An American in Ireland

Today is Memorial Day, a day when Americans honor those who died serving the nation. Elsewhere on this site you'll find an excellent article on the Irish/Irish-American recipients of the Medal of Honor. It's great stuff.

However, there's one group of Americans who did not die serving the United States of America who we also honor this day. Memorial Day is also for those Americans who died fighting for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, although it took a good few years for everyone to agree on that.

Of course, among those Americans who died fighting for the Confederacy was a large contingent of Irishmen. At the moment I'm reading I'd never really considered how many Irishmen had made their way to places like Birmingham, AL or Nashville, TN before 1860 or that so many New Orleans Irish had joined the Confederate cause. Although I had a vague idea that Irish units faced each other at To my shame I have to admit I had only a vague idea about the Davis Guards before I read this book. The Davis Guards - named for CSA President Jefferson Davis - were 47 men, all Irish, who prevented a Union flotilla carrying 5,000 men from entering Texas via the Sabine River.

This week the Irish Times reported that a property for sale has had it's price cut. Last June the family of businessman Tony Ryan, who died in 2007, had put his 600 acre Co. Kildare estate on the market. The family were hoping to get €80m for the "Georgian stately home" and surrounding lands.

According to the Irish Times Ryan {photo} had spent millions on repairs and refurbishments and "threw all his energies into creating one of the finest estates in the country" after he acquired the property in the 90s.

However, Ryan's family learned the same lesson that thousands of Irish home-owners have learned in recent years. This is not a seller's market.

Bono might be returning home to recover after his back surgery, but rest might be harder to come by.

I have sympathy for Bono, suffering with his bad back. I'm sure if I was 20 or so my reaction to Bono's injury would be something along the lines of, "What's that old guy doing anyway, trying to behave like a young rock star. He's lucky he can still stand at the microphone." But, I'm in my mid 40s and can fully understand why Bono doesn't want to give up yet. Who wants to be old?

The media says Bono will do his recuperating in his home on Killiney Hill in south County Dublin. What better place? It's beautiful there. Tremendous views looking out over Killiney Bay from Bray to Dalkey and Dalkey Island {photo}, with its medieval church and 19th century Martello Tower.

As any visitors to these shores this past weekend could tell you the weather has been fantastic. Forget all that moaning about the cold - this weekend we had mid-summer temps. (And, yes forecast is for them to head in reverse, but the memories of this weekend will sustain us for a while.}

The weather was tremendous on Saturday and Sunday. It wasn't too shabby on Friday or Monday either. And today again, sunny and warm, down to mid-60s from the weekend's highs in the mid-70s, but in Ireland mid-60s is a pretty warm day.

On these warm days you have to open the windows of course. Back door too on the really warm days - like this weekend. I've lived here long enough to feel like I'm melting when the temperature hits 74°F.

During the Celtic Tiger years there were all sorts of articles in the press outside Ireland trying to explain why we were having such a boom. Some were better informed than others and just about everybody better than Tom Friedman, who declared that it was thanks to "free" college education and national health care. (Can we now blame college professors & doctors for the bust?!)

Given all the attention the Celtic Tiger received it's hardly a surprise that there are many who are now trying to explain what went wrong. Again, however, some are way off the mark. This week we had two prime examples.

A couple of recent reports here say the fall in house prices is declining. That's the good news. House prices are still falling, but at least they're not going down as fast as they were.

I know American house prices have also declined, but nationally the price of the average American house is down about 20% from the peak. Here prices are down about 50% and we have another 10% decline to go - at least. {Ireland's experience matches that of Las Vegas, which is appropriate given the way the government and the banks kept doubling down time after time til the bubble finally burst.}

In the area where I live I've seen two "SOLD" signs recently and those are the first in quite a while. That had me believing that maybe we were really near the bottom and that things might get better.

I read recently that lawmakers in

Ireland is a hotbed of Islamic extremism. Shocking, right? Of course it is. However, that's the view of Imam Ali Al-Saleh, who is the head of Ireland's biggest Mosque, the Islamic Cultural Centre in Dublin {photo}.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune newspaper Al-Saleh said many of the extremists came to Ireland as asylum seekers and now their children are becoming adults, taking over university societies, brainwashing other students. These "indigenous" extremists are being bolstered by students from the Middle East.

This may explain why American Jamie Paulin-Ramirez came to Ireland after she told Colleen LaRose (aka Jihad Jane) in an e-mail that she would like to join her in Europe at a place that would be both a jihadist "training camp" and home. As Al-Saleh puts it, Ireland is an extremist "safe haven" and an al Qaeda "base."

Something's bothering me. Where did Jamie Paulin-Ramirez get married?

You might remember Jamie Paulin-Ramirez. On April 2 Paulin-Ramirez was arrested in Philadelphia after she arrived on a flight from Ireland. Paulin-Ramirez had been arrested and released in Ireland in March in conjunction with the so-called Jihad Jane plot. Paulin-Ramirez is a Muslim convert, but not Jihad Jane, which is a pseudonym allegedly used by fellow American, Colleen LaRose.

Paulin-Ramirez {photo} is from Colorado and according to the federal indictment against her Paulin-Ramirez left America last September, around the 12th. She arrived in "Europe" the following day and Paulin-Ramirez "married CC#2, whom she had never before met in person." (CC#2 is unidentified in the indictment, but it seems pretty clear CC#2 is Abu Nabil Charaf Damache or, sometimes, Ali Charaf Damache.)

I offered my daughters some fashion advice the other day that I thought I'd share with you: May is the new February. Dress accordingly.

It's been cold here. Not icy, but cold. Too cold for the first week of May, which in Ireland is the first week of summer. ("Summer?", you ask. "Yes," I reply, "in Ireland summer runs from May 1 through July 31." "Why?", you ask. "Well," I reply, "I don't really know, but that at least puts midsummer right around June 23 when Midsummer is celebrated. I guess.")

Anyway, back to the cold. Last Friday evening I was out for a post-dinner walk with the family along the seafront in Bray, Co. Wicklow. It was breezy and pretty cold, probably in the mid to high 40s. It wasn't late; the sun hadn't even set yet. Besides, the east coast of Ireland is not the kind of place where it's 85 at midday and 35 at midnight.

Gerry Ryan was a giant on Irish radio and there's no doubt that people here are shocked by his sudden death last week. I still find it hard to believe that he won't ever again fill three hours daily on the national airwaves.

To be honest, I wasn't a big fan. Often his show ventured from earthy to bawdy to crude. I usually bailed at earthy.

Other times he dealt with stuff I simply had no interest in - the everyday little things that are important when they happen to you. He'd take calls from people who were having trouble getting a passport or dealing with noisy neighbors or a cheating auto mechanic. I know a lot of people liked his personal approach to radio - it was like a one to one conversation with 300,000 people - but it's just that when I listen to the radio I prefer a discussion on politics or economics or sports.

I want to finish