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Calling Card Books and Z Girls Press Blog
REST IN PEACE
From Palermo eastward to Messina, then south along the straits across from mainland Italy, Sicily rises steeply from the Tyrrhenian and Ionian Seas. Millenia of seasonal rains have carved river beds into steep, narrow folds in a deeply corrugated, undulating...
Wearing a Mask
Years ago, I came across a bound set of dated motivational posters in a bookshop in New York. I bought it for its retro-chic graphics. The posters were designed to hang in canteens or locker rooms where the workforce might absorb their exhortations to kindness,...
Mercy
Following a bereavement late in life I underwent a prolonged struggle to regain my sense of purpose. Everyone said a pet would be a good idea, that it would help me steady myself, give me a focus, cheer me up. The timing was perfect, they said. I determined I would...
Communion
My local was a small roadside pub, just beyond the Leitrim border, on an otherwise empty stretch of the regional road leading into Sligo. It is closed now. The license has been sold. Most people called it Vincie’s; the old ones called it Hargadan’s. A round sign...
Leckaun
I once owned the old cottage across the lane, and the twenty-five acres of moss-covered grassland that it sits on, up a switch-back lane off the Calry Road in North Leitrim.
Marilyn Monroe
In the beginning, the time I spent with Louis was limited to Friday nights. He would insist on going home at sunup on Saturday.
Hartnett Hall: A Memory
The first place I rented in Washington, DC, was Hartnett Hall. This was in the spring of 1975, in the DuPont Circle neighborhood. The hall was an aggregation of 19th Century townhouses, nearly half a city block long, whose once-spacious interiors had been walled off...
Valencia, October 2022
I am staying in an Airbnb rental in Valencia for a week, in a half-acknowledged re-examination of a long-ago formative period. I have reached the age when the view behind me is more enticing than the one ahead. I chose the flat for its central location in Ruzafa, the...
Poem: Down from the Brae
Introducing a selection of poems from memoirist, Dan Juday to celebrate the publication of his debut novel Waltzing a Two-Step: Reckoning Family, Faith, and Self which will be released on September 15, 2021. In his memoir, Dan recounts life as a Catholic-school child...
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