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Art, Belfast, Belfast Peace Lines, Berlin Wall, Borders, Bruce Springsteen, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Coming of age, Gaza, Human Rights, Kai Wiedenhöfer, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Photography, The Troubles, United States-Mexico Border, W.B. Yeats, Writers
‘peace comes dropping slow’
I always thought Robert Frost was very sensible to ask so plainly in a poem we had to memorize for school, why it is that good fences make good neighbors: 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. If walls could talk, what stories would they tell? I never pondered this more than in 1978 when I traveled with the North East Ulster Schools Symphony Orchestra to Germany for our annual summer trip. Ordinarily, we spent a week in Ballycastle, County Antrim,…
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Children of The Troubles, Damian Gorman, Devices of Detachment, For too many Palestinian and Israeli Parents, Gaza, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Poetry, Tony Parker
Gaza ~ how long must we sing this song?
One child has been killed each hour in Gaza over the past two days Kyung-Wha Kang, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator told those gathered at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council six days ago. Far away, I begin the mental mathematics. Adding it up, I know for sure only this about Gaza – children are dying. The news comes fast and furious, twenty-four hours a day. Mainstream media. Social media. Mixed-up media. From their early morning studios, Starbucks in hand, the “experts” weigh in, all the while equivocating their way out of circumstances they cannot comprehend. How could they? How can we? We, with…
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Belfast, Friendship, Good Vibrations, JJ Cale, Loss, Memoir, Milestones, Music, Pop-in Records, Record Shops, Regrets, Social Media, Soundtracks of our Lives, Terri Hooley, The Clash, Twitter, Vinyl Records, Waking Ned Devine
belated . . . but thank you, jj cale
On my way home from work, I stopped by Half-Price Books, remembering that I still needed to buy George Orwell’s 1984 (the obligatory summer reading for a high school Senior). My lucky day, I found a well-worn paperback copy, published in 1961- the only one in the store – and I paid a dollar for it. Just a dollar to enter a world of newspeak and double-think, of propaganda and psychological manipulation, of “Big Brother’s Watching You.” Sometimes I think George Orwell wrote to remind us of our worst selves. Handing over my dollar, I spied a record section and asked the young man sorting through donated books to hang on for a minute while I…
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Arizona, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Concerts, Fourth of July, Immigration, Rolling Stones Farewell Tour, SB1070, Slane Castle
america – another year older
When I think of the 4th of July, I think not of fireworks that flash and fly across an American night, but of those that kiss the sky over Slane Castle in County Meath Ireland, after a long day of music. My first concert at Slane was in 1982 for The Rolling Stones “farewell tour.” Seriously. Warming up for them were the J. Geils Band, The Chieftains, and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. Two years later, I was back, to see UB40, Santana, and Bob Dylan and the sweet surprise of Van Morrison joining Dylan on stage to sing “Tupelo Honey.” As I recall, Bono showed up as well. But on June 1, 1985, America came to…
