Category: Ireland

• Dublin On A Sunday Afternoon

  It was a brief flight.  Heathrow to Dublin airport in a little over an hour.  No time for a movie.  No time for any real food.  I looked across Mariam’s lap and watched the fields of Wales slide under us at several hundred miles per hour.  Still, when we landed and took the taxi to…

  patrickjegan

  June 8, 2015

  Blogging, Creativity, England, Fables & Folklore, Ghosts, History, Holding onto the Past, Ireland, Love, Melancholy Thoughts, Memories, non-fiction, Objects of Beauty, Real Personal History, Travels

  Dublin, General Post Office, Ha’penny Bridge, Irish music, Legend of White Horse on O’Connell St. Bridge, O’Connell Street Bridge, padlocks of love, prostitutes, River Liffey, Temple Bar

• May The Sun Rise To Meet Him

    On Wednesday, my son, Brian will step off the red-eye flight from JFK and the sun will rise to meet him.  I will have my son, my boy, my only boy with me while we tour our ancestral island with my wife (on her first visit, too). It’s been thirty years since I’ve been…

  patrickjegan

  June 6, 2015

  Blogging, Creativity, England, Fables & Folklore, Family, History, Ireland, Memories, Real Personal History, Travels

  1916 Irish Uprising, Ben Bulbeen, Bobby Sands, Cliffs of Moher, Galway, hunger strikes, Ireland, Irish bards, Irish pubs, Kevin Barry, potcheen, Rock of Cashel, Sligo, Yeats

• If Hand-Hewn Beams Could Talk: A Proper English Pub

  I’ll repeat what I said in a previous post: “If you want to know what is happening in an English village, just sit in the pub for an hour or two.”  I am convinced that this is true.  Pubs and not bars in the way we know bars in the States.  If the village is…

  patrickjegan

  June 6, 2015

  Blogging, England, Everyday Events, Food, History, Ireland, Memories, Real Personal History, Travels

  barmaids, darts, English pub deserts, English pubs, Ireland, skittles

• Dance Like A Wave Of The Sea

  I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree… –W. B. Yeats Three decades have passed since I last walked the streets of Dublin, Galway and Sligo.  A great many things have changed in those years.  And, a great many haven’t.  The smell of peat-fires in Dublin on a December night, the blasts of…

  patrickjegan

  May 16, 2015

  Blogging, Creativity, England, Family, Ireland, Love, Memories, Real Personal History, Travels

  Cotswolds, Dorset, Dublin, England, Galway, Guiness, Ireland, Sligo, traveling with your son, traveling with your wife

• Digging A Grave On A Beautiful Spring Afternoon

  I stood in the soft loam, nine inches below ground level, leaned against my shovel, and thought about death and insects.  This is not a difficult thing to do when you’re helping to dig a grave on a day in May when the gnats and flies are biting ankles and arms.  After all, it is…

  patrickjegan

  May 8, 2015

  Blogging, Creativity, Everyday Events, Ireland, Melancholy Thoughts, non-fiction, North Country Life, Real Personal History, seniors

  Adirondacks, death, grave digging, insect survival of winter, Ireland, north country, springtime rebirth, winter

• Fabled Cuchlain

  In the lobby of the General Post Office in Dublin is a bronze statue.  It depicts an ancient Irish warrior, standing but slumped over in death.  If you look closely, you can notice that he is really not standing…he is tied to a stake.  A raven stands on his shoulder.  The sculpture is by Oliver…

  patrickjegan

  March 17, 2015

  Blogging, History, Ireland, Travels

  Cuchlain, Dublin, Ireland, Irish legends