14 July 2019
Blarney Castle, Ireland
photo by Nancy Eng MacNeill
Category Archives: Ireland
Purple flowers, guest collection #100
The Until We Meet Again Tour – 2 September 2016
The Until We Meet Again Tour, featuring Eric as a guest artist, visited Battery Park. However, our gig at the Irish Hunger Memorial was cancelled due to construction.
The color of the day is green
Friday Prince. Today Ireland.
Friday purple.Today green.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising of Irish men and women against the occupation and oppression of England. More civilians were killed during the rising than were combatants on both sides. Guerrilla warfare followed that resulted in England leaving Ireland. The agreement to end that war partitioned the country: 26 counties became the Irish Free State; 6 counties in the north remained part of the United Kingdom. Civil war ensued but did not change that configuration. The Troubles convulsed Northern Ireland; progress has been made toward peace, the journey is not complete.
In remembrance and prayer, green was today’s color.
Note April 24 also marks the day the Armenian genocide began in 2015.
See you along the Trail.
17 March – each year, every year
I speak for no others,
only for myself.
For me, this day has
nothing to do with
green beer or
green rivers or
green clothing,
this day has nothing to do with
pinching me or kissing me;
my bad jokes aside,
this day has nothing to do even with Jameson.
Today is a day
to remember oppression
to honor resistance
to recognize that, despite the efforts of
systems of race and racialization
to separate us,
struggles for dignity and justice,
freedom and equality,
human rights and humanity
are inseparably linked:
none of us are free until all of us are free.
for that reason, in that spirit, and in my own fashion,
I mark this day, and each 17th of March.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
Fitzgerald, from County Cork, on my mother’s side.
See you along the Trail!
Filed under Antiracism, Current Events, Human Rights, Ireland
Tommy Sands at Christmas
Many years friends ask about favorite Christmas songs.
I name two every year.
Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon
The Rebel Jesus by Jackson Browne
This year I add, Like the First Time It’s Christmas Time by Northern Ireland’s Tommy Sands.
It is another song that speaks of the hope and possibility and peace of the season.
See you along the Trail.
Celluloid connections
I always enjoy recognizing places I know in movies, particularly when it surprises me. It brings back memories and makes connections with people and places. A recently viewed movie became much more enjoyable when I spotted Pedernal in the background.
This morning, I finished watching The Quare Fellow, an adaptation of Brendan Behan‘s play. It presents a critique of thedeath penalty as it focuses on two pending execution.
The character subje ct to execution is not named or seen, except with a hood over his head at the hanging. The crime remains unnamed.
As a death penalty opponent, who has not been active enough lately, I appreciate that. My opposition is to the death penalty – to the state taking a life. My opposition depends neither on the person nor the certainty of guilt nor the crime for which the person is convicted, many of which are truly horrific. I grieve for those killed and violated in the crime. But executing the criminal demeans society. Execution is the issue.
Given such a topic, the movie is bleak and somber.
I recognized a filming location as Kilmainham Gaol. Kilmainham has a painful, tragic, troubling history. It is a place of defiance and resistance. All that washed over me this morning.
But so did the memory of visiting Kilmainham with Tricia and Bruce and Nancy when we were in Dublin for the wedding of Joel and Roja. And the connections to my family and friends warmed me. (And yes, I realize celluloid is not used much anymore.)
See you along the Trail.
Filed under Capital Punishment, Death Penalty, Family, Friends, Ireland, Movie
