I will not repeat my Christmas greeting error, which was to send the list a link to a card site, evidently securely trapped in the Rootsweb spam filter. So, without embellishment and graphics, I wish you all the best for the New Year. My Bunratty story: while traveling as a college girl and before my knowledge of roots in Clare, I hitched a ride with an airline stewardess on her way to work at Shannon. I still remember the grip I kept on anything in the car as she drove super-fast to the airport from Cork (but she had taken the time to stop for me). I then made my way to Bunratty, as the nearest tourist site. There I met another Amercian college girl who was the niece of Sheriff Matt Carberry of San Francisco, and so we hung out at Dirty Nelly's together. Little did I know that I was within ten miles of where my folks had lived and worked. On arriving in Dublin, after my new friend had left the island for other places, I was strolling amid the crowd near Trinity College when something caught my eye, and being a bold American, I called out across the street: "Paul...Paul Murphy, is that you ?" It was in fact the huge figure that had whirled the dancing Irish girls who had come over in those times when Irish teens came to the U.S. in the summer to work. I had met the group at Lake Placid, New York, where I too was working. We were all servers in the dining hall, with lots of time to spend on the beach between meals. It was the summer of the fabulous Woodstock concert, which I did attend although it was several hundred miles away (I did all the driving on the way back because I am a hardy traveler.) Anyway, Paul took me back to the family home, where his mother provided her brown bread recipe, and I had a wonderful weekend in Dublin family-style. There is magic to be had but you must get yourself there to experience it. May all that is old become new for you, Sharon Carberry Georgia USA