“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
In the middle of July on the Isle of Skye and on the Outer Hebrides , it rained for nine straight days. Sidewinding rain, deluge rain, misty rain, soaking rain, and when it occasionally cleared and the heat rose, midges appeared … and kleggs, a creature I was convinced I had imagined until I read the letters again. I like my spelling better, but they are Clegs , a Highland horsefly that cuts the skin rather than pierce it. […]
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If you’re not frightened, you should be, at least so much as fear will spur you to resistance. You too can feel it, right? The sense of an ending, of not ever going back, of normalcy being not redefined or amended, but of normalcy itself being thrown into a rubbish pit. It’s not just me out here in some lonely atom of the country watching us prepare to commit […]
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A scene from Bloody Sunday. Northern Ireland in 1976 was an early exhibit of a first world country that had been torn into factions by Protestant bigotry and fear and by a resultant Catholic resistance and fury. The British Army stood at the center. More often than not, because of poor decisions by English politicians and the actions of one terrible day, Bloody Sunday , January of 1972 when paratroopers killed 13 […]
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In June of 1976, the Bi-Centennial year, the year of every ‘Hurrah Hurrah America’ display you can imagine, the summer following my first year teaching, my friend Tony and I hitchhiked out of London to a ferry stop in Wales and on to scrofulous Dublin, across Ireland west and north, to another ferry ride, complete with Orange Day riot, to Scotland where it rained and rained, to the far north […]
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