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Welcome to The Village Oak Tree

I am your host, Terrance Ó Domhnaill.

Thank you for joining me.

I’m going to take a break from most of the news this last week of the Celtic new year, what we in the Gaelic world call Oiche Shanhna (Ee-heh How-ná) or Samhain.

I want to take this time to outline the future of this podcast going into my new year ahead. This is the time of year I typically make my big changes in life, much like what Christians tend to do around the first of January. You know, New Years resolutions they call them.

Since my annual calendar revolves around the ancient Celtic calendar, my new year starts on November first, using the Roman calendar.

I’ve decided to start spending more time writing my novels, and traveling around the United States pursuing photography in the new year ahead. The images I take I will showcase on my soon to be newly renovated website. The website address is shown below or just use the QR code in the upper left.

What that also means is that because of all of the stress and distractions from the daily news cycles, I will start fading out my podcast as we know it. My future plan is to make infrequent podcasts about my travels and the people I meet along the way, along with any earth shattering news stories I find. Sort of like photo journalism with lots of landscape and nature photography. I will write more articles than produce videos next year.

Will this cause me to lose a lot of Substack subscribers? Probably. But then, my mental health is a lot more important than how many subscribers I can garner from the internet. Life’s too short to be worried about such shallow endeavors. At my age, I’d rather pursue nature than internet followers in the time I have left here in middle earth. So, I’ll be writing more of my particular brand of activism in the blog on my website than for any corporate online platforms. All because of the threats of algorithmic censorship in this age of pro-Israeli lobbies and Trump’s authoritarian takeover. I’ll probably quit writing in Substack altogether sometime in 2026 because of the corporate influence. I’ll continue contributing to Medium.com though because I have quite a few friends there and a much larger fan base.

So, gather round, sit you down somewhere comfortable for a bit. Let’s talk about a couple of things I’ve found in the news, the Celtic New Year, and where Samhain - Hallowe’en comes from to finish out my year.

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