Fathers Day 17/june/07

...if Dad looks a little "Blown Away!" here, it is because he was having his picture taken, just after someone stepped out of the frame, and just before someone stepped into the frame for their picture.

I like this photo because it looks like he was beamed in there by aliens from the "Starship Tour-bus".

James Gilmour O'Brien
At the Border of England and Scotland
Sept/1982 Age 57

Although my Dad was a big influence on me with respect to how a man can be tactile, caring, loving, and still be masculine, righteous and honorable, my Mom was the one was the artistic bent.

Dad was a veracious reader but I don't think he ever wrote anything. He often professed to "not understand my poetry". (At the time I was going through my ee cummings, mixed with Tristan Tzara, blended with a little Francis Picabia thrown in for good measure "phase".) I think the Grammarian in him just couldn't handle the way I mangled and played with words.

Mom had a palette knife in my hand and oil paint all over me when I was "a wain". She was always there at every one of my openings, and I still kid her that the "frustrated Artist" in her lives vicariously through me.

Mom has been in and out of the Hospital allot recently.

This Northern Ireland Landscape Photograph
was Hand Painted by my Mom: Doris E.T. Burns O'Brien.

Mom and Dad made a good pairing from the beginning. They were both born in 1925. They met when they were in the third grade. The story goes that Mom sent Dad her first love letter in third grade.

This is my mom in the 1930s
...about the age she began sending love letters...
(I wonder why my Dad wasn't scared off by that hat?)

Mom and Dad were into the Ancestral search thing, when I was younger and I didn't seem to care. They went to England, Ireland, Scotland & Wales when Dad retired.

The following is a poem that shows how I feel about my Ancestors now:

Me Ma & Da,

They were never privy to things

that I have come to know

Burns, Gilmour, Pollock & O'Brien

Poets and Priests on every side

was there ever a need to choose

to become what I have come to be

the past is comforting

it billets my future

and beckons me come....

obeedude 17/June/07

This is my Mom in Kerry, Ireland,
Sept of 1982 age 57.

"The Pot O' Gold at the Beginning & End of Dad's Rainbow!"

I got the best of both worlds from both of them.

Happy Fathers Day!
17/june/07