Erin Bair

@eebair.bsky.social

145 Followers 97 Following

Lover of long novels, old friends, and black coffee. Aunt of four, priest, doctoral student, former redhead, newbie Irishwoman.

Screenshot of text that reads: “The island settled in a whispering and excited night-time, and within each cottage the story of Sean Gore left husbands and wives sleepless in their beds, feeling the sudden chill knowledge that while they were thoughtlessly churning through the day perhaps God Himself had passed along the island roads.” ~ Niall Williams, Four Letters of Love
Photo of a stretch of a sandy beach under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. In the background is the hill that is the Howth peninsula that just out into the bay.
Screenshot of text that reads: “Did you feel angry?” the psychotherapist asked me. I remember my response well: “Oh, I don’t get angry.” I know that this is not unusual. I know that many people—perhaps this affected, or is the word infected, by religion—know these words particularly well. We try to be like God, and so we are slow to anger, and overflowing in everlasting resentment. -Padraig O Tuama, In the Shelter
Woman holding a sign that says “It’s so bad even the introverts are out here”
Photo of me standing in front of the US embassy holding a hand-made sign that says “Hands off free speech”
Screenshot of text: For Citizenship In these times when anger Is turned into anxiety And someone has stolen The horizons and mountains, Our small emperors on parade Never expect our indifference To disturb their nakedness. They keep their heads down And their eyes gleam with reflection From aluminum economic ground, The media wraps everything In a cellophane of sound, And the ghost surface of the virtual Overlays the breathing earth. The industry of distraction Makes us forget That we live in a universe. We have become converts To the religion of stress And its deity of progress; That we may have courage To turn aside from it all And come to kneel down before the poor, To discover what we must do, How to turn anxiety Back into anger, How to find our way home. ~ John O’Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us
Screenshot of text that reads: “Gaza’s future: President Trump proposed on Tuesday that the United States take over Gaza and that all Palestinians there — some two million people — leave, describing a permanent relocation to one or more sites funded by “countries of interest with humanitarian hearts.” As he hosted Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for a joint news conference in the White House, Mr. Trump said that he has studied the conditions in Gaza and his idea to seize and develop it has gotten “tremendous” support from the “highest of leadership” as a viable plan to bring peace to the Middle East. Read more ›”
Photo of at-home brunch: white plate with quiche, fruit, and a muffin on a blue placemat; a cup of coffee; and a book.
Screenshot of copy that reads, “a generation later, and newly liberated nations resort immediately to the means of their former oppressors. The triple contagions of nationalism, utopianism and religious absolutism effervesce together into an acid that corrodes the moral metal of a race, and it shamelessly and even profoundly performs deeds that it would deem vile if they were done by any other.” — Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings (2/2)
Screenshot of copy that reads, “Where does it all begin? History has no beginnings, for everything that happens becomes cause or pretext for what occurs afterwards, and this chain of cause and pretext stretches back to the paleolithic age, when the first Cain of one tribe murdered the first Abel of another. All war is fratricide, and there is therefore an infinite chain of blame that winds its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every people and every nation, so that a people who are the victims of one time become the victimizers… (1/2)