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Death of parent, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Father's Day, Fatherless daughters, learning to drive, Milestones, riding a bicycle
just like riding a bike . . . taking the strain on father’s day
“The first grip I ever got on thingsWas when I learnt the art of pedalling(By hand) a bike turned upside down, and droveIts back wheel preternaturally fast.” ~ from Wheels within Wheels by SEAMUS HEANEY My first bike arrived on Christmas morning, 1967. It had training wheels, or “stabilizers” as we called them in Northern Ireland. Stabilizers – my first big word. Even now, I like saying it and conjuring all it connotes – stability, steadfastness, balance – a firm hold. Perhaps had Santa Claus read MIT engineering professor David Gordon Wilson’s Bicycling Science, he may not have been so adamant about finding a bike with stabilizers. The professor dismisses training wheels entirely, pointing…
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Alex Haley, Charlottesville, James Baldwin, Nazis, People Get Ready, Race in America, Racism, Trump, White Supremacy
People get ready …
We may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world – James Baldwin This is for George Floyd. I came to Arizona in the late 1980s. Something of a cliché, part of the “brain drain,” I was a well-educated immigrant who had over-stayed her welcome in America and subsequently found a job in a bar. With my Northern Ireland accent and the right amount of naiveté about Arizona, I was the main source of amusement for the regulars who stopped by for a beer after their shift at a nearby manufacturing plant. Young and fearless, I…
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Aging, Art, Bob Dylan, Daniel Kramer, Dispatch from the Diaspora, It's Not Dark Yet, Michael Gray, Photography, Positively 4th Street, Street Legal, Tangled up in Blue, Where Are You Tonight? Subterranean Homesick Blues
For Bob Dylan on his Birthday – in Black & White
Bob Dylan has always been almost as old as my parents. He has also always been forever young, staring up at me from the cover of a book that has graced my coffee table for decades. When was it when a Dylan song first mattered to me? I can’t be sure, yet I can’t remember a time when it didn’t, a time when I wasn’t tangled up in blue. Maybe it was in the Spring of 1979, when my high school English teacher let me borrow his Street Legal LP, an album that was crucified by a handful of critics considered more qualified than I to measure the success of a Dylan song.…
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Aging, Art, Children's Books, Coming of age, Death of parent, Education, Fatherless daughters, learning to drive, Memoir, Milestones, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mr. Jones, Poetry, Rituals, The Gone of You
Summa Cum Laude in the Time of Corona or How to Be a Sun Devil . . .
Home is where I want to bePick me up and turn me roundI feel numb – born with a weak heartI guess I must be having funThe less we say about it the betterMake it up as we go alongFeet on the groundHead in the skyIt’s ok I know nothing’s wrong . . . nothing Lyrics: David Byrne I am supposed to be in Phoenix, but like many of you, I am not going anywhere. This Mother’s Day weekend coincides with what has been projected as the peak of coronavirus contagion here in Mexico, and we are being urged to stay at home. There have been social distancing measures in…
