A new Chipotle restaurant (it’s the upscale, Mexican McDonald’s) opened in the square today and is celebrating by giving out free burritos. I planned to grab one with some friends after my Irish history lecture. This was poorly timed, as today we covered the Famine. My professor showed a power point slide with an official log from 19 April, 1848 listing those who reported dead family members to a parish priest in Sligo. Prominently among them was a Philip McGowan (which was my grandfather’s name) who lost his wife and daughter to death by starvation. Seeing that felt a little like stepping on a rake hidden in a pile of leaves and having it smack me unexpectedly in the face. I still went to get the burrito, but the entire time I was eating it I was wondering how long it could have sustained that mother and daughter. Nineteenth-century Irish Catholic guilt ruining a burrito made with vegetarian-fed chicken in a McDonald’s-affiliated chain restaurant: how’s that for historical memory in a globalized society?