As Michael Viney turns 70 this month, friends reflect on how his move from Dublin was the start of a long-running drama that is his weekly Irish Times column, and the beginnings of lasting friendships.
From John Horgan, fellow journalist
Four words for Michael.
Envy - who wouldn't have wanted to be a full-time feature writer on The Irish Times in the 1960s, instead of being marked for meetings of the Dublin County Council?
Admiration - for the way in which, in the newspaper and on television, Michael brings precision to a high art, and embellishes it with a fine, individual prose.
Vicarious - he took a part of each of us down to Mayo with him, and thereby allowed us to delude ourselves that any of us could have done the same.
And friendship, which flourishes in spite of being shamefully neglected.
From Tim Robinson, author/environmentalist
Michael and Ethna moved from city to country shortly before us, and we used to follow their pioneering experiences through Michael's column, admiring their commitment to ecological living. When Michael proposed a film on my mapping activities, I feared it might paint me into a corner defined by environmentalism. To reassure me, Michael wrote that he too was "fighting to save what little poetic spark I still possess from going up in the general bonfire of indignation". The elegance of the formulation throws into relief Michael's modesty. I salute the unsoured realism of his reports from that battleground, the Irish countryside.
From Trevor Sargent TD, Green Party leader
Michael and Ethna Viney deserve warm tribute. The late 1970s, when "Another Life" began in The Irish Times were a formative time for me, a young green-thinking college student. I revelled in the prosaic accounts of self sufficient homestead living, accompanied by the trademark Viney illustrations. So valued were these articles, that I lovingly collected them in folders chronologically to enjoy again and again. No sooner had I finished Volume 1 of my compilation than The Irish Times stole my thunder and published its own collection "Another Life". My only consolation was I could save myself £2.75 incl. VAT, as I already had the original cuttings. Since then, Michael's way with words has inspired me and many others to grow our own food and to cherish threatened habitats. The wildlife of Ireland and the sanity of its people owe much to the eloquence and wisdom - and indeed the computer - of Michael and Ethna Viney.
From Michael Longley, poet
Michael and I are inspired by the same landscape in Co Mayo. He has made his home and cultivates his acre in Thallabawn. I visit the next townland, Carrigskeewaun, whenever I can. Occasionally, we have walked together - along the yellow strand or up to a mountainy tarn. But usually I follow in his footsteps, a student of his marvellous communiques from the west. I am one of thousands of Irish Times readers around the world who every Saturday turn to his column for news of his tiny smallholding and the windy world beyond its snug maze of fuchsia hedges. He has taught us about the worms under the grass, about the peregrine falcon and the clouds beyond, about beachcombing after a storm and fishing with a spillet at dawn.
Michael's gaze reaches from his compost heap to the Milky Way, from his own lovingly tended potato crop to the overgrown lazy-beds and the Famine ghosts across the ridge. Science and poetry come together in his writing: it is devout in its precision and sustained by a lovely verbal melody. He is one of our greatest writers. (Shouldn't he be a member of Aosdána?)
I love calling on the Vineys for vigorous conversation and ambrosial homegrown food. It has been my privilege occasionally to share with Michael more private thoughts - for instance, what's going to happen to us when we die, a question that can best be answered in terms of the Thallabawn landscape, and therefore with joyfulness as well as trepidation.
The microscopic flower in the following poem was plucked from a Viney column. I offer 'Petalwort' to Michael partly because, like so much of my verse, it is indebted to him, but mainly to wish him a very happy 70th birthday and to thank him for his creativity and artistry. And for his friendship. I look forward to sharing with him many more platefuls of the tastiest spuds in the west.