Galway Bay, by Mary Pat Kelly

'Tis far away I am today from scenes I roamed a boy, And long ago the hour I know I first saw Illinois; But time nor tide nor waters wide can wean my heart away, For ever true it flies to you, my dear old Galway Bay. -F.A. Fahey, Galway Bay

Too often when I pick up a book at school nowadays, I'm picking it up because if it's fiction I need to read it for class or if it's non-fiction I'm reading it for research. I've advanced into reading non-fiction books for fun, which is probably a bad thing, so it's not often that I read fiction books I don't have to take notes on and annotate copiously.

Over the summer I've had a chance to change that and read a little bit more fiction, probably because the selection of fiction at the three libraries I frequent when I'm at home is a lot better than the selection at school. A friend of my mother's recommended Galway Bay to her when she found out I was soon to be studying there, and like the good bookworm I am, I borrowed the book from Mom before she had a chance to read it.

It was a wonderful read. I plowed through it in three days, which is a testament to both my ability to plow through books (already aptly demonstrated) and M.P. Kelly's ability to tell a story. And what a story! It starts in a very small village in Ireland before the Great Famine, with a young woman named Honora who is thinking about becoming a nun until she meets Michael Kelly, a very charming young man with a gorgeous horse, a knack for telling stories, and dreams that are just as big as Honora's. Kelly then follows her heroine through the famine, five children, and immigrating to Chicago, a place whose history I know and love well.

This book comes highly recommended by me as well as a slew of much more famous voices, including Frank McCourt's, and it's not terribly difficult to follow or keep track of Honora's many family members. Historically interested types may want to take note of this novel as an interesting way to experience family history -- Mary Pat Kelly based the story on her own family's experience as Honora herself told it to her granddaughter, Agnella Kelly. I also loved the stories within the story told by Honora and her grandmother and the way those stories had such a centrality in thier lives.

But this book was interesting to me for another reason; Honora came from Galway and went to Chicago, and here I am, twelve days away from leaving Chicago and going to Galway. She went on foot and by boat, while I'll go by plane and bus and automobile. I'll probably see many towns that were once like Honora Kelly's, and that makes me really happy inside. I feel, in a very small way, that I'm adding to that story even though I'm not Irish and my people never had to flee a country because their crops were rotting and their government wasn't helpful and their landlords wanted them gone.

Who knows? Maybe this will inspire me to find out what the great-grandcesters of Mercury Gray were doing way back in the day in France and Germany and wherever else we came from!

A Bone to Pick

This weekend was fantastic. On Saturday my mom and I took the train downtown to go to the Green Festival on Chicago's Navy Pier and hang out with all our liberal, lefty freinds and discuss climate change and look at bags made out of recycled everything (tires, sailboat sails, construction fencing, feed bags) and walk around. And then on Sunday, my dad and I took the train down to the Art Institute to look at their new Modern Wing. (Very cool -- and FREE this week!) All in all, I felt very cultured and I probably put five miles on my shoes. It's not every weekend I spend not one, but TWO days in Chicago.

I know that so far this post doesn't have anything to do with reading, writing, or books, but I feel that all these topics have to do with a general sense of culture, and that's what I'm here to talk about. Specifically, I'm here to talk to the mother who decided bringing her three year old son to the Art Institute was a good idea.

Now I am all for giving your kids a healthy appreciation for art (music, literature, painting) early in life. I understand that admission is free this weekend. I get that you want to show your kids some really, really nifty stuff they might not otherwise see. But when your offspring is running around the classical art wing and going behind the safety railings, (see picture) threatening to touch and quite possibly destroy a five hundred year old piece of irreplaceable art, I have only three words for you -- CONTROL YOUR YOUNG. The security people can't do it for you. I realize you have two older children you'd love to explain the methods of Reuben and Van Eyck to, but your three year old either needs to be sat down in the stroller you obviously brought for this purpose, or you need to pay more attention to him, because he's three, and he's not going to remember this anyway.

So that's my bone to pick. Parents of small children, please feel free to comment.

Something to Read

We in the writing business sometimes forget about the people on the other end of our pipeline -- the people in the reading buisness. This is paradoxically absurd, because I know for a fact that many of the people in the writing business are ALSO in the reading buisness.

This man, however, is out to profit both ends of the spectrum--

http://somethingtoread.net/bike.html

It's a project called Something To Read, and if you're in the vicinity of Wicker Park in Chicago any time soon, you should go and see if you can find him. It's the brainchild of Gabe Levinson, and it's attracted the attention of more prestigious pens than mine, like the people at the Chicago Tribune, which ran a rather nice article entitled

A bicycle built for books

in last sunday's Q section. Personally, I think this man is brilliant. He's helping people read. I would, however, give him more brownie points if he were to start the same thing with RECYCLED, SECOND-HAND books.

So, Gabe Levinson, if you're reading this blog, there's an idea for you. (and if you like it, give my freinds at SCARCE a call. I'm sure they'd love to help you. To everyone else, check out his website. He sounds like a pretty groovy guy.