Nine Months Later...

Thinking back on Ireland nine months ago now, It's the conversations that I remember most fondly. Sitting with Kathleen and Patrick and the other guests in Glengarriff. Talking to the gents in Castletownhend. All the good people who took the time to draw us out of our shell.

Back in Castletownbere, I picked up a book in McCarthy's Bar with the unexpected title of "McCarthy's Bar." It followed the story of an Irishman, born and raised in England, trying to determine what it was that made the Irish unique and spoke to him through his ancestors. He was desperate to avoid the cliches of Leprechauns, The Quiet Man and Celtic New Age blather. At the end of the book, he answers an ad from an in-flight magazine for people who want to open an Irish pub anywhere in the world. At a warehouse in Dublin, he wanders through aisles of actual Irish pub paraphernalia, cast off by real pubs as they change their look to suit younger clientele. The owner of the franchise explains that the Irish pub is popular worldwide. From Tokyo to Bucharest, people are looking for a place where strangers are invited in to the conversation and your only as alone as you want to be. I figure he's got to right. Where I used to see the "Irish" pubs in town as a marketing gimmick, now I look at them and wonder, if I were to ask for a pint at the counter, would someone ask me who I am, where I'm from, and what I'm doing there. If they do, I promise I won't mind. Really.