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Ajijic, Chapala, Irish Diaspora, Jalisco, James Taylor, Lake Chapala, Mexico, Mexico, Paula Meehan, You're So Vain
Mexico ~ With My Own Ones
“I am the blind woman finding her way home by a map of tune. When the song that is in me is the song I hear from the world I’ll be home. It’s not written down and I don’t remember the words. I know when I hear it I’ll have made it myself. I’ll be home.“ ~ Paula Meehan, Irish poet Vibrant, foreign, and far away, Mexico was once nothing more than a James Taylor song on my first radio. It was too far beyond my reach to present an alternative to the Northern Ireland of my childhood, a grey and divided place, its capital city, a ‘no-go’ area in…
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Birthdays, bombing, IRA, John Hewitt, Loughinisland, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Peace, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF, W.B. Yeats
At this moment, bear in mind Omagh.
As we plan to mark the 20th anniversary of the Omagh bombing, I am drawn back to the summer of 1998. A new mother, I had taken my baby daughter back home to Northern Ireland, my lovely, tragic Northern Ireland. Between my father, my brother, and a handful of relatives who could keep a secret (an impressive trait in rural County Derry) we had planned a “This is Your Life” style surprise for my mother’s sixtieth birthday. It was delicious, knowing we had all swallowed the same secret, and that my all-knowing mother was completely in the dark. The Troubles had tainted previous visits home, but this time would be different…
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Addiction, Dead Poet's Society, Death and dying, Depression, Good Morning Vietnam, Good Will Hunting, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Mental Health, Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams, saying goodbye, Self-medicating, widowed
out of this world – robin williams
You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it. I first encountered Robin Williams on the TV in our living room in Antrim. Remembering his death four years ago, I am a teenager in Northern Ireland once more, and Robin Williams is an alien from outer space on the Mork and Mindy show. Brilliantly, he was Mork from Ork. Pam Dawber, as Mindy, was the perfect foil. Easy to like, she shared my taste in music with the cover of Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” album hanging on her apartment wall. Naturally, when I went to college in Belfast, living away from home for the first time, the “Running on Empty”…
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Antrim, Belfast, bombing, British Army, Castledawson, Claudy, IRA, La Mon House Hotel Bombing, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Sectarianism, The Miami Showband, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF
july 31 – just another day in northern ireland
Any atrocity reported in isolation can be used to beat the other “side,” but together with stories from both communities, it is clear that no “side” has a monopoly on suffering or loss. ~Stephen Travers, July 30, 2018 I remember reading a book about Northern Ireland and realizing I was probably a Child of The Troubles, even though I was always, by nothing other than luck, in the right place at the right time. It was from a safe distance, that I learned to recognize the dull thunder-clap of a bomb, the tremble of our kitchen window in its wake, and the stench of days-old smoke from rubble that once was a hotel, a…
