Writing Prize

So honored to be getting writing submissions for the Kelly Culhane Prize. Very touching stuff. Tell your friends, if you would. By all accounts it is a good thing to write about cancer, about the arrival of illness, about the dark companion.

Irish Weather

Interesting factoids about Ireland:

1.) For four days here in Cottage 10 it was warmer inside the refrigerator than in the living room.

2.) The shipyards in Belfast produced 22,000 ships in the four years of WWII.

3.) There are a lot of Savages in County Down. A lot. Most of them are dead.

4.) I've come up with a rather plausible epitataph for my gravestone: "He was widely tolerated by many and barely tolerated by those who knew him well."

5.) Ireland's surface area is smaller than Lake Superior, not by much, but certifiably fewer hectares in Ireland than on the Big Lake.

6.) Ireland's water table is predominantly above ground, residing mostly above ground and between the low gray clouds scudding past off the ocean at 600 feet.

7.) Irish pastries are damn near worth moving here. Not grossly sweet, delicate, deserving.

The Old Forge Press

Met an interesting guy in Ireland named P.J. Curtis, musician, musicologist, author. He lives in the old, old, old, house handed down to him from generations ago. I'd read his book, The Lightning Tree, a fascinating account of life in Ireland before the Celtic Tiger. The book reports on all the old ways, the healing, the herbalism, the mysticism, the "Hunger," the religious abuse. P.J.'s father was the village of Kilnaboy's blacksmith...hence the name, The Old Forge...and did not approve of the boy's love of reading and music, so, at sixteen years young, the boy ran away to, of all places, Liverpool where he played in the era when the Beatles were learning their music. P.J. is a real fascinating guy. The photo is of him holding forth while seated in the hearth of his "loovly, loovly" home filled with ancient artifacts. Visiting his site is pretty informative. The URL is above

HONORING BOOKS AND AUTHORS

I'm finding the newspaper content here in Ireland to be much more literary in slant. It's also more informal and it is more...what can I say...vulgar? Earthy? Bare breasted women on page two could be called earthy I suppose. Using fuck on page one but ***in out cocksucker in the same paragraph could be called earthy I suppose. I've also seen that books have higher regard over here. I'm attending a book festival in Ennis and it seems there is a lot of devotion to the book...the non-electric kind. (Kindle's got its work cut out for it here.) I'm guessing there is more devotion to the book in NYC than there is in Superior, Wisconsin where the last word in the state is SIN, so I can't complain too much when I feel like my corner of the world eschews books for beer. But it is nice to be in a society where authors and books are more revered than cheese and brats. Though, one downside to the reverence is the faint aroma of snobbery now and then. All in all though, it is fun to be living and moving and having breath in a more book oriented, word oriented society. Keep writing.

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw comes to mind this morning. He said, and I quote this loosly I'm sure, "It has taken me twenty years to become dumb enough to entertain the English." This brings to mind the Robert Frost quote, "Any damn fool can start a poem. It takes a poet to end one." These quotes...why are they coming to me this early morning in Ireland? All that suggests itself is...what is the role of ego in the writer's life? I'm of the opinion that 99.9 percent of my writing will never be read. It's almost entirely digitized. A massive EMP would wipe out my hard drives, my back-ups (few that there are), and all the emails I've ever written. I'm writing for the joy of it. Writing for the entertainment it provides. Writing to give my fingers something to do. I'm reminded of the printer who was asked why he went into printing. "Because I like the smell of ink," he answered. Why are you writing? To preserve a history? To create a history? To salve a wound? To entertain? To get revenge? To be adored? To become rich? To heal? To teach? To worship? To be worshipped? To learn to spel? To make a joke? To see if there's anyone out there who is as clever as you? Maybe it is all about ego. Maybe that isn't a bad thing. Write on.

IRISH LIVESTOCK EYES ARE SHINING

It's that time of year again when plans for the annual Ireland trip are being made. It looks like the end of Feb. first two weeks of March again. Planning on visiting my Irish livestock happily living on the edge of the Burren near Corofin, in the shadow of famed Burren mountain Mulloughmor. The brown donkey in the middle, with the white nose and blaze, is Daisy. I'm half owner of this fine, fantastic, funky, female, four-footer, whose sole purpose in life is supposed to be producing offspring for the profit of her human "owners." The "venture" has yet to produce a foal. This...of course...makes me a "Half-Assed Irish Businessman." It'll be fun to get back to the Burren and all my Irish livestock.

It looks like I might be a doing a Q&A session at next year's Ennis Book Club Festival. Check out this year's schedule: http://www.ennisbookclubfestival.com/. It's a fun event with tons of great author/reader interaction, tours of Ennis, coffee & scones, some Guinness consumption, (well, maybe lots of Guinness consumption) and lots of book talk.

It'll be fun to be back in Clare and do some more work on the Dave Davecki novel "DIERland" where Davecki gets involved in tracking down a band of irritating druid-wannabes who are murdering folks and selling pre-Christian Irish artifacts to the highest bidders in Russia.