-
Borders, Bruce Springsteen, DREAM Act, Human Rights, Kai Wiedenhöfer, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Photography
achtung baby . . . if walls could talk.
I always thought Robert Frost was right to ask so plainly in a poem we had to memorize for school, why it was 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. And, if a wall could talk, what stories would it tell? I suppose the first time I pondered this question was when I traveled with the North East Ulster Schools Symphony Orchestra to Germany for our annual summer trip. Ordinarily, it was two weeks…
-
happy birthday america, wherever you are . . .
When I think of the 4th of July, I think not of fireworks in America, but those that kissed the sky over Slane Castle in Ireland after a concert. My first concert at Slane was in 1982 for what was touted as 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 there again, to see UB40, Santana, and Bob Dylan. But on June 1, 1985, America came to Ireland when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band made their Irish debut. I knew it would be special. I’d spent the previous…
-
From the Republic of Conscience, Human Rights, Loss, Nelson Mandela, Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney, Soundtracks of our Lives, The Cure at Troy, Themes of Childhood, Writing
nelson mandela – once in a lifetime
Men and women, all over the world, right down the centuries, come and go. Some leave nothing behind, not even their names. ~ Nelson Mandela Nelson Mandela is gravely ill tonight with reports coming out of Pretoria, South Africa that he is on life support. He is at the end of his life, frail at 94, but in my mind’s eye, Mandela will forever be at the beginning of his journey as the free man who stepped onto the world’s stage in 1990 after spending 27 years behind bars. In the darkest days of apartheid, no one – other than Mandela himself – could have imagined the man in that…
-
Belfast, Bullying, Damian Gorman, Eleventh Night Bonfires, Family, Friendships, Jilly Cooper, Memoir, Northern Ireland Culture, Sectarianism, Soundtracks of our Lives, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood
skipping out of northern ireland – an incendiary subject
“On yonder hill there stands a lady Who she is, I do not know. All she wants is gold and silver, All she wants is a handsome beau . . .” My breath quickens with every tentative jump over the skipping rope, its ends twirled by two girls who are singing about the lady standing on the hill. I am wearing glasses to correct a lazy eye, and there are scabs on my knees from falling because I hadn’t been looking where I was going. In primary school, I was good at spelling, reading, and music, but I could never quite pull off a handstand or a cartwheel. I could swim,…
