One Long River of Song
Page 22
To all of the above for enthusiasm and conviction.
To Fred Courtright for enduringly navigating the rights and retributions and fielding questions at all hours while moving to Florida.
To Kim and Perrin Stafford for guiding us to Fred Courtright and for your seasoned savory wisdom and countless roast chicken dinners.
To Thomas Booth for vigor and brio while answering mounds of queries and for publishing Mink River in the first place and to Meg B. Holden for pies.
To Chris and Jeananne Doherty for legal and other advice while moving to the twenty-sixth floor with a broken elevator and for thirty-three years of salmon feasts in Neskowin.
To Robert Miller Senior and Susan Richardson Miller for legal advice and general guidance and the best barbecued steaks in Damascus, not to mention Thanksgivings.
To Elisabeth Mary Miller for being Beth.
To all the optimistic, stellar, brave publishers and editors who gave first light to Brian’s essays and graciously gave permission for them to be included in this collection. A special bow to Bernadette Walters and Martin Flanagan for imaging One Day Hill into being and for the hummingbird on the cover of Thirsty for the Joy.
To the long-legged, lovely, fiery Irish Ethel Clancy Doyle for mothering, teaching, tending, and for dusting the mountains and miles of bookshelves living and breathing in your home, feeding Brian’s hungry mind with dreams and visions all the while. For birthing Kevin, Betsy, Peter, and Thomas to sandwich Brian in between instead of becoming a U.S. senator, and for marrying the erudite, dignified, and devilishly handsome James Aloysis Doyle, who fathered the lot of them, all of you gathering and laughing and arguing each evening at the dinner table, elbowing and jostling and elevating each other.
To James Aloysis Doyle, for all the hours in the wars and on the train to the city, keeping all of us and the Catholic Press alive and well and putting up storm windows and listening and leveling and typing columns in the basement instead of writing all of your own novels, presenting Brian (while he pondered going to the state college to play basketball or Notre Dame to pursue an English degree) with the infamous observation that you hadn’t seen a lot of under-six-foot guys with ponytails and glasses in the NBA.
For the seventy-five years of your vibrant and desirous marriage, in sickness and in health, with the Times and tea, and for the incredible way you, our beloved Nana and Bopa, LIVE your buoyant faith, selflessly, nonjudgmentally, and sui generis-ly, which qualities marinated and flourished in the son you love so and sent out with stamps and a silver tongue.
To Kevin for being a hero to B. and for keeping Heron Hawk Eagle Egret Osprey company with him now.
To Depa for giving your brother his learning curves in music and rhythm and for your calm joy and peace and saffron and maroon socks hanging along the Hudson River.
To Peter for accompanying your brother through the oceans and backroads and forests and bars of your brotherhood and for all the beauty you bring out of wood.
To Thomas for being the solid, sturdy, sumptuous son, and bait for your brothers. For always caring for others before your deep-sea dives or your golf games, all while raising funds to nourish young-adult minds.
To Jane, Sharon, Diane, Neal, Meghan, Jess, Jack, Henry, Conor, Rachel, Tara, Colleen for millions of easy connective bumping hours of laughing stories and stimulus in Merrick, Ireland, and Florida.
To Steve, Gregg, Susie, Bobby, George, Chris, Luke, Maddie, Catie, Tim, Ingrid, Mark, Susan, Maggie, Will, Sam, Katie, Brock, Samuel, Robert, Kesa, Tyrell, Leo, Maurice, Hannah, Mary, Erich, Lucas, Charlotte, John, Paula, Vincent, Grace, Michael for millions of easy connective bumping hours of laughing stories and stimulus in Neskowin, Portland, and Damascus.
To our dear friends on the court and off, in pubs, bookstores, libraries, classrooms, and campuses, at concerts, coffee shops, and chapels, at weddings and wakes, in kitchens and gardens and vineyards, around your tables, on islands, highways, skyways, streets, and country roads, you know who you are and what you mean to us.
As Brian wrote for his friend the Reverend Bill Harper, “If a man cannot begin to count the oceans of love slathered in his personal direction, then he is rich far beyond calculation.” Remember to be rich when fear comes.
If we are united, then there is no room for fear. Just miles and oceans and streams and rivers of long songs of gratitude.
Gratias vobis ago.
Mary Miller Doyle, July 22, 2019
These essays originally appeared, sometimes in different form, in the following publications: “20 Things the Dog Ate,” “The Creature Beyond the Mountains,” “Fishering,” “Joyas Voladoras,” “Lost Dog Creek,” “Raptorous,” “The Anchoviad,” “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever,” “The Hawk,” and “Tigers” appeared in Children and Other Wild Animals by Brian Doyle, copyright © 2014, and are reprinted with the permission of Oregon State University Press. A previous version of “Heartchitecture” appeared in The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart by Brian Doyle, copyright © 2012, and is reprinted with the permission of Oregon State University Press. (www.osupress.edu)
“Eating Dirt,” “Joey’s Doll’s Other Arm,” “Leap,” “On Not ‘Beating’ Cancer,” “The Anchoviad,” “The Meteorites,” “Two Hearts,” “Two on Two,” and “Yes” are excerpted from Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies by Brian Doyle (Loyola Press, 2013), and are reprinted with permission from Loyola Press. “Dawn and Mary” and “His Last Game” are excerpted from The Thorny Grace of It: And Other Essays for Imperfect Catholics by Brian Doyle (Loyola Press, 2013), and are reprinted with permission from Loyola Press. Reprinted with permission from Loyola Press. (www.loyolapress.com)
“100th Street,” “A Prayer for You and Yours,” “Angeline,” “Because It’s Hard,” “Bird to Bird,” “Chessay,” “God,” “Hawk Words,” “Illuminos,” “Mea Culpa,” “Our Daily Murder,” “Selections from Letters and Comments on My Writing,” “The Bullet,” “The Daoine Sídhe,” “The Deceased,” “The Final Frontier,” “The Four Gospels,” “The Old Typewriter in the Basement,” “The Way We Do Not Say What We Mean When We Say What We Say,” “To the Beach,” and “What Were Once Pebbles Are Now Cliffs,” are reprinted from Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace by Brian Doyle, copyright © 2017, with the permission of Franciscan Media, 28 West Liberty Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202. (www.FranciscanMedia.org)
“A Shrew” and “The Sea” are reprinted from A Shimmer of Something by Brian Doyle, copyright © 2014, and “The Tender Next Minute” and “Tyee” are reprinted from The Kind of Brave You Wanted to Be by Brian Doyle, copyright 2016, all with the permission of Liturgical Press, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, MN 56321. (www.litpress.org)
“A Song for Nurses,” “Catch,” “The Room in the Firehouse,” and “We Did” are reprinted from So Very Much the Best of Us: Prayers of Praise in Prose by Brian Doyle, copyright © 2015, all rights reserved. “Cool Things,” “Irreconcilable Dissonance,” and “[Silence]” are reprinted from Grace Notes, by Brian Doyle, copyright © 2011, all rights reserved. All of these are used by permission of Saint Mary’s Press. (www.smp.org)
“Clairtonica Street,” “On All Souls Day,” “The Old Methodist Church on Vashon Island,” “Times Tables,” and “God” are reprinted from How the Light Gets In by Brian Doyle, copyright © 2015, used with permission from Orbis Books, PO Box 302, Maryknoll, NY 10545. (www.orbisbooks.com)
“Joey” and “Lines Hatched on the Back Porch of Eudora Welty’s House in Jackson, Mississippi” are excerpted from Thirsty for the Joy by Brian Doyle, copyright 2007, and are reprinted with permission from One Day Hill.
“Last Prayer” is excerpted from A Book of Uncommon Prayer, copyright © 2014 by Brian Doyle, and is used with permission of the publisher, Sorin Books, an imprint of Ave Maria Press®, Inc., PO Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556. (www.avemariapress.com)
“Billy Blake’s Trial” is excerpted from Spirited Men: Story, Soul, and Substance, copyright ©
2004 by Brian Doyle, originally published by Cowley Publications, now Rowman & Littlefield, 4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham, MD, 20706. “His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Manifestation of Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Stops the Car Along the Road to Watch Children Play Soccer” is excerpted from Epiphanies & Elegies: Very Short Stories, by Brian Doyle, copyright 2007, originally published by Sheed and Ward, now Rowman & Littlefield. (www.rowman.com)
“His Last Game” and “Two on Two” are excerpted from Hoop, copyright © 2017 by Brian Doyle, and used with permission of the University of Georgia Press, Main Library, Third Floor, 320 South Jackson Street, Athens, GA, 30602. (www.ugapress.org)
“20 Things the Dog Ate,” “Creature Beyond the Mountains,” “Eating Dirt,” “Joey’s Doll’s Other Arm,” “Joyas Voladoras,” Lost Dog Creek,” “Raptorous,” “The Anchoviad,” “The Greatest Nature Essay Ever,” and “Tyee” were published in Orion Magazine. “Catch,” “Dawn and Mary,” “Everyone Thinks That Awful Comes by Itself, But It Doesn’t,” “First Kiss,” “His Weirdness,” “Memorial Day,” “My Devils,” “The Hawk,” “The Old Typewriter in the Basement,” “The Way We Do Not Say What We Mean When We Say What We Say,” “To the Beach,” and “We Did” appeared in The Sun. “Address Unknown,” “Angeline,” “Beer with Peter,” “Chessay,” “His Last Game,” “His Listening,” “Hoop,” “Joyas Voladoras,” “Leap,” “Pants: A Note,” “The Daoine Sídhe,” “The Meteorites,” and “The Praying Mantis Moment” were published in American Scholar, and “Chessay,” “Cool Things,” “Leap,” “Two Hearts,” and “Illuminos” first appeared in the University of Portland’s Portland magazine.
“Fishering” appeared in High Country News, “An Leabharlann” in AGNI, “100th Street” in First Things, and “A Song for Nurses” originally appeared in Health Progress, the official journal of the Catholic Health Association.
“Brian Doyle Interviews Brian Doyle,” “Catch,” “Leap,” and “Lost Dog Creek” appeared in the noncommercial online magazine Smokebox. “Hawk Words” appeared in the National Catholic Reporter. (www.NCRonline.org) “Leap” also appeared in Medium.
“His Last Game” appeared in Notre Dame Magazine, “Irreconcilable Dissonance,” “On Not ‘Beating’ Cancer,” and “The Hawk” appeared in Eureka Street. “Irreconcilable Dissonance” also appeared in Oregon Humanities, and “On Not ‘Beating’ Cancer” also appeared in The Oregonian. “Jones Beach” appeared in Ecotone, “Mea Culpa” in Brevity, and “The Final Frontier” and “Because It’s Hard” (originally titled “A Monk Would Know Better”) were published in Sojourners. “Yes” appeared in Harper’s and the Georgia Review, and “The Wonder of the Look on Her Face” and “Two on Two" were published in Creative Nonfiction.
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About the Author
Brian Doyle (1956–2017) was born in New York and attended the University of Notre Dame. He worked at U.S. Catholic Magazine, Boston College Magazine, and, up until his death, was the editor of Portland Magazine. He wrote a number of novels and works of nonfiction, and his essays appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion, American Scholar, America Magazine, The Sun, and many more. He won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, the 2017 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, the Oregon Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, among others, and had multiple essays included in Best American Essays.