Category: Melancholy Thoughts
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Unexpected Memories
Seventeen years ago today, my older brother Denny, passed away. It was not a sudden unexpected death but a slow decline with cancer. His family misses him terribly. My brother, Dan and I miss him. I think about him a great deal. We were a family of four boys. Denny was the second oldest, born…
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Crossing The Liffey: Our First And Last Full Day In Dublin’s Fair City
I was sitting opposite my wife in the restaurant of the Arlington Hotel where we are staying. It’s just steps away from the O’Connell Street Bridge. I was making strange, odd and contorted…some would say ugly faces in her direction. She simply stared back at me. My eyes watered and I continued to wiggle my…
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I Never Met An English Country Church I Didn’t Like
[St. John the Baptist, Buckthorn Weston, Dorset] It’s been said by many travelers that if one wants to know what’s happening in any small English village, just go to the pub and listen for an hour. I think the same is true, to a degree, of social life provided by the Church in these towns…
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The Haunted Well Of Avebury
I heard about the haunted pub and the cursed well of Avebury while touring a church in Gloucestershire. I was purchasing a CD of Traditional Country Songs (sung by a small chorus) at the gift shop of St. John the Baptist in Cirencester. I recognized many of the titles from my collection of Irish songs…
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The Green Man: Watcher Of The Lychgate
I am a conflicting image. Sometimes I appear in churches, carved into the bosses of an archway. At other times, I am associated with pagan symbols of nature worship. I am a man and I am a tree…one part of me morphs into another. I am called The Green Man by those who study the…
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Yes, But Why Can’t You Go Home Again?
It’s a cliché. It’s a meme. It’s been repeated a hundred billion times by three hundred billion people. “You can’t go home again” I’ve read Thomas Wolfe’s book by the same name. It was a long time ago. I may be wrong (correct me if I am), but I do not recall Wolfe ever saying…
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Digging A Grave On A Beautiful Spring Afternoon
I stood in the soft loam, nine inches below ground level, leaned against my shovel, and thought about death and insects. This is not a difficult thing to do when you’re helping to dig a grave on a day in May when the gnats and flies are biting ankles and arms. After all, it is…
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A Chain Of Events Has No End
The judge cancelled the restraining order setting into motion a chain of events… I walked into my classroom on a September morning to meet my class for the first time. I looked around the room of faces, hands holding pencils, open notebooks and staring eyes. A chain of events was set into motion… One in…
patrickjegan 