Word: limerick
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Novey has run the Boston Marathon for the past two years. Last year, he noticed a fellow runner in a burger costume. After chatting with the sandwich-clad man, Novey learned that he was sponsored by b.good. Novey sent a limerick to the owner of b.good, asking to be the next Burgerman—and before he knew it, he was wearing the 12-pound stretch Lycra suit around his hips...
McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930 - he would later, much later, memorably describe the scene of his conception in his memoir - but he grew up in Ireland. His parents were both Irish immigrants, and they moved back there, to Limerick, in an effort to stay ahead of McCourt's father's drinking problem. They didn't succeed. Malachy, Frank's father, worked intermittently as a laborer, but he drank constantly...
McCourt was the first of seven children whom their mother Angela cared for indomitably. But even she was no match for the grinding poverty that Malachy's drinking brought upon the family, and for the cold and damp of Limerick. They became so poor that three of the children - twin brothers and a baby girl - died of disease and malnutrition. "It was, of course, a miserable childhood," McCourt famously wrote in Angela's Ashes, in a passage that's worth quoting in full. "The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable...
Fame and fortune transformed McCourt's last years. He bought a second home in Connecticut, next door to Arthur Miller. There is now an Angela's Ashes walking tour in Limerick, and the university there awarded him a doctorate. He spent three months as a writer-in-residence in London, at the Savoy Hotel, and another term at the American Academy in Rome (during that time, he met Pope John Paul II and rather embarrassedly knelt and kissed his ring). But by all accounts McCourt himself was in no way transformed by his success. Though that doesn't mean...
...meant be. Sceptre Tours' seven-day package to Ireland includes round-trip airfare from New York City or Boston to Dublin for $799 per person, a night at the Ritz-Carlton Powerscourt (just south of Dublin) and a stay at the four-star Strand Hotel in Limerick. While you're on the road (the car rental is also included), you can stay four nights at any of 1,200 Irish Farmhouse Bed & Breakfasts. The same package is available from Chicago or Washington, D.C., starting at $949, and from San Francisco starting at $1,059. Book by Feb. 27 for travel...