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Anahorish, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Anna Deavere Smith, Art, Awesome Women, Great Advice, Human Rights, Justice, Language matters, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Oprah Winfrey, Peace, Phoenix, Politics, Prop 300, Punishment, Seamus Heaney, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Theater
a walk in other people’s shoes, other people’s words
Every afternoon at 3 0’clock, for the first twenty-five years of my American life, I sat down on my couch and watched Oprah Winfrey’s talk show. It was Oprah who taught me Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift of Fear” and later, if ever I were kidnapped, that I should remember Sanford Strong’s Rule #1: to never let myself be taken to the second location. My teenage daughter can recite this. When Oprah started her own book club and single-handedly did more for the publishing industry than anyone before her, I was pleased when she chose titles I would have selected myself. Watching Oprah’s show was a small ritual that contributed…
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Anahorish, Anahorish, Antrim, Arizona, Bellaghy, Borders, British Army, Broagh, Castledawson, Dennis O'Driscoll, Fosterling, From the Republic of Conscience, grandmother, IRA, Language matters, Loss, Love, Memoir, Memoir, Memory, Mother Daughter Relationship, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Personal Helicon, Poetry, Politics, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Tony Parker, Writing
back to Anahorish ~ Seamus Heaney’s ‘first hill in the world’
Our poet, Seamus Heaney, will be buried in Bellaghy tomorrow evening, his body brought home from Dublin to rest next to the grave of his little brother, Christopher, whom many of us know from “Mid-Term Break,” a poem now learned by heart by Irish children in schools North or South of the border. The first time, I heard Mid-Term Break, was when Brian Baird, the late UTV newscaster and my beloved Anglo-Irish Literature Tutor at Stranmillis College, read it aloud a seminar one morning. It cleaved my heart open: Mid-Term Break “I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o’clock our neighbors drove me…
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Anahorish, Art, Bellaghy, Coming of age, Death and dying, Family, Fathers and sons, Loss, Memoir, Northern Ireland Culture, Personal Helicon, Poetry, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, Writing
a kite for seamus heaney – in memoriam
I can barely bring myself to type the words. Seamus Heaney is dead. There is no way for me to adequately convey the inestimable impact of his words on my adult life. He has been with me every day for as long as I can remember, like a pulse. Somehow, I always imagined our paths would cross, and I would be able to thank him for making me brave when I needed to be, for gently teaching me to love from afar the language and the well-trodden lanes of Castledawson and Bellaghy in rural Derry, for “crediting marvels,” in the unlikeliest small things, and, mostly, for inspiring me to set…
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Arizona, Awesome Women, Immigration, Linda Ronstadt, Memoir, Parkinson's Disease, Politics, SB1070, Soundtracks of our Lives, Themes of childhood
Belated Birthday Greetings to an American Girl . . .
The radio reminded me that it was Linda Ronstadt’s 73rd birthday yesterday. Driving back from Tucson, her hometown, and listening to the DJ tell us that in these parts she is now better known for covering traditional mariachi songs and political appearances as a political activist, I rewind the tapes in my head and there she is on The Old Grey Whistle Test belting out “When Will I be Loved?” This is very long ago. I’m 16 and bored and wishing I was in America, wishing I was just like Linda Ronstadt. She was my girl crush. Today, Linda Ronstadt can’t sing like that. She can’t sing at all. I first…
