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A Sense of Wonder, Aging, Barmbrack, Belfast, Best friends, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Good Vibrations, Hyndford Street, In the Days Before Rock n' Roll, Irish culture, Little Feat, Madame George, Memoir, Milestones, Music, Norn Iron Soul Food, Northern Ireland, Paris Buns, pop culture, Pop Music, Pop-in Records, Record Shops, Rites of passage, Rituals, Seamus Heaney, Snowball, Soundtracks of our Lives, Terri Hooley, Themes of childhood, Van Morrison, Vinyl Records, WagonWheel, When the Healing Has Begun
Caught One More Time . . . Happy Birthday, Van Morrison.
From Cyprus Avenue on Van Morrison's 70th birthday - when the familiar refrain streamed across a continent into my kitchen in the desert, and the appreciative whistles from the Belfast crowd, my whole world stopped for a second. Back street jelly roll . . .
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Dispatch from the Diaspora, Gerald Dawe, Music, Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney, The Troubles, Van Morrison
Belfast & Van Morrison: Works in Progress
A version of this article appeared in the Ulster issue of Reading Ireland. There is no denying Gerald Dawe’s sense of wonder for Van Morrison – and for Belfast – in his lovely book In Another World. Culled from all the material Dawe has published on Morrison since the 1990s, it is a portrait of these artists in and of…
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airing laundry for my mother’s birthday
Old Smoothing Iron by Seamus Heaney Often I watched her lift it from where its compact wedge rode the back of the stove like a tug at achor. To test its heat by ear she spat in its iron face or held it up next her cheek to divine the stored danger. Soft thumps on the ironing board. Her dimpled…
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Dispatch from the Diaspora, Hank Thompson, Lou Reed, Seamus Heaney, Stiff Little Fingers, The Clash, Kevin Rowland, Dolores O'Riordan, Christy Moore, The Good Friday Agreement, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, Trouble Songs
Good Trouble – in the Back Seat with Stuart Bailie.
Far away from Belfast, Stuart Bailie and I find ourselves in the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains in Los Gatos, California. A perfect place to ponder politics, protest, and punk rock, it’s where John Steinbeck penned his angriest book, the soundtrack of America’s Great Depression and Tom Joad’s California. By any other name, The Grapes of Wrath is a…
