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The Red, White, and Blue
To be an American is to be free. It’s to be who you want to be. It’s to be whoever you want to be. To be an American is knowing you can make something of yourself. It’s to build your statue from scratch and pure innovation. To be an American is to be worth it. […]
Blue Jeans and Bruce Springsteen
A few days ago, I referred to my typically American sentiment to come here to “fix” Northern Ireland with a heavy-handed, judgmental political diatribe disguised as a play. Now that the Fourth of July is mere hours away here, I can’t help but reflect on the meaning of what it is to be an American, […]
What it means to be an American
I have received this very question on many assignments quite similar to this; but I will not regurgitate. Being American, except for the obvious ‘being born in the United States’ is to wander into situations that one does not fully understand and to adapt nevertheless. America’s protectionism of the past has completely disappeared since World […]
Coming to America . . . or Not
It’s Independence Day, and I’m in the wrong country. The day should be hot, fireworks should be flying, and watermelon juice should be dripping down my chin. Instead, the weather is cool, the only sounds are light traffic and wind, and there’s a great ice cream place right down the street. Maybe this isn’t such […]
If My Heart Was A House, You’d Be Home.
Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, “Home”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHEOF_rcND8 Simon and Garfunkel, “Homeward Bound”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex8YNIhXydE Considering this theme, Joliet is my immediate thought. Geographically, I was born and raised in Illinois, but I do not proclaim this place as my home. I’ve fit in there, my family also resides in the city, but the soulmates I’ve adopted and […]
A Fine Doodle Morning
The theme of the John Hewitt International Summer School, the venue where we will be performing our plays in a number of weeks that I care not to remember, has a theme of “Living Among Strangers: The Lost Meaning of Home”. I just wanted to share a doodle that I ‘composed’, to state it pompously, […]
A Home that Never Fades
“Living among Strangers: The Lost Meaning of Home.” Where do I start to unpack this concept? Actually, it’s easier than I might think. Living among strangers is a state I find myself in often. I can tag along with any group, but do I really belong in any of them? When they start talking, I […]
Unprompted: Armagh After Hours
It’s two o’clock in the morning, and Armagh is dead. But the city is not without life. No one walks the streets, but the very buildings seem to come to life, great slumbering giants waiting for the rise of dawn to turn them back to stone and wood and glass. They join together as if […]
Discovering “home”
I think there are two versions of home, the one that will always be there waiting for you, and the home that is where you make it. When you’re in one place you always miss the other. Right now I am living in a foreign county, and although we are gradually becoming closer, essentially I […]
Home? Have I Lost You?
Living Among Strangers… I tend to think of the word stranger as calling someone a strange person. I haven’t met any classifiably strange people here. Everyone is friendly, kind, and curious. I don’t feel the least bit out of place. Everyone has been so welcoming and I feel totally comfortable in this environment. Maybe I […]
