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well suited
The little boy standing on O’Connell Street, is the image of his father, my brother, anticipating a cream bun treat at the nearby Arabica Coffee. He has just completed a milestone to remember, his first day at school, where he will be known by the Irish version of his surname, the very impressive Mac Uaitéir. Literally, this translates to “Son of Water,” a Celtic Warrior who quite possibly could have held his own with “Wind in his Hair” or “Dances with Wolves.” Thus, a first day at primary school with baked goods from Arabica Coffee, assumes the tone of an epic adventure. The ready-made tie around the collar of my nephew’s…
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naming names
Flanked by row upon row of flagpoles set five feet apart, if we stretch out our arms, we can touch two lives at a time, lest we forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, is heartbreakingly beautiful, each one of its 2,996 flags signifying a life taken on that horrific autumn morning. As my daughter walks away from me, a somber and solitary figure cutting a path deep into a Healing Field of red, white, and blue, I am undone by the sheer enormity of the memorial and her diminished stature among those flags. For a minute, I look away to remember how we were that September…
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9/11, Anything can Happen, bombing, Healing Field Tempe, Language matters, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Peace, Phoenix, Pre-school, Rolling Stones, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, Valley of the Sun, Writers
moving memories from New York to Phoenix
The Rolling Stones “Shattered” was stuck in my head all weekend long, not all of it, just a few bars, just enough to be maddening. Not the first time, nor will it be the last, for me to fall prey to an “earworm.” I’m not alone. It turns out, according to psychologist Dr. Victoria Williams that 90% of people experience this “involuntary musical imagery” at least once a week, whereby “a tune comes into the mind and repeats without conscious control.” There are other words for it too according to the International Conference on Music and Cognition website – Dr. Oliver Sacks calls it “sticky music” or “brain worms,” Dr. James Kellaris describes it…
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a day of rest
Day Seven: Celebrating the Ordinary and Bringing it to Rest. It is Labor Day in America, and I have the day off work. It feels like a Sunday, this first Monday of September, so I have more time to catch up with the world. In her Labor Day message, I see White House Secretary Hilda Solis is reminding us that this is a day to “honor the workers who built the world’s strongest economy,” to pay tribute to untold numbers of people like me who came from distant shores seeking an American Dream that always seemed within reach. Hardly excessive, my dreams revolved around finding a job in the profession I loved…
