Settle in today to listen to an Irish David and Goliath tale that extols pluck and smarts and reminds us that it's often the small and seemingly weak that topple the great and grand, especially when they're being tyrants and bullies. We can ALL make a difference. https://youtu.be/qqZJRNb_W3c I'd love to hear from you: [...]
What would the early Irish poets think of AI? My answer might surprise you! Tell us in the comments: 1. How are you using AI in a way that still allows you to feel like the creative driving force in what you're making? 2. What are some great uses for AI that you've discovered? 3. [...]
I am an ardent fan of Irish proverbs and carry dozens of them in my mind. This one, though, I think needs just a bit of tweaking to help us harvest its dose of encouragement. Tell us in the comments: 1. What is one identity that you think our society regards with a fixed mindset [...]
By sheer chance, I just opened a journal from 2021 and felt encouraged by this entry: "The hardest goodbye (at the end of the term) was with C who tried bravely not to cry. It’s easy to assume I don’t mean much to people, that I’m part of the furniture of life. But even that [...]
Sometimes in my morning writing, I ask questions of “Wise Kate” – that part of me that knows more than I do at present. Today, I asked her: “What do you believe about pleasure?” Here’s what she said: +That it’s as necessary as air and water to life, and more than that – to [...]
Do you know what Bards do? They learn stuff - demonstrable, actionable things that can be shared on the spot. Sing a song? Check. Recite a poem? Got it. Tell us a tale? Gladly! This picture shows the evolving repertoire of one of my dearest and most long-standing Bardic Academy students. At present she knows [...]
Yesterday I finished listening to the BBC podcast, “The New Gurus” – or rather, almost finished listening because when the host began to cover things I’d rather not think about, I turned it off. Same with a book I began reading recently. About twenty pages in, I set it down. “Nope,” I thought. “Three hundred [...]
I’m getting ready to teach my first Irish language class through the Celtic Wisdom School, though I’ve taught Irish for about 25 years now at Harvard and a few times at Boston College – and so I’m grappling with the question: Why would anyone want to learn Irish? When I was falling in love [...]
Like everyone else, I do my fair share of typing, both on laptops and in the tiny text box on my phone. But here’s why I write by hand every single day and why I honestly believe it’s in everyone’s best interest to do so, too: It’s calming. It’s a human-paced activity in a [...]
Can you picture your long-ago bedroom when you were about twelve years old? Here’s mine: A single bed over which my mother had very helpfully affixed a reading lamp (thank you, Mama!). A desk for doing homework. Two small bookcases brimming with my favorite books, perhaps fifty or sixty, all of which I’d read at [...]
