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Covid-19, Death and dying, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Funeral, Rituals, saying goodbye, Seamus Heaney, Seamus Heaney
Ireland, I’m sorry for your trouble . . .
. . .feelthe strumming, rooted, long-tailed pull of grief.You were born fit for it.Stand in here in front of meand take the strain. From A Kite for Michael and Christopher by Seamus Heaney My mother tells me she and my dad were able to attend Palm Sunday services on Sunday,virtually, on the iPad I gave her a few years ago. It took a wee while to get the hang of it, she says, but it was lovely, the Minister and his wife reaching the faithful with Bible readings and music from an empty village church, one of thousands of empty churches across the island of Ireland as Holy Week, the highpoint of the Christian calendar unfolds. In this time of Coronavirus, my…
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doctoring in the time of covid-19 . . . a dispatch from Twitter
Craig Spencer MD MPH is the Director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. You can read his bio here. After doing so, you will be impressed. He knows a thing or two about diseases and the treatment of them. Five years ago, after treating patients in West Africa, where he coordinated Doctors Without Borders national epidemiological response during the Ebola outbreak, he was diagnosed with the virus and treated in New York. He remembers the hysteria surrounding Ebola as well as the jokes ‘e-bowling’ – and how it dissipated. But Ebola and Covid-19, he warns, are very different. I don’t know him. I found…
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Aging, Awesome Women, Castledawson, Coming of age, Family, grandmother, Irish culture, Irish mammies, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of Childhood
mothering in the time of COVID-19 . . .
Having worked in education for over thirty years, it is not uncommon for me to encounter – in real life or the virtual version – my former students, all grown-up, some of them married with careers and children. Surreal to find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with these adults who, just a twinkling ago, were scribbling in composition books about who they might become. They are often incredulous to discover I am now the mother of a daughter who is over a decade older than they were when they sat in my classroom. Equally perturbed by this scenario and its implications is my daughter. It amuses me to watch my…
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Dispatch from the Diaspora, Feminism, Love, Meg Ryan, Milestones, Nora Ephron, Online dating, Relationships, Rob Reiner, Social Media, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail
match point ~ seeking romance & mr. right
A match made in heaven? No. In spite of all the tactics and algorithms deployed to make sense of our checked boxes and declare us a 100% match or subsequently updating our relationship as 'official' on Facebook, we are making this match right here, right here where angels fear to tread, in the messiness of the middle of two lives that collided at the best and worst of times. There is no wrong time.
