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Something happened last week, a load shifted in my psyche. I don’t have the words, really, to describe the feeling. Something like a grim set of the teeth. Determination to face the coming cyclone even though there will be nothing left intact on the other side. Over the weekend I went to see Scorsese’s brutal…
We spent the Thanksgiving holiday in San Luis Obispo visiting our long-time friends Gene and Ros. We also house-sat for a woman in Los Osos, free lodging in exchange for looking after her pets. In the morning we would take the dog for a walk. It was a strange experience because neighbors and other people…
Driving through the Irish countryside we saw countless small farms, each with a small herd of cattle or a few flocks of sheep. I don’t know what a head of beef goes for on the Irish market–I’d guess maybe between 800 and 1600 euro. Seems like you’d have to sell at least a hundred head…
You gotta love a gizmo that does only one thing, but does it exceptionally well. And if you find such a thing, let me know, because the Wolverine FlashPac has a few little quirks that leave me wondering if I can trust it completely. And that’s not how you want to feel about your equipment…
Leaving Dublin, heading for the airport, 5:00 AM, we found ourselves for just a second on Grafton Street in November. Young people in costume walked slowly, barefoot, weaving their unsteady ways to wherever home happens to be. Reality sinks in. Kavanagh’s Queen of Hearts is merciless. Without getting too sappy about it, I feel some…
Halloween in Dublin was a perfect night to go on a literary “pub crawl.” Our crawling party consisted of myself, Maureen’s brother Dan, his wife Christina and their children Cole and Ava. Cole was dressed as a Wraith, and Ava was in character as a lil’ devil. The city bustles with students who dress in…
Aside from visiting Williamstown and looking up the Family Tree, the other part of our mission was to cheer on Christy O’ as she ran the Dublin marathon. Christy was having some problems with a hip flexor and wasn’t planning to run a personal best, but she was determined to finish. Christy’s friend Tony O’Donnell…
Tom McCoy pilots the bus as if it was a cruise ship–smooth, steady, certain. And when we weren’t listening to Martin’s power ballads on the CD, Tom was happy to toss out bits of knowledge. For instance, the Derrynasaggart mountains are going through a wide scale reforestation program with lots of Sitka spruce and Canadian…
Somehow we’ve managed to avoid darkening the door of a church thus far. But we haven’t avoided Jesus, because there on the red flocked wallpaper in Danny Mann’s is a framed picture of the Sacred Heart. Danny Mann’s is a pub in the traditional style, with dark wood beams and wallpaper that looks to be…
We we hit Killarney a battalion quickly formed to go shopping. I decided this would be a good chance to snag another geocache. Armed with my trusty GPS it didn’t take long to pinpoint the coordinates on the western bank of the River Deenagh. The clue was that the cache would be in a hollow…
It is a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him… Edmund Ludlow This morning Tom McCoy took us along the Western coast of County Clare. We stopped outside of Kinvarra for a Kodak moment with a pastoral scene on one…
Back to the Raddison for dinner. Someone in our party spotted Martin Sheen at our hotel, rumor is that he lives in Galway part of the year and goes to university. The lobby was full of Australian football players, in town for the anual Irish/Aussie grudge match of International Rules football. The Aussies stayed up…
By all appearances Williamstown is a typical Irish farming community. The population is about 300. The town consists mainly of three pubs, each next door to the other, and a church across the street. What’s different about Williamstown is that two of the three pubs are up for sale while the church is undergoing a…
People tell you how green Ireland is, but they’re only telling you half the story. You never hear how brown the countryside is, grass turned to rust by the high iron content of the soil. Even the fresh mountain streams run a kind of gunmetal color with yellow foam breaking around the rocks. Some places…
Feck (pronounced “fake” or “fehk” in Irish) is an acceptable word in mixed company, whereas fuck (pronounced “fook”) is vulgar. Feck is an obscure word, meaning something in the neighborhood of “forceful.” The word feckless means the opposite–weak and impotent. Just don’t overuse feck or feckin’…especially not around a crowd of native Esperanto speakers or…
