them," Mr. Makem said. "But in fact it's their culture as well as mine. What you have to do it invite people in, welcome them, and say: 'This belongs to you, too. Enjoy it.'"

Mr. Makem's cultural festival also comes at a time when the young people of the Irish Republic, so many of them reaping the rewards of one of the world's most astonishing economic turnarounds, seem prepared to sacrifice their identity and ancient culture as they embrace the idea of deracinated Europeanism. "If you talk to anybody in Dublin 4 [roughly the equivalent of the Upper West Side]," Mr. Makem said, "They'll say, 'We're not really Irish. We're Europeans now.' As a result, young people are being denied their natural inheritance of culture and identity as they pursue the almighty pound. There's nothing wrong with making money, but if you lose your identity in the process, you're gone forever."

Mr. Makem hopes that his school of international song will serve the healing process under way in Northern Ireland, remind young Irish people in the republic of their distinctive culture-which inspired so many artists and writers-and will call attention to the cultural treasures of South Armagh. "This song school can be a great beam of light over Europe," Mr. Makem said.

Once before, about 40 years ago, Mr. Makem and his friends the Clancy Brothers introduced New York to the joys of Irish folk music, filled with references to the island's ancient traditions. Now Mr. Makem has a chance to reintroduce the Irish to some of the traditions he and the Clancys revived in Greenwich Village in the 1960's.

Peace makes dreams possible.

Predicting the future in Northern Ireland, whether in the next 24 hours or the next quarter-century, is a business best left to the brave and the foolish. Nearly everything hinges on a meeting of the largest Protestant-Unionist party on Nov. 27, which could either lead to a final agreement or could present yet another obstacle to peace. But all indicators suggest that the energy which Mr. Clinton has invested in Ireland is about to pay off, with dividends for the people of the Irish Republic, Northern Ireland and Britain.

Author Jack Holland, a Belfast native and a columnist at the Irish Echo newspaper, summed up the frightening dilemma of Northern Ireland in the 1990's in the title of his new book, Hope Against History . Had Mr. Clinton paid attention to the sobering lessons of the latter rather than cling to promise of the former, he surely would not have involved himself so personally in what so often seemed to be a thankless task. But now, after grueling negotiations chaired by the President's special emissary, former Senator George Mitchell, hope does appear triumphant.

"This is an example of American foreign policy at its best," said Niall O'Dowd, the founding publisher of the Irish Voice newspaper and Irish America magazine. "This hasn't been about sending helicopters into another country. It's about a superpower using its proper influence over two friends, Britain and Ireland."

It ought to be remembered that the President's aggressive, rules-breaking diplomacy in Ireland is the result of no focus group or poll. Irish-Americans rarely if ever ask if a candidate is "good for Northern Ireland"-whatever that might mean. If they did, they surely would not have been among the disaffected Democrats whom Ronald Reagan and George Bush won over throughout the 1980's. Those two Republicans followed the British line on matters Irish, and yet they counted Irish-Americans as an important part of three successful national coalitions.

No, Mr. Clinton's peacemaking is based on qualities not always associated with his White House: idealism, determination, a sense of justice and terrific timing. On the latter score, the Administration got no small bit of help from a group of amateur diplomats in New York, chief among them William Flynn, chairman of Mutual of America, and Mr. O'Dowd. They understood early on in the Clinton years that the time was right for American intervention in a bloody dispute that has baffled a generation of professional diplomats. Long before the Irish Republican Army declared a cease-fire, the New Yorkers served as an invaluable conduit between Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and the Clinton White House, and helped persuade Mr. Clinton's former national security adviser, Tony Lake, that Mr. Adams was indeed the key to winning a settlement that was unimaginable when the Reagan-Bush White House treated Mr. Adams as an international outlaw. Now, Mr. Adams and Sinn Fein are on the verge of becoming part of a new, multiparty government in Northern Ireland. And the main Unionist leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble, has conceded that Irish nationalists have legitimate aspirations-an assertion that is heresy in Mr. Trimble's Protestant community.

It is an astonishing turn of events, made possible in part through the subtle use of language. For example, Mr. Holland, a keen observer of his native land, noted that at a critical moment in mid-November, the I.R.A. issued a statement stating that it was "committed unequivocally to the search for freedom, justice and peace" in Northern Ireland. "The word 'search' replaced the word 'struggle'" in the I.R.A.'s lexicon, Mr. Holland noted. The shift in language persuaded Mr. Holland that a breakthrough was, in fact, at hand. "And what it means is that as Ireland enters the new millennium, we see the beginning of the end of the I.R.A. as we knew it for most of this century," Mr. Holland said.

History practically shouted that such an outcome was impossible. Hope, however, insisted that the time was right to do what was right.

When Mr. Trimble and Mr. Adams, representing hostile traditions, cultures and communities, broke bread with each other for the first time, they did so in the American Embassy in London, under the watchful eye of Mr. Clinton's emissary, Mr. Mitchell. Those who study Irish history, like Mr. Holland and Mr. O'Dowd, understand what a difficult challenge Mr. Clinton undertook, and how rich the rewards will be.