“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
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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I’ve run through a long list of words searching for one that best describes my first year of teaching, discarding some as too dramatic, others as too mild, a few as wildly inappropriate. It was a confounding year. Look at the definition: “causing surprise and confusion; mixing up (something) with something else so that the individual elements become difficult to distinguish.” Make it a dream. You’ve been assigned to […]
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I do not know who taught me to work hard. Neither of my parents, who all in all were pretty laissez faire about child rearing by the time they got to me. Maybe I just looked at them in perpetual motion and took the hint — there is only one speed, forward, go. Or maybe like my brother and sisters, we carried the DNA of Depression experiences inside us, received […]
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