Politics

Reason and Rebirth

Reason and Rebirth The Old Country is not so very old any more. I just had occasion to look at Ireland’s level of household income versus that in the United States. The US is at $44k where Ireland is $25k. But when you look at it based on purchasing power parity (PPP dollars) the numbers skew considerably to $60k versus $76k. So in absolute terms the income level in Ireland is only 57% of the…

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Fiction/Humor

Edgy Ageism

Edgy Ageism Week Two of the Grand Hibernian Tour is underway. What distinguished this week from last is that the participants are, for the most part, from my wife Kim’s side of the ledger. Siblings, friends from Wabash, Indiana (the ancestral spawning-ground of the Grogg Clan), Theater friends (Showboat, State Fair, Gypsy and Lennie’s Wild Mouse Ride) and a googly-eyed nephew and his beloved Ashley. My friends on this voyage, besides all the befriending I…

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Fiction/Humor Memoir

Flags of the Realm

Flags of the Realm In case you haven’t been paying attention, we are in Ireland for a few weeks. The length of a vacation is a tricky thing. It seems like the biggest risk is to under-book and leave yourself wishing you had a few more days wherever you are off to. That is certainly less than ideal since fulfillment versus being left wanting does help soothe the demons within. I went a lot to…

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Fiction/Humor Memoir

The Keogh Connection

The Keogh Connection The Keogh family of Killarney is a long-standing part of County Kerry and has had great influence on all of Ireland and, indeed, all of modern civilization. Its descendants include a young lass, Fancy Nancy, who hails from Ithaca, New York, and who has come back to Ireland and County Kerry in search of her roots. Of course the irony in all of that is that her roots are firmly entrenched in…

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Love

Merzy Doats and Tom Toms

Merzy Doats and Tom Toms I have been admonished by faithful blog reader Lonnie to dispense with the blogging while on a family vacation and focus instead on my family. I take all blog comments to heart and always try to be a better man, but on this one I must disagree. Do you remember that scene in A Few Good Men when Tom Cruise has Colonel Jack Nicholson of Guantanamo Bay on the witness…

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Love Memoir

The Cats in the Irish Cradle

The Cats in the Irish Cradle My son Roger is thirty-seven years old and I am particularly pleased to have him along with me on this week in Western Ireland. Roger is, for all our differences, more like me than not. There are many ways to notice this, but the best way is to spend a week in a “strange” new land with specific culinary customs. Now some would say that Ireland is more like…

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Fiction/Humor

Tir na nOg

Tir na nOg In the land of Tir na nOg there lived a faery that wore size 14W Adventure Crocs. Some would call him an ogre and some would call him Grumpy Gramps. What was clear was that he enjoyed feasting on the stories of the realm of the Otherworld, the place where the faeries lived and heroes visited on quests of honor. Tir an nOg was a place just outside the realm of man,…

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Love

Comfort and Clansmen

Comfort and Clansmen Here’s the thing I have never reconciled about vacations, I almost always forego comfort to be with my clansmen. Like any basic experiment, you need a control, and my control for this purpose is my home, whether a primary residence or a secondary home (I currently have both). We all work very hard to make our homes homey. We have all our stuff (per George Carlin) around us in the most convenient-sized…

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