One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Growing up in Ireland, when my family received important news, good or bad, we would boil water and make tea. It was the first thing I did when my father died in 1984. This ritual allowed me a moment to take in the enormity of what had happened.
One of my earliest memories is walking up a muddy road into the mountains. It was raining. Behind me, my village was burning. When there was school, it was under a tree. Then the United Nations came. They fed me, my family, my community.
Every week, we read about horrific tragedies resulting from children who play with firearms and accidentally shoot themselves or their family members.
With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound.
When I was in my late 30s, I lit a figure on fire on Baker Beach in San Francisco. It was me, a friend, and maybe eight people, tops. There wasn't any premeditation to it at all. It was really just a product of San Franciscan bohemian milieu.
I was a girl in a land where rifles are fired in celebration of a son, while daughters are hidden away behind a curtain, their role in life simply to prepare food and give birth to children.
I saw why people died and how they died. I saw gunshot wounds and liver failure. It was a good learning experience, so I came regularly on weekends and holidays.
Our house was bombed, and the roof fell in. We were sitting under the stairs of the basement, and we were quite safe, but it brought home the realization. In two nights 400 people were killed in small town.
When I was 13 or 14, my parents had a bit of a windfall so bought a lovely new kitchen, but I burnt it down. I was making cheese on toast when flames escaped from the grill. My father stopped the fire with blind panic and excessive water. I was forgiven, but it put me off cooking for years.
I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.