Guinness

Re "They've lowered the bar in Ireland," Column One, July 12 Having recently returned from a pub crawl in Ireland involving nine pubs, 10 days and innumerable pints of Guinness, we want to quash the rumor of the demise of Guinness. On that quest never did we hear a call for "Boodweiser." Morning, noon and night, Guinness is good for you. Beth Regan and Stuart Swanson Vista, Calif.

President Obama, accompanied by an ancestral cousin from Moneygall, Ireland and an Irish bar owner whose establishment hevisited during a trip to Ireland, strolled into a local Irish bar on Saturday afternoon and enjoyed a pint of Guinness. Obama wore a green jacket that read "National Parks, America's Best Idea. " He spent about 30 minutes at the pub, located less than two miles from the White House. A full accounting of the outing is below. In past years, St. Patrick's Day at the White House has been marked by a visit from the Irish prime minister, also known as the Taoiseach.

The Anglo-Irish brewing firm Guinness PLC Wednesday accused its former chairman Ernest Saunders of receiving more than $4.8 million in a secret operation he organized as part of the Guinness takeover of Scotch whisky-maker Distillers last year. Guinness director Shaun Dowling told Britain's High Court that the company suspected Saunders and Thomas Ward, a U.S.-based Guinness director, of paying out $8.3 million from Guinness funds into a bank in the channel island of Jersey.

— In this city he is known simply as Yannick, while American journalists seem to be plumping for YNS. Whatever the appellation, last month's announcement that 35-year-old Quebecker Yannick Nézet-Séguin would be the eighth music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra was kind of a big deal. Long one of America's most prestigious orchestras, the Philadelphia Orchestra has been listing dangerously of late. A new board chair and orchestra manager have steadied the ship considerably, and Nézet-Séguin will be expected to provide the artistic guidance necessary for the orchestra to sail on to adventures new. Music director appointments are meant to last a decade or more, and as in marriage, the chances of success improve dramatically if both parties at least like each other before tying the knot.

Ernest Saunders, dismissed as chairman of the Anglo-Irish brewing giant Guinness, was arrested and charged with financial offenses during Britain's biggest takeover battle, police said today. In the latest twist of Britain's worst financial scandal in years, fraud squad officers arrested the 51-year-old businessman at his lawyer's office in the heart of London's financial district Wednesday night and charged him with attempting to pervert the course of justice and destroying documents.

The two men drink standing near the back of the long bar at Davy Byrnes, one of the many watering holes in this city that, in the words of writer Samuel Beckett, who once lived upstairs, have been known to house "broken glass and indiscretion. " In the back, because that's well away from the "whippets" and "blow-ins" who tend to wander in, armed with neither intellect nor wit, if one distinguishes between the two, settle on the first available stool and ask for a "Boodweiser" from the barman.

President Obama, accompanied by an ancestral cousin from Moneygall, Ireland and an Irish bar owner whose establishment hevisited during a trip to Ireland, strolled into a local Irish bar on Saturday afternoon and enjoyed a pint of Guinness. Obama wore a green jacket that read "National Parks, America's Best Idea. " He spent about 30 minutes at the pub, located less than two miles from the White House. A full accounting of the outing is below. In past years, St. Patrick's Day at the White House has been marked by a visit from the Irish prime minister, also known as the Taoiseach.

Randy Lewis, you got it so right, dude. The Flogging Molly story ["Punk 'Tude With an Irish Heart," March 17] was the greatest story on St. Patrick's Day. God help us that virtually no one knows who Flogging Molly is. But Randy Lewis did his job, and he did it so well. I think the world will change a little as a result and that means something. We'll fight 'em to the end! And I'll have another Guinness, please. John Kilroy Orange

The Doll Hut, 107 S. Adams Ave. (at Manchester Avenue), Anaheim. Open Monday through Saturday, 1 p.m. to 2 a.m. (714) 533-1286. Top 40 is strictly prohibited, it's too loud and cramped to ever be a pickup joint, and its grunge-over-glitz motif is the antithesis of all those peach-stucco and neon yuppie hangouts. It's also the best place in O.C. to hear avant-rock, drink Guinness and shoot pool.

MORE BARS: The Doll Hut, 107 S. Adams Ave. (at Manchester Avenue), Anaheim. Open Monday through Saturday, 1 p.m. to 2 a.m. (714) 533-1286. Top 40 is strictly prohibited, it's too loud and cramped to ever be a pickup joint, and its grunge-over-glitz motif is the antithesis of all those peach-stucco and neon yuppie hangouts. It's also the best place in O.C. to hear avant-rock, drink Guinness and shoot pool.

Finding Oz How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story Evan I. Schwartz Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 400 pp., $28 Cheek by Jowl Talks & Essays on How & Why Fantasy Matters Ursula K. Le Guin Aqueduct Press: 150 pp., $16 paper -- In classic fairy-tale tropes, L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" impresses its vision upon the reader. A girl left with no biological parents is banished from home.

Forest Park is one of the largest patches of urban wilderness in the United States, and the Victorian homes and gardens nearby create an air of Tolkienesque enchantment. Right around here in fact, one of Tolkien's heirs labors in a century-old house. "I agree with Tolstoy that the best way to tell a story is invisibly," Ursula K. Le Guin says. "But I also hear what I write, and I think if you can't read it out loud, there's something wrong with it."

Irish Republican Army dissidents on Sunday threatened to kill top Sinn Fein politician Martin McGuinness and resume attacks in England as part of their efforts to wreck the IRA cease-fire and power sharing in Northern Ireland. An Easter statement from the outlawed Real IRA sent to Irish news media branded McGuinness a traitor because he holds the top Irish Catholic post in Northern Ireland's government, sharing power with British Protestants.

To many moviegoers who came of age in the '70s, Alec Guinness was synonymous with the cowled "Star Wars" guru Obi-Wan Kenobi. For this most chameleonic of actors, whose career ranged from London's West End to Broadway, from Ealing comedies to David Lean epics to John le Carre thrillers, this was apparently a source of consternation (he claimed to throw out all "Star Wars" fan mail unopened). Guinness, who died in 2000 at age 86, was a junior member of Britain's circle of acting knights, but Sir Alec was always a little different from the likes of Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Michael Redgrave.

To many moviegoers who came of age in the '70s, Alec Guinness was synonymous with the cowled "Star Wars" guru Obi-Wan Kenobi. For this most chameleonic of actors, whose career ranged from London's West End to Broadway, from Ealing comedies to David Lean epics to John le Carre thrillers, this was apparently a source of consternation (he claimed to throw out all "Star Wars" fan mail unopened).

Re "They've lowered the bar in Ireland," Column One, July 12 Having recently returned from a pub crawl in Ireland involving nine pubs, 10 days and innumerable pints of Guinness, we want to quash the rumor of the demise of Guinness. On that quest never did we hear a call for "Boodweiser." Morning, noon and night, Guinness is good for you. Beth Regan and Stuart Swanson Vista, Calif.

The two men drink standing near the back of the long bar at Davy Byrnes, one of the many watering holes in this city that, in the words of writer Samuel Beckett, who once lived upstairs, have been known to house "broken glass and indiscretion. " In the back, because that's well away from the "whippets" and "blow-ins" who tend to wander in, armed with neither intellect nor wit, if one distinguishes between the two, settle on the first available stool and ask for a "Boodweiser" from the barman.

Ursula K. LE GUIN can't easily be pegged. Her ample body of work includes science fiction novels and stories, poems, essays, books for children and much else beside; yet it's difficult to know who or what she is. Perhaps her latest novel makes all of this plain: She creates other worlds that seem uncannily like our own. This is certainly true of "Lavinia," which is historical fiction of a kind, a spinoff from Virgil's "Aeneid."