Ireland is the birthplace of scores of renowned writers. Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker. Jonathan Swift and Frank Mc Court. Samuel Becket, who famously waited for Godot. George Bernard Shaw and Patrick Taylor, who informed my small-town ensemble writing. William Butler Yeats and C.S. Lewis. Maeve Binchy and more, so many, many more in a list as long as my arm. All of these famed writers wrote well without NaNoWriMo, which didn’t exist.

While NaNoWriNo exists today, I say no-no-no to the imposition.

I’m not participating, though many members of this group are: https://www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com  

Some of the group members might even be Irish, like me. Irish folk can, reportedly, quip limericks and spin yarns in a great story-telling tradition. Here’s a blog post I wrote to honor my father and our shared ability to write limericks: https://www.pjcolando.com/limerick/

The Irish are also known for their whiskey, from MacCallan single malt to Glenfiddich. They might drink you under the table with their Guinness. Another famed export is Irish Coffee.

In the Irish story-telling tradition, I’ll share how the latter confection began. In the winter of 1943, during World War II, Joe Sheridan operated a restaurant/coffee shop at Foynes Port near Limerick (a civilian airbase). On a cold, dreary night, a flight took off for New York but was forced by bad weather to return. The co-pilot sent a message via Morse code to alert the airport that a planeload of people would be returning, in need of food and drink.

Joe Sheridan was inspired to stir some fine Irish whiskey into their bone-weary passengers’ coffees. When an inquisitive passenger asked if it was “Brazilian coffee?,” Joe replied “No, that’s Irish Coffee” and the name stuck.

After WWII, a travel writer asked the bartender at the Buena Vista Hotel in San Francisco to recreate the drink, describing the technique to float the cream as innovative. It was at the Buena Vista, at the end of one of the trolley lines, where my husband and I learned the benefits of Irish Coffee.

You, too, can make Irish coffee. Watch this video to know how.