What's in Dave's Head

My mom, Ellen Douglass, passed away Thanksgiving morning at the age of 88. Here's her eulogy: I'd like to share with you some memories about my mom to try to convey what made her special to me and others. But first I’ll tell you a little about her early life. Ellen Blanche Egleson was born in 1931 in the depths of the Great Depression, in the heart of Appalachia, and was the only child of her parents, who owned a small farm. She loved farm work and spending time on the farms of her nearby relatives. Her father played the fiddle and guitar at dances and her uncle was a trained musician who taught at the local college. Mom started piano lessons from her uncle at the age of four and continued until she married at age 17 and played the piano and organ until arthritis took away her ability to play. Chopin was her favorite. Her family sold the farm and moved to the Washington, D.C. area at the outset of World War II when her dad got a job at the torpedo factory in Alexandr

My father-in-law, Lou Harding, was a brilliant businessman. He found angles and opportunities that others missed. For instance, he and his partner once bought the right-of-way of an old railroad line because he knew telecom carriers would want it to lay fiber-optic cables. My favorite story about Lou’s business acumen also has a telecom angle – it involved AT+T. AT+T was the bluest of blue-chip companies, paying regular dividends each quarter for decades, and was a staple for pension funds and widowers because it was such a safe investment. It was the most widely held stock in the U.S. So anything impacting AT&T had a monumental affect on America. In the early 1980s, that impact came. The U.S. Justice Department was breaking up AT+T. “Ma Bell” had a monopoly on local phone service via its network of local operating companies, and there was very little long-distance competition. If you wanted to use an alternate carrier, such as MCI, you had to dial an 800 number, enter

The day Donna and I and Rich and Barb tracked down the Quiet Man bridge was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year for those of us north of the Equator. In Galway we were treated to 17 hours of daylight, extending until after 10 pm. The sky wasn’t fully dark until past midnight and it started getting light in the wee morning hours well before 5:30. We spent the afternoon after our Quiet Man bridge adventure shopping in Galway. Claddagh, an area close to the center of Galway city, where the River Corrib meets Galway Bay, is known for its namesake ring whose heart, hands and crown symbolize love, friendship, and loyalty. We strolled around and explored the streets and nameless alleys of the Latin Quarter. We came across the entrance to a small handsome pub called the Slate House, its sleek and modern interior a sharp contrast to the earthy, dark, stone-and-wood-beam styles typical there (after all, a number of the buildings stretch back four centuries to medieval ti

I’ve just finished re-reading Moby Dick , Herman Melville’s American masterpiece about Captain Ahab’s battle with destiny, madness and the great white sperm whale that demasted him of a leg. It’s one of the most remarkable books I’ve ever plowed through. Ishmael, the book’s narrator, signs on to be a shipmate on the whaling ship Pequod for a three-year expedition because he’s drawn to the sea as a way to clear his head and experience the ocean’s vast wildness. As fate would have it though, Ahab, captain of the Pequod , has no intention to harvest as many sperm whales as possible, but to hunt down and kill Moby Dick.   I’m fascinated by literary names. Ahab was named by his “crazy mother” after a biblical king of Israel who devoted himself to the worship of false gods. Like his namesake, Captain Ahab is devoted to the maniacal pursuit of his false god, vengeance. Ishmael in the Bible was the bastard son of Abraham and his wife’s slave Hagar. Abraham’s wife Sarah banishe

The shepherding demonstration we watched on a farm on Slea Head in County Kerry, just outside Dingle, was conducted by Gabriel Kavanagh, whose ancestors have lived in Kerry for centuries. The dirt-floored, “famine cottage” Gabriel’s forebears occupied in the 1800s still stands on Kavanagh’s farm.  In addition to raising sheep, Gabriel and his brother Gordon are historians. They authored “Famine in Ireland and  West Kerry,” a history of the famines in Ireland. It’s a sobering look at what led to Ireland becoming susceptible to food shortages, and how the most infamous famine, the Great Famine, caused by the failure of the country’s potato crop in 1845, forever changed Ireland and much of the world. Other sources tell of Ireland’s earlier history, which is filled with centuries of political and religious subjugation, war, poverty, and policies that contributed to the conditions leading to the Great Famine. Centuries of English occupation England occupied and controlled

Fully refreshed after a good sleep, Donna and I and Rich and Barb came down from our rooms to a hearty, excellent breakfast, although not exactly a “full Irish,” which typically includes beans, blood pudding, fried eggs, bangers and bacon). Our plan for the morning was to visit the bridge from which John Wayne’s character in The Quiet Man first spots his love interest, played by Maureen O’Hara. Rich has seen John Ford’s 1952 movie scores of times, and finding the bridge, which we knew was in the vicinity of Galway, was on his bucket list. We told the proprietor, Marie, of our intention and asked if she had suggestions on where to find it. She gave us explicit (for Ireland) directions, assured us it was easily visible from the road and was well “sign-posted.” Excellent! Except it wasn’t. We drove along the N59 as directed, never seeing the bridge nor a sign for it. We drove well past where we were told it would be until we came to a giftshop and pub. Rich went in and

Donna and I flew from Newark with Donna’s siblings, Rich and Barb, on a Wednesday night redeye flight that put us at Shannon airport the next morning. We picked up our rental car and, unable to check into the B&B in Galway until late afternoon, headed northwest to the Cliffs of Moher, a one-hour drive that starts on the M18, a U.S.-style highway with two wide lanes in each direction. It’s a good way to become re-acclimated with driving on the left side of the road from the right side of the car.  After several roundabouts (much cheaper to build than intersections with flyovers), we turned onto the N85 and were down to one much narrower lane in each direction. We passed through beautiful Lahinch and saw the Lahinch Golf Course preparing for the following week’s Irish Open golf tournament. Morning clouds burned off and we were presented with a picture-postcard sky as we arrived at the cliffs. The massive, spectacular, 400-foot-tall cliffs abut the Atlantic Ocean and run