Tag Archives: Ireland

TFF 2013: Run & Jump

Posted on April 29, 2013 by sheila

Will Forte is great, playing an uptight humorless brain researcher living with a family in Ireland, studying Conor, a 38-year-old man who had a sudden stroke and has returned home totally altered, unable to connect, interact. So many pitfalls. Could … Continue reading →

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The Books: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘The Joyces’, by James Thurber

Posted on April 2, 2013 by sheila

Next up on the essays shelf: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross The Fun of It is a collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces in The New Yorker, grouped … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, James Joyce | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Happy Birthday, Seán O’Casey

Posted on March 30, 2013 by sheila

Irish playwright Seán O’Casey was born on this day, in 1880. He was the first major Irish playwright to deal with slum life and the reality of the Dublin poor. He grew up working-class in a family of thirteen children. … Continue reading →

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Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

Posted on March 17, 2013 by sheila

Jean, Me, in Dublin, the night the fuse blew at the disco Siobhan, Jean, Me, in Dublin, again, on the night the fuse blew at the after-hours disco. Here we are by the firetruck in the street, with our new … Continue reading →

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Happy Birthday, Brendan Behan

Posted on February 9, 2013 by sheila

Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in. — Brendan Behan Brendan Behan, Irish playwright and terrorist, was born on this day, in Dublin, in 1923. He led a … Continue reading →

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“But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you.” – Happy Birthday, Maud Gonne

Posted on December 22, 2012 by sheila

Maud Gonne, Irish revolutionary, feminist, radical, and lifelong poetic muse of William Butler Yeats, was born on December 20 in 1865. She married John MacBride (after a couple of notorious affairs and illegitimate children). John MacBride was an Irish nationalist … Continue reading →

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At Least I’m Consistent

Posted on October 25, 2012 by sheila

Sunrise coming through my window, hitting the two framed prints on the wall: one being a page out of the Book of Kells, the other being the 1916 Proclamation of Irish Independence.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 4 Comments

“Man Is Least Himself When He Talks In His Own Person. Give Him a Mask and He Will Tell You the Truth.”

Posted on October 16, 2012 by sheila

So said Oscar Wilde, whose birthday it is today. His mother, Jane Speranza Francesca Wilde (aka Lady Wilde, aka “Speranza”) was an incredible woman in the canon of Irish literary history certainly, not to mention its politics and social upheaval. … Continue reading →

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“[At Swim-Two-Birds is] just the book to give to your sister, if she is a dirty, boozey girl.” – Dylan Thomas

Posted on October 5, 2012 by sheila

When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence. Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put … Continue reading →

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“The Catechism of the Ithaca Episode Really Helped Me Over There in Iraq.”

Posted on June 16, 2012 by sheila

Marine and Iraqi war veteran reading from ULYSSES at Bloomsday celebration in downtown Manhattan. He said that while in Iraq he would read the Proteus episode over and over again. He said it helped give him a perspective on mind … Continue reading →

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