The Limerick Pogrom
is instigated in 1904 by a zealous priest, Fr. John Creagh who accuses the city's Jewish population of usury and ritual murder. Angry mobs rampage and a widely supported boycott of Jewish businesses ensues -- resulting in the Jews of Limerick being driven from the city and taking refuge in Cork.
copyright Bianca Dorso
It's an unsettling time of year, in my opinion and at least in some respects, St. Patrick's Day and Easter and in the air the whiff of ancient pagan celebrations along with the promise of green beer and the end of winter and the resurrection from the dead and chocolate bunnies. In Pittsburgh I lived with a Carnegie Mellon artist, Claire, who did paintings which involved lots of X's and eggs -- ancient symbols, as she explained, of infinity and fertility. She would also make coffee by pouring the grounds in a stew pot and then plunging a burning stick into the boiling water which she insisted forced the grounds to the bottom and was an age-old trick she'd learned in Girl Scouts. A paint-splattered woman wielding a burning stick in your kitchen is a memorable experience.
Nearby, two young actresses, Cherry Jones and Gela Jacobson, lived in the ballroom at the top of an enormous old mansion on Fifth Avenue (Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue) which in my memory is the Thaw mansion, as in Harry K. Thaw who shot Stanford White over the alluring and seductive Evelyn Nesbitt, but I could be wrong about that. What I do remember is an immense room painted white and sparsely decorated with theater props, the spring sunlight slanting down from pink and pale green stained-glass skylights across the battered parquet floors made for waltzing. Someone tells me that CMU theater students perform period plays in historically accurate costumes -- authentic whale-bone corsets, crinolines, lace and strings and stays and ties and garters and ribbons and high-button shoes even if they don't show on stage and whether true or not, I still find the idea exciting. Were they practicing for a play? Maybe Chekhov? What I remember: these two ethereal (seductive, alluring) creatures (one light, one dark) moving like languid ballerinas amidst a scattering of peignoirs and negligees.
Springtime in that part of the country is uncertain and magical, wet and grateful, sunny and still cold, with patches of snow lingering next to crocus and narcissus breaking through the lawns of Fifth Avenue.
And then later there is beer with my roommates, Irish bars and Easter, and later still I move to New York and add Passover to the mix and maybe it's because Easter (like Passover) is tied to a lunar cycle, so the moon has something to do with it too -- this mood, the tension and nostalgia, the promise of rebirth and ithe threat of infinite conflict, the yearning and the regret. Although why a picture of an old man sitting at a bar by himself should somehow sum it all up is beyond me.
If I could only explain, if I could make you see how it all fits together, I just know it would help. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it would make a difference.
copyright Bianca Dorso
It's an unsettling time of year, in my opinion and at least in some respects, St. Patrick's Day and Easter and in the air the whiff of ancient pagan celebrations along with the promise of green beer and the end of winter and the resurrection from the dead and chocolate bunnies. In Pittsburgh I lived with a Carnegie Mellon artist, Claire, who did paintings which involved lots of X's and eggs -- ancient symbols, as she explained, of infinity and fertility. She would also make coffee by pouring the grounds in a stew pot and then plunging a burning stick into the boiling water which she insisted forced the grounds to the bottom and was an age-old trick she'd learned in Girl Scouts. A paint-splattered woman wielding a burning stick in your kitchen is a memorable experience.
Nearby, two young actresses, Cherry Jones and Gela Jacobson, lived in the ballroom at the top of an enormous old mansion on Fifth Avenue (Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue) which in my memory is the Thaw mansion, as in Harry K. Thaw who shot Stanford White over the alluring and seductive Evelyn Nesbitt, but I could be wrong about that. What I do remember is an immense room painted white and sparsely decorated with theater props, the spring sunlight slanting down from pink and pale green stained-glass skylights across the battered parquet floors made for waltzing. Someone tells me that CMU theater students perform period plays in historically accurate costumes -- authentic whale-bone corsets, crinolines, lace and strings and stays and ties and garters and ribbons and high-button shoes even if they don't show on stage and whether true or not, I still find the idea exciting. Were they practicing for a play? Maybe Chekhov? What I remember: these two ethereal (seductive, alluring) creatures (one light, one dark) moving like languid ballerinas amidst a scattering of peignoirs and negligees.
Springtime in that part of the country is uncertain and magical, wet and grateful, sunny and still cold, with patches of snow lingering next to crocus and narcissus breaking through the lawns of Fifth Avenue.
And then later there is beer with my roommates, Irish bars and Easter, and later still I move to New York and add Passover to the mix and maybe it's because Easter (like Passover) is tied to a lunar cycle, so the moon has something to do with it too -- this mood, the tension and nostalgia, the promise of rebirth and ithe threat of infinite conflict, the yearning and the regret. Although why a picture of an old man sitting at a bar by himself should somehow sum it all up is beyond me.
If I could only explain, if I could make you see how it all fits together, I just know it would help. I'm not quite sure why, but I think it would make a difference.
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