Word
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Eclipse
09/27/2015
By: - Sep 28th, 2015From the beach in Truro, looking up into the clear night sky, we watched the first lunar eclipse in thirty years.
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Harvest Moon
Late September in Truro
By: - Sep 27th, 2015Bookending summer. In Truro in May, when the town comes away, then late September when it winds down. Three performances a day during Ten on Tenn. Tonight the harvest moon with an eclipse. Sand in our shoes to shake off in the city.
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Lost and Found
With a Photo Spoof
By: - Sep 18th, 2015When you’ve lost your set of keys / You, once again, realize the complexities in your life.... is the beginning of a poem and photo series. Who cannot relate to that or other 'lost' things or time and many other unfortunate circumstances in life? Keys, in fact, are just a small matter and my excuse to photograph in September the remaining glory of our garden.
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Bonsai
A Forty-year-old Ficus
By: - Sep 18th, 2015We don't keep pets but in a way plants are among our loved ones. Astrid nurses them through winter but gave up on the diseased bonsai riddled with sticky leaves and scale. With last ditch triage I removed the leaves and pruned it to a stump. We changed the soil a team effort that has now seemingly paid off. At least for now.
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Anniversary
Say it with Flowers
By: - Sep 17th, 2015On Wednesday nights I rushed from one teaching gig to another. Touching base at home in East Boston before a commute to U. Mass Lowell. Always bought a bouquet of flowers at the Arlington T stop. It was a weekly ritual that now and then I forgot. Until the first frost Astrid has bouquets in every room.
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Summer Camp
First Winona Then Loon Pond
By: - Sep 14th, 2015Camp Winona, for rich kids, had all the perks. Joined Troop Ten at Chestnut Hill. That summer I turned down Winona to be with my pals at Loon Pond a Boy Scout camp for inner city kids. You got a Merit Badge just for surviving the summer and going home alive.
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Best Tent
Not a Neat Freak
By: - Sep 14th, 2015Part of camp was learning to make beds and keep a neat tent. It was something that just didn't interest me.
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Other People
Why Infinity Is Not
By: - Sep 13th, 2015The infinity of time and space is not. The only limitation is an ability to understand. For all else there's God.
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Flynn Foundation
Built on Rockport Granite
By: - Sep 13th, 2015The Irish rebels, Edward, my great grandfather, and Patrick Flynn, members of Sinn Féin fled to Montreal in the 1920s. They made their way to Concord, New Hampshire then worked the quarries of Cape Ann. My grandfather, James, married Mary a Nugent of Rockport.
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Tournament
Rocks Covered in People
By: - Sep 12th, 2015Catching the last of the beach as summer turns to autumn.
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Alan Ginsberg
Howling in Harvard Square
By: - Sep 12th, 2015In 1997 as a part of the annual Lowell Kerouac Festival, with curator Linda Poras, we organized two exhibitions celebrating the Beat Generation. I met Alan Ginsberg for lunch in Harvard Square not long before he died. We talked about the best minds of his generation gone mad in the naked streets of boring Post War America. The Beats were an inspiration to hipsters growing up absurd in suburbia.
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Outside the Lines
No Rules for Making Art
By: - Sep 11th, 2015The nuns told us to color inside the lines. Turkeys for Thanksgiving. Santa Claus for Christmas. In the fury of creation I never followed the rules. Not then and certainly not now.
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When Phyllis Got Robbed
Dated Son of the Don
By: - Sep 11th, 2015We met during high school Saturday art classes at Mass Art. Later at RISD Phyllis dated Ray, Jr. the son of the Don.
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Old Blue Eyes
Singer for the Dons
By: - Sep 11th, 2015By the time Sinatra played the Music Hall in Boston there wasn't much left of The Voice. But he had the chops to sell a song long after the pipes had rusted. Up close and personal I had choice seats in a special section of New England mafia royalty.
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Blood
The Celtic Disease
By: - Sep 10th, 2015Hemochromotosis is a blood disease, manifested in middle age, that is unique to those of Irish/ Celtic heritage. It killed a cousin and may have been the cause of the demise of my great grandfather Patrick Nugent.
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Nutcracker
Bathing in the Frigid Atlantic
By: - Sep 09th, 2015Taking a plunge in the cold Annisquam River.
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Annisquam
Growing Up Absurd
By: - Sep 09th, 2015Growing up absurd in Annisquam. Merry prankster the progigal returned to read local poems at the Village Library.
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Crosscurrents
Tracking Nugent Heritage
By: - Sep 09th, 2015The Nugents are more French than Irish it would seem. Tracking family history back to 930 AD in the village of Nogent in France.
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Good Harbor Beach
Once Nugent Family Property
By: - Sep 09th, 2015The Nugent family homestead, rented from the Babsons in 1875, was abandoned and then torched in the 1920s. Of the clan of thirteen only George continued to farm. He bought a vast wedge of land that included all of Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester.
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Harvest Moon
Pillow Talk
By: - Sep 08th, 2015Following my poetry reading at the Annisquam Village Library the cousins lingered. We enjoyed a rare gathering that was not a wedding or funeral. As the Irish tend to do we formed a circle and swapped outrageous tales. Topped by Kevin's account of the rigors of driving his dad, the cantankerous Judge A.E. Flynn, from Florida to his summer home in East Gloucester.
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Woodstock
Back Stage Perks
By: - Sep 08th, 2015Ditching the car with Joey and Amber we hiked to Max Yasgur's farm in Bethel, New York. There were a half million sitting through mud and rain at Woodstock. The fences came down but I had press credentials. We made our way back stage.
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Susan Hall
Phantoms of the Opera
By: - Sep 07th, 2015During a holiday visit to New York critic Susan Hall treated me to nose bleed seats at the Met for Aida.
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Soft Corduroy
Here Comes the Sun
By: - Sep 06th, 2015Sunrise red paints the topside of a white cabin cruiser.
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Norman's Woe
On the Rocks Off Gloucester
By: - Sep 02nd, 2015Mostly the mega rich fantasy architects Sleeper and Hammond lavishly entertained their male friends. From the Castle is seen Norman's Woe which inspired Longfellow's Wreck of the Hesparus.
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Manet
Quarrymen
By: - Sep 02nd, 2015Flynn ancestors landed in Canada. Worked quarries south to New Hampshire then Rockport.
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