-
Coming of age, craic, Dispatch from the Diaspora, Northern Ireland Culture, St. Patrick, Sunningdale Agreement, The Troubles, United Workers Council Strike 1974
by the wayside again on st. patrick’s day
I’m a bit ambivalent about St. Patrick’s Day. What is it about March 17th that renders so many people Irish or some version of it that I do not recall from living the first twenty-seven years of my life in Northern Ireland? Everywhere I turn tomorrow, there will be Americans proclaiming their Irishness , some in T-shirts emblazoned with a command for everyone to kiss them or a warning that they are falling-down drunk. Because they are Irish. Even politicians we never knew were Irish will become bona fide Irish – usually they are American. Imagine for a second just how many frazzled interns there must be in these United States, tasked by politicians…
-
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Cadillac Ranch, Coming of age, Drive All Night, The Price You Pay, The River, The River Tour 2016
“And that’s the river . . .”
I bought Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” when I was 17, and I played it until I had memorized every song. Mr. Jones, my English teacher, introduced me to The Boss sensing perhaps that his plainspoken poetry would appeal to my blue-collar sensibilities. He knew I had never seen a Cadillac or a State Trooper – most likely he hadn’t either – and that I wouldn’t know the difference between a highway and the motorway, but he knew I knew disappointment. I knew about the dole and diminished opportunities all around us. I knew pregnant girls whose boyfriends married them. I knew men who worked at the factory, and when the factory…
-
The Boss & Me – Still Looking for America
When he announced he was going to tour again and that he would perform The River – all of it – I knew I’d be there, somewhere in the nosebleed section. Since 1984, I have seen Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band ten times, and there isn’t a 4th of July – or a Presidential race – when I don’t think of him. Real talk – when people ask me why I came to America, I know they know from something in my response that Bruce Springsteen is part of it. And, every Fourth of July, when fireworks flash and fly across a desert sky, I find myself flying back to a twilight over Slane…
-
Aging, Awesome Women, Castledawson, Coming of age, Family, grandmother, Irish culture, Irish mammies, Memoir, Mother Daughter Relationship, Mother's Day, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of Childhood
far away on mother’s day . . .
Having worked in schools for thirty years, it is not uncommon for me to encounter former students, all grown-up, some of them married with careers and children. Surreal to find myself standing shoulder to shoulder with these adults who, just a twinkling ago, were scribbling in composition books about who they might become. They are often incredulous to discover I am now the mother of a daughter who is older than they were when they sat in my classroom. Equally perturbed by this scenario and its implications is my daughter. It amuses me to watch my students confront the truth that I had a life outside the classroom, and my daughter face the fact that once upon a time…
