Dateline New Orleans, Louisiana –

I wasn’t going to write anything this evening or really report on vacation part 2 – the unnecessary sequel and then I happened to open my Twitter app while my friend Frank Thompson was driving us down I–59 from Birmingham to NOLA this afternoon and took a look at what was going down. I haven’t seen a celebrity marriage implode so fast and furiously in public since Ethel Merman and Earnest Borgnine or perhaps Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney. The public mud wrestle on social media between POTUS and the world’s richest man would be the stuff of high comedy if the consequences for all of us weren’t so deadly serious. I have no idea where all this is going. All I can do is sit ringside along with the rest of the world with my jaw dragging on the floor wondering where the hell this is going to end up. I guess we’re all going to find out eventually. I don’t even care which faction ends up on top. I find them all equally obnoxious and so out of the touch with the needs of the country and its citizens that my general reaction is revulsion, in between fits of giggles.

I got back to the US yesterday evening after a highly uneventful return flight from Dublin via ATL. Everything went smoothly. I cleared customs and immigrations with bored waves of the hand from Border Patrol in Ireland (I’m still not sure why we clear there rather than back in the US but it did make dealing with ATL so much easier). All that tells me is that I’m not being subversive enough yet in my writings and I may need to think about upping my game.

As I returned to the US on Wednesday and don’t have to be back at work until Monday, I decided to treat my old friend Frank, whose birthday it was yesterday, to a birthday weekend in NOLA. I haven’t been for a few years and it’s one of my favorite cities. And so, after arriving, he zoomed in from South Carolina where he now resides, a few old friends including Bill McMullen, Leah Luker, and Patti Steelman gathered to celebrate his continued aging at my condo last night and we packed up and left this morning for NOLA, stopping for brunch at Waffle House with Barbara Gerardo in Tuscaloosa on our way down the road.

We got in around dinner time, and I rapidly determined that I was in a very different climate zone than I had been the last two weeks (I did repack between trips) and headed out into the muggy evening for dinner at the Gumbo Shop followed by Hurricanes on the patio at Pat O’Brien’s. I am comfortably numb now, and have no agenda for the next few days other than some gallery hopping and eating and drinking. I did bring Richard II with me to do some work on it but the chance of that happening is fairly small. I also have to start working on this sermon I’m slated to give in six weeks on morality and health care.

Sleep patterns have been erratic the last few days so I’m hoping to just conk out and get myself back onto central time tonight. We shall see.

Dateline – Dublin, Ireland

I apologize for not writing last evening but I was tired and yesterday and today are more or less the same day in regards to travel, just separated by a sleep period. All of the organized stuff was finished. Just me here in Dublin for two days with no specific agenda, a two day Hop on Hop off buss pass if I didn’t feel like walking (and Dublin isn’t all that big so I did walk for the most part – me and the River Liffey became good friends), and lists of things sent from various sources for things to see and do while here. My pedometer is happy. I feel like I caught most of the highlights (but deliberately skipped a few things like the Guiness Tour – I’m not a huge fan of beer). Now I get a decent night’s sleep before getting up around midnight Birmingham time for the roughly 16 hour process of returning home. Apparently Ireland has a most favored nations clause of some sort that allows us to clear immigration here rather than in Atlanta so it’s supposed to be a bit easier. It also explains why there are 10-15,000 undocumented Irish in the USA I suppose. Haven’t seen a single report of ICE interfering with them. I wonder why…

So, a few of the stops and some impressions of Dublin. First, it’s a fairly flat city as it’s built along a number of tidal rivers making walking easy. Second, there are very few large buildings and nothing that would qualify as a skyscraper. I think the tallest I saw were about fifteen floors. Ireland has been a poor country for centuries with its wealth expropriated and exported until relatively recently. It’s time with the EU seems to have turned things around. Prices in Dublin are no longer cheap and real estate throughout the country seems to be zooming up and out of reach of the younger generation which makes me think the young uns will again become Ireland’s most valuable export over the last few centuries, her people.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral – like most medieval Irish architecture more blocky and Romanesque than the soaring Gothic of France or the Perpendicular of England. Still splendid in its own way.

Temple Bar – like any entertainment district anywhere filled with pubs, restaurants, bars, tourist shops, and people determined to have a good time. Some of the winding side streets have some hidden treasures but you[ve seen plenty of places like this before.

Trinity College – Interesting mix of Jacobean and Modern built around a classical quadrangle. Lots of history. The Book of Kells, one of the great antiquities is housed here. It’s not the largest thing and it would be difficult to display multiple pages but I’m really not sure why they had to turn it into an hour long son et lumiere ‘experience’ full of bad animation. I’d rather stay home and watch the Irish film, The Secret of Kells, which is full of good animation. (This whole interactive immersive trend with art puzzles me in general).

The Irish National Gallery – A middling collection of minor old masters. Some very good Irish painting, especially a collection of Jack Butler Yeats (William’s brother – their father was a celebtrated portraitist and there is some of his work as well). The Irish National Portrait Gallery is appended. I especially liked the modern stuff from the last fifty or so years of people whom I know from news and culture.

The General Post Office Museum – A multimedia interactive display of the events around the rising of 1916 and the partiton and civil war of the early 1920s. It’s in the actual GPO building which was the center of the 1916 action. I liked this one a lot and would like to see it expanded. There’s so much more to tell about modern Irish history. I knew the bare bones (mainly gleaned from BBC series or historical novels of the Edwardians and World War I as it’s often in the background) but have learned a good deal more this past week. I’ll need to do some additional reading. If anyone has recommendations, let me know.

The EPIC Museum – a museum dedicated to the Irish diaspora and how Irish individuals and culture have traveled the world and influenced so much in so many places. Again, very interactive and multimedia and laid out through a series of basement vaults under an old 19th century indoor marketplace. A good one to bring the kids.

Not an exhaustive list of everything, but a few highlights. I’m glad I made the trip. I feel like I’ve seen a good deal of the country over the last ten days and have a feel for what it’s like, it’s history, and how it fits into the current world puzzle. Still planning a fall trip in my usual late October slot but haven’t figured out what or where yet. Plenty of time. I’m thinking something slower paced – perhaps with a beach involved.

Looking over the news from the states, Trump issues an executive order on Friday regarding science and scientific research. Perusing it, it more or less states that political appointees can and should censor scientific findings incompatible with poltiical goals and that scientists who publish findings unfavorable to ideology can and should be punished by executive branch officers. This sort of thing has been done before – particularly in Stalinist Russia and Mao’s China and the results tended to be rather disastrous leading to millions of deaths from starvation due to failed crops and the like. History is unlikely to repeat but it does rhyme so expect some sort of major disaster with serious consequences for millions of us when politics trumps science because science and the natural world don’t care who runs the White House. The most likely thing is another pandemic which is significantly worse than Covid and which spreads much more easily as we have destroyed containment mechanisms. But then again, we have a head of FEMA who doesn’t know that we have a hurricane season, NOAA and the NWS are in tatters, and the administration is planning on 40% plus cuts in science research across the board which is going to have huge ripple effects through academia and any town home to a medical school or university with strong science programs. One piece of good news, Trump and Elon are on the outs with Elon offering a scathing read on the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. That didn’t take long…

And I don’t want to hear any ‘that’s not what we voted for’ – it’s exactly what you voted for. All the information was there with what the administration’s plans were long before the election. I can’t help it if you didn’t do the reading.

Dateline – Dublin, Ireland

The organized tour/get on the bus/why am I so danged tired portion of the current vacation is over as of this evening. I still have three nights and two full days here in Dublin during which I can get into trouble if I so desire but I get to do it on my schedule. The first thing on tap for tomorrow is sleeping in. I’m not due anywhere and I am putting out the Do Not Disturb sign and I’m sleeping until my natural urges wake me. As I’m not sure what time zone my body and brain are effectively in – Greenwich or Central or something in between, that could be anywhere between about 7 am and noon. And that’s OK with me. We’re three weeks out from the solstice and at latitude 53 (I looked it up) so it doesn’t get dark until 10 pm anyway.

We departed from Tralee about 8:30 this monring and were in County Cork by ten or so for a stop at Blarney Castle and gardens. The castle and grounds, still in private hands, have become a rather significant tourist attraction. As it was my first visit to Ireland, I felt obliged to visit the castle (not much but very photogenic) climb up the 100 or so stairs to the top, and assume the very uncomfortable position necessary to kiss the Blarney Stone. (It’s disinfected between each supplicant so Tom Lehrer got it wrong in his song. I’m more likely to get covid from crowding up the very narrow ill ventilated stairs than from the actual kiss). I can now scratch that item off the life list and feel no need to repeat it should I return to Ireland in the future. Does anyone still read Richard Scarry to their children? My favorite, which I had as a small child and read and reread until the pages began to fall apart was ‘Busy Busy World’ in which each chapter took place in a different country. In recent years as I have taken to traveling, episodes and illustrations will come racing back to me as I hit that particular destination. My introduction to the Blarney Stone was from this book and the Ireland chapter in which Patrick the Pig learns to talk. (He won’t speak as a small pig – his parents take him to kiss the Blarney stone and then he won’t shut up – a child’s version of ‘be careful for what you wish’). I’ll have to see if I can find a copy to reread. And I will forever be in the Lowly Worm fan club.

The castle may be a bit underwhelming, especially to those who have been to a lot of medieval European sites, but the gardens are to die for. Acres and acres meticulously planted and maintained. At this time of year they were in full bloom (except the azaleas – they were over) and wonderful to wander through. They reminded me very much of Butchart Gardens in Victoria so my advice is go for the gardens and accept the castle as an add on. I may have kissed the Blarney stone this monring, but I don’t seem to have noticed a change in vocabulary or any irresistable urges to speak.

Then back on the road and another three hours or so to Dublin. Different hotel this time – the Radisson which is two blocks from St. Patrick’s cathedral and therefore centrally located unlike the castle in which we all started a week ago. I had a couple of hours before dinner so took a walk, found Temple Bar, Dublin Castle, the cathedral and a few other landmarks, all close by before joining the group for our closing dinner. This was at The Abbey Tavern in what used to be the independent fishing village of Howth but is now a suburban part of Dublin. Corned Beef and Cabbage, Guiness, Apple Tart, Irish Coffee, and entertainment consisting of Irish singing and dancing definitely remixed for the tourist trade. I was not a huge fan. We then said goodbye to Dominic our intrepid tour guide and driver (who was very grateful that we were a small group of 9, got along well with each other, and handled minor travel issues ourselves) and I now have 60 or so hours in Dublin before I have to think about the road home.

For those who are wondering, I still have a bit of a chest cough (as I do after every cold virus), feel a little more fatigued than I think I should, but am otherwise back to normal. And I have another full week before I have to return to work. I just hope I don’t pick up yet another viral crud when I seal myself in a tin can with several hundred of my closest friends and launch myself across an ocean midweek. The work stuff remains pretty caught up but I’m feeling the need to throw myself into Richard II in the not too distant future as there is a lot of work to be done there, especially to pull off the concept which will require a lot of stage time from the actors when they aren’t the focus but still have to be present and I have to help them come up with requisite emotion, backstory, and balance it in such a way that there is interest outside of who is speaking but not a stealing of scenes.

Perusing the headlines, the one I’m most interested in is the absolute stunning success of the Ukranian military at pretty much wiping out Russian air power with their drone operation. That’s a maneuver that’s going to be in all of the military histories and studied at war colleges worldwide from now on. Response from the administration has been muted. I’m wondering how they’re going to spin it given the rather deep tendrils the Russian state has inserted into American politics over the last decade. Bravo Volodomyr. (I’m firmly on Ukraine’s side in this particular conflict).

More and more of the great American public who somehow bought the idea that criminals were flowing in over porous borders and must be immediately removed are now starting to understand that an overly empowered ICE force is going to go after easy targets and that’s going to lead to a lot of hard working people being branded as ‘criminals’ when they’re nothing of the sort, the tearing apart of families including American citizens, the creation of detention centers which are concentration camps in all but name, and misapplication of punishment as those with the power can’t be bothered to verify if they even have the right people in custody and are under intense pressure to step up the numbers. To those who are now saying ‘This is not what I voted for’ I say ‘This is exactly what you voted for and you must learn to live with your guilty conscience or figure out how to begin making amends’. If anyone tries to come after me or anyone I’m around without a properly signed judicial warrant, I’m not staying silent. I guess I’ll find out on Wednesday when I need to clear immigration coming back to the US if I’m yet on any watch lists for more intense screening due to my ‘subversive’ writings.

It’s nearly midnight local time. I feel the need for sleep. Carry on.

Dateline – Tralee, Ireland

And the end of the tour of the Irish countryside approaches. One more day as we head back to Dublin tomorrow, then a few city days before heading home. Even though I return stateside on Wednesday, I am not going back to work until Monday the 9th as planned. There is an extra bonus sequel: Vacation II in between that will go direct to Netflix as no one asked for it and no one much is interested and it’s not likely to engender a daily update as it’s a destination I’ve been to and written about many times. In the meantime, I will keep writing about Ireland with other random thoughts thrown in as they strike.

Today was a relative sleep in day and I didn’t have to be down to breakfast until sometime after 8:15 for my oatmeal and yogurt (my staples when I’m a bit uncertain about the eggs and breakfast meats at the hotel buffet) prior to boarding the bus. This time, we headed south to the road around the Iveragh peninsula known as the Ring of Kerry, one of the most scenic on the island as it veers from the waters of Dingle Bay to passes between the highest mountains in the country all in the matter of a few miles. Mind you they aren’t terribly high mountains, even in Appalachian terms, but they’re pretty darn impressive as they more or less rise directly out of the sea. The weather held (cloudy but fairly clear) and most of the morning was spent stopping for photo ops and oohing and aahing at the scenery. Lunch was in Waterville, at roughly the halfway point. The rains descended while we were safely inside the pub, dropped an inch or so of water and then cleared up just as we finished lunch and thoughtfully stayed away the rest of the day. I guess they were making up for yesterday at the Cliffs of Moher.

After lunch, a stop at Daniel O’Connell’s family manse, Derrynane house with a ramble along the beach in the company of an expert on the growing and preparation of seaweed for human consumption. Samples were provided for tasting. This was nothing new. After all, my mother was a marine botanist by training. I was encouraged to try a number of seaweeds on beach walks as a child. I did not develop a taste. Then back on the bus for more scenery (wild little islets, steep green cliffs falling into mountain tarns with their own wild little islets and the occasional red deer hanging out in the fields along with the cattle) arriving in the town of Killarney late in the afternoon and told to amuse and feed ourselves for a few hours. As it was the Saturday of June Bank Holiday weekend (more or less equivalent to our Memorial Day Weekend and the start of the summer season), the town was hopping, especially with a large motorcycle festival in town. I was getting a bit tired of meat and potatoes so I looked around and found an Asian restaurant and had a bowl of Thai green curry with rice.

I’m having a quiet evening in tonight. Tomorrow promises to be a fairly long driving day with only one significant stop prior to Dublin, at Blarney castle. I’m not sure if kissing the Blarney stone is involved. If I come back with a new accent and even more of a tendency to get up on soapboxes than I already possess, you’ll know.

Having not felt great for a couple of days, I’ve cut the last few of these missives a bit short. There are some of you who are offering prayers of thanks, I know, but others like heading into the woods of my prose and ideas. I’ll make it up to you in a couple of days. There are a bunch of things percolating that will need to be written down soon. Just not tonight.

Dateline – Tralee, Ireland

Today is the 30th of May. If we still believed in traditional calendars, we’d be celebrating memorial day but that was this past Monday due to changes made in my childhood in order to create more long weekends for the federal workforce. I get the reasons for the floating holiday but I think we lose something when we give those calendar traditions up. In this case, the special celebration of my sister’s birth. Yes, she was born on May 30th of a year a number of decades prior to the current one. If you want the exact date, ask her. In her time, she has been annoying younger sibling, creative free spirit, talented graphic designer and now a well regarded tattoo artist. She has always been the one in the family who has always met me where I am and never tried to course correct me. She also tells me exactly what she thinks when I’m being stupid. Here’s to you Jeannie Rae.

The viral illness is being beaten back through a combination of wise eating choices, Tylenol, and adequate rest. I haven’t missed anything major. It seems to be going through our little group. A few others have had a bit of a hacking cough and looked a little peaked at breakfast. All I can say is it’s not terribly long lasting and doesn’t appear to be covid, at least according to my internal barometer. I should be pretty much back to normal by tomorrow with one more night’s good sleep. And as we aren’t changing lodgings tomorrow, I get to sleep in a bit.

This morning, however, it was up early and back on the bus for the drive to County Clare and the Cliffs of Moher. This was the first disappointment of the trip (there has to be at least one). Although we left the hotel in sunshine, when we arrived on the coast it was rainy, foggy and minimal visability. I put on my rain gear, and headed out to the view points anyway. I have long learned with sea fog that patience will be rewarded. Sure enough, with picking a single vantage, and waiting, clouds would lift and separate and reveal different parts of the cliffs. It wasn’t the postcard perfect scenic view expected but was more dramatic with sudden reveals, shapes looming in the mist, and the birds calling and dying down depending on the visibility. Not good for pictures, but oh well. My fantasy of being Sarah Miles in Ryan’s Daughter and losing my parasol over the cliffs in David Lean’s somewhat obvious visual set up of loss of innocence will have to wait for another day. Besides which, I’m not Sarah Miles, I’m John Mills (and at least he won an Oscar).

Leaving the cliffs, we started south to the Dingle peninsula. We hadn’t gone five miles before the skies cleared again. Figures. Something about the microclimate of the cliffs I presume. Down into the valley of the river Shannon and then onto a ferry across as it’s much too broad at its estuary to bridge easily. Then up and down various hilly country roads until we made it into that part of Ireland that I’ve always referred to as the Fingers after Game of Thrones and ended up on the south side of the peninsula at Dingle Bay and the town of Dingle. Dingle is a seaside town that was probably aworking fishing village and port for about ten centuries and has now become a twee tourist destination full of gift shops, yarn shops, and ice creameries. It’s setting on the edge of the bay is spectacular nad the harbor isn’t large enough to compete these days so I guess they had to do something. I took pictures. I had an ice cream cone.

Then, with the waning of the afternoon, a bus ride back to Tralee (as in Rose of Tralee), the big town in the area at 25,000 population. The hotel is decent. Dinner was good and I’ve been watching some bad local television after. Tomorrow, a scenic drive around another of the finger peninsulas, the famous Ring of Kerry.

I poked through the political headlines from back home a bit. Was very amused at the thought of Stephen Miller, the chief protagonist in the sick and somewhat farcical deport them all games the current administration is playing running around with an immigrant who lied on his visa application by the name of Elon Musk. I almost forgot that there’s a genocide against White South Africans – it’s so enormous that fewer than sixty took advantage of expedited evacuation and immigration.

It’s becoming clearer and clearer as to what the purpose of DOGE was and saving dollars wasn’t it. The total savings, despite untold havoc and tens of thousands of disrupted lives is only that of a couple of pieces of top grade military hardware. The purpose was to install assets of Musk, Peter Thiel, and the other tech bros in all of the necessary offices to be able to swipe, collate, analyze and otherwise use government data for whatever purposes they choose and with virtually no oversight. The obvious first move, now that the foundations have been thoroughly weakened is to let government agencies fail and, when the public starts screaming, to replace those services with private companies who can do the same work (as they absconded with the data) for profit – it will likely be done well for the haves and poorly for the have nots with tiered benefits and premium services and it will all be made palatable by direct to consume psy-ops which will make Cambridge Analytica look like childs play.

I really need to look into that British passport eligibility. Although I’m not sure it helps all that much post Brexit.

Dateline – Adare, Ireland

I’m feeling a bit better thn last night after snoozing in the bus a good piece of the day. (The weather was foul – rainy and grey so there wasn’t all that much to look at anyway). I expected dreary grey weather when I booked the trip (but according to all of the locals the early part of May was absolutely lovely this year. Must have brought the grey skies with me from my Seattle upbringing).I’m hoping one more long night with nothing to do will get me over the hump. Not feeling well in strange hotel rooms in foreign countries is my idea of a good time.

We left Westport and county Mayo this morning, once more tearing across rural Irish lanes. Dominic, our driver/guide has been doing this for decades and seems to be an old hand at roads too narrow for passing, sharp curves, and blind corners. As we are a small group, we’re not in a full size bus. I can only imagine what mad skills he would need to handle one of those on some of the backroads we’ve been trundling down. Our first stop was a sheep farm which offers a demonstraction of border collies rounding up and maneuvering a flock. I wouldn’t want to try and train a dog for something like that. But Janet, our demonstration dog, seemed to be having the time of her life – the sheep not so much. The farmer running the place struck me as being out of the mold of Farmer Hoggett and I expected ‘That’ll do pig, that’ll do’ at any moment.

Back on the bus and heigh ho the wind and the rain and headed into Galway for lunch. Galway is a prosperous small city of about 100,000 which has made a name for itself in the biotech industry. (remember that your heart stents, insulin pumps, defibrillators and all the rest are imported when considering tariff policy. Some shopping, some lunch, a stop at the cathedral (which is younger than I am – it’s Romanesque in style but was built in the 1960s). Then on the bus to the village of Adare which is about seven miles outside of Limerick. The hotel tonight is the Woodlands which started out as a four bedroom B and B fifty years ago and which the family have steadily grown into a 100 room rural destination hotel/event space. Confirmation parties and a wedding in residence this evening.

The matriarch of the owning family came in to tell us a bit about the story of the hotel when she checked on our dinner. The kitchen is very much farm to table with their own organic gardens and orchard (Tommy would have loved that). And there’s a petting zoo and a number of walking trails, including one with some fairy scenes for the kids to explore (Steve would have loved that. Actually, he would probably have stolen a couple of table cloths, rigged himself up as Oberon, and run around popping out from behind trees exclaiming ‘Look at me, I’m a fairy’ giving a couple of three year olds life long psychological complexes and leading to a visit from the local constabulary).

Going to bed early. Nothing else to say tonight.

Dateline – Westport, Ireland

As Robert Preston once said as Toddy in the movie version of Victor/Victoria, there’s nothing more inconvenient than an old queen with a head cold. One snuck up on me today with a stuffy and runny nose, a mild headache and some mild unwellness. It’s not bad enough to knock me off my stride but I did decide it would be wise to knock off the days activities at dinner and to spend this evening in the hotel room doing very little. Tonight, I am at the Knockranny House hotel in Westport, Ireland, a rather upscale little boutique town on the west coast of the island. The hotel is spacious and my room is large enough to conduct a pilates class should I so choose. I am lounging on the bed before getting about nine or ten hours sleep. WIth luck, the viral demons will be subdued in the morning. I know it’s not Covid. I have some very specific physical feelings with that the times I have had it and they are all absent this time around so I think it’s garden variety rhinovirus.

We got up this morning, left the hotel in Donegal and headed a bit south and back just over the border of Ulster and into Northern Ireland about 100 yards in order to visit the Belleek pottery and procelain factory which has been in continuous operation in the same facility for about 170 years. I emerged from a tour of the factory with a much greater knowledge as to the creation of fine china, a healthy respect for modern kiln technology, and a new understanding of how much of the work must be hand done. Belleek is known for their intricate porcelain baskets with a multitude of china flowers and butterflies arranged on them for maximum effect. It’s all done by a team of fine crafstmen from the creation of the weave patterns to the making of the flowers to the painting of the colors. And there’s not a lot of them. Maybe a half dozen or so in each department as it’s difficult work which requires years of apprenticeship training to get right. I now understand why the pieces are as expensive as they are. Many hours of skilled labor in each. I did not buy one as everything I liked was well out of my price range.

From Ulster, we cut across the northern part of the country to the west coast through WIlliam Butler Yeats country beneath the shadow of Ben Bulben mountain, a huge table formation and through County Sligo and into County Mayo arriving at the town of Westport. Where most Irish towns grew up higgledy piggledy from medieval footpaths and lanes with streets running every which way, Westport was a planned community, laid out at the behest of the Marquis of Sligo back in the 18th century and it’s rather charming with its streets radiating out from a central octagonal market square. The town isn’t very big so it didn’t take that long to explore it. Then it was off to Westport House, the local manor house and home to the Marquises of Sligo for three centuries.

Westport House was commissioned originally in the 1730s with much rearranging and adding over the years. The grounds were laid out with an ornamental lake and canal, and woods and copses to catch the eye and at the end of the property, the tidal inlet that leads to the sea. Like most of the other great country houses, three hundred years of water damage and deferred maintenance have left significant scars on the house and the family like, most of the rest of the landed gentry, no longer had the rental incomes to support it after the great war. (It’s all very Downton Abbey). The family have sold the house to a very wealthy local family who are about to pour tens of millions into a major restoration effort for both the house and the grounds.

The house was built on the site of Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen’s castle from Tudor times. Nothing remains of this other than the dungeons in the basement. Boubil and Schonberg of Les Miz fame wrote a very bad musical treatment of her life a few years back that flopped on Broadway and has not been seen since. She’s a fascinating historical figure, especially in her negotiations with Queen Elizabeth I but not everything needs to be a musical. It might be worth coming back in five years or so to see how the restoration is getting on. I’m one of those who was forunate enough to see the Sistine Chapel both before and after it’s major cleaning and restoration in the 1990s and it was a very different experience both times.

From my perusal of the headlines, the Trump administration seems to be doubling down on trying to destroy Harvard, the most prestigious of American universities (he’s so focused on this that there has to be something he’s trying to get back at. Was it his not being accepted when he applied to college? There as speculation it was Barron who did not get in and that this is what’s driving it but Melania is denying that) in a level of petty vindictiveness that would make Roy Cohn roll in his grave. RFK Jr. has decided that the three most prestigious medical journals in the world – The New England Journal of Medicine (founded 1812), The Lancet (founded 1823) and The Journal of the American Medical Association (founded 1883) are corrupt and that government funded scientists and health researchers should no longer be allowed to publish in them. Ummm… two centuries of the brightest minds in medicine have published and monitored the research that appears on those pages. I think they would have noticed if something were seriously off. The ostensible charge is that the corruption occurs because they publish the results of clinical drug trials that were funded by pharmaceutical companies. Ummm…. it’s called research and development and peer review and others then being sure that results can be appropriately replicated. I’m still waiting for the NIH to come out full bore for Carter’s Little Liver Pills and Snake Oil. It’s where we’re headed.

There’s a new strain of covid making the rounds – NB 1.8.1. It became rather wide spread in China and has now started to pop up all over the US and Europe. It’s still an omicron strain and, from what I can tell, it’s not that different from prior circulating strains in terms of virulence, morbidity and mortality. Like all covid, it’s not a great thing to get but it doesnt’ appear to be causing new serious issues. I’m still waiting for a mutation that causes something major. It’s coming and we in the US, after the major destruction of the public health and medical systems that has been meted out over the last few months, aren’t going to be able to do much about it. Keep your masks and your hand sanitizer handy and watch the news.

Dateline – Donegal, Ireland

And a second night in Donegal – which is nice as it means there was no need to pack and get the suitcase out the door at an early hour this morning and I had a very nice time sleeping in a bit. (Cue ‘Another Suitcase in Another Hall’). I did get up and get moving eventually, had my hotel breakfast buffet (middling quality) and walked back into the center of town to finish exploring. It didn’t take long. Donegal is not all that large. I was back at the hotel in plenty of time to board the bus for our day of exploring the Irish Highlands to the north and east of Donegal Bay. They’re part of the same geological formation that created both the Appalachians and the Scottish Highlands so I suppose I was connected to both my ancestors and my current domicile in some strange geologic way.

The roads in rural Ireland are narrow, rarely divided, and laid atop peat bogs and marshes so they tend to settle in unusual ways. This makes a drive along them, even in a small bus, something akin to an amusement park ride with strange sudden bumps, rapid turns and an occasional sudden drop off. Watching the scenery go by outside the windows was fine but any attempt at reading would likely lead to a bad case of motion sickness.

We skirted Donegal Bay, went through the fishing port of Killybegs (looking like every coastal town in Washington, Oregon and Alaska with a mix of commercial and pleasure fishing craft in the harbor) and then climbing up the side of the mountains to Slieve League, the tallest sea cliffs in Europe rising some 2000 feet from the ocean to the top of the peaks. It was a gorgeous view, if a bit chilly, shared mainly with the ever present sheep snacking away on the grasses and heather. Down the hill for an Irish Coffee (one of the few foods to contain all four essentials – alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat) and then cross country to the town of Ardara and a visit to the Triona factory and showroom where they continue to make traditional Donegal tweeds – complete with weaving demonstration. (I splurged and bought myself a new blazer in a rather becoming shade of blue). More Irish coffee. Down the street a bit to Nancy’s bar, a pub that’s been in the McHugh family for eight generations for dinner. (Guiness this time). Dinner entertainment was an energetic young fiddle player who’s winning awards for his traditional Irish music at the ripe old age of 16. He’s going places. Then back to the hotel. I am considering going back into town this evening, but I am an old fart and should probably call it an early evening and conserve energy.

I’m starting to gather ideas for the sermon I need to write on returning – ‘Moral injury, moral evil, and the American Health Care System’. It shouldn’t take me more than a couple of days. My traveling companions are all of a certain age so I’m pumping them for stories of their experiences so I can have some fresh anecdotes with which to spice up the finished project. I should also be working on Richard II, but that’s going to require deeper thought so I’ll probably leave that until after I get back, recover, and am back in usual form. I have two weeks between back to the grind date and first rehearsal.

Until tomorrow, sláinte…

Dateline – Donegal, Ireland

Up far too early this morning to get ready for the major drive of the week, from Dublin in the country’s Southeast to Donegal in the country’s Northwest. Still it wasn’t too bad. Ireland is not a large country. It’s a good deal smaller than Alabama (32,500 square miles including Ulster vs 52,500 square miles). It has a somewhat larger population of about 6.5 miliion compared to Alabama’s 5.2 million. And it definitely has a different climate. It’s been gray and blustery with intermittent rain showers all day (with a couple of gorgeous rainbows when the sun did manage to break through) and it’s just now twilight at 10 PM due to the northern latitude, all in all very like the Seattle of my childhood. I have my Gortex rain jacket and an extra sweater so I’m doing just fine. My traveling companions from California, not so much.

The first leg was from Dublin to a town called Strokestown in the middle of the country. We stopped there to visit Strokestown house, one of the grand old Georgian country manses that survive and to take in the National Famine Museum that it houses. One may ask why the museum commemorating the potato blight and famine of the 1840s is in such an out of the way place and not in Dublin, the answer lies, as it often does, in historical accident. Strokestown house was occupied by one family, the Mahons, for about 300 years as the lands and rents were granted to the family by Oliver Cromwell in his English colonization enterprises of the 1680s and the last member of the family not having vacated until about 1980. The Mahons must have been packrats as the man who bought the estate in the late 70s, intending to raze it, started to rooting around in disused cupboards and found more or less a complete archive and history of the family, the tenants and the workings of the plantation including full documentation of what happened to the 12,000 or so people who lived on the land at the time of the famine. The head of the family at that time, Dennis Mahon, was a piece of work. Profligate and with no interest in the humans who depended on him and the estate to survive, solely in the profits he felt were his due, he was eventually assassinated by the locals, but not before thousands of his tennants died or emigrated (after walking to Dublin), aided by the Mahons as they figured out that paying passage for their dying tennants in coffin ships headed to Canada was cheaper than paying the relief taxes imposed by the need for workhouses and soup kitchens.

Reading the letters and ledgers, carefully preserved, and the callousness with which life and death are discussed as a drain on profits, I could not help but draw parallels to the discussions currently happening in congress regarding the budget bill and its cuts to food assistance and health programs. The language and attitudes are exactly the same. Looking through the exhibits and through the public rooms of the house (very lived in and with an incredibly intact Georgian kitchen), I thought a little bit of my Irish antecedents. I have one great great great grandmother from Ireland by the name of Betsy Nacey. I know next to nothing about her other than she emigrated to Canada where she married a German emigree named Nolop some time in the early to mid 19th century. I don’t know the dates to know if she was running from the famine or came over in a coffin ship or if she arrived before that time. Must do some poking around Ancestry.com when I have some spare time.

Back on the bus and another hour or so and over the border into Northern Ireland and to the town of Enniskellen where we stopped at a 19th century Irish pub known as The Hollow although its real name is The WIlliam Blake. (Poets and Pubs – that’s Ireland). It was chosen as it has a relatively famous carved door. The center for filming of Game of Thrones was Northern Ireland and one of the locations, used as The Kings Road, is an avenue of interlacing beech trees called The Dark Hedges. During production, a windstorm toppled several of the trees. The production took charge of the downed trunks and the craftsmen employed on the show made them into ten carved doors (one for each episode of season six – why season six? I haven’t the foggiest). One ended up in this pub and there’s a whole game where you run all over Northern Ireland trying to collect all ten doors. I am not participating.

Then back on the bus and on to Donegal where we are spending tonight and tomorrow night. Donegal is one of those picturesque little towns with a crumbling old castle, some well used churches, and a large market square/high street that looks like the set of a BBC television series. I took a quick walk around it before dinner but the rain was getting harder so I repaired back to the hotel (modern and comfortable and not crumbling) to eat and to take it easy for a while. We have nothing planned until lunch time tomorrow so I’ll head back into town in the morning. Hopefully the weather will have improved.

I have enjoyed a respite from American political news over the long weekend. I suppose I should start paying attention again tomorrow. From what I can tell, Trump’s big beautiful budget bill is falling apart at the seams as more and more people start to realize what’s actually in it and the Republican’s understand that votes for it will be weaponized in the midterms as people start losing various benefits. Trump himself put out a Memorial Day message that was his usual insulting gobbledygook and seems to have insulted the graduates of West Point by giving a graduation speech focused on trophy wives before he left early so he could play golf. I’m paying no attention to either his words or actions at this point. It’s not possible to get them to make any sort of sense or to ferret out coherent policy. I’m watching the powers behind the throne and what they’re up to. They are far more dangerous. Most of the Irish I’ve met, when they hear my American accent, are a bit standoffish so I’m now adding ‘yes I’m American and I didn’t vote for him’ and they thaw considerably.

Dateline: Dublin, Ireland

And I think I managed to make it out of the house and on to the plane without any major mishaps or omissions. I forgot to bring my compression socks for the plane but I do OK with transatlantic flights without them. They are an absolute necessity for transpacific flights however. I miss the world of people dressing up in tailored suits for travel, if it ever even existed outside of the tropes of classic Hollywood. I, in my polo shirt and slacks seemed to be remarkably overdressed for the occasion. I counted at least six sets of pajamas and something that I think was made out of discarded dental floss on the Atalnta to Dublin flight. In another couple of decades, hoodies and sweat pants will likely be de rigeur for society weddings.

Aside from my various ‘you kids keep off my lawn’ moments, the travel was uneventful. There were no weather delays. Air Traffic Control in both Birmingham and Atlanta seemed to be functioning normally. There were no significant lines for security or passport control. They did not lose my checked luggage. The entertainment system at my seat appeared to be fully functional. My choice of films to snooze through: Gladiator followed by Gladiator II (which I had not yet seen and I’m glad I did not waste several hours of my life catching it at the movie theater) followed by my umpteenth rewatch of Mary Poppins so my brain could have some comfort food as I kept dozing off. Actual sleep without CPAP or recumbent position wasn’t going to be possible. Mary Poppins was the first film I was taken to see at the movies, age 2 1/2. (I still remember the experience). It’s funny to consider that I am now retirement age and the two stars are still both very much with us.

As the plane approached Ireland, I cracked open the window shade to look as it was now Sunday morning thanks to time changes. Looking down, lots of green fields with trees and hedges outlining running water and a scattering of hamlets and small towns, then a loop out over the Irish Sea to get into position for landing in Dublin with a view of a number of the small islands that dot that body of water. Smooth landing in Dublin a few minutes later, all of the usual disembarkation rituals, and then off to meet the representative of the tour group in the Arrivals Hall. I’m taking this tour through a company called CIE which is the Irish National Transportation company which runs the busses and railways. So far I have been impressed. It’s a good deal cheaper than some of my other European jaunts but the amenities are almost as good.

The lovely lady from CIE met me, parked me at the coffee bar and told me to wait there while she collected other charges. She then promptly forgot about me and I did not see her for forty-five minutes until she arrived somewhat put out that I was lost. I told her I was sitting exactly where she told me to wait. Quick dash through airport to catch ground transportation to hotel. The hotel is known as Castle Clontarf and is on the grounds of a castle that was built as part of the defensive perimeter of the city starting in 1172. Most of the current castle is a 19th century pile of restoration that was some nobleman’s summer retreat. It’s architecturally interesting with lots of strange hallways and staircases with rooms shoehorned into odd corners. From the narrowness of the hall I am on and the fact that I am a bit below ground level, I assume that I am someplace in the old servant’s quarters… or the dungeon.

Our tour officially began at 2 PM local time so that gave me enough time for a quick shower and change, a stroll through the neighborhood and a lunch of roast pork and potatoes. The castle is on the northeast side of Dublin, about a mile and a half from the city center. I have more time in Dublin on the other end of the trip with a more centrally located hotel so I’ll do most of my city walking and sightseeing then. We were given a bus tour of the city with a few stops (still my least favorite way of seeing any urban area) including Oscar WIlde’s house and the main cemetary where I paid my respects to Daniel O’Connell and Michael Collins. The weather kept seesawing back and forth between blue skies and sunshine and grey and blustery with a very wet rain. Very similar to Seattle so it doesn’t bother me any.

Back to the hotel for cocktails and a welcome dinner (leek and potato soup, fresh hake with green beans, and raspberry cheesecake) and some time to begin getting acquainted with the travel companions. It’s sort of an odd lot. There are a grand total of nine travelers and a driver/guide who will be sharing the next week and a half. Two married couples from the midwest and five singles including myself – widows and widowers from various places in the US. Hopefully we’re all compatible. If we’re not, I brought plenty of books and am very good at faking presbycusis when needed.

Now it’s time for bed and to begin making up for lost sleep. We head out north in the morning. I haven’t studied the itinerary too carefully. Surprise me.