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Desi's Diary

Ireland’s Universal Writer

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
This story has been told before but it is worth the retelling. The following e-mail was received about seven years ago. “Started Colum McCann’s “Zoli” yesterday – it’s already ruined one night’s sleep. Did you know that some of the story takes place within fifteen or twenty miles of where my father grew up? I went there once in 1962 with him and his sister. 

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There is no such thing as Forgetting

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It is almost impossible for somebody who has been lucky enough not to have experienced the savage infliction of Alzheimer’s at first hand to understand just how devastating this horrible disease can be. It is all the more insidious because, insofar as I understand it, the person with Alzheimer’s often firmly believes that he or she is in the whole of their health. The real sufferers are the victim’s loved ones who watch their beloved literally disappear before their eyes while to the outside world the person is leading a perfectly normal life.

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What Did You Do During The Recession, Daddy?

Donal Ryan

For the last four years or so, the Recession has dominated the Media. The prevalent mood has been anger with the Blame Game taking pride of place. While there is a solid justification for this, it can become a little overbearing especially when the “Holier Than Thou” syndrome emerges and the “Finger Pointing” becomes something of a witch hunt.

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Hey Mister Teacher Man

About five years ago. I received an e-mail from a Dutch customer who wanted to know if we could supply forty two copies of a single Mills and Boons title. Having sourced and supplied the forty two copies, I asked him out of sheer curiosity why he wanted them.He told me that he was an English teacher. In Holland secondary school pupils in certain schools have the option of being taught through the medium of German, French or English as well as Dutch. He was teaching the English stream. As an exercise in the experience of reading, the pupils were to read a Mills and Boons title and then compare it with a recognised work of literature.  “Wow!” I remember saying, “I wonder do your pupils realise how lucky they are to have a teacher like you”.

 

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The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer

Edna O'Brien

Mother sometimes articulated a memory of a Friday evening sometime during the early 50s when a young girl and boy entered the shop and spent the afternoon there. Shortly after she had opened the following day, the pair reappeared. When, towards the end of the day, the girl, “who had the most beautiful auburn hair”, came to the counter to finalise her purchases, mother, by way of pleasant conversation, asked her what she was doing with herself, the reply came without hesitation and with a great deal of conviction: “I am training”, she said “to be a writer”.

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The Louisburgh Storyteller

Mike McCormack

There is a memory of a man in a  packed Irish bar somewhere in Boston sometime around 1990 on a Sunday afternoon during a lively session who, totally ignoring all that was going on around him, threw his head back and sang his song to the ceiling. Every sinew, muscle and syllable spoke of the rocks and headlands of Connemara or Aran and whether his song was of joy or of sorrow – for in the general din it was impossible to hear him – he exuded such a strong sense of place that anyone there who witnessed the moment was transported to a bar in Carraroe or Kilronan.

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The Seductive Enigma of Jazz

Jazz

Trying to write about Jazz is a bit like trying to paint Connemara. In both instances the subject is so elusive that to describe it conclusively on either paper or canvas is nigh near impossible and the writer or artist is reduced to focusing on an individual moment that most responds to or echoes their personal or artistic talent. In both cases this is due to their elemental nature and their absolute refusal to be artificially moulded into a definite entity. When Jazz began to evolve from its multifarious foundations and make itself felt as the powerful music force it now is,


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Achill’s Champion, Eva

Achill's Eva O'Flaherty - Forgotten Island Heroine

The Irish Cultural Landscape towards the end of the nineteenth century was in a state of powerful transformation. While the period directly following the Act of Union in 1800 may have represented the best era of civil government in British/Irish history, it also saw Ireland being stripped of its political capital leaving it open to the economic failure that resulted in the Great Famine. Stunned and demoralised after what has been called the greatest human disaster of the nineteenth century, The Great Famine, it took a decade or two for the country to find its cultural feet


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