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Silent Nights – from Scotland to Sandy Hook.
December 14, 2012 Cold and lifeless, the bodies of twenty little children lie where they were gunned down that morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The crime scene, a day before, was a school. The medical examiner’s team begins its work through the night to make sure there are no mistakes, no shadow of doubt about the names of those children – 12 girls, eight boys – along with those of six women shot at close range by a 20 year-old man, whose name everyone now knows. Later, a state trooper is assigned to each anguished family in close-knit Newtown, Connecticut, as they wait for confirmation of what they already know. And, stunned families all…
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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…
