From the AVI Archives While I m Away

We are now looking at piles of rocks in Ireland. Today is Bective Abbey, Trim Castle, Hill of Tara, and maybe the Monasterboice High Crosses. When we first went to Ireland in 2002 I worked very hard to make sure we could find someplace where we could hear traditional Irish music.  I found a hotel with a top floor apartment we could rent, perfect for a couple with three teenage sons.  And on the ground floor, a pub, with traditional music many nights of the week!  I was enchanted, and brought the sons over to look at the pictures.

We had not even finished unpacking and it was clear that the problem was not going to be finding Irish music, but getting away from it. Even the bad boys of Ireland can't seem to get away from it.  The sentimental tunes often have some anger in them, and the angry ones some sentiment.  Here are the Pogues, who Tommy Makem* said were the worst thing to ever happen to Irish music, getting together with the Dubliners.

“The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”

GK Chesterton "The Ballad of the White Horse."

*My sister-in-law was friends with the Makem girls growing up in Dover, NH.  They all went to Saint Thomas Aquinas Highschool.

From January 2007 

I am going to flood you with enough content while I am gone that you will be begging God to bring me home sooner so you can get some rest.

Teach Your Children Well  Take your children to the movie first, teach the history lesson second, and take them on the expensive trip after.

Homage to Troy Brown, who did go to the Patriots Hall of Fame and is now a coach. 

The Nine Nations of North America changed how I viewed the whole continent in the 1980s. Others have taken the concept forward since then, including Colin Woodard's Eleven Nations of the US. Those may be better now, but it is Garreau's original that was revolutionary for me in terms of seeing our cultural regions.

The World According to PJ. As in O'Rourke. Who protests?  I think this is as true as ever it was in 1991.

The track record of the European Intelligentsia in the 20th C. It's not pretty.  And I even give them some credit for things.