trickster
-
The Students Are Here – and a new colleague
On Saturday, Mary and I met the students and our three other colleagues at the Dublin Airport, loaded them on the bus, slogged through the bank holiday traffic – including a two-hour back-up outside the town of Moate – and then got them more or less settled in…
-
It’s a Nissan Micra!
In the previous years that I’ve come to teach with Study Abroad Ireland our director, Barry Vaughan, has rented a car for the program. He can’t come this year because he is the president of Maricopa’s faculty association. Mary Aldridge is in charge this year, but she did not want to drive. So, I am…
-
Getting Settled
This is Gavin Doorley, the manager at the Croi Oige Student Accommodation, and his was the first familiar face Mary Aldridge and I saw after arriving in Ireland. His face was not completely familiar – I don’t think I’ve ever seen it with a shiner before! He got it last week while rooting for his…
-
A Tale Should Be Judicious
A tale should be judicious, clear, succinct; The language plain, the incidents well link’d; Tell not as new what everybody knows, And, new or old, still hasten to a close; There, cent’ring in a focus round and neat, Let all your rays of information meet. What neither yields us profit nor delight Is like a…
-
Cushendall, Cushendun and the Glens of Antrim
One day a young woman came upon an old woman washing a stack of tiny white shirts in a river in the north-east corner of Ireland. When she inquired about the shirts the old woman told her, “These are the fairy’s war shirts. There will be a great battle in Scotland tomorrow…
-
Storytellers of Ireland
The Storytellers of Ireland website is now live. On it you can learn about upcoming events and find contact information for most, if not all, of the storytellers I’ve been meeting and writing about. On Wednesday night I had the opportunity to meet two of the Storytellers of Ireland…
-
Is This Your First Time Home?
First time home. The first Wednesday I was here I walked east on the Dublin Road about a mile to the large roundabout that defines the eastern edge of AthloneTown. My destination was the Creggan Court Hotel where the Weight Watchers meetings in Athlone are held. When I got to the desk to pay I…
-
Second Stories
The day before Liz Weir came to class, the students in the Irish Storytelling Tradition experimented with creating simple storyboards as a technique for learning their stories by connecting to its images. Through this exercise I learned that Allison Davis is considering storyboarding as a major once she selects which design college…
-
Liz Weir Comes to Athlone
“I stand in awe of Liz Weir after watching her tell stories to four and five year old children in the Athlone Library. When that horde of kids walked down the stairs, I thought, “Oh, man, Liz doesn’t stand a chance. How in the world can any storyteller tell tales to this…
-
Be Here Now
I got up early this morning to witness the departure of my colleague Mary Aldridge and most of the students. Mary is on her way to Heathrow, with its heightened terrorist alert status, and then on to Nottingham for her Study Abroad in Britain program. This is the first time for the…
-
Bloomsday and Beyond
The 16th of June in Dublin, which happened to be on a Saturday this year, is the annual celebration of Bloomsday. That day in 1904, was the one James Joyce chronicled in his book Ulysses. We started our Bloomsday at the I heard very few of them because…
-
The Dublin Yarnspinners
The Dublin Yarnspinners had arranged several weeks ago for me to be the featured storyteller at their monthly meeting on Thursday, June 14th. As it happened, Study Abroad Ireland was scheduled to be in Dublin – starting the 14th – for our annual multi-day trip that includes the celebration of Bloomsday on…