Gaelic Football

During the past 11 days, soccer has provided a break from reality for Socker midfielder Brian Quinn. On Tuesday of last week, Quinn's wife, Sharon, had a miscarriage. "It was very traumatic," Quinn said. "It was the worst episode of my young life. It's something completely outside my control. Something you don't have any power to control . . . "When I first heard, I thought they were telling me lies. There was bewilderment. I was perplexed. I have three healthy kids. You can't understand."

Ignatius Murray fed fresh coals to the flames and resumed his lonely post behind the bar. The soggy, bleak Saturday night seemed made for fire-lit banter in the company of lifelong neighbors, lingering travelers and a bar lined with sweet, creamy pints of slowly settling stout. But business has gone sour at Iggy's Pub, a comfortable oasis the size of a living room in a fishing village on Ireland's far northwestern coast.

They couldn't be in California for the Super Bowl, but that didn't dampen the enthusiasm of the legions of New York Giants fans who gathered in their favorite taverns to watch their team beat the Denver Broncos 39-20. "I've been waiting for this all my life," said David Sackler, a 20-year-old student at Hofstra. "It's the most exciting day in my life," Sackler, who lives in Jericho, said as he watched the game on a 12-foot television screen at the Sports Bar on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

IF you'd like your children to enjoy travel as much as you do, get them involved in vacation planning early. That way, the trips your family takes will become their project too. Children's travel books can make the job simpler. Some of the books are written for kids to help them gear up for trips they'll actually take. Others are narratives that will send them vicariously to places they're unlikely to see in person.

In most metropolitan cities with large native Irish populations like Boston, New York and Chicago, there are well-established Irish centers and newspapers, way stations for new immigrants and critical sociocultural connectors. Neither newspaper nor center exists in Los Angeles County, which has a population of at least 13,500 native Irish. The latest figure for Irish-Americans in Los Angeles County is 369,868.

There is a secret buried beneath the brambles here that few visitors ever discover. Most drive through this rural village in southwestern Ireland without realizing they have passed one of the most historic places in the country: the Ford homestead. The ancestors of automotive pioneer Henry Ford were poor farmers who came to Ireland from England and lived in a simple stone cottage in Ballinascarty during the first half of the 19th Century.

A lanky woman ducks out of a West Hollywood apartment, scans her surroundings and introduces herself. "Hi, I'm Teresa," she whispers. She wears Coke-bottle sunglasses, a low-cut, crushed velvet mini-dress and Dr. Marten's. An unruly mane of titian locks tumbles around her face. But all that Hollywood chic belies the fact that she is an outlaw of sorts. Here on the sly. Teresa moves on to a nearby coffeehouse, where it is noisy, crowded and safe--at least temporarily.

The two hulking men squatted on the balls of their feet, facing each other in the fighting ring. They rubbed their hands together to symbolize washing before battle, clapped once to alert the gods that a fight was about to begin, then opened their palms to show they had no hidden weapons. They leaned forward and touched the knuckles of both hands to the ground, just as the gyoji, or judge, gave the signal to begin.