Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's staff management or ownership.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, you'll find it out with Pete and the
Poet Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
And we're on the air this morning with Mary Flad,
a local Poughkeepsie artist and being an artist. She's a
new novelist. And we're going to get right to Mary
Flad and her work right after the poet Gold gives
us a weekly prayer poem incantation, Gold, please let.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It roll, Okay, Peter, Today this morning, I'm going to
do hope. Hope is not light as in weight. It
carries within it the heaviness of adversity, the shadows whispering
to remind you of a past you overcame. Therefore you
can overcome again. I lean into hope like an old friend,
helping me to move forward.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And moving forward something Mary Flad knows a great deal about. Absolutely,
you had a lot of things, and Mary, if you
could just explain to the audience how you spent your
life as an artist and how the people who have
known you for a long time. It might be surprising
that the punchline as you have a novel.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah right, Peter Will. My life has I think gone
back and forth between visual arts and verbal stuff. I've
written off and on over a long period of time
about different things, and you know me mainly as an
artist recently, but I've gotten back to the writing end
(01:36):
of things. So a number of years ago I started
delving into the stories of immigration, and particularly immigration from
Ireland in the nineteenth century, because of family folklore that
had been passed down and for a variety of reasons.
I got deeply into a story of somebody an ancestor
(01:58):
my great great grandmother, who was a nurse in Ireland,
widowed then came to the United States. Similar story. We've
heard this in many different places, and because I've heard
that story from people from all over the world, a
friend of mine who's a Jamaican came here as a
nurse when she was a young woman to work for
(02:20):
a family. People from the Philippines, people from Korea who
have all ended up coming to this country because of
the opportunity, particularly in medical related things. So that was
the story I started delving into. And after i'd gotten
everything I could out of the records here and in Ireland.
(02:45):
Then I started messing around with the idea of turning
it into something fictional, a story said in that same
period of time, based on a lot of the details
I'd learned looking into the life of this woman. And
it took years and years and years, and a lot
of paper thrown into the waste baskets and so forth.
But it's just very recently that I have gotten to
(03:10):
the point of taking the manuscript that had been worked
and reworked and reworked, and got it into a book
form which is about to appear in the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It's so wonderful. Congratulations. A lot of people don't know
the process of, you know, writing that. I recently posted
on Facebook something about how writers will research something that's
perhaps factual and do exactly what you said and turn
that into fiction. Is such a relationship between you know,
what is real and then what is the creative story.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Right, and moving from fact to fiction is a very
interesting process because not just you have the freedom to
put things together in a different fashion, but also you
have to work at building the skill of telling a
story that anybody would want to read, so that you know,
I think for me, as for many other people, when
(04:05):
they move through that, they go to writers' workshops locally,
maybe to things during the summertime at one place or
another that has a writer's workshop, find out that they
can throw away a lot of their written what they've
written by way of that, and start over again. And
that's all part of the process. But you also learn
(04:26):
a lot about different writers approaches to telling a story
and what you're what's authentic history, and what you're making
up just out of your imagination.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Now, now I met you as a would you say, tapestry.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
A visual artist that's mainly a tapestry weaver, designer and
weaver of textile things.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Right, So which that works is absolutely fabulous. What you do?
You did you find, let's say, mentally in the process
as an artist, a correlation between how you write and
how you weave.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I think there are a little different processes, but for me,
both of them involve words. I mean, I find very
often in developing a design for something, I'm starting with
a phrase, a phrase out of a poem, something I
hear somebody say, a line from scriptures or some historic source,
(05:25):
and then you start building in the other parts of it,
color and shape and so forth. And I have gone
back and forth over my not short life between working
with the visual and working with the verbal things, and
I find when I'm switching back and forth it's kind
(05:46):
of challenging to get back to the other semantic structure.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
And how different is that. I would imagine relatively few
visual artists would thought at the word is it completely
you syncratics to you? Or is this something that you
know other people do that's new to me.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I'm not sure, Peter Beeth. I think there are a
lot of differences to it. I mean, I think a
lot of particularly contemporary abstract art, I have difficulty figuring
out where the artist is starting from and coming up
with something. And I would say generally not a word.
(06:31):
I mean, frequently the title is untitled number six. That's
not always true. I mean sometimes I find that there's
a title for something that's kind of an aha moments, Oh,
so that's what this is all about. So it's back
(06:54):
and forth. But the creative process for both, I think
you get you know, you have an archive in your
head someplace that you're sticking things away and dealing with them.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
That's so true. I'm always, you know, putting things in
different parts of my brain and thank goodness for the
phone now, so I put some of it in my notes,
so I don't forget, do you have?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
You sometimes tart with images and then go to words.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Sometimes I do.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So both you as artists are bilingual at one level.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
That's very good. That's very good.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Peter.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Once again, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to
finding out with Pete in the poet Gold. I'm Peter
and I'm the poet Gold. And we're here talking to
our friend Mary Flat who is a visual artist and
an author that has a new book out coming many
long years to Home.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And so it's in nineteen it starts in nineteenth century Ireland, right,
and so the immigration is like in nineteen thirty two
and eighteen thirty two.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Well, the actually the immigration story this is about is
the early eighteen forties, in other words, just before the famine,
the Potato famine, which is what so much of Irish
Immigration Center is about as a story. But really the
immigration from Ireland to elsewhere, whether it's Australia or North
(08:22):
America or into the military. As the wild geese going
all over the world is continuous from the late eighteenth
century on. And you know, a substantial part of the
population of this country has some of that Irish roots, and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I have a ton of it. The eighteen forty potato famine,
that's when the potatoes grow shrilled. Hime to America and
we sort of poor in New York for one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Irish.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I'm sorry, your family's Irish.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Also my father's family, Yeah, yeah, so my father's family
is all one hundred and ten percent Irish. My mother's
family was Dutch and German, but also eighteen forties immigration.
So I've heard, you know, stories from both sides of
(09:21):
the family. And these stories may be true or embroidered
or totally imaginary, but they were great for me. They've
been a great source of inspiration for writing, not just
this book, but other stories of you get all these
ideas about how you know, who was mad at who,
(09:43):
and why they left the country and where they ended
up and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And my editorial position is with the Irish, you know,
when we say something, it's already embroidered.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Exactly exactly fact, right right right.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I love with your weaving background that you chose to
use the word embroidered.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And you know, so I started working on this about
thirty years ago, and when I got to a certain point,
my kids gave me a trip to Ireland so I
could do some research there, and so I got I
had never been to Ireland before. All I knew about
(10:33):
it was from book learning really not too much sense
of thing. Got off the plane in Dublin, got a cab,
got into the cab, and the cab driver in the
drive from there to the B and B recites the
whole history of the last two thousand years in Ireland,
and in Ireland, Peter, you probably know this, but every
(10:56):
time you turn around this happens people. It's an extreme
family verbal society, and people have the whole history. And
besides that what their uncle said really happened to tell
you about everything under the sun.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So well, at least they know their history.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Yeah, they know, or the embroidered part, the.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Embroider part, and not the shame to share it. You know,
they don't run from it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
My sense is that you're pointing out the Irish are
good with words. I mean, like even contemporary Irish Irish
people when you speak to them, they're just generally like
friendly and charming, and you know.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Unless they're related, and then they may have a.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Boney rough on that. But the charm is real and
it's cultural. It's not an individual quirk.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But Irish people are charming, ye, so, and the Irish
poets are great like you know, right anybody, but we're
much better words and we are winning. Was terrible at
winning was And so what we do? You go out
and was to England and then come back and make
uple of the beautiful sentimental.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Story and songs and music.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, give us amary of the character herself. I mean,
this is sort of a mythic form of your great
great grandmother.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Right, So the real one that out of the mythic
form comes out of this was a woman who was
born in seventeen ninety ninety seven, right at the end
of the eighteenth century, and she married probably in her
early to mid twenties, was widowed probably about ten years
(12:44):
after that during one of the epidemics, probably a cholera
epidemic that swept through a lot of Ireland in eighteen
thirty two. Became nurse at a time when modern nursing
is just starting to take shape and the place that
(13:08):
modern nursing comes out of is Dublin. Dublin is where
Florence Nightingale went to learn nursing. So the hospitals in
Dublin in the from about eighteen twenty on became the
model for how nursing became part of the institutions of hospitals.
(13:32):
So this woman spent some time there after a period
of their migrated to North America, ended up in New
Haven in Connecticut, and lived the rest of her life there.
Died in eighteen seventy And I've seen her gravestone, so
(13:53):
I know that you know these dates are for real.
So filling in that seventy three year period is what
the novel is about, and embroidering it a bit, you know,
adding in the family conflicts, why did people move, and
so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I want to just catch your equivocation on the word
story novel and when you said and it's exactly what
the novel's about, and you said it in a different
way as if you mean the novel might also be
the truth. I mean, I show you it could be.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
You're and for anybody who gets into genealogical stuff, you know,
you get it to a dead end in terms of
figuring out So why did Jonathan leave for the gold
Rush and end up in New Orleans just at the
time of the yellow fever epidemic? So you make up
(14:56):
that story and those kinds of things have to become
part of it. And for that you're drawing on other
historic resources than the story of the person that's central
to it.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Now, will the book be available on your website?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
WI?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Can people?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
It be available you know online from Amazon and so forth.
It will be at the Three Arts by the end
of the month. There will be a book launch party
on the twenty fourth of November down at Gallery forty
in Poughkeepsie from four to six in the afternoon, and
(15:32):
the milk will be for sale.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Four to sixth on November twenty fourth.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Sunday, November twenty fourth at Gallery forty, which is at
forty Cannon Street.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Insie in Poughkeepsie.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And hopefully, you know, there will be all the online
sources that you can order books through. My understanding is
it will be available on all of those after the
twentieth of November.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Okay, And are we at the end already? And I second, okay,
And I was like, wait a minute, place.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I'm that.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
One other thing I wanted to add.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
If they give you a second, if you're just tuning in,
you're listening to finding Out with Pete, and the po
would go and I'm the poet go. Then we're here
talking with Mary Flat about her new book Many Long
Years to Home. So Mary went to save them with.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Things right, and we were talking about language and words,
the verbal part. So one of the things I learned
when I went to Dublin for the first time, hearing
people here coming back to Poughkeepsie, and all of a sudden,
I'm hearing the same thing on the streets of Poughkeepsie.
And who am I hearing it from is people from Jamaica,
because there's so much migration from Ireland to Jamaica during
(16:51):
the nineteenth century because the Irish, the unemployed indigen Irish
became to fill in after the end of slavery for
a labor supply. And so you have throughout the Caribbean,
throughout places in North America, and certainly certainly through Australia
(17:13):
also you have a lot of Irish and that language,
the lilt to the voice, the way of dealing or
you know, dealing poorly with various words, is very much
influenced by the accent and the lilt and so forth
(17:33):
that comes out of many Irish immigrants immigrants.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
But to havesie be the to have pepsie become a
world sense where world's crossroads between for the English language,
which is so beautifully spoken by Irish filter through Jamaica.
It shows UPHIPSI through the world. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
And the other thing I don't have any handle on
it all is I don't know where the Gaelic language
fits into that whole. Because it's the early nineteenth century
where Ireland moves from being primarily Gaelic speaking to being
(18:25):
at least half or primarily English speaking. And there are
economic reasons for that and all that, but I don't
understand the linguistic tie there.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I love some of the Gaelic you know, songs.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Right right written here.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
The beautiful body of works melodically.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So do you like the character what's the character's name, Margaret?
You like? Yes? Why do you like Margret?
Speaker 3 (18:55):
She endures, She deals with a lot of challenges and
manages to find her way through them. There are other
characters not so much.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Funny.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I wouldn't say funny. She has a sense of humor
in dealing with the circumstances around her. So, you know,
as a as a girl. Really before I would say
she's a young woman. She is working in a household,
(19:37):
one of those big elegant households in the Irish countryside,
which has kind of fallen into disrepair. And there's a
kind of a retired couple and then an elderly relative
of one of them, and the elderly relative and her
have somewhat difficulty seeing the same new universe. And that
(20:01):
relationship between the the cantankerous elderly woman and Margaret is uh.
It was fun to work around.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
And I look forward to reading the book. And you know,
you use the word endure for for Margaret. And there's
a great question, Peter, by the way, you know, you know, yeah,
but you know, but but to me it runs parallel
to immigration. You know today that immigrants overall endure. They're resilient.
(20:31):
You know, they're not necessarily coming to you know, just
to hang out. They come for a very good reason,
so to speak, to move their life forward in a
positive place in a land that they consider to be promised,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
The challenges they find aren't necessarily the ones they expect.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Right, and neither the ones that they've they've that they've
created for themselves, you know, they And that's throughout history,
you know, whether if you're you know, Irate, Jamaican, anything Italian.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
You know, we don't want to get into the politics
of it, but immigrants almost by definition, are the best
people that their country of origin has, the people who
refuse to endure gruesome condition nobody wants to own, right,
so they but they recognize their ambitious, forward looking, optimistic people.
(21:26):
And that's like a simple way of putting. This is
why America is great. I mean, as immigration is the
key still.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I like, I like you said, I know same, we've
like what you said is great, not that we have
to become great. America is great, and.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
They dealing with the challenges. I mean, I don't remember,
but I know my father's generation remembers the places that
had the signs up saying and I and no Irish
need apply and where you know, it wasn't acceptable to
even apply for a job.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
And they were othered, you know, and the other we
have a history in this country of othering people when
we think that things are just not going well for ourselves,
we look for another group of people to scapegoat because
we don't want to look at them in the mirror
at ourselves.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And that's one of the things that I was able
to play with in the story, is that that othering
of various people in various circumstances.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
So did Margaret every marry or have kids?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Well, she had, she had step children, older step children,
and she had two children of her own, and one
of them also died in that eighteen thirty two cholera epidemic.
And the rest I leave to the reader to discover that,
(22:55):
and they so. But the family, the extremely tangled family
networks of any Irish family, because so many Irish families
are so large in terms of numbers, is always an
interesting story. I'm just reading a book by Thomas Lynch
(23:17):
called Booking Passage that was written about twenty twenty five
years ago, which is his very contemporary stories of migration.
But again you have the you know, seven generations of
Thomas Lynch's, the Thomas Curry Lynch and the Thomas this
time Thomas Lynch, and you have all those tangled stories
(23:39):
that are so typical.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You have to edit it somehow. I know. My grandfather
was born probably eighteen eighty five. He was one of
twelve children, twelve Irish, more in the Bronx, so I
have remote cousins generations. Well we no longer have interest
in right, but the large Irish family. You're right, and
(24:04):
the Bronx is a pretty small place. Twelve, that's right.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, Well we should.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Tell people again the name of the book. Ye when
it's coming out the thing on the twenty fourth, so
we get that in for our listeners.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
The title of the book is Many Long Years to Home.
It's published by Epigraph. It will be available online or
at the Three Arts after November twentieth, and there will
be a book launch party on the twenty fourth at
Gallery forty in downtown Poughkeepsie forty Cannon Street on Sunday
(24:46):
the twenty fourth, from four to six in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And we're all interested before as you leave many Long
Years to Home, not from home.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And I am going to add that thank you for
the font size. Yeah. So once again, thank you so
much everyone for listening to finding out with Pete and
the poet gold another weekend and Mary was such a
pleasure having you.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
It was great to be here again, Thank you, welcome,
by bye,
The views and opinions expressed in the following programmer those
of the speaker and don't necessarily represent those of the station.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's staff management or ownership.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Good morning, you'll find it out with Pete and the
Poet Gold.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Peter Leonard and I'm the poet Gold.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
And we're on the air this morning with Mary Flad,
a local Poughkeepsie artist and being an artist. She's a
new novelist. And we're going to get right to Mary
Flad and her work right after the poet Gold gives
us a weekly prayer poem incantation, Gold, please let.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
It roll, Okay, Peter, Today this morning, I'm going to
do hope. Hope is not light as in weight. It
carries within it the heaviness of adversity, the shadows whispering
to remind you of a past you overcame. Therefore you
can overcome again. I lean into hope like an old friend,
helping me to move forward.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
And moving forward something Mary Flad knows a great deal about. Absolutely,
you had a lot of things, and Mary, if you
could just explain to the audience how you spent your
life as an artist and how the people who have
known you for a long time. It might be surprising
that the punchline as you have a novel.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah right, Peter Will. My life has I think gone
back and forth between visual arts and verbal stuff. I've
written off and on over a long period of time
about different things, and you know me mainly as an
artist recently, but I've gotten back to the writing end
(01:36):
of things. So a number of years ago I started
delving into the stories of immigration, and particularly immigration from
Ireland in the nineteenth century, because of family folklore that
had been passed down and for a variety of reasons.
I got deeply into a story of somebody an ancestor
(01:58):
my great great grandmother, who was a nurse in Ireland,
widowed then came to the United States. Similar story. We've
heard this in many different places, and because I've heard
that story from people from all over the world, a
friend of mine who's a Jamaican came here as a
nurse when she was a young woman to work for
(02:20):
a family. People from the Philippines, people from Korea who
have all ended up coming to this country because of
the opportunity, particularly in medical related things. So that was
the story I started delving into. And after i'd gotten
everything I could out of the records here and in Ireland.
(02:45):
Then I started messing around with the idea of turning
it into something fictional, a story said in that same
period of time, based on a lot of the details
I'd learned looking into the life of this woman. And
it took years and years and years, and a lot
of paper thrown into the waste baskets and so forth.
But it's just very recently that I have gotten to
(03:10):
the point of taking the manuscript that had been worked
and reworked and reworked, and got it into a book
form which is about to appear in the next couple
of weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
It's so wonderful. Congratulations. A lot of people don't know
the process of, you know, writing that. I recently posted
on Facebook something about how writers will research something that's
perhaps factual and do exactly what you said and turn
that into fiction. Is such a relationship between you know,
what is real and then what is the creative story.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Right, and moving from fact to fiction is a very
interesting process because not just you have the freedom to
put things together in a different fashion, but also you
have to work at building the skill of telling a
story that anybody would want to read, so that you know,
I think for me, as for many other people, when
(04:05):
they move through that, they go to writers' workshops locally,
maybe to things during the summertime at one place or
another that has a writer's workshop, find out that they
can throw away a lot of their written what they've
written by way of that, and start over again. And
that's all part of the process. But you also learn
(04:26):
a lot about different writers approaches to telling a story
and what you're what's authentic history, and what you're making
up just out of your imagination.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Now, now I met you as a would you say, tapestry.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
A visual artist that's mainly a tapestry weaver, designer and
weaver of textile things.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Right, So which that works is absolutely fabulous. What you do?
You did you find, let's say, mentally in the process
as an artist, a correlation between how you write and
how you weave.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I think there are a little different processes, but for me,
both of them involve words. I mean, I find very
often in developing a design for something, I'm starting with
a phrase, a phrase out of a poem, something I
hear somebody say, a line from scriptures or some historic source,
(05:25):
and then you start building in the other parts of it,
color and shape and so forth. And I have gone
back and forth over my not short life between working
with the visual and working with the verbal things, and
I find when I'm switching back and forth it's kind
(05:46):
of challenging to get back to the other semantic structure.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
And how different is that. I would imagine relatively few
visual artists would thought at the word is it completely
you syncratics to you? Or is this something that you
know other people do that's new to me.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I'm not sure, Peter Beeth. I think there are a
lot of differences to it. I mean, I think a
lot of particularly contemporary abstract art, I have difficulty figuring
out where the artist is starting from and coming up
with something. And I would say generally not a word.
(06:31):
I mean, frequently the title is untitled number six. That's
not always true. I mean sometimes I find that there's
a title for something that's kind of an aha moments, Oh,
so that's what this is all about. So it's back
(06:54):
and forth. But the creative process for both, I think
you get you know, you have an archive in your
head someplace that you're sticking things away and dealing with them.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
That's so true. I'm always, you know, putting things in
different parts of my brain and thank goodness for the
phone now, so I put some of it in my notes,
so I don't forget, do you have?
Speaker 1 (07:20):
You sometimes tart with images and then go to words.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Sometimes I do.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
So both you as artists are bilingual at one level.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
That's very good. That's very good.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Peter.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Once again, if you're just tuning in, you're listening to
finding out with Pete in the poet Gold. I'm Peter
and I'm the poet Gold. And we're here talking to
our friend Mary Flat who is a visual artist and
an author that has a new book out coming many
long years to Home.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
And so it's in nineteen it starts in nineteenth century Ireland, right,
and so the immigration is like in nineteen thirty two
and eighteen thirty two.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Well, the actually the immigration story this is about is
the early eighteen forties, in other words, just before the famine,
the Potato famine, which is what so much of Irish
Immigration Center is about as a story. But really the
immigration from Ireland to elsewhere, whether it's Australia or North
(08:22):
America or into the military. As the wild geese going
all over the world is continuous from the late eighteenth
century on. And you know, a substantial part of the
population of this country has some of that Irish roots, and.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I have a ton of it. The eighteen forty potato famine,
that's when the potatoes grow shrilled. Hime to America and
we sort of poor in New York for one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Irish.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I'm sorry, your family's Irish.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Also my father's family, Yeah, yeah, so my father's family
is all one hundred and ten percent Irish. My mother's
family was Dutch and German, but also eighteen forties immigration.
So I've heard, you know, stories from both sides of
(09:21):
the family. And these stories may be true or embroidered
or totally imaginary, but they were great for me. They've
been a great source of inspiration for writing, not just
this book, but other stories of you get all these
ideas about how you know, who was mad at who,
(09:43):
and why they left the country and where they ended
up and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
And my editorial position is with the Irish, you know,
when we say something, it's already embroidered.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Exactly exactly fact, right right right.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I love with your weaving background that you chose to
use the word embroidered.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And you know, so I started working on this about
thirty years ago, and when I got to a certain point,
my kids gave me a trip to Ireland so I
could do some research there, and so I got I
had never been to Ireland before. All I knew about
(10:33):
it was from book learning really not too much sense
of thing. Got off the plane in Dublin, got a cab,
got into the cab, and the cab driver in the
drive from there to the B and B recites the
whole history of the last two thousand years in Ireland,
and in Ireland, Peter, you probably know this, but every
(10:56):
time you turn around this happens people. It's an extreme
family verbal society, and people have the whole history. And
besides that what their uncle said really happened to tell
you about everything under the sun.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
So well, at least they know their history.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Yeah, they know, or the embroidered part, the.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Embroider part, and not the shame to share it. You know,
they don't run from it.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
My sense is that you're pointing out the Irish are
good with words. I mean, like even contemporary Irish Irish
people when you speak to them, they're just generally like
friendly and charming, and you know.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Unless they're related, and then they may have a.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Boney rough on that. But the charm is real and
it's cultural. It's not an individual quirk.
Speaker 4 (11:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
But Irish people are charming, ye, so, and the Irish
poets are great like you know, right anybody, but we're
much better words and we are winning. Was terrible at
winning was And so what we do? You go out
and was to England and then come back and make
uple of the beautiful sentimental.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Story and songs and music.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, give us amary of the character herself. I mean,
this is sort of a mythic form of your great
great grandmother.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Right, So the real one that out of the mythic
form comes out of this was a woman who was
born in seventeen ninety ninety seven, right at the end
of the eighteenth century, and she married probably in her
early to mid twenties, was widowed probably about ten years
(12:44):
after that during one of the epidemics, probably a cholera
epidemic that swept through a lot of Ireland in eighteen
thirty two. Became nurse at a time when modern nursing
is just starting to take shape and the place that
(13:08):
modern nursing comes out of is Dublin. Dublin is where
Florence Nightingale went to learn nursing. So the hospitals in
Dublin in the from about eighteen twenty on became the
model for how nursing became part of the institutions of hospitals.
(13:32):
So this woman spent some time there after a period
of their migrated to North America, ended up in New
Haven in Connecticut, and lived the rest of her life there.
Died in eighteen seventy And I've seen her gravestone, so
(13:53):
I know that you know these dates are for real.
So filling in that seventy three year period is what
the novel is about, and embroidering it a bit, you know,
adding in the family conflicts, why did people move, and
so on and so forth.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I want to just catch your equivocation on the word
story novel and when you said and it's exactly what
the novel's about, and you said it in a different
way as if you mean the novel might also be
the truth. I mean, I show you it could be.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
You're and for anybody who gets into genealogical stuff, you know,
you get it to a dead end in terms of
figuring out So why did Jonathan leave for the gold
Rush and end up in New Orleans just at the
time of the yellow fever epidemic? So you make up
(14:56):
that story and those kinds of things have to become
part of it. And for that you're drawing on other
historic resources than the story of the person that's central
to it.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Now, will the book be available on your website?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
WI?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
Can people?
Speaker 3 (15:12):
It be available you know online from Amazon and so forth.
It will be at the Three Arts by the end
of the month. There will be a book launch party
on the twenty fourth of November down at Gallery forty
in Poughkeepsie from four to six in the afternoon, and
(15:32):
the milk will be for sale.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Four to sixth on November twenty fourth.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
Sunday, November twenty fourth at Gallery forty, which is at
forty Cannon Street.
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Insie in Poughkeepsie.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
And hopefully, you know, there will be all the online
sources that you can order books through. My understanding is
it will be available on all of those after the
twentieth of November.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Okay, And are we at the end already? And I second, okay,
And I was like, wait a minute, place.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
I'm that.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
One other thing I wanted to add.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
If they give you a second, if you're just tuning in,
you're listening to finding Out with Pete, and the po
would go and I'm the poet go. Then we're here
talking with Mary Flat about her new book Many Long
Years to Home. So Mary went to save them with.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Things right, and we were talking about language and words,
the verbal part. So one of the things I learned
when I went to Dublin for the first time, hearing
people here coming back to Poughkeepsie, and all of a sudden,
I'm hearing the same thing on the streets of Poughkeepsie.
And who am I hearing it from is people from Jamaica,
because there's so much migration from Ireland to Jamaica during
(16:51):
the nineteenth century because the Irish, the unemployed indigen Irish
became to fill in after the end of slavery for
a labor supply. And so you have throughout the Caribbean,
throughout places in North America, and certainly certainly through Australia
(17:13):
also you have a lot of Irish and that language,
the lilt to the voice, the way of dealing or
you know, dealing poorly with various words, is very much
influenced by the accent and the lilt and so forth
(17:33):
that comes out of many Irish immigrants immigrants.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
But to havesie be the to have pepsie become a
world sense where world's crossroads between for the English language,
which is so beautifully spoken by Irish filter through Jamaica.
It shows UPHIPSI through the world. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
And the other thing I don't have any handle on
it all is I don't know where the Gaelic language
fits into that whole. Because it's the early nineteenth century
where Ireland moves from being primarily Gaelic speaking to being
(18:25):
at least half or primarily English speaking. And there are
economic reasons for that and all that, but I don't
understand the linguistic tie there.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
I love some of the Gaelic you know, songs.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Right right written here.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
The beautiful body of works melodically.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So do you like the character what's the character's name, Margaret?
You like? Yes? Why do you like Margret?
Speaker 3 (18:55):
She endures, She deals with a lot of challenges and
manages to find her way through them. There are other
characters not so much.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Funny.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I wouldn't say funny. She has a sense of humor
in dealing with the circumstances around her. So, you know,
as a as a girl. Really before I would say
she's a young woman. She is working in a household,
(19:37):
one of those big elegant households in the Irish countryside,
which has kind of fallen into disrepair. And there's a
kind of a retired couple and then an elderly relative
of one of them, and the elderly relative and her
have somewhat difficulty seeing the same new universe. And that
(20:01):
relationship between the the cantankerous elderly woman and Margaret is uh.
It was fun to work around.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
And I look forward to reading the book. And you know,
you use the word endure for for Margaret. And there's
a great question, Peter, by the way, you know, you know, yeah,
but you know, but but to me it runs parallel
to immigration. You know today that immigrants overall endure. They're resilient.
(20:31):
You know, they're not necessarily coming to you know, just
to hang out. They come for a very good reason,
so to speak, to move their life forward in a
positive place in a land that they consider to be promised,
you know, and.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
The challenges they find aren't necessarily the ones they expect.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Right, and neither the ones that they've they've that they've
created for themselves, you know, they And that's throughout history,
you know, whether if you're you know, Irate, Jamaican, anything Italian.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
You know, we don't want to get into the politics
of it, but immigrants almost by definition, are the best
people that their country of origin has, the people who
refuse to endure gruesome condition nobody wants to own, right,
so they but they recognize their ambitious, forward looking, optimistic people.
(21:26):
And that's like a simple way of putting. This is
why America is great. I mean, as immigration is the
key still.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
I like, I like you said, I know same, we've
like what you said is great, not that we have
to become great. America is great, and.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
They dealing with the challenges. I mean, I don't remember,
but I know my father's generation remembers the places that
had the signs up saying and I and no Irish
need apply and where you know, it wasn't acceptable to
even apply for a job.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
And they were othered, you know, and the other we
have a history in this country of othering people when
we think that things are just not going well for ourselves,
we look for another group of people to scapegoat because
we don't want to look at them in the mirror
at ourselves.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
And that's one of the things that I was able
to play with in the story, is that that othering
of various people in various circumstances.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
So did Margaret every marry or have kids?
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Well, she had, she had step children, older step children,
and she had two children of her own, and one
of them also died in that eighteen thirty two cholera epidemic.
And the rest I leave to the reader to discover that,
(22:55):
and they so. But the family, the extremely tangled family
networks of any Irish family, because so many Irish families
are so large in terms of numbers, is always an
interesting story. I'm just reading a book by Thomas Lynch
(23:17):
called Booking Passage that was written about twenty twenty five
years ago, which is his very contemporary stories of migration.
But again you have the you know, seven generations of
Thomas Lynch's, the Thomas Curry Lynch and the Thomas this
time Thomas Lynch, and you have all those tangled stories
(23:39):
that are so typical.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
You have to edit it somehow. I know. My grandfather
was born probably eighteen eighty five. He was one of
twelve children, twelve Irish, more in the Bronx, so I
have remote cousins generations. Well we no longer have interest
in right, but the large Irish family. You're right, and
(24:04):
the Bronx is a pretty small place. Twelve, that's right.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah, Well we should.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Tell people again the name of the book. Ye when
it's coming out the thing on the twenty fourth, so
we get that in for our listeners.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
The title of the book is Many Long Years to Home.
It's published by Epigraph. It will be available online or
at the Three Arts after November twentieth, and there will
be a book launch party on the twenty fourth at
Gallery forty in downtown Poughkeepsie forty Cannon Street on Sunday
(24:46):
the twenty fourth, from four to six in the afternoon.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
And we're all interested before as you leave many Long
Years to Home, not from home.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And I am going to add that thank you for
the font size. Yeah. So once again, thank you so
much everyone for listening to finding out with Pete and
the poet gold another weekend and Mary was such a
pleasure having you.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
It was great to be here again, Thank you, welcome,
by bye,
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