Galway Ireland

Our visit to Galway was timed as a lunch stop on the way to Limerick (actually we hoped to see the Cliffs of Moher as well, but the day was too short).

We walked through the pedestrian-only shopping district, along William Street

taking in some beautiful music along the way

to Finnegan's on Market Street.

Finnegan's, according to Lonely Planet: "Authentic, utterly unpretentious Irish cooking

and an equally authentic clientele (Beth had the 'homemade shepherd's pie')

make this a wonderful spot for comfort food."

I fulfilled a childhood goal growing up in Galway, NY--visiting Galway, Ireland.

Mullaghmore Head Ireland

After Thanksgiving Dinner at the beautiful Slieve Russell Hotel in County Cavan Ireland, we traveled north and west to our first view of the west coast of Ireland at Mullaghmore Head in County Sligo. Passing Classiebawn Castle, one-time home of the ill-fated Lord Mountbatten, we continued to where sea, sky and clouds formed a brilliant scene.

Dramatic scenery appeared in every direction.

Donegal Bay to the north.

Atlantic Ocean looking west.

The sheep enjoy the view every day.

Jacob took a break and gazed across the Bay to Donegal.

Thanksgiving in Belfast NIE

In the early nineties, my band-mate Mike Ladd introduced us to a haunting Nanci Griffith tune called "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go," and it became a regular on our playlist. His rendition was at once awesome and chilling. The song's central image is that of an American tourist riding in the back seat of a cab through the divided West Belfast district at a time when "The Troubles" were in full force.

This year, with a resort hotel in Cavan our Thanksgiving dinner destination and all day to get there, I calculated that the route from Dublin to Belfast was just over 100 miles by expressway, giving us plenty of time for a lunch stop and a quick tour of the city. We strolled through the downtown area, flush with a Christmas Market at City Hall and booths selling gifts and food, and I stumbled on a BBC One reporter doing man-in-the-street interviews. My question was pretty easy: "Which do you prefer, a real Christmas tree or an artificial one?"


The city is vibrant and our visit pleasant but I wanted to see the Murals of West Belfast most of all. We hired a black taxi and were on our way. Our driver gave us a thorough tour of the Shankill and Falls Road areas and while he had a definite bias, it was apparent that both sides contributed to the long-term
conflict. The murals were numerous and impressive, an art genre unto themselves, and we stopped at a number of memorial sites as well. The 'peace wall,' meant to protect a Catholic neighborhood from drive-by shootings, and gated side streets, stand as additional reminders that the troubles are recent history.

We came away troubled ourselves, that such killing could take place so widely, and for so long, between people not unlike ourselves. Our driver did say that the last two years have been quiet, hopefully a sign that the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 is having some lasting effect.

It seemed appropriate to match Nanci Griffith's song with our photos in the video that follows, although hopefully we can say that it's not 1990 any longer in either Belfast or Chicago.

I know we still have a way to go, but at least we can be thankful this Thanksgiving for some measure of peace.

Lough Gur Ireland

Lough Gur is located 21 kilometers southeast of Limerick City where "deep in the rolling hills of County Limerick, an enchanting and rich archeological landscape is simply waiting to be explored." We had arranged to visit Beth's friend Anna's Mater who lives nearby and decided to take in the landscape as well.

A hard frost greeted us as we awoke for a tour of the local sites and after breakfast we began a counter-clockwise circuit of the Lough with a stop at The Great Stone Circle, which dates to 2000 BC.

The circle is the largest of its kind in Ireland, measuring 150 feet in diameter and consisting of 113 upright stones. It is believed that on the 21st of June each year, the Summer Solstice, the morning sun shines through the entrances and illuminates a pattern, suggesting astrological use of the enclosure.
After talking to the cows on the adjacent farm

we met their owner, Timothy Casey, who also maintains the site for visitors and provides his own unique explanation of the circle, sells postcards for the site and accepts donations for maintenance.

Next stop was the New Church, built in the 15th century by the Earls of Desmond as a Chapel of Ease, in ruins by the middle of the 17th century, rebuilt and now in ruins again, with only a shell currently extant.

The scene overlooking the Lough with its surrounding gravestones had a mystical quality under the still heavy frost.

Driving past Wedge Tomb a burial site dating to 2500 BC, we parked at the east end of the Lough in the Visitors Center, closed at this time of year. From the parking lot we climbed above The Spectacles, a replica of a farmstead from 900 AD, to a viewpoint overlooking the Lough.

I can't recall many more beautiful vistas, although I seem to say that about alot of the spots we visited in Ireland.

Here's a compilation of our photos set to Bill Cooley's "Isle of Inishmore."

Leinster House, Dublin Ireland

Jacob's home away from home this fall has been in Dublin where he's studying Irish history, literature and politics in a program called the Institute of Public Administration. A fourth component of the program involves interning in the Dail Eireann, the Irish Parliament.

The Dail meets in the Leinster House on Kildare, not far from Trinity College and St. Stephen's Green in downtown Dublin.

He works for Timmy Dooley, a TD from County Clare in the west of Ireland. Timmy is a member of the ruling Fianna Fail (Republican) Party and serves as Vice-Chair on the European Affairs Committee and it's the latter that is of special interest. Ireland is the only EU member to have not ratified the Lisbon Treaty and Timmy's committee involvement has given Jacob a window on Ireland's struggle to position the country within the EU, maintaining their historic independence and taking economic advantage of their membership. Timmy has been an awesome mentor while keeping an extremely busy schedule during the Dail's Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday weekly schedule.

Judging from Jacob's comments, Timmy has also kept him pretty busy as well, and hopefully it has been a mutually beneficial arrangement.

During our visit, Timmy treated us to dinner at the members-only dining room at the Dail. He arrived well after we were seated due to a meeting commitment, but we had plenty of time to observe his outgoing and gregarious personality and enjoy an outstanding dinner. After dessert we were treated to a gallery-view of a budget vote in the Dail, finishing just after 10PM. Fianna Fail prevailed, though the difficulties in the global economy have certainly complicated the process in Ireland.

Dinner with Timmy Dooley, TD representing County Clare in the Dail Eireann.

Bank of Ireland

In 1984, I joined the staff of First NH White Mountain National Bank and four years later became an employee of the Bank of Ireland as a result of their purchase of First NH Banks. Executives from the Bank of Ireland visited their first US acquisition regularly and we met Mark Hely-Hutchinson, Chief Executive and former Guiness executive and Frank O'Rourke, Deputy Chief Executive when they visited our office in North Conway, NH. One of my more embarassing moments occurred after coordinating an all-day realtor appreciation day at Attitash Ski Area and attending a management team welcome dinner in the evening for Frank O'Rourke. Exhausted after a day of making arrangements and skiing, I started dozing off seated next to Mr. O'Rourke after dinner. Taking notice of my lapse in judgment, our affiliate president, Mike Kirk, came around to my side away from our guest and assured me in no uncertain terms that I did not want to be falling asleep at that point in my banking career.Visiting Dublin 20 years later gave me the opportunity to visit the 'Main Office' for the first time. Beth and I entered from Westmoreland/College Street and followed the maze of corridors to the main entry. The building was originally built to house the Irish Parliament, opening in the 1730s, and became a Bank of Ireland property after 1800. We were granted entry into the House of Lords chambers, which have been preserved in more or less their original state. I introduced myself to a current employee and inquired as to the Bank's business standing, getting little positive feedback. Considering the price of it's stock has fallen roughly 95% since early 2007 and they're suffering from many of the same lending tactics that have crippled American banks, the response was not surprising. They seemed to be waiting for the ax to fall at any moment.


Ireland in recent years has been known as the Celtic Tiger for the dramatic upswing in its economy but the past year and a half has dulled the shine on the progress there. Still, I remember hearing of 18% unemployment on the Emerald Isle in 1988, and with many infrastructure improvements evident throughout our visit, present-day Ireland seems well ahead of 20 years ago in spite of the recent downturn.

The Bank of Ireland, 2 College Green, Dublin.

Dublin Ireland

Arriving in Dublin last Wednesday morning after the overnight flight from the US, Beth and I had most of the day to wander the streets before meeting Jacob and Nicole, who had spent the previous few days in Berlin visiting the site of her semester abroad in 2007. We headed for the tourist information center--not a very adventurous move but providing a scenic walk from our hotel on Kildare Street.

We proceeded to City Hall and through Temple Bar and came to the River Liffey. I'd say we were in awe of our surroundings or just plain tired--I'm not sure which--but the scenery was fascinating to these first-time visitors.

My next stop was a visit at the old parliament building, now an office of the Bank of Ireland, my former employer via their purchase of First NH Banks in 1988. I'll talk about my visit at BOI in a later post.

Across the street is Trinity College, pictured below, and we strolled through taking pictures at strategic locations and noting the whereabouts of The Book of Kells for Beth and Nicole's visit later in the afternoon. (Jacob and I had another mission, picking up some luggage at his host family's house in Dun Laoghaire, south of the city) It turns out they are very compatible in terms of museum visits. Trinity was estblished in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I of England on an expansive property outside the city but now is surrounded by the city

Unsuccesful in an attempt at early check-in at our hotel, we strolled down Kildare Street to the current Parliament Building, Leinster House, where we would have dinner later, to the National Museum of Ireland, dedicated to Archaeology & History of Ireland, and including Bronze Age and Iron Age gold artefacts and "the world's most complete collection of medieval Celtic metalwork," according to Lonely Planet.

Though tired from the long trip, we were sustained by the fascinating collection and did not hurry to leave. I have no argument with LP's assessment.

To be continued...

Thanksgiving in Ireland

Thanksgiving vacation in Ireland from Mullaghmore Head, Co. Sligo---one of many fascinating and beautiful places we visited.

Ireland-bound

Growing up just short of the Adirondack foothills in the rural Upstate New York town of Galway, meant spending alot of time in the dairy farming land that surrounded our village home. I enjoyed haying with neighbors, eating wild red raspberries and sledding in the winter. Still I was always alert to the mention of faraway places. One, naturally, was Galway, Ireland.

Galway NY was settled in 1792 by Scottish farmers as New Galloway, and the story goes that, when the town was incorporated in 1838, an Irish clerk in the Saratoga County Registry mis-spelled the name of the new town, and it stood.

Attending Joseph Henry Elementary Elementary School (named for the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution) in the early 1960s, I did a social studies report in Mr. Rowland's 6th grade class that combined information about Galway NY and Galway Ireland. Other than the name, the two towns had little in common but that didn't deter me. Mr. Rowland overlooked the lack of commonality and rewarded my hard work with a good grade.

Later in life I had my next brush with Ireland when my employer, First NH Banks, was the first banking company outside of Ireland to be purchased by the Bank of Ireland. The year was 1988 and they bought at the top of the market. Soon streams of BOI executives toured all over New Hampshire, even our office in North Conway, to visit their new investment. They included Chief Executive Mark Hely-Hutchinson, a Brit who previously chaired Guiness, and Deputy Chief Executive Frank O'Rourke, an Irishman, but born in Chicago. BOI was optimistic that with 18% unemployment at home, their path to growth was overseas. By the time I left the company in 1991, due to the inevitable consolidation of bank-wide departments, the Irish were regretting their purchase. It took many years for them to recoup their intial losses and sell their share of Citizen's Bank at a profit.

Now the "Celtic Tiger" is at a slight downturn mirroring the world economy, but coming off an extended period of growth that coincided with its menbership in the European Union and lowered the unemployment rate to 3.5%.

Fast-forward to September 2008: youngest son Jacob, a senior majoring in Political Science at Northeastern University, leaves for a semester-long program with the Institute of Public Administration in Dublin. Jacob is taking courses in Irish Literature and History and interning in the Dail (Irish Parliament) with Timmy Dooley, a member of the ruling Fianna Fail Party from County Clare.

Beth and I are headed to Ireland for the Thanksgiving Holiday to see Jacob and a 4-day motor-tour of the country, including Dublin, Belfast, Cavan, Galway, Limerick and as many more sights as we can see. Beth wants to see the Cliffs of Moher and my old First NH White Mountain Bank boss, Mike Kirk, recommended driving the Ring of Kerry, so we'll have to move fast to see all we want to see in 5 days.

To be continued.....

My Vote

My father gave me two insights, among many, into the status of African-Americans in our country in the early 1960s. The first was on a trip to New York City to see relatives in Brooklyn and a ball game in Yankee Stadium. Wherever we went in the city, he cautioned me to stay away from various people of color and I developed a fearful respect of their existence. He never said it, but as I grew older, I sensed that he wasn't practicing racial discrimination, just the recognition that life in the city was difficult and people were just as likely to victimize you for the sake of their own survival (right or wrong) as they were to say or do something nice to you.

One Thanksgiving, Dad, who taught Mathematics at Union College in Schenectady, NY, brought home one of his students for dinner. His name was Bob Holland and he was a star basketball player. I don't remember if the trip to his home outside Detroit, Michigan was too long or if he couldn't afford it, but Dad decided that Bob shouldn't spend the holiday alone and invited him to join us. He was an immediate hit to this family of 4 boys aged 7-17. We all took our turns trying to defeat him at ping pong and when our efforts proved futile, he gave us a second chance by switching to his left hand. Still, his athleticism and skill lifted him to victory.

Bob became a family favorite and in the winters that followed, I begged to attend Union home basketball games to watch Bob and his teammates, who more often than not came away victorious. This congenial, athletic, intelligent, and charismatic man became my new standard for not only people of color, but remarkable individuals of any race. I knew then, at the age of 10 or 11, that race was no limitation in defining a person's potential or character.

Through the civil rights movement of the 60s, the death of Martin Luther King, my college years at a small New England liberal arts school with a limited minority population, I marveled at the dignity of African Americans in the face of such horrible treatment in white America. And I questioned how a country built on the values of equality and opportunity could continue to allow race to be such a divisive factor.

Over the last 40 years, events have suggested improvement in the situation, some with personal connections. I was pleased to see the Sports Editor of my college newspaper from my freshman year, Bryant Gumbel, rise to elevated network TV status. I celebrated in the early 90s reading that a African American college classmate, John Jenkins, had been elected Mayor of the City of Lewiston, Maine--at the time a mostly white town. (John is currently Mayor across the river in Auburn.)

And not long after our whole family was pleased to hear in the news that Bob Holland had been the first person not named Ben or Jerry to be President and CEO of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. The irony of his rising to this position, I later learned, was the fact that he (and all others of color) had been barred from Sullivan's Ice Cream Shop, growing up in his hometown of Albion, Michigan.

In my recent visits to New York City, especially Manhattan, I noted the change since the 1960s in terms of the racial landscape. I've walked the streets of Harlem, where my father never would have gone, and witnessed the tremendous diversity downtown, where conceivably every ethnic group in the world is somehow represented; all of them participating in some fashion in the synergy of this financial capital of America.

While New York and other major American cities reflect ethnic diversity as a function of economics, one other place struck me in recent years in the same way: the Santa Monica Pier. A visit with a former Bates College roommate and ski teammate Norton Virgien in California included a walk out on the pier among Asians, Latinos, African Americans and others, all enjoying the beautiful day, the ocean, the pier vendors and performers. They weren't there by necessity and yet all co-existed and reveled in the day.

This week when I cast my vote for President of the United States, I thought of Bob Holland and John Jenkins, New York City and the Santa Monica Pier; and voted for a man who, for the first time in my opinion, will be a President for all Americans, not just those of a certain race or ideology. I don't think that America has a greater need than the leadership of someone who has compassion for all of its citizens and the ability to project it globally.

I'm truly proud to have cast my vote for Barack Obama.

Cannon Mountain NH

The first time I summited Cannon was in June of 1995 on my first Icebreaker Hike with Wilderness staff from Camp Calumet. The day was perfect and the view beckoned us across the valley for a 2nd day on the Lafayette Range, in lieu of our original plan to hike the Kinsmans.

We were lead by D-Guy (Don) Johnson, the executive director of the camp, who loved the outdoor experience, but was so busy in his guidance of the camp that he seldom had the opportunity to enjoy it himself. He made sure that the Icebreaker was that opportunity each year. D-Guy also loved the food and the bunks at the AMC Huts, so we lived in relative comfort in spite of the rigor of the hike. Joining Don and I were a diverse group of counselors: David Hall from New Zealand, Lara Coleman of South Africa and Skip Slocum from Michigan.

We arrived at the Lonesome Lake Hut in the middle of the afternoon and quickly decided the 1.7 mile hike to Cannon and back would be short enough for us to get back for dinner. Hiking the Lonesome Lake Trail to its junction with the Kinsman Ridge Trail in the col between Cannon and the Cannonballs went easily but the scramble up Cannon was another story. By the time we reached the Rim Trail and the view east our legs were screaming for oxygen. The distress dissolved once we took in the broad vista facing us. It's no wonder the Old Man choose that face of the mountain to reside.

The next day was re-routed down through the Notch, up Falling Waters Trail, over Lincoln and Lafayette and down to Greenleaf Hut for our second night's stay.

In addition to some awesome weather and great hiking, we enjoyed D-Guy's late night reading of "the Cremation of Sam MacGee" and endured the overnight snoring of a certain member of group. (Dave moved to a vacant bunkroom and thus was above suspicion.) Sharing our wilderness and devotional stories established a camaraderie that continued unabated through the summer, ending only with tearful good-byes.

This past weekend I returned to Lonesome Lake Hut with Beth and her brother, Charlie, his bride of 6 months, Luz Maria, and her thirteen-year-old son Ignatio (Nacho for short), who were visiting from Chile. After a night at the hut we split in two groups, with Beth, Charlie and Luz Maria heading back down to the Notch, and Nacho and I retracing my ascent of 13 years ago. Again, I was lulled by the ease of the Lonesome Lake Trail and then struggled up the formidable scramble of Cannon's southwest shoulder. Nacho speaks little English and I don't go much beyond 'hola' in Spanish, so our stops for 'photos' at each trail junction gave us a level of communication and served to break up the climb.

We met Beth, Charlie and Luz Maria at the summit tram terminal and escorted them around the Rim Trail to much the same view as I'd first seen 13 years ago. It was quite a coincidence to again have two people with me in this spot, who were born in the Southern Hemisphere.

This ascent of Cannon varied in two significant ways though--we took the tram down and saved our knees for another day, and the Old Man was no longer there, having fallen to the valley a number of years ago. As Tom Rush says, "it's strange to have outlived a geological formation."

Charlie, Luz Maria and Nacho are heading back to Chile and in parting last night, Nacho said: "we climb mountain again!" Anytime, Nacho.