For the most part, day to day life in Northern Ireland is peaceful these days. That not so distant time when things were not at peace touches day to day life still, though, sometimes in unexpected ways.

Newry is not far from where I stay when I am in Ireland. a bustling center of transport and trade, a growing city and a long time crossroads of geography, history, and politics

When I trade the euros for sterling in my pocket — Newry lies just a short distance from the border between the north and the republic — and head out to stock up on groceries, I might also plan to hang out at the local branch of Waterstone’s book store, maybe see what’s new at the museum at Bagnell’s Castle or do some window shopping in shopping malls of Buttercrane and The Quays and a few steps away in the city center along Hill Street. I usually spend time in the Cathedral of Saints Patrick and Colman, as well.

The cathedral is imposing, and as you walk up to it the grey stone and heavy wooden doors continue the impressive presence. Once you step though those doors, though, that presence is one of welcome. I am not quite sure why that is. Perhaps it is the warm wood of the pews, the light turning red and gold through the stained glass windows, or the nearly two centuries of prayers offered in the place. Whatever the reason, it is a quiet place to kneel and pray, to sit and think, to share a smile with friend or stranger.

In common with houses of worship of just about every faith around the globe, the cathedral in Newry has a couple of bulletin boards in the back of the church. These hold posters telling about pilgrimages to Lourdes and Medujorge and Knock, inviting people to consider if they might have a vocation to the religious life or the priesthood, mass schedules for nearby parishes, notices of events at parish schools. In all the years I’ve been visiting, among its other notices the bulletin board over on the left has held a plain sheet of white paper with typescript on it.

It is headed The Disappeared. Below is a paragraph saying here is a list of names of people who went missing during the Troubles. Their families and friends would like to know what happened, where they are buried. If you can help, here’s how to give information in confidence

Then there are the names: a father of five, an man who was expecting his first child, a mother of ten. An asphalt layer, a painter, a teacher.

I was at the cathedral not long ago and as I was looking at the bulletin boards, I was startled to think, at first, that this page had been taken down. It hadn’t been. There was a large colorful poster about some other event in the diocese, a wide one, which had been pinned so that it covered the top of this page. You couldn’t see the heading or the explanation, but you could still see the names.

Had the person who pinned it there thought it was time to move on from remembering the troubled times when these people disappeared? Had they been careless? Had they been so exuberant about promoting their event that they had not noticed? I wondered about that, as I reached out to touch the names. I’m not going to know, just as I won’t know the stories of the people whose names I touched. I remembered a song Scottish musician Emily Smith wrote after a visit to an old graveyard near her home. It is called Audience of Souls. In it she thinks about what sorts of conversations we’d have with those who’ve gone on, what they’d make of us and what we’d tell them.

I thought about all that, as I walked out into the busy day to day life of Hill Street.

you may also want to
read further thoughts about traveling in Northern Ireland
learn about healing and hope in Northern Ireland through the music of Tommy Sands

No, I wasn’t being arrested at Health Camp; the police officer inside was having lunch, so there was backup as I attacked my arteries with….

A perfectly crisp corn dog with cornbread wrapping that actually tasted like cornbread, and….

A peanut butter shake, with bits of peanuts hanging suspended in a super-thick dairy confection (there are 30+ shake flavors to choose from, but I passed on Grape, Blue Hawaii and Toasted Marshmallow.)

This roadside eatery on a Waco, Texas traffic circle has served locals and travelers alike since 1949.

A name that makes no sense. Health Camp. What?

Just call it an inside joke by the founder, and pay a visit.

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS feed or by email – the email signup link is at the top of the right sidebar near the Search box. Thanks!)

Johnny Cash: musician, activist, songwriter, a man whose music resonated through the years of his long career across country, music, folk, Americana, rock and roll, rockabilly, and gospel, and whose influence has been felt from Japan to Russia to Ireland to his native Arkansas in the American south, and continues to live on across the world, nine years after his death.

It is to Arkansas, to the town of Dyess, that members Cash’s family will return on February 26th, the eightieth anniversary of his birth, to celebrate ground breaking on the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project. Under the stewardship of Arkansas State University, the project is intended to be be a permanent tribute to Cash’s early life and that of his family. It will also reflect American life in the south during the Great Depression of the 1930′s. To that end, the university is spearheading the restoration not only of the house in which Cash grew up, but several other historic buildings in Dyess.

In this eightieth year since his birth, Nashville, Tennessee, where he spent much of his music career, will see a new legacy from Johnny Cash, as well. It was announced recently that plans are underway for a Johnny Cash Museum, to be located on Third Avenue South, not far from the Country Music Hall of Fame and a short walk from the historic Ryman Auditorium. It will contain memorabilia from friends, family, and collectors and is, in the words of Johnny and June Carter Cash’s son John Carter Cash, meant to continue the momentum and the spirit of his parents’ lives. The museum in Nashville is expected to open this summer.

Rosanne Cash, herself a professional musician and songwriter, says “ This entire year we celebrate not just [my father’s] roots and history, but the breadth and depth of his artistic legacy, his spirit and authenticity, and the love and rhythm he brought to all our lives which continues to inspire millions of people around the globe.”

To get a taste of that, take a look at this video, a sort of photographic retrospective of Cash’s life, set to the words and music of the song September When It Comes, a song Rosanne wrote and which they sang together on her album Rules of Travel.

you might also wish to

Look back at a selection of some of Cash’s memorable songs, including I Walk the Line, Folsom Prison Blues, Ring of Fire, and others on The Essential Johnny Cash

Consider subscribing to Perceptive Travel through email or
RSS feed. thanks!

In the center of a walk which crosses a university campus in the deep south, there is a statue of an African American woman holding a bouquet of roses and wearing a feathered head dress such as Indians of the western plains once wore. It will stop you in your tracks. What is she doing there?

The campus in that of Florida State University, in Tallahassee, Florida. The woman in the statue is Doby Lee Flowers. She’s wearing that dramatic and, it might seem, unusual head dress because that is the head dress she wore when she was chosen as homecoming queen for the university in 1970. Flowers was the first African American to be so chosen.

Was being named homecoming queen really that important? For a black woman to be so recognized on any campus in the United States in 1970, yes. It was a mark of both social and political shift.

In 1970, the long road toward integration of the races in education and elsewhere in life which had begun a decade and half earlier was moving forward, but slowly. FSU had admitted its first black undergraduate student, Maxwell Courtney, in 1962. In 1965, Flowers’s older brother, Fred, became the first African American to be part of an official sports team representing the university. With her election as homecoming queen in 1970, Doby Lee Flowers added another chapter to the integration story, not only in Tallahassee, but across the country.

It wasn’t an easy road. Though she’d won the honor, she was not always honored as other homecoming queens had been. In the 1970-1971 FSU yearbook, she was quoted as saying “In December, one month after I was elected, an official with the gifts from merchants finally got in touch with me. She said she had been delayed because she couldn’t find out where I lived. Not being awarded the homecoming trophy … not being asked to attend out of town football games, not being invited to participate in the gubernatorial inaugural parade – that’s what it’s like to be a black queen at FSU.”

Some four decades later, though, her courage and achievement were given a lasting legacy in the statue which was created by internationally renown sculptor Sandy Proctor. In consultation with representatives of the Seminole Tribe of Florida and university officials, he decided to portray Flowers in the head dress she wore at Homecoming in 1970. It is historically accurate to that moment. Florida State students and sports teams are known as Seminoles, and though this sort of head dress, one that is most often associated with tribes of the western plains, isn’t worn these days by homecoming queens at the university and is not used by the Seminole Tribe of Florida, it is what Flowers was crowned with in her day.

That day in November, 1970, was one of courage, challenge, and change — recognition of changes in process and more change yet to come.

That is worth a few moments quiet contemplation, whether you stand before the statue of Doby Lee Flowers or you are regarding a photograph of it. A powerful art work to remind of a powerful time in history, a history that is not that long past, and in many ways, still close enough to touch.

Ms. Flowers attended Florida State University from 1967 to 1973, earning both bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and later studied at Harvard as well.

you might also want to
read about Maxwell Courtney, whose statute stands alongside that of Doby Lee Flowers
take a look back at the civil rights years through an episode of the PBS series Eyes on the Prize

Consider subscribing to Perceptive Travel through email or
RSS feed. thanks!

“Our talent [in Mississippi] is our greatest export …. our competition is Chicago in 1949, when so much musical talent left our state to go north [as part of the Great Migration] …. It’s time for them to come home. The musicians we speak to want to train and work with the next generation.”

David Watkins, Jr., VP of Communications and Entertainment, Watkins Development

There’s a rebirth going on right now on Farish Street, the historically black neighborhood in downtown Jackson, Mississippi.

Mere blocks from the elegant King Edward Hotel (also rescued from oblivion) dilapidated buildings and a thriving musical culture – the “Farish Street Sound” – are both being refurbished.

The hope is that this will be Jackson’s equivalent to Beale Street in Memphis, but with a more authentic flavor of the city, more local musicians and a bit less neon tackiness.

Historic preservationists, developers like David Watkins and those who love music are planning to create a new entertainment district here;  it has hit a number of bumps along the way and progress has been slow, but I saw enough during a visit this past fall to be convinced that the people involved WILL make it happen.

To look at the hot mess in the photo at the top of this post, and then walk just a few doors down to climb around in what will be a BB King Blues Club (in the former Star Laundry) is to see what hundreds of hours of dedicated work can create….a shell of a building, yes, but almost ready for move-in, then interior work, then a long-awaited Opening Day.

For a project of this scope, you need the buildings and streets re-done, and then you need tenants who can actually move into the area. The poor economy and credit crunch have had a significant negative impact on both, but the work is moving forward.

I cannot wait to return to Jackson and see it all come together.

The first thing I’ll do is walk up Farish Street to Peaches Cafe, put money in their jukebox and play….naturally….Etta James’ “At Last.”

If you like this post, please consider subscribing to the blog via RSS feed or by email – the email signup link is at the top of the right sidebar near the Search box. Thanks!)