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SLAINTE
Ireland should have felt alien,but it never did during our visit,nor had Scotland years earlier.And it wasn’t that I loved Scotchand Irish Whiskey and Guinnessalthough I did all of those, andtraditional Celtic music to boot.What I didn’t know then, whatI wouldn’t learn for a decadewas that my taste for thingsIrish and Scottish was woven,twisted into…
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CEILI
He liked nothing more than slipping out the back of the Ritz Carlton and heading down Nonhyeon-ro, more alley than street, past the small bulgogi restaurant, and winding his way to Gangnam-daero 106, finally arriving on the great avenue, Gangnam-daero. It was buzzing with life at all hours, but in the early evening the Virgin…
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CAT (PSYCH)OLOGY
It wasn’t until I hitmiddle age, which on my scalewill allow me to live past 100,that I discovered that catsare Celtic deep in their hearts.Our cat, she who adopted meand forced her then ownerto marry me, like it or not,was in love with the tin whistleand the uilleann pipes playinghad her in my lap, unmoving.But…
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DACHAIGH
Even when I was briefly in Edinburgh I dreamed of walking the streets of Lisbon or Porto, looking into the faces of older men and wondering if this one was my father, the one I had never seen, never known. the one my Jewish mother described in detail to the social worker who took me…
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NIGHT AT THE PUB
It’s a fading memory now, a hole in the wall then, CBGB’s, loud, but nothing happening at Tommy Makem’s and here the cop and his pals play angry Irish with a foot in reggae and ska. I’m too old to be here, but no one really cares as long as I buy my Bushmills or…
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DISCOVERING ME
They were always almost mythological, heroes of a people I could only imagine as my own, knowing I came from a far different place, one of shtetls and pogroms, of seaside villages, the beaches of Cascais. It was half a lie, but I couldn’t know it then, couldn’t guess my dream was reality, my reality…
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an old writer and his words 