If you get your news, facts and truths from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, OAN, MRCTV, Newsmax, FoxNews, Russia Today, AM Talk Radio, Parler and other alternate reality profiteers which helped inspire the Michigan “covid ain’t real” kidnappers, the Nashville “lizard-people conspiracy!” bomber, the Wisconsin “vaccines alter your DNA!” saboteur or the “Stop the Steal” domestic terrorists… please check your sources and at least look for something to cross-check your beliefs.

When family and friends say something which contradicts these sources, they’re not trying to hurt you.

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, the author of “The Power of Positive Thinking” had a…

We stepped into a cobblestone pub to have lunch. Turf burned in the fireplace behind me as we enjoyed another excellent meal. We continued towards the southwestern corner of Ireland. Here mountains blocked the north winds and focused the remnants of the Gulf Stream to warm the shoreline of Bantry Bay. We found a sign for a B&B atop a hill overlooking the narrow bay. We arrived at the top of the hill as night deepened the blue and purple colors of the sky. It appeared that no one was home. I rang the doorbell and a cheerful woman came…

March 19, 2001
My wife and I were photographers when we met in the U.W. Oshkosh Advance Titan newspaper darkroom. We have family and friends in Southeastern Wisconsin and the Fox Valley but in 2001 we decided to try something different. We moved to a village on the Irish Sea just north of Dublin, Ireland.

March 19, 2020: Exactly 19 years later our daughter made her first solo flight back from her experience as a high school student in Appleton Wisconsin. The pandemic cut her time there short and kept her granddad, aunt and cousin from accompanying her on the…

On the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg:

May the blessing of her memory remind all of us that we many small raindrops can become a sea of change.

According to Jewish tradition, a person who dies on an any holy day is a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness. Even more so for people who die on Rosh Hashanah, which began that evening. NPR’s Nina Totenberg explains,

“A Jewish teaching says those who die just before the Jewish new year are the ones God has held back until the last moment because they were needed most and were the…

My great uncle John was born in Germany in November 1895. He brought knee-slapping laughter to our family and always called me William Jennings Bryan. It was the first thing out of his mouth every time we met, spoken with the deliberate timing of a comedian who knows exactly how to prime a joke told so often that laughter was a reflex.

“William — Jennings — Bryan!” He would pause and seemed to expect that a child born almost four decades after Bryan’s death would understand exactly who he was and why his nickname for me was as good of…

It is now 111 years since the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic and we have learned… nothing. 1500 people tragically lost their lives when the Titanic sank on April 15, 1912. And so far 154,000 human lives have been lost to the terrible Covid-19 virus.

Imagine more than 100 Titanics sinking since the beginning of the year, 20 of them with American passengers (30,000+ U.S. Covid-19 deaths so far.) If you were captain, what would you do?

Full steam ahead for the economy, because that’s what matters right? There never were enough lifeboats/masks/respirators, the captain/president was in the best position…

Faery, avocados, limes and other green things are still available here in Ireland. So there should be no panic to buy toilet paper and guns back in the land of Colt and Kimberly Clark. We have no Guinness or rashers in the fridge but we have toast, Irish butter and Italian coffee (to support our neighbours there.) So if there’s no reason to leave the house, we’ll enjoy a quiet St. Patrick’s day from here at home in Ireland. We hope you do the same from wherever you are. Here’s to your health. Sláinte!

May the road rise to meet…