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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Cadillac Ranch, Coming of age, Drive All Night, The Price You Pay, The River, The River Tour 2016
by the river on independence day
I’m remembering the fireworks that exploded into the sky over Slane Castle on a summer evening in 1985 when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band made their Irish debut. Close to 100,000 of us had made the pilgrimage through the sleepy and disapproving village of Slane to see The Boss. Between assurances of increased security and a promise–– that remains unfulfilled–– that this would be the last rock concert to disturb them, the residents had been placated. Even the weather cooperated. It was the kind of sun-drenched day the Irish pray for. Everybody was young that day, even the crotchety old farmers who let us park our cars on…
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please read the letter . . .
The 74-year old man in black still sounds like the Robert Plant in your memory … the one who never failed to hit the paint-peeling high notes on a Led Zeppelin classic, the one who belongs up there on a Mount Rushmore of rock and roll frontmen. A sold-out crowd at the University of Arizona’s Centennial Hall is on its feet by the end of a revamped ‘Rock and Roll, and then a kind of hush as Plant leans into “Please Read The Letter.” It’s a slow-burn of a song that hints at infidelity and mistakes that can’t be fixed. It’s also a song about the way we used to…
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Being young, Coming of age, Death and dying, John Lennon, learning to drive, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, riding a bicycle, saying goodbye, Starting over, Time, widowed
How to ride a bike . . .
And what is a bicycle? It is trust and balance, and that's what love is. Love is trust and balance.
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last birthday: june 12, 2018
June 12, 2018 It is her birthday today, and she is dying. Curled up in a fetal position, in a cloud of morphine, she is not going to recover. On her Facebook page, a string of tender and tentative birthday wishes on social media soften the blow. Distance – virtual and real – helps conceal the truth. The man I love watches – helpless – as his mother struggles in that space between holding on and letting go, a bewildering space that both tightens and expands without warning. There is no greeting card section for a birthday like this, no adequate words to mark 79 years that were mostly lived…
