Principal Geraldine gibbons opens the Graduation ceremony

Make-Up Artistry graduates Suzanne Dolan, Sarah Greaney, Zoe Ryan, Michelle Farrell and in front, CarlaCcoleman

Louise McInerney and Tara Langan, Diploma in Beauty Therapy

Elaine Doran, Siobhan O’Keefe and Cat O’Donoghue

Eileen Robinson

Sinéad Parslow

Martina Murray with mother Patricia, sister Jessica, and baby Jack.

Martina Murray with Darragh McConn

Principal Geraldine Gibbons with Tutor Judy Aylmer

Waiting …….

Leona Folan holding her sister Emer, with sisters Georgina, Katie,Hayley,and Aisling

Ludmilla Monaghan with her husband Patrick

Farida with her mother Claudia Aliyu, Health Science

Basil Tuke with his daughter Niamh, both graduated from GTI this year, with mum Geraldine who kept the ship afloat at home!

Siobhán Regan, Rebecca Mcgowan,Azarah Gordon,Stephanie wynne, Aisling Mcgowan and Niamh Tuke

Aoife Garrihy with her parents

Eileen Robinson and Siobhán O’Keefe, Tutors

Sarah Healey with her parents, Mary and Declan

Niamh Monaghan and Sarah Healy, Hairdressing 2

Catherine Fahy and her daughter Aoife

Neasa Moran, Diploma in Health Science with her Mum

Louise McInerney and Tara Langan, Diploma in Beauty Therapy

More photos tomorrow!

Image from Facebook.com

by Sean O’Toole

The official Facebook page for The Doors posted a statement today concerning the sad passing of one of the band’s members, Ray Manzarek. Manzarek had made appearances a number of years back in Galway venues, performing his own music.

The following statement was released on Facebook recalling elements of Manzarek’s time with the iconic band as well as his literary and solo music successes before losing his lengthy battle with cancer:

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of The Doors, passed away today at 12:31PM PT at the RoMed Clinic in Rosenheim, Germany after a lengthy battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74. At the time of his passing, he was surrounded by his wife Dorothy Manzarek, and his brothers Rick and James Manczarek.

Manzarek is best known for his work with The Doors who formed in 1965 when Manzarek had a chance encounter on Venice Beach with poet Jim Morrison. The Doors went on to become one of the most controversial rock acts of the 1960s, selling more than 100-million albums worldwide, and receiving 19 Gold, 14 Platinum and five multi-Platinum albums in the U.S. alone. “L.A.Woman,” “Break On Through to the Other Side,” “The End,” “Hello, I Love You,” and “Light My Fire” were just some of the band’s iconic and ground-breaking songs. After Morrison’s death in 1971, Manzarek went on to become a best-selling author, and a Grammy-nominated recording artist in his own right. In 2002, he revitalized his touring career with Doors’ guitarist and long-time collaborator, Robby Krieger.

“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” said Krieger. “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.”

Manzarek is survived by his wife Dorothy, brothers Rick and James Manczarek, son Pablo Manzarek, Pablo’s wife Sharmin and their three children Noah, Apollo and Camille. Funeral arrangements are pending. The family asks that their privacy be respected at this difficult time. In lieu of flowers, please make a memoriam donation in Ray Manzarek’s name at www.standup2cancer.org

National Biodiversity Week runs from the 18^th to the 26^th of May and this year will be Ireland’s 7^th year celebrating the event. The aim of Biodiversity Week is to raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity and to better understand its value to the local, national and international community. 2011-2020 is the United Nations Decade on Biodiversity and May the 22^nd is the UN International Day of Biodiversity.

Local community group Friends of Merlin Woods has teamed up with members of The Vincent Wildlife Trust and the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, among others, to bring you a full calendar of events for the week.

Our first event is a biodiversity workshop, which includes a short introductory talk on woodlands and an educational walk through Merlin Woods, on Saturday the 18^th at 11 am. Meet us at the Ard Family Resource Centre on Doughiska Road.

Check out www.galwaybiodiversity.com/events for details and join the Facebook event at: www.facebook.com/events/245981065546447/

image:www.isfoundation.com -

by Ciara Parsons                                                

You may not realise it, but each and every one of us is contributing to one of the biggest ecological disasters in the world;  contributing towards destroying the most ancient and ecologically diverse forests in the word,being part of a mass animal genocide and the extinction of thousands of species,  just so we can have our creature comforts and not worry about what’s happening thousands of miles away from us. The most annoying thing is that all of this can be easily avoided if the consumer just stops to think before they buy and support this insanity. In this consumer driven world we don’t often take the time to think about what we are buying and what the products contain or even where they come from. I never used to check the ingredients on packaged food or cosmetics because I wasn’t aware of the consequences. I’m writing this article to raise awareness of the ravaging impact of palm oil plantations on the environment. I do not wish to preach or force my beliefs on anyone, I simply want to give you the facts so that you can make the informed decision for yourself!

Palm oil is the ingredient I am referring to; it can be found in packaged food, cleaning products and cosmetics. The reason palm oil is so popular among manufacturers and used in so many products is because it is cheap and in large supply. Because of this it is used in over 50% of products! It is a type of vegetable oil derived from the palm fruit, grown on the African Oil Palm tree. It flourishes wherever there is an abundance of heat and rainfall. Almost all of the Palm Oil used in the world is produced in Indonesia and Malaysia. I know it may seem like it is an essential ingredient because it is found in such a vast amount of products but it’s not essential. 30 years ago it was practically non existent in the western world and we managed just fine without it. It can be easily substituted if there is a demand. I don’t have a problem with palm oil as an ingredient or plant, it’s how it is manufactured and the destruction associated with it that I cannot accept or understand.

It can be labelled under the following palm oil derived ingredients:

Vegetable Oil
-Vegetable Fat
-Sodium Laureth Sulfate (in almost everything that foams)
-Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
-Sodium Dodecyl Sulphate (SDS or NaDS)
-Palm Kernel
-Palm Oil Kernel
-Palm Fruit Oil
-Palmate
-Palmitate
-Palmolein
-Glyceryl Stearate
-Stearic Acid
-Elaeis Guineensis
-Palmitic Acid
-Palm Stearine
-Palmitoyl oxostearamide
-Palmitoyl tetrapeptide-3
-Steareth -2
-Steareth -20
-Sodium Kernelate
-Sodium Palm Kernelate
-Sodium Lauryl Lactylate/Sulphate
-Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate
-Hyrated Palm Glycerides
-Sodium Isostearoyl Lactylaye
-Cetyl Palmitate
-Octyl Palmitate
-Cetyl Alcohol
-Palmityl Alchohol

Sustainable Palm Oil has been suggested as a solution to this problem. This “eco friendly” palm oil is sourced from RSPO (Roundtable Sustainable Palm Oil). An organisation established in 2004 to “promote the production and use of sustainable Palm Oil for people, planet and prosperity”….I feel that it is possible they are more focused on “prosperity” than anything else! Consumers state that RSPO is a name that companies “can hide behind” and suggest that the palm oil itself cannot be proven to be sustainable or environmentally friendly. I have read from a number of different sources that it is an organisation proven to be “untrustworthy and unreliable”. It’s up to each individual consumer to decide whether or not to take the risk and trust them.

Palm oil plantations are rapidly replacing some of the most ancient and bio -diverse rainforest in the world. The rainforest is torn down in order to make room for these plantations. Animals such as orang-utans are killed and the ground is burned, leaving a desolate, vast area where there had once been so much life. To give you an idea of the rate in which this is happening try to imagine an area the size of 300 football fields being destroyed each hour. That’s 12 million hectares of dense, bio -diverse rainforest being destroyed each year. I find it hard to comprehend when I try to picture how vast that actually is.

Forests are essential to the well-being of this entire planet. Forests moderate air temperatures and maintain atmospheric humidity. They absorb the atmospheric carbon and replace oxygen in our air for us to breath. Forests maintain soil and water resources and absorb excessive rainfall. They regulate stream flows by gradually releasing water into streams and rivers, thus reducing flooding and landslides downstream. Tree roots reduce soil compaction and help infiltration of water and nutrients. The environmental impact of the loss of these forests is incalculable.

The trees, shrubs and debris are burned after being cut down. Smoke is being released into the air and CO2 is released into the atmosphere, influencing local and global climates and causing climate change. It has been found that the production of palm oil is the third  biggest contributor to greenhouse gas in the world, which in turn affects our ozone layer.

In 1997–98, such forest fires became wildfires so immense that they caused a thick cloud of air pollution across the entire South-east Asia region. The haze and smog were estimated to have affected the health of 70 million people .

Palm oil plantations also cause soil, water and toxic chemical contamination. Plantation companies usually dump palm oil-mill waste into the nearby water with sometimes catastrophic results. For example in 2002 thousands of fish were killed in the Siak River in Sumatra as a result of illegal waste-water disposal from palm oil mills. At least 14 facilities still do not meet the new requirements set in 2003 to stop river pollution. According to reports the river water has now turned black, smells foul, is undrinkable and causes skin irritation upon contact. Dead fish float near mills’ waste water outlet pipes. It highlights the fact that these pesticides and chemicals used in palm oil production are  harmful, yet we ingest them into our bodies without hesitation

There is also a huge social impact to be considered when thinking about palm oil. While plantations may increase the income of a few plantation smallholders, it also has a large negative impact on the majority of the surrounding population, by turning most of the villagers in the plantation area into poorly paid wage labourers. When the villagers are forced to give up their homes, community farming and the rainforest lands on which they have survived  for generations they have no choice but to work for the plantations and clear even more rainforest in order to earn a modest living. In Borneo many of the ‘Dayak’ tribes that have lived on these lands for 100′s of years have been displaced by the plantations. Tribal peoples’ land rights are often not recognized by the state and are inadequately addressed when tribal lands are “allocated” and sold by the government to  palm oil plantation companies.

A few years ago I watched a BBC documentary series called Orang-utan Diaries. The program was set in an orang-utan orphanage in Borneo. Initially I thought it was cute because of all the baby monkeys but upon watching it more I realised how terribly sad the reason that they were all in this place. They had all been forced out of their jungle home by loggers and plantation workers cutting down the trees and shrubs. Their parents were often run over by logging machinery, beaten to death, buried alive or set on fire.

The baby orang-utans had been rescued either from the plantations or from people keeping them in cages as pets. The orphanage had been set up to help raise them and aid them in adapting to their new life. Orang-utan babies would usually stay with their mothers for the first 6 – 8 years of  life .It aimed to teach them how to survive in the wild even though they had physical disabilities and had suffered mental trauma.  After watching this program I couldn’t believe the injustice and appalling circumstances which had brought these animals together. This program changed the course of my life. I left college and started saving money to go over to Borneo and try to do anything I could to help. I no longer felt that ignorance was bliss and had to do something.

Orang-utans share 97% of their DNA with humans, making them one of our closest relatives. The word orang-utan comes from the Malay language and means ‘person of the forest’ -from the word ‘orang’ meaning people and ‘hutan’ meaning forest. The average one shares the intelligence of a 6 year old human child. They are native only to Indonesia and Malaysia. Experts say that they will be extinct in the wild within the next 3-12 years,meaning that we could have wiped out an entire species of monkey as early as 2015 and that their jungle habitat will be non-existent within the next twenty years.

Roads constructed for the plantation workers expose the forest to poachers and animal smugglers, allowing them to capture the wildlife and sell them on the illegal pet trade market. Orang-utans aren’t the only species becoming extinct because of Palm oil plantations. There are thousands of Sumatran and Bornean species of animals, insect and plant under threat every day, including  the proboscis monkey, pygmy elephant, gibbon, sunbear, Sumatran tiger, Malayan tapir, Asian rhino, clouded leopard, refflesia flower and Bornean pitcher plant  to name but a few! It’s such a depressing thought that the next generation will only hear stories about these rainforests and beautiful animals and think that they sound like a fairytale!

A British naturalist,biologist and anthropologist named Alfred Russell Wallace visited Borneo in the 1850s; he went there because of the abundance of species. It was in Borneo that he began to develop the theory of evolution independently of Darwin. While he was there he wrote in his diary “ It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while, on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy”. Everything he predicted in that quote 160 odd years ago is coming true. If this man knew this back then, why we can’t figure it out now? Or is it that we just don’t care? Imagine how much there is left to be discovered instead of it all being destroyed before we get the chance.

All hope is not lost yet. There is still time to halt and try to reverse the damage we have done. The human race simply cannot survive if we continue down this path of destruction and frivolous consumerism. There are things that we, the individual consumers, can do.

• We can start by emailing the companies who’s products use Palm oil and urging them to stop. All you have to do is choose a company, go to their website and lodge a complaint. It makes a difference because the companies feel the consumer pressure.
• Signing petitions. Petitions still work. They may need a million signatures and your single signature helps! It only takes two minutes but makes a huge difference. The website “Say No To Palm Oil” has numerous links to petition sites in their “how to help” section, as well as other websites such as Avaaz.org…you could even set up your own petition.
• Donate money to the Borneo Orang-utan Survival Foundation, Sumatran Orang-utan Society , Orang-utan Land trust and may more organisations set up to help this crisis.
• Read the ingredients before you buy and BOYCOTT PALM OIL!!

“The ones that are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do”

image:http://www.filmofilia.com/

by David O’Brien

Starting his career making Television commercials, Ridley Scott was 39 years old by the time he made his first venture into filmmaking with his feature  debut “The Duellists” (1977). Its poor reception would contrast massively to the  impact his next feature film would have, the classic science-fiction/horror film “Alien” (1979). “Blade Runner” (1982) was his next film, although ignored at the time of its release and branding Scott as a particularly difficult director to work with due to its conflicted shoot, it later became one of the most influential films ever made. The years that followed would see Scott become one of the most polarizing directors, going from box office flops to box office smashes with films like “Legend” (1985), “Thelma & Louise” (1991), “White Squall” (1996), “Gladiator” (2000), “Black Hawk Down” (2001), “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005), “American Gangster” (2007) and “Robin Hood” (2010) and his long awaited Alien prequel “Prometheus” (2012). Scott’s extensive body of work, meticulous attention to detail and visual eye has cemented his place as one of the greatest directors of his generation.

Scott was born on Nov. 30, 1937 in South Shields, Northumberland, England. From an early age Scott showed a talent for art and drawing which developed as the years went on. His mother, Jean, an avid film fan, introduced her son to the joys of cinema. By the time he was 19 years old, however, Scott wanted to follow his father’s footsteps and enter the military; his father served as a brigadier for the British Army during World War II. But his Dad urged Scott to go to art school instead. Scott enrolled at West Hartlepool College of Art to study graphic design, then did the same at the Royal College of Art. After college Scott worked at the BBC as a set designer. But Scott’s real ambition was to direct, which he eventually got the opportunity to do after some dogged persistence.

Scott went on to direct a few episodes of television, which included the long-running crime drama “Z Cars” (BBC, 1962-1978),Scott ,however, became jaded by his low wages, so he left the BBC to enter into advertising commercials, which he later dubbed his “film school.” He quickly gained a reputation for himself by taking his work very seriously, directing hundreds of spots that were visually stunning and later mimicked by other commercial directors; his ads for Hovis bread were long remembered in the U.K. for being some of the best ever made. In 1967, Scott formed his own company, Ridley Scott Associates, which continued to have great success well after he started directing features, which he finally did when he was 39 years old. By that time, Scott was quite wealthy. The drive to make movies, however – something Scott had wanted since he was eight years old – proved too hard to resist.

In the mid-1970s, Scott began working with producer David Puttnam on numerous story concepts. They eventually came up with “The Duellists” (1977), a lavish historical drama based on a Joseph Conrad story about two officers in Napoleon’s army (Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel) who spend their time off challenging each other to bloody duels that result in 16 years of repeated draws. Though well received at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival, “The Duellists” was released in only seven theaters in the United States.

Undeterred, Scott became interested in directing science fiction, due to the success of “Star Wars” (1977). He was offered the job of directing “Alien” (1979) which became one of the most imitated and influential sci-fi horror films ever made – focusing on a crew aboard an ill- fated spaceship which is hunted by an alien xenomorph after it attaches itself to one of their own when they answer a distress signal on an mysterious derelict vessel. Spending all of its low budget on creating an amazing set design, Scott  managed to make  a visually stunning film that attracted mainstream audiences in with tension-filled scenes inside dank crawlspaces and with a truly  iconic scene involving an alien creature popping out of a crew member’s chest. Scott deftly kept the alien in the dark which sustained a sense of impending doom throughout the entire film. Also notable was Scott’s use of a female hero in the form of Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) which was unheard of in cinema at the time. Alien went on to become a massive franchise with numerous sequels and spin-offs throughout various different forms of media.

Alien established Scott as a serious talent, but it was up to his next feature, “Blade Runner” (1982), to confirm it. While no one was aware of it at the time, it would go on to be one of his finest works. Ironically, the film that would become one of the most celebrated science fiction films ever, was poorly reviewed and a box office flop at the time of its release. The shoot itself was horrifying for everyone involved,  with constant rain and night shoots along with a fractured relationship with the cast and crew. Harrison Ford played the lead, Rick Deckard, who is an ex-detective brought out of retirement to hunt down and kill a group of human androids  who have escaped a mining company and taken refuge in the dystopian world of Los Angeles, in 2019. Behind the scenes Scott had an uneasy working relationship with the crew from day one, upsetting the production design crew with demands for drastically changing established sets.

Despite the strenuous conditions Scott created a distinct and timeless look along with stunning visuals that, decades later, still stand up against todays films. It was ahead of its time in so many respects but trouble with its production would see it go through many different changes. If Scott was not fighting with the cast and crew, he was battling Warner Brothers over test screenings, which forced Scott to make changes he knew were wrong, including an extensive voice over to help people relate better to Ford’s character and follow the plot more easily. Scott was also forced to change his enigmatic ending which gave the film a lot more weight in place of a clichéd ending of Deckard and Rachel riding off into the sunset happily ever after, though in the years since its release, Scott has painstakingly re-cut the film, making a truly definitive version.

Scott was under a lot of pressure to produce a hit after “Blade Runner” flopped. Unfortunately, his next effort, “Legend” (1985), suffered a similar fate. A  breathtakingly beautiful fairy tale set in a mystical forest inhabited by magical creatures, “Legend” suffered from a redundant good vs. evil story, an un-charismatic male lead in Tom Cruise, and a meddling studio that cut  30 minutes from the final film, creating an incoherent movie that looked great, but failed to satisfy moviegoers. Scott went on to direct “Someone To Watch Over Me” (1987), a rather standard romantic thriller about a cop (Tom Berenger) who falls for a murder witness (Mimi Rogers) he is protecting against the mob. After that came and went without much of a stir, Scott directed Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia in “Black Rain” (1989), a crime thriller about two New York City cops trying to find a killer they lost while extraditing him back to Japan. Though not a critical hit, “Black Rain” did fare well at the box office.

Returning to the film genre that put him on the map, Scott reverted to a female hero in his next film “Thelma and Louise” (1991). In this seminal revisionist action thriller, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis starred as two small town girls who go on the run after killing a rapist, only to meet their fate on their own terms rather than those of the sympathetic police officer (Harvey Keitel) giving chase. “Thelma and Louise” was especially noted for its unconventional ending. Unlike his time working on “Blade Runner,” however, Scott battled hard to keep this ending.The film was a massive success and Scott earned a nomination for Outstanding Directorial Achievement from the Directors Guild of America, and another for Best Director at the Academy Awards.

Unfortunately for Scott, he followed this success with nearly a decade of poorly received and critical failures, starting with “1492: The Conquest of Paradise” (1992), a lavish but ultimately doomed retelling of the famed discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (Gerard Depardieu), then going on to make “White Squall” (1996)  a high-seas adventure about a group of young men struggling to survive after their boat capsizes and then finally “G.I. Jane” (1997), a flawed look at a woman (Demi Moore) struggling to prove herself worthy of becoming a Navy SEAL. Scott did, however, set up his own production company with his brother Tony Scott in 1994 called Scott Free.

Scott’s next film “Gladiator” (2000) was a triumphant return to the fabled sword-and-sandal epics of a bygone era in Hollywood which earned 12 Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Director, and eventually took home five Oscars, including Best Picture.

After the success of “Gladiator,” Scott fell into directing the “The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)  sequel “Hannibal” (2001) continuing the tale of Dr. Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins), 10 years after his escape from federal custody.Scott’s mildly entertaining take failed to live up to the tension and suspense of the original but that did not stop the movie from giving Scott his second huge hit in a row. Feeling himself on a roll, he directed the stunning “Black Hawk Down” (2002), a gripping take on the true story of a Black Hawk helicopter getting shot down while on an exercise in Somalia during the United States’ ill-fated humanitarian mission in 1993. Scott was honored with his third nomination for Best Director at the Academy Awards.

With three successive hits, Scott was on top form. But it was just a matter of time before he hit another stumbling block, which was “Matchstick Men” (2003), a quirky crime comedy about a neurotic con artist (an over-the-top Nicolas Cage) who gets enveloped by fear and panic when his partner (Sam Rockwell) wants to pull a big job. Despite the appeal of a unique twist on an old genre film, Scott failed to develop it to the level of true inspiration. After a short foray into television Scott returned “Kingdom of Heaven” (2005), a historical epic set during the 2nd and 3rd Crusades of the 12th century containing stunning battle sequences, while striking the right balance between grandeur and genuine character moments. It unfortunately failed to make much of an impact at the box office.

Scott would go on to form a long lasting partnership with Russell Crowe as they teamed up for four consecutive films together. First they collaborated on “A Good Year” (2006) a romantic comedy about a failing London banker (Crowe) who finds love with a beautiful Californian woman (Marion Cotillard) after he inherits a winery. Their next film was “American Gangster” (2007), a true-life description of 1970s Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), who gets nailed by Detective Richie Roberts, an honest cop (Crowe) trying to root out crooks on both sides of the law which earned Scott his third Oscar nomination for best director. The third film was an espionage thriller “Body of Lies” (2008), co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the role of a CIA operative used as a pawn by his supervisor (Crowe) in a high stakes game between Western and Arab intelligence agencies; they finally capped off their massively successful run with “Robin Hood” (2010) a visually spectacular epic that retold the story of Robin Hood.

Scott turned his eye back to the genre and film that made him and in 2011 he began production on  ”Prometheus” (2012),a science-fiction thriller initially intended as a prequel to “Alien”. The film was a box office hit but polarized audiences on its release. Visually breathtaking and acted well, especially Michael Fassbender’s take as the android David, it was panned however for its incoherent narrative but with a sequel extremely likely, these plot holes may yet be filled.

Scott was hit by tragedy in August 2012 with the apparent suicide of his brother Tony who leapt to his death from a suspension bridge in San Pedro California. Scott remained quiet throughout the ordeal and halted filming on his next film “The Counselor” for a week to mourn.

Scott’s foray back into science fiction in Prometheus has reignited his interest and he is planning to direct its sequel along with a highly anticipated sequel to Blade Runner. His next film The Counselor will star Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender in a tale involving drug trafficking