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Arizona, Belfast Peace Lines, Berlin Wall, Borders, Bruce Springsteen, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Immigration, Phoenix, United States-Mexico Border
Achtung, baby – tear down that wall.
Families separated by their immigration status – some of them for decades – were reunited yesterday. For just three minutes during the Hugs not Walls event, relatives clung to each other in a concrete canal between the border cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez. Mothers and children, husbands and wives, grandparents and newborn babies, all on the honor system and under the watchful eye of…
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Being young, Belfast, Belfast Peace Lines, bombing, Borders, Brexit, Dispatch from the Diaspora, EUFA Cup 2016, IRA, Loughinisland, Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland, Sport, The Good Friday Agreement, The Troubles, The Troubles, World Cup Football
Confronting Brexit & my Identity Crisis
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down. ~ Robert Frost Less than a week ago, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Let that sink in. I haven’t…
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Antrim, Belfast, Belfast Peace Lines, bombing, British Army, Bruce Springsteen, Castledawson, Good Vibrations, IRA, Joe Strummer, La Mon House Hotel Bombing, Memoir, Mix tapes, Movies, Music, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Pop-in Records, Record Shops, Regrets, Sectarianism, Sherman Alexie, Terri Hooley, The Clash, The Miami Showband, The Troubles, The Undertones, Themes of childhood, UVF, Vinyl Records
for the record . . . a reprise
Terri Hooley has decided to close down the Good Vibrations record shop on June 13th. This one’s for him – again. I rarely watch movies when I’m flying, but on the plane from Chicago to Dublin two Novembers ago, perusing my options for in-flight entertainment, I paused when I heard the unmistakable hiss that comes after a stylus is dropped right in the groove, and a Northern…
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Belfast Peace Lines, Borders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights Movement, Human Rights, Ireland, Justice, Marriage Equality Referendum, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Politics, Seamus Heaney, Themes of Childhood
On Domestic Affairs in Northern Ireland
In April 2015, when the Northern Ireland Assembly voted – again – against same-sex marriage, I was disappointed, but I was not without hope that change is coming. If a month later, the Irish Republic could become the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular, national vote, then surely the tide must turn in the North? What happened in Ireland…
