Thanks for the encouragement from bloggers to continue my work on Constance Gore-Booth.  So far I have no luck in getting the novel published but I am taking time from my  teaching to rewrite the entire manuscript.  I will be using a fictional character, Alice, loosely based on my grandaunt, and Constance will interact with her.  This may make the book more lively, something that editors keep saying has to happen to improve its chances of being published.

As I love the story of…

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…

My first big memory of my Uncle Charlie Clarke is when he arrived home from Naval duty after World War II. I was seven years old. Soon after, my granduncle, Patrick Joseph Clarke, appointed Uncle Charlie to be the manager at his saloon, P. J. Clarke’s, at 55th Street and Third…