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has anybody seen my old friend, America?
I often feel guilty for having left my Northern Ireland. I often wonder if perhaps the better thing or the best thing would have been to stay, to stay and strive to see far beyond the images that flickered on our television screen at six o’clock every night. But I didn’t stay. I fled. I became an immigrant in an America I no longer recognize, and turned my back on the vulnerable, tiny country that shaped and scared me – my lovely tragic Northern Ireland. Not much older than my 18 year old American daughter, I spent most of the 1980s planning my escape. It was a turbulent and traumatic time in Northern Ireland. We…
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America – Another Year Older & What Have You Learned?
Every Fourth of July, when fireworks flash and fly across a desert sky, I find myself transported back to a twilight over Slane Castle shimmering with music and the notion of America. So very young, and had I not been awake, I would have missed it . . . the whole of me a-patter, Alive and ticking like an electric fence: Had I not been awake I would have missed it ~ Seamus Heaney My first rock ‘n’ roll concert at Slane Castle was in 1982 for The Rolling Stones “farewell tour.” Seriously. The Stones were saying goodbye. Goodbye. Warming up for them were the J. Geils Band, The Chieftains, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. The Rolling Stones kept saying…
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For My Granda on the 100th Anniversary of the Battle of the Somme
My grandfather died on June 22, 1977, a decade before the Enniskillen bombing. Had he been alive on that day, he would have been wearing his pressed suit, with medals and poppy attached to the lapels, not unlike those pensioners gathered respectfully at the Cenotaph where at 10:43am, with chilling choreography, an IRA bomb exploded, killing eleven and wounding 68. I cannot think of the First World War without also thinking of Enniskillen, so as we prepare to commemorate the one hundred year anniversary of the Battle of the Somme – in which my grandfather fought – I am also remembering those old men gathered in remembrance at the Cenotaph in County Fermanagh. My…
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Being young, Belfast, Belfast Peace Lines, bombing, Borders, Brexit, Dispatch from the Diaspora, EUFA Cup 2016, IRA, Loughinisland, Martin McGuinness, Northern Ireland, Sport, The Good Friday Agreement, The Troubles, The Troubles, World Cup Football
Confronting Brexit & my Identity Crisis
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down. ~ Robert Frost Less than a week ago, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Let that sink in. I haven’t – yet. Buoyed – and delightfully distracted – by the progress of both the Ireland and Northern Ireland football teams in the 2016 UEFA European Championship, I have yet to absorb the ramifications of Brexit. It’s complicated, because it concerns who I think I am. Let’s face it, my cultural identity has…
