Fáilte
Welcome back to another episode of Crann na beatha Stories and Poetry
I am Terrance Ó Domhnaill, your village scéalaí, returning again this week after my holiday with more stories and poems from authors around the world.
This week, I have three stories and two poems
I continue with The Grave Diggers of Orpheus chapter 10, another short scary story from the same author, an scary Irish story from a Medium writer, and two poems. I will be reading one of my own scary poems this week as this is the last show before Samhain and finish up with a nice thought provoking, meditative poem from Bulgaria.
Some notes about future changes to this show. I had talked before about making some changes regarding this show starting in November and I decided to stretch things out a bit. I will continue the current schedule and title until next July but I will be uploading the shows under The Village Oak Tree heading on rss.com starting in November. The same for my Substack page. By next July, everything will be under that heading and Crann na beatha Stories and Poetry as a separate show will cease. I figured it would be better for everyone if I changed things up slowly rather than doing anything abrupt.
So gather round once more and let me read to you under the shade of the Crann na beatha, the tree of life.
To offer a glimpse into what I did last week while on holiday, I will give you a couple of details.
My wife and I went up to Brooklyn, New York so my wife could celebrate our youngest grandson’s first birthday. Sounds simple enough, right?
Our difficulty lies in that we drove our RV motorhome. I hate hotels. I managed to find an RV campsite somewhat close to Brooklyn, in Jersey City, New Jersey. The campground had high ratings in our guidebook and their website touted the closeness to the Statue of Liberty, plus upscale camping facilities and so on.
It turned out to be just the opposite. The campground was run down and shabby looking, run by some folks who needed to find some investors. The electrical system was a mess with me fighting with it to keep things on. We kept tripping breakers when we needed something besides just lights. The place was just an old converted downtown parking lot next to the dock yards. Miles from the Statue of Liberty. You could see it from the docks but it was at least five miles off. I did manage to get a couple of pictures with my large zoom lens.
My son in-law told me that the reason the place was so expensive, was that Jersey City is considered a high rent district. Given the high rises surrounding us, I could believe it but my issue was the deception by the campground. The place looked nothing like the pictures on their website. Needless to say, we will never stay there again.
Otherwise, the visit with children and grandchildren was great. They went to the restaurant to eat and enjoy the party and I stayed behind at my son in-law’s house to dog sit and get a little work done on my book. Everybody was happy.
We like to travel in our RV whenever we can. My wife loves to visit national and state parks to enjoy nature, or as much as one can from an RV park. We have visited some parks where there were no hookups per say and had a great time. We have also discovered RV parks that sucked and marked them off our list of returns someday.
My wife wants me to take her back to Key West, Florida someday so she can watch the sunrise and sunset from the same camping spot. We didn’t get to do that last time we went a couple years ago.
Next year, we are going out west to make a loop through all of the more famous national parks, such as Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Bryson Canyon, the Grand Canyon and so forth. I will take lots of pictures to share.
In the meantime, I will keep reading stories and poems throughout the cold weather months much like my ancestors did in ancient times. We don’t have a meeting hall with a big fireplace to sit around drinking mead while the seanchaí tells the old stories these days but I do try to bring something close to that here.
That’s it for this week. I appreciate everyone who drops by to listen to the stories and poems, and read a little bit about my adventures now and again. Sláinte
As I say good bye this week, I wish to leave you with this Irish blessing as you go about your day. "May your path rise up to meet you and the sun warm your bonnet as you walk down the lane to the pub. May your travels bring you to a quiet place where the ocean meets the sky and the birds greet you with a kind word or two." Slán go fóill - goodbye for now.
Stories and Poems for the week:
The Arianrhod Treasure
A mantle of feminine power
The Hunger
A New Day
Comes with the dawn
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