panacea noun pan·a·cea | \ ,pa-nə-'sē-ə \ : a remedy for all ills or difficulties : CURE-ALL --Merriam-Webster Dictionary
"I’ve had three Panaceas in my life. Places that evoke pleasant memories. Memories of happy times. Some memories so perfect that the place almost seems like a dream. But the places are real. They may not be literal Panaceas that provided a remedy for all of life’s difficulties. But memories have a way of filtering the good times from the not-so-good times, and the good times stick and perpetuate in one’s mind. These are places that one daydreams of reliving, and you wouldn’t hesitate a second if you had it to do over again."
The above is an excerpt from the preface of my book,
Panacea II On Achill Island, County Mayo, Republic of Ireland
To more fully explain the origin of the name Panacea, and my designation of our Ireland cottage as Panacea II, here are further excerpts from the preface:
"My first Panacea was my paternal grandmother’s summer cottage in Chautauqua, Illinois, USA. We called my grandmother Nanoo. Chautauqua was a gated community of rustic cottages in a heavily treed valley between the bluffs on the Mississippi River. Chautauqua had a summer season with a “program” that seemed like a summer camp for families. A huge swimming pool, tennis courts, bocce ball courts, and shuffle board courts. Movies three times a week in a covered, outdoor auditorium that frequently showed classic Westerns. The Station Stand cozily situated between the swimming pool and the lighthouse on the bank of the Mississippi River, where ice-cream cones were a traditional treat after an afternoon swim. The Kentucky Home restaurant that served family-style dinners of comfort food, like meatloaf or fried chicken, at a fixed time every day. Chautauqua’s roads were narrow and shaded, filled with few cars and many bikes and pedestrians flitting from one fun activity to another."
"That was Panacea I."
"My second Panacea was a cottage on Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland. My wife, Mary, and I created it many years after Chautauqua. We bought an old seaside cottage on this Irish island that had been in Mary’s family.
"Our original dream was for it to become a part-time retirement home. The renovation project to make it livable was a huge undertaking. But we were building a place to be remembered, and hopefully passed through the family generations. There were many analogies, in my mind, to Chautauqua and to Panacea. So it seemed a given that we should name our Ireland cottage the Gaelic word for Panacea – Uile-íoc (illa-eek).
"The renovation turned the cottage into more of a Country Estate. It wasn’t that huge – a two-story house with about 2000 square feet. By our standards, that was reasonably modest. But it contrast to the typical cottages in the area, many of which were around 1000 square feet, the relative grandeur of our renovation made it a Country Estate. The locals said, 'Oh my, the Yanks built a mansion.' Nonetheless, I always preferred to call it a cottage.
"Uile-íoc was also a vacation rental home, or as they would say in Ireland, a holiday home. It was not a B&B, because Mary and I were not living there when we rented to guests. But rather, it was what they called a self-catering cottage. This aspect of Uile-íoc was a big part of our overall experience, and is a big part of this book.
"Although this Panacea didn’t live a full life to meet our original intent, the 12 years we owned it was a journey to be remembered. And the name Panacea certainly lived up to its reputation.
"That was Panacea II, and the subject of this [section of the website]."
The dramatic events that led us to purchase the cottage, the protracted and difficult process of building Panacea II, the joys of living there a month each year, the good and bad experiences of renting it to vacationers in the summer, and the trauma of selling it, are all part of a 12-year experience that can't be adequately conveyed through this website. You'll just have to buy the book (when it's complete).
But on the other hand, the book can't do justice to all the photographs I collected during those 12 years nor the photostories I produced during many of our trips to Achill Island -- at least not without making it a huge, very expensive book. So this website is actually a supplement to the book.