Manhattan Diary

New York Senator Charles Schumer is busy this week pushing for what we hope will be a successful comprehensive immigration reform bill as one of the so-called gang of eight bipartisan senators.

Along the way he’s sure to be casting a weather eye on the ways in which his actions now could eventually craft his political legacy, the great work he will be remembered for in decades to come.

We don't really think about what happens to a woman once the plane that's carrying her touches down in England. Out of sight is out of mind.

She becomes someone else's problem, her own mostly. To salve our conscience and keep the peace we temporarily cut her adrift from the island on which she makes her home. While she's away she'll be her own nationality.

Mrs. Doyle owned the tiny shop toward the bottom of the main street. A general store from another era, by the time I was old enough to go in on my own it had a faintly aniseed aroma, as though it were preserving itself.

She was old, and by Donegal standards she wasn’t nice. I had never heard her offer a sharp word to anyone, but I couldn’t recall hearing her offer a kind one either.  In my town that got you noticed.

Inforwars, the far right government conspiracy clearing house helmed by crackpot Alex Jones, and one of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s favorite sites on the internet as it happens, sent a 'reporter' to

Boston

The main problem with Margaret Thatcher, I was forced to recall last week, was that she often spoke and acted as though she were the monarch of the British Empire, rather than prime minister of the U.K.

There was no British Empire to rule by 1979. In fact there hadn’t even been one to rule in 1969.

There's no tragedy too painful for those self-styled Christians over at the Westboro Baptist Church.

His secret was that he embodied the promise of his own show. He was both the signpost and the destination. I wish he could have lived to understand how much that meant to us.

I'm on a diet. That means you're attacking my freedom and undermining my beliefs each time -you- eat a doughnut.

I'm serious, you're doing me harm. OK not actual harm, try metaphysical harm. By eating that doughnut you're not harming me personally, but you're sure making my imagination hurt. It's really very selfish of you. It's probably a terrific sin.

Who's the phony, Bill?

In the fourth year of the Iraq war I was walking home one day with my partner. It was June 2007, about five in the afternoon, and the sun was shining.

We had been shopping at the farmer’s market in Union Square and we’d picked up some seasonal vegetables and a French loaf.

Curiously, the most vocal segment of Irish society in matters of sex and sexuality are also usually the ones who would prefer if matters of sex and sexuality were never discussed, anywhere, ever.

Gay rights have made their unparalleled advances because technology has allowed us to see that we had nothing to fear, and so much to gain. That's even true in the Vatican now.

It's Monday morning and the egregiously perky barista is waiting to take my coffee order. I look at her askance, the way the Irish do when confronted with perkiness.

As I get closer to the counter I have an inner dialogue with myself that goes like this -- should I tell her, should I not?

themselves from the fate of the nation

Something happened the other day that spooked me.  I was caught off guard by a casual comment made in my presence by a fantastically wealthy former senior economic adviser to the Obama administration.

I happen to know that this man (and let’s face it, senior economic advisers still tend to be men) has paintings by Picasso and Cezanne on the walls of his cavernous penthouse overlooking Central Park. You could say he represents one percent of the one percent, the cream of the cream. The very sunlight seems to rearrange itself around him to illustrate that he’s a person of some stature.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien

When news broke this week that Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, had been accused by four priests of sexual exploitation both his critics and supporters were instantly suspicious of the timing.

Why now, they asked? Pope Benedict's dramatic resignation was barely a week old and the papal conclave was already looming. How could accusations this damning have come to light just at this moment (especially considering O'Brien had Britain's only vote for Pope)? It was an a reasonable question.

Patriarchy, literally the rule by the fathers, is a social system in which the male is the primary authority figure.  Daddy calls the shots in political leadership, moral authority, the control of property, and over women and children. Sound familiar?

If you haven't noticed, patriarchy is not what it once was. In the Irish context the experience of patriarchy has played out for centuries in the empires that ruled us, the church that molded us and in the state that (most often) sent us to war or sent us packing.

Patriarchy, literally the rule by the fathers, is a social system in which the male is the primary authority figure.  Daddy calls the shots in political leadership, moral authority, the control of property, and over women and children. Sound familiar?

If you haven't noticed, patriarchy is not what it once was. In the Irish context the experience of patriarchy has played out for centuries in the empires that ruled us, the church that molded us and in the state that (most often) sent us to war or sent us packing.

America sometimes feels like a party to which you’re not always certain you’ve been invited. Oh, the hosts have said hello and they made tiny little gestures of welcome, but other people are looking at you funny and some people openly hiss.

I blame the Declaration of Independence, the founding document of the United States, written by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. You could call it the ultimate invite.

Now they're just flat out saying he's Hitler. And Stalin. And the Anti-Christ. And other Really REALLY BAD things, you guys.

That means we can dispense with the blatant fiction that the Tea Party represents a legitimate political strand of the GOP anymore. Apparently what they really represent are arrested adolescents who express themselves as though they were still in junior high. With multiple exclamation marks, because they really really mean it!!!!!

The fondest hopes of millions, still hidden in the nations shadows, have just met the Republican Party.

Message: your hopes and dreams are 'dead on arrival.'

One late October, just before Halloween, I remember my father raking leaves on the lawn in front of our house in Co. Donegal.

It was early evening, the sky was grey and the air was absolutely still, not a puff of wind about.  Dry twigs cracked and split under my shoes as I walked toward him.

Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols (David Rose)

Love, real and enduring love, is exceptionally hard to find. It’s a miraculous flowering that happens in this otherwise coldly indifferent world.

It’s what we live for, love. It’s what creates many of us, it’s what ultimately defines us and it’s certain it’s all that remains of us.

Republican Senator John McCain

In a truly shocking moment of high handed arrogance, Senator John McCain announced this morning that granting immigration rights to legally married gay couples was not 'a matter of paramount importance' to him, or presumably anyone.

Well, it may not be a terrific surprise that a rich old white Republican man can't bring himself to think of gay people as his social equals, but I can tell you it's a matter of  'paramount importance' to the tens of thousands of pointlessly separated gay couples whose legal marriages are still rendered meaningless by the pointless Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Go to the mall, get shot. Go to the movies, get shot. Go to the gun show, get shot. Go hunting, get shot. Go to the rifle range, get shot. Go to university, get shot. Go to school, get shot. Go to kindergarten, get shot.

It’s a wonder we go out at all here.

When you vehemently disagree with someone, it can be hard to listen to what they have to say. Instead of hearing their views, you'll often only hear your own objections to them.

So listening is a skill that's the work of a lifetime really.  It’s one of the hardest things we ever learn to do. But it's also one of the most enlightening.

A year before my schoolteacher had a terrible breakdown, he terrorized us all on a daily basis. What a schoolroom that was -- part concentration camp, part asylum.

At a time when most of us are encouraged to help our fellow man, Benedict XVI was instead informing the globe that gay people are 'threatening world peace.'

I'm not making this up. I really couldn't. I must have missed the 'destroy the World' memo.

They ride subways all night, or they sleep on the sidewalks. Sometimes they find a sheltered spot in one of the city parks. During the day they try to keep out of sight.

But at night they drift into train and bus stations, and even the airports. Sometimes you'll see them answering the voices they're hearing in their heads. They know that passersby don't like that, so they try to stay quiet. They have learned that it's safer to stay quiet.

When the English got serious about colonizing Ireland the most enduring change they made was to rename our towns.

It won't actually matter if the words you write are complimentary or insulting, in fact it'll be beside the point. Irish people live in mortal dread of scrutiny. Call it a colonial consequence. The spud that rises gets the spade.

It's only getting worse.

Even Bill O'Reilly, in his own hapless way, got the message. 'It’s not a traditional America anymore,' he lamented, meaning that he'd just noticed that people who aren't white, wealthy wasps can also vote.

Not only that, they are voting for the other guy. You can say what you like about Republicans but you can't call them stupid.

After Hurricane Sandy, I'll want to be on the latter team.