For years America has viewed Ireland through a veil of fond remembrance. This is the sentiment fueling The Gathering, Ireland's 5-million-euro scheme designed to get tourism rolling.

But this plan and the view of Ireland through rose-colored glasses is as dated as the sentiments expressed in "Come Back To...

In the annals of how time runs our lives, January was a banner month for me. Within a week, I received my first Social Security check and had my first facial. Social Security came first.

For some time, my husband had been gently suggesting that a monthly stipend from...

Somewhere down in the basement, or maybe in the back of a drawer, lies one of my old Gottex bathing suits, now faded beyond use. When new, it was a shiny lime green, skimpy too, quite like what Tinkerbell wears in Disney's Peter Pan.

I see it in memory...

It was when I opened The Guardian and saw a picture of a terrified woman being carried through a street in Beirut that I cried.

Her terror: The result of a car bomb in Ashrafyeh, a predominantly Christian section of Beirut, that killed five people and injured one hundred and...

In Aleppo, there is a bakery that makes the most delicious French pastry. In Damascus, there is a store on the biblical street called Straight, where I bought a 19th Century rug. In Bosra, there is a Roman amphitheatre where, for my own pleasure, I recited: "Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend...

Recently, on the Dublin to Cork train, I solved a mystery that's irked me for years: Why young girls today speak in high-pitch, screechy voices and end every sentence, declarative or not, in a question.

Approaching my favorite seat armed with a full contingent of weekend newspapers, I hear chaotic...

Writers Gore Vidal and Maeve Binchy have died within twenty-four hours of each other. He was 86, she 73. One I knew. One I didn't.

Maeve was a colleague -- a Dubliner born and bred, a lover of cats and a good bottle of wine, someone who...

Admit it. The reason you rent The Picture of Dorian Gray from Netflix, is to gaze upon that famous portrait of evil decrepitude, knowing you'll never wind up like that.

Then, after pouring a glass of chardonnay to help you rummage around for that yellow-paged college paperback, don't you...

According to a recent article by Paul J. Zak in the Wall Street Journal, people do want to be kind. All one has to do "to trigger this moral molecule is give someone a sign of trust" -- just like I do, every time I stand by the...

As the girl walked by holding a tray of green cupcakes decorated with shamrocks, I knew St. Patrick's Day was nigh. She noted me eyeing them. She noted my red hair as well and asked was I Irish. Yet when I said I was, she said, somewhat disappointedly, "You don't...

Do I have Syrian blood on my hands because I loved the country so blindly? I can't help but ask myself that question as I see the bloodshed in the streets today. I must have been naïve when I visited the country four years ago.

Friends couldn't believe my husband...

It's amazing to me that I've become an older woman. Yet, now that I'm one of the woman featured in the blog Advanced Style, it seems I am.

A year ago I wasn't. But on a cold January Thursday, just as I was about to enter the cleaners with my...

There I am standing waiting for the cross-town bus, my arms full of late summer vegetables and flowers from the Green Market, when I see him. Twelve feet or so away from me, fiddling with his Blackberry, is the boy who took me to the Senior Prom. He looks...