Where did the summer go? It's still here, as far as the heat and the thunderstorms and green leaves and grass cutting go. I'd consider ourselves lucky since normally the temps have already moved lower. The days are certainly shorter, and a few of trees are starting to turn.
All this by way of saying we here seem to have finally caught our breaths after a long stretch of summer activity going back to the Poconos. We dropped off at the airport a Peace Corps friend on Monday and then have settled back into our routines, just the two of us.
We had a magical trip to Ireland. There's no other way of describing it, and I think I'm not the first. I can sum it up in three words: family, churches and pubs. The magic part had to do with the Boyle family we encountered. Our purpose for going was to attend a reunion of Boyles who came from Strabane on the border in Northern Ireland. We found out that their town was kind of a ground zero for The Troubles, which confirms why Mary's father was even born here. His parents came to escape capture. Anyway, we all met up across the border in a town called Stranolar, that took me about a week to pronounce. Right away, we connected. We saw Boyles from Pittsfield even who we never see here. There were Boyles from Australia and of course people from close by. Lots of long talks, a little singing, and as always good food and did I mention Guiness?
We then headed over to County Mayo and a town called Castlebar, (pronounced cas-el-bear, if you ever need to talk like an Irishman, or woman). Mary was on the search for the home of family on her grandmother's side in a village which I can still barely mouth, Cloncundra. (I finally figured out how to remember places like this - I took pictures of maps and road signs.) The magic part of the trip came from Mary writing a letter to "the family of James and Ella Walsh" with an address that she found from her mother's address book, and a postal code that Joe googled. Well, the day before leaving, she got an email from the niece of James and Ell who gave us her contact points and we arranged to meet. Her niece, Ann, told us when we met, that the postal code was wrong but since one of her family worked in the post office, whoever was sorting gave the envelope to him, and the letter made its way to this, perhaps the smallest hamlet in Ireland. I exaggerate of course, but you will never see its name on a map. I did see a road sign.
Well we found her grandmother's house, and spent a day touring around the area with Ann, packing in a church and a basilica (where the Pope had gone two days earlier), a pub (actually two, one of which where we celebrated Ann's birthday) , a museum, tea and scones, and a shop or two.
From there, we headed on our own down a very sad road cutting over to Connemora, sad because it was completely desolate and because we learned of the fate of 600 people who walked a great distance to escape famine but whose plight was ignored when they reached the next town. A memorial marker with a quote from a visitor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, told the story.
On our last night, in Galway, we were walking back to our B&B when another touring couple, lost, probably from Italy, approached us and asked how to get to the center of the town. We told them, and then they asked if there were any pubs there. "PUBS? How many do you want?" was our answer. Blocks and blocks of pubs. How do you choose. Fun.
When we got home, we had a mini Peace Corps reunion of sorts, and I finally got to cut the grass.
And we were able to keep up a little with all your happenings. Wonderful photos of Everett on Facebook. He's home and already more awake and alert, from the photos, it looks like. Daniel finished his year of school and has a job at a high end men's salon with people who pay tons of money for what Pop paid $2.50 for in Putnam. But then again, I bet they've never had a tripleheader - haircut, trip to the dump and Spag's. Claire has started her job where she's the sole music teacher in a K-12 school in Michigan. Sounds challenging; she's trying to raise money for instruments - read about it on her Facebook site. Andrew and Lur took their grandchildren over Labor Day when Bill and Jen went to Pennsylvania to work on their new project - the mobile home/bus.
We also saw a lot of photos from Portugal where Leonor, and Thomas, were able to spend a couple of weeks with her family and friends. Annie spent Labor Day with China friends in San Francisco and Margaret was getting ready for a short trip to Mexico.
John and Marilyn were also traveling, on a cruise along the Rhine, which sounded very nice were it not for the fact that they may have had a series of mishaps on their flight over that caused them to be delayed for 9 hours, or was it even more?
Sean and Erin are closing in on their big day, and we're looking forward to that, and to seeing all of you again.
Love from up here. The photo below is of the Mary and Ann checking out the Walsh family house, the grandmother's stone house in the background and James and Ella Walsh in front. Mary visited here in 1973.
