Ireland – Life In A Word

First-Name Basis

It’s only Tuesday as I type, but I’ve already cleared my calendar for Friday. After all, I have a very important day ahead of me. So important in fact, I need to organize a parade, raise a flag, and prepare unique dishes for the expected throng of adoring fans. But why am I wasting words on the details? You already know we’re celebrating Saint David’s Day in a few days, don’t you?

They’ll be celebrating in Wales, at least, just as they do every first day of March. You’ll find my cathedral there too, way down in the southwest corner of the country. Well, St Davids Cathedral, I mean. And the funny thing is, he’s not the David you’re thinking of, the one from the Bible who took down Goliath as a boy and became king as a man. This David helped to spread Christianity throughout the UK, united the Welsh people against a warring England, and performed several miracles. David’s a big deal in Wales.

St. Patrick’s an even bigger deal, of course. At least Patrick rates a celebration in the U.S. But admit it, you’re not celebrating Patrick’s spread of Christianity throughout Ireland, nor his miracle of removing all snakes from the land. You’re thinking more about what garment of green to wear, four-leaf clovers, beer, and maybe, just maybe, this is the year you participate in your local St. Paddy’s Day 5k.

This business of saints is interesting to me because, well, it’s not as defined as I was led to believe. The rules and processes to put “Saint” in front a first name are a little vague. Suffice it to say, you need to be a model citizen, as well as a teacher, person of influence, and someone who cares little for the material goods and comforts of this world. I know a lot of people who fill this bill, but add in “wonder worker” or “source of benevolent power” and the list drops to zero.

Saints are also on my mind because I grew up in California and, well, they’re all over the place out there. Francisco to the north. Diego to the south. Barbara somewhere in the middle. My childhood home was right down the street from Monica. My brother lives in Fernando’s valley. 99.9% of the state’s residents think of those as “places”, but firstly they were people. You’ll find “San’s” and “Santa’s” all over the Golden State.

Saints get a little watered down when you consider the Catholic Church’s take on them. More than 10,000 have been recognized over time. Even more to the point, Catholics acknowledge anyone making it to heaven to be a saint. I’d hope that count is way more than 10,000 by now. Maybe it’s the reason we have patron saints: the cream of the crop, the ones regarded as “heavenly advocates of particular nations, families, or people”. My patron saint isn’t David by default, but I sure like his name.

Eat Welsh Rarebit when you celebrate on Friday (grilled cheese on toast, zero rabbit)

Admittedly, my mind wanders somewhere other than historical figures when I think of saints. Our dog is a Saint Bernard, one of those gentle giants you picture with a brandy brandy around the neck. A few years ago we went on a cruise, with a stop in the Baltic Sea port of Saint Petersburg. “St. Elmo’s Fire” is a luminous phenomenon caused by an atmospheric electric field. (also a pretty good movie from the 1980s). And so on.

You can read a bit more about Saint David and his cathedral in one of my very first blog posts: unsung. You’ll discover that his town of Pembrokeshire – the smallest ~~kingdom~~ enclave in the UK – is right across St. George’s Channel from the Irish town of Kildare, where you’ll find St. Brigid’s Cathedral, my wife’s namesake. The blog post is really about Brigid but at least David gets a mention towards the end. Even if you don’t “read a little more”, remember, Friday’s the big day. Parades, flags, and fun food, all for a darned decent guy. Makes me blush anytime somebody says, “Dave, you’re a saint.”

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Rolling in the Isles

With the world “opening up” again, my wife and I often talk about places we’d like to visit. Some of them are more accessible now that we live near the East Coast. One in particular is further away. But coincidence or not, the five locales tempting the travel bug in me have one thing in common. Every one of them is an island.

Let’s get my first choice out of the conversation straight away, because it kind of stretches the definition of “destination” and “island”. I want to go see a round of The Masters golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia. If you’re not into golf you won’t understand the fuss, but trust me, when you’ve watched this competition on television every April since you were a kid, the place becomes a shrine of sorts. The Masters never played into our decision to move to South Carolina, but the course is suddenly only forty-five minutes from my new front door. So why is it an “island”? Have you been to Augusta? The Masters is like finding a bright green emerald in a bowl of gravel. Let’s just say it would be complimentary to describe the rest of Augusta as “plain vanilla”.

Now for the real islands. The first two fall on a lot of must-see lists: Hawaii and Ireland. Hawaii is no less appealing even though South Carolina makes it three hours further than from where I used to live. I’ve only seen “The Islands” on my honeymoon and on family trips (decades ago) so I know this time around would be decidedly more adventurous. Not that I want to bungee-jump into a volcano or anything; rather just take a closer look at all Hawaii has to offer.

As for Ireland, it feels a lot closer when you live up against the East Coast. If I had x-ray vision I might see the Blarney Stone from these parts. My wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with our first trip to the Emerald Isle, where we saw a lot of Dublin and only a wee bit of everything else. We tossed a coin into the Trevi Fountain to be sure we’d go back, and… oh wait, right… that’s Rome. Anyway, something we did in Ireland back then – whatever it was – instilled the yearning to go back someday. And we will.

Island #4 – Mackinac – sits neatly between the two peninsulas of the state of Michigan. The “Crown Jewel of the Great Lakes” has been on my must-see list ever since I watched Somewhere in Time in college in the 1980s. Yeah the movie’s a little corny, but it’s utterly romantic and it stars Jane Seymour, so cut me some slack. More importantly, Somewhere in Time shows off Mackinac’s Grand Hotel in all of its past/present glory. No, I can’t afford the stay at the Grand (rooms start at $500/night) but I’ll settle for one of the B&B’s on the island and spend my money on other stuff instead. Like a horse-drawn carriage tour with my wife (Mackinac has no cars). Or a round of golf on the only course in the country where the trek between the front nine and the back is, again, by horse-drawn carriage. Or a brick of Mackinac’s famous fudge. Whatever the draw, I’ll endure two connecting flights, a couple hours of driving, and a quick ferry ride, just to experience Mackinac’s throwback delights.

I’ve saved the best for last (well, at least, I think it’s the best). If I ever make it to France, I’m heading straight to Mont-Saint-Michel. “St. Michael’s Mountain”, which I’ve blogged about here, first captured my imagination when professional sandcastle builders (yes, there are such people) built a replica on the beach where I grew up, and again when I studied architecture in college.

The whole island setup is just so remarkable: nothing but a walled village of shops, restaurants, and other structures, connected by cobblestone streets ascending up, up, up to the Romanesque church and abbey at the pinnacle. Only 29 residents at last count. The surrounding tides ebb and flow, so at times Mont-Saint Michel is an island and at other times not so much. And about that abbey on top. The first cornerstone was laid in 1023, making Le Mont 1,000 years old this year. All that time and I’ve never ever seen it? Mon dieu.

If I make it to my five “islands”, I might have to add just one more. Ireland is paying people almost $100k for the “gift” of an island off the western coast of the country. There are twenty such islands. The catch: you have to refurbish whatever structures you find and you have to live there. Shelter yes, but food, water, power, and fellow humans are maybe’s. Yeah, I won’t be rolling with any of those isles. Let’s just start with that golf course down the street from me, shall we?

Some content sourced from the CNN Travel article, “Ireland will pay you $90,000 to move to a beautiful island home”

Doorstop Topper

The word nerd in me thinks it’s cool when one can be modified to make four others simply by changing the same vowel. Batter will be in abundance the next several weeks with all of the baking. The holidays are always better when shared with others. Colorado’s bitter cold winters are a thing of our past now that we’ve moved to the South. The chaos of the holiday season doesn’t really “bott_er” me (okay, that one’s reaching). But finally, we have butter. Ah, there’s nothing better than (or bitter about) butter, is there?

The topic of butter is brought to you today by an utterly ridiculous here-today-gone-tomorrow suggestion to make your holiday hosting more glam than your neighbor’s: butter boards. When I saw this picture I didn’t even understand what I was looking at. Even more insulting to this word nerd: the opinion piece I found describes a butter board as “charcuterie”. No, it’s not. Charcuterie is meats, not dairy. This unappetizing appetizer is nothing but butter, spread on a board, with toppings designed to take your attention away from the fact that it’s, well, butter on a board. I mean, if you’re gonna do faux-fancy at least go with peanut butter on a board, right?

Butter boards are an insult to butter. I think we can all agree, butter stands alone. You don’t need nuts or roasted garlic or dried fruit to ~~hide~~ dress it up. As long as your butter comes from fresh, quality ingredients, it makes anything it pairs with better. Except a board.

Can you tell I’m “bott_ered” by butter boards? It’s because my wife and I take our butter so seriously. Ever since a trip to Ireland, we learned the best butter is not only about quality, but quantity. At dinner in a quaint hotel in the Connemara region north of Galway, the waiter brought us a big serving of bread with an even bigger serving of butter. Seriously, the butter was more “brick” than “stick” (and certainly not “pat”). Ever since, our go-to butter is a brick. It also makes a great doorstop straight from the freezer.

Our butter dish is even designed for a brick, see? A stick would be lost in this Irish pottery; a pat even more so.

Speaking of butter pats, I must make mention of the device in the photo below. I wrote a whole post about it once called Sentimental Utensil. Who knew this petit guillotine was a timesaver to make butter pats? It showed up mysteriously in one of our kitchen drawers one day and I can only assume I inherited it from my mother. But inherited it shall stay. I can never get enough memories of my mother, as I alluded to in this paragraph from the past post:

And thinking about it even more, I can picture my mother using her butter cutter when I was a kid, leaving a perfect little pat beside the crescent roll that was positioned carefully on the bread plate beside each place setting at the dinner table. Because that was my mother. She was all about the dinner table. Everything had its place, even the pats of butter.

If you read the article on butter boards (please don’t) there are several dead giveaways on how forced this holiday trend feels. The first is right up there in the teaser subtitle: “Butter boards have gone viral…”. No, they haven’t, else this topic wouldn’t be worth ~~warning you~~ posting about. “… because of their novelty and shock value.” Their novelty? Shock value? Is one of your guests going to look at your butter board and say, “Well now, isn’t that novel?” And just what about a butter board causes “shock” other than the writer’s excuse to use (part of) the overused phrase “shock and awe”? It’s just butter, people.

The article should’ve gone with just the title so we could draw our own conclusions. Instead, you’ll find phrases like “… how fun the concept is…”, “… what’s fascinating about butter boards…”, and “… extremely versatile as an appetizer…”; none of which are true. The writing takes itself way too seriously and goes on way too long about something I will way never prepare. Unless it were frosting, of course. A “frosting board” would get my attention for sure. Put out a plate of cookies with a frosting board and I’m all hands.

But enough of the butter boards. You’d have to be blind as a bat to fall for this faux-fancy offering. I’ll bet you’ve already stopped reading. If you did make it this far, thanks for sparing a bit of your time. Comment so I know you’re not a bot.

Some content sourced from the Food Network article, “How to Make the Perfect Butter Board for the Holidays”.

Emerald Greens

In the final lines of our national anthem, Americans sing, “O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave”. Those labels are a little dicey today. Are we really free? Are we really brave? It’s a debate best left to more intellectual bloggers. I’m simply looking for less controversial words to describe the United States. Take Ireland, for example. The little republic is nicknamed “The Emerald Isle”. Of this, there can be no doubt. Before your flight even touches down, the window seat view is nothing but endless rolling green hills. And not just any green.

See what I did there? Inside of a single paragraph I distanced myself from heavy topics like freedom and bravery, and now I’m focused on the color green. Bravo, Dave! Now then, let’s continue.

Emeralds have always been my favorite of the precious gems. In the jewelry shop it’s hard to ignore diamonds (because they’re everywhere), yet somewhere in the glass cases you’ll find the more colorful stones. Blood-red rubies. Royal blue sapphires. Modest little garnets (my birthstone). And green, green emeralds. I’m drawn to emeralds because green is my favorite color. On that note, do you realize your favorite color never changes? Nobody says, “Well, I used to like purple but now my favorite color is orange”. You can move to another country, switch up your career, or overhaul your wardrobe, but your favorite color is a constant.

I digress (sorry). I have emeralds on the brain for good reason. My wife & I just celebrated thirty-five years of marriage (thank you very much), and she hinted emeralds might be a nice gift. So I paid a visit to my jeweler. I told her I was looking for something understated, maybe earrings and a necklace. She showed me a pretty set, where I thought my only decision was the shape of the stones (Round? Square? Pear?). But then she threw me a curve when she said, “Would you prefer natural or lab-created?” Huh? Why would I buy my wife anything other than the real thing?

Here’s the rub of the green. Lab-created gems are the real thing. They’re “chemically, physically, and optically identical to their natural counterparts.” So why choose one over the other? Cost. Lab-created gems can be significantly less expensive, especially as the number of carats grows. In other words, easy choice, right? Wrong. The lab-created gems – at least in my jewelry shop – were small enough to be the same price as the naturals. Instead, my decision came down to color.

Was I tempted by the blue-green clarity of the lab-created? Absolutely. Did I choose them? Absolutely not. I kept coming back to the emeralds in my brain. Call it natural green, kelly green, or Irish green, but I prefer the green on the left. And I think my wife did too.

Liz is wearing $6.5M worth of emeralds and diamonds

I’d like to share some trivia on today’s topic but – warning – it’s a little pedestrian. Emeralds are one of the twelve birthstones (conveniently, the month of May). Emeralds come from the mineral Beryl (as do aquamarines). Their rarity makes them “precious”, alongside diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. They’re delicate, susceptible to chipping. Finally, emeralds are considered, among other things, a symbol of rebirth.

A section of the Florida Panhandle is called the Emerald Coast for the area’s clear, green water. The Wizard of Oz lived in the Emerald City for reasons only Oz fanatics can explain. And little Ireland, deservedly, earns its nickname for those rolling green hills, as well as Irish jewelry, made primarily from green gems (if not all emeralds).

I saved one more fact for last, mostly to make points with my wife. After I bought her the earrings and necklace, I said to my jeweler, “By the way, it’s silver for the 25th anniversary and gold for the 50th, but what about the 35th?” She replied, “Emerald” (even though several Google searches suggest jade). Whoa. I didn’t plan on that coincidence but I’ll certainly take the credit. After all, my wife is one-quarter Irish. My daughter’s name is Kelly. And my favorite color is green. How could it be anything but emeralds?

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

——————–

Lego Grand Piano – Update #17

(Read about how this project got started in Let’s Make Music!)

Today’s build demanded more of an overhead view so you can see the difference between last week and this week. Bag #17 – of 21 bags of pieces – earned me the row of seventeen black caps you see in the second photo (on top of the piano wires), as well as the wide stand for sheet music, just behind the keyboard cover.

The piano is a remarkable instrument. When you press down on a key, you’re actually pushing a “hammer” up against the underside of a piano wire, creating a musical sound (or “note”). When you release the key, a black “damper” (one of the seventeen I just built) drops down on the top of the wire, silencing the sound. Add in the functions of the three pedals at the base and you should consider the piano a musical mechanical marvel.

Running Build Time: 12.5 hours. Musical accompaniment: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee. Leftover pieces: 2

Conductor’s Note: The Bumblebee is a brief orchestral interlude of an opera, composed well over a hundred years ago. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s furious little piece, when played on the violin, really does sound like a buzzing bee. It’s only 84 seconds in length, but you find yourself catching your breath after you’ve heard it. It’s even more remarkable when played on the piano, the fingers almost a blur. Have a listen to the audio file here. I’m sure you’ll recognize the tune from some of today’s movies and cartoons.

Springtime Rings

My daughter drops little hints on our phone calls recently, teasers to suggest her boyfriend will soon pop the proverbial question. If he does propose, her left hand will be adorned with an engagement ring and she’ll become – literally – a marked woman. She might as well sport a little neon sign on her ring finger blinking, T-A-K-E-N.

While my daughter gets excited about her potential Ring by Spring (Hallmark Channel movie, March 2014), I glance down now at the gold band I’ve been wearing for the last thirty-four years. My wife and I decided a plain ring wasn’t enough of a statement for wedded bliss so we chose one with seven inset diamonds across the top. Now that I think about it, those seven gems might as well broadcast M-A-R-R-I-E-D.

Over the years, I’ve grown fond of the string of bling inside my ring. It’s a unique setting and the diamonds draw compliments. But credit to my wife, there’s purpose behind the glitter. She gives me her coy smile and declares, “When you’re walking down the street by yourself, the woman with her eye on you a block away will easily know you’re married”. A block away? That’s pushing it, but my diamond shine certainly does seem to advertise M-I-N-E.

Speaking of the opposite sex, Irwin Shaw, a playwright and author from the early 1900’s, wrote a short story that seems appropriate here. It’s called The Girls in Their Summer Dresses. Shaw puts us on the streets of New York City on a beautiful day, where a married couple is going for a walk. The husband keeps getting distracted by every pretty girl passing by and his wife calls him out on it. Their conversation over drinks after – and his closing thought – make for an interesting perspective on marriage. You can read The Girls in Their Summer Dresses here.

I can’t talk about my daughter’s forthcoming engagement ring and my own circle of gold without including a ring of my wife’s. No, not her wedding band (though it’s a beaut’) but rather a Claddagh ring she’ll receive from Ireland in the next few days. As we learned when we visited the Emerald Isle (and also from the Hallmark Channel – As Luck Would Have It, April 2021), the Claddagh ring includes symbols of love (heart), friendship (clasped hands), and loyalty (crown). Wear the ring facing one way to show you’re single and looking for love. Wear the ring the way my wife will, to show you’re already “captured”.

So there’s one more ring for love out there in jewelry shops (and it’s not a “promise ring”, which doesn’t count for much of anything). Ever heard of an eternity ring? It’s a band of precious metal with little gems all the way around the circle, to symbolize “never-ending love”. Talk about a bauble. Women describe it as “cumbersome”, and rumor has De Beers came up with the concept to justify a large purchase agreement with Russia for small diamonds. My wife will never get an eternity ring from me. Our vows included a nod to her wedding ring as “a forever sign of my love and fidelity”. See? I’ve got “never-ending” covered already.

My newsfeed included a recent wedding proposal in Atlanta, where the groom-to-be took his bride-to-be on a helicopter tour of the city, then promptly dropped to one knee on top of the skyscraper they landed on. When he popped the question he opened a box of five engagement rings. Seriously? I hope the guy my daughter will marry is way more decisive than that. Commit to just O-N-E, son, kind of like you did when you chose my daughter.

Some content sourced from the CNN.com article, “Man tops off helicopter proposal with five engagement rings”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Come What Mayo

When I was a kid, I had this inexplicable obsession with cheese sandwiches. Maybe it was the popular Wonder Bread of the time (a slice of which could be reduced down to a compact dough ball with minimal effort). Maybe it was fondness for the Tillamook cheese my mother always had on hand; the sandwich merely serving as an edible container. Surely it was because they were super-simple to make. Whatever the reason, cheese sandwiches would’ve been utterly dry-mouthed and unappealing without the essential third ingredient: mayonnaise.

The easy guess here is you have mayonnaise in your refrigerator. Go check. Even if you don’t, you have the ingredients to make your own: eggs, oil, and vinegar or lemon juice (blended together at high speed and allowed to set). The fancier versions of mayo add in some spices. Your particular brand probably lives quietly in the refrigerator door or towards the back of one of the shelves, alongside several other condiments. But the more I learn about mayonnaise the less inclined I am to group it together with the basics like ketchup and mustard.

West of the Rockies where I grew up, the standard brand of mayonnaise was always Best Foods. When I moved east of the Rockies later in life, the name changed to Hellmann’s but the label, the jar, and ingredients were exactly the same. That was always an oddity to me – until I learned Best Foods acquired Hellmann’s after both brands were solidly established. Rather than drop one for the other Best Foods just kept them both. Same product, same packaging, different name. [Note: those of you in the southeastern U.S. may prefer Duke’s Mayonnaise – a distant third in sales. At least Duke’s tastes distinctly different than these fraternal twins.]

Mayonnaise has one of those prolonged evolutions you could care less about, including its debatable origins. Several moments in European history claim ties to its invention. The most credible story (or the most romantic – take your pick) has the French winning the Seven Years’ War in 1756, and the victory dinner including a fish course, but no cream to make the tartar sauce. The chef improvised with eggs, oil, and garlic instead, and voila: mayonnaise. Further, the dinner took place in the Spanish port city of Mahon, so the sauce was dubbed “mahonnaise”. Elegant name, no?

But for a few uses I can take or leave mayonnaise. In addition to my childhood cheese sandwiches I only use mayonnaise for tuna salad, potato salad, or cole slaw. I never put mayonnaise on a burger (do you?) It’s ketchup on my French fries not mayonnaise (apparently that’s a “thing” with some of you). It’s drawn butter on my artichokes (again, not mayonnaise). And speaking of the cheese sandwiches, I recall my mother packing school lunches with bologna-and-mayonnaise sandwiches. Meat and mayo on the bread – that was it. No Tillamook cheese, no lettuce or tomato, no pickle on the side. There’s a harsh simplicity to bologna and mayonnaise. In other words, I hated the combo (and maybe that’s why mayonnaise only gets “a few uses” in my world now).

After my wife and I met, I discovered another refrigerator regular besides Hellmann’s: Miracle Whip. You could say Miracle Whip masquerades as mayonnaise (same look, same wide-mouthed jar) but the taste is decidedly sweeter. Check out MW’s ingredients and you’ll discover a clone of mayonnaise… but with a healthy dose of high fructose corn syrup (sugar). I like the tangy taste of Miracle Whip but I can’t help thinking mayonnaise is the healthier alternative. Credit Kraft Foods though, who debuted their “less expensive alternative to mayonnaise” at the Depression-era 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Almost a hundred years later MW’s a staple condiment, and the Miracle Whip-or-mayonnaise debate lands in the same conversation as Coke vs. Pepsi, Uncle Ben’s vs. Minute (rice), and Aunt Jemima’s vs. Log Cabin (syrup).

If you’re like me, at some point in this post your sub-conscience drums up the 1982 romance “An Officer and a Gentleman” (If not, you’ve missed a great film). If you’ve been to Ireland you probably know County Mayo in the northwest corner of the country. Better yet, go visit the town of Mayo on the northeast coast of Florida. A few years ago Mayo changed its name to Miracle Whip as a publicity stunt. Okay, that tops all other “mayo” references I can come up with.

As little as I dip into my mayonnaise jar, I’ve seen plenty of expiration dates. It might behoove me to make my own instead. Eggs, oil, and vinegar, with a little salt to taste, whipped at high speed. Sounds American easy-as-pie. But call it mahonnaise, okay? Then you’ll have something sounding more like what the French cooked up all those years ago.

Some content sourced from the 7/9/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “The Delicious Evolution of Mayonnaise”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Climb Ev’ry Mountain

St. Brigid’s Cathedral dominates the quaint urban landscape of Kildare Town in central Ireland. The centuries-old stone church beckons the short walk up the hill from the village square, for a tour around Brigid’s domain. And while you’re on the grounds, you’ll be tempted to climb the adjacent tower for a bird’s eye view of the surrounding county. I assure you; the vistas are breathtaking.

A bird’s eye view from my own locale would be just as breathtaking right about now. In the last ten days, I’ve ventured beyond my driveway once, for a mundane grocery shop at the local market. For all I know, nearby Colorado Springs has been erased from the map. For all I know, all my neighbors in the surrounding county traveled to a tropical island where they’re making merry, while I’m left to keep an eye on things back here at home. Who nominated me for that job?

No kidding, the view from the tower at St. Brigid’s is spectacular. Not only do you see all of Kildare Town below, but you’ll be mesmerized by the lush green acreage of the adjacent Irish National Stud (and its countless roaming thoroughbred horses). When my wife and I visited several years ago, targeting Kildare Town to see the cathedral of her namesake saint, I figured light a few candles and say a few prayers; not climb a ten-story tower. I have a mild fear of heights so you can imagine my trepidation. And here’s the kicker: there’s no code-sanctioned, easy-to-navigate stairwell within the tower. Instead, you hand over a couple of Euros for the privilege of climbing a dozen ladders to the top. I almost called it quits after the first few rungs.

My longing to “rise above it all” today is not just inspired by the pandemic, nor even my acrophobia-be-damned adventure up the tower at St. Brigid’s. I also think about nearby Pikes Peak, the highest of the Rocky Mountains in this part of Colorado. “America’s Mountain” tops out at 14,115 feet, and I’ve hiked to the summit several times (the trail begins at 6,000 feet). You begin the journey on a series of easy switch-backing trails, which then give way to a remarkably gentle incline through a forest of Ponderosa pines. For several miles under the treetops, you have no orientation to suggest you’re even climbing a majestic mountain. But once you hit the tree line, everything upwards is a moonscape: rocks and dirt and scrub brush all the way up to the summit. The view is stunning; as if you’re looking down from space. You can see clear to Wyoming to the north and Kansas to the east.

I could use a mountain (or a ladder-filled tower) on my property right about now, just to connect with the world around me. Oh sure, rural living means the stay-at-home rules are a minor inconvenience, but it’d sure be nice to confirm someone else is out there. The local news shows human interest stories every night on TV, but c’mon, how many of us trust the media these days?

Here’s my very favorite climb-ev’ry-mountain memory. I grew up in a narrow canyon on the outskirts of Los Angeles; so narrow in fact, some stretches could only accommodate a single row of houses on one side of a winding two-lane road. Biking with the cars was taking your life in your own hands, as was scaling the canyon trails into the domains of rattlesnakes and other wildlife.

Lucky for me, a steeply rising network of paved residential streets branched off the canyon floor less than a mile south of our house. On foot, those streets became a kid’s adventure up and out of the isolation. I’d stock a daypack with cheese sandwiches, Pop-Tarts, and anything else I could pilfer from the pantry. Some days I’d go it alone; others I’d drag my brother with me. Up, up, up we’d climb, rising breathless until we could peer almost straight back down to the canyon floor below. The final stretch of the topmost street – with houses perched precariously along on its edges – afforded a view of Los Angeles and the nearby Pacific Ocean like none I’ve seen to this day. There I’d sit, munching snacks, wondering what all I was missing down there in the big city.

Today it’s the same feeling, only different. What am I missing out there in the big city? Is Wyoming still to the north and Kansas to the east? Are cadets still at the Air Force Academy, anticipating this weekend’s socially-distanced graduation ceremony? Have the majestic red rocks of Garden of the Gods finally crumbled? Truthfully, I can’t answer any of these questions, not while I’m stay-at-home. But at least I can see the summit of Pikes Peak from here. At least I’m confident St. Brigid’s Cathedral still stands in Kildare Town (Notre Dame in Paris, maybe not so much). And at least I can revisit fond memories, the kind I never thought I’d yearn for again. On that note, think I’ll make a cheese sandwich.

Iced Coffee

In the airy but over-aired romantic comedy Me Before You (2016), the dashing but damaged Will Traynor (Sam Claflin) laments bygone times when he refers to, “Paris. Place Dauphine, right by the Pont Neuf. Sitting outside the cafe with a strong coffee, a warm croissant with unsalted butter and strawberry jam.” Place Dauphine is not just a scene in Me Before You; it’s a real square in the heart of Paris. And it probably has Will’s cafe, thanks to the nearby river and central views of the city. Yet French cafes are growing scarcer every year. In fact, these quaint little gathering places are disappearing in droves.

If someone asked me to paint a scene from a French country village, I’d surely highlight a charming cafe on a cobbled central space, bursting with patrons. In the cafe, the proprietor would serve incomparable pastries alongside fine, pressed coffee. The room would swell with music and chatter; the locals swapping their work-day adventures before heading home to supper. The evening stopover in the cafe seems to me a staple of French culture.

So it pains me to read about closed doors on France’s rural cafes, according to a recent report of the Wall Street Journal. Sixty years ago, you would find over 200,000 of them liberally dotting the country. Today, there are less than 40,000. “Progress” – in its various forms – has forced the rural worker out of traditional French industries and into the big cities. Time once spent in the cafe is now given over to the workday commute. Adds a village mayor, “Without a cafe, a village is pretty much dead”.

Even though I’ve been to Paris, I can’t claim to have spent time in any of its cafes, not even the famed Les Deux Magots, where writers like Hemingway and Joyce were said to have gathered. And yet, I’ve still experienced authentic “cafe culture” (and I don’t mean Starbucks). On a trip to Ireland several years ago, my wife and I concluded our first day of sightseeing by ducking into what we thought was a small pub in downtown Dublin. Turns out the place was more “French cafe”, complete with black-and-white prints on the walls, candle-lights on the tables, and coffee, tea, and pastries to beat the band. We were so taken by the place we stopped in every afternoon for the better part of a week. Perhaps the most showstopping memory of all: we never saw a phone, tablet, or laptop. Patrons were there to gather and chat, or at least – in the case of a few loners – to lose themselves in a good book.

The French cafe is made all the more romantic thanks to the artist Vincent van Gogh. In 1888 in the southern town of Arles, van Gogh observed the play of a cafe’s lights against the nighttime sky, which inspired his painting Cafe Terrace at Night, the precursor to his unequaled The Starry Night.

Perhaps you recall France’s “yellow vest movement” a year or so ago, when protestors took to the streets to battle aggressive economic policies. Turns out the French cafes played a part in the melee. The government sought to impose an increased fuel tax to reduce the number of cars on the road. The protesters interpreted the tax as an impolite shove, to get more people to move to the big cities. In other words, less people in French country villages. And no people in French country cafes. Remarkably, one of the government’s concessions following the yellow-vest protests was subsidies towards small businesses. Perhaps the French country cafe is not dead after all.

Had I written this post two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have come up with much positive spin on this topic. But let’s face it, those of us “sheltered in place” right now yearn for social interaction (not social distancing). We want face-to-face again, not Facetime. We want the congregation, not just the church service. So perhaps there’s a silver lining to the current pandemic after all. When we return to “new normal”, my hope is we’ll have a newfound appreciation for gathering, instead of hiding behind our electronic devices. As well, my hope is my next visit to France will find the doors of French country cafes wide open again, just beckoning me inside for “strong coffee and warm croissant”.

Clothes Shrink

On our 25th wedding anniversary, my wife and I crossed the Atlantic for an unforgettable first trip to Ireland. We wanted a few keepsakes to bring back with us, so we shopped carefully as we went about our travels. She found a gold necklace with a St. Brigid’s cross (her namesake), and a few ceramic Christmas ornaments. I opted for a few logo items from the Guinness Brewery, and a coffee table book on the village of Kildare. We also purchased music from a lovely harpist, playing outdoors just steps from the Cliffs of Moher. Last week, I came across one more Ireland item I forgotten about: the sweater you see below. It’s colorful and it’s Celtic… and I think I’ve worn it once.

Don’t know about you, but the new year is always my opportunity for “spring cleaning”. Maybe it’s because I’m already in the mode as I take down and box up the Christmas decorations. Or maybe it’s because my office files burst with paper after a year of accumulation. Whatever the reason, by mid-January I manage to a) empty my office of anything irrelevant to the coming year, and b) conduct something akin to an inventory reduction sale on my clothes. The office files are easy, but the wardrobe; that takes a little more judgment.

When it comes to decisions about clothes, it’s safe to say guys have it easier. We’re more utilitarian – by definition “designed to be useful or practical rather than attractive”. Yep, that’s us guys – if the shoe fits, so to speak. Of course, women flip the definition around and put the premium on “attractive”. For them it’s more about fetching than fitting. In fact, I’d venture to say a woman’s closet is 75% “attractive” and 25% “utilitarian”, while a man’s is the reverse. And trust me; “utilitarian” is easier to shift to the giveaway pile.

My annual wardrobe shrink is always nostalgic. Some items – particularly suits and sweaters – survive several years before reluctantly leaving the nest. Others – admitted impulse buys – fly the coop having been worn just a handful of times. I’ll never forget one year, when I brought eight suits to Goodwill. Why so many? I moved from California to Colorado and changed jobs in the process. My CA job required the suits; my new CO job did not. Even so, I had to swallow hard on that donation. Those suits had plenty of mileage left in them.

Here’s a mistake I make all too often with my wardrobe. I’ll buy a shirt or a pair of pants at a store. Weeks later, I realize I really like what I purchased, so I go online and buy another half-dozen; same style in various colors. That’s the mistake. Not only am I a poor color-chooser through the Web, but I don’t wear that shirt or those pants as often as I think I will. In other words, I over-shop (and I’m a guy!) Then comes wardrobe shrink time, and my giveaway pile includes that shirt or those pants. Not good.

The more common mistake – at least for us guys – is to buy something last-minute for a single occasion. Sure we may need it, but do we take a moment to project whether we’ll ever wear that item again? If not, that shirt or tie or sweater is reduced to a keepsake, sitting quietly on the closet shelf just yearning for another wear. That’s my Ireland sweater. Kinda sad, isn’t it?

Admittedly, I have other keepsake clothing. I buy shirts from favorite destinations (hello Guinness), and can’t bear to part with them. I buy shirts with my college’s logo on them, and can’t bear to picture someone else wearing them. I still have an Aloha shirt from our honeymoon in Hawaii (probably the last time I wore it too). No matter – there’s plenty of room in the closet when 25% just went to Goodwill. The purge is not completely pure. My Ireland sweater will live to see another year.

Some content sourced from the Wall Street Journal article, “The Case for Buying Less Clothing”.

Refuge and Reassurance

When the world goes off the rails like it did this week in Las Vegas, the very human reaction is fight or flight. Fight as in help to those who were impacted. Flight as in shelter; consolation from an incomprehensible tragedy. My own flight, in extreme instances like this one, sometimes takes the form of fond memories of a journey my wife and I made five years ago, to a remote village on the west coast of Ireland called Clifden.

For those who travel to Ireland, Clifden is rarely on the itinerary. It’s a four-hour cross-country drive from Dublin, and the final ninety minutes meander along a two-lane road through the forested expanse of Connemara National Park. Clifden has a modest history for all of its two hundred years on the map. The town evolved from farmers and fishermen who lived in the region, its commerce bolstered by the heir of a nearby castle. Like most towns in Ireland, Clifden suffered the blight of the potato famine and the onslaughts of rebels from the north. Its only claim to fame is the location of Marconi’s first wireless telegraphy station to the near south, broadcasting messages across the Atlantic to Nova Scotia in 1905. Today Clifden has 2,000 inhabitants, still looking the part of “two churches, two hotels, three schools, and 23 pubs” it boasted in the early 1800’s.

As my wife and I discovered, Clifden is the very definition of “off the beaten path”. We stumbled upon its welcoming neighborhood very much by chance. Our intended stop was Galway that day, but once in the city-center (and having survived a five-lane roundabout), we yearned for something smaller and less urban. Heading north along the coast and with dusk turning to dark, we experienced the thrill of the uncertainty of locating our as-yet-unknown destination.

After a middle-of-the-road stop for a funeral procession (popular guy, judging from the dozens of people descending upon the nearby church), and then passing by the dignified Kylemore Abbey, little Clifden emerged from the coastal fog. We stopped into the first bed-and-breakfast we could find, but there were no rooms at such a late hour. Instead, we were directed to the larger/older Foyle’s Hotel a couple of streets away. What a blessing in disguise. Foyle’s was the perfect introduction to the charms of Clifden. A turn-of-the-century grand dame with wide hallways, creaking stairs, and no elevator, we felt like we’d stepped back in time a century or more. Dinner was served in an elegant main-level salon just off the reception area, soft music playing in the background. Our spacious room looked down on the center of town from one of the second-floor windows you see here.

The next morning, we took to Clifden on foot, wandering its quaint, narrow, up-and-down streets. We stopped in at Walsh’s Bakery for breakfast, walking away with a few of the more tempting choices from the case. We then stopped in at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, one of the two spires accenting Clifden’s modest skyline. We climbed to the higher part of town for a look down to the lazy harbor activity along the quay. More than any sight or sound, we simply embraced Clifden for what it was; a quiet seaside village; is inhabitants contentedly going about their business. In contrast to bright and busy Dublin, Clifden summoned a much-needed deep breath and a moment of halcyon reflection.

Perhaps our travels will bring us back to Clifden someday. But the more I consider the idea the less inclined I am to make it happen. Our idyllic experience was predicated on the chance decisions making our visit happen in the first place, the wandering road leading us to its cobblestone streets, and the saving grace of vacancy at the Foyle’s Hotel.

In Gaelic, Clifden means “stepping stones”. That’s a nice coincidence, since my fond memories seem to guide me back to a more content frame of mind. I keep the following illustration in my home office. With just a glance I can find reassuring refuge once again.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.