The flowering dogwood is blooming. Spring is taking time showing the rest of her sweet face but the dogwood branches are in blossom and their branches look like suspended wedding lace at twilight. This condition will last about a week until the apple-green leaves take their place and the petals will drift to the gutters. The temp is still nowhere near 80 but it’s warm enough in the sun. It’...
When I hear someone say, “I Love the sound of an Irish Band” I make a few assumptions. If the person is significantly older than me and/or playing an acoustic instrument I figure they mean one of the Irish Folk groups like The Chieftains, the Clancy Brothers or the Irish Rovers. If the person is around my age and/or playing an electric guitar, I guess they’re probably talking about U2 and Thin Lizzy.&...
I visited Monroeville, once. In the summer of 1990, I, my husband and a friend were driving home from the beach when one of us spied the interstate exit that leads to the home of Harper Lee. My friend had (finally) read To Kill a Mockingbird, she was still overwhelmed by the power of the story and she wanted to see Miss Lee’s home town. My husband knows how much I care about the book and he thought it would be a trea...
They say there’s one day a year when everyone’s Irish and that’s St. Patrick’s Day. Well, that’s what I’ve heard in America, where everyone insists they’re part Irish and celebrates March 17th like it was their personal 4th of July. On such matters, I defer to the late Frank McCourt who said “A well-placed bomb at the New York St. Patrick’s Day parade would wipe out the c...
Ordinarily, we don’t honor disobedient people. Our history does, as many rebels are the heralds of overdue change, but in this world where most folks “go along to get along” the contrary soul is a resented member of a community. Every town has these intractable dissenters who, even when they are right, still alienate their peers with their hard-headed ways. Born outsiders, these nonconformists follow their ...