Allow me to repeat that, because it's important.
I hope you understood that.
Some FAQ:
I am anti-current IRA, as I am anti-death and killing in general. But there's some interesting stuff in history. When the IRA started, they were not *all* bad. The shit that some Northern Irish Protestants were doing to the Catholics was really bad, and the IRA was *meant* to be a defense against it. I won't go into details because it's not my job to teach you history; I am not making this up. The fact is, the IRA was originally intended to stand up to the violence that the Protestants began. (Not to say that there weren't socio-political-etc reasons for the way the Protestants acted. These are all the actions of people, not monsters from Mars, and it's sad it came to that.)
Aside from that aspect of the IRA, the historical one, there isn't anything good about them. I know that the historical semi-good phase was a brief period and for the most part the IRA has done stuff just bad as the UDA and all of them. In other words, nowadays, they are terrorists, and I understand that.
Well, I take Bobby Sands on a sort of different level than you seem to. If you read what I wrote about him in my little explanation of who he is, you'll know what I admire is his strength of convictions and his poetic prowess. He believed in something enough to die very slowly for it. That's more that I can say for most people. I don't know if I can even say it about myself. Hopefully I'll never be put in a position to find out.
I'm very sorry you lost a loved one to terrorists. It's not fair that your life had to be fucked up by something like that. If you are having trouble dealing with your grief and anger, that's to be expected. I hope you come to some sort of peace with it. In the mean time, don't blame me just because I get a bit tipsy and sing Irish songs twice a month or so. Okay?
Well, if you mean that literally, I know quite a bit about a wide variety of things. As far as knowing about "the troubles," I've studied up on this aspect of history because I thought it was only fair that if I was going to sing the songs, I know the stories behind them.
If you meant that figuratively, like, "It's not your business," yep, I'd have to agree. I've said it before and I'll say it again. "I don't feel entirely comfortable "taking sides" in these matters since it isn't my country and I don't feel like I'm qualified to really do so. The people who really created the situation in Northern Ireland are all long-dead and the living are left to try to untie an incredibly tangled knot."
Because it's just a page of links that might be interesting to those who listen to Irish-American music in NYC. By Irish, I mean "Irish American," mainly. Does that help at all?
Could be. I don't live there. I have visited, and I know it's not the land of shamrocks and roses. I'm not stupid. But Ireland felt like home to me. When I talked about it with my friend from Ireland, he said he never understood why Americans wanted to come to Ireland since there was "nothing there" (his words). But after spending so much time here, he understood. It was the lack of stuff everywhere that kind of *was* the appeal. The appeal to me was the physical beauty of the land, the general higher ratio of nice people to mean people than I am used to here, and the different way of life in terms of size of the towns and the layout and stuff. It's hard to really put in words, but it seemed a little more human than NYC. But that's just me.
If you have further questions or concerns, I ask you to please address them to me via email. Lorettagrace@excite.com. Please do not leave anonymous guestbook messages yelling at me incoherantly. Thank you for reading this, and I wish you well.
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