>Now I'm sure you're Mike's brother. You run when you can't argue on an adult level.... twit me ... I don't care...
>
>Wow...so this is what it's about....that I said last week that I agreed with Mike on a few specific topics. Fine, you started this...

Please, both of you, knock it off.

Here is where I am coming from. This is something I just emailed to two old friends. I had asked about another of our old gang, whose long time lover has Alzheimer's. Life is way too short for silly disagreements.

That sucks so bad about Linda. Somehow I thought it would be her who wound up taking care of him. Please give Tom my contact into, or ask him if he wants mine. I can’t do anything to make the situation better but it would be nice to talk to him.

My most vivid memory of Tommy is a weekend in Dublin in 1987. We were working in Manchester at the Co-Op. Rob was also there and one weekend when his mom and his sexy younger sister Betsy were in town Tom organized a weekend trip to Dublin. I use the word organized loosely. He booked the airline reservations and that was as far as it went. We got off the plane at the airport and realized it was open ended from there. Uh, Tom, do we have a hotel? There must be lots of them, he said, losing facial control as he did when amused. (Usually at something he himself had said).

Our great stroke of luck was our taxi driver. His name was Brian Carthy and I still have his card somewhere. There were too many of us to fit in one car so Brian spoke briefly with the guy behind him in line, Jack, who was Brian’s polar opposite. We hired them for the weekend, something like $150 for all of us for two days, and could not have had better Irish tour guides.

It was a rainy Saturday morning. “Does it rain a lot here?” Tommy asked. “Oh, no,” Brian said. “It’s lovely in July. How long are ye here for?”

Tommy’s original thought was to make a pilgrimage to his father’s birthplace in western Ireland. “How long are ye allowing?” Brian asked. “Looks like a couple of hours on the map,” Tommy said.. “Eh, those are some of the worst roads in all of Eerland.” Long story short, Tommy never made it out of Dublin. He visited many pubs and sang many songs.

Jack was the unintentionally funny one. He was as stonefaced as Brian was gregarious. He had L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E tattooed on his knuckles. He said nothing if at all possible. We took turns between cabs so we all got to share Brian. My favorite moment was when we were driving down O’Connell Street (O’Donnell Street?), the main drag, and I asked Jack who the statue was. “Famous Irishman,” he said. For weeks afterward it was a running joke at CWS when the phone rang. “Who is it?” “Famous Irishman.”