PETE HAMILL - FAREWELL TO ALEXANDRIA

I had been meaning to visit Egypt for the last 40 years or more, so last month I bit the bullet and went.

 

No big deal, except shortly beforehand Messrs. Netanyahu & Trump decided to blow the hell out of Iran. Everybody thought I was around the bend, but I had a feeling if I didn’t go then, I might never. Besides, my travel agent said I’d have the place to myself, and how bad could that be?

 

I needn’t have worried. You’re never alone in Cairo, a city of 22 million people with traffic so dense it makes Manhattan seem like a stroll in the park. I might add there are no pedestrian walk signs, hence crossing streets is up to you, your sense of adventure, and fancy footwork.

 

But it has the nearby Pyramids and the Sphinx, though every Tik-Toker in the universe seemed to be using them as backdrop for their narcissistic posturing. Not to worry, close by is the recently opened Great Egyptian Museum, designed by Mayo’s Róisín Heneghan.

 

You could spend a week there basking in the shadows of the various Pharaohs’ statues while weeping over the remains of Tutankhamun, the boy king, and what might have been.

 

Then down to Luxor where the Valley of the Kings can overawe you, or the Valley of the Queens and their sometimes still-born children show the more achingly human side of ancient Egypt.

 

But I had an ulterior motive – I wanted to walk the streets of Alexandria, and catch any remaining echoes of a series of books set there by Lawrence Durrell, the Anglo-Irish writer. (Durrell always referred to himself as an “Irishman” and considered England “the grey death.)

 

The Quartet books, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea are set circa World War Two. They explore a romance influenced by a brooding portrait of the atmospheric city founded by Alexander The Great.

 

Justine gives a thrilling account of the love the narrator Darley has for Justine, the wife of his aristocratic Coptic friend, Nessim. As satisfying as the book is, it leaves you wanting more, and most people turn to its immediate sequel, Balthazar.

 

That’s where the real thrill is, and it becomes apparent that truth is relative as it unfolds in fits and starts over the course of the remaining books.

 

Pete Hamill and I shared an admiration for the Alexandria Quartet. We had both been introduced to it by women no longer alive, perhaps part of the fascination.

 

If Joyce masterfully captured the essence of Dublin in 1904 with Ulysses, Durrell did no less with Alexandria though in a more mysterious and hallucinogenic manner. But each writer’s city is more a character than just a backdrop.

 

Joyce’s Dublin is still glaringly there courtesy of the Irish people. You have to dig deeper in Alexandria as the Greeks, Jews, and British departed around President Nasser’s regime in the 1950’s and are barely an echo now in this bustling Muslim city leavened only by Coptic Christians.

 

But the Cecil Hotel still looms large. Darley, a penniless English schoolteacher, and the glamorous Justine met there, and its storied Monty Bar (Field-Marshal Montgomery) still reeks of a decadent colonialism.

 

One of the great bonuses of immersing yourself in the Quartet is that you become familiar with the poetry of C.V. Cavafy, “the poet of the city,”  a master at transmuting love, loss and life.

 

“One afternoon at four o’clock we separated

for a week only... And then,

that week became forever.”

 

Within strolling distance of The Cecil, Cavafy’s apartment has been turned into a miniature museum replete with photos, furniture and intimate artifacts of this Greek-Alexandrian’s life. He was Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorite poet, and fittingly the museum was founded and is supported by the Onassis Foundation.

 

Across the street from The Cecil is the Corniche, a long walkway by the Mediterranean where Darley, Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, Cavafy and the hapless Clea gazed out across the sparkling waves, wondering if they’d ever escape the magnetic attraction of Alexander’s city, before they too would be swept away as his legendary library was.

 

It's strange how a book can have such an effect on you after so many years. But that’s the power and majesty of literature, isn’t it, and why writers sacrifice everything to capture one glimpse of its magic.

 

DO IT NOW!

 I was recently asked, “What was the best piece of advice you ever received.”

Though it was given to me way back in the last century, the simple words still resonate, as does the time bomb those words set ticking.

 

I’m usually loath to give advice myself, though in the fields I labor, it’s tossed about like confetti. Far better to develop your own sense of discretion, then judge any advice you’re receiving through that prism.

 

I received my life-defining advice back in my first year at Wexford Christian Brothers Secondary School - the equivalent of American high school.

 

We were a mixed bunch, wild rural lads who rode into town on heavy black bicycles, sons of factory workers confident they would soon join their fathers as apprentices, and the rest of us vaguely middle-class, though no one had a tosser, and everyone had emigrant relatives in London, Dagenham, or Birmingham.

 

In those tween-age years we were rowdy, but still constrained by the ever-present fear of corporal punishment. Still, the Christian Brother warned us to be on our best behavior, as our religion class would be pre-empted that noon by the visit of an important personage.

 

We all hoped it would be some hurling star, like Hopper McGrath or one of the legendary Rackard brothers.

 

To our surprise, in strode Brendan Corish, our local TD, and leader of the Labor Party. He came from storied stock, his father Richard had helped lead the foundry workers in the Wexford Lockout of 1911, and was a confidant of James Connolly.

 

Brendan would go on to become Tánaiste (Deputy Leader) and Minister for Health and Social Welfare in the Irish Coalition government of 1973.

 

A consummate constituency politician, he surveyed us keenly; however, he seemed troubled. Perhaps, he could already foresee our emigrant fates.

 

Nonetheless, he shook off his initial concern and breezily informed us that it had not been long since he sat in the same desks. He was then in his early 40’s, and by his own admission a socialist, though a Christian one, he added to the relief of our attentive Brother, who added, “Mr. Corish, like all Irish politicians, hews closely to our Holy Father’s religious and ethical edicts.”

 

Brendan took no notice of this well-intended compliment, and soon had us chuckling, having  quickly divined our sporting interests and favorites in the pop music of the day. 

 

And so things continued on an even keel, until the Brother intervened in a rare silence, “Mr. Corish, if you had one piece of advice for my students what would it be?”

 

This question summonsed the clouds back into Brendan’s face and he sighed. His shoulders sank for a moment and concerns of state seemed to swirl around the room. Then he gathered himself and smiled, “It’s very simple: three words, seven letters.”

 

He turned to the blackboard, picked up a piece of white chalk and wrote very deliberately, DO IT NOW!

 

The silence gathered and enveloped the sun-dappled classroom as we wrestled with this no-nonsense command. The Brother and Brendan, however, shared a glance of empathetic understanding.

 

“As good as this advice is, it will haunt you,” Brendan warned, “for in the end, the things you didn’t do will weigh far heavier than those you did. So keep it close to mind and, for God’s sake, act on it as often as you humanly can.”

 

The bell for lunch rang, but instead of jumping up in our usual jumble of delight and relief, we sat there as if nailed to our rough-hewn seats.

 

“Get on with you now,” the Brother hissed and we trooped out of the classroom into the noisy corridor, some of us still wrestling with both the advice and the conundrum it would apparently present.

 

I glanced behind and saw the Brother and Brendan sharing a long handshake, their political persuasions laid aside on a hallstand of human understanding.

 

They’re both dead a long time, Brendan after a distinguished career in public service – a Christian Socialist to the end; I can’t even remember the brother’s name, let alone how he fared in life.

 

But the advice still rings true, serviceable as ever, if troubling and occasionally haunting.

DO IT NOW! It may soon be too late.

TRUMP, YEATS & THE SECOND COMING

 

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold...

 

Those lines were written by William Butler Yeats in 1919, shortly after World War 1. Often called the “the war to end all wars,” it may well have been the stupidest of conflicts.

 

Roughly 20 million people died, and god knows how many wounded, over a royal squabble between Queen Victoria’s grandchildren.

 

Wars solve little, but a new order inevitably comes to pass.

 

What troubles me about President Trump’s current “excursion,” is that it eerily echoes the 2003 US invasion of Iraq with its “weapons of mass destruction” that did not exist.

 

Who cares anymore that this overwhelming blunder cost a half-million Iraqi lives and upended the region, or that 4500 Americans died - not a Clinton or Bush among them; just as there won’t be a Trump casualty among the US forces destroying Iran.

 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

 

By the time The Second Coming was published in 1920, Ireland was a battlefield with IRA flying columns harassing vastly superior British forces. 

 

I’m sure Mr. Trump has never heard of Terence MacSwiney, the hunger-striking Lord Mayor of Cork, who declared, “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those who can endure the most who will conquer.” 

 

Nor, apparently, has he been informed that modern-day Iran is descended from the Persian Empire that took a beating from Alexander The Great, but outlasted his technologically superior Greek army.

 

Don’t underestimate Iran. Empires don’t like being invaded, and even regime opponents are not keen on their cities being “bombed back to the stone age”.

 

It’s always important to remember that in 1953 US and British Intelligence services engineered the overthrow of the constitutionally elected Iranian government, leading to the reign of the Shah and his murderous Savak secret police, and eventually to the current theological regime in Tehran.

 

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight...

 

What a second coming indeed: a Trump alliance with Mr. Netanyahu as he seeks to do another Gaza on Southern Lebanon before annexing it. Meanwhile, it’s arguable that both gentlemen would be behind bars if they weren’t leading their countries.

 

But it’s hard to beat Mr. Trump when it comes to turn of phrase. “We’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out...” until “these deranged scumbags”... 

 

I had to wonder what the parents of the 150 elementary schoolgirls slaughtered by a US Tomahawk missile called Mr. Trump when they got the news?

 

Somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

 

Elections have consequences, and we failed miserably back in 2024 when we put our faith in an addled, egotistical Joe Biden, before settling on his not-ready-for-primetime Vice President Harris.

 

Still, how could we have elected a spoiled man-child from Queens who caught a lucky break in Venezuela, and now uses US Armed Forces like they were action figures in a video game.

He will not make America great again; but he will certainly change the world order.

 

Perhaps the rising price of gas will cause some sanity to prevail. Hey, maybe the Iranians will allow our imperial president to declare victory and scurry on out of the Strait of Hormuz trap he so eagerly waltzed into.

 

Perhaps, it’s time to talk like a statesman, instead of hollering insulting rhetoric about nuclear weapons; 9 countries already possess them, including such pacifist nations as N. Korea, Pakistan, Israel, and India. 

 

The Obama 2015 treaty with Iran doesn’t seem so bad in retrospect – instead of ripping it up like a self-centered kindergartner, it could have provided a basis for renegotiation.

 

But then I read the final lines of Yeats’ masterpiece and hasten to pour myself a stiff drink.

 

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stoney sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

DAVID JOHANSEN - STATEN ISLAND IRISHMAN & LORD OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE

 It was the best of times and the worst of times – the best because we were young, the worst because we didn’t know any better.

That’s how we all ended up in the East Village. By today’s standards it was dangerous, but you developed street smarts quickly. With apartment rents costing less than $200 a month, it basically meant you didn’t need a steady job.

 

Patti Smith lived around the corner, as did Allen Ginsberg who winked salaciously as one strolled by, Jean-Michel Basquiat hung out on St. Marks, and Debbie Harry always mistook me for someone else. Everyone was a little famous because everyone read the Village Voice, and you had to be pretty lame not to get some kind of mention.

 

Turner & Kirwan of Wexford was the first band to play CBGB; we were friends of Hilly Kristal and as a favor played his opening night party at 315 Bowery.

 

David Johansen was the most famous person on the scene. His band, The New York Dolls had made it to the New York Times, their first single, Personality Crisis, was played often on WNEW-FM; besides, The Dolls dressed in a stagey transvestite manner, a somewhat suicidal move on the rambunctious streets of the Lower East Side.

 

With a name like Johansen, I had no idea David was half-Irish. I didn’t even know he was from Staten Island. But right from the start he knew how to dominate a stage.

 

In those days he threw classic Mick Jagger shapes – who didn’t? David even had his own Keith Richard, the inimitable Johnny Thunders, the equal of Keef any old day of the week, until junk got the better of him.

 

Everyone was cool on St. Marks. I never saw The Ramones tip their cap to anyone, they just swaggered by, looking neither left nor right. Their penniless jeans were always ripped. After their first photo session they realized they’d coined a style, now losers worldwide pay up to a grand for identical fashionista-ripped tight blues.

 

David Jo was different -  way beyond pseudo-cool. He winked and smiled and had a word for everyone who looked him in the eye. 

 

The Dolls might have been kings of downtown New York but they never gained national acceptance. They were too outrageous for middle-America  - sneeringly explosive and shambolic at the same time.

 

They single-handedly ignited the whole punk scene when they toured the UK. The Brits always knew how to copy a good thing and, before you knew it, Malcolm McLaren had manufactured The Sex Pistols, led by another unruly Irish roots messiah, Johnny “Rotten” Lydon.

 

Mercury Records soon dropped The Dolls and the band broke up in late 1976, just as CBGB was taking off. Everyone showed up at CBs when The Ramones were being checked out by music mogul, Seymour Stein, head of Sire Records. 

 

That’s when David Jo really made his mark on me. He led the applause for the stone-faced Ramones. I thought he would have been envious: after all, the dropped Dolls were going nowhere, they’d blown their chance and the Ramones were taking over. 

 

David’s example saved me a lot of heart-scald down the years – don’t measure yourself against the achievements of your peers. 

 

Oddly enough, Seymour Stein fell asleep in Paddy Reilly’s when he was scouting Black 47. True, he was jet-lagged but he must have had ears of concrete, such was our volume.

 

I didn’t discover David’s Irish roots until he recorded Staten Island Baby with Black 47. He told us great stories about his mother, Helen Cullen and her nourishing Irish clan. 

 

The Cullens had lace-curtain aspirations, and when one of his aunts fell in love with a shanty Irish guy, her mother forbade the union. His attractive aunt ended up a spinster.

 

He floored us with his knowledge of Swing, Jazz, Juke-Joint, and New York Irish music. Take a listen to Staten Island Baby. His rhythm and comedic vocal flair are beyond comparison.

 

David Jo was the man – a happy warrior! He passed away last year.

 

All the Dolls and Ramones are dead now, and CBGB is an expensive men’s boutique. But I still hear echoes of their rattle-the-walls music whenever I pass by.

 

Those, indeed, were stirring days in Hilly Kristal’s punk emporium on The Bowery!

WEXFORD PARTIES AND PRESIDENTS

 

It was a town of poets and photographers, patriots and piss-heads, sailors and emigrants, croppy boys and teddy boys, they all got along exceedingly well when the pints were flowing, somewhat less so during hangovers.

 

They shared the same accent, jaunty and distinct - hard to describe for it had so many roots: Viking, Norman, Celt, Cromwellian, with stray influences from the vast British Empire, for Wexford was a garrison town whose mariners had sailed everywhere.

 

Each street and lane had its own speech patterns, and every syllable suggested that you were from Maudlintown or Croke Avenue, Corish Park or Dukes Lane.

 

You can get a strong whiff of the accent by listening to Wexford native, Michael Londra on his national PBS show, Ireland with Michael, as he travels the country, introducing musicians and crafts people to American viewers, always with Ireland’s soft beauty glowing in the background.

 

But the myriad shades of Wexford accents all melded together on Wexford’s Quays that  stretch from the North End Railway Station to the Deep South Talbot Hotel and beyond.

 

Pierce Turner grew up in a quayside house opposite Wexford Bridge. The house seems lonely, now that the Turners no longer live or conduct business therein. It used to throb with activity, and the parties in the second floor sitting room were legendary.

 

Everyone had to either sing, dance, recite, or do some kind of turn; it didn’t matter if you were shy or tongue-tied, you had to contribute, and everyone from professional to amateur received the same resounding applause.

 

Pierce and I became friendly through our mania for songwriting, and manys the hoped-for classic we knocked together in that sitting room with the upright piano, overlooking the Slaney’s surging flow.

 

Wexford’s emigrants did well overseas – down the Quay on the Crescent stands an inspiring bronze statue of Commodore John Barry, founder of the American navy. And one glorious day in 1962 former President Eisenhower laid a wreath at that statue, while Wexford men and women who had served in WW2 saluted “General Ike”, their Allied Commander.

 

But it was an even bigger day 10 months later, when President Kennedy, whose grandfather emigrated from Dunganstown, County Wexford, drove along the Quay  to Redmond Place where he delivered his homecoming speech.

 

That’s when Pierce’s older sister, Bernie Lloyd, caught him. Bernie was always very bright, curious and involved. Instead of running around the town trying to catch a glimpse of the young bronzed-faced president, she opened the sitting room window and trained her Brownie camera on him as he drove by.

 

I don’t know how many pictures she took, but one survived from that unforgettable day on the Quay. It was of a different time, when presidents could motor by unencumbered by security.

 

That all changed five months later in Dallas when Jack Kennedy was assassinated while motoring along in a similar big American car.

 

 I often think that President Kennedy’s visit, commemorated by Bernie’s quayside picture, was what sent Pierce and me to the US as Turner & Kirwan of Wexford. We never thought of going to England in 1972. There was a war going on and Paddies were suspect over there. So, instead we hopped a plane to New York.

 

Over 50 years later, Wexford is a different town. Many of the old pubs have closed, and on Saturday nights when the Main Street used to be chock-a-block, people are scarce, or in a hurry, little time for exchanging greetings, let alone gossip.

 

They’re rushing home to surf the internet, stream movies, or bemoan the fact that the price of a pint is so expensive nowadays. That’s the price of progress and modernity, I suppose, but Wexford is still a great place to live, still has that distinctive lilting accent, where everyone knows you and you know them.

 

Pierce’s house on the Quay may be silent but he’ll transfer the party to Joe’s Pub on his annual gig there on Saturday March 14^th. You’ll hear the townie accent ring loud and clear as he belts out his Wexford anthems, “Musha God Help Her”, “Groovy Hearts” and “The Sky and The Ground.”  The latter, one of Wexford’s remaining great pubs, is named after Pierce’s song – now there’s an honor Bono or Bob Dylan never received.

 

Meanwhile Bernie’s snap of a beloved emigrant president takes us back to a different time, when guns were less prevalent and community more common.

 

Pierce Turner at Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. NYC, March 14, 6:30pm Tickets https://publictheater.org

TRUMP, GREENLAND & MINNESOTA MADNESS

“You’ve made a holy show of yourself, boy!”

 

That was a saying back in the Wexford of my youth. It meant you’d done something to be thoroughly ashamed of and, if you knew what was good for you, you’d better change your ways.

 

The phrase came to mind during the Donald Trump Greenland debacle. Seems like a long time ago, but that’s the “flood the zone” world our president has mired us in.

 

It’s hard to credit that a grown man would admit he was miffed because he wasn’t awarded last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and that someone would have to pay. 

 

Oh yes, there were the lies about myriad Russian and Chinese ships threatening, and in the interests of US security Denmark had better hand over Greenland post-haste.

 

The crazy thing is that Denmark and our other NATO allies are in agreement that the US should have all the access it needs to Greenland; in fact, Greenlanders themselves would be thrilled if the US was to fix up its many abandoned rusted bases and help locate the frigid island’s abundant rare earths.

 

But no, that wasn’t good enough for the poor little rich boy from Queens. Rich or poor, he would have been shunned and ridiculed in the pubs of Wexford. How does he get away with such conduct in America?

 

Fibber’s fatigue, perhaps? Remember when Mr. Trump first ran for president, reporters used to note the number of lies per speech. Ancient history! Nowadays “it’s just Donald being Donald.”

As one follower winked, “You don’t expect him to be George Washington, do you?”

 

Well, one could dream. But a Greenland expert, Martin Breum, put it very well recently. “There is extreme consternation that your president appears completely immune to data, facts, arguments and common knowledge. He continues to state what is obviously factually wrong. This seems unbelievable to many people in this country (Denmark). We cannot understand what is happening. We wonder what is next.”

 

I’m with you there, Marty. There was a time we used to hold our presidents accountable. I guess fibber’s fatigue has done a number on us all.

 

Things got even worse at the Davos Billionaire Boys Convention when our noble warrior insulted the NATO troops who sacrificed their lives while aiding the US in the post-9/11invasion of Afghanistan. This coming from a man who got five deferments that saved him from serving in Vietnam.

 

This also from a man who never lifted a finger to prevent his followers from attacking outnumbered police officers while they stormed the Capitol Building on shameful January 6^th – a man who later pardoned the vast majority of said “patriots.”

 

The people of Minneapolis/St. Paul, however, have shaken off their fibber’s fatigue. 

 

It’s always been a pleasure to play the Twin Cities and look out across a well-integrated audience of Americans and recent immigrants. 

 

And yes, I have heard the accusations against the Somalis who ran a scheme to defraud the welfare system. Those crooks should be prosecuted to the fullest – but their crime should not be used as a blanket denunciation of the gracious Somali people who have added so much to the culture and commerce of Minneapolis/St. Paul.

 

I’m sure there are many good people among ICE and Border Patrol agents too, but this armed militia do themselves no favors by wearing masks and assaulting American citizens and others who are exercising their First Amendment rights.

 

This is not Italy in the 1930’s, but sometimes it seems like Donald Trump is trying hard to be another Mussolini looking for his balcony. 

 

After initially holding Democrats rather than federal agents responsible for pumping 10 bullets into Alex Pretti, he’s been busy determining how much damage the execution of two American citizens will affect the House and Senate elections in November. 

 

There’s already been a change in his attitude: 700 agents will be withdrawn from Minnesota, and a couple of brassy sycophants will likely take the fall, for without Republican congressional majorities Mr. Trump will become just another lame-duck president. But hey, George Washington was once one too.

 

Despite the inevitable lies that came spouting out of the White House, we have seen the videos, we believe our own eyes, and we stand with the people of Minneapolis/St. Paul’s in their grief, loss, and defiance.

 

Your fibber’s fatigue is wearing thin, Mr. President. You’ve made a holy show of yourself, boy!

 

LISA O'NEILL - A LEGEND IN HER TIME

 

Every now and again, an artist comes along who changes the game. Bob Dylan springs immediately to mind. Yet, Dylan without the sense of mystery would have been just another Woody Guthrie imitator.

Dylan, though ahead of his time, seemed rooted in the past. Small wonder, because soon after his arrival in New York he immersed himself in the newspapers and lore of the Civil War period and emerged as a truly original artist.

When I first heard Lisa O’Neill, I felt a shock of recognition. I was once again a young boy, sitting atop my grandfather’s shoulders outside Enniscorthy GAA grounds. We were part of a hushed crowd listening to Margaret Barry as she sang in a nasally voice while strumming her banjo.

To her credit, Lisa had ignored the tidal wave of modern influences, dug deep into Ireland’s past and uncovered the itinerant street singer.

Lisa hadn’t copied Maggie Barry, it’s more that she instinctively inhabited certain aspects of the street singer’s psyche and times.

I immediately began playing O’Neill on Celtic Crush/SiriusXM, but to my surprise there was very little response from the normally curious Crushers. I put it down to the originality of her songs, and to what at first seemed  an awkwardness of delivery.

But make no mistake, Lisa O’Neill is the most original artist to come out of Ireland in a long time.

Born in 1982 in Ballyhaise, County Cavan, nurtured by the quiet beauty of her rural surroundings, she was always aware of music and began writing her own songs at an early age.

Many of the significant new bands and singers emerging from Ireland nowadays are “from the country.” Previously, most tended to be from the greater Dublin sprawl or the bigger towns.

This new rural sensibility tends to draw from the land and long neglected local tradition; yet, their style is spiced with city experience – perhaps, because so many rural teenagers now attend university.

At the age of 18, Lisa left Cavan for Ballyfermot College to study music, and has lived in Dublin for the last 24 years. Because of her grounding in folk music she became a part of the new Trad scene that centers around The Cobblestone and other inner-city pubs.

For a taste of this new Tradition, listen to Lisa’s striking duet on Factory Girl with Radie Peat of the mighty Lankum.

But there’s always an experimental twist to Ms. O’Neill. As rural Irish and traditional as she may be, she was introduced to the banjo (her main performing instrument) by Billy Bragg while at a workshop in Tasmania. These “young Irish” do get around.

One of the things that attracts me is her fearlessness as a songwriter. Is she confessional? Surely, but it’s more like she scans her own heart and boldly follows  its inclinations.

I persevered and played a number of O’Neill’s songs on Celtic Crush, including her amazing cover of Bob Dylan’s All the Tired Horses which had brought her much attention as the finale of the Peaky Blinders series.

But it wasn’t until I played the almost lullaby-like Goodnight World that listeners began writing me about her. One described her as “a voice of the true Ireland that touches you without you knowing why.”

I echo that assessment and have no fear of Lisa getting stuck in any kind of Celtic Twilight, though her 2023 album All of This Is Chance is poetic in the best sense.

She’s already moved on with a 6 song EP, The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right. It has more of a political edge, and features Mother Jones, a song celebrating the life of “the most dangerous woman in America,” labor activist Mary Harris Jones.

Not to mention the searing Homeless in The Thousands (Dublin In The Digital Age); these two tracks become even more vibrant when set against O’Neill’s chilling treatment of the Yuletide classic, The Bleak Midwinter.

There’s an original oddness to her voice that takes a little getting used to, but Bob Dylan sounded equally strange amidst the pop confectionery of the early 1960’s.

Still, I’d bet a pound to a penny that Lisa O’Neill will become one of the most cherished, and challenging, voices of Ireland down many’s the day to come. Up Cavan!

MEN DON'T READ NOVELS

 

Men No Longer Read Novels – the small headline in the bottom right-hand corner of either the Times or the Journal screamed at me.

Yes, I’m one of those luddites who still delights in receiving two newspapers at my door each morning.

Their views are different, but in my jaundiced mind they serve to keep me somewhat balanced.

The headline wasn’t news to me. I had first noticed a gender imbalance years ago while president of Irish American Writers & Artists, and doing a silent head count at one of our early salons.

It was beyond 60% women to 40% men, and I resolved to gradually turn the majority male board into a body that more closely reflected those numbers.

My fear nowadays is that the last word of the headline will become superfluous.

Men, of course, still read novels, but the gender imbalance can become painfully obvious at book readings or signings. Many men prefer biographies, scientific tomes, and histories; but why the scarcity of novel readers?

I’ve been shaped by the novels I’ve read, and for better or worse, I find that novels say something about the times we live in.

My first pre-teen novels were from the Just William series about the hilarious doings of William Brown, an unruly British 11-year old.

I became a County Wexford Library member soon thereafter, and every Wednesday evening I would borrow three books: a history or biography for my grandfather, a detective or romance for Miss Codd, our housekeeper, and something or other in the boy department for myself.

We read like demons. Everyone seemed to, back in Wexford before television ruled the roost. Books were fuel for conversation, and for library members they were free.

I read all of Dickens, was floored by Conan-Doyle, romanced by Jane Austen; then one blessed evening I discovered Graham Greene. The genial librarian, Miss Lucking assumed that Greene’s existential novels were for the grown-ups. I’ve never looked back.

I was living in Dublin when I bought a well-thumbed paperback on Rathmines Road - For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. The hero of this Spanish Civil War story spoke directly to my teenage psyche – his ideals, quiet intensity and longing for justice rang true.

Hemingway’s pared, but luminous, prose swept me away, and the dramatic unspoken ending still haunts me.

Great Gatsby is by far a better known novel, but to me there’s something hollow at its core. Perhaps I’m repelled by Fitzgerald’s Irish Mid-Western snobbishness or his worship of wealth? But there’s no denying it’s a hell of a story and a literary touchstone - every American high-schooler seems to have read it, and good for them!

From the newspaper article I gather that the educational powers-that-be prefer that students read more novel extracts, that nowadays teenagers no longer have the attention-span to devote to a full novel.

What does that say about our society? It roars out that there’s an elephant in the room – Social Media.

The article was able to track the rise of Facebook and Instagram with the decline of high school reading scores.

This is scary stuff, as the writer hadn’t even taken into account the volcano that is Tik Tok, nor the nascent use of AI.

There is no doubting the instant excitement that one can find in social media as compared to the measured elevation of reading a good novel.

Still, despite all the friends and followers one can find on social media, you can almost touch the digital loneliness that’s gathering force. The streets are full of people sporting AirPods as they blankly scroll their phones. Even in bars, where conversation used to reign, people silently stare at banks of flat-screen televisions.

As for the content on social media, much of it is flippant and harmless, but sometimes I’m reminded that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

People are so convinced they’re right – gone are the days of reasoning or subtle argument. Lies are common, bluster is the currency, everyone’s “truth” is delivered with a sledgehammer; this hardly augurs well for democracy.

Ah, it makes you long for a nice quiet read, where you’ve time to think, come to terms with character and story, while admiring the subtle workings of a thoughtful novel.

 

Should you wish to learn more about Irish American Writers & Artists visit https://iamwa.org    Men are welcome!

WEXFORD FRIARY - A COMPLICATED CHURCH IN A COMPLICATED TOWN

 

When Christmas is at hand, like most emigrants my thoughts turn to home – Wexford Town, in my case.

After I escort a tour group to Ireland every October, I spend a week’s vacation at the Wexford Opera Festival; so the town, its people, history and distinctive accent still resonate over Yuletide.

My thoughts are often drawn to the Franciscan Friary where I was an altar boy between the ages of 11 and 14. Oh yes, I was a true believer before I got waylaid by dreams of revolution, music, sexuality, and other teenage obsessions.

Teenage years, as most will testify, can be complicated. But then Wexford was a complicated town. Though conservative and Catholic, it was traditionally represented in Dáil Éireann by a left-wing Labour TD.

While the Third Order of St. Francis, the Holy Family Confraternity, and the Legion of Mary held nominal sway in the town, James Connolly and Richard Corish had led torchlight processions down the Main Street during the Great Lockout of 1911.

To top it all, my father, like many other seafarers, was a “silent atheist.” Most had been harassed, even torpedoed, in the Atlantic by Hitler’s U-boats, and as I heard one testifying in a Quayside pub, “I never regained my appetite for pie in the sky.”

The Friary, too, was complicated. It was flanked on either side by the majestic Gothic twin parish churches of the Immaculate Conception and The Assumption. I could have qualified for altar boy service in either, because I lived with my grandfather in George’s Street, while my parent’s house was in nearby Corish Park.

But I was a Friary boy, born and bred, and always attended mass or devotions in its humbler, but inviting, Italianate structure. And why wouldn’t I?

The Friars had first come to Wexford circa1240, not long after the Normans seized the Viking town, often known back then as Weissfjord. You could say, there was a mysterious steely gentleness to our Franciscans.

For one thing, they had taken a vow of poverty. They were as poor as the poorest, and subsisted on donations from their local spiritual clientele. But it was more than that – they had stood with the people at the worst moment in Wexford history – when Oliver Cromwell’s troops slaughtered 2000 civilians after a long siege in 1649.

The vengeful roundhead cavalry galloped through the church, murdering 7 friars and their congregation, and then for a little insulte final they stabled their horses at the altar rails. The surviving friars remained in the shattered town to minister to their surviving flock.

Likewise in the Great Lockout, while the regular clergy took the side of the bosses, the friars stuck by the strikers and shared their food and few possessions with them.

That’s why on Christmas Eve, I time-travel back to boyhood midnight mass at the Wexford Friary, and experience once again its glorious choir, glowing candles, clouds of incense, and my dear friend, jolly Fr. Justin OFM.

No matter what I confessed to that merciful friar he never sentenced me to more than 3 Hail Mary’s penance, before soliciting my opinion on Manchester United’s prospects in their next game.

Fr. Justin was the reason for my friendship with Black 47 fan, Fr. Mychal Judge, OFM. I once asked Mychal to find out what had become of Fr. Justin. About 6 months later, he showed up in Connolly’s on a boisterous, packed Saturday night with the news that he’d fulfilled my request.

“What request was that?” I inquired.

“Didn’t you ask about Fr Justin?” And with that Mychal delivered a full report on the fate of his brother Friar. We laughed about the doings and sayings of jolly Fr. Justin every time we met thereafter. Franciscan solidarity!

Like all Catholic orders the Franciscans are experiencing tough recruitment times, but I suspect that their belief and adherence to the Christian socialism espoused in the Sermon on the Mount will lead them to better days.

In the meantime, the old Friary in Wexford is badly in need of a new roof. Should you feel like donating a few bucks, go to https://friarywexford.ie/

And if you’re in any kind of spiritual fix, reach out to dear departed Fr. Justin, OFM. I feel sure he won’t give you any more than 3 Hail Mary’s no matter what your transgression, but I wouldn’t mention Manchester United. Even the ever-forgiving Fr. Justin has to draw a line somewhere.

WARREN ZEVON - THE CLANCY BROTHERS & TOMMY MAKEM INFLUENCE

 

Warren Zevon was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame recently. 

 

He was a fine songwriter and wrote of what he knew. You might remember Werewolves of London, Send Lawyers, Guns and Money, or Carmelita, one of the best songs written about heroin.

 

He was well able for his subject matter, his Ukrainian-born father was a gangster in Chicago, and Warren had done his own share of walking on the wild side. Oddly enough, he had taken piano lessons from master modernist, Igor Stravinsky in LA where he also hob-knobbed with the likes of Linda Ronstadt and Stevie Nicks.

 

All of this, and his many influences, were detailed in various media upon his popular ascension to Rock and Roll immortality.

 

One major influence – of a Celtic nature – was overlooked.

 

It had to be some summer in the late 1970’s, hot as hell, and definitely a Sunday night because the Bells of Hell was near deserted. Barry Murphy was behind the stick and I had dropped by to pick up my guitar.

 

Murph bought me a Heineken and I was sitting close to the door when Warren Zevon strolled in.

 

He was tall, lean and handsome, if a little weathered, and he stood out in his cowboy hat and LA threads. The two other customers paid him no pass, while Murph continued reading Nabokov or whatever barmen intellectuals read in those distant days.

 

I recognized him instantly, but being a cool New Yorker, I merely nodded.

 

“Are the Clancy Brothers here?” Zevon inquired in an excitable drawl.

 

Though taken aback, how was one to answer? Was he having me on, and would I end up a fall guy in one of his cosmic songs?

 

Murph finally deigned to look up from Pale Fire or whatever, and cast a wary eye down the length of the bar in case Tom, Pat and Liam might have snuck in.

 

“What would they be doing here?” The barman pondered his own existential question.

 

“They drink here.” Zevon shot back.

 

“Yeah, about once a year, if they’re in town.”

 

“Oh.” The trainee rock god conceded, but shaking off another of life’s disappointments he said, “Give me a Tequila.”

 

Murph laid aside his tome and began to pour a shot of top-shelf Jose Gold.

 

“I meant a bottle.”

 

“We don’t sell liquor by the bottle.”

 

“For the right price you will.”

 

Sensing Murph’s hesitance, the two other customers offered their advice on an equitable price. 

 

Shrugging his toil-worn shoulders Murph settled on a round $30, at which Zevon asked for 4 glasses and invited the clientele to join him at a table, adding that the only worthwhile advice his father ever gave him was never to drink at a bar, especially with one’s back to the door.

 

Tossing down shots of Gold like John Wayne, I ventured, “What’s with the Clancy Brothers?”

“They saved my life.” Zevon replied, “In Spain of all places.”

 

Then he was off in a gallop. “I hit rock bottom in Sitges, near Barcelona. Woke up, no money, no prospects, nothing left but my guitar. I chanced upon a hole-in-the-wall called The Dubliner. 

 

When I asked the owner if I could play, he told me to knock myself out – which I did. He said I wasn’t bad but they only hired Irish ballad singers – whereupon he took pity on me and gave me three Clancy Brothers LPs, said come back when I’d learned all the tracks.

 

“The chords were a breeze, and I figured that if you got the lyrics of the first verse right, you could fake the others. 

 

So, I came back 2 days later with the first verse of 30 Clancy songs and blew them Spaniards away.

 

Best summer of my life. I should have stayed there. Instead I came back to this madness,” he cast a deprecating glance at his drinking companions and at Murph murdering Nabakov behind the bar. “But I owe a debt to the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. They changed my life - made my music what it is today.”

 

With that, he took a long slug from the bottle, stood up, belched, straightened his hat, and strode out the door into the long hot summer’s night, another pit stop behind him on his way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

WHO FEARS TO SPEAK OF ZOHRAN MAMDANI

 Greetings from the soon-to-be Socialist Republic of New York, or rather from a city that has elected a politician determined to confront the curse of affordability.

So why don’t we dispense with the American phobia of “socialism,” and see if Zohran Mamdani’s proposed solutions have any merit.

 

New York is still a comfortable abode for those in the top 10%, but for just about everyone else it can be a struggle.  

 

And who wants to live in a city without a confident working-class where clubs, dive bars and an affordable social scene are fast disappearing.

 

Our Mayor-elect put forward 5 solutions to New York’s affordability crisis and received a majority of votes in a huge turnout. I voted for him. Give the man credit - he electrified an apolitical Gen Z!

 

Mamdani’s first goal is to freeze stabilized rents. He’s hardly unique: Mayor de Blasio did it 3 times. The real question is – for how long? The howls from landlords are intense and warranted: buildings are costly to maintain. One compromise would be to allow landlords to charge capital spending as a tax deductible expense over a two year freeze. 

 

I’m all in favor of Mamdani’s city-owned grocery stores - one in each borough. If nothing else, this will help ascertain if grocery chains are guilty of price gouging, as many New Yorkers suspect. 

 

Every year, despite economic fluctuations, corporate profits outpace Wall Street expectations. Meanwhile, workers’ wages and salaries tend to remain stagnant or below inflation. So let’s follow the money on these city-owned bodegas.

 

The free and faster MTA buses idea is a no-go for many reasons. The MTA needs every penny of income to keep trains and buses moving. Giving away over $600 million annually is not an option. 

 

45% of those presently riding buses are not paying, so how about placing cameras that can identify free-loaders both on buses and subway platforms. Stiff fines and more paying customers would definitely help the MTA’s finances. (Senior citizens and very low income earners should be exempt from charge.) 

 

Besides, “free” means that buses would likely end up housing the unsheltered and those struggling with mental health problems. And since Gov. Hochul has no interest in financing this quixotic goal, better to drop it and concentrate on the Mayor-Elect’s final two important proposals.

 

Mr. Mamdani hopes to build 200,000 affordable, rent-stabilized, union-built houses over the next 10 years. This should be possible since Mayor de Blasio came close to achieving the same goal during his tenure. Unfortunately, it will still leave a huge housing shortage. 

 

To compound matters, because of tariffs and inflation, prices of materials have risen appreciably, and the immigrant community that supplies many construction workers is reeling from an unsympathetic federal government and often brutal ICE enforcement. Still, 200,000 houses is a very concrete start and worth achieving.

 

This leaves the dream of free universal childcare. To survive with any comfort in NYC both spouses must work. But even if a couple makes as much as $150k between them, child-care can cost up to 25K annually. Thus, many young couples are being forced to leave the city for less expensive rents and childcare in exurbia. 

 

I mention “dream” because this proposal would cost so much, but at least, governor and mayor-elect are adamant that something must be done, and the sooner a start is made the better.

 

Who’s to pay for this? Well, under President Trump’s recent tax bill, the top 1% received disproportionately higher breaks, it’s time for them to give back a little.

 

Taxes are already high in NYC but that’s the price of living in such a vibrant community. Still, with federal corporate taxes now reduced to 21%, perhaps it’s time for a small corporate surcharge to aid the city that houses Wall Street?

 

Mamdani’s proposals, though lofty, are humane and intended to make New York an affordable city - not just a playground for the rich. 

 

Affordability will be the key issue in all upcoming elections. So, let’s get beyond the tired scapegoat of “socialism” and deal with fiscal reality.

 

And for God’s sake, spare us the Islamophobia! Mr. Mamdani is one of a million upstanding people of Islamic faith in our city, none of whom crashed the planes into the Towers on 9/11. 

 

Many remind me of our 19^th Century Irish Catholic immigrant forebears, a misunderstood, pious people seeking a new and affordable life in the city of their dreams.

THE STATE OF IRELAND AND A WORD OF ADVICE FROM MISTER YEATS

 

“The longer you stay away, the less likely you are to go home.” That was another piece of wisdom the auld fellah imparted to me up in The Archway so many years ago.

 

He neglected to say that once your parents pass away, there’s even less likelihood of a grand return. It’s like the roots have been cut from under you.

 

I used to feel like I was floating over Ireland when I’d return on vacation. I could see and hear everything, but I was no longer involved. That’s when I got the idea of taking a tour group back every year.

 

Not only would I see Ireland through the group’s eyes, but I’d be working. That’s how I experienced America with Black 47. Each club, pub, or concert hall was a new challenge. You had to be alert because there was often a bonus to be negotiated. Likewise, to attract a crowd, you had to do interviews with local press and radio – that’s how I came to know each individual city, college or town. 

 

There’s not nearly the same pressure taking a group to Ireland; but I’m still working and making sure that those traveling with me are seeing the real Ireland.

 

And, boy, has the real Ireland changed over the last twenty or so years!

 

Ireland is now a modern, secular European country. Moving statues have long since hung up their dancing shoes.

 

I’m not even sure I saw a priest or nun in the recent couple of weeks I was over there. I did attend two concerts in St. Iberius, the stately Protestant church on Wexford’s Main Street. The place was jammed with opera lovers, whereas the nearby Church of the Immaculate Conception and the Friary where I’d served as altar boy, were deserted.

 

Membership of the EU has been good for Ireland. Many old friends now winter in Portugal or The Canaries, “It’s much cheaper and you can’t beat the weather,” they tell me.

 

Big Tech and favorable tax laws have dumped bucketfuls of Euros on the country. It goes without saying that this moolah has not been equitably distributed.

 

Still, everyone lives in fear of President Trump and follows his daily pronouncements like scripture. Will he introduce new tariffs on Pharma exports, will he force Ireland to rescind its favorable corporate tax laws?

 

Is he really going to check every visitor’s Facebook page for snide comments about his sanity, or for supporting a Palestinian state? I’ve had to assure ladies in their 70’s who wish to visit their American grandchildren, as well as students in their teens, that the man from Queens has bigger fish to fry.

 

They even worried about me being allowed back in the US after describing the great man as a “megalomaniac” in the local newspaper. But here I am in Lower Manhattan, jet-lagged and writing this, with no sign of ICE breaking down my door.

 

Ireland is still a beautiful country that can take your breath away. A visit is good for the soul.

And yet, the country is becoming more like the US by the day. Things I heard with Black 47 while crisscrossing the US 30 years ago, I heard in Ireland last week -  that self-same dull rumble of racism and xenophobia. 

 

It’s not loud and the great majority are resisting it, but the “us against them” sensibility is, as ever, being fanned by lies and rumors spread on social media.

 

Recent Irish governments have done the country no favors by allowing quite so much immigration and refugee intake in the midst of an acute housing shortage. Biden revisited!

 

In the long run this influx of people will add immeasurably to the country. In the short run, however, there will be further turmoil as budgets tighten - for as the owner of a popular Wexford pub mentioned, “disposable income is at a new low.”

 

It doesn’t take a genius to notice that the “rare auld financial good times” are coming to an end. Same as the US,  “affordability” will be the next big word in Irish life. It will sit snugly next to “immigration” and “refugees.” 

 

In other words, beware of politicians – Irish or American - who traffic in loud words and drastic solutions.

 

For as Mr. Yeats put it, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst. Are full of passionate intensity.”

YER MAN FROM PEARL RIVER MEETS JAMES JOYCE

 “I’m pingless,” said I.“And I thought you were just brainless.” Replied Yer Man from Pearl River.

He had been wondering why I hadn’t replied to his text immediately.

 

Meanwhile, I was wondering why I’d ever given him my phone number in the first place.

I hadn’t heard from him since well before the Pandemic. In fact, I assumed Covid had done a number on him. 

 

But then, I never really knew him. He was a self-appointed literary guardian – “just making sure you don’t lose the run of yourself,” as he put it one day.

 

Did I need such a person in my life anymore?

 

He also commented on my Celtic Crush radio show, and attended many Black 47 gigs, around Westchester and Rockland County. 

 

But how could I tell if he was even the original “Yer Man From Pearl River;” or a Bot out of Hell come to haunt me?

 

What times we live in!

 

I’d long ago stopped giving out my phone number – not that I’m particularly paranoid, it’s just that as a self-employed person I work on deadlines, and don’t have time for random phone calls unless they’re from family or close friends. 

 

I’m not much of a texter either, especially since you’re expected to return such jittery interruptions forthwith.

 

Hence, my choice to go pingless. I have all rings, prompts, buzzes and nudges silenced on my iPhone.

 

“Aren’t you afraid of missing out on something?” Yer Man from Pearl River inquired solicitously during our reunion call – he snuck through my defenses because I had been expecting a call from my sister in Ireland.

 

Don’t get me wrong – I’m far from some solitary monk squirrelled away in the bowels of Manhattan. It’s just that I value my time.

 

Think of it! When you’re pingless the world is your oyster. You’re not jumping from Billy to Joe on text, plus I rarely get spammed anymore.

 

Am I any happier because of this? Immensely so! When I go for a walk, I often don’t even take my phone, nor do I wear the obligatory white Apple earbuds.

 

Instead I amble along like people used to. I’m tuned into the same rhythms of the city that poets and musicians from Walt Whitman through Miles Davis, Brendan Behan to Bob Dylan moved to. I have no need of podcasters or other “influencers” screaming in my ears.

 

It’s a lot safer too. I’m less likely to get a belt in the back of the head from some crazy who doesn’t appreciate my hair-style. Although a majority of contemporary lunatics appear to be conversing with argumentative old girlfriends or concerned fathers-in-law through concealed microphones.

 

This makes for a noisy world and I’m determined to keep my little patch of it as quiet as possible.

 

That’s not to say I’m some kind of luddite. I use my phone and laptop frequently to seek or confirm information; for instance, I was stuck for a name a few minutes back and googled “first poet of the Manhattan skyline?”

 

Bob’s your uncle, out popped Walt Whitman. The old poet and printer has always fascinated me, consequently I had to restrain myself from following him down an AI rabbit hole, one of the temptations of modern life.

 

I don’t use Instagram. Nor do I subscribe to X or anything of that nature, and the thought of getting information on current affairs through social media strikes me as beyond ludicrous.

 

Try it sometime – de-ping yourself! You’ll find a certain sense of self returning. You’ll definitely be less stressed and time-constrained, and your neck will feel a little more supple when you no longer have to crane it downwards to fixate on your phone.

 

You may even find an original idea or two bouncing around again in your cranium. Don’t take my word for it, I’m merely heeding the advice of Mr. Joyce. Would Jamesy have written Ulysses if he’d been following Taylor Swift on Instagram?

 

As the great man put it, "I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art... using for my defense the only arms I allow myself -- silence, exile, and cunning.  

 

As for Yer Man from Pearl River -- Ah well, I guess everyone occasionally needs a guardian angel.