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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Blackberry Picking, Clearances, Family, Feminism, nikki giovanni, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Poetry, removing training wheels, Rites of passage, Rituals, Soundtracks of our Lives, Starting over, Themes of Childhood, Time, Wheels within Wheels
getting a grip on things ~ noli timere
Had someone told me this was going to happen, I wonder what we would have done differently or better or both with our remaining days together. Would an expiration date on our family have changed the way we lived those thirty days? Would we have crammed in the kinds of things typically found on bucket-lists or would we have made…
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BC Action, Belfast, bombing, Breast Cancer Advocacy, Breast Cancer Awareness, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Breast Cancer Treatment, Cancer Language, Culture of breast cancer, Language matters, Language of Cancer, Memoir, Memoir, Pink Ribbons, Pinkwashing, Sexism, Shopping, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood
booby-trapped this October?
boo·by trap Meaning: A practical joke. Also a concealed and possibly lethal trap. Noun: A thing designed to catch the unwary, in particular Verb: Place a booby trap in or on (an object or area): “the area was booby-trapped.” Synonyms: snare, trick into doing something “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November . . .” the rhyme reminds me, as…
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9.11.2013, 9/11, Anything can Happen, Belfast, Billy Collins, Blog Awards Ireland 2013, Blogging, bombing, British Army, cancer, Diary, Healing Field Tempe, Loss, Memoir, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Culture, Ordinary Things, Peace, Poetry, Remembering September 11th, The Peace Process, The Troubles, The Troubles, Themes of Childhood, Writers
from A to the final jolt of Z ~ September 11th
I have yet to be disappointed by what happens when my online world collides with the ‘real’ one. Landing on the virtual doorsteps of people in the middle of lives parallel to my own, I have been beautifully blindsided by unexpected coincidences and exchanges of truths that may not otherwise have seen the light of day. In my virtual home,…
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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…
