After inflating 99 red balloons in secret, anti-war protesters in Galway gathered Sunday afternoon in a 500-year-old city square to decry the use of fighter jets for entertainment at the popular spectacle known as the Salthill Airshow.

 

And as it turns out, the protesters were right to argue about the dangers of military hardware as bread and circuses for the masses after the door fell off a British Royal Air Force helicopter more than 80 feet and landed among the crowd of 80,000 and injured three people.

 

Signs on utility poles around this western Irish enclave directed people to join a protest of the Galway Alliance Against War at noon at the ancient Spanish Arch, part of the old city wall. Once there, 99 red balloons would be released, a kind of tribute to the mid-80s anti-war pop anthem about a balloon launch that some generals mistake for a nuclear assault.

 

Last year, the Galway Alliance planned a similar protest, but the local police force, known as the Gardai, popped the balloons in the advance, according to one speaker (whose name I failed to obtain because I bumped into the protest by accident and didn't have the requisite note pad and pen).

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For the few hardcore Green Party activists, the compromises the Irish Greens had to make to enter into a coalition government with veteran prime minister Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fail party were too much.

 

But 86.6 percent of the voting 510 voting Greens said that the risks of further compromise from inside the government for the next five years outweighed the value of throwing stones from outside the system.

 

And so the Irish Greens parlayed their six percent national vote total into two cabinet seats (on a 14-person Cabinet). The Greens earned the Environment and Heritage portfolio, and the Communications and Energy portfolio.

 

This will forward the Green agenda in ways that few other Green contingencies across Europe have been able to accomplish, forget the Green Party in the U.S. And this benchmark could teach U.S. Greens about developing realistic policy aims that make candidates electable. Allan Brison down in New Haven seems to understand this.

 

"We can drop all those tired old cliches about flaky idealists with little understanding of the real world," said the editorial in The Irish Independent daily newspaper June 14, titled "It's Green for go."

 

"The Greens could not have come of age at a more opportune moment in our history, given the challenges we face," the Independent's editorial proclaimed. "For a party with only six seats wrestling over policy with a party of 78, it is a significant achievement."

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Adam Bulger over at the Hartford Advocate beat me to the punch in writing about the Aetna Viaduct. Urban Planner Toni Gold beat us both to the punch back in February, but Adam wrote about it this past week.

 

His was a good story, although I must say both Adam and Joe Barber, who he quoted, are friends of mine. I would have liked Adam to have included a disclaimer in the story that he and Joe Barber are friends and housemates.

 

Before I get too tall on my high horse, it is possible that I have quoted Joe Barber in columns and not put that disclaimer in myself. But in the future, I think we all need to be more forthcoming about relationships that must be disclosed.

 

With that painful journalistic bit out of the way (it sucks having to say stuff to friends, especially when I am in Liverpool right now and can't really call him for an explanation). So if I get one from Adam, I'll post it.

 

What's really important here is that a contingent of city leaders want the Connecticut Department of Transportation to address the destructive rift of highway separating Frog Hollow and Asylum Hill.

 

Walking around Birmingham, England on Friday afternoon, the photos posted here represent some ideas that might benefit the city and the DOT as they begin discussions surrounding improving the cleave between neighborhoods.

 

Spaces underneath elevated highways needn't be horrible pedestrian spaces, but can be creatively designed to invite foot traffic. The Colt gateway to the mighty Connecticut River should take note of this too, as the space under I-91 is calling for something more than cold blue steel rafters and dirt floors.

In this photo, also from Birmingham, city planners painted a bridge on Bridge Street in a Victorian decorative motif, making the bridge easy on the eyes.

 

The city of Providence has done something similar at the bottom of Wickenden Street, with murals around giant pillars supporting Interstate 195.

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