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Birthdays, bombing, IRA, John Hewitt, Loughinisland, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Peace, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF, W.B. Yeats
Omagh. On a sunny afternoon.
“It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people.” – Martin Luther King Jr. Last month, after almost 26 years, the British government opened the first hearing of an independent statutory inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing that claimed 29 lives and injured hundreds in the County Tyrone market town on 15 August 1998. If justice comes, it won’t be swift. The first hearing is mainly procedural. No witnesses will be called or evidence heard until next year. Bereaved and traumatized families and survivors must wait, as they have done for almost three decades. They are…
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Art, Artisans, Awesome Women, Books, Cat Stevens, Crafts, Educating Rita, Field of Dreams, Fiftieth Birthday, Memoir, Mother's Day, Ordinary Things, Seamus Heaney, Willy Russell
if my books could talk to you …
my collection of books is smaller than it has ever been, pared down when I knew I would be moving to Mexico over four years ago. I remember sitting on my living room floor in Phoenix, asking every single book, "Are you important enough to move to a new country with me?" with a follow-up question to myself, "How many books do I really need?" What is the magic number? I suppose I need enough to feel "book-wrapt," a term coined by Reid Byers, author of The Private Library, to describe the way a well-stocked personal library makes us feel.
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It ain’t over … this land was made for you and me.
Today, my best wishes for the 4th of July are with the truth-tellers, especially those in the media who will continue to tell us what we need to know - about Project 2024, about the unbecoming behavior of Justice Alito and his wife, Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, about why we should question why Biden's advanced age matters but Trump's crimes don't ... and on and on.
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Awesome Women, Birthdays, Christine Ohlman - "The Deep End", Concerts 2014, Crescent Ballroom - Dr. Dog, Great Concert Venues, Joan Osborne, John Prine, Memoir, MIM, Red Rocks Amphitheater, Rodney Crowell, Ryan Adams and Jenny Lewis, Steve Earle and Shawn Colvin, Steve Winwood, Stevie Wonder, The Crescent Ballroom, The Hold Steady, The Rhythm Room, The War on Drugs, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
cutting my own groove: distract, deny, and dance away
Life isn’t some vertical or horizontal line — you have your own interior world, and it’s not neat. ~ Patti Smith How do I begin to pack the stuff of the past twelve months in a box and tie it up with a big red bow? Just begin. Pluck out a memory and wrap it up. Move on to the next – in my own time. Shortly after Ken died, I discovered on Christine Ohlman’s beautiful record, “The Deep End,” a song that was then too much for me to listen to, too beautiful, too true – “The Gone of You.” I had forgotten about it until it showed up on my playlist this weekend…
