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Just when I think I have my dad all figured out, a new snippet of info comes to light, and June always finds me thinking more about him than usual. It’s Father’s Day month, his birthday was the 3rd, and my parents were married on June 16th, now celebrated globally as Bloomsday, the day Leopold Bloom wandered through Dublin in Ulysses by James Joyce, Dad’s favorite author. June is also the prime month for weddings, and Dad was a wedding photographer. He used to say he’d like to write a book about his wedding adventures titled I Shot the Bride with a 4-5, meaning his trusty 4×5 press camera. ....
An Irish adage advises: Go East for a woman; go West for a horse. When I was a girl I had a bicycle. I wanted a horse. That was not in the cards for this city child, so I named my bike Lightening and careened about the neighborhood, crouched racing-low over the handlebars, doing daring (so I thought) one-legged pedal stands, hair flying, pulse pounding, and imagining I was galloping over wide-open countryside. My uncle owned a pair of ponies. Despite their slight height they looked darn big to me, and I thought my cousin was the luckiest boy in the world. Vivid memories center on the times I accompanied them to the boarding stable where my uncle pooh-poohed my mother’s protests and allowed me to feed his beauties carrots and apples. I can still feel their velvet noses nuzzling my palm, hear their hooves thunk and bridles clink as they trotted out from their stalls, and smell the musky mix of horse and hay. ....
Illustration by Benedetta Celada. No Christma-a-as! No Christma-a-as!” Such was the town crier’s chant in the streets of 17th-century Dublin when Ireland felt the hammer blow of Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan iron fist. Garlands of greenery were pulled down and publicly burned. Revelry was forbidden. Priests were imprisoned. But the Irish people found ways to celebrate their most loved holiday despite the hazard. Those troubled times were in fact the origin of the custom of putting a lighted candle in the window on Christmas Eve. The honor of lighting the candle was given to the youngest daughter of the household, even better if she were named Mary. According to one belief, the candle served as a symbol of welcome to Mary and Joseph who desperately sought shelter on the first Christmas night in Bethlehem. It also served as a signal to any priest seeking refuge and protection that he was welcome to say Mass free from danger in that household, albeit in secret. In our own t ....
As my sophomore year of high school began in 1960, the country was buzzing with the coming election. An Irish American was running for president! My Irish relatives rallied to the call and even my Italian family members supported the candidate. He might be Irish but he was Catholic too! When John F. Kennedy’s campaign came to Philadelphia, my father was one of the official photographers. Proudly, I accompanied him to the events and watched as he took pictures of the man who would become the 35th President of the United States. I still have the negatives, some of my most treasured heirlooms. ....