Letter from Macha on Pádraigín McGillicuddy

On 11/20/08, I wrote to Macha/Aline:

Did you ever find out anything more about Pádraigín? I read your 2006 blog. When did she die? Is Jim Durán still in Galway? Such old memories.... (I grew up in Forest Knolls.) See A Genius of Poets

On Nov 20, 2008, at 6:42 PM, M. Macha NightMare wrote:

Hi Maureen,

As far as I know, Pádraigín died in Ireland within the year before our visit ('06). Jim Duránwho lives right above the Spanish Arch in Galway, told  me. He's still there. He was here for a visit a few months ago and I was lucky enough to spend an evening with him. Was he your Gaelic teacher?

Since blogging about Pádraigín, I’ve raised the dead. I've gotten a phone call from her sister Caitlin in Forestville (very drunk, and not much of a fan of Pádraigín), and finally managed to get a contact for her daughter, Kerry. Evidently Pádraigín also has a brother named Cornelius.

Her son, Sean, committed suicide some years before Pádraigín returned to Ireland. His fiancée was a mutual friend of a friend of mine, and this former fiancée had some family photos she didn't want to throw away. She wanted to get them to someone in Pádraigín's family. I think she made contact with Caitlin.

Only recently I got a comment from Kerry on my blog, with her email, except that blogspot blocked it out. A few weeks ago I got a postcard from her with her email.

I have emails for Jim, Caitlin and Kerry, if you want them. Also have contacts for Sharon Devlin and Sean Folsom, if you happen to know that crowd of old Institute of Celtic Studies folks.

Are you familiar with Patricia Monaghan, Elizabeth Cunningham or Annie Finch? They're part of the Black Earth Institute in Wisconsin. (google it). Fabulous Irish-American poets all!

Do you still live in Northern California? I live in San Rafael.

I have many Hurley relatives. ;-)

Blessings,

Macha (aka Aline O'Brien)

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
M. Macha NightMare, P&W
herself@machanightmare.com
www.machanightmare.com
www.besom.blogspot.com
www.cherryhillseminary.org

From: mohurley
Subject: Re: Padraigin MacGullicuddy
Date: November 22, 2008
To: herself@machanightmare.com

Macha/ Aline,

Did you ever live on the Russian River? For years, I used to coordinate a weekly poetry series there at Garbo's in Guerneville. There was an Aline I lost touch with.

I grew up wild in Forest Knolls and moved to, get this, Forestville. I've been in Oakland for 11 years.

I probably met Pádraigín through Jim Duran. He was the one who encouraged me to study Gaelic. How many languages does the man speak anyway? I remember he was at Fort Ord and spoke several African languages as well.

Last time I saw him was at LAX in 1983 or 84, we were heading to Guatemala and ran into him at the luggage carousel. Weirdly my boyfriend John Oliver Simon also knew him—as Jaime!

He organized a poetry reading for us at Angel's Gate in San Pedro. I remember standing with him along the cliffs north of the harbour when he began to unfold his life story, it was pretty fantastical. I'd love his email.

I ran into Pádraigín in a SF restaurant with a bunch of Irish women after Finnegan's Awake, (I think).  Jennifer Stone, among them. Used to see her at lots of events. Breeda Courtney knew her as well...

Caitlin in Foresville? Hmmm I wonder if I met her, I met so many people in those days, (daze) so many roads intersected and overlapped that after a while it became a blur.

The Russian River was an interesting place to be in the late 1970s and 1980s. I met all manner of folks famous and formerly famous...including the lead singer from It's a Beautiful Day, a gorgeous blond guy with the voice of an angel reduced to pumping gas at the Guerneville station...fallen from grace...Madame Blavatsky's sister...very Russian! John Prine's brother: I learned John's songs from him...May Sarton's sister came to the series for a while...I could go on....

Living in the moment, we never thought it would end, then AIDS struck the gay community and it foundered. Peter Pender, chess champ, Leonard Matlovitch who made the cover of Times: Military comes out of the closet...that's how I found out Hoover was gay. Something Thorman???...the guy who founded Gold's Gym, a real piece of work... Bill, the first Marlborough Man lived in the cabin across from me....(whod'a thunk that handsome cowboy hunk on horseback we saw on all the billboards and back of magazine covers, was gay. The KS ravaged his beautiful face...

Wow, methinks there's a log in progress here!! I'm trying to blog daily but I constantly fall off the wagon...prose tires me....my head hurts yet the urge to tell stories is so strong...(you might want to check out what I've already written if you're interested in Marin stories....)

Adair Lara (Daly) and I grew up together and she's writing a memoir about growing up "Valley Rat? too. My blog is headed in that direction as well... I just learned how to put pix in my blog yesterday...with Picasa. So now I need to find pix for my older blogs. I only started writing in August 2007, but, seeking continuity, I backdated a lot of the older work. It's forced me to delve deep.

Sharon Devlin, I first met her at the big Irish exhibit at the De Young, probably that's where I met Jim. See, my granny was the only one there who could actually READ the Book of Kells, so we drew quite an audience! Someone came up and asked if she could read it...she snorted, "Of course I can. It's in Latin!" As if everybody could read Latin. Sharon had a baby, my grannie fussed over her as Sharon played the harp...

I don't know if Sharon and Sean Folsom would even remember me ...I went back several times as they played in the foyer every day....that's how I met Lief too...we corresponded for a while and traded some Hebridean mouth music tapes...I should try & find them, Wonder if they'll even play?

slan leat
mairin
aka The Morrighan!

Hey, I didn't name myself on that one! Someone else did. I would much rather have been called Macha of the horses, or even Epona.... but war goddess works. That I am...

Remembering Jim Duran, (Séamas Ó Direáin)

I first met musicologist and linguist Jim Duran (Séamas Ó Direáin) with harpist Sharon Devlin of the traditional Irish group, Sheila na Gig at the Treasures of Early Irish Art exhibit at the San Francisco De Young Museum in the mid-'70s. We were listening to the group singing Irish tunes my granny knew. I was shocked when he came over afterwards and spoke to my grandmother in Irish and she answered him right back.

My grannie was the only one there who could actually READ the Book of Kells, so we drew quite an audience! Someone came up and asked if she could read it...she snorted, "Of course I can. It's in Latin!" As if everybody could read Latin. 

My grannie, Jane Walsh Reilly probably hadn't spoken to anyone in Irish since the 1930s as there were few Irish speakers in San Francisco, but she kept up her Irish studies her entire life. Daily she was nose deep in Dineen's Irish Dictionary looking up words. 

My grandfather was instrumental in founding the KRB club in SF: Knights of the Red Branch. Among other things, they organized Irish cultural events, Irish language classes (and ran guns too, but that's another story. The photo of Liam Mellows in our lower field is proof enough of those IRA connections).

Despite holding a PhD. in linguistics from Stanford, Jim Duran was the most pragmatically practical from the Of course you can gung-ho just do it school. He was the one who encouraged me to study Irish Gaelic. He was one of the few people I knew who was fluent in Irish but then, he was fluent in many languages. How many languages does the man speak anyway? Eleven?

At first I thought he was putting me on. But then he slew my ears with polyglot tongues, in languages I didn't even know existed.... Why on earth would he learn Angolan, I thought. But then I remember him telling me he was at the Fort Ord Language Institute and spoke several African languages as well. Angolan. Oh the government... But that was the days of the Black Panther Movement, Stokley Carmichael, Angela Davis, Symbionese Liberation Front, Patty Hearst, etc. Angola was in the headlines a lot.

One of the last times I saw Jim was at LAX. We were heading out to Guatemala and El Salvador. Or was it Cabo? We ran into him at the luggage carousel. Weirdly, my boyfriend John Oliver Simon also knew him—as Jaime! At the same instant we both shouted out to him: Seamus! Jim! Jaime! and did a quadruple take and laughed. So it was a double meeting of the minds.

Jim organized a poetry reading and book party, Falling to Sea Level, (Aldebaran) for us at Angel's Gate Poetry Reading Series in San Pedro. I remember standing by the side of the Pacific Coast Highway with Jim along the cliffs just north of San Pedro Harbor mouthing a few words in Irish, when he began to unfold snippits of his life, it was pretty fantastical. I thought he was jiving me, but I later found out it was all true...

Last I heard he was teaching at the University of Cork. Someone else said, No, he was in Galway. I recently found a paper of his online—in Irish—on dialects of the Aran Islands, so I couldn't make heads or tale out of it—well maybe donkey's tails—in that I could make out a few words here and there, follow the gist, conjugate a preposition or two, but that was about it....

Because of Jim, I redoubled my efforts and I got my grannie to teach me what she could of the old Hibernian Club Gaelic League Irish from her Grammars, but speaking it was another matter.

I want to do a shout out: Hey Jim,wherever you are, I finally learned some Gaelic. I thought it was impossible. I studied Celtic languages at UC Berkekey with Joe Nugent, Breen O Conchubhair, with professors Kathryn Klar and Linguistics Chair, Dr. Gary Holland...Old, Middle and Modern. Irish, some medieval Welsh too. 

It was impossible, but we translated the Tain Bo Cuailaigne, the Tain Bo Fraoch, and the Mabinogi... But after ten years lying fallow in the back fields of the mind, and with no one to speak it, I now know enough to know that it's truly impossible and that I don't know enough in order to read your papers on Irish linguistics. (chun: in order to)

Last summer, however, I was surprised to find that I could slog my way through a Manx story (only if I read it out loud), I was able to translate place names while in the Hebrides and I'm slowly building my repertoire of Irish and Scots Gaelic music...that's where I came into this crazy circle, wanting to learn Irish and Hebridean mouth music...such a long, long time ago.

Go raibh mhaith agat a Shéamas, wherever you are!


Laguna Poets reading

AT THE LAGUNA POETS' READING

AT THE LAGUNA POETS' READING

After running into Jim Duran at LAX,
we're surprised to find we both know him.
I know him as Seamus, and John, as Jaime.
We yelled out in unison Seamus/Jaime, to Jim,
and turned to each other and laughed.
We agree  to meet up later for dinner at Palo Verde,
and the reading at The Laguna Poets, followed by open mike.
Some of it was dark, dark and richly green, a la Roethke,
or James Wright. Terry Kennedy, Richard Weekley.
I said: Women can't get away with that kind of language,
it sounds too banal. We want something meatier with hips.
Another poet reads a diatribe about the IRA. I cringe.
John writes in my notebook, verde te quiero verde—Lorca
If she talks about horror, I'll scream, please don't say...
The horror, the horror—wrote Joseph Conrad.
See? Already the Belgian Congo is a cliché, said John.
Neo-colonialism and confessional poetry at its best / worst.
Speaking of darkness... We have no place to sleep.
I can't reach my cousin in Laguna Beach.
I ask John, Do we have a place to duerme?
He says not to worry. if nothing turns up.
we'll go to a motel and make like rabbits.

11/22/1985
Voyager Inn, Laguna Beach
added/rev. 2/17

Laguna Poets reading (prose)
Remembering Jim Duran, (Séamas Ó Direáin)