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California, Father's Day, Happy Father's Day, Love, Memoir, Milestones, Mix tapes, Morro Bay, Ordinary Things, Phoenix, Pismo Beach, Rites of passage, Road trips, Rolling Stones, San Luis Obispo, saying goodbye, Songs for the Road, Summertime
on the road again
From June until September, when the temperatures soar well above 100 degrees, most Phoenicians suffer a kind of amnesia about why they live in a desert city where, for most of the year, the weather is the kind that people from rainy, grey places covet. In the summer, all hot and bothered, we retreat to our air-conditioned offices, and grumble that our backyard pools aren’t…
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Anahorish, Antrim, Arizona, Artisans, Being young, Belfast, Language matters, McClelland Irish Library, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Phoenix, Phoenix Landmarks, Soundtracks of our Lives, Ted Hughes, The Diviner, The Forge, Writing
a cool whiskey for seamus heaney & me
No better way to end a night celebrating the poetry of Seamus Heaney than with a Powers whiskey and a bit of craic. The only thing missing was a turf fire, but this is Phoenix, Arizona, the weather still warm on the first Friday of October. No need yet for a hot whiskey, not the way my father makes it as a…
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9.11.2013, 9/11, American Dream, Anything can Happen, Arizona, Art, Belfast, bombing, Healing Field Tempe, Human Rights, Loss, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Phoenix, Remembering September 11th, Rolling Stones, Seamus Heaney, Sectarianism, Terrorism, The Troubles, Themes of childhood
moving memories from New York to Phoenix
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Anahorish, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Art, Awesome Women, Great Advice, Human Rights, Justice, Language matters, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Oprah Winfrey, Peace, Phoenix, Politics, Prop 300, Punishment, Seamus Heaney, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Theater
a walk in other people’s shoes, other people’s words
Every afternoon at 3 0’clock, for the first twenty-five years of my American life, I sat down on my couch and watched Oprah Winfrey’s talk show. It was Oprah who taught me Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift of Fear” and later, if ever I were kidnapped, that I should remember Sanford Strong’s Rule #1: to never let myself be taken…
