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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…
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Apartheid, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, Death and dying, From the Republic of Conscience, Funerals, Human Rights, Loss, Nelson Mandela, Northern Ireland, Politics, saying goodbye, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, The Cure at Troy, Themes of Childhood, Writing
“madiba magic” ~ once in a hundred years
Back in June, I imagine Seamus Heaney was vexed over the thought of a world without Mandela. I think we all were. I remember my husband and I talking about his charisma, the "Madiba magic" that changed the world. We were sad that Mandela's time with us was coming to an end, and I remember turning to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, the way I always do in times of sorrow. And now, just six months later, I am writing that Nelson Mandela is gone. Seamus Heaney is gone. My husband is gone. Gone. All three gone too quickly. Like shooting stars.
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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 . . . happy father’s day
“The first grip I ever got on things Was when I learnt the art of pedalling (By hand) a bike turned upside down, and drove Its 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…
