Patrick Egan's Blog, page 2

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, could peel paint off a wall.

I wasn’t complaining. The gate sounded precisely what I would expect of one that led into an old and unmaintained graveyard. But there were more interesting things to see inside the lichen-covered stone walls.

[The copse of trees hid a ruined chapel. Photo is mine.]

Like a roofless abandoned chapel?

I pushed through the rusty gate and found myself on a faint path through the unmowed grass. Then the path faded and the hummocks of turf were all I had to walk on. The footing was uneasy, uneven, difficult. Sunken rectangles of weeds told a story of old wooden coffins that were no longer extant. Ahead was a copse of trees. A wall? Did I see a twelve foot stone wall engulfed by the trees? I walked around the side. An arch. It lead through the wall.

I made my way toward the arch.

[The entrance to the former chapel. Photo is mine.]

{NOTE: I intended to insert a short video of my walking into the space beyond the arch. For some inexplicable reason WordPress would not allow the video to be loaded. And I failed to take any single photos of the graves in the interior. Suffice it to say, the graves I did see were so overgrown with shrubs, they were barely visible. There was nothing so see there. I apologize. It was a cool video. Perhaps there is another explanation? Who knows?}

But the visit was not a total loss. My distant cousin, Joan Egan, and I did locate a grave of another of my very distant relatives. The stone was so weathered only the surname was visible.

[The grave of a distant relative. The name was visible, barely. No dates. Photo is mine.]

A little short story to pass the time…

I leaned against the stone wall, near the narrow lane, out of the heat and sun, in the cool of the tree and stone wall. Mariam and my cousin were busy chatting in the car. I needed a quick break before we drove on to where I was to meet more of my Irish family. I flattened myself against the wall and stretched my back. That’s what I needed. I had been sitting in a car for days now. I needed a moment to listen to the wind blow through and around the graveyard. A few sheep walked past me as I stood working out a pain in my L4 & L5. An older man with hair of grey was following the sheep.

“Hello,” I said.

“Good afternoon,” said the man, brushing his white hair.

“Where are walking to?” I asked of the man.

“Oh,” he said, “I’m going to off the distillery over there. See it?”

“Yes, I do see it,” I replied.

“I’m going to buy something for my son, he lives in America, you see?”

“That’s so nice of you, sir,” I said.

“The least I could do. I miss him. And I love him with all my heart.”

Earlier, we had visited a much newer cemetery, St. Patrick’s. Here is where many of my Irish family are interred.

[Joan, at the headstone for her grandfather, Michael. He, as I understand it, is how she and her brothers are related to me. Photo is mine.]

I returned to the car and we drove to Culleens where more of my family lived. I first visited the place in 1975. Again in 1984 and the most recent time was 2015 with my son, Brian and Mariam.

So much has changed there. New buildings, forests that were planted in the last ten years. It was all so different. And it was wholly different from when my father was there in the early 1970s. Joan and I talked about my dad quite a lot that day. He is remembered by everyone. Some of the people I met in 1975 have passed away.

Joan stopped at a lay-by and said that this spot, overlooking the shallow valley and the distant meadows was where my father said, on more than one occasion, that he could see himself building a small cottage there…and spending summers listening to the wind in the gorse.

He sought the quiet in much the same way I do.

[A note from me: The above short story is just that. It’s fiction. There is one thing in the story that is true, however. It doesn’t really matter, though, what the one true thing is. It just a story. In the end, it’s just a story.]

the four green fields blog3:the burren

[Where we were. Photo is mine.]

Burren (‘b^ren0 n. A limestone area on the North Clare coast in the Irish Republic, famous for its wildflowers, caves, and dolmens.

The Burren is a lot of things. It’s a place in Ireland, a route to tour, and a UNESCO Heritage Site. To me, it’s something else altogether.

It’s mysterious and mythic.

When I first encountered the Burren, it was in 1984 while driving through Northwest Ireland to attend an Egan Clan reunion. My father was driving so I saw it from the passenger window of a rent car. My face was plastered against the glass. I remember it rained that day. Recalling the weather from forty years ago is not something most people can do, but I’ll never forget the way the fog hung low, just above the uneven pavement of limestone that seemed to extend off into a misty dreamscape. We got out to take photos and I thought that I could easily just keep walking off, stepping over the pitted surface, and just keep going. Perhaps a voice called out to me. Maybe it was my constant desire to find a quiet place, even if it was in the rain, even if it was in a place I knew nothing about.

I next drove through the region in 2015 with Mariam and my son, Brian. That day was clear, bright and sun-splashed, but the desire to just walk off and sit in a nook or by a gorse bush, or a patch of wildflowers was there. I still heard the voice.

Then, just a few days ago, Mariam and I were staying in Ennis, just at the edge of the National Park. I was worried about my back and foot problems. Would I be able to even walk 100 meters? A kilometer?

It was unseasonably warm, not characteristic of Ireland in any part of the summer. We walked off to explore.

I was doing what I had thought about for nearly half a century. We walked 1.3 and 1.5 km’s on two separate days. I was too uncomfortable in the heat to even think of camping or just sitting. On the limestone fields, the sun was relentless. But I was out there.

I was heeding that voice I heard so many decades ago. And, I have no doubt that no matter where I walk, or camp, or stroll, be it in a wilderness, or a city park, I will hear the voice urging me on…

Enjoy the photos:

[On the Burren. Photo is mine.]

[Some of our hike was under the trees and in the welcome shade. Photo is mine.]

[Mariam, walking pole in hand, prepares to pass through a narrow gate in the stonewall. Photo is mine.]

So, there’s my story of the Burren and the Voices.

Coming up in a few days: A vacant church in a old churchyard cemetery and a visit with my Irish relations. Stay tuned…

The four green fields blog2: a stone circle, the ring of Kerry and beyond

[A steeple in Kenmare. Photo is mine.]

We were preparing to depart Kenmare, but I had found one more place I wanted to visit. The Kenmare Stone Circle. It was a short walk from our hotel, down Main Street (sounds so American), past a hundred pubs, fifty Aran Island Woolen/Weaver shops full of scarves, and Clan throws. If you’re cold and thirsty and you can’t find a solution, than you have some serious perception issues. I can’t help you. Turn left and walk along a narrow street lined with pastel painted houses, side-by-side with no yards and fewer places to park an Audi or a Clio or a Citroen. Very soon we were standing at the small booth where you put a few euros in an honesty box and were handed a pen and two pieces of paper.

A few steps away, partly hidden by a crescent of trees was a stone circle. Fifteen stones, placed in a nearly perfect circle and enclosing a boulder dolman which is considered quite rare.

[Stone circle with the boulder dolman in the center. Photo is mine.]

I don’t see the need to go into stone circles here. Everyone on the planet knows about Stonehenge. Briefly, they were built for religious and/or astronomical reasons. This circle is thought to be aligned to the solstice. Next trivia game, I suggest you go with solstice.

However, stone circles, large or small, complete or broken, are not trivial in any way. They were constructed with 2,000 year old engineering knowledge and without equipment. The labor alone is jaw-dropping. It’s a testament to the strong beliefs of a pagan society. I believe that such structures were less a way to pay tribute to a god, and more of a way to predict eclipses and sunrises which were in turn linked to seasonal planting and hunting. And to tell the group when it was time to pack up and relocate.

We are all related in one way or another to a wandering people. Their DNA is our DNA. We too were immigrants, a millennia or two ago.

But why were we given the paper and pen? That is made obvious when you approach the two hawthorn trees.

[If you wanted, you could write a wish on the paper and tie it to a branch. Photo is mine.]

I read a few of the messages. They ranged from sad and hopeful wishes: “I wish that my aunt Pauline will get better” and “I pray my niece would stop drinking” to selfish and cruel wishes: “I wish my sister will suffer.”

People can be strange. Bitterness is common, suffering is universal, loneliness is epidemic, but why wish any sort of pain on another human…and one that you know or are related to?

[Wishes on a hawthorn tree. Photo is mine.]

So, after writing my wish (I won’t reveal what I wrote, I’ll just say that I mentioned compassion and love), it was time to turn our rental car around, program the SatNav, and head for the Ring of Kerry.

This route is most likely the most popular single road in Ireland. Everyone and their cousin from Topeka who come to the Emerald Island, will at some point find themselves on the Ring. We found this fact to be true. That’s why there are dozens of tour coaches, yes, coaches driving the narrow roadway that can barely handle two Fiats. As I passed those behemoths, I would close my eyes for a moment, bracing myself, and listening for the crunch of metal on metal. To me, my side rear view mirror felt like it stuck out three feet into the other land. I kept my window rolled up because I didn’t want to feel the shards of the mirror glass hit my face.

When it was over, when we had reached Glenbeigh on the west coast of the Kerry Peninsula, I exhaled for the first time in 3 hours and 48 minutes. But, vehicle damage aside, the beauty of the Ring of Kerry is beyond mere words, my vocabulary to truly describe the ocean meeting the rocky coast and the verdant hills. If you drive it clock-wise like we did, the seacoast was off to your left, beyond breathtaking expanses high above the valley floor. I just couldn’t drive by a lay-by without getting out, taking a photo and breathing the humid and salty air. And on your drive, on your right are hills that would be called mountains in some places. Large sweeping green fields and stone walls. White cottages scattered about, some isolated and a few in small clusters, never big enough to be a village.

Well, what am I trying to say? What am I trying to write that will excite you, dear reader? Here’s a cliche: I’m at a loss for word. & Words fail me. But words are not allowed to fail me. I write blogs. I write. But I’m nothing if I’m not honest. So, bearing that in mind, I can say that the stark beauty of the Ring is for poets and writers far greater than me. I look into the misty distance and I see a field of green, the tone, the hue, is a mile different than the field just beyond the stone wall. And that field is totally unique in it’s own gentle apple green. And across the road there are three fields that share and blend, one to the other, the same olive shade. See, beyond that small shed, it’s sage. Over there is a hectare of the deepest and purest moss. There’s basil and juniper and seaweed green. And if I squint, hard enough to tear up, I can make out a grey stone walled field of Kelly green.

I’ve read there are twenty-eight different shades of green in Ireland. Maybe. But I can say that if Vermont ever fades, Ireland has enough Chlorophyll for all the wide world.

[Nearing the tip of the Ring of Kerry. Off in the distance, somewhere, is Skellig Michael, a small island with a 6th century monastery. It’s unclear to me whether the two islands to the right are those islands. Photo is mine.]

[Our road winds over the mountain at the right. Photo courtesy of Mariam Voutsis.]

By mid-afternoon,I had spent more time than I wanted behind the wheel. I need out of the car. I needed air. Patiently I waited for a proper lay-by. I pulled over and walked up a short distance. It was quiet. I felt strong in my legs, like decades had fallen away from my muscles. It was peaceful. I sat on a rock and leaned over. There was a world of life all around me. I was sitting on living organisms. I looked deeper into the moss and wild flowers.

[Water droplets caught on a spider web. Photo is mine.]

[A hundred different organisms in and around a rock. Photo is mine.]

A few kilometers above Glenbeigh, on the western edge of the Kerry Peninsula, we pass through Killorglin. This is probably end of the famous drive. From here we continue through Tralee and northeastward to the Tarbert ferry. It was a long drive. Not a lot of kilometers, but it was all on a winding road, a bit too narrow at times, with plenty of stops for the loo, water and just to stretch our legs. At Tarbert ferry we had a 14 minute wait to board (we were the third car in the queue) the boat and cross the Shannon River. Old decommissioned coal or peat power plants sat with weeds growing in the parking lots beside the giant wind mills. Ireland is rapidly moving away from fossil fuel toward the future, the bright future of renewable energy.

I drove off the ferry and turned right to drive the 30 or so kilometers to Ennis. This is where I am writing this post, at the Woodstock Hotel (a spacious golf resort). We’ve just returned to our room after a curry dinner in the pub. We are tired and sore from two days hiking through and over the world famous Burren.

What, you may say, is the Burren?

That’s the next blog post. It’ll be from Galway.

Meanwhile, here’s something that I find delightful to watch and listen to…

The four green fields blog: Touchdown at shannon to Kenmare

[The shortest distance between two points is a curved line (when The Great Circle is in play). Photo is mine.]

To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.

~~Old Irish Saying

Five hours and fifty some minutes separated us from New York City and Shannon Airport. Round it up…six hours. Not many hours, not too many miles, but a thousand worlds apart. Does that make any sense? The roar, energy and sweet chaos of Manhattan somehow morphs into a languid quiet and gentle pace of, what many call The Old Country or The Old Sod. But over here, across the cold Atlantic, all the countries are old. Very old.

But that’s another meditation all together.

We picked up our rent car about 9 AM. We should have taken names and phone numbers. Not ten miles down the road, I felt that we made a mistake.

Me: “The indicator light says the tires need to be checked.”

The guy: “Oh, that just the sensor. The tires are just fine. They’ve been checked.”

Needless to say we are going to give the company a lot of grief when we drop the Hyundai off in Dublin. Enough said about that. So far, everything is going well.

At 1 PM, we arrived at the Killarney Towers Hotel in Killarney. The town was far larger than I remember it was when I first visited in the mid-1970s. The shops that lined High Street stocked more woolen goods than I thought possible. Where did it all come from? Are there that many sheep here? I was very impressed, so much so that I bought the second wool sweater that I laid my eyes on. And of course, a set of Egan Clan coasters, emblazoned with our coat of arms. But the wool. There’s something about wool that I find fascinating. The smell of the lanolin, the warmth, the colors…

[The skeins. Oh the skeins. Photo is mine.]

I’m a little hesitant to post a photo of the sweater I purchased at the Aran Wool Shop because it seems, I don’t know it seems a little trivial. There is so much to say about this this journey, what’s so important about a wee little sweater? But here it is anyway:

[Nice choice, eh? Photo is mine.]

After sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted, I was up early and off to find a berry scone and an Americano. The Celtic Coffee Shop had it all and more. Then off to the bookstore to buy The Irish Times and the Guardian. Plenty of reading for the evening. But, the first major event of our two-month trip was to take a boat ride on one of the fabled lakes of Killarney. We found the place to board the small boat at the shore beneath Ross Castle. This was a well fortified castle but all the ramparts and moats failed to keep it safe from Oliver Cromwell. It was the last castle to fall to him in 1503.

[Mariam strolls the ground of Ross Castle. Photo is mine.]

Dinner (the buffet at the hotel) and a stroll along College Street. The number of pubs boggled the mind. And most of them had Iive Irish music. As we walked down the street, it was Molly Malone one one side, followed by Whiskey in the Jar, on the other. Our hotel pub, Donoghues had two mates belting out The Long Black Veil and The Wild Rover. It was all catching up on me halfway through Come Out Ye Blacks and Tans…I needed to settle in and read and then sleep.

Read? I made it through one page of “The Gathering” by Anne Enright. Awesome book but the cool Irish air lulled me to a sweet slumber.

We decided that another week in Killarney might have been a better choice, but we had miles to go.

Today, August 9, we began our journey in earnest. We found the N71 and pointed the car toward Kenmare. The lakes drifted past on our right. The large coach busses filled with tourists took up much of the narrow road. More than once we had to give way to the big boys. But, soon the views of the Reeks came upon us. I could feel the presence of my father on this road. The scenery I saw today was the same photos I saw in 1970 when he made his first trip to Ireland.

Here are just a few of the places we stopped beside during our drive from Killarney to Kenmare:

[At the edge of the Macgillcuddy’s Reeks. Photo is mine.]

[En route to Kenmare between Muckross Lake and Upper Lake. Photo is mine.]

[Never had the chance to look up the name of this little wind blown flower. Mariam had to hold the stem to steady it. Still didn’t work. Photo is mine.]

In the weeks to come, there will be many more illustrations in this blog series that will attempt to find something interesting and out of the ordinary for you to consider.

Meanwhile, as I drive, through quiet wooded sections, or open fields of rock and gorse, I hope to take long moments to try to walk in many footsteps (those who came before me) like my father of several decades ago. And further back, to retrace the pathways of the bards, those storytellers who made it their lives to keep the oral traditions alive, the Traveling People, the an lucht siuil, the itinerant educators who would teach the children of the village in exchange for a place to sleep and a few meals…before moving on.

But my greatest hope is to follow in the steps of the poets that wandered the West Country, men like Antoire O’ Raifteriri, a famous blind poet who is known for the poem, Mary Hynes, in which he describes Mary, a fair beauty, he writes of her beauty, even though he has never seen her…and never will.

Slan…

The Icefield

[Photo is mine.]

There are lives that are erring and aimless,

And deaths that just hang by a hair…

~~Robert Service “The Spell of the Yukon”

It’s been a long time since I used a quote by the poet Robert Service. It’s been even longer since I thought about sitting on a ledge, alone, on the margin of the Taku Glacier, in the middle of the Juneau Icefield, about thirty-five miles from the nearest doctor, and thinking one thought:

What the hell have I gotten myself into?

Me, a sixteen year old from Owego, not yet a senior in high school, sat on that ledge and felt fear, real smack-in-your-face fear. Truthfully, I was not totally alone. But the geologist I was with was out of sight, doing whatever geologists do when they chip rock samples and check compass bearings and write things in little yellow notebooks. But the fear I felt that day has etched itself into my memory. I will never forget how helpless and fragile I felt sitting there and waiting for my partner to be finished.

At sixteen, I was the youngest assistant to be accepted by the Juneau Icefield Research Program. My brother, Chris, who was doing research for his MS and later a PhD, had convinced the Director, Dr. Maynard Miller, that I was not going to do the teenage thing. I was there to serve as a field assistant, carry loads, sometimes cook, be helpful, stay out of way and refrain from whining. I did these things and more. But underneath my placid exterior, I was freaking terrified.

At first anyway. As the summer wore on, I gained confidence. I was less afraid but never unaware that one misstep could end badly.

I sat there looking out over the glacier and kept thinking: Be careful. Be aware of everything around you. One slip on the chunky glacier ice, at the edge of a crevasse…a person would last only minutes at the bottom of that crevasse.

[The intensely beautiful blue ice of a deep crevasse. Somewhere down in the deep dark almost black ice usually is a pool of melt-water. Photo source: Unknown.]

The year was 1964. I returned to Owego in late August and soon began my final year in high school.

Three years later, I was hired by the USGS to be a Geologic Field Assistant. I found myself back on the Juneau Icefield, at the same isolated camps, geologizing on the same nunataks. This time I was being paid to camp, hike, climb mountains and help the geologists.

It was a sweet summer job and I knew it.

But it wasn’t long before the same fears and anxieties returned. This time the game was more serious. Four of us, two assistants and two geologists were more isolated, further back from Juneau, often in places that few others had been.

It was a day in July, 1967, when me and the geologists walked into a situation that was at once, surreal, interesting, challenging and totally terrifying.

We were X-country skiing across a large snowy expanse of the LLewellyn Glacier engaged in a serious discussion of a heavy topic, like the attributes of Helium over Hydrogen in dirigibles. And then we stopped.

We were in a whiteout. A cloud had descended onto a snowfield. No horizon. Nothing to judge direction and scale. No sky, the ground was just the few meters around our skis. We were sightless with our eyes wide open and seeing white in every direction. It’s difficult to find the words to describe the level of disorientation. There was nothing to do except to continue skiing, making every effort to follow a week old snow mobile track that was hard to see even in the best of conditions.

I was the first one to spot it. There was a brown bear directly in our path. I judged it to be about ten meters away. We discussed a plan. Play dead? Freeze? Slowly turn around? Or…or move aggressively toward it, screaming and banging on our water cups? We chose to attack, fully aware that if anything went wrong, it could prove to be lethal. And not for the bear.

Ten seconds later we both stood feeling rather silly. What I had seen and believed to be a bear (I really believed that at the time), was a five gallon fuel can. That’s what whiteouts will do. No sense of scale. Nothing to compare one thing to another.

But a little later, as the fog began to thin, I slowed my pace. I did not want this unique experience to end. I was (forget my companion for a moment) alone with myself. No distractions. No objects to look at. Just me and the cloud-ground world I had inhabited for two hours.

I never experienced that feeling ever again.

And, somehow, in a City, an ocean voyage, walking a path through a forest, strolling a footpath across a field of rape in Dorset, I seek that time when Nature overwhelmed me, tested me, took me down a few pegs and left me in awe.

Which brings me back to Robert Service. His poems have delighted me since I first read The Cremation of Sam McGee. I read it to my children and I hope to read it to my grandson.

One day in the summer of 1966, I was sitting on my front porch. I was trying to memorize one of Service’s shorter pieces when I came across two lines that struck me somewhere near my heart.

I’ve decided that I would like these lines engraved on my headstone.

It’s the beauty that fills me with wonder,

It’s the silence that fills me with peace

My 700th Blog: Another chapter in a Journey

[The usual metaphor for a journey. Photo is mine.]

The life in which nothing happens goes the fastest, because it has no landmarks.

~~Katherine Tynan

The last time I reached a milestone, my 600th post, was on Feb. 3, 2023 (at 9:17 PM). Looking back, I have been writing about 100 every several years…it’s been fairly consistent, surprisingly. My first attempt at writing blogs was July 2012. At the time I wasn’t sure what a ‘blog’ was. I’m not sure I know too much more, 13 years later.

I’ve averaged one or more posts per month since 2012. How did I ever maintain such a rate?

That’s a good question. I don’t have an answer.

Usually when I reach a milestone, I recap for you all the truly strange things I’ve tried to do. The different styles, different tones (from the whimsical to the serious).

This will be a departure from the past. Oh, don’t worry, dear readers, I’m not ready to stop posting just yet. I have more things to say.

Do I count the ‘likes’? Of course. I care about whether or not anyone out there is reading my thoughts. I care in the same way a fly-fishing person casts the weighted lure into the morning mist of some Limestone bottomed stream outside of Carlisle, PA. Into the mist it disappears, but is there a bite, a nibble? The angler hopes so. I, as a writer, certainly hopes so.

I hope that the people I love, love reading my thoughts. And, it’s quite a satisfying feeling to look at my stats and find that I have found someone reading my material in over 125 different countries around the world. People I will never never have a chance to meet. But I see that they have read my piece and took the nano-second to click on a button that relays that fact to my laptop.

I’m writing this in a haunted Guest House in my hometown of Owego, NY. I lived a significant part of my life in a house at the other end of Front Street. Now, I have to pay to walk the streets that once were my very own.

I will be choosing a new Theme in the coming months. That’s the appearance of the post. I liked my old one but it’s no longer supported by WordPress. And I never did like writing on a black background. I want to re-affirm one fact that may not have been on anyone’s mind when I started out writing blogs…I will never deceive you and use AI without warning you first. All my errors are mine. I still think for myself.

I will be writing about more serious and timely topics. The times demand it.

And, finally, I want to thank those of you who have told me that you read me and enjoy the material.

My wife, Mariam, has been my major editor. Thank you, m’dear.

My son, Brian and my daughter, Erin…love you both more than the distance from the earth to the moon.

And, thanks to anyone who is my fan, someone I will never meet..thanks for finding me in your Google search and thinking, hey, that’s sounds like something I might want to read.

Keep reading….

on linda’s porch: some wondrous things are about to bloom

[In Linda’s front yard, flowers abound in every corner. Photo is mine.]

Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life

~~Steve Jobs (Probably not spoken at the Greenport graduation, but I like the quote so here it is.)

Saturday 21 June 2025–

Mariam and I are visiting her colleague and friend, Linda Mugford. She has a beautiful home in the beautiful town of Greenport, NY. It’s a absolutely beautiful day. The three of us are sitting on her porch, and a cool and impossibly fresh breeze is making her wind chimes clink and ring and echo in her backyard. Her dog, Ginger’s tail makes a faint thumping as she lies, dreaming dog dreams on the porch floor. It’s 8:39 AM. Twenty-one minutes before the parade begins. It’s not your usual parade. No, it isn’t. It’s the start of the graduation ceremonies.

I love a parade, so I’m anxiously watching the far end of Front Street for the first fire engine.

There’s the siren. Then the blast of the firetruck’s horn.

I step into the yard and stand beside the Day Lilies. The flowers are just hours away from blooming, so it seems. The buds are nearly bursting forth, but not yet.

[The Day Lilies. So near to blooming. Photo is mine.]

I look to the left. The seniors, I’m told, decorate their cars, or ride in the back of a pick-up, or just wave from the windows. As I wait for the first car, I look up…

[Utility poles along Front Street leading to the Greenport School. The graduates are honored by their photos flapping in the breeze. Photo is mine.]

People are lining the sidewalk. Family. Friends. Cheering and yelling congratulations to each student with a cap and gown.

[Video is mine.]

[A grad in an MG. Life is sweet. Photo is mine.]

My wrists are getting sore from the waving. My voice is still strong enough to yell: Good for you! I stand back to take it all in. The horns, music, shouts fill the air.

Then I look at the lilies next to me. I look at the seniors. A metaphor is inches away. The grads, the flowers…they are both about to explode out into the world. One to fill the nose with sweet odors and fill the eye with colors. The other, to return the mortar boards and gowns to the gym, head to the backyard, the restaurant, the beach with friends and family and then…and then start packing for college or preparing to take a job.

And each one, in their own special way, go out to make a splash in the world. I did the same thing seventy years ago to the day. I don’t know if I made a splash, but I did learn something. Something I can yell at each passing car and each graduate…

I would shout into the wind to them and tell them to make each moment count. Remember everything. Take notes. Keep a journal of your life and thoughts. Take plenty of pictures.

And sing whatever song you wish. Dance to whatever tune makes you happy…

That’s how Mariam and I spent a beautiful Saturday in June. Way out on Long Island.

[The Greenport School. It houses K – 12. A student will spend their school days in the same building. Go in as a crying Kindergartner (like I did), and come out a young man or woman. Photo is mine.]

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 is a…stick, about the thickness of a broom handle, the ends of which are chewed by the aforementioned beaver into a sweet conical end. It would be used in the construction of a ‘beaver dam’. (Check out a YouTube segment on Beaver Dams.)

But, I am starting to digress.

I stood looking at things that we brought down from our home in the Adirondacks to our apartment in New York City. Time was October, 2022.

After picking out a few tools that we would no longer need (I was going to give them to our Super), I spotted a stick. I thought it was a ‘beaver stick’. Well, I said to myself, who needs a ‘beaver stick’ on the Upper West Side. It needed to be tossed. But where? Ah, I said to myself, just across Riverside Drive is Riverside Park. There are plenty of sticks of all kinds laying around. I’ll just take it over and toss it into the shrubs. I actually got as far as the front door of our building, carrying the stick, when I thought it just felt funny. Not like all the ‘beaver sticks’ I’ve had before.

I got to the sidewalk, still holding the stick, intent on discarding it into the Park. No, I thought, something feels wrong.

I looked at the stick. Whoa! This was not a ‘beaver stick’. This was a gift from my father to me. A very special gift. It was his walking stick that he used on his one and only ascent of Croagh Patrick in 1970. June 10th to be exact.

[My father’s Walking Stick. He was 56 years old when he made the climb. At 78, I will attempt to make it to the top. Travel sites indicate that for an experienced hiker, it is a 4 – 5 hour climb. Videos are mine.]

I returned to the apartment and put the stick in a corner, vowing never to throw it away. That would be unforgivable. You simply can not discard an artifact, hand carved by my father, that he used to make a pilgrimage up Ireland’s holy mountain. For that day, it was his shillelagh, connecting him to his Irish heritage.

And I nearly threw it away!

Days later, I sat and held the stick in my hand, turning it over and reading what he had carved into the shaft.

Climbing Croagh Patrick is something that millions of Catholics, mostly of Irish descent, do as a form of penance, and to be closer to God.

The mountain, also called The Reek, over looks Clewe Bay in the northwest of Ireland. It rises 2,507′ above the sea. A legend tells that St. Patrick fasted for 40 days on the summit, clearly meant to emulate Jesus’ fasting on a mountain in Judea for 40 days.

[Croagh Patrick. Source: Wikipedia.]

I plan on being in Ireland in August of 2025. And, in memory of my father, I have made plans to climb the holy mountain. I won’t be there for 40 days fasting, however. Nor will I do the climb any where near the last Sunday in July. I don’t wish to compete for trail space with the thousands of pilgrims heading for the top…many barefoot.

So, here’s to my father on the day when we remember and miss the fathers in our lives…

[Note: My father got his Guinness at the pub when he walked away from the mountain. Just sayin’…]

Poet from the north country

No quote necessary…

~~Patrick Egan

[Photo credit: Google search.]

This morning I was reading an article in The Guardian about Amazon Echo (Alexa). It was written by a journalist from the UK. I learned how much that is spoken by me and Mariam is stored in a server…somewhere. The writer told of how he now knows of his daughter’s musical tastes. It’s all been archived…somewhere.

That, of course, led me to think of what I’ve asked Alexa to do for me, list for me, and to play for me. So, I did what you’d expect me to do on a morning like this, on a day like this…Dylan’s birthday.

Me: “Alexa, play a Bob Dylan song in honor of his birthday.”

She complied and immediately Blowin’ in the Wind came through the speaker. I’ve heard the song for far too many years than I care to reflect on just now. Trust me, dear reader, I heard the song about as many times as he has played it in concert. (Not really, but it sounds good to write that.)

As usual, a few words, a phrase, a tone came to me in a unique way. As I grow older, his words take on new meanings.

…And you better start swimmin’

Or you’ll sink like a stone…

These days, these horrific, soul-destroying, mind-torturing, heart-breaking days, where we are watching the fall of a culture of generosity and the rise of a culture of selfishness and greed…his words are truer now than they were when he wrote them.

We came out of the tumultuous 1960s a better and more humane society. I am so terrified that it will take a generation or two to repair the damage being done this very day.

Every American, every citizen of the planet should start swimmin’, before they drain the sea.

So, Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan!!!!!

You were right all along.

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. It hit the floor and broke into many pieces. Mom just sighed and walked into the kitchen.

I felt like crap. She accepted my apologizes but the saucer was gone. She suffered something inside her heart that day, and I was responsible for it. But, she moved on, never holding it against me. Never saying: “Remember when you didn’t listen to me?”

That was a teaching moment of sorts, but it was lost on me. I constantly relive the hurts I suffered. I don’t think my mother did. I think she just had a way of accepting what life handed to her. And be thankful.

Maybe it was part of being a child of the Great Depression. Who’s to say?

Early On…

From things she told me, old notebooks of hers that I’ve looked through after she passed away, I knew she was a dreamer. She copied page after page of the sayings of Marcus Aurelius. She could quote him. I can picture her with her head in her hand and looking out of the window of the Falls-Overfield School where she was educated, and dreaming of the world beyond that nearby hill. Her parents came from Eastern Europe, likely Hungary…maybe Romania. The region shows up in my DNA test. She was born, probably in Scranton, and grew up on a farm in the rolling hills west of that city.

[To the best of my knowledge, my grandmother is on the right, holding a daughter. Perhaps my mother. No notations on the back of the photo. Photo is mine.]

[My mother’s mother, Mary Hotchko. Unknown date. Unknown location. Photo is mine.]

Sometime in the late 1920s, my mother met a young man, Paul Egan. They enjoyed each others company. So much that they married in 1936. The wedding photo is awesome. I’ll post it when I can get it scanned.

My father scored a job at IBM when the company’s importance was increasing. But they had to move up from NE Pennsylvania to Endicott, NY. And then to Owego in 1945. I was the last of four boys, born on May 31, 1947. In a drawer of a dresser I found a bundle of New Baby cards sent to my mom. They were dated June 2 or 3. It was no secret among my mother’s friends that she dearly wanted a girl. So the cards referencing me read like sympathy notes. But regardless of her slight disappointment at having a fourth boy, she was proud of her children. She boasted once that the priest at St. Patrick’s mentioned our family during the sermon. From the pulpit! Without revealing surnames, he said that one mother in the parish had named her boys strong Catholic names, strong names of saints of long ago…

“She named them, Christopher, Dennis, Daniel and Patrick.” Okay no girl at the end, but she loved her children without measure and told them so.

[My mom’s boys at the Birch Tree in our backyard. We posed there for four photos spanning decades. In case my readers don’t recognize me, I’m the one on the right. Photo is mine.]

My childhood darkness and my mothers affection…

I remember she had a soft cheek that I tried to kiss as often as I could. I clung to her. I followed her. I was afraid for her. Nothing tangible, just a vague sense of impending loss. A friend of hers collapsed and died on Main Street after dinner at a restaurant. It was sudden, unexpected, shocking. It saddened her deeply and that sorrow flowed to me. I felt her loss and by extension, I felt like death, for her, could come at any moment. I became terrified.

I have very distinct memories of walking out of my bedroom and leaning over the banister and calling for MOM. My father would come to the steps and ask what was wrong. I said I wanted to talk to mom. (Now, as a father, I can imagine how hurt his feelings were when I wanted to bypass him.) She would come to the bottom of the stairs, I would go down to the landing.

“Please promise me that you won’t die before me,” I would almost beg. I did beg.

What was she supposed to say? Trapped by my neediness, she said: “I promise”.

When she was 77 years old, she broke that promise. But by then I understood how life worked…and death. I spent the last night beside her bed in the living room of our house. I checked her often. She slept. She had seen the priest on Holy Thursday and she told him she wanted to go on Easter Sunday morning.

She did.

I remember sitting on the back porch and listening to her tell about her dreams. So and so courted her in 1930. Another so and so sent love letters from the war zone in Europe. Until they stopped coming.

She told me she wanted to travel. She craved the idea. There may be places she visited that I never knew about, but I know for a fact she visited: Alaska, British Columbia, many states, England, Ireland and France.

The hardest and loudest I ever heard her laugh, and I mean laugh, was when she and my daughter, my brother and his daughter came to visit me when I lived for a year in Dorset, England. It was the Christmas holidays of 1984. I took her to see a pantomime, an old British Music Hall tradition, presented all over the British Isles at that time of year. Truly, she never laughed harder. And days later, I held her arm while I walked her into Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. She was so tired. She was so happy.

Yes, travel was important but her home was her focus. She loved the house on Front Street (with the exception of the tiny kitchen) and did her part taking care of it. She re-papered the bedrooms, planted flowers and walked the property. She told me on several occasions that she would stand on the river bank and she would feel the presence of Native Americans. A chief, she said, was often standing behind her, protecting. She was never afraid.

So, reflecting back on a life time of memories, I am conflicted and regretful. I don’t think I told her I loved her nearly as many times as she told me that she loved me. An imbalance that I can not alter.

In her final hours, however, she must have known on some level, in her sleep, in her dreams, in her joyful anticipation of death and going to heaven and being greeted by her mother…well, she must have felt the love of her youngest son, the one who was supposed to be her Rosemary, holding her hand and bending over to kiss her soft cheek, once again and one last time.

~~Mother’s Day 2025