Bailes Con Chihuahuas

As we step out into the early morning darkness, she's afraid that I'm going to get lost or do something stupid so the dog makes me hold on to one end of the leash so she can lead me home if I go terribly astray.  The streets are quiet save for the roosters calling out their morning prayers, and the only other sign of life is the flash mob of street dogs appearing, disappearing in the spotlight of the street lamps as they rush frantically, noses to the ground, back and forth across the cobblestones.

I lift my head into the cool morning breeze and head off intently toward no place in particular but the dog's interests lie in the opposite direction, closer to the cobblestones. She is as intent in pursuing her pleasures as I am in mine and so the morning tango begins. Two quicksteps "adelante" as she drags me toward the curb, an abrupt twisting "media vuelta" and a stumbling  "atrás" as I attempt to regain my balance and rein her back in, followed by an elaborately executed "corrida garabito" in which we both end up hopelessly entangled in the leash. We continue our hesitant tango for the entertainment of the adobe walls, the amusement of the cobblestones, the silent applause of the moonlight as we dance a little "contrapaso" onto the next block and then round the corner into the final stretch home.

The narrow view down this Mexican street as night meets day and the pink rip in the sky tilts toward orange, makes me question once again, "Did I forget to unplug the toaster?" I've seen this before. Was it the footage of the wildfires raging across California, or that spectacular pipeline explosion in Texas? 

It makes me wonder if Dante Alighieri once lived here. Was this the ethereal light that he struggled to describe in the final canto of the Paradiso? Did Homer walk his dog here too in the early morning hours but neglect to mention Ajijic as the forgotten town in the Odyssey as the source of the repeated epithets extolling the "rhododactylos Eos", the "rose fingered dawn"?

Some mornings Eos arrives as an explosive spectacle, a fiery chariot drawn by powerful horses blazing into the sky accompanied by the endless scheming and chattering of Homer's gods, this morning she appears as a waif, pale and thin, arriving silently, hesitantly, a lonely refugee from the night. Still, not a bad way to begin the day, or to bring yet another year to a close.

We follow the malecon home but our morning tango is brought to an abrupt halt as we stroll onto the bridge and nearly fall into the arroyo. The entire structure is deteriorating. The surface looks more like a cheese grater than a bridge, with several holes large enough to swallow a small dog. 

We approach the largest hole and stare into the void half expecting to find Wile E. Coyote clinging to the edge of the abyss, or perhaps, I thought, this is simply the opposite end of Dante’s extraordinary poem, the place that inspired the opening cantos of The Divine Comedy. I kneel down placing my ear close to the hole, listening for the eldritch voice of Virgil murmuring an invitation to descend into the nine circles below.  I think about trying to block off the hole or at least put up a warning sign, but all I can find is a large paper cup. I think about scrawling a message on it and placing it over the hole,"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate", “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”, but I figure the message along with the cup would be lost.

Safe at home, as the dog nudges aside the cat and heads for her water bowl, I sit with my coffee, and relate our morning adventure to my wife and I’m delighted to hear that the Garden Guild is (not surprisingly) way ahead of me on the need for bridge repair. The Garden Guild has for years contributed to the community in ways large and small and this year they have raised the money and reached out to forge partnerships with Hector España Ramos, Inside Lakeside, the Municipality, Have Hammers, and others to make the necessary repairs to both bridges and ensure that the malecon remains the heart and soul of Ajijic. Building bridges with the community is something the Garden Guild has excelled at for many years, and this latest project is no exception.

So the dog and I look forward with great anticipation to the completion of the project in the next few weeks when we can dance down the malecon once again, crossing the bridges without being provoked to contemplate the void, and instead turn all our attention to yet another spectacular sunrise. But the leash is still a hindrance to our morning tango so I practice hard to gain the confidence of my dog in the hope that one day perhaps she will let me leave home without it.

Merry Christmas!

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

 ‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through la casa,

Not a creature was stirring – Caramba! Que pasa?

Los niños were tucked away in their camas,

Some in vestidos and some in pajamas.

While Mama worked late in her little cocina,

El viejo was down at the corner cantina.

While hanging the stockings con mucho cuidado,

In hopes that old Santa would feel obligado

To bring all children, both buenos y malos,

A nice batch of dulces and other regalos.

Outside in the yard there arose such a grito,

That I jumped to my feet like a frightened cabrito.

I ran to the window and looked out afuera,

And who in the world do you think that que era?

Saint Nick in a sleigh and a big red sombrero,

Came dashing along like a crazy bombero!

And pulling his sleigh instead of venados,

Were eight little burros approaching volados.

I watched as they came and this quaint little hombre

was shouting and whistling and calling by nombre:

“Ay Pancho! Ay Pepe! Ay Cuco! Ay Beto!

Ay Chato! Ay Chopo! Maruca y Nieto!”

Then standing erect with his hands on his pecho,

He flew to the top of our very own techo.

With his round little belly like a bowl of jalea,

He struggled to squeeze down our old chiminea.

Then huffing and puffing at last in our sala,

With soot smeared all over his real suit de gala.

He filled all the stockings with lovely regalos –

For none of the niños had been muy malos.

Then chuckling aloud, seeming muy contento,

He turned like a flash and was gone like the viento.

And I heard him exclaim, and this is verdad,

Merry Christmas to all, and Feliz Navidad!

(Author Unknown)

Rising Waters

The lake is still rising. The shoreline along the malecón has disappeared, the shorebirds that used to strut on stilted legs along the water’s edge are now nesting in the trees, and the playground, once many yards from the gently lapping waves, is now a water-park for the fish as they dart between the submerged swings and teeter-totters. The rains began early this year and they continue.

In a typical year the rain begins in mid June and tapers off beginning in mid October, but it’s now December and it rained again a few days ago.  This is Mexico’s largest lake, about 7.5 miles wide and 50 miles long. The Lerma River starts its journey about 435 miles away near the city of Toluca and  eventually empties into Lake Chapala, so the total watershed is a massive area of about 20,000 square miles, and the lake level will continue to rise over the next few weeks. It’s astonishing to think about how much water is required to raise the level of water by even an inch!

Water laps ever higher against the short wall that protects the line of restaurants along the waterfront, and pelicans paddle between the trees now seemingly standing a-tip-toe in the neck-high water. The boardwalk has disappeared into the marshes, the picnic tables and stone benches sit like remnants of Atlantis at the bottom of a goldfish bowl. 

But the kayaks that required a struggle across yards of pebbled shoreline to launch into the lapping tide can now be slid directly from the rack into knee-deep water, and the long journey from the town pier down the flight of stone stairs to the tour boats is now only a step or two. 

And next July as we bask in the unrelenting heat of the summer sun as it shimmers across this slowly evaporating lake, we’ll look back and marvel at how this could ever have seemed alarming, and boastfully inform our disbelieving visitors just how high the water used to be.

The Dingle Peninsula

From Killarney we headed west to the Dingle peninsula. Jutting out into the cold Atlantic, the journey along Slea Head and the Wild Atlantic Way leads to the western most point on the mainland with views of the mist shrouded Blasket Islands on the horizon. This is a region of Gaeltacht, a bastion of Irish heritage where the traditional language and culture are embraced and Gaelic is the voice of songs, shop signs, and small talk.

The landscape is wild and remote. The locals love to say that “the next town over is Boston”. When it rains it doesn’t so much fall as blast in horizontally from the storm-gray North Atlantic. But when we were there the sun was shining if not entirely warm, and the mist had receded to the far horizon.

Dingle, as you would expect, is a fishing village with restaurants serving salmon, sole and mussels caught that morning in the cold Atlantic, but it's also become a fabulous foodie town. Celebrated chefs from all over Ireland (and beyond) are attracted here not only for the abundance of seafood but also for the salty march grasses and seaweeds used for broths and wraps, locally grown organic produce, grass fed lamb and beef, and locally made, award winning cheeses. There's also the superb gin from the Dingle Distillery flavored with local botanicals, rowanberries, hawthorne, heather, and fuchsia. Then there are the bakeries! And the butchers! And the cheesemakers! And the ice cream! Not to mention the plethora of pubs with local beers and local musicians playing local music. This is a place that gives real voice to the national Irish greeting, "Ceád Míle Faílte," a hundred thousand welcomes.

As we rounded the wide curve where Castlemaine harbor opens to the ocean there’s a beckoning view of the North Atlantic. Inch beach, despite its name is not the smallest beach in the world, but a wide flat tideland, a long peninsula really, and it’s a haven for the hearty Irish surfing crowd. If it were twenty degrees warmer and we hadn’t become such cold weather wimps since moving to Mexico, we’d have walked its entire length but the draw was still so irresistible that we had to walk, seemingly forever, to the water’s edge 'til the outgoing tide lapped at the tips of our shoes.

This is where David Lean, director of the film "Lawrence of Arabia" built a stone house on the side of a hill for his filming of "Ryan's Daughter". Farther down the Wild Atlantic Way is where Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman starred in "Far and Away", and the remote island of Skellig Michael off the tip of the peninsula was used in the filming of the latest "Star Wars" epic.

As seems to be the case all over this island, epochs collide and the past and present sit tolerantly side by side. Prehistoric stone monuments stand like silent sentinels of the past scattered across the landscape and the farms. The ancient beehive huts or ringforts, stone piled on stone without mortar, used now for sheep pastures or pig shelters still stand in great abundance after more than a thousand years.

A short distance down the road the bones of a Famine Cottage stand defiantly on the side of a hill staring blankly across an open field toward another  prehistoric stone complex perched precariously atop the bluff. The cottage and the surrounding grounds are preserved as they were in the mid-1840’s when the potato crop rotted in the fields, a million people died, and a million more emigrated from Ireland with the hope of a finding better life. 

Stone stacking is an ancient and sometimes religious impulse, but it's a way of life in Ireland, both commonplace and high-art. Stone cairns lead lost hikers to the safety of a trail, stone walls define pastures and farms, and guide sheep from one grazing ground to another, stone monuments bear witness to deeds and graves, and stone chapels lead the faithful to a place beyond the hardships of their daily toils. The thousand year old Gallarus Oratory combines all these things. Its origins and purpose have been lost to the ages but it still holds visitors spellbound standing as it does in stark solitude in defiance of the years and the endless battering of the North Atlantic. 

Like much of Ireland, the Dingle peninsula is remarkable for its stark and rugged beauty. The stone walls and monuments bear silent and reverent witness to the toils of previous generations. It's easy to imagine how the famous Irish hospitality could be born of such natural beauty and remote isolation.

Dublin

That Dublin is renown for both the gift of gab and the Book of Kells is not merely a coincidence. This is a city of stories, a city of writers and poets, wordsmiths and playwrights, a city of intricate flourishes and grand ideas. 

Georgian Doors around St. Stephens Green, Dublin

This is also a city of pubs, perhaps because as someone once observed, “no great novel ever began by eating a salad.” Here, it’s all about the conversation. Although some pubs provide entertainment, in many there are no fiddles or pipes, no mournful renditions of “Danny Boy”, nothing to distract from the pressing task of putting the world to rights. 

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, 

which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” 
                                                   ― William Butler Yeats

James Joyce liked to hang out at Davy Byrnie’s pub, William Butler Yeats at Toner’s where tall tales and great literature share a corner table with the poetry of Seamus Heaney and the plays of Samuel Beckett. Dublin is a UNESCO City of Literature, there are few cities that care so deeply about the written word. 

The Book of Kells, Trinity College, Dublin

And Ireland’s greatest national treasure is the holy grail of the written word; The Book of Kells. The impossibly intricate designs and elaborate flourishes on the the 1,200 year old vellum remind me of the haiku describing the excruciating weight of the moth on the one ton temple bell. Pages are sumptuously illuminated with Celtic knots, floral designs, swirls and flourishes, but hidden among and between is another whole miniature world of cats and mice fighting over food, an otter with a fish, and rows of heavenly seraphim. The book is ceremonial rather than functional, designed to extoll the greater glory of God and it is a remarkable insight on the impact that the Catholic Church had on the life of the country.

“An idea that is not dangerous

is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

~ Oscar Wilde

Although we didn’t have an opportunity to walk the pagan pathway to the sacred site of Cnoc na dTobar in the mountains of Kerry, we did make another required Irish pilgrimage. Jameson’s Irish Whiskey has been distilling Uisce beatha, literally “the water of life”, since 1780 and although they slowed down a bit during prohihition the demand for whiskey around the world is through the roof and the distinctively smooth finish of Irish Whiskey gives it a leg up over most other whiskeys. Jameson’s 15 y/o Redbreast quickly became a favorite. But we couldn’t stop with just Jameson’s and headed off to Teeling Distillery for a sample of the competition. Teeling’s 34 year old Vintage Reserve Single Malt is at the top of everyone’s top ten list, but at $5,000 USD a bottle, it’s not your every day, or every year, or perhaps even every lifetime kind of whiskey. This list goes on, Green Spot, White Spot, Dead Rabbit… so many whiskeys, so little time!

Jameson's Distillery, Dublin

And there is yet another well known Dublin landmark of particular importance. Located at 17 Chatham St. just around the corner from Grafton St. is an old Irish pub painted a traditional red and black with gold lettering above the door announcing “Sheehan’s Pub”. This is the place that our grandfather’s brother Jeremiah Sheehan founded in 1933. It’s been handed down a couple of times from father to son and is now in the capable hands of Paul Sheehan, the grandson of Jeremiah. 

Sheehan's, 17 Chatham St, Dublin

We had briefly met Paul when we were here 25 years ago and had been looking forward to seeing him again but we arrived unannounced to find that he was off that day but his sister, Alana, was there. We had no idea that Paul even had a sister but in fact he has two, Alana and Evelyn. We did not meet Evelyn but Alana was wonderful. The pub was busy that night but she took time to have multiple (if briefly interrupted) conversations, even presenting us with traditional Irish snap-brimmed caps emblazoned with the Sheehan logo!

Bill, Alana & Sue

Oh, and the Pope was there! Not at Sheehan’s Pub unfortunately, but he was in the city trying to drum up more interest in what the Catholic Church has accomplished , or perhaps deflect criticism from what the Catholic Church has accomplished. But anyway he drove right by us in his bubble-top PopeMobile, waving to anyone who would pay attention! For a prominently Catholic country, I was surprised at the mixed reception, some obviously thrilled that he spent several days here and others expressing regret that, with the country facing significant issues of homelessness, and neglect, millions of dollars was being spent on security and other issues surrounding the papal visit. 

"This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades."

                                                    ~ Louis MacNeice

The Cotswolds

We had originally planned to ditch the rental car and spend 3 – 4 days hiking from village to village in the Cotswolds but eventually came to our senses and decided on a more prudent approach. We would stay in the car and attempt to avoid driving into the hordes of other tourists who were walking on narrow country roads no wider than a bar of soap continually dodging cars operated by drivers like us, sitting on the wrong side of the car, driving on the wrong side of the road, in an unfamiliar country, with unintelligible road signs. 

This is quintessential England. Pastoral landscapes, grazing sheep, sleepy villages, thatched roofs, honey colored coloured stone cottages nestled into narrow lanes, stately manor houses, and of course the ever present, perfectly tended English country garden overflowing with roses, geraniums, and honeysuckle. 

The Cotswolds was the center of the English wool industry in Shakespeare’s time but as Australia and New Zealand emerged as the new woolen capitols, prices here declined and as the rest of the country was caught up building factories and cities in the industrial revolution, the Cotswolds slept. Lucky for us!

Stow-on-the-Wold, Bourton-on-the-Water, Moreton-in-Marsh, Chipping Camden, (I love the names) were bustling market towns in the 17^th century. Street names like Shepherds Way and Sheep Street are reminders of the origins of these towns’ remarkable history and wealth. 

The towns are all protected now. Various covenants and restrictions are in place that prevent what may not be in keeping with these 400 year old farms and villages. The stone used for all these buildings and homes is locally quarried, honey-hued limestone that lends each village a warm and inviting glow. And the towns are thriving! Tourists have replaced the sheep as the main inhabitants and there are fabulous restaurants, quaint tea rooms, art galleries, antiques, interesting shopping, and intriguing historical sites to appeal to just about everyone.

And of course no English town would be quite complete without a splash of gin, and Cotswolds Distillers does not disappoint! The varieties here are mind boggling. Think rhubarb, blackberry, pink grapefruit, and Cotswolds lavender. And then there's the cheese! From the traditional Double Gloucester, to Baron Bigod, and Stinking Bishop, to ewe and sheep cheeses the variety is endless. And the breads and pastries! And the restaurants! The wild rabbit that scampered across the meadow earlier today is now on the menu, vegetables that have been pulled from the ground 20 minutes before they arrive at your table, that cute little lamb that you cuddled this morning... well, never mind.

London Calling!

We met Sue and Bill in London and spent a day touring the  city before heading off to the Cotswolds and then to Ireland. London is a fascinating town! Extraordinary history, a wonderful mix of architecture, art and culture.

We wanted to see Westminster Abbey but, hard as it is to believe, the lines were even longer than the lines at the opening of the new iPhone store! The history of the place is pretty impressive. The coronation of all the kings and queens of England have occurred here going back to William the Conqueror in 1068, and of course there's more than a few well-known dead Brits buried here. Some of the monuments are majestic, ornate, and impressive, but as you can imagine, having buried people here now for more than 1,000 years, space is getting a little tight, so parts of it seem more like a filing cabinet or one of these new pod hotels where you crawl into a little box and someone else closes the door behind you. Still the list of people is impressive, including St. Crispin, Edward the Confessor, Henry V, Geoffrey Chaucer, Charles Dickens, Percy Shelly, and Charles Darwin to name but a few. Steven Hawking was interred here next to Sir Issac Newton earlier this year bringing the total of permanent residents to more than 3,300. The memorial plaque reads "Here lies what was mortal of Stephen Hawking" and includes a version of the Berkenstein-Hawking Entropy Equation relating to black holes. But even the exterior is impressive, I was startled to see a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. standing shoulder to shoulder with nine other guys peering out from a niche above the 15th century door on the west facade. Not a bad legacy for a poor, black, Baptist preacher from the South!

Big Ben was muffled in plastic and tied up in scaffolding, perhaps a reminder of the struggles and turmoil churning below in the Houses of Parliament as Brexit continues to limp toward an uncertain future. A statue of the puritanical despot Oliver Cromwell continues to rage against the Irish, the Catholic Church, and the British Monarchy from atop a stone pedestal in the sunken gardens outside the House of Commons, while at the other end of the building Richard, Coeur de Lion incongruously sits astride his bronze steed, sword held high seemingly saluting or challenging the House of Lords surrounded now, not by his vast armies arrayed  in  an unholy war against the  Muslims during the third Crusade, but the cars and buses jockeying for space next to him in what has become a vast parking lot. All this serves as a reminder of the conflicts in our own shrine to democracy, the U.S. Capitol building, where at least a dozen statues still celebrate the Confederacy despite multiple skirmishes to enact legislation to remove them.

A little further away St Paul's Cathedral sits atop Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the city of London. It is the crowning achievement of Sir Christopher Wren's remarkable career as England's pre-eminent architect and has dominated the skyline of the city for more than 300 years. This is where Prince Charles and Lady Diana were married, where the Duke of Wellington, Horatio Lord Nelson, Florence Nightingale, Lawrence of Arabia and John Donne are buried. Many memorials include commemorative plaques with inspirational statements or quotes from speeches or sermons once given by the deceased. The inscription above church dean and poet John Donne's memorial includes a quote from one of his sermons beginning with "No man is an island..." and ending "Therefore, send not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee". 

Funerals for Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and George Mallory were also celebrated here although their remains are interred elsewhere. George, most notably absent from his own funeral, remains somewhere near the summit of Mount Everest. Sir Christopher Wren was the first person to be buried here and a plaque on the wall above his tomb reads in latin "Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice" - Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you.

But by far the most fun, and entertaining attraction, if those are words that can be used to describe a place that once served as a medieval prison and torture chamber, where multiple traitors were hanged, drawn, and quartered, where princes were murdered and queens of England beheaded, was the Tower of London. The Yeoman Warders, dressed in full regalia, and armed with commanding voice and dry British humor, are the quintessential tour guides to this historic site. The captivating and irreverent stories about Anne Boleyn and the unfortunate wives of Henry Vlll, Guy Fawkes, Sir Walter Raleigh, the uproarious comments about Mel Gibson's portrayal of William Wallace, as well as the disparaging comments about the Brits favorite punching bag, the French, and fellow compatriots in the Royal Marines, are brilliant and hilarious. "We didn't execute ALL our prisoners" he barks gruffly at one point, followed by " Well it's a better ratio than the state of Texas!" If my  teachers had been half as knowledgable and engaging, I'd have chosen history as a life long career. The following link is to a video of a tour of the Tower of London, given, not by the same Yeoman Warder as we had, but one equally enjoyable and informative. https://youtu.be/8YS0vGq0QsE

Saying goodbye is always painful but saying goodbye to London was particularly difficult, not because I was sad to leave (which I was) or that driving out of the city was particularly arduous (although it was) but because no one simply says goodbye here. It's Cheerio! or Ta Ta! or Cheers! or Bob's your uncle! or something unintelligible in an indecipherable British accent or slang. Best to just wave. The Queen's wave of course, otherwise known as "opening the marmalade jar".

Running Away To Home

The house is in ruins now, a corrugated metal roof set incongruously atop the crumbling walls of stone gathered from the mountainside some 200 years ago and placed one atop another to build a home on this remote farm near the top of the Gap of Dunloe near a place called Coimín Sléibhe.

Mrs. Moriarty's House

Labeled as “The Gap Cottage” on maps from the 1830’s and referred to in local lore as “Saint Patrick’s Cottage” this was the place, according to legend, from which St. Patrick drove the last of the snakes from Ireland. A series of photographs, undated but perhaps from the turn of the century mostly label the home as “Mrs. Moriarty’s house”, and it is this designation that is most intriguing. Our great grandmother, Johanna Moriarty, was born in the Gap of Dunloe in 1850. Her family had lived in the Gap for many generations, and it’s of course impossible not to speculate that the people in the photographs might be our family. Photographs taken over the years of what appears to be the same house are not dated, street names and numbers did not exist in rural communities, and surviving records from the time are vague, so current attempts at identifying the people in the photographs are purely speculation.

Bill & Sue Brinkert in front of Mrs. Moriarty's House (2018)

Families no longer live this high in the Gap, most having sought a better or more hospitable life lower on the mountain or somewhere more distant. The only visitors this high on the mountain now are red, orange, and purple sheep, spray painted with spots of identifying color (yours are purple, mine are orange), and the trap and pony men who carry tourists to the top of the Gap for spectacular views of the Black Valley and beyond.

Our trap and pony driver was Joe Coffey who recommended that if we wanted to learn more about the families that lived here, we should go down to Kate Kearney’s Cottage and talk to Sean Coffey (the current proprietor) and he could put us in touch with a woman by the name of Mary Coffey who knew a lot about the families in the area. I asked if Sean and/or Mary were related to him and Joe said “Not that I know of, but ask Mary, she will probably tell you different”. (We did, and they are).

Bill & Cathy and Bill & Sue in the Gap Dunloe

Kate Kearney’s Cottage is another house surrounded by legend and lore, and it is here that things get interesting. The following excerpt is from the Gap of Dunloe website (www.gapofdunloe.com)

“As with many an interesting history, the story of Kate Kearney’s Cottage begins with strong drink—and an even stronger woman. Kate Kearney was a woman of exceptional beauty and character who lived in Kerry in the years before the Great Famine of 1845 to 1849. The legend began in a cottage at the eastern edge of the McGillycuddy Reeks mountains and has captured the popular imagination ever since. It was at this síbín that Kate distilled a particularly potent form of poitin, called Kate Kearney’s Mountain Dew. So strong that it could not be drunk without at least seven times its own quantity to temper it, this Mountain Dew was illegal, but Kate ignored the law and continued to create her special liquor and sell it to tired travellers in need of reviving."

Kate Kearney's Cottage (2018)

Unfortunately the “mountain dew” concoction of goat’s milk and poitin (homemade whiskey) is no longer served at Kate Kearney’s Cottage, but the legend and the cottage business continues.

A fixture in the Gap now for over 150 years, Kate Kearney’s Cottage was actually built by Donal Mór Moriarty in 1849 at the entrance to the gap at a place called Doirín an Chuileann. The house was eventually handed down by Donal Mór Moriarty and his wife Julia Burke to their daughter Mary Moriarty, who married another Moriarty who lived in a house at the top of the Gap at a place called Coimín Sléibhe.

So, backing up a few years,  a John Moriarty was born in approximately 1795 and married Ellen Burke in 1815. They lived in a house at the top of the Gap in a place called Coimin Sléibhe, and had two sons, both redheads, named Daniel (Donal Ruadh) Moriarty and John (Sean Ruadh) Moriarty. Daniel grew up and eventually married Catherine Barry. They had a son named John in 1850 who eventually moved down the mountain and married Mary Moriarty, daughter of Donal Mór Moriarty and Julia Burke. Mary and John inherited Kate Kearney’s cottage from Mary’s parents and continued to operate it as a Public House (Pub). 

The other brother John (Sean Ruadh) Moriarty also moved down the mountain and he married a woman by the name of Mary Ferris. In 1850 they had a daughter named Johanna Moriarty who eventually married a man also from the Gap named Jeremiah Meara. Jeremiah and Johanna had a daughter on April 1, 1878 and named her Mary Josephine Meara. This is our grandmother.

Moriarty Family Tree (detail)

Both Sean Coffey, and Mary Coffey are descendants of Mary and John Moriarty. Sean continues to run Kate Kearney’s Cottage and Mary, now retired, spends much of her time there. Sean and Mary were extremely warm, gracious and hospitable, and from the first moment we met, treated us like family, which it turns out, we are.

Bill and Sue with Sean Coffey and Mary Coffey Coghlan

When we first contacted Mary Coffey and we told her we that we were descendants of both the Moriartys and Mearas, she was thrilled to meet us., both of these names having been prominent in The Gap for many generations. Mary has done extensive genealogy research and is a wealth of information on the Gap of Dunloe. It is Mary who provided us with the information that connects our family to hers. According to Sue, who is far more proficient in these matters than I, Mary Coffey is a 4^thcousin, and Sean is a 4^thcousin, once removed. Kate Kearney’s Cottage is filled with photographs of the Gap, the Moriartys, and the many families who lived here. All the lives in this once isolated community were intimately intertwined for generations, and Mary Coffey seemingly knows all the connections.

Our sister Sue has painstakingly compiled an extraordinary family history complete with interconnected family trees, birth and death dates, marriages, and personal stories, maps and details of peoples lives. I suggest you contact Sue to find out more. As I said eight years ago, in my original search through the shadows and ghosts of this small corner of Ireland, if it weren’t for Sue’s extraordinary ability to discover and document our family heritage, we would be a family without much history.

Postales del Paraíso: The Guadalajara Book Fair

Postales del Paraíso

 The Guadalajara Book Fair

The Guadalajara Book Fair was this week and it is extraordinary! We spent all day there on Saturday and it wasn’t enough time to explore everything we wanted to see and do. With over 2,000 publishers from 47 nations spanning the globe, it’s the largest book fair in the western hemisphere and the second largest in the world just behind Frankfurt, Germany.

The danger here is that this is a place where, as Schopenhauer said “men of learning can read themselves stupid”. The volume of books is overwhelming. The breadth and depth of the assortment is breathtaking. There are art books, novels, classics, short stories, and coffee table books. There are comic books, graphic novels, children’s books, academic textbooks, poetry, even a section of rare and antique publications. And then there is my new favorite, dual language books, Cervantes, for example, with Spanish on the left page and English on the right. The selection is mindboggling, and if the shear volume of books to read is not enough there are also audio books, lectures, and films. There is great risk of giving in to temptation here, as someone has said before, I would buy more books if only I could also buy the time to read them.

There is a featured country each year. Last year it was Brazil, this year it was Portugal, and although that country has a 900 year history of producing extraordinary writers and artists, the focus here was on the modern. The writings of Nobel Laureate José Saramago, and two other Pritzker Prize recipients featured prominently along with film, lectures, music, and poetry that highlight the culture and arts in Portugal.

The graphic novels and comic books section was an unexpected delight. I was taken back not only by the diversity of the crowds but the range of topics, the creativity, the artistic expression, and the number of volumes addressing issues from politics to poetry, from the environment to science fiction. This section of the fair, more than others represents our future. These writers are young and engaged, they are accomplished thinkers and artists giving voice to new ideas and challenging the status quo. These will be some of the great writers of the next generation.

The usual cacophony, urgency, and frantic pace of a gathering of over 800,000 jostling down narrow aisles is here, but the expected enormous noise and typical hype of the publishers is reduced to a murmur as lips move in silence, faces buried in the inner flap of a book cover. 

This is an annual event held each Nov/Dec. at Expo Guadalajara on Avenida Mariano Otero and it runs for nine days. Don’t miss it next year!