Pub Guide
The West's Awake
by Cormac MacConnellRSS 
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Islandmcgrath - Paradise for McGraths and more
In rural Ireland we love too see our Irish Yanks coming -- Admiration and respect for Irish Americans is total
We love our Irish Yanks - admiration and respect for emigrants
There has been a lot of discussion around the place recently on the subject of what the Irish in Ireland think about Irish Americans, and I've read some strong views being expressed on both flanks of the debate and on both shores of the Atlantic.
Spring in our step - Irish travel continues as the world gets ever smaller
It is so balmy and soothing in Clare today that I am not going to allow even a single negative thought or word into this ramble around the events the last 10 days.
The facts are that the gentlest winter season of my entire life is now mingling and melding into a spring of compelling beauty and hope. Even the barometer that is represented by the hourly news bulletins is rising.
For the past month, as the sun shines away in the mornings and the daffodils dance, there have been far more announcements of incoming jobs and positive developments than job losses or other indices of economic gloom.
It’s best for Pope Benedict to stay away form Ireland, for now
At the time of writing on a bright spring morning, the word on the wires is that the Pope is considering coming to Ireland later this year for an upcoming Eucharistic Congress. He has been invited by the Irish hierarchy.
The one that got away - loving and losing the neighbor’s daughter
I'm telling this yarn exactly the way it was told to me a week ago by a wise man whose name I will hold back out of respect for his honesty and privacy.
I recorded it in his farmhouse home in sight of the thunderingly beautiful Cliffs of Moher on a surprisingly bright and mild January afternoon. We had the front door open all the time we were talking before his hearth fire.
Will 2012 roar or whimper?
I hope ye are all having a serene season to date as we venture into that surreal limboland between the dying of an old year and the incoming of its successor.
Gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh - Jesus was a wealthy child at Christmas
These are beautifully gentle days and nights. This is the season, whatever the weather, which brings out the best of us, which gentles us, which writes smiles on our faces far more often than normal, which warms our handshakes and greetings.
I love these days leading into Christmas even more than I savor Christmas itself. Are you like that?
Silent Night (Christmas 1915) - my song is a gift from above - VIDEO
It is a fact, however, that in a Christmas season about 20 years ago I got a rush of creative blood to the head above in Connemara and wrote one of the most popular Irish Christmas songs in less than an hour.
It came to me, air and all, after I'd watched a poignant TV documentary about the spontaneous soldiers' truce in the trenches during World War I. Deeply moved and somehow inspired, I was walking through the living room singing it, tears streaming down into my beard, before that strange hour was over.
Santa Claus’ double is still raring to go this Christmas
It was cold last weekend in rural Holland. I was visiting the warm-hearted family of the Dutch Nation in the eastern Gelderland region up against the German border.
There are dozens of picturesque little villages here. They are all crowned by a windmill which does not work any more but hallmarks the geography.
'Warm and still above ground' or 'Livin' to die and dyin' to live'
The blackbirds and thrushes and starlings accordingly are on their annual cider binge, pecking at the windfalls. By the late evening some of them are flying unsteadily on one wing. If they were mortal motorists the police would stop them for drunk driving and put them in jail.
I have some fun with my neighbor Jimmy White across the road, a man I mentioned to ye recently. He is now hale and hearty again and restructuring his fine garden by having a boundary wall constructed.
Family, funerals and a witch
Maura tells me he is down in John B. Keane's pub for one of the pub theater nights there, feeds me with a mighty fry and all the Kerry news, and releases me into the evening again.
The aura and spirit of John B. still strongly inhabits Kerry's most famous pub. It hits between the eyes as you enter, and the entertainment is as varied and rich as Keane's own work.
The summer’s getting shorter
I've been up there more than 20 times, maybe 30, always in the line of reporting duties for newspapers and magazines now long gone, and it is my firm intent to climb the holy mountain again.
I put on my boots and take my pilgrim's staff and put Ciara's leather hat on my head and start off through the afternoon crowds with a light heart and step. There are thousands gathering and climbing, just like always. Nothing has changed at all.
What's in a name?- Calling all Cormacs!
There was a debate here recently about all the implications of being a Paddy or a Mick on either side of the Atlantic. It was interesting.
For what it is, worth I made certain that none of my three sons would bear that burden. Accordingly they are called Cuan and Cormac Og and Dara.
Looking on the bright side - reflecting on the hell of post-Famine evictions and workhouses
I sipped an espresso from the small cafe behind me and looked down the floral path leading into the center of a walled garden that has become a major tourist attraction in the West Clare town. It was a long time before the reality of where I was, in historic terms, struck me like a bucket of cold water.
Down that very path, into the very same garden, the cruel Lord Hector Vandeleur walked with his agents away back in the post-Famine era, when his family owned the town, and planned the mass evictions of sick and starving tenants from his estates in an episode which is indelibly marked not just into Kilrush history, but nationally too.
Why Sarah Palin is disliked in Ireland
There are times to keep your mouth tightly closed and there are times to yell. This is one of these occasions.
In the name of the sweet and suffering Christ Almighty what is wrong with ye over there? How is it even remotely possible that a significant number of the citizens of your mighty and well-educated nation have created a political climate which sees Sarah Palin emerging as the most likely Republican choice to contest the upcoming presidential election?
A history of Ireland's stone walls
There is something quite exquisite and even exciting about stone walls and the men that build them. I've always thought that.
These craftsmen are working with grey chunks and flags of eternity building boundaries which will be still young when they are dead and gone. Stone walls last forever. And men don't.
My tears at the Queen Elizabeth's speech at Dublin Castle
I wept because of the damage that history did to my brain, because of the way it damaged the heads and perceptions of the good people, both Protestant and Catholic, among whom I spent my childhood in Ulster, because of the tortured and bloodstained impacts it had on all the people of this island, north and south, because of all the horrifics of all the Troubles between the two Bloody Sundays, because of all the tears and fears and heartbreaks.
And I remembered small things. My shopkeeper father Sandy was known for the high quality of the tea he sold in our country shop. When this old Queen was young and her coronation was being celebrated, the tea company in Dungannon sent out a gift hamper to their customers.
The man still on the moon - Solly Maguire
Driving back home from the village of Labasheeda on a crystal bright spring night garnished with stars, I saw Solly Maguire for the first time in close on 20 years. He had not changed one bit from the time I last saw him even though he is a big age now.
He still had the same ruddy cheeks, the huge wide smile, the head on one side. And he still has the double chins and the dimple in the center of the original one.
A remarkable man, Solly, and the father of a daughter with beautiful wisdoms about her.
I said, "Hello there Solly. It's great to see you looking so well." I saluted him with my right arm.
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