Sweny’s chemist. My favorite place in all of Dublin, it is featured in James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses and proudly upholds that heritage. Yesterday between the hustle and bustle of running back to the National Museum of Archaeology for forgotten sunglasses and an extremely overwhelming crepe order, Peter, Al, and I walked down to Sweny’s. We had been hoping to return and catch a reading there since our first real day in Dublin, when we had very quickly stopped in on our walking tour. The first time we visited, Henry and I had read a little bit and chatted excitedly with the very sweet man who was working there. He encouraged us to return later in the week and attend one of their many readings, spanning from newcomers to Joyce reading through his first published work, The Dubliners, to a highly dedicated group of Joyce aficionados who were reading Finnegan’s Wake, dissecting each word of the text. They claimed it would take them four years to finish reading through the colossal book. We hoped to attend a reading of Ulysses, but soon realized out schedule would not allow that. On Tuesday when we arrived at the little, old store front we were greeted by a different man than the first time. He was old, with white hair, a white lab coat, and a sparkly, sequined, silver bow tie. He immediately engaged with us, asking how long we would be in Dublin, if we were Joyce fans, what we had read. When I mentioned to him that we were hoping to attend a reading, but had no time to do so, he smiled and said “we’ll have a personal reading.” He pulled out The Dubliners and told us to flip to page 23. Eveline. As we read the story out loud, the connections to our own Ireland Project were startling. It was a story of home, a story about a girl who has to make the choice to stay in an abusive, sad home, which she has known for all her life, which she promised her dying mother to keep together, or to leave with her lover for a distant land. There was an overwhelming sense of camaraderie, thinking of James Joyce pondering the same questions as we are. What makes a home a home? What responsibility do we have to our home? Can we ever really leave our home? What does it mean to leave home, knowing that you will never return?