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Assessment, Testing, Transfer Test Northern Ireland, Brian Baird, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Education, Great Teachers, Brian Baird, Mr. Jones, Northern Ireland, Rites of passage, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Teaching, Themes of Childhood
The kids matter ~ right?
Today is Transfer Test result day in Northern Ireland, and thousands of 11-year old children will know by now if they got the scores they need to “get in” to the next level of their education. It is a process of “academic selection” that seems to fly in the face of ensuring access, equity, and excellence for all children – all children – yet…
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Aging, Arizona, Birthdays, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Death and dying, Diagnosis, Family, Fireworks, Irish culture, Irish mammies, John Hiatt, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Muriel Rukeyser, New Year, Newgrange, No Country for Old Men, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Ted Kooser, Themes of Childhood, Time
Ready to Turn ~ Winter Solstice 2015
Again, the sun will pause for its moment of solstice before changing direction to move northward. From the Latin, solstitium, the apparent standing still of the sun, the Winter Solstice is a turning point, something I look forward to each year. At Newgrange, a neolithic burial tomb even older than Stonehenge, outside Dublin, Ireland, they hold a lottery to decide who…
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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…
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Act Two, Aging, Being a Widow, Birthdays, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Treatment, Castledawson, Coming of age, Death and dying, Dying, Family, Fatherless daughters, FInal wishes, First birthday without him, Funerals, Great Advice, Grieving, Loss, Love, Marriage, Memoir, Mourning, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Robin Williams, saying goodbye, Thanksgiving, Themes of Childhood, Tommy Edwards, W.H. Auden, Wedding Anniversary
Remembering Ken on our 25th ‘Anniversary’
Twelve days after Ken died, I wrote this post. I haven’t read it since, and I’m not going to read it tonight. Somewhere in the middle of the grief-stricken ramblings, I remember is a pure – and good – memory of this day twenty five years ago – January 13, 1990 – the day when Ken and I embarked on what we both knew…
