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David Mitchell

I got off the grid for a few days while up in NC at a retreat. (We go phoneless for the two and a half days.)

So may interesting posts - so little time!

A few reactions - In no particular order;

John,

thanks for your the reminder of my second favorite day of the year, the day we celebrate how close Patricks' day come to a really important date. And it reminds me of one of my favorite moviess of all time - "The Qiuet Man". My youngest daughter Meg (Watterson about "92) just sent me a text thanking me for introcuding them to that wonderful film.

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Jeanine,

Been thinking of you guys and how sad the circustances to be on a "pleasure" trip. I read where "POTUS" had to immedaitely delete a very threateing tweet he had just made about his supporters being "tough" and warning that "there will be trouble", after he heard about the shootting. Jeesh!

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Joe, 

Why an I not surpised that you would know this? (and Fred has retired to sending private email jokes)

Careful Mary Margaret. Better count all the money before and after.

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Mike,

Don't be silly. I bet you have to climb all the way out of that pool wihtout any ropes.

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Tim, 

Could it be that we might know the identity of the two, uhhh,,,,, aliens in the photo?

David Mitchell

Oh, and Jack,  (you knew I couldn't lay off that one - lol)

I think I might have seen Jesus this weekend. HE was at our closing ceremonies of another Marked Men for Christ retreat, full of hugging and laughing and crying. I think I know what is better than "Chicken Soup for the Soul". It might be hugging a huge black man, (just recently released from one of No. Carolina's Correctional Institutes, with poor language and social skills, and dreads down to his knees), while he is crying like a baby in your arms!  Yup, I think that was HIM alright. 

After a weekend starting with doubt and fear, we turned it into a celebration of Joy. 

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bragging here;

Saturday night, standing around with in a group with most of the staff, the leader (who I have known through about 6 of these retreats now - and love the guy - a formert airline piltot turned minister) started to announce what I though were the next set of instructions to the group of about 50 staff members. As he went on he began to sound curiously like,,, well something different was coming. He was talking about a guy who was older than most of them,  and that he hoped the younger guys (mostly 30 to 55) would keep coming as late as "this guy".  

Then he announced to the whole group that it was my 70th Birthday. Everybody cheered and I was shocked. Then laughing, had to yell out that it was my 71st. Then I took the moment to shout out a favorite funny brag - "Yea, the only living helicopter pilot in the history of the world to successfully bomb the Mekong River with a pizza oven."  They loved it !  

Fun moment - and a joke about a true strory. 

Frank Ganley

John a loovvely ode about old Ireland. If you’d like to know why we the irish left listen to a mourful ballad titles “sibbereen”https://youtu.be/DP8PB3viZck the youtube link. My family treee is almost completely irish but one of my best friends came over here 25 years ago and has unendingly refered to me and all those of irish decent as”plastic paddys”. I had to remind him that his son Kieran is a plastic paddy. If you listened to the song skibbereen you now know then why they left and came to America. They came to Boston which was mostly english, who hated the  irish and signs offering employment had attached at the bottom”INNA” which stood for Irish need not apply. That sent them west to work on the railroads where it was discovered no one worked harder than them. They also played harder but never missed work. This however is not the point of this post. Due to my career as a PGA pro i had been wearing out my bones and joints from constant practice and play. On one occasion I was having extreme pain in my shoulder and neck and I had to see a nueroligist. I had to get a nerve induction study. Perhaps brother hamilton will explain how it works and performed with needles and a calculator, precomputer age.He was a most handsome spanish gentleman approaching 80 and he asked me if i was from argentina. I scoffef and said no my family is from ireland. As miracle max so eloquently stated in princess bride, oh you who know so much. He went on to tell me that he was from argentina and his best friend throughout his life was named Ganley. No way i said in somewhat questioning way. Yes way he said. He went in to explain that when letters from america came back to the motherland and read that the treatment of the irish was almost as bad that they were enduring from the english. Hearing this thousand flocked to argentina and quickly assimulated into that way of life. The smooth talking irish boys succeeded in charming all the rich landowner and ranch owner’s daughters and the beautiful irish lassies did the same to the boys. Today after spanish and the german have one of the highest populations of irish decent. And there my friends is a chapter of history we never hear abouthttps://youtu.be/DP8PB3viZck i put here again so you don’t have page up

John Jackson

Mike, I know Raglan Road mostly as a song and it’s one of my absolute favorites.  I have  versions by Loreena McKennitt, the Chieftains (one version with Van Morrison and another with Joan Osborne) and Peter Rowan, a bluegrass version.

Frank, I’d  never heard your Skibbereen song but it really does rivet you (and make you glad you were born a hundred years later).   I’ve actually been to Skibbereen – it’s in the extreme southeast corner of Ireland only ten miles from Cobh, the port of Cork City where the vast majority of Irish immigrants set sail for America, Canada and other places.   I’m sure you’d be interested to know that it’s also close to the Old Head of Kinsale, a really scenic peninsula that also has a famous golf course (built, let's hope, after the famine times).

A really good, fun and funny book on the Irish diaspora is Pete McCarthy’s ”The Road To McCarthy” in which the author visits several countries to track down and interview people of Irish descent with the name McCarthy (and of course others as well).  A few of the places are expected (New York, for example, and Australia which was originally settled largely by Irish convicts deported for life to the harsh British penal colony there) but most of the book is devoted to places not known for their Irishness – Butte (Montana), Alaska, and Morocco.  But the most interesting chapter is the one on Montserrat, an island in the Caribbean now mostly populated by the descendants of slaves (and half blown away by a series of volcanic eruptions between 1995 and 2000).

His earlier book “McCarthy’s Bar” is also really good.  A BBC-TV personality with an English father and an Irish mother, he grew up in England but would spend summers as a kid with his Irish grandparents in rural County Cork (not far from Skibbereen).   In the book, he recounts a several-month long trip he took to Ireland to attempt to decide if he’s really Irish or English at heart.   During this odyssey his guiding principle is “never pass a bar that has your name on it”.  It’s not Yeats, but it is a very enjoyable meditation on what it means to be Irish.

We took our three kids to Ireland for the first and only time in 2008 when my daughter (our youngest) had graduated from college.  I had read the book 7-8 years earlier and had mostly forgotten about it until we stopped into a pub for lunch in a small town in County Cork.  After a few minutes, my daughter said “Look, Dad, they have a copy of that McCarthy book you like hanging above the bar” (there were also grocery items like canned goods, soap, etc for sale on shelves above the tables  - no harm in stocking up on life’s necessities while you’re having your Guiness).  I went outside to check the name of the place (which I hadn’t noticed on the way in) and it was indeed named McCarthy’s Bar and is the bar shown on the cover below.  One of the book’s funnier chapters “All-Night Hooley in McCarthy’s Bar”, in which the author gets invited to an after-hours party celebrating the proprietress’s fortieth birthday, took place in this bar.  When I asked  the woman serving us if this place was the bar shown on the book’s cover she confirmed that it was her party that McCarthy had written about.  

My point in telling this story is that Ireland is indeed a small place…

David Mitchell

Fun stuff, this Irish "thing".

I remember my only trip to Ireland years ago with Mary's whole family - cousins of I.C. classmate Janet Hughes' family. Altogether 19 of us includng some of us married spouses. (I was allowed to ride down in the cargo space)

We spent two nights in Killarney and found a wonderful little B&B outside of town where the owner had his own Jaunting cart. "Michael" took us (free) over to Muckross Abbey and all the way aroung the little lake (espensive and not included if you paid for the "tourist" cart drivers in downtown Killarney.)

Michael - "You WILL listen to me now! You'll be after spendin' all your money on those drivers in town!"

We went to the famous "Danny Mann's Pub" for Irish music - we thought - but it was all just American Rock and Country. The younger local crowd loved it but we felt a bit dissappointed. I asked the band leader during a break about authentic "Celtic music" and he said, "Oh darlin, they'd be laughin' us off the stage here."  I guess we were there too early for the resurgence of Celtic interest, which my aughter Sara, and John Jackson have explained to me is what the town of Doolin is all about nowadays. I know the Clancy Brothers, Tommy Makem, and the Chieftains, etc. were around back then but I guess it was less widespread at that time.  

My favorite memory was our visit to Dingle, which we learned was referred to as the "Last Parish before Boston." And I learned for the first time what the term "Irish Wake" really meant. When family members left for "Amer I kay", they knew they would never see one another again, so they called the priest, and a few musicains and cooked up a feast to celebrate the virtual "death to come". A few prayers and toasts, and a lot of music and food and libations and dancing - and tears before the morning "sail". That thought moves me.

We had dummped our rental cars for a day trip in a guided bus (much better way to learn the local history and culture) and found our way to the famous Doyle's Seafood house for lunch (wow expensive!). We saw the "strand at Inch" (where they filmed the horse race scene in John ford's "The Quiet Man", and we saw the other beach where they filmed the gun smuggling scenes in "Ryans Daughter". We went all the way out to the end of the point and stopped for a break, (where I seem to recall the tiny village was called "Ballydavid", but I cannot dind that on a map. The bus driver explained that we could use the restroom in that Pub but we must turn right inside the door to find it ourselves as "no one in the place will speak any english" (only Gaelic). We stared out at the "Blasket Islands" where as recently as the 1950's the government of Ireland finally had to move the last hundred or so residents off the island and back to the mainland due to the high cost of support facilities, transportation back and forth, and lack of school teachers for the few remaining islanders. I still have the small book about their history and have never read it.

But one of my fondest memories about Ireland is hearing the wonderful stories from my two daughters, who "youth-hostled"  Europe after their Watterson graduations ("91 and "94 - I checked this time and got ithe dates right). On Megans' trip, older sister Sara went back and met her in Dingle for a few days. They found the place where you can rent the "wet suits" and go into the bay and actually swim with the Dolphins. (they were both superb competitive swimmers) Megan described a moment where a Dolphin came up behind her and slid himself between her legs, wanting her to ride him as he swam forward.

I keep this favorite photo from their days in "downtown Dingle".  (never knew Mitchell or sometimes Mitchel - one "L" as in Mitchelstown - where all the Irish cheese in made) was an Irish name before going there.

Timothy Lavelle

In an unrelated report out of Seattle, a mother and father are accused of bribing a U. Washington admissions clerk $17.50 to allow their child entry. Surprisingly, the couple had previously turned down an offer to get the kid accepted into Ohio State for $4.95. 

David Mitchell

Okay everybody fess up, who knew John Jackson could write a piece that long?

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My mother's side was Welsch, but Dad's was Irish. Dad didn't have the interest in keeping track of family history unti lateer in life. He once shared that he knew three of the of the four family names and here they came from - but not in order. There were O'sullivan's, and Harringtons (or O'Harrington ?), and Mulcahys. I do seem to recall he knew that  one was a 16 year old boy from the Bantry Bay area. And I think one was from around Cork, and a Mulcahy from the little town of Castlemaine. But are there two Castlemaines?

Anyway, I love to imagine he is from the one in the song "Wild Colonial Boy" - sung in the film "The Quiet Man"

"There was a wild colonial boy, Jack Duggan was his name.                                                                               He was born and raised in Ireland, in a place called Castlemaine.

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This will surpise you. Nearby Savannah Georgia claims the second largest St.Patrick's Day celebration in teh country!  It draws people from all over and crams about 500,000 in (not-so-very-big) downtown Savannah and becomes an absolute nightmare of traffic access. I have dropped riders there who have flown in from Phoenix and LA. I also had to pick up people after 10 hours, and traffic was so bad a I could hardly get through it AND they were stinking, beligerant drunk. It took me almost 3 hours to get to where they were - and they moved three times. They were so abusive and foul-mouthed to me on the way home, I swore I'd never do that again. 

To this kind of revelry, my Dad used to say that he thought "Patrick must be rolling over in his grave" 

David Mitchell

Frank,

Nice choice of songs, but I think your own music is better.  

David Mitchell

Yes but Tim, 

Didn't the "U-DUB" price include a new book deal for those kids. I heard they were planning for it to be done as  a sequal to their great Rowing team story, and in conjunction with a new line of men's makeup, so they could call it, "The Boys in the Bathroom". 

Lawrence Foster

Over in the User Forum section I have posted a new short story that I wrote and presented tonight to the writer's group that I participate in.  It is about St. Patrick and is titled "A Mission from God."  I hope you enjoy it.  Please feel free to give me any feedback you might wish to share. 

James Hamilton, M. D.

John Jackson

Not sure if this is for real, but if so, it's pay-back time for us tech-challenged geezers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OADXNGnJok

I've been posting way more than normal so will return now to my usual lurking status...

Lawrence Foster

This is the photo of mine that Janie posted on the home page.  For some reason it did not post upright.  I went into my folder on my computer and tried re-posting it after I turned it. It came out sideways for me too!  Arrgh!  It took three different trys in different positins before it posted correctly.  And even then it is back in the original upright position.  Don't know why but at least now you don't have to twist your neck to see it.  I have a few more from that flight that I am going to post over on the User Forum section for your viewing pleasure.

David Mitchell

Well I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!

IMHO this announcement from John Jackson is a complete cop-out!  A betrayal!

- - - If he follows through on this threat, it means we will;

a) No longer hear his tender sarcasm about our beloved "narcissist-in-chief",

b) I will have no more reinforcement for my Fathter Foley Bingo stories,  

    and worse still,

c) We will probably never hear from the Doolin Ireland Chamber of Commerce Music Committee again.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I say we throw the book at him!

Classmates, Citizens, (former prom dates) Fellow Reprobates - Will You Join Me in this Fight?

This is a call to man the barricades!

* Janie, is there some way you could place a monetary fine on anyone who teases us with an occasional gem of a post, and then retreats behind the curtain? This is just wrong!

Michael McLeod

I think John should get a timeout for taking a timeout. 

David Mitchell

Good idea Mike. But I have to admit, that was one funny video.

(and I still have an old slender "princess" wall-mount phone with rotary dial)

David Mitchell

Here's a little fun thing I found a few years back in a drawer from the "Clintonville Booster". This came to mind from a side conversation with Larry and Jim about Larry's mountain photos and my detection of a ski area in the last two shots - yes, from 30,000. Skiing had been a passion of mine since the televised 1960 Winter Olympics from Squaw Valley, and still would be if I lived near some mountains. I taught Tom Litzinger and Dennis Winchester to ski, as well as several girls that I dated  - all up at Snow Trails in Mansfield. I skied there for free for severl years at Snow trails after Dad bought into teh ownership with some friends from Columbus. They got out a few years later, having lost a ton of money - and realized some years later they had all been swindled by the Accontant partner from Mansfield.

The article is 53 years ago this month. There were some more detailed articles in the Dispatch, but I thought this coupling of both announcements was kinda fun.

correction - Mike B (oulware), I hope you are still on this Forum.

Sorry for the stupid blunder on my part in the previously edited post.

*(another skiing story - my Dad took me to ski in Austria just before I left for the Army. We were driving down from Munich to Innsbruck, on our way to the Arlberg region (west Austria, where the skiing is big time.) When we got into Innsbruck, we spent the night before going on. But we did manage to locate a local "foreign student" from the states to share an enjoyable dinner with (at some famous historic place - uhhh, maybe "The Goldener Adler ?)         His name was Mike Yarbrough.

David Mitchell

Just sitting here imagining how fun it would be to get an invitaion to dinner at the Conway household.

 I still have an old catcher's mask in the closet.

"Could I have that cocktail in a to-go container please." 

John Jackson

OK, the pleasures of lurking are greatly over-rated…

Dave, you know that when the Conways sit down to dinner tonight George better make sure he sees Kelly Ann take a couple of bites of the meat loaf before he tries it.

And speaking of Kelly Ann, I can’t decide who is more disgraceful – the boastful, lying, self-absorbed con man she works for, or Kelly Ann herself for trying to excuse/normalize his outrageous behavior.

And speaking of outrageous behavior, how about the behavior that triggered George Conway’s swipe at Trump?  I’m talking about Trump’s sick attack on John McCain, now dead and buried for seven months.  I didn’t agree with McCain on some things but he was a good and honest man who did what he thought was best and followed his principles, even when it hurt (and five years in the Hanoi Hilton after he was offered an easy out is way more than a hurt).  And just as outrageous is the refusal of all but a handful of congressional Republicans to denounce our increasingly deranged President for this sick and mean-spirited attack. 

I guess we have to resign ourselves to the fact that once in a while a really bad apple comes along, but the really disturbing part is that Trump’s moral rot has proven contagious and now infects almost the entire Republican congressional delegation.  And when Trump is gone, we’re still going to be stuck with a lot of these people, his enablers, in Congress.  Question: once you grovel and debase yourself as thoroughly as these people have, do you ever get your soul back?

Mary Margaret Clark (Schultheis)

While I dislike engaging in political/religious discussion on this MF, I feel compelled to respectfully ask you John, how Democrats will "ever get their souls back" when they are passing laws that not only allow abortions up until birth, but also allow a mother and the doctor to decide, if the child survives the abortion, whether to provide medical care for the child or to let the child die?  

David Mitchell

Doggone it people! I wish you would stop sugar coating everything and tell us how you really feel.

I'm going to take the easy way out and agree wiff da boat o' yas.

Seriuosly, I still think there is enough blame to go around on both sides to warrant my claim that our two party system is broken. And it won't be fixable until we change the whole system of lobbying money and campaign financing. And I expect those two things will occur on approximately the third Thursday, after the first fulll moon, after the week that pigs learn to fly helicopters,,,,upside down. Unless it's during a leap year, in which case Congress will have to approve and extension.

This message was brought to you by a raving, cock-eyed, skeptical, blind optimist, and I approved this message.

David Mitchell

On a serious (really) note: I mentioned a while back the news coming forward about human slave trafficing and sex trafficing. The spotlight is really on this topic since the Robert Kraft police sting in Florida during the NFL playoffs. 

Yuu might find quite a shocking story in today's USA Today - a  long special investigative editorial about Sex trafficking, drugs, and a certain Attorney in Portsmouth Ohio - that has apparantly been going on for years AND everybody in twon seems to know it!

Pretty frighteneing story!

Several other recent articles chronichled a couple of young Pro athletes who are involved in fighting the problem - one baseball pitcher and his wife working with young girls in Uganda, and one last year about a guy who goes into the "sex factories" of Thailand to rescue girls as young as 9 and 10 - at great risk to himslef if they realize what he is really doing.  He poses as a customer to get to the girls and sneaks them out, one at a time. If they catch him they will likely kill him. These stories ought to be getting much more attention than they are but the Robert Kraft case may have finally brough the full spotlight onto it. 

** To repeat myself from and earlier post - for more in depth info on this matter, check out the website, "EXODUS CRY". An organization in Missouri dedicated to ending the world-wide sex and slave trafficikng. It contains some incredible information.    

Jodelle Sims

Mary Margret we all know how you feel about abortion and your concern for the souls of Democrats.  Please tell us how you feel about nearly 1500 children that the U.S. authorities have taken from their parents at the border.  Many of these children are kept in cages while others were sent away to places that are now unknown.  They probably will never be reunited with their parents.  Also are Republican souls affected by the cuts to free and reduced lunch programs.  I worked over 30 years in the inner city and know for a fact that breakfast and lunch from school is often the only food many children receive for the day..  I'm asking how you feel, so please don't send me any links!

Frank Ganley

Jodelle, God bless you for 30 of incredibly difficult teaching service teaching in the inner city. Just to correct the record Obama used the cages and seperated more children than our great President has..Obama built the cages and deported so many that in the congress he was known as “the great deporter” trump is just enforcing the laws the the democratic party enacted. It has been reported that a majority of these children were brought here not by their parents but by human trafficers for easier entry . Jodelle lets agree that seperating child from their parents but initiated by Obama is wrong. But what gives these people the right to just enter our country illegally. It could be compared to 20 people show up at your home and demand that they be allowed to not only sleep in your home but since they don’t have work they demand you not only allow then to stay at your home but you must clothe them, feed them, and give them money. Are you in a position to be able to that? You may scoff at that but how can you defend that position when these people have done nothing to deserve this. As you said the gov’t is cutting food funding to inner city for in school breakfast and lunches. Why if that is true, i don’t know, do you think they are doing that? We only have so much money and to support these illeagle aliens. With thousands coming in a day now comes the moral question, do we ignore our inner city poor and our vets who are wounded or homeless and unemployed. Which do you chose. The theives in night or our citizens? Americans are the most compassionate people in the world but at some point we must cut all this. They can come here but do it legally. Now jodelle if the baby and please tell me as a mother and maybe a grandmother can you support a party that cheers and brags and celebrates murdering children in the womb. That baby is a life has less rights than a dog. We are sickened by animal abuse, dog fights, chicken fights because it is cruel to treat these animal in this way. Yet some states allow these babies to be murdered just before their birth. Don’t hurt the eagle or an owl’s egg, that will get you arrested and jail. Murder a baby and the left celebrates that it is allowed. Its a woman’s right with her body, but right have we given to that baby.. if the baby was asked what it wanted i belueve it would chose life. 

Frank Ganley