• YOU LOSE EITHER WAY

    The timing could not have been worse. But when Murphy does the planning, the timing will always never be worse. You do wonder just who Murphy was. Certainly not the kind old gentleman who owned the pub by that name in midtown Manhattan. Maybe a distant cousin of Mrs. O’Leary. I mean even the cow…


  • EIRE

    There are two principal problemswith Ireland, and I found bothto be utterly insurrmountable. Every town, even Galway Cityat any time of day or nightlooked like it should be a postcard. Add to that the horror that inevery pub I visited it was assumedthat if asked I would sing a song or, realizing I have no…


  • A NIGHT AT THE ROSE

    Three beers over two hours and, giddy, I want to sing along with the Irish house band in my horribly off key voice, just two choruses of Irish Rover or Four Green Fields. It’s beginning to snow outside and it’s a four-block walk to the Government Center station. I suppose it would sober me up…


  • In any half respectable pub in Galway, and in Ireland the county of place hardly matters, when enough pints have been passed, and night grows thick, even such as I, claiming to be part Irish, claiming two left feet, can feel the ceili deep within, and step out on the floor to do what I…