What an exciting opportunity this might be - to win a trip to Ireland at age 77.  When I was 32 years of age, my husband and I won two tickets on Aer Lingus to Ireland.  While our grandparents had emigrated from the auld sod in the early twentieth century, John and I had never set foot in the Emerald Isle.  What a delight when we saw the green fields from our airplane seats!

We went immediately by car to my grandaunt Alice McMahon's cottage in Miltown Malbay.  Alice had emigrated to…

Constance Gore-Booth Markiewicz’s amazing life came into my purview on my second trip to Ireland in 1989.  My husband and I were browsing in a Dublin bookstore eager to buy as many books on Irish history as we could fit in our suitcases for our return to…