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A Postscript for Mr. Jones
... when we write in the moment - especially about someone who mattered to us - it can feel like tossing a message in a bottle into the sea. We don't expect it will come back to us. Not really. Teachers, I think, spend their professional lives doing exactly that, except without the romance of the bottle.
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𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝗻 𝗔𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝘀 𝗠𝘆 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗿t 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗜 𝗕𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘃𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝘆𝘄𝗮𝘆)
I don’t know when I fell in love with the idea of baseball. This is bothersome, because I like to know exactly when things begin so I can blame them properly later. What drew me to it? Maybe it was that unnaturally beautiful moment in “The Natural” when the beautiful Robert Redford sends the ball screaming into the stadium lights, smashing them, and then takes his victory lap in a shower of golden sparks. When I watch that scene I think, yes, I would like all my victories, no matter how small, to involve sparks. Or perhaps it was that afternoon in the Spring of 1989 at the iconic Cine…
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Language of Cancer, Leontia Flynn, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Themes of childhood
Poetry: Works like a Charm
Ukrainian-American poet, Ilya Kaminsky, writes in the New York Times, of his desperation to find ways out of Ukraine for his friends - writers, poets, and translators. Many of them do not want to leave their homes, even as Russia continues to bombard their cities: I ask how I can help. Finally, an older friend, a lifelong journalist, writes back: “Putins come and go. If you want to help, send us some poems and essays. We are putting together a literary magazine.” In the middle of war, he is asking for poems.
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mother’s day. as always.
Each day we move a little closer to the sidelines of their lives, which is where we belong, if we do our job right. Until the day comes when they have to find a florist fast at noon because they had totally forgotten it was anything more than the second Sunday in May. – Anna Quindlen Or the Fourth Sunday of Lent. Which is today. Mother’s Day in Ireland. And yes. I forgot. My mother is miles away, at home in a village in South Derry, which feels very far from Mexico on a day like this. I miss her the way I do every day, but Mothering Sunday sharpens…
