Peter Kavanaugh, brother of Ireland’s last great poet Patrick Kavanaugh, used to say that “Ireland was a racket centered in Dublin.” Today, it is a racket centered in Brussels. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the European Union. It is no longer a Catholic country. After struggling for hundreds of years for their own … Read more
COVID-19 experts prescribe that we should socially distance ourselves from our neighbors. In his time, Henry David Thoreau (writer, philosopher, and poet), encouraged another form of social distancing. Thoreau advocated distancing not to avoid contagious disease, but as a means to evaluate who and what the human person truly is. He observed that the modern … Read more
The Pilgrims first sighted land off Cape Cod on November 9, 1620, after spending sixty-five days at sea. They rejoiced, singing Psalm 100, a traditional song of thanksgiving. But as William Bradford recorded in Of Plymouth Plantation, it was winter when, “all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face.” “They had no friends to welcome them, … Read more
St. Patrick’s Day in our home was a quiet, subdued affair—no appurtenances of green, no consumption of green beer. We wore no stovepipe hats, nor any buttons of boasting Irishry. However, it was a special day, my saint’s day, the day when St. Patrick passed from the discord of time to the mystery of eternity. My … Read more
The Pilgrims first sighted land off Cape Cod on November 9, 1620 after spending 65 days at sea. They rejoiced singing Psalm 100, a traditional song of thanksgiving. But as William Bradford recorded in Of Plymouth Plantation, it was winter when, “all things stand upon them with a weatherbeaten face.” “They had no friends to … Read more
The Statue of Liberty used to be the face America projected to the world. A gift from the people of France in 1886 and an emblem of how Americans saw themselves and how they wanted to be seen by the world. Liberte eclairant le monde is the name given the statue—”Liberty enlightening the world.” The … Read more
Why not celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day with something enlightening instead of inebriating—an Irish classic, The Aran Islands by John M. Synge? The Aran Islands, off the coast of Galway in the west of Ireland, are the cultural heart and soul of Ireland. The area is known as the Gaeltacht; translated into English it means “Irish … Read more
At the end of May, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn left his residence in Cavendish, Vermont, to return home to a new Russia. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. It was prematurely assumed by members of the media that when he entered the United States he would say comforting things about the West — of … Read more