When Irish Eyes Are…Snowing?

I blame myself.

I began writing Irish Firebrands in February, 2009. As part of my research, I visited Ireland* that December – and it snowed on my birthday. The landlord of the B & B told me it was the first time that had happened in 20 years. The island normally has mild maritime winters, so nobody was prepared: A quarter-inch of snow shut down the whole Republic. More snow fell after I went home. Pipes froze everywhere – half of Dublin didn’t have water. And ever since then, they’ve had some dreadful winters.

Here in Indiana, there are still several feet of snow on the ground (and it snowed again, today), but it’s March, and that means St Patrick’s Day is around the corner, with the vernal equinox trailing close behind. We may have had the most severe winter during my 14 years in Indiana, but we’ll be seeing the green, soon.

* If you’re Ireland-bound, stop at Athlumney Manor Bed & Breakfast in Navan, County Meath. I stayed there for a week, and their website doesn’t lie: http://www.athlumneymanor.com/ This is an unsolicited “celebrity endorsement” by a very satisfied customer. If I ever get to go back, that’s where you’ll find me.

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Balabolka

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Once More, With Feeling…

If there’s an easy way to program a computer-generated voice to read aloud English verse in qualitative meter, and sound halfway decent, it probably costs a lot of money.

Now and then I can trick the Hazel text-to-speech voice into pronouncing a rhotic word correctly, and I’ve been able to make her speak a few simple phrases in Irish, but the only kind of poetry she likes is English Haiku.