The pictures today are in no particular order...In County Kerry...around The Ring of Kerry from Killarney then back to Killarney again. As we go along seeing the ruins of literally hundreds of stone homes from the Great Hunger, the Potato Famine, in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, my attention is drawn back again and again to the senseless indifference comfortable people have to the suffering of less fortunate folks... based on differences in religion or skin color or nationality or social class... When will it ever end?

THIS IRELAND... The Way I See It.This Ireland is so beautiful, so peaceful, that it is hard to believe the English and the Irish, the Protestants (Anglican Catholics) and Roman Catholics have found reasons to hate each other. I don't even like to think about the damage done to people's lives by disputes over religion. Religion should be the source of solutions to problems between people, not the cause of the problems.
Yaughl is a quaint little town between Waterford and Cork. The John Houston film Moby Dick with Gregory Peck was filmed here.Blarney Castle west of Cork is as green as anyplace I know in spring. The famous Blarney Stone is on top of the castle and for six shillings you can have your picture taken kissing it. The disinterested fellow helping "get down" to kiss it was a definite turn-off. I decided I it would probably be dangerous for me to have more power of the gab than I now have, so I passed up the chance. The view from the top of the castle was definitely worth the climb.

TUESDAY: From Dublin to Kilkenny to Waterford...
IRISH NATIONAL STUD: No... The Irish National Stud isn’t a hunky movie celebrity but it’s a farm managed specifically to produce winning race horses. The facility paid no less than a million euros for any of its males. They run all the way from one million up to eighty million euros. The horse that caught my imagination is called “Invincible Spirit” and cost four million. He had won only seven important races before he was put out to stud, so he is one of the cheap ones. The close up photograph is a mare. Mares don’t cost so much. Go figure.

We visited a Japanese garden... Why it is part of the Irish National Stud is still a mystery to me.

We have some Waterford crystal, so when Margaret learned that we were going to city where it was made, she got excited about it and her excitement, as it usually does, rubbed off on me. It was a great surprise to learn today that the Waterford plant has closed, perhaps to reopen in a year or two. The city is obviously depressed as the global recession grows worse.
We stopped at Kilkenny for lunch. Margaret and I went into a pub because the chalk notice board outside advertised traditional Irish Stew. They were fresh out, so we settled for a decidedly American turkey club sandwiches and vegetable soup.The wall of peeling paint and old posters near the Dooley's Hotel is appropriate for Waterford. Don't get me wrong. I like this place. It is having a hard time holding onto an image of itself that involves finely cut crystal. I must ask someone tomorrow about the beautiful new bridge that crosses the river a couple of miles up river (maybe it's down river... I'll have to ask about that, too). I'm guessing it was designed by the same Spanish architect, Santiago Calatrava, who designed the Sun Dial Bridge in Red Bluff, California; (Yes! Red Bluff.) It's the bridge that actually tells time of day. There is also a bridge in Dublin by Calatrava...looks like a harp, Ireland's national symbol. If you don't this architect's work, Google him. Amazing imagination. Like that race horse, he obviously has an invincible spirit.

St. Patrick' Cathedral rests on the site of the original church founded by St. Patrick. The new Cathedral was first Roman Catholic before it became protestant during the rule of Henry VIII. There are so few Anglicans in the city that the church is now little more than a museum which has to charge admission to remain solvent.At Trinity College I felt an almost overwhelming wish to be a student again.
We poked around Dublin for half-a-day before going out into the countryside to Glendalough to walk through the ruins of the old St. Kevin Monastery. The highlight of the city time was a visit to Trinity College Library where we spent some time with the incredible Book of Kells, which dates from the 8th Century. Margaret and I walked from the college to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and then all the way back to our hotel. Before America was even an idea, much of what can be found in and around Dublin was already old.The roof of the little chapel called St. Kevin's Kitchen has a roof made entirely of stone... It remains intact after twelve hundred years.There are no bad places for love... It thrives even here in the cemetery surrounded by twelve hundred year old monastery ruins.