Category: Family
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Thanksgiving Thoughts on a cloudy afternoon
[If you know me, you know this house. 420 Front St. Owego, NY. Photo is mine.] I can see a better time when all our dreams come true. ~~Fairytale of New York. Shane Patrick Lysaght Macgowan Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our…
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the four green fields blog7: Confessions of a flawed traveler
[Redwood Castle, Lorrha, Co Tipperary, Ireland. Photo is mine.] So, are ye staying the night? ~~Coleesa Egan My last blog post, No. 6 in my series. Oh, my last post from nearly a week ago. What can an honest man say about my determination to spend the night in my ancestral castle, reputed to be…
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the four green fields blog6: a night in my ancestral castle
[Castle Redwood. Lorrha, Co Tipperary, Ireland. Photo source: Tipperary Tourism.] This photo is of Castle Redwood. It’s not a ‘castle’ in the popular sense, the way most are depicted in movies. It’s a Keep, intended to hold the owners in safety during an attack. Walls are nearly ten feet thick, slot windows for defending archers…
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the four green fields blog5: a poet’s grave
[A roadside flower, ready to spread it’s seed. Co Sligo, Ireland. Photo is mine.] When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; ~~from When You are…
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The four green fields blog4: An old cemetery & my Irish family
[A very creaky gate leading into an old cemetery. Photo is mine.] Suaimhneas Siorai Air ~~Old Irish Epitaph “Eternal Rest be Upon Him/Her” The green and rusted rotating gate made a noise that seemed more like a stifled scream of metal against metal. It pierced my ears. The harshness of the sound, under other circumstances,…
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the walking stick: father’s day 2025
I never wanted a Guinness more than the moment when I reached the bottom. ~~ Paul Egan. Upon finishing his climb of Croagh Patrick. [Paraphrased] Once upon a time, when I was a young boy, my father gave me a ‘beaver stick’. For my readers who have never had or seen a beaver stick, it…
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the woman who birthed me
[My mother, Mary Hotchko Egan. She is striking a very ’50s pose in our backyard in Owego, NY. Photo is mine.] “Don’t toss that saucer in the air. You’ll drop it.” ~~My mother to me, sometime in the late ’60s. Of course I wouldn’t listen. I tossed it up and caught it, until I missed.…
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To keep you from being homesick
[The found photograph. By unknown photographer, probably my father.] The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect, and as for that object, it depends upon chance whether we come upon it…
patrickjegan 