From my living room in Portland, Oregon, I spent the hour talking with my friend Tommy Sands in Rostrevor, County Down, in Ireland.  There were a few technical glitches with the connection, but mostly it worked, and we talked about current events in Ireland, the US, and elsewhere, and various little anecdotes from Tommy's very interesting life and times as a global traveler from a part of the world that was, for many decades, a hot spot for global news coverage.