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Belfast Peace Lines, Borders, Dr. Martin Luther King, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights Movement, Human Rights, Ireland, Justice, Marriage Equality Referendum, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Politics, Seamus Heaney, Themes of Childhood
A Lesson in Domestic Affairs – Northern Ireland style. (P.S. Thank you Louise Kennedy)
It is the morning after Thanksgiving, uncharacteristically rainy and gray in the desert southwest. Relishing my solitude and a second cup of coffee, I settle in to read the Irish Times. When I spot this headline, I put down my cup. She doesn’t know it, but writer, Louise Kennedy, has just made my Thanksgiving complete. She doesn’t know me either, but she knows something about me, something I had until this very morning discarded as trivial. Indulge me while I tell you about the Hamlyn All Colour CookBook nailed here by Kennedy: The book seems hideously kitsch now, but there was something heart-breakingly earnest and aspirational on those pages. There…
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A lesson in gratitude . . . in every thing, give thanks.
Several years ago, I enrolled in a college photography class with a friend. This was something I had been meaning to do for about thirty year but had never made time for it before a breast cancer diagnosis shifted my priorities. Until then, I had been very busy being busy, bemoaning the pace of life as a woman trying to play equally well the roles of professional, mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, all the while wishing Tom Petty would show up on my doorstep one day and beg me to be one of his Heartbreakers. A pleaser, I wanted to be the photography instructor’s favorite. I was off to a…
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In Memoriam: Walking on Air
Epitaph By Merrit Malloy When I dieGive what’s left of me awayTo childrenAnd old men that wait to die. And if you need to cry,Cry for your brotherWalking the street beside you.And when you need me,Put your armsAround anyoneAnd give themWhat you need to give to me. I want to leave you something,Something betterThan wordsOr sounds. Look for meIn the people I’ve knownOr loved,And if you cannot give me away,At least let me live on in your eyesAnd not your mind. You can love me mostBy lettingHands touch hands,By letting bodies touch bodies,And by letting goOf childrenThat need to be free. Love doesn’t die,People do.So, when all that’s left of…
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following the sun – an American dream for me
But now that I have spent more than half my life in the desert southwest, there are still unguarded moments of dislocation that bring a crushing loneliness and a visceral longing for “home,” for brightly painted front doors and blue space; for a slow pace in a rainy place where strangers say hello to each other; where church bells peal and roosters crow; where there are unplanned sessions in pubs that stay open late if you sing another song for them; and, where there's always a bus to the city. I will know it when I find it. I will be home.
