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has anybody seen my old friend, America?
I often feel guilty for having left my Northern Ireland. I wonder if perhaps the better thing or the best thing would have been to stay, to strive to see beyond the images that flickered on our television screen at six o’clock every night. But I didn’t stay. I fled. I turned my back on the vulnerable, tiny country that shaped and scared me – my lovely tragic Northern Ireland —and I became an immigrant in an America I wouldn’t recognize after three decades. And then, I turned my back on the United States of America. In retrospect, I spent much of the 1980s planning my escape from Northern Ireland. …
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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Act Two, Door into the Dark, Postscript, Seamus Heaney, The Underground
P.S. Thank you, Seamus
Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. And so, my fellow graduates, make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you. ~ From his remarks to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduates, May 12, 1996 Eleven years since you left…
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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.
