This month Trasna is featuring writers participating in Words Ireland National Mentoring Programme. Every year, 22 emerging writers are selected for the program in the areas of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, children’s/YA fiction, and poetry. Each are paired with mentors. Featured this week is poet Billy Fenton. On participating in Words Ireland, he…
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Equality and Justice: What Can We Do? By Anthony Nganga Dear Community Members, The protests precipitated by the police killing of George Floyd and numerous other black Americans are an indication of people’s frustrations from deliberate inequalities and injustices they have faced for a very long time. It has become…
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The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The peaceful protests continue amidst emerging proposals for policy change, but will they amount to anything? Longtime Boston leader and community activist Hubie Jones, in his unpublished book Black in Boston: A Lover’s Quarrel, came to understand the…
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Best Back Seat Passenger By Nancye Tuttle My grandson Jack turned 16 on April 4. He’s a tall, handsome kid with a winning smile and friendly personality. Like other Massachusetts 16-year-olds, he couldn’t wait for the big day because it meant one thing — he could get his learner’s permit.…
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Eagle River Virus By Mike McCormick I’m sitting on my deck listening to the ebullient calls of ruby-crowned kinglets as they flit from branch to branch high atop birch and spruce trees. My wife Katy is transplanting geraniums from inside our arctic entry room to outdoor flower boxes. We are…
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Diary in the Time of Coronavirus (8) by Paul Hudon May 31 In Consciousness, his only volume of memoirs, John Updike proposes two life-defining questions. First, Why me? Second, Why here? Identity and place. He paired the right questions, only, being Updike, he put them back to front. Place comes first…
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My co-blogger Marie Sweeney writes about making slumgullion at home. The first time I read that word I knew I had to work it in to a poem. Turns out the dish she makes (and a lot of us make) has a bunch of names. I only knew it as…
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Orchardist and artist Linda Hoffman writes about fruit in this post from her blog on May 31. Blueberries on the way. And here’s her latest post from June 7 about the way water moves on Old Frog Pond Farm in Harvard, Mass. Early Morning Pond View, 2020, watercolor (Linda…
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The weather in Lowell was mostly sunny and warm on Monday, June 5, 1944. Across the Atlantic Ocean, things were quite different. In the English Channel, high winds caused heavy seas and low clouds enveloped the coast of France. The forecast caused General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, to…
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Shout Out to All the Dads by Chris Wilkinson “What’s happening in the video?” Hey, you know what was a hard conversation for the white father of a brown son? Explaining race-based injustice to an almost six year old (who I’m certain will have struggles in life that I can’t…
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