No, we haven’t visited the capital of Denmark, charming as the coastal city is described, and famous for its Tivoli Gardens and Rosenborg Castle. A melody recently popped into my ancient brain from the dim, distant past, triggered by who knows what. I couldn’t place the song but I recalled the tune, which conjured a vague sense of happiness, quite well. I hummed it to Donna, whose encyclopedic knowledge of music is unsurpassed. She responded, “maybe if you sang it better I might recognize it.” Ouch. She suggested I try using Google. “Dum, dum dum dum, dum dum DUM, dum dum dum,” I crooned. Google, perplexed and possibly annoyed, guessed Dun Dun , a 2020 song by South Korean girl group Everglow. Yeah no. Not even close. I tried Donna again. Despite my pitch-impaired humming (I have pitch like Congress has cajones), Donna was able to puzzle together the melody. She employed Google and, being able to perfectly carry a tune (while I can carry a tune like I can hold a greased eel), t...
Donna and I made our latest trip to our beloved Dingle, Ireland recently and it only deepened our love for this amazing piece of the world. From our first interaction, with the easygoing Customs officer at the pleasant Shannon airport, to the conversations we struck up with virtually everyone we came in contact with – locals or fellow American tourists at pubs and restaurants, in shops, on hikes, to visiting old haunts and discovering new places, to just taking in the natural beauty of the Dingle Peninsula, which National Geographic has called the most beautiful place on Earth, we feel almost at home here as we do in Maryland. This trip we stayed an unprecedented three weeks as an experiment to see if we would become bored or restless for that amount of time. We decidedly did not. It was a blessing to have so much time to just be here without immediately eyeing the calendar to see how few days remaining we had. We were able to tune out the vitriol plaguing our country and fully ...