INK MAGAZINE - MARCH 2026

Help Rebuild Grayson Reinwald’s Workshop!

On Friday, Feb.13th a fire completely leveled a work space that has produced Functional Art for decades.

We encourage our readers to donate whatever they can to help Greyson rebuild his shop. Below is from his GOFUNDME page:

“Grayson Reinwald of Grayson Metal is Allison Sloane’s (the woman I work for) Husband, but more than that, they are like family to me. Last night, tragedy struck when Grayson’s workshop burned to the ground, leaving them facing an overwhelming loss. The workshop was not just a place of work, but a source of pride and support for their family and the community. Seeing the aftermath has been heartbreaking, and I know how much this space meant to them. They do have insurance but unfortunately it won’t begin to cover the loss or the vet bills for their injured emu, Clarence.

This family has always been the first to step up when someone else is in need. They give and give, never asking for anything in return, and their kindness has touched countless lives. Now, in this difficult moment, they are the ones who need a helping hand. The funds raised here will go directly toward helping them replace what’s been lost—tools, equipment, and the means to rebuild what the fire took away. Every donation, no matter the size, will help them take the first steps toward recovery.

If you’ve ever been helped by this family, or simply want to support people who truly make a difference, please consider giving what you can. Your generosity will mean the world to Grayson and his family as they work to rebuild and move forward. Thank you for standing with them in their time of need.” —

Bailee Leonard

for Pandemonium Rainforest Project

Please Consider a Donation of Any Size. Scan the QR to visit gofundme:

“Individuality doesn’t just mean individualism—standing alone. It means developing one’s unique gifts, and being able to share them for the enjoyment of oneself and others.”

Frances Moore Lappe

Community. I can’t think of a more valuable word, but not stopping with the word, but the expression of it. Good neighbors leading to great neighborhoods. Great neighborhoods create healthy towns. These towns form the cities and, subsequently, the states. We rely on one another more than we let on.Shop were you know a name.

A community is a complicated system to build and often takes decades to find its groove, to stabilize. May we be sorrounded by friends. Speaking for myself, the go-to position would be the golden rule: treat others the way you would like to be treated. Carolina touches on this in her piece this month “The Quiet Strenght of a Smile”

The maintenance of convenience.The costs are not insignificant.

As an early adopter of tech, I now find myself as 60% spectator. INK is a magazine first. I think digital is vital. In print we remain in the physical world. Print is a choice. Everyday, it becomes more evident. There is a need to sit in silence for a while. The result being to remind ourselves (insert prayer or mantra here) that it’s okay to take both feet off the gas. When you park yourself against a wall and observe, what you’ll see is a whole lot of hurrying going on.

Progress can’t seem to come fast enough these days. What exactly is the measure of progress? (asks a phone). Have you ever received one of these new workflow efficiencies? “I am circling back in response to a text in an email regarding the voicemail we received.” Then my new favorite, “I thought you were a spam call.”

Here’s to the simple life. Enjoy

March 6 to April 11, 2026 Opening Reception Friday, March 6, 5-8 pm

DOROTHEA LANGE:

Through May 3, 2026

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Photo by hicrreet

And yet — smiling isn’t universal in meaning.

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shadowed as medicinal remedies took center stage, yet its results remain quietly groundbreaking.

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by

2023 Octopoda Cabernet Franc

March, the month of good luck and tasteful shenanigans, is usually devoted to beers darker than the winter months from which we are all ready to be liberated. There is good reason for that when one considers the lasting impact of Arthur Guinness and his ‘pints of plain’ that have so thoroughly intertwined themselves within Irish cultural history. Yet this month I picked a grape varietal that I love and have featured before, Cabernet Franc, hailing from a state better known for the offspring of that grape (Cabernet Sauvignon), California. May the road rise and deliver you to a place that carries 2023 Octopoda Cabernet Franc.

Cabernet Franc is a grape that here in ‘the States’ gets far less credit than it deserves. Discovered in France in the 17th century, this is a grape that has come to many European tables with more appropriate fanfare in the form of big Bordeaux blends and striking standalones. Yet the similarities between the production of this Spring-ready sipper and the varietal origins across the Atlantic are purposeful and plenty. The parent company that oversees the production of this particular label is called Precision Wine Company. Founded by a wine collector and trader with a distinctive Fenian surname (Trevor Sheehan) in 2010, the collective sought to establish their own négocian (French wine merchant) model meant to imitate the historic Burgundian practice of purchasing the highest quality grapes from a spattering of neighboring wine growers. In this case instead of the foggy hills of Burgundy he was picking produce from the lush lands along the Vaca and Mayacamas mountain ranges. What started as a passion product has since emerged as a major player in the market with a keen focus on finding a way to make the best of the West just a little more approachable. Now with 250,000 cases-plus in distribution each year it is clear he has found a mark and a market all his own.

well which really helps when trying to match it with cuisine. This offering is certainly delivering in both of those categories but there is something more that comes after you have had a chance to let it open up a bit (I recommend decanting it for thirty minutes before diving in. If you don’t have one, I am sure your local thrift store has a carafe waiting with your name on it)! The bouquet is plum and sage with that vanilla essence alluding to the oak it spent time in before bottling. A little more comes through with the first sip and then tarragon takes center stage. Every successive sip is a fill-in-the-blank black fruit exercise: black currant, blackberry, black cherry to name a few. More spices march in from your rack in the form of bay leaves and fennel. Maybe even a little allspice meets muddled jalapeno. Depends on who you are and how your palate is behaving that day to be honest. The tannins are tight, and the swirls around the glass invoke the early blooming violets that are ready to spring up (pun intended) around Ireland at the time of your reading this. It is bold but not boisterous and can shake the chill of one of the many swings in the weather we have come to expect in the Northeast this time of year. A 14.5% ABV delivered by a kind growing season in 2023 makes total sense. The good news for you, the well- intentioned imbiber, is that you can be as bold as the kelly green attire you are about to don when you are looking for the right meal to marry this to. This California dream of a wine will bless your Bleu cheese burgers, charm your corned beef, and placate your pasta carbonara. Truly living up to the octopus on the label when you are considering how many options you have when featuring this wine.

On to the contents beyond the cork: this is a proper representation of this foundational grape. At Saltwater Farm Vineyard we always tell people the big takeaway from Cabernet Franc (not blended) is bell pepper. There is usually a good amount of herbaceousness as

So unlike the protagonist of the Irish folk song, Spancil Hill, Johnny, you can be pleasantly surprised when you think of California as the state of mind you are in this season. Sláinte means health, and I hope“the craic was ninety”as they say across the pond (translation: you are having the time of your life)!

Gregory Post is a sommelier and manager at Saltwater Farm Vineyard, affiliated with Kingdom of the Hawk Vineyard.

Dennis Sirrine: Portrait of the

by Rona Mann / Photographs By Jeffery Lilly

Artists are a lot like snowflakes.

No matter how many there are, no two are ever alike, and it is this uniqueness that makes each of them so very special, because science tells us that a single snowflake is shaped by a unique, chaotic journey.

It doesn’t take long after meeting Artist Dennis Sirrine to sense the genuine uniqueness of this man. Sirrine, however, is hardly a single snowflake; in fact, he is a delicious blizzard of talent coming at you 100 mph, and he’s enjoying the squall he’s created as much as the visitor to his gallery will enjoy being swept up in it.

We first profiled Sirrine in August of 2018, so it seemed natural, after reacquainting with the artist just weeks ago, to go back to that issue of Ink and take a look at what he and we said; and, with little surprise, not a whole lot had changed. Eight years ago, he voiced, “It’s hard for me to talk about my work because it comes from a deep place.” And even now, eight years later, he’d rather not speak about the work, but let his work speak for him.

This can make it difficult when you want to tell a story, but Dennis Sirrine is not a difficult man. He is sensitive, emotional,

“ It’s hard for me to talk about my work because it comes from a deep place. ”

very engaging, and has talent that seemingly has no borders. He has done it. He has done it all, and although you could say he’s lived life on an angle, he has absolutely no regrets, certainly not when it comes to his work. He does not trivialize his work by giving it a “label” or an “ism,” so no matter how many times we asked, he steered clear of putting anything he has created in the past, or is working on now, into a box to be checked off and compartmentalized. Dennis Sirrine is, in many ways, an enigma, yet he doesn’t bury his secrets deep. He fancies talking about his life in sevens, “I believe every seven years there was change.” So, taking the artist’s lead, let’s go back to the beginning.

Perhaps you may have heard of Midland, Michigan. Perhaps not. But chances are, you have heard of the Dow Chemical Company, founded some 129 years ago and still one of the largest chemical companies in the world. Back 70-plus years ago, when Dennis Sirrine was born into a Midland family, “everybody in town worked at Dow.” It was just one of those places. Sirrine’s parents and siblings worked there; “my grandmother opened the glass lab there,” and, for a short time in summer, even Dennis had a pay stub from Dow. But his first love was always art, and from earliest childhood, he drew and painted, so it was no surprise to his family that, when he was in high school, he announced he wanted to enroll in art school and pursue that career path.

“ a bedroll, my sketch pad, some markers, and clean underwear ”

Art school was the Kendall School of Design, a private art academy in Grand Rapids, some 113 miles from Midland. That was fine with Sirrine because he wanted to get away from Midland and experience life on his own...and did he ever!

After three years at Kendall, the young man with a budding talent earned a diploma with honors in Fine Arts & Illustration and went on to the Minneapolis School of Art, where he completed his BFA in painting. He liked Minneapolis and found work as a sign painter, a trade he had learned from his uncle and embraced, turning it into an art form. It was the 60s in America, and Dennis also embraced the popular hippie culture, happily living a communal life with like-minded friends.

Soon it was the third seven-year block of Dennis Sirrine’s life, and he was ready to move on. His travels in the years that followed read like a travel agent’s office of brochures.

For a time, he took to the beaches in Hawaii, then to Arizona and New Orleans, before following his parents to Florida. They had retired and sold the family home in Midland, preferring to exchange the snowy Midwestern winters for the warmth of Florida, returning to Michigan in summer. However, Dennis realized early on, this was too confining for him. All he needed was “a bedroll, my sketch pad, some markers, and clean underwear,” and the world was his canvas. By that fourth seven-year period, he had experienced life in Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, India (not necessarily in that order, but the information comes rapid fire from him), finally landing in New York, where he worked in direct marketing doing illustrations for catalogs (“before computers”). At night, he would paint and freelance, joining outdoor shows in Washington Square Park and other venues throughout the City.

Sirrine additionally spent three years abroad studying the paintings of the old masters in Florence and Paris, as well as time in India, where his art appealed to the religious cult of Hare Krishnas as much as their peaceful way of life and consciousness appealed to him. Several of his works are included in an impressive book on Indian Art, and a photograph of a painting appeared in National Geographic in 1964. He has served on the boards of the prestigious Salmagundi Art Club in New York (the oldest in New York) and the Lyme Art Association in Connecticut. To say Dennis is accomplished is an understatement...he is a veritable force of nature!

Dennis Sirrine is his own man and an artist of incomparable and unending talent. Now in his late 70s and happily ensconced in his own gallery at Stonington’s Velvet Mill, where he also curates the second-floor Artists’ Collective Gallery, it is apparent he has no regrets. “If I had, or hadn’t, I wouldn’t be where I am,” he says with the smile and gentle manner he constantly exudes.

Sign painting, outrageous cartoons, black-and-white sketches, a famous “blue period,” beautiful traditional landscapes in oils, mixed media, watercolors, and now abstracts. He has done it all and excelled in every medium, creating a kind of visual language in every piece. The people in Midland who knew him as a young man dabbling in art no doubt labeled him a sign painter, his teachers in Minneapolis saw him as a painter, the ad community in New York called him a graphic artist or cartoonist, but the artist eschews such labels and just sees himself as Dennis Sirrine, happily evolving through the seven-year blocks of a very full life.

Abstract painting was a total departure for him, but one he has embraced with honesty and passion. It is his “new” language, one which leads to a dialogue between him and what develops on the canvas before him. “For the viewer, there is no right way to interpret the work; no hidden meaning. Objects appear and disappear in the process, revealing and reflecting my physical surroundings, memories, and emotions of the moment. Some of my paintings are collections of vignettes; others are figurative or reference landscape, coastal waters, marshes, birds, fish, boats, the city, the desert, and mountains...all creep into my visual journals. As does the unknown.”

“ Idlewild. What a wonderful name for a poet or an artist. To be allowed to be both idle and wild.”

— Dylan Thomas

The “sevens” seem to come faster now, but they do not chase Sirrine. They never have. The years have been the locomotives that have powered this artist’s evolution. You may remember Dylan Thomas, a great Welsh poet whom most students encountered during high school English classes. Upon arriving in New York for the very first time, his plane landed at what then was called Idlewild Airport (now JFK). Thomas was intrigued by the name “Idlewild” and remarked, “Idlewild. What a wonderful name for a poet or an artist. To be allowed to be both idle and wild.”

Such a perfect description of the artist, who is Dennis Sirrine. Who stays idle for a short time, then bursts through like a wild snow squall, giving us something different. Something new. And just like the snowflake that lands on the grass or on a tree, there is a permanence in what he creates that doesn’t fade even as it melts into time.

When Dennis Sirrine picks up the sketch pad, advances toward the canvas, or looks around his gallery and the culmination of his life’s work, there are always snowflakes shaped by unique, chaotic journeys.

A portrait of the artist. A self-portrait.

Utilizing yet another of his many talents and with a deep affection for doing so, Dennis has just hung the current art installation at the Velvet Mill, The Artists’ Group Show. Make sure you venture upstairs where the walls of the entire second floor are covered with mixed media representing those who inhabit these spaces. The show will be on through April 18th and may be viewed daily from 9AM to 5PM at 22 Bayview Avenue in Stonington Borough.

*JUST IN! As we were going to press, we found out that one of Dennis Sirrine’s abstract paintings, “Palate Picnic,” has been chosen to hang in the newest juried show entitled, “An Exhibition in Five Acts,” to be presented by the Lyme Art Association February 27-April 10th, with an opening on Sunday, March 1st from 2-4 PM. Address is 90 Lyme Street in Old Lyme. Congratulations, Dennis!

ngdom | Abstracted | Stilln ening Reception: S u ness | F Faaces & Figures nday, March 1, 2–4 pm

riving up the long driveway with snow on both sides in the dark, I sensed and felt something m the door of a long, s “Are you Ellen?” H warmly greeted me.

d I was going on a new adventure magical. A tall figure emerged from prawling property in the woods. He queried. “T.K.” he offered and . I had arrived.

Scents of sage and a wood fire ushered me in to the low-lit roo blankets over zero gravity chai and beam room. I took off my ittt

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r, , and the host om with candles and Indian irs that populated the long post shoes, and settled in. Musical tltiliibl instruments were set up: a crys chimes, drums and bells.

stal triangle, singing bowls, gongs,

Soon T.K. sat on a stool in front w sharing his work and expressing He encouraged dialogue later bu ipants on breathing and the valu from this as having a ripple effec

welcoming the twelve participants, g possibilities inherent in the session. ut for now he focused all particue of it. He alluded to the energy ct of peace.

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en ebbed and flowed, quieted, went yowntimefirsthearingothers

wild and soft, I followed in my own time first hearing others breathing and allowed the sounds of the music into my inner world. At first, tense, about halfway through the magic started to happen. I felt both exhilarated and in suspended disbelief at visions I saw. Soon the host brought out a plume of hawk’s feathers and blessed us with burning sage and stood by us wi tinkling koshi chime, welcoming us back.

After the end of the session, T.K. created availability for sharing He said to me to let my experience sit with me and to look for images I saw to come into my life.

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Going back thr y, , T.K. expressed it as second his past and present work at The Sound Retreat. Of imp to him is the present moment. Bringing sound together breathing was something he came to in his personal pract sound meditation. He started opening channels of spiritu came to find his tr Trrained and self-taught as a from a young age, T.K. left that behind to pursue a caree received the words as instant knowledge of his future w gy

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singing bowls, chou gongs, paiste gongs, little bells suspended on woodland branches, a bronze singing bowl, koshi chimes, brass plates, drums varied mallets that bring out different harmonics. He refers to all the instruments as voices.

Trained in transformational breathwork during Covid. T.K. got into it as a healing modality for him at a time of turmoil and he found it powerful and profound. He then realized that breath training worked well with sound work. He trained as a breath practitioner and offers group breathwork classes throughout the year. He went on, “I attended a group breath session where you do intense breathing exercises for an hour and a half with about 20 people and three or four helpers. It stirs up your system to the point that if there’s stuff in there that’s old, repressed trauma it does something to it.” With many different techniques he points out that it’s all breathing, but this is with intention and depth. He offered, “You usually go to a breath workshop for a reason. You knowingly have an issue that you’re trying to work through.” Sessions are normally an hour and a half.

Through the years at the Sound Retreat he has had a concert series, bringing people in from around the United States and the world, he has made the space available for women’s groups to gather, he created the “Conscious Café” and created space for community connections among groups that wouldn’t normally mix. Nature being so vital in T.K.’s spiritual connections, he has offered outdoor immersion programs called, “The Healing Aspects of Nature.” It is centered around forest bathing which is a practice that started in Japan. It was originally a modality to help factory workers experiencing job stress. They would bus workers out into the forest

for twenty-five minutes a day to sit still and use their senses acutely. It wasn’t for meditation or even to close one’s eyes but to see, hear, touch, and smell in the setting of the forest.

In addition to the public group sound meditations that he offers 4-6 times a month, there are improvisational music and dance workshops that are a new offering, the breathing workshops, and one on one sound

meditations. The Sound Retreat works with many private groups, including halfway houses and school districts for teacher training on meditation. Once or twice a year they work with the Connecticut Bureau for the Blind and conducts day long workshops for blind adolescents featuring hand drumming and sound meditation. Also, they have had similar offerings to book groups, a women’s equestrian club and groups of close friends.

T.K. related that he came into his work as sound meditation in flux. He wanted to be available for people that bought into the same system he did and were discovering a spiritual path and a new way to do things. He said, “I needed to open this house up and learn my craft well so I could offer this opportunity to people.” Sound meditation is conducted inside the beautiful post and beam room, outside on a large deck that overlooks the forest and further into the forest in a gong garden which features a bed made of moss for sunrise or sunset meditation for individuals or couples.

He offers work for people that might be a little lost and a little off their firm footing: “Not a cool guy who has a cool space but to help people.” T.K. said, “Everything has been changing here in the last two years. People are having a hard time finding truths today. I personally believe that truth is something that should be born within. Not by what you read or what you watch. People have been flocking here. I’m hearing and seeing a lot more emotional release.” He related that people are no longer looking for another prescription or numbing out with television or addictive behaviors. He said, “As things in the country are getting more intense and crumbling, People are going to need real things, healthy things.”

T.K. added, “There has been a sharper focus on how desperate people are becoming with the political climate and where the truth lies. I feel obliged to offer these sessions as often as possible.” He increasingly sees fear and anxiety in people. T.K. shared, “I provide these sessions to give people a break. “

Preparation for T.K. in sound m the physical space for guests, ch asking for a sense of calm, safet clients that whatever they have work. He asks for a blessing fo tries to settle and be calm and p expresses gratitude. He asks fo and grandkids. He does a who the space anything that doesn’ asking for guidance from his sp

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meditations is critical. T Tiime setting up hoosing music in the background, y, , surrender and release for the e come for that they can do the r the instruments and guidance and present. He asks for a flow state. He or support for his health, forhis ids ole ritual with sage eliminating from t serve it. And then, he sits quietly pirit guides.

T.K. said “I have one precious h here. I must do everything I can who are going to purge a little o Whkdhhl Kf idihikT

hour with every person who comes n to create a container for people or have realizations or visions.”

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.K.of ost in doing this work, T T. fered, hat he needs a connection with the o me and whatever that means to times that is a painful experience as he spiritual world.” His instruments sing.

T.K. related some comments he was so busy I couldn’t drop in.” thing that could happen. Yoour even lie still in a comfortable se instruments. It’s a call to arms f people to do breathing work at number of people who are buyi ed that the possibility of tappin people. He said “The bottom lin life feels mysterious, that’s whe lot of years when I thought I wa it out, but the truth is you never

e as this is all a mystery ng into these tr Y

e has heard after sessions: “My mind ” He shared, “That’s the greatest ealize you’re cluttered. Yooucan’t etting listening to these beautiful for some people.” He encourages home. He added, “I have a record ing tickets and don’t come.” He addruthsistoomuchfor y. When my en I am at my happiest. There were a as on top of the world, I had figured r do.”

T T..K. discussed people disconnecting from clock time so that th can rest and be quiet and hopefully drop into a mediative sta in the sound meditation. He said, “That’s why I do what I do provide that offering.” He mentioned that many people are w out a belief system or that what has been that system is chang They’re unsure of which way to go. He said, “People have ha deep spiritual experiences in these sessions and that often lea toanewpath.” T.K.wrappedup: “Thereispotentialforgrow

mor to a new path. T.K. wrapped up: There is potential for growth through these experiences for every person. That’s what I’m here to do.”

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“The

You’re Being Paged

Book review by Rick Koster

Secret of James Joyce and Finnegan’s Wake”

Yes, it’s March!

St. Patrick’s Day is on the 17th, and the entire month becomes a global celebration of All Things Irish. These shenanigans include folks dyeing their Irish Wolfhounds green. Some hilariously shipping boxes of venomous snakes to Ireland to commemorate the iconic legend that St. Patrick originally ridded the Emerald Isle of all serpents.

Some of the biggest fun happens when celebrants inhale green beer for thirsty-six hours before St. Patrick’s Day and another twelve or so hours after, stopping only when the last leprechaun has gone back into hiding for another year.

There will be many parades, and every Irish fiddle band, punk rock band, dance troupe, Lucky Charms-eater and Irish Spring soap-user will be merry for thirty-one days.

Me? I’m not Irish and that makes me sad. My wife Eileen is half Irish and it’s not fair!

So all month I will listen to Rory Gallagher’s “Irish Tour ’74,” one of the best in-concert recordings ever made, and I’ll try to calculate how many blood transfusions I’d have to undergo to actually be Irish.

Oh! Here’s something else I do each March in my ongoing efforts to Irish-out.

I attempt one more goddamn time to read James Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake.”

Yes, Irish writers are extremely well represented on the world literary stage. Four have won the Nobel Prize: William Butler Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Samuel Beckett (1969) and Seamus Heaney (1995).

Twenty Irish authors have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and six have won: Paul Lynch (2023), Anna Burns (2018), Anne Enright (2007), John Banville (2005), Roddy Doyle (1993) and Iris Murdoch (1978).

Other notable Irish wordsmiths include Oscar Wilde, Paul Muldoon, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker, Edna O’Brien, Sally Rooney, Frank McCourt, Colm Tóibín, Caitlín Maude, Máirtín Ó Direáin, Seán Ó Ríordáin and Brendan Behan.

And many more!

For some reason, though, probably because he also wrote “Ulysses” and “The Dead,” Joyce might be the best known of all.

And “Finnegan’s Wake” is the most controversial of his works.

There are only four possibilities regarding “Finnegan’s Wake.”

1: It’s the greatest novel ever written

2: It’s the worst novel ever written

3. People who tell you they believe #1 are lying their asses off because …

4. No one’s ever actually finished “Finnegan’s Wake”

What I’ve done recently, though, is to make the book more palatable — and I’m doing so by translating it into English.

“Wait!” you say.“It’s already IN English.”

Well, yes, sorta.

“Finnegan’s Wake” was a Joycean experimental work in which he thought, “I know what would be fun! I’ll turn English into incomprehensible and clown-like gibberish!”

But what I’ve learned in my efforts at translation — and what no scholar has heretofore figured out — is that Joyce was actually writ-

ing a Hardy Boys book, which many of you know was a famous series of mystery novels for young readers. Though credited to Franklin W. Dixon, the books were in fact authored by a series of different writers, and Joyce accepted an offer from the publisher to write one — but only if he could do it HIS way.

And THAT became “Finnegan’s Wake”!

Here are two examples in which I take Joyce’s original text and “translate” it into digestible English.

Actual excerpt from “Finnegan’s Wake”: Pinck poncks that bail for seeks alicence where cumsceptres with scentaurs stay. Bear in mind, son of Hokmah, if so be you have metheg in your midness, this man is mountain and unto changeth doth one ascend. Heave we aside the fallacy, as punical as finikin, that it was not the king kingself but his inseparable sisters, uncontrollable nighttalkers, Skertsiraizde with Donyahzade, who afterwards, when the robberers shot up the socialights, came down into the world as amusers and were staged by Madame Sudlow as Rosa and Lily Miskinguette in the pantalime that two pitts paythronosed, Miliodorus and Galathee.

My translation:

Sixteen-year-old Joe Hardy hitched up his dungarees, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and shook his head. In his other palm, he balanced the severed head of an elderly woman.

Fighting back tears, he said to his brother Frank, older by a year, “Someone’s murdered our peppery Aunt Gertrude.”

“You right,” Frank said quietly. “On a guillotine, no less. Fiends! But, Joe, this could be our latest case as teen detectives!”

“Wake” excerpt: Is it not the fact (gainsay me, cakeeater!) that, while whistlewhirling your crazy elegies around Templetombmount joyntstone, (let him pass, pleasegoodjesusalem, in a bundle of straw, he was balbettised after haymaking) you squandered among underlings the overload of your extravagance and made a hottentot of dulpeners crawsick with your crumbs? Am I not right? Yes? Yes? Yes? Holy wax and holifer! Look up, old sooty, be advised by mux and take your medicine.

My translation:

“Boys, I’ve been a famous international detective my whole adult life, and you two solved the twisty and bloody murder of your own dear

Aunt Gertrude — my own sister! — while I was tied up bringing that ruinous mail fraud gang to justice!”said Fenton Hardy, proud father to Frank and Joe.

Frank and Joe nodded modestly. “You see, dad, all along Joe believed that Knuckles Buttercorn, the guillotine owner, couldn’t have been in Des Moines and Bayport at the same time! Our short-wave radio proved that!”

Joe added,“And it was Frank who realized that Bugsy Bradley couldn’t be a Catholic bishop. Plus, we found a bottle of Aunt Gertrude’s magnolia perfume hidden in the confessional booth at Bugsy’s church!”

“They’re gonna be in prison a darned long time,” Frank said grimly.

“I’m proud of you,” Fenton said, his eyes misting over. Then he took three shovels from a landscaper’s cart and handed them out.“Let’s dig Auntie’s grave!”

And so I believe, in my own way, I’m celebrating the month of March and All Things Irish with my contributions to the country’s literature through the prism of James Freakin’ Joyce and his lost Hardy Boys mystery!

Éirinn agus James Joyce go Brách!

Rick Koster has written over 13,000 words in a long career! Subscribe to his free "I WRITE GOOD!" SubStack for unparalleled inanity. www.substack.com Rick Koster.

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In Kirker’s “December 25th” book published in 2022, “a timeless state overtakes the Earth, and a mysterious voice issue an ominous warning that inconceivable forces are about to appear on Earth’s horizon,” he said.

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ForKirker He said many characters, which are drawn from his personal friends, surprise him as the story develops. r, , every chapter requires extensive rewriting. “A good writing product by the writer.”

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narrow his focus when he gets too whima subject, he said. “Editors can’t help you honest and ruffle your feelings.”

By visiting schools in B has received feedback f characters they liked th hundred percent.” He a school children in Buffa feedbackIgetisthatth feedback I get is that th moon and characters in important to me.”

Boston and throughout Connecticut, Kirker from children about his plots, as well as y, , which he integrates “one also receives a great deal of feedback from alo, New Yo y, , the biggest hey love my descriptions of scenes like the n a book. They can visualize them. That’s

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He credits his Norwich F withturninghis“‘don’t with turning his dont studies into ‘hell-bent on graduate from St. Bonav Law School in 1970.

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give a damn attitude when it came to n achievement and education,’” going on to venture University in 1967 and Notre Dame

“I have never forgotten be grateful that our pat book show at the Dime was published.”

n her influence on my life and will always ths crossed. She attended my very first e Bank Corporate Center shortly after it

Kirker’s advice for child become avid readers and both fiction and nonfictio that you’re going to get s

dren who want to become writers are to d read everything. “Read all the classics. Read on. It’s only with the breadth of that experience some idea,” if you really want todoit.

He said writing is one of the great joys o because it gives him a chance to share id strongly about and “hope that someone book and has a positive reaction…I thin time you read a book like this, when yo should add to the totality of something life that you keep with you and carry fo

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of his life, deas he feels e reads the nk every ou’re done, it good in your orward.”

changed his name to “Kirk” in the late r, , he changed his this time to “Kirker” to sound “more Pr

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’Kirks of t-grandfather 1800s to get s name again, Protestant.” in the U.S. y..’”

mus O’Malley” so available gs” (which k)d work in the USA. Later

Jim Kirker’s “The Adventures of Shamus O’Malley” series is available on Amazon.com. Also are his books, “Izzy and the Three Kings” (which Jim co-wrote with his son, J. Patrick Kirker) and “First Prize is Nothing: The Marion Incident.”

For more information, r..com.

In Kirker’s latest book, “Finding Patrick” (for “Harry Potter”- a readers and adults, to be published later this year), a group sea for St. Patrick’s true burial place. Laced with two mystifying murders and money laundering, this story heavily involves M agentsfrom EnglandandforeignnationalsKahlilfromIndiaa age arches MI6 and go to jimkirkerauthor agents from England and foreign nationals, Kahlil from India Kimona from Jamaica.