And that’s a wrap on the first week of rehearsals for Richard II. I think it’s going to come together well and be the show I’ve had rattling around in my head these last few months. At least the parts we’ve put on their feet are working relatively well. I’ve always liked conceptual Shakespeare. At least as long as the concept helped clarify theme and character. We still do the plays after four hundred years because the ideas and insights into humanity remain timeless which in turn makes it easy to set the plays anywhere and at any time and not confine them to Elizabethan drama. Richard II may be about specific political events in late 14th – early 15th century England but thos are just surface trappings to exam how a man with absolute power undoes himself by his unwise application of that power. It’s something we see all the time – and it’s become pretty much a daily occurence under the current administration. Richard is not our current president. Richard has self awareness and that’s the tragedy. In hindsight he understands what he has done that has caused his downfall. The president isn’t a tragic figure. He’s an operatic one. He’s larger than life and if he is taken down by the gods, he will be unable to comprehend his role in that process. He’s the Duke in Rigoletto, not a conflicted Shakespearean protagonist.

So what has our Duke of Mantua and his court been up to these last few days? NATO still holds (but it’s unclear just what the outcome is going to be for Ukraine or the Baltics – it’s a good thing Russia is running out of men). The Iran/Israel contretemps remains somewhat obscure. Iran’s nuclear program was permanently damaged… no it wasn’t just set back… the news is wrong… congress is wrong… the Democrats are leaking falsehoods… the Democrats were not given the intel for political reasons… I am in agreement that the mullahs of Iran should not have nuclear weapons. I am not in agreement that the best way to deal with the issue is lobbing ballistic missles back and forth. Diplomacy is much more likely to come up with equitable solutions. The trouble is that the current administration seems to have gotten rid of all the experienced diplomats with true knowledge of the parties involved.

There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth that a Muslim with progressive views has come out of nowhere to be positioned as the next mayor of New York City. The far right are exclaiming that he should be denaturalized and deported. If we’re going to start playing that game, a future Democratic administration could deport the current first lady, the movie star former governor of California, and a large portion of the right wing voting block of Southern Florida. The left wing is soul searching as to how a corporatist third way democratic insider was defeated (despite significant compromise in the past). The current leaders of the Democrats need to wake up to the fact that demography is destiny and that their attempts to keep all power in an entrenched circle is doomed to fail. Their refusal to embrace the candidates of younger generations, public repudiation of David Hogg, and general tone deafness in dealing with the concerns of younger millennials and generation Z do not bode well. They are supporting a system which has continuously economically squashed younger generations preventing them from developing and achieving the milestones of maturity that we have valued in this culture. These are the conditions that breed revolution. If we didn’t live in a time of birth control and these young people had masses of children they couldn’t properly feed and care for, it would already be upon us. There will be more and more candidates like this on the left and they will win more and more elections.

I am waiting for more and more exposes as to what’s acutally going on in ICE detention facilities. None of it is good. They are over crowded, under staffed, and appear to be run by for profit entities interested in government contracts but not in those entrusted to their care. Throw in a bunch of masked bully boys with no professional training and it’s a disaster in the making. When the madness passes and we hear about horrors, I don’t want to hear any ‘we didn’t know’ from anyone. Yes you do. You just don’t want to admit that we could do such things in this country. A better term for the tent city they’re setting up in the Everglades is Alligator Auschwitz as there’s no other proper term for it than concentration camp.

Something I have noticed. Pretty much every report on someone snatched off the street is of how they are ordinary workers, mothers, students. They are gleefully rounding up those that are legal permanent residents who had a run in with the law years ago. There have been almost no reports about gang members being or criminals being taken. First off, there aren’t that many and they aren’t going to be easy to find as they aren’t likely to show up at scheduled court dates. Second, they’re likely to fight back and the passel of quasi-legal bullies aren’t about to enter a situation where they might be injured. If they were really rounding up hardened criminals, wouldn’t it be the easiest propaganda in the victory to parade their mugshots and rap sheets on the nightly news? The lack of such things tells me everything I need to know.

And this brings me back to my staging of Richard II, taking place in a holding cell of a political prison. We should all be thinking about the misuse of power these days and it should inform what we do in terms of voting patterns and holding our leaders to account. Shakespeare had a lot to say about power and its abuse and misuse. I want people to leave this show thinking. I don’t want them feeling that their side in our current divide is right or wrong. I want them to dig deeper than that and soul search about the meanings of political power and what are right and wrong ways that it is used. I hope I’m smart enough to get that on the stage.

Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and, starting tomorrow, we begin the long march back towards darkness. Of course, there are those who would argue that we havve been marching towards darkness since January 20th, no matter what the relative positions of earth and sun happen to be and, given the news of the last week I am a bit inclined to agree. I don’t even know where to start any more when musing about politics and doings on a federal level. The brightest spot is that the center is not holding. As reality continues to intrude on ideology and science continues to trump wishful thinking, a government consisting of sycophants, toadies, and know-nothings seems to be buckling around the edges. Quelle surprise.

The administration’s positions on all major issues are sinking rapidly in every major opinion poll, including those put out by Fox News, leading to various mouthpieces attacking their favorite propaganda outlet for not toeing the party line. Pretty much every special election has had the Dems overperforming and Reps underperforming, often by double digits. This suggests that, assuming we have midterm elections, that there is likely to be a change in control of congress. Hopefully this will lead to a reinstitution of some of the constitutional checks and balances the current congress appears to be snoozing through.

Trump is, of course, trying to get the media spotlight back on himelf, especially after that sad little fiasco of a military parade. Attention is his oxygen. Ignore him and the tantrums get bigger and bigger until he’s back again center stage. The best way to deal with him would be for everyone to go about their daily business and ignore him no matter what comes out of whichever orifice. His current attempts to control the narrative include paving over the rose garden. (I’m not worried about that – it can be jackhammered up again and resodded – and if they sold chances to wield the jackhammer for substantial donations to The Kennedy Center, it would likely be properly funded for a century). He’s also installed flag poles so out of proportion to the White House that the design principle appears to be used car lot.

The Big Beautiful Bill is in definite disarray as there is more and more reportage on just what it will do, especially to the poorest amongst us. Even some of the Republican senators are backing away from some of the crueler measures. The Senate parliamentarian is providing political cover by explaining that significant portions violate the rules of reconciliation and must be stricken in order to use simple majority voting. I’m sure something will eventually emerge but whatever it is, it’s likely to be a Frankenstein monster with a few extra limbs rampaging across the Federal landscape for a while. With luck, a future administration will trap it in a burning windmill.

Speaking of rampages across the government, what has happened to Elon Musk? He was everywhere just a few short weeks ago and he seems to have fallen off the radar other than his usual activity of blowing up rockets on the launchpad. I think he has a long way to go before he can think about making us an interplanetary species. Unfortunately, the Muskrats are still embedded throughout federal agencies, vacuuming up all of our personal data for the benefit of Palantir, and cancelling out decades of scientific and medical discovery. Speaking of medical data, the right wing’s favorite judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk (judge shopping is just fine when they do it) has decided that your reproductive health and HIV health records are not private and can be shared with legal authorities. Expect pregnancy test centers at conservative state borders and confinement to prevent travel for any sort of termination services in 3…2…1.

And then there’s Israel and Iran lobbing ballistic missles at each other on the other side of the globe. The secretary of defense and director of national intelligence appear to have been sidelined due to general incompetence. The secretary of state appears to be unfamiliar with the most basic concepts of diplomacy. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one in the upper echelons has any understanding of Shia vs Sunni or why the split exists. The war hawks are careening one direction. The isolationists another. And the religious zealots seem to think the more lunatic ravings of Cyrus Scofield are becoming reality. At least Europe, after very publicly sidelining Trump at the G7 meetings, are being the adults in the room and dealing with the issues in the way in which they need to be to keep the planet from going up in flames.

So what’s next? Who knows. I look at the headline digest in the morning from the day before and just kind of shake my head, try to forget most of it, and put my clothes on and head in to work to save the world one patient at a time. It’s all I can do. Rehearsals start on Richard II Monday and I will soon learn if my ideas which work just fine in my head actually work when other people try to put them on a stage. I’ve also got a bunch of non-profit board work to do over the next few weeks to help raise funds for various worthy causes.

I’ve had every intention of writing one of these essays? missives? screeds? for the last couple of evenings but as I’ve bumped up on the end of the day, I have just been too tired to put coherent thoughts together and have crawled into bed and the deathless phrases forming in my mind have petered out in dreamland. I’ve been far more fatigued than usual this week. I don’t know if it’s readjustment after two weeks off and now back to the usual grind or perhaps its post viral slowdown after having had yet another respiratory virus while off in Ireland a couple of weeks ago. Whatever the cause, I hope it wraps itself up soon as I have to begin directing Shakespeare in just over a week and I’ll need all of my wits and energy about me. Fortunately this next week is a short week due to the Juneteenth holiday so that may helpme get back into fighting shape.

There’s not a lot going on in my life other than the usual work stuff, hopefully soon to be made a bit easier by the arrival of my nurse practitioner to help spell my patient care duties in the VA half of my job. That process only took about eighteen months, interrupted as it was by the federal hiring freeze and the like. She’s someone I worked with at UAB for years so I know she’ll fit in very well with the VA rural house call program that’s my major responsibility on that side of the street. So far the shockwaves that are roiling academic health systems and federal agencies have spared my little corner of the world. I’m wise enough to know that it’s a temporary reprieve while the system rebalances. The ultimate endgame will be the usual one – forced to do more with less. I’ve been playing it for decades and know how to respond and how to push back but I am getting tired. I’ll have been part of the medical system for forty one years this August. It’s time to let younger generations take it all on.

There’s not a lot to report on the covid front. Hospitalization, mortality, and complication rates have all been in significant decline in the US for the last six months and we’re now well below where we were a year ago. Will there be a surge again this fall or winter? Time will tell. Vaccine remains available and the recommendations from the experts continue to be for an annual booster in the fall (with an additional spring booster if you have significant risk from the disease due to immunodeficiencies or serious lung issues). It’s unclear if there will be vaccine available this fall given the moves HHS secretary Kennedy is making. Despite his promises to the senate to not monkey with the vaccine system in order to get the votes he needed for confirmation, he went full antivax this past week, firing the entire CDC expert panel on vaccines, all researchers with years and years of expertise in evaluating vaccine science. His replacements have, so far, been individuals whose major qualifications are covid vaccine contraryism, many without significant credentials or expertise. Kennedy’s reasoning is that the prior panel members were compromised by ties to industry (all conflicts of interest were transparent and members recused themselves if an issue came before them that impacted any industry ties they might have), that vaccines haven’t been subject to rigorous testing for safety and efficacy (they have), that vaccines are linked to autism (they aren’t – that’s been debunked in dozens of studies) and that it’s best to start with a clean slate. We shall see. I don’t really want to see us return to a society where pretty much every family lost a child before age 5 due to a preventable disease but maybe that’s just me.

Tomorrow our president is hosting a military parade ostensibly to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the US Army but more about self aggrandizement and his 79th birthday. To me, it reeks of Soviet Russia or North Korea and not the sort of thing we do in this country but I suppose those with inflated egos must be placated. At least that seems to be the general attitude in the capital these days. The opposition is planning widespread general demonstrations in response. I approve in theory but I’m afraid that they may end up doing more harm than good if agent provacateurs – from either side – lead people into asinine action. Peter Coyote, the 80s indie film actor who now appears to be a professor of zen buddhism released an essay recently regarding protesting in the age of Trump that I found very interesting. It’s easily googleable. Taking a couple of pages from his book, he notes that the optics of demonstations and how they can be portrayed in the media are as important, if not more so, than what actually happens on the ground. We can see that in how the administration has handled what happened this week in LA. A relatively minor disturbance there (less violent and widespread than those after major football championship upsets) became defined by smoke, flame, some half dressed young men waving Mexican flags and it was turned into a narrative of a city in flames with both the National Guard and the Marines called out which has now led to major standoffs between federal and state power. Side issues have included the tackling of a US senator in a Homeland Security press conference, the administration’s continued ignoring of judicial orders regarding immigrant cases, and the president’s backtracking on previous positions as his wealthy friends start complaining about the depletion of their workforces.

I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow but if I ran the protests, I would encourage everyone to dress as if for church, leave the flags and the signs for pet causes at home, and carry American flags to represent the people and constitutional power, and be as quiet and polite as possible. An overreaction against crowds of well dressed average Americans decked with the symbols of the country would create a powerful visual statement which could help sway the middle back away from the fascist impulses of the current administration. Those of us in Birmingham should be well versed in the optics of Bull Conner acting in the name of ‘public safety’ back in the early 60s.

Must run – have a show to cast. Hopefully we’re not all living under martial law next week but I put nothing past the collection of zealots of various stripes to whom we’ve turned over our public institutions.

I should be watching the Tony Awards, but I’m being a bad theater gay and using the time go catch up on life before I have to go back to work in the morning. 16 days off has allowed my brain and body to decompress somewhat and there’s a certain amount of prep work I have to do in order to get everything lined up so that I can move forward in the morning. I know this from long experience of vacation returns in my chosen vocation. I routinely tell new medical residents that one of the worst days they will experience will be their first day back from their first vacation. They hit the ground at the start of internship, all hyped up on adrenaline and new experiences and responsibilities; then, in a few months, they get to return to normal life for a week or so and they reset. And then they have to return to the very abnormal stresses and schedules of which clinical medicine training is composed.

I am back home in Birmingham. I don’t have a lot to say about the last few days in New Orleans in the company of Frank Thompson. Good food was eaten. Walks with window shopping and gallery hopping were taken through the French Quarter. Drinks were consumed. Many heart to heart conversations were had. Rapid onset rainfall caused a couple of soakings. It was good for both of us. We’ve been friends for more than 20 years now and even though we no longer live in the same state or get to play together on stage routinely, we remain excellent touchstones for each other in dealing with the vicissitudes of life. The only truly notable event was walking up Canal Street last night when we found ourselves between a group of young Black women on the sidewalk having a good time and a group of young Black women on a party bus stopped next to them having an equally good time. They began having a twerk off. There was nothing for a couple of old white guys to do but to join in, general hilarity from the young ladies and passers by.

I was a good boy and wrote the first half of my sermon on morals and health care during my down time this weekend. Shouldn’t take all that much more to finish it up. I think it reads well so far and will hopefully get the points I’m trying to make across with a minimum of didacticism. I believe it’s scheduled for July 20th at the UU Church of Birmingham but I’ll have to double check that with the powers that be. I’ll also have to run it by ministerial staff to be sure I’m not saying anything from the pulpit I really shouldn’t. But I’m not completely sure what’s actually considered off limits in a UU space given some of what I’ve seen and heard there over the last quarter century. (My silver anniversary of having signed the membership book is next month).

I decided to take a look at the most recent Covid news as I hadn’t for a while. There are various omicron strains. They should all be covered reasonably well by the current formulations of vaccine. Vaccine remains available and the recommendation remains annual in the fall for mature adults, with a six month booster in the spring for those at significant risk due to age or underlying disease process. The CDC, under current leadership is continuing to reevlaute all of this and these recommendations could change. They have withdrawn recommendaitons for vaccination of children and younger adults (most of whom do not have severe cases). The biggest practical effect of this is going to mean that vaccinations won’t be covered by insurance for these individuals. I have no idea what will happen if there’s a mutation that renders current vaccine ineffective or even how to really track what’s going on given the degradation of public health reporting for political reasons. Keep your eyes and ears open.

The very public spat between Trump and Musk appears to have died down somewhat. I haven’t seen anything quite that viscious since a couple of old theater queens nearly came to blows over whether Patti LuPone or Glenn Close was the better Norma Desmond. (The answer is, of course, Betty Buckley). Maybe it was all a performance piece for Pride Month. I have a couple of tasks I’m responsible for for our local Pride celebrations so I better get on the stick and figure out how to get those responsibilities shoehorned into my life.

I am far more concerned about what’s going on in Los Angeles and the stand off between local/state and federal authorities. The administration is obviously trying to provoke response for propaganda purposes and there are moves of dubious legality in regards to martialing the National Guard and putting the marines on alert. We shall see what we shall see. From what I can tell, what’s going on is far less violent and destructive than January 6th 2021 so there’s definitely a bit of a double standard going on in regards to calling protest an insurrection. Domestic reporting on the situation does not appear to be terribly accurate and is fraught with media companies protecting their profits so I am getting my news from the BBC.

Wish me luck tomorrow – hopefully I won’t have left the building screaming sometime before noon.

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.