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,…
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…
Riding the Rails to Kerry We always knew it would be an adventure to drive in Ireland on the left hand side of the road, but little did we realize how much of adventure we would experience on the first day. To cut to the chase van, let’s summarize by saying that one of four vehicles is down for the count and at least one other is due for some rental company settlement. We have…
Virgin Slave Ship I begin by acknowledging that I will never evoke one gram of sympathy for the plight I will be describing in this story. I am officially on vacation as of three hours ago. We are on our way to Ireland for two weeks with all sorts of family and friends. I booked this trip and the house we have rented nine months ago and made a point of booking the flights at…
Staging Retirement The way I write these blog stories is to think about what’s on my mind, think about what topics might be interesting enough to write about and then asking myself if it fits into the basic categories I have defined for myself and written about for the past five months. Not that complicated, but fortunately, still requiring some chin-rubbing and pondering as I like to be more than just mindless in most…
Lord of the Dance In 48 hours I will be arriving in Shannon, Ireland, gathering up a gaggle of family and friends (19 to be exact) and we will drive in two rented 9-passenger vans and one 4-passenger car the three hours to Westcove, where we have a peaceful and large (operative word is large…as in sleeps 26) manor house and grounds on the Ring of Kerry, right on a lovely cove that looks…
Borderlines This is not the pro-immigration rant you have all come to expect from me in this blog. By the way, I am very pro-immigration and I do seem to be ranting more lately (mostly at work and at the moon over Mr. Trump), but this piece is about different borderlines. I am haunted by great movies and there are very few that are greater than Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. I think…
Hacking and Wheezing There has been some lousy bug floating around (I’m sure it’s not limited to New York City, but it’s definitely here) that is not the seasonal flu strain (I got that shot), but it has debilitated several people including me. When I say debilitated, I should be careful. I have not lost one day of work (some of my colleagues who have it have lost a few odd days), and I have…
Boyled in Love Kim is a member of SAG/AFTRA through some obscure back-door caused by her long membership in Actor’s Equity. She was in an Italian film starring Daryl Hannah (the movie was called Ole!), but that episode didn’t figure into the equation. What did figure in was paying several thousands of dollars for the back dues for initiation or whatever it was. I remember the discussion about it at the time and we…
System Overload As I was growing up, the ages of 65, 75 and 85 (just to pick three random points) were thought to be oldish, old and very old. We all know about increasing longevity statistics and sixty being the new forty, or whatever. We also all probably know people in their late sixties that are showing signs of age as much as we know people that are vibrant and fresh at the age…