moving memories from New York to Phoenix
10 Tuesday Sep 2013
10 Tuesday Sep 2013
15 Thursday Aug 2013
Tags
"Neither an Elegy nor a Manifesto", 1994 World Cup, 2004 World Series, bombings, Boston Red Sox, Giants Stadium, Good Friday Agreement, Ireland, John Hewitt, New Jersey, North Antrim Coast, Northern Ireland, Omagh, REAL IRA
In the summer of 1998, I took my new baby daughter home to Northern Ireland, my lovely, tragic Northern Ireland. It was my mother’s sixtieth birthday, and between my father, my brother, and a handful of relatives who could keep a secret (an impressive trait in rural County Derry) we planned a “This is Your Life” style surprise. It was delicious, knowing we had all swallowed the same secret, and that my all-knowing mother was completely in the dark.
The Troubles had tainted previous visits home, but this time was going to be different – no bombs, no shootings, no petrol bombs, no more girls tarred and feathered for falling in love with a boy from the other side. I found something symbolic, magical even, in returning home with a new baby girl in my arms to a new optimism fueled by The Good Friday Agreement.
It had been different four years before. That trip had coincided with Ireland’s qualifying for the World Cup. The country was ecstatic, with factories, offices, shops, even banks, all closing early so everyone could make it home, or to the pub, in time for kick-off at the Ireland v Italy match being televised live from Giants Stadium in New Jersey. We had thought of going to the pub to watch the first-round match, but my father convinced us to stay home, have a few drinks, and watch from the comfort of the living room. So we stayed in and watched – in joyous disbelief – as Ireland went up 1-0 against Italy at Giants Stadium. When the lads in green scored a goal, we roared with pride even as we were afraid to look, not unlike Boston Red Sox fans prior to the 2004 World Series.
The second half of the match was well underway when two men, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, stormed into a tiny packed pub, The Heights Bar, in the village of Loughinisland, County Down. With an AK47 and a Czech made rifle, they shot madly and indiscriminately at the sixteen men gathered around the bar watching Ireland beat Italy. They killed six of them. According to witnesses, the two gunmen laughed as they made their getaway. The first killed, Barney Green, was in his eighties, someone’s grandfather, and as I recall from the stories that later poured from that heartbroken village, he had put on his best suit to mark Ireland’s making it to the World Cup.
Chilling even now to think of Barney Green struck down with such savagery in the very moment as that jubilant Irish squad burst out of an American football stadium, awash in green, buoyed by the chanting of 60,000 supporters, anticipating champagne and a night of revelry, only to be silenced and sickened by the hideous dispatch from a country pub back home.
Another atrocity. Another anniversary for the people of Northern Ireland that would leave us wondering again how we would ever recover from the madness that once more brought wrenching anguish to so many. My country is so tiny – I’ve been told it fits into one third of the state of Kansas – I imagine everyone knew someone who knew someone maimed or killed in the largest mass murder in its history. I knew Aidan Rush, a barman at the local pub in my hometown. A relative of his had been killed in the Omagh bombing. I remember wondering what I could possibly say to him by way of condolence, knowing there are no adequate words.
I felt sad and foolish, and I felt cheated, having dared to believe that peace had come to the country I had left but still loved. I should have remembered what Yeats wrote in The Isle of Innisfree, that “peace comes dropping slow.”
For many Northern Ireland families, mine included, the youngest generation knew only a country in conflict. But in 1998, my daughter would witness a new country, a country at peace. The people had voted for it in anticipation of a new era for Northern Ireland. A brand new day. That year, when my mother’s sixtieth birthday arrived, I telephoned in the morning with love and good wishes and a promise that we would arrange a trip home soon. Yes, she had received the flowers I’d sent, and she was looking forward to going out for dinner with my father that evening. On their way, he took a bit of a detour for a quick visit with my Aunt Sadie, where delighted shrieks of “Surprise!”exploded from the well-hidden gathering of family and friends whose cars were parked on another lane, far out of sight. One of my cousins even assumed the role of This is Your Life host, Eamonn Andrews, complete with a big red book, and related the story of my mother’s life to all assembled.
When she reached the part about my mother becoming a grandmother for the first time just eight months earlier, she suggested calling me so that I could at least be part of the celebration by phone. Naturally, I was unavailable, given that two days earlier, I had flown in to Belfast with Sophie, and had been holed up at my Aunt Sadie’s house enjoying secret visits with my dad and my brother, the three of us laughing that my mother – who usually knows everything – was oblivious to all the subterfuge. She was disappointed that I wasn’t home, but was quickly distracted by the doorbell ringing. Thinking it was yet another cousin or a friend with a birthday present, she opened the door to find looking up at her from a nest of pink blankets, her beautiful baby granddaughter. It was a perfectly executed surprise, planned down to the very last minute, and one my mother would cherish always, as a jewel in a box.
Unbeknownst to us and to most ordinary people in Northern Ireland, another plan was coming to fruition, a diabolical scheme that would, one week later, rip asunder the tiny market town of Omagh in the neighboring county of Tyrone, devastating families from as near as Donegal and as far away as Madrid, Spain, and reminding us all that Northern Ireland’s Troubles were far from over.
I don’t know all the details. I’m afraid of them.
It frightens me to consider the machinations of minds that could craft a plan to load a nondescript red car, plate number MDZ 5211, with 500 pounds of explosives, park it in the middle of a busy shopping area, and place two phone calls to the local television station, one to the Coleraine Samaritans, with a warning 40 minutes before the bomb inside it exploded. There was confusion as the police evacuated the shoppers – mostly mothers and children on back-to-school shopping sprees. Thinking they were moving them away from the Court House to safety, the police moved people to the bottom of Market Street, where the bomb was about to be detonated.
I wonder if they felt that familiar relief, the kind you know from past experiences of bomb-scares and hoaxes, if they felt they were out of harm’s way and just in time, believing that it would all be alright. Maybe they told themselves it was just a bomb scare, like old times, not to be taken very seriously but still they would cooperate with the authorities so they could get back to their Saturday afternoon shopping, seeking out bargains for backpacks and books, new uniforms and lunch-boxes, full of the promise that accompanies the start of a new school year.
I cannot write about it without weeping.
Mere seconds after this photo was taken with a camera later retrieved from the rubble, the 500 pound bomb inside the red car exploded, blowing the vehicle to bits. Like a butcher’s knife, the blast cut through the row of little shops. I recall the harrowing accounts of witnesses, forever altered, who saw blood flowing in the gutters and pieces of people in the street, describing the savagery, the carnage before them as a war zone, a killing field.
At the same time, my brother, his girlfriend, and my baby girl were driving around the North Antrim coast, listening to Neil Young and Paul Brady CDs, occasionally breaking into song as we took in wild scenery around us. We stopped to show Sophie the horses and cows that peered over gates along the country roads. It was a beautiful, windy Irish day, and we were happy.
We were not listening to the radio that afternoon, so we didn’t hear the news. We had no reason to believe anything was wrong, until, heading home at dusk, we were stopped at a police checkpoint, where we were told to take a detour. And we knew. It had happened again. My parents knew too. Worse, they were worried sick. Something horrific had happened, and they had no idea where we were. Worried, they paced the floor until their driveway was lit up again with the headlights of my brother’s car.
There was no peace. Nothing had changed, and everything had changed in that blast that killed 29 people and unborn twins. And there would be no justice. No one has been convicted. Why?
The Omagh list of dead “reads like a microcosm of Troubles deaths, and left no section of Irish life untouched. The town they attacked is roughly 60:40 Catholic:Protestant, and the dead consisted of Protestants, Catholics, a Mormon and two Spanish visitors. They killed young, old and middle-aged, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and grannies. They killed republicans and unionists, including a prominent local member of the Ulster Unionist Party. They killed people from the backbone of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They killed unborn twins, bright students, cheery shop assistants and many young people. They killed three children from the Irish Republic who were up north on a day trip. Everyone they killed was a civilian. The toll of death was thus both extraordinarily high and extraordinarily comprehensive.”
Without answers, we can only bear witness. Can we ever bear our pain and that of others in a way that brings about peace and understanding? Is Northern Ireland forever destined to use remembrance as the ultimate divider? Will the families of the bereaved ever see justice?
No answers. Only this:
So I say only: Bear in mind
Those men and lads killed in the streets;
But do not differentiate between
Those deliberately gunned down
And those caught by unaddressed bullets:
Such distinctions are not relevant . . .
Bear in mind the skipping child hit
By the anonymous ricochet . . .
And the garrulous neighbours at the bar
When the bomb exploded near them;
The gesticulating deaf-mute stilled
by the soldier’s rifle in the town square
And the policeman dismembered by the booby trap
in the car . . .
Patriotism has to do with keeping
the country in good heart, the community
ordered by justice and mercy;
these will enlist loyalty and courage often,
and sacrifice, sometimes even martyrdom.
Bear these eventualities in mind also;
they will concern you forever:
but, at this moment, bear in mind these dead.
James Barker (12) from Buncrana
Fernando Blasco Baselga(12) from Madrid
Geraldine Breslin (43) from Omagh
Deborah Anne Cartwright (20) from Omagh
Gareth Conway (18) from Carrickmore
Breda Devine (20 months) from Donemana
Oran Doherty (8) from Buncrana
Aidan Gallagher (21) from Omagh
Esther Gibson (36) from Beragh
Mary Grimes (65) from Beragh
Olive Hawkes (60) from Omagh
Julia Hughes (21) Omagh
Brenda Logue (17) from Omagh
Anne McCombe (45) from Omagh
Brian McCrory(54) from Omagh
Samantha McFarland (17) Omagh
Seán McGrath (61) from Omagh
Sean McLaughlin (12) from Buncrana
Jolene Marlow (17) Omagh
Avril Monaghan (30) from Augher
Maura Monaghan (18 months) from Augher
Alan Radford (16) Omagh
Rocio Abad Ramos (23) from Madrid
Elizabeth Rush (57) Omagh
Veda Short (46) from Omagh
Philomena Skelton (39) from Durmquin
Frederick White (60) from Omagh
Bryan White (26) from Omagh
Lorraine Wilson (15) Omagh
10 Monday Sep 2012
Tags
9/11, anything can happen, Art, cognitive itch, Dr. Victoria Williams, earworms, involuntary music imagery, Memoir, Moving Memories Phoenix Arizona, Moving Memories Phoenix Memorial, music memory, New York, New York City, Northern Ireland, Rolling Stones, Seamus Heaney, Shattered, terrorism, The Rolling Stones, Themes of childhood, World Trade Center 11 years on
The Rolling Stones “Shattered” was stuck in my head all weekend long, not all of it, just a few bars, just enough to be maddening. Not the first time, nor will it be the last, for me to fall prey to an “earworm.” I’m not alone. It turns out, according to psychologist Dr. Victoria Williams that 90% of people experience this “involuntary musical imagery” at least once a week, whereby “a tune comes into the mind and repeats without conscious control.” There are other words for it too according to the International Conference on Music and Cognition website – Dr. Oliver Sacks calls it “sticky music” or “brain worms,” Dr. James Kellaris describes it as a “cognitive itch,” which, he suggests may be relieved by singing aloud the mental tune. Dr. Daniel Levitin, who studies the neuroscience of music, refers to it as “stuck song syndrome.” Levitin also points out that “the songs that get stuck in people’s heads tend to be melodically and rhythmically simple.” Not to diminish the genius of Jagger and Richards, “Shattered” is not a complex tune. Then again, the same might well be said of the opening four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Because music memory is unconscious, so effortless, researchers like Dr. Williamson are fascinated by the implications of understanding it, hoping that if they can better understand why some songs “stick” more than others, they might also find that music memory could help treat patients who suffer from memory loss. Williamson tells NPR’s Jon Donvon that because songs are typically recalled with such accuracy, “this tells us something about the automaticity of musical memory and its power as a tool for learning . . . imagine if we could recall facts that we wanted as easily as we can bring new ones to mind without even trying.” Imagine, indeed. Anyone interested in learning more about the music in their head, can visit The Earwormery to participate in research studies being conducted by a team at Goldsmiths, University of London and BBC 6Music.
Back to the Rolling Stones and “Shattered.” I know what caused this “cognitive itch.” It began with a random email from my brother, which in part, read as follows:
… it’s easy, given the antics of The Rolling Stones in their dotage, to forget what a brilliantly bratty, snottily subversive band they once were. Today, the workings of the shuffle function on my iPod unexpectedly presented me with ‘Shattered’ from ‘Some Girls‘. What a great song! I recall once reading an interview with the New York songwriter Ed Hammell. He recalls being in a bar in Manhattan just a couple of days after 9/11. There was a disco in the bar, and people were dancing to the usual floor-filling favorites, probably trying to forget about the horror of terrorists having blown the heart out of their city. ‘Shattered’ came on, its pumping, driving rhythm prompting whoops and hollers and dancing, until that line which Mick Jagger delivers with the utmost indifferent cheek, “Life an’ joy an’ sex an’ dreams are still surviving on the streets, an’ look at me . . . I’m in tatters. I’m shattered . . .” and within seconds those on the dance floor were embracing each other tightly and weeping uncontrollably. And the way they stayed so, until the song ended, struck Hammell as one of his saddest and yet most affirming memories of post 9/11 New York.
Well, little brother of mine, so far away from New York City and even farther away from Limerick, Ireland, I decided to visit Wesley Bolin Memorial Plaza to pause a while by the 9-11 memorial and to remember again when I first heard about those planes crashing with such force into the heart of New York city. It had been a clear blue morning there, the city’s skyline sparkling in the sunshine, as it was here in Phoenix. I had just dropped Sophie off at pre-school, not yet fully aware of the horror that, by day’s end, would envelope us all.
Until the morning of September 11, 2001, I had taken for granted the sense of security I felt as a woman who had traded in Northern Ireland for America. Such naïvety. I had forgotten that anything can happen. I had grown complacent. Confident. Over-confident that – unlike her mother – my little American girl would never catch herself looking twice at an unattended shopping bag forgotten by someone who was merely in a hurry, or find herself standing stock still with her shoes off and her arms over her head while an airport security guard frisks her or wonder while poring over international headlines, how a complete stranger could hate her because of her nationality.
But anything can happen – it always does.
Anything Can Happen by Seamus Heaney
After Horace, Odes, I, 34
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horsesAcross a clear blue sky. It shook the earth
and the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
the winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towersBe overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleading on the next.Ground gives. The heaven’s weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle lid.
Capstones shift. Nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
Anything can happen.
Coming into focus is a stark and sobering reminder of this truth, the diminutive and solitary piece of a steel beam salvaged from the World Trade Center. Far from home, it is now a part of Phoenix, Arizona, a memorial to all who perished in those cataclysmic attacks on America on September 11, 2001. The concrete on which it sits at Wesley Bolin Plaza is mixed with rubble from the Pentagon and earth from Shanksville, Pennsylvania where Flight 93 plowed into an empty field.
From 10 o’clock in the morning until 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the predictable rays of Phoenix sunshine pierce unforgettable etchings, messages laser-cut on a sweeping canopy of steel, thereby illuminating on the great circle of concrete directly below, a moving sequence of dates, times, events, and emotions. Thus, “Moving Memories” appear and disappear with the sun.
Moving always.
Lest we forget.