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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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9/11, Anything can Happen, Being young, Belfast, bombing, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Heartbreak Beat, Northern Ireland, Paris Attack, Sectarianism, Soundtracks of our Lives, The Psychedelic Furs, The Troubles, War
Paris – Heartbreak Beat.
“They stopped France when its guard was down,” announces the BBC reporter from a TV in the corner of my house so far away from Paris. Of course they did. I should know by now that a popular concert venue in Paris on a Friday night is not an unexpected place, that there are some for whom Paris is “a legitimate target.” I…
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Act Two, After death of a spouse, Aging, Being a Widow, Birthdays, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Father Daughter Relationships, Fatherless daughters, Fourth of July, Loss, Memoir, Milestones, Rites of passage, Second Birthday Without Him, Soundtracks of our Lives, Ted Kooser
Marking your Birthday – “Slow Learning but You Learn to Sway”
It is your birthday, and for the second time since we met, you are not with me on your day. How should we mark the occasion? Without any fuss, I can hear you say, and maybe you can hear me ignore you as I plan a fuss of some kind, the way I did for each of the 23 birthdays you celebrated with…
