PLEASE CHECK OUT ANNIE MADDEN'S RESPITE FOR WOMEN

Because I am so excited about this new venture, I am crashing this "travel" blog to invite you to a new blog. I am a novice. I hope you are able to get there from here-
Good Luck with your travels. If I had the means and the ability-my vote would be for a train trip "Orient Express" type...through Canada and Alaska- but I do not have the means or ability to take a trip right now -so carry on-

Reminder

Hello clan --

Just want to remind everyone that there are a number of us with school-age kids, so the usual non-school weeks would be the best;  President's Week, late June/early July, the week between X-mas and New Year's Day.   Speaking of which, we're going to Disney World the day after Thanksgiving until the following Monday. My first visit, and Daniel's first, too!

I'm doing this from my email account, per X-tina and Dan's instructions.  Hope it works!

---

Find phone numbers fast with the New AOL Yellow Pages!

Exit Strategy

It's exciting to think about joining you all on a trip, not only for the great company, but to escape reality for a while. For me, June/July and certain weeks in August are difficult. In any case, I may elect to bring Nils but leave Chris at home. I've always wanted to shoot wolf from up above so Alaska may provide some fringe benefit. Seriously though, Alaska is an incredibly beautiful place and I'd really like to go back. I'm also up for points south but not in the summer. I find it's better to go to warm places when it's cold at home. I went to Costa Rica in May/June and the sheets were wet at night from the humidity.

To change the subject for the moment, I would love to catch up on what we know re: our Irish Ancestry. I'm thinking of spending some money/hiring someone to find, once and for all, Nanny and/or Pop's birth certificate. I think I saved info from the blog 2 years ago but if anyone has it chronicled, please forward it to me.

Thanks much,
Cathy

When??

Christina, I think to get the party moving forward, how about giving us three or so different time frames to choose from. Whichever wins may eliminate an option say the Alaskan cruise if it falls at a time other than what works for most. I would pick next August or next October( the last week) or summer of 2010.
maureen

Late to the party

Sorry...it's taken me all this time to create a gmail address so I could sign up. So I haven't voted, haven't seen polls, haven't done much of anything. But I'm excited for whatever we decide to do. Just let's decide to do it before the entire American economy crumbles and none of us has any money left!
What do I need to do? Is there somewhere I need to vote for something???

More ideas...

Hello my clan....

I still like the idea of a cruise, but a cool resort would also be nice....Christina's Safari sounds amazing.  Meanwhile, re: Mexico, have you Los Angelenos been to Cabo St. Lucas on the Baja Penninsula?  My haircutter goes there and loves it.  Puerto Vallarta is also nice, I understand.    No interest whatsoever in Cancun, which was a tourist trap 25 years ago when I went there.  

As for WHEN -- maybe President's Week in 2010?   Or if we can pull it together, sometime around St. Patrick's Day in 2009?

We Need Another Poll!

The last poll revelaed that people like Alaska, a groovy retreat, and a couple of other ideas. Blogger closed that poll so we need another with some new--possibly more specific?--ideas.

I'll set up another poll, if you tell me what to put in the poll.

I'll also set up a poll for WHEN! But give me some ideas for what to put in there too.

I'll start things off: How About Safari West? It's a groovy Napa resort with elephants and tigers. Think of the near-death esperiences we memories we would have! I know a guy who knows the owner. Maybe I can get us a deal....


Christina

Sorry I never got around to voting...I am psyched for another trip, depending on when and how much $$$. While Alaska sounds amazing, I think it's pretty pricey. I don't know much about cruises leaving from the west coast, but the cruise the O'Connors took to the Caribbean was a great family trip with something for everyone. I would vote for a cruise in warm climate or even a resort stay on the west coast.

Don’t Forget to Vote!

It's good practice for the upcoming election. It's fun. It's easy. You should vote! You don't have to log in or post or figure anything out. Just click on the places you would most like to go. You can vote for more than one. And it's only a poll, not a decision. So relax. It looks like only 6 people have voted so far.

 

If anyone needs help logging in, registering, or any of that, please let me know.

 

Christina [at] tynanwood [dot] com

Posting via eMail

Everyone loves email, right? And you can post to this blog simply by writing an email--to your own private blog-to email address--and sending it. Here's how.

First follow the directions in your invite email for registering with this blog. Got that? Let me know if you need help with that. I'm going to check and see how many of you have managed that in a minute so...well. I will. That's all.

Once you are a registered blog author, here's what you do to secure an email address you can use to SEND emails here that show up as blog posts:

Click on the Settings tab from the basic dashboard, which should be the first thing you see. It looks like this:

Then click on Email from the menu you get. It looks like this:

See it? Okay, you should get this menu next:

Ignore that top bit about the BlogSend addresses. It's the bit on the bottom you want. Where it says Mail-to-Blogger Address, you will see your email, a blank spot, and blogger.com. (This example has mine.) Fill the blank section in with something you can remember. Then click Save Settings. Make a note of that address you just created by entering it in your email address book.

Now anything you send to that email address will show up here as a blog post. You can see an example of it in Dan's post.

Let me know if you need help with that!

Also, posting from Word 2007 is super easy so let me know if you use that and want directions.

Happy blogging!

Remember when....

Remember this?

That's the now-married Emma dancing on stage with that traditional Irish band we all went to see.

What were they called? The Merry Plowboys?

Amazing work, Dan and Christina

The Tynanwood travel-tech service is very impressive indeed!    I feel that we are in very capable hands.  

This is Just a Test of the Email System

If this test works, this email will show up as a blog post on the
Madd(en) Tynan Travels blog. And won't that be special?

dt

Another Trip!

It started this morning. The seed for another trip with the greater Tynan/Madden tribe was planted by Maureen. And so we begin again! Woo-hoo!

The blog was lots of fun last time so I unearthed it, redecorated, dusted, and renamed. (Well, Dan picked the name.) I didn't clean out any of our posts from the Ireland trip, though, because there are so many memories there. **sniff** And one day in the distant future, when we sit in a pub in Ireland (or a desolate beach in Mexico if things have a little differntly than planned) all aged and dwelling on our memories, we will be able to look here for a full acount of all the Madd(en) Tynan travel adventures. (Provided they do something about the Internet access between now and then.)

Blogger has improved a lot since the last time we used it. So this time everyone gets their own account to log in and post with. You should be getting yours via email very soon. If not, well send me a note and I'll fx that (christina [at] tynanwood [dot] com.) You might need a gmail email address to do that but those are easy to get--and oh so hip. Your invite should walk you through that step-by-step. It should even provide you with an email address you can use for posting if you prefer that.

Maddens-in-Ireland

Maddens-in-Ireland
Hello all
I too was hoping that we could have one place to have the ancestry stuff. Someone of us got the name of a person( and a phone number) who has the parish records. Can you post it here? I would like to pursue the birth record for Nanny and that is our best lead.
I saw Smithwick's in the grocery store today. In honor of all of you Phil's been buying and drinking as much Guiness as he can find.
love,
Maureen

More Ancestry 'stuff'

In case anyone ever wants or needs it, I thought it would be good to put as much info as we have about our history in this one place. Laura has a copy of Nanny & Pop's marriage certificate, as well as Uncle Marty's birth certificate, and this is what she shared with me:
Married on 8/3/1920
Pop was 28, and Nanny was 26
Pop lived @ 122 Calumet St. Roxbury
Nanny Lived @ 25 Coroperthwaite St. Cambridge
Date of Record 8/5/1920
Priest, Dennis A. O'Brien 34 Holyoke St. Cambridge Mass
Record of Marriage in the custody of the City clerk as entered in Volume 22,
Folio 954 of said record, city of Cambridge, county of Middlesex on Feb, 4
1992....weird that the date from the city is 1992?? I also have my Dad's
actual birth certificate which was also filed in Cambridge, they were living @
387 Concord Ave. in Cambridge, it says Pop was 33 and Nanny was 30, the Dr.s
name was T.F. Brassil.

Also... by reading the blog and viewing Christina's photos on www.twitfoto.com I realized that Dan and Christina spent some time in Ennistymon. That is where Pop's birth would have been recorded. Too bad we didn't realize it at the time! But it means we collectively covered a fair amount of ground in visiting Nanny's AND Pop's past.

I'd go get a Smithwicks, but it wouldn't be the same without all of you.
love, kathleen

Tynanwoods Day Twenty One

November 4, 2006
Day 21: Bog butter on toast; get thee to a nunnery

Today we planned to get an early start out of Dublin, hauling our four duffels, four backpacks, two bags of food, three satchels of dirty laundry, and four tired carcasses into the Opel Astra and head back to Ennis. And we would have if the car had started. It was dead in the underground garage six blocks away, where it had been sitting since we first arrived in Dublin a week previous. Apparently someone in our party left an interior light on; we're still awaiting forensics from the CSI team to determine who.

Xtina waited for the Irish Auto Association to show up while I stayed at the apartment wrangling the bags and the kids. After a while a guy showed up on a scooter with a portable car battery and jumped the Opel. The cost? Absolutely free.

(Xtina has come up with a nickname for me based on my extreme reluctance to drive: Dan The Car Coward. Xtina is, of course, Her Majesty, Queen Shopsalot.)

Around noon we hit the south road, N7, toward Limerick. En route we stopped in Roscrea, a charming little town entirely surrounding a Norman castle built in 1280. The Roscrea castle looks a lot like the one at Bunratty: A great room on the first floor with a fireplace big enough to cook a buffalo; kitchen, dining, and sleeping quarters are on the upper three floors and narrow winding stone staircases climb to towers in each corner.

Near the entrance is a dungeon known as an 'oublietter' (from the French for 'to forget'), a 2' by 2' hole in the floor with a grate over it, leading to a square basement maybe 20 feet deep. You got in (or out, if you were lucky) by a rope ladder. The castle guide said the Normans would put someone in there and forget about them. The castle also featured a machiolation over each entrance and a 'murder hole' in front of the portcullis through which boiling oil would be poured over unwelcome visitors (a feature that would come in quite handy today when Republican fundraisers come knocking).

In the 18th century a British family named Damer bought the castle and built a large Queen Anne style residence on its grounds. Their descendants still live there. But the bottom two floors are a museum dedicated to the relics found nearby, including a 35kg (80 pound) hunk of petrified butter dating from 988 AD. The bog butter explains a lot about the current Irish diet (strangely, ancient jars of mayonnaise were not also found nearby).

[Note: a writer for the Sunday Tribune, Helen Lucy Burke, tasted the bog butter in 1987, which at time of its discovery was thought to be cheese. She described it thusly:

Close up, the boulder smelled cheesy, ripe, even athlete's footy. An inviting piece had crumbled off and lay at the base. I palmed the fragment, and at a suitable moment popped it in my mouth, rolling it on my tastebuds. The flavour was definitely cheesy, and though unpleasing, not revolting either. The texture was oddly granular. It came closest to a Wensleydale cheese which had dried out: Wensleydales are only tolerably fresh.]

We drove through a spectacular sunset over Limerick, the horizon glowing deep orange like a pizza oven, followed by a full moon rising. We arrived in Ennis after dusk and checked into the Temple Gate Hotel, a lovely 3-star hotel in the heart of the city. In a previous life it had been a convent for the Sisters of Mercy, but 10 years ago it was converted to a hotel. Xtina's aunt Nula was educated there, and she says the Sisters showed very little Mercy. The old chapel had been turned into the hotel's bar and and is now a great room for weddings and such; the stained glass windows sport the logos of Bulmer's and Stella Artois.

We stashed the kids in the room -- they seemed ecstatic to be on their own and away from us for a few hours -- and had a pint in the library off the lobby, underneath the ubiquitous portrait of Joyce. We moved from there to the hotel pub, where more pints were consumed, dinner had, and Xtina went wild on the hotel's free Wifi hotspot -- uploading photos to the blog, chatting, calling people on Skype. It was like finding an oasis of connectivity after weeks in the Netless desert. Every so often one of the kids would come downstairs to find us and lodge a complaint about the other one, but they seemed to be having a good time.

Around 10 pm the "band" came on: An older couple who looked a little like Mary Travers and Peter Yarrow if you squinted (or had drunk three pints). He played guitar and electronic keyboard and sang backup; she sang lead and banged a tambourine. Their voices were fed through the keyboard, giving them an oddly robotic sheen.

They launched into The Carpenter's "On Top of the World" which then sequed surreally into "Help Me Make it Through the Night" without changing tempo or melody. So we went from 'on top of the world looking down on creation' to 'let the devil take tomorrow, Lord, tonight i need a friend.' In a place where nunneries become bars, it seemed like a apt metaphor. Then again, maybe it was just the Guinness.

Tynanwoods Day Twenty

November 3, 2006
Day 20: Of pens and penitentiaries.

Friday, our last full day in Dublin. Everyone is totally exhausted. We walked through St. Stephens Green, jumped back on the Dublin tour bus. The tour guides vary wildly on this bus -- our first guide was an older Irish gentleman, very dry sense of humor. Even Cole remarked on how good he was. Our second guide kind of mumbled his way through everything, made corny jokes, then looked at us expectantly, waiting for the laugh. Our guide this time was an older woman with an even dryer sense of humor and very clear ennuciation (which is important, when you're trying to compete with trucks rumbling by). She recommended the tour of the Kilmainham Gaol (jail), where 14 members of the 1916 Easter Uprising were executed, and which was also the set of the Daniel Day Lewis film, In the Name of the Father.

We hopped off at the Jail and signed up for the tour. Our guide, Sabeena, was Polish or maybe Czech. She spoke English, sort of. She recited the facts in an odd rhythm that was hard to follow and without any passion, repeating herself two or three times and using phrases like "huge big" to describe, well, large things. This was a shame, since the place was so filled with history and blood. It would have been great to hear a true patriot tell the tales. We did, however, have fun threatening to leave the kids behind in one of the cells.

From there we took the bus to the Writer's Museum on Parnell Square, north of the River Liffey. This was a bit of a disappointment as well. For one thing, there was no mention whatsoever of me or Xtina (though Katherine Tynan had her own spot on the audio tour). It was two rooms with long text displays, first editions inside glass cases, busts and paintings of Swift, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats, O'Casey, Joyce, Beckett, etc., and the typewriter Brendan Behane allegedly threw through the window at McDonough's Pub. It was mildly informative but the kids were bored silly.

Then we took what has become our 'usual route' home -- over the O'Connell Street Bridge, past Trinity College, through the crowds and buskers and street performers on Grafton to the light rail station at St. Stephen's Green. I'd hoped to hit one last pub, stroll through Temple Bar on a Friday evening, but the kids were dead set against any more walking. So we stayed in and watched Irish telly.

Tynanwoods Days Eighteen & Nineteen

November 1 & 2, 2006
Days 18 & 19: Zoos & booze; sneaking into Mecca

Wednesday: most of the Gang of 20 left this day. We spent the afternoon at the Dublin Zoo inside Phoenix Park with my cousin Jeanne and her three-year-old Daniel. Jeanne flagged a cab back to the hotel while we took a bus back to the south side and drank a pint at The Duke, where we began our Literary Pub Crawl two nights earlier. We took the light rail home. I decided to not buy tickets this time, since they're expensive and nobody ever asks to see them. It's almost an honor system. And tonight we discovered the almost: after we got on, two light rail employees came onboard right next to me and started asking to see tickets. There's apparently a stiff fine for riding the rail without paying. I did my best to become invisible, and it worked -- we got off at the next stop without being thrown into the hoosegow. But when Ava took my hand as we walked home she said 'Dad, you're shaking.' The adrenaline. So much for my life of crime.

Later we had dinner with Jeanne and Daniel at O'Neills Pub, competing with soccer matches blaring on screens in every room. While we were there the (well) lit pub crawlers came in, and I chatted briefly with one of the actors.

Thursday: We caught the Dublin Tour bus, which we referred to as the 'jump on jump off', since the tickets are good for 24 hours. The bus runs along both sides of the River Liffey and comes with a live tour guide who points out the various sites -- the smallest pub in Dublin, the statue of Molly Malloy, and so on. The top side of the double decker bus is open to the air, which both makes it easier to see the buildings and also butt cold in early November.

Our first jump off: St. Patrick's Cathedral, which among other things houses the corpse and death mask of Jonathan Swift, who was dean of the cathedral for 30 years when he wasn't writing a few things on the side. We wandered about, admiring the gothic architecture and the stained glass. Ava discovered the votive candles, so we lit one for every dead relative I could come up with. (Starting with my Uncle Bill, whose generosity made this whole trip possible.)

We jumped back on the Dublin Tour bus and jumped off at Mecca, aka The Guinness Brewery at St. James Gate. Our aim was to just eat lunch in the cafe and catch the 360 degree view of the city from the 7th floor bar. When we discovered we had to pay a 30 euro fee for the tour -- whether we wanted to tour the plant or not -- that made Dan a very cranky boy. While Xtina wandered through the gift shop trying to convince me to buy some Guinness boxer shorts, Ava wandered off behind the ticket counter to check out a waterfall she heard flowing (yes, there's a waterfall inside the plant). I followed her, Cole followed me, and then Xtina showed up five minutes later PO'd that we'd abandoned her. But we were in the plant and it didn't cost us a dime, so we headed up to the Brewery Cafe and had lunch (and, it goes without saying, a pint). Xtina had Guinness and Beef Stew, I had fishcakes, the kids had chicken nuggets, and it was the best restaurant meal we had during our entire stay. Even the nuggets and chips were good.

Note: In the elevator up we met a brewery tour employee who did not ask to see our tickets but did explain why Guinness tastes better over here. One, they know how to pour it. Two, they serve it at 6 degrees Celsius, or roughly 44 degrees fahrenheit. Apparently the Brits serve it too warm (9 degrees) and the Americans too cold (3 degrees). I think possibly the warm and inviting environs has something to do with it as well.

Ancestry Search

In search of a birth certificate for Nanny, to help out all of those who might be interested in applying for an Irish passport at some point:

On Tuesday (Oct 31) Maureen & I went to the Ancestry Branch of the National Library of Ireland, at 2 Kildare Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. (Tel 353 1 6030200; email info@nli.ie; web www.nli.ie) The very helpful gentleman there showed us how to use the index to find the civil registration district for each town and village. It is in the civil registration district where births are recorded.

We were given a list of Civil Registration Districts, by County, as well as a map of all the Civil Registration Districts. I was also given the address of the main office in Roscommon to which we can write to request certified copies of birth certificates once you have located the correct one. Applications for such can be downloaded from www.groireland.ie.

We focussed our search on Nanny (Annie Dillon) because we had received verbal confirmation from locals in Williamstown that the Dillon family had lived in Derrywode, just outside Williamstown, in the county of Galway, for many years. The civil registration district for Williamstown and Derrywode is Clifden. He suggested that we visit the General Register Office (GRO), at Joyce House, 8-11 Lombard Street East, Dublin 2 to research the birth records there. The telephone there is 353 1 635 4000 and the website is www.groireland.ie.

On Wednesday November 1 I went to the GRO. You pay 2 Euro for a general search. You may request the "Index of Births" in 5 year increments according to the census. Each year's birth records are indexed in a large volume divided into quarters; thus for each year you must look in four separate quarters for all the births. Names are listed alphabetically by last name. I looked up Dillon, then looked for all Annes or Annies that were registered. Ultimately I searched all the records from 1894 through 1900. I found 19 Annes or Annies, but none in Clifden. Staying in the same geographical area as Williamstown (when I could determine that) I requested copies of 4 birth certificates. Only when you see the copy of the birth certificate can you determine the names of the father and mother and the actual town in which they lived. None of the four I requested were a match for what we know. (You can request up to 5 birth certificate copies in one day; if you want more than that, they will send them to you by mail. Each certificate copy costs 4 Euro.) If you are lucky enough to find the birth certificate of the person you are searching for, you can go downstairs to the General Register Office on the first floor and obtain a certified copy.

I will be happy to scan and send any of the documents I did collect if you want to see them; just let me know

What we know:
We know that Edmund Dillon and Mary or Margaret Nee Dillon had 7 children: Patrick, Michael, Tom, Mary, Margaret, Norah and Annie. We are not certain of Annie's year of birth; we have long assumed that it was 1896.

After striking out on all my searches the woman in the research room admitted that Nanny's birth may never have been recorded with the government. This was very common in those days. IN THAT CASE WE WOULD NEED PARISH RECORDS OF THE CHURCH HER FAMILY ATTENDED IN ORDER TO RECEIVE PROOF OF BIRTH. I do not have the information on the parish records, but I think someone else who was in Williamstown with us may have written down the name or contact info of the person who might have those........ Anyone?????

I did not have time to do the same type of search for Pop's records. What we think we know about him is that he was born to Thomas Madden and Bridget Burke Madden. His siblings were Tom and Jack. Tom had two children - Joseph and Lily. Jack had two children - John and Joe. We believe he was born in Leeds, which is in County Clare. Ennistymon (or Ennistimon) is the civil registration district for his area, and Kilfarboy is his civil parish. I do not have the years that would need to be searched, but I think we'd have to start as far back as 1888 or so.

One can also research the Census records, which we did not do. In that case we would look for the 1901 - 1911 Census for Derrywode to see who was recorded. But that would only tell us that the family lived in Derrywode, and we felt we already knew that.

After I was out of time a very nice gentleman who had overheard my requests for assistance came to me to tell me that there is an alternative to the method I was using. In the Dublin City Library & Archives, at 138-144 Pearse Street, Dublin 2, the records I was researching are on microfiche, and the search is free. That office is open from Monday - Thursday from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm and on Friday and Saturday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm.

So..... no documents to show for our research. Now we know why people pay thousands of euros to have professionals do this for them!
love, kathleen