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silent night again . . . from sandy hook to dunblane
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. It is a crime scene that the 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…
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Van Morrison & Ghosts of a Halloween Past
Given the courage, we live by moments of interference between past and present, moments in which time comes back into phase with itself. It is the only meaning of history. We search the past not for other creatures but for our own lost selves. ~ Roger Shattuck 1958 (Source: Listening to Van Morrison, Neill Marcus). We knew it would be a quiet Halloween at our house, falling on a week-night, the Wednesday before the 2012 General Election. Naturally, there was homework for voters, with a plethora of Propositions to study and choices to make over who would be sent to Washington. It didn’t feel like Hallowe’en with November just hours away and the…
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Dear October – Please Don’t Pink for Me.
Dear October, There are 13 more days until you disappear and all your pink trappings will be removed from grocery store shelves and replaced with the amber hues of Thanksgiving. And some of us will forget to be aware of breast cancer – until next year, when you do it all again. I’m weary of you and your pink ribbon culture. I’m weary of your unrelenting message that the answer to the breast cancer epidemic which will kill over 40,000 women in the United States again this year – is to get a mammogram, feel the boobies/tatas/hooters, and raise more money “for the cure.” I’m tired of your mythology. I’m…
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American Dream, Belfast, Bob Dylan, Concerts, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Irish Diaspora, Las Vegas Shooting, Red Rocks Amphitheater, saying goodbye, Soundtracks of our Lives, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Dear Tom Petty . . .
Dear Tom, Last Friday night, you and your Heartbreakers played the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, and I was there with my boyfriend. It was his first time seeing you perform, but I’ve lost count since I first saw the Grateful Dead open for you and Bob Dylan at Rich Stadium, Buffalo, in 1986. This was special, every bit as special as I had expected, knowing you told Rolling Stone magazine last year that you’d be lying if you didn’t say it would probably be your final tour. And the Hollywood Bowl? A bucket list venue for me, the place that still conjures black and white Beatles taking America by storm,…
