Category Archives: family

THE GUILT OF MOTHERS by Peter Nolan Smith

March 31, 2024 – 3:17 am

Back in the 1990s I deserted New York to spend the Easter holiday with my family on the South Shore of Boston. Despite my abandonment of God as a child my mother persisted in requesting my attendance at morning Mass. It was a small sacrifice to make for the woman who brought me into this […]

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NO REST FOR THE WICKED – 2008 – Boston

March 18, 2024 – 4:23 am

Eleven years after leaving the USA for good I departed from Thailand in May of 2008. My internet business had been wiped out by the shrinking dollar. Being broke in New York was not fun and at the month’s end I bussed up to Boston to celebrate my birthday. Written 1/9/13 2:51 PM That night my […]

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The Far West Of Ireland

March 16, 2024 – 3:16 am

My grandmother came from County Mayo. Her last name was Walsh. Nana sailed to Boston at the age of fourteen. That ocean voyage was so traumatic that she never returned to Ireland. My mother and her sisters often offered to fly Nana to Shannon. “I don’t want to travel on that sea again.” “Planes don’t […]

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Girls Will Be Boys – 2010

February 22, 2024 – 3:49 am

“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stone.” There are no glass houses in Afghanistan, but there are stonings for a wide variety of social offenses. Adultery is the most common, however woman are under constant threat for such trivial trespasses as leaving the house without a male family member or showing their face or attending […]

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Tar In The Blood

February 5, 2024 – 9:35 am

My father’s side of the family traveled to the New World on the the Mayflower. My antecedents were Howlands. A young indentured servant, John Howland, had been washed overboard mid-Atlantic and somehow had grabbed a trailing lanyard to haul himself to the safety of the Mayflower. Centuries later my Irish Nana had sailed on a […]

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