Galway Postcards

Some days, walking through Galway, I notice something that other people seem to pass by without thought. I see children with Down Syndrome - smiling, waving, holding hands with a sibling or a parent. The parents look tired sometimes, of course, but there’s something else there too. A kind of steadiness. A kind of warmth. A sense that life is being lived, not optimized. And then I watch other families in the same cafés, the same restaurants - perfectly “healthy” children staring into screens, wearing headsets, lost inside some cartoon universe, their tiny hands swiping, their eyes glazed. Parents half-present, half-distracted. Everyone together, yet nobody really there. ...

There’s a small miracle in the west of Ireland: the word ye never died here. ...

A parable of optimism and overdrafts, told through a half-abandoned building on the Corrib.