Athlone (pronounced "At-loan" by locals) is just a smidgn closer to Galway than it is to Dublin on the main east-west highway, the N-6. Yeah, we live out in the midlands; lotsa sheep and stone fences. Then again, sheep and fences can be found pretty much everywhere in Ireland outside of Dublin.

Being the major crossing point of the River Shannon (Ireland's largest river) and at the mouth of a system of major lakes, Athlone attracts lots of fishermen during the summer months. Being the biggest town in the area (and the home of a couple of colleges), Athlone's pubs and nightclubs also bring crowds of young adults in from the surrounding area on the weekends. Expect to meet quite a mix of ages in town, the likes of teenagers sharing a few glasses of cider at their local while their grandfather plays the fiddle in his band across the room.

The physically defining features of the town are mostly clustered together; the town's large, 300-year-old stone bridge is a photo opportunity waiting to happen, touching down as it does right between Athlone castle and the town's largest church, the cathedral-esque Saint Peter and Paul's church on the west bank of the Shannon. Across the river, the curved steel and glass of brand-new apartment buildings square off with the aging stone opposite them.

Athlone has been a bustling town since before the first castle was built here back in 1129 AD. Around 1300 AD the town was a real medieval city with one-mile square stone walls all around it (you can still see the stone walls all over town). Even with its long history, Athlone isn't technically a city yet - they're hoping in a year or two that enough people will live here to qualify Athlone town for city status. More people live around the town (in the country) than in it.

It can be a bit dizzying for a U.S.-oriented sense of history sometimes - people have been living in Ireland for about 5,000 years! That means there's probably not anywhere that someone hasn't been living at some point or another. There are prehistoric stone huts hidden under 2,000-year-old swamps, stone walls so old they've been completely buried, their rounded top stones just discoverd last week out in the middle of a footpath.

I like to think about the more recent history - the fact that I'm here in this country, the country my father grew up in, to be living in the presence of a hope and possibility that has so long been absent from life here. For hundreds of years, stripped of their hope, their sovereignty and self-determination, to be born Irish was to be born into despair . . . or expatriotion. This beautiful land hemmorhaged her people for generations, the best and brightest Irish sons and daughters fled their homes, seeking a better life elsewhere. Now we are among the first to come back, to join in the pride and vigor swelling in a land that only very recently had almost none.

"They traveled not for glory,
their motive wasn't greed -
a voyage of survival
across the stormy sea . . .

So in the city of Chicago
as the evening shadows fall,
there are people dreaming
of the hills of Donegal."

-Christy Moore