Last night back at Trinity College was very comfortable in a quiet and spacious 2-bedroom apartment in the center of campus. The location of Trinity can’t be beat. I explored most of the historic campus earlier in the month but never got around to taking the student led quided tour. I will make a point of it next time.

This morning, I boarded the Air Coach to Dublin airport, which was no more than a 5-minute walk from my apartment. I arrived, was through security & customs, and in the lounge, all within 75-minutes of leaving Trinity.

I am now comfortably onboard Aer Lingus flight 1121 on a transatlantic flight back to Florida which took off 15-minutes early, is roughly 1/3 occupied, and expected to land an hour sooner than expected.

I’m very grateful to my Mom for inspiring and motivating me to make this journey to Ireland and I look forward to returning with her next year to mark her 80th and my 55th birthdays. And, also for encouraging me to obtain full Irish citizenship.

I am also thankful for the medical technology, surgical intervention, and medical marijuana, that help make my physical and cognitive limitations manageable.

Without them, I would never have been able to make this trip.

President Éamon de Valera, who my grandfather served under, is remembered for saying:

“The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cozy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age.

The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live. With the tidings that make such an Ireland possible, St. Patrick came to our ancestors fifteen hundred years ago promising happiness here no less than happiness hereafter.

It was the pursuit of such an Ireland that later made our country worthy to be called the island of saints and scholars. It was the idea of such an Ireland - happy, vigorous, spiritual - that fired the imagination of our poets; that made successive generations of patriotic men give their lives to win religious and political liberty; and that will urge men in our own and future generations to die, if need be, so that these liberties may be preserved.

One hundred years ago, the Young Irelanders, by holding up the vision of such an Ireland before the people, inspired and moved them spiritually as our people had hardly been moved since the Golden Age of Irish civilization.

Fifty years later, the founders of the Gaelic League similarly inspired and moved the people of their day. So, later, did the leaders of the Irish Volunteers. We of this time, if we have the will and active enthusiasm, have the opportunity to inspire and move our generation in like manner.

We can do so by keeping this thought of a noble future for our country constantly before our eyes, ever seeking in action to bring that future into being, and ever remembering that it is for our nation as a whole that future must be sought.”

Amen to that, and...