I was walking down a street in San Francisco, and talking politics with a friend. my friend pointed out how the government had totally played up the rôle of Jews in Northern Ireland. my reply was how stupid was that, there are no Jews in Ireland.

there was a line of people in the middle of the street leading up to an intersection. this lady was there with her friend. the lady was really short with greying hair and a broad face. she got really offended at my remark and took me to task. turns out her name was Susan Stallings and she was Jewish and had been living in Ireland lo these many years. She was the author of some occasional column in the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed section. She showed me some of the article references on the web.

then I was suddenly in Ireland (!) with my friend Sarah (who was not the person I had been talking politics with). we were walking along a street in Dublin. it had wooden sidewalks and was all muddy like a wild west boom town. we passed by a couple pubs. to get in you needed some sort of i.d. or card key like in corporate America.

we came to a little paved lot behind a building. it had a dumpster and looked quite typical for a lot behind an American fast food restaurant. Sarah and I started talking to each other about how we should behave. Sarah was excited about visiting all these places in Ireland, which she had never before visited. but, Sarah is Jewish and I guess in my dream I was too, now. I cautioned her that no matter how egalitarian most of Europe had become, we were on an island that was Officially Catholic, and Fanatically Catholic. except for in Northern Ireland but there they blew people up. so all around it was dangerous for us to be there.

then we went back in the street and managed to get entry into a pub anyhow.