tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16904814046618915652024-03-16T09:49:00.733-07:00Larry Kirwan of Black 47Black 47http://www.blogger.com/profile/05113384740594604412noreply@blogger.comBlogger496125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-45421513209240562142024-03-13T17:02:00.000-07:002024-03-13T17:04:57.937-07:00HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY<p><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">On one day a year, they congregated outside St. Patrick's Cathedral off Prince Street in New York City and marched in celebration. To some of these "Famine Irish" and their American born children it was a religious occasion, but to most the gathering was an affirmation of their right, not only to survive, but to thrive in their adopted country. That's what I sense on St. Patrick's Day - an echo from a time when the Irish were despised outsiders. And that's why I go along with the raucous energy, the excitement and even the green beer, the plastic shamrocks and the ubiquitous leprechaun.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">I didn't always feel that way. When I arrived from Ireland, these manifestations of Irish-America were at best embarrassing. Back home, our own celebrations were rigid and religious; we did sport actual sprigs of shamrock but there was no beer, green or otherwise, on this gloomy church holiday. The Parade up Fifth Avenue and the ensuing bacchanal seemed downright pagan by comparison.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">I had other immigrant battles of my own ahead. Black 47 was formed to create music that would reflect the complexity of immigrant and contemporary Irish-American life, and to banish When Irish Eyes Are Smiling off to a well earned rest at the bottom of Galway Bay. This idea met with not a little resistance in the north Bronx and the south sides of Boston and Chicago; but when irate patrons would yell out in the middle of a reggae/reel "Why can't yez sing somethin' Irish?" I would return the compliment with, "I'm from Ireland, I wrote it! That makes it Irish!"<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">With time and familiarity, Irish-America came to accept and even treasure Black 47, probably more for our insistence that each generation bears responsibility for solving the political problems in the North of Ireland, than for recasting Danny Boy as a formidable gay construction worker. I, in turn, learned to appreciate the traditions of the community I had joined along with the reasons for the ritualized celebration of our patron saint. And now on St. Patrick's Day, no matter what stage I'm on, mixed in with the swirl of guitars, fiddles, horns, pipes and drums, I hear an old, but jarring, memory of a people rejoicing as they rose up from their knees.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Our battles, for the most part, have been won; Anti-Irish sentiment, not to mention Anti-Catholicism, is a thing of the past. But a new breed of uninformed nativism threatens our Republic. Such views are on the wrong side of hope and history, for we are an inclusive nation - that's what makes us great. We close the gates and pull up the ladders behind us at our own economic and spiritual peril. And we must always honor the memory of those who paved the way for us.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Part of that responsibility is that we never forget the new immigrants from other lands. Many, like our forebears, are fleeing tyranny and are striving to feed and educate their families. It would be the ultimate irony if an Irish-American were to look down upon the least of them; for, in my mind anyway, there is no place in the Irish soul for racism, sectarianism, homophobia or even dumb old Archie Bunker type xenophobia.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">I once heard Pete Hamill ask: "What does the Pakistani taxi driver say to his children when he gets home after 12 hours behind the wheel?" I can't answer for certain, but I'll bet he echoes many of the sentiments of those "Famine Irish" who gathered outside St. Patrick's Cathedral so many immigrant tears and years ago.<o:p></o:p></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-79524456038199751922024-03-06T10:19:00.000-08:002024-03-06T10:19:59.734-08:00ALL THE RAGE - THE INFORMER<p> One of the joys – and occasional banes – of writing a
regular column is that it engages you with your readers. A recent column beginning
with Frank McCourt’s advice to would-be writers caught the eye of many.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In it I described a method I personally employ to get a writing
project started. One piece of advice I neglected - never write about something
you’re not totally invested in, for you will spend a long time in its company.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It took over ten years to get Hard Times/Paradise Square
from the Cell Theatre on 23<sup>rd</sup> Street to Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore
Theatre on 47<sup>th</sup>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The pandemic interfered, of course, but during that year of
“silence, exile, and cunning”, I conceived two other projects, which means I’ve
already put years of work into both.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, in this merry month of March, each will have a
showing when I, and an audience, will be able to judge their progress.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I had always wanted to write a 2-person musical – the better
to really delve into the characters, for as was stated in the McCourt column, “from
character comes story.” </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I had a vague idea of the plot which would center on a romantically
involved couple who break up and are thrown together years later. Can they
overcome time and change, and rediscover love?</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As I began to take notes soon after the lockdown in March
2020, I still had no idea of the setting, but on that first day the face of an
old friend surfaced - Ric Ocasek of The Cars. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He had died some months earlier, alone in his mansion near
Gramercy Park. We had co-produced Black 47’s album, Fire of Freedom, and became
close during long talks about bands, the Punk/New Wave scene, and the nearby
East Village.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While remembering Ric, my own life in the 70’s and 80’s NYC
music scene came back in a rush. And suddenly, I had my setting – my old
apartment on seedy <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>East 3<sup>rd</sup>
Street, overlooking a pristine urban garden.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was then easy to place the two characters in a New Wave
band of that era, to pinpoint the turbulence that both cast them apart and eventually
reunite them 20 years later.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I had lived that life, and almost instantly shards of songs came
to mind, about what it was like to be a rock musician - not in the usual dumbed
down, treacly Hollywood or MTV portrayal - but in the real life drama of trying
to “make it” on the drug-infested streets of the Lower East Side.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s called All The Rage and will receive a staged
performance reading on March 12<sup>th</sup> in the 28<sup>th</sup> Street
Theatre, NYC.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some months into the pandemic, Bobby Moresco, the Academy
Award <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>winning writer of the movie Crash,
got in touch, wondering if I was familiar with Liam O’Flaherty’s <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>novel, The Informer.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Was I what? I’d seen John Ford’s movie 3 times while still a
boy back in Wexford. Bobby wondered if I’d be interested in writing a stage
version.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I re-read O’Flaherty’s dark novel in a feverish weekend. I
had a long-standing ambition to write a drama about the Irish Civil War, and
wondered if Gypo Nolan’s betrayal could be re-oriented in that direction.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As it turned out, it took a re-imagining to adapt the story without
creating an anodyne period piece. For, to keep the spirit of O’Flaherty’s book
relevant, you can’t ignore the 50 years of more recent Troubles.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But I also had another ambition – to gather together a cast of
New York’s finest Irish-born actors and harness their distinctive voices and
talents to bring a new, large ensemble piece to life.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We did that in 20 minute increments by Zoom, all through the
pandemic, courtesy of Bobby Moresco’s weekly online Actors Gym. And what a cast
and director we had!</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We’ll see the results on March 23<sup>rd</sup> when The
Informer will receive a staged reading at the opening of the 1st Irish Festival
at the American Irish Historical Society courtesy of new president, Elizabeth
Stack, and Michael Mellamphy of Origin Theatre Company.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It will take even more time to get first class productions
of these projects on the boards. That’s the nature of the game, just make sure when
you begin your project your story is worth living with.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tickets for All The Rage, March 12, 28<sup>th</sup> Street
Theatre, 15 W. 28<sup>th</sup> St. NYC <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://bit.ly/ATR-TIX" target="_blank"><b>bit.ly/ATR-TIX</b></a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tickets for The Informer, March 23, at AIHS, 991 5<sup>th</sup>
Ave. NYC <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>www.origintheatre.org</p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-27118801944670653652024-02-25T15:22:00.000-08:002024-02-25T15:22:55.345-08:00A NEW IRELAND - NORTH & SOUTH<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Michelle O’Neill’s elevation to become Northern Ireland’s First Minister was a momentous event, full of hope and possibility.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Even in the glory days following the Good Friday Agreement such an outcome was the stuff of dreams; and that the First Minister be not only a member of the Sinn Fein Party but a woman, well, that would have smacked of a fairytale. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"> </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I’ve always loved Belfast. Had that something to do with the link between the Wexford 1798 insurrectionists and the Northern Presbyterian United Irishmen, or perhaps it was hearing the slashing guitar intro to Baby Please Don’t Go by Them?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s hard to tell, as my life has been a blur of politics and Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Belfast had both in profusion.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I was not unaware of the sectarianism, barely skin deep in the city, after all I had red hair, freckles, and a “Free State” accent. Still, at the worst of times, there’s always been a zest for life curried by a black sense of humor that knows no divide in this city of churches, chapels and evangelical shop-fronts.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Twice on a rainy night during the 1981 Hunger Strikes I came close to Armageddon: first while straying witlessly into a Loyalist pub, and later when alarming a very nervous British Army unit.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Those days are gratefully long gone, and about a dozen years ago I noticed a thaw in the streets, specifically while bringing people on a tour of Van Morrison’s once forbidden East Belfast – there you go, Rock ‘n’ Roll again!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">That thaw continued to accelerate, until last October at a rip-roaring party in the Europa Hotel I realized that I hadn’t even considered who might be Catholic or Protestant - in fact, the only such mention came from Terri Hooley of Good Vibrations fame when he made a scathingly funny remark about his own Methodist background.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">What happened? Travel, the broad vistas of the Internet, or the realization that “we’re all in this together” and that while you may live and breathe your cherished background, you can’t eat it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I have little doubt that the daylong strike of 150,000 public sector workers was the major catalyst that caused the foot-dragging DUP to go back into government. And now it’s up to Sinn Fein to deliver equal pay with other areas of the UK, along with better health care and other long neglected needs.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">A united Ireland will come in its own inevitable post-Brexit time, for as my Republican grandfather always pointed out, “In the long run, Unionists are more interested in the half-crown than the crown.” </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Besides, there are not a few nationalists in no particular rush to become citizens of a 32 county Republic.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And what of the South? Is this the same country I grew up in and left for adventure and greener hills?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">With the steady, and sometimes oppressive, hand of the Catholic Church removed, the country has cast off much of its old stodgy conservatism and appears to be flourishing.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Ireland’s secondary school students are the most literate in the EU, while Ireland is now on par with Scandinavian countries in its levels of tolerance for ethnic and LGBTQ+ minorities.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">On the other hand, the cost of housing has skyrocketed, with many young people feeling that they’ll never afford a home. This is leading to a renewed surge of emigration mostly to Canada, Australia, and other EU countries.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">No one even considers emigrating here anymore; under current laws it’s almost impossible, but there seems little urge to come illegally either.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">This has already affected Irish-America. The only relevant bridge between the two societies now seems to be the semester of foreign study in Ireland that many US colleges offer.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Apart from trips to Disney World and Taylor Swift concerts, tourism is one way, with the Irish-American demographic traveling to Ireland tending towards middle-aged and senior.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There is definitely overall goodwill between the communities but the cultural gulf continues to widen.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Take a look and listen to Bambie Thug from Macroom in rebel County Cork, Ireland’s entry into the Eurovision Song Contest with “Doomsday Blue.” Though the Eurovision often tends towards banal Pop, nonetheless, it can offer a glimpse into a country’s soul.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Perhaps the Irish people – North and South - are coming into their own and no longer need to look overseas? Does our fractious, sundering society have something to learn from them?</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-67671731475566034082024-02-08T14:29:00.000-08:002024-02-08T14:29:05.874-08:00LUCY BURNS, DOROTHY DAY, "KAISER WILSON" & THE SILENT SENTINELS<p> <span style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif;">They were called The Silent Sentinels. Members of the National Woman’s Party, 33 of them were sentenced to prison in November 1917 for protesting outside the White House.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Their mission was to convert the US into a legitimate democracy by gaining votes for women, though they were not without sympathy for the many disenfranchised African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans in various states.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The National Woman’s Party (NWP) had broken away from the more conservative National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) and called for direct action to gain the vote.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Led by Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, they began their campaign on March 3,1913 - the day preceding the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson - by marching through Washington DC.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">They were attacked by spectators on Pennsylvania Avenue, 100 women were hospitalized, and eventually cavalry troops were summoned to restore order. Ironically, a decade later, the Klu Klux Klan held a huge DC march without incident.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Born in Brooklyn to well-to-do Irish-American parents, Lucy Burns was tall, flame haired, and a devout Catholic. She was studying at Oxford University in 1909 when she met Alice Paul in a London police station. Both had been arrested at a suffragist protest.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">They bonded and worked together in the British Suffragist movement for some years before moving back to the US.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Here they gathered a formidable group of fearless women, including Dorothy Day, a young writer from New York with many admirers in bohemian circles, including Eugene O’Neill. Described back then as “a frail girl,” she had indomitable will and would go on to found the Catholic Worker Movement.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">By 1916 nine states had granted women the right to vote but President Wilson opposed a federal amendment.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Paul and Burns resolved to force his hand. In January 1917, as Wilson was about to begin his second term, the NWP called for women to picket daily outside the White House, regardless of the weather or Wilson’s displeasure.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">They wore distinctive gold, white and purple sashes and were at first tolerated as a curiosity. Wilson often smiled at them as he passed, though like many he disapproved of their “unladylike behavior.” However,<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Fueled by patriotic fury, onlookers attacked the silent protesters and ripped up their signs and placards.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">By mid-summer the women were being arrested, but usually released without charge. Eventually the courts sentenced them to short prison sentences. The silent women fought back by carrying more aggressive signs that labeled the president as “Kaiser Wilson.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Paul was arrested in October and sentenced to 7 months in Occoquan Workhouse. She went on hunger strike, was brutally force-fed and detained in the psychiatric ward.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Burns and Day were among 33 women brought to Occoquan on November 14<sup>th</sup> – since known as The Night of Terror. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">They demanded to be treated as political prisoners, but instead guards dragged them down the hallways and threw them into filthy, dark cells.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Lucy Burns was shackled, hands outstretched above head, and forced to stand all night. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Dorothy Day, the “frail girl”, was twice slammed down onto an iron bench, and various others were either knocked unconscious or injured – one suffered a heart attack.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Many of the women went on hunger strike but their demands for political status were ignored.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">However, word leaked out about their brutal treatment, and by the end of November all the protestors were released.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The oldest, Mary Nolan, 73, who had also been injured during the guards’ assault, published an account of the night and national outrage ensued.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">President Wilson, sensing the change of mood, demanded legislative action and Congress passed a federal suffrage amendment on June 4, 1919. The 19<sup>th</sup> Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920, and women were finally granted the right to vote.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Lucy Burns retired from public life soon after to raise an orphaned niece and lived quietly in Brooklyn.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Dorothy Day’s reputation as a leader of Catholic social action continues to grow. Though a confirmed feminist with left-wing and anarchist influences, she is being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Aptos, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">And the indomitable Mary Nolan, who refused to be silent, is buried in Jacksonville FL. Her tombstone contains her own quote “I am guilty if there is any guilt in a demand for freedom.”<o:p></o:p></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-64996088568330998892024-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:002024-01-25T14:10:21.174-08:002024 - THE YEAR OF THE BITCH<p> Well, it’s finally here – 2024, the year of the bitch! </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rest assured, sisters, this has nothing to do with any
gender-based slur, rather a recognition of the prevalent national pastime of
whining.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I say national because on trips to Sicily, Scotland and
Ireland in recent years, the whine level barely surpassed a whisper. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our era of complaint and victimhood inarguably amped up when
Donald Trump glided down the escalator and announced his candidacy for US
President on June 16, 2015.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Bloomsday, no less! Perhaps, Mr. Trump is a secret James
Joyce admirer. Now there’s something for conspiracy theorists to sink their
teeth into. One can only imagine the man from Queens and Mr. Putin exchanging
Molly Bloom quotes or breaking into a few sober bars of Finnegan’s Wake during
late night calls.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In no way am I accusing Mr. Trump of inventing the national
whine. The No-Nothings beat him to it by a solid century and a half. But it’s
hard to escape the conclusion that the most influential president since
Franklin Roosevelt legitimized the art of complaint.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Even my Uzbekistani barber, a once cheerful man, has grown
dour and can launch into a persecution-laced rant that could leave me hairless
if I didn’t keep a close eye on the mirror.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Does Mr. Trump not realize the damage he’s doing to the
national mood? What’s his problem anyway, he was born with a platinum spoon in
his mouth, got free digs in the White House for four years, and now lives down in
sunny Mar a Lago with his beautiful wife, yet he never stops whining.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why doesn’t Melania order him to swear off social media, go
to the pub a couple of nights a week, and lighten up my barber’s mood? Just the
thought of four more years is enough to send me to Uzbekistan.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I broached this matter to my Black 47 co-founder, Chris
Byrne, he advised with Brooklyn logic, “Just don’t listen to him.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But that means no more television, and what am I going to do
when Slow Horses returns in the fall?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are a lot of downsides to President Biden but give the
man his due - he’s eminently ignorable.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal"> Come to think of it, neither of these
guys takes a drop of the hard, Barack Obama could drink both of them under the
table. Now that’s a scary thought.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But forgive me, I’m straying into politics, and it’s a long
way to November. No, I want to deal with the whine, and why it seems to be
everywhere. I know, the Mets, the Jets, the Giants, the Yankees and Manchester
United all suck, but there’s so much else to be grateful for.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Whatever happened to the American ideal of the tall, silent
stranger blowing into town on a palomino, and sorting things out? I never heard
a single whine out of Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, or The Duke, all paragons of
silent fortitude.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where did we go wrong? I mean, both the Wall Street Journal
and the New York Times agree that the country is thriving economically. In many
ways we’ve never had it so good.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Wages are up, unemployment is down, new immigrants are
lining up to do the jobs we want no part of; we even pulled together and came
through a pandemic that could have floored us.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Financial markets are booming, 401(Ks) have rebounded, the
big companies are raking in profits as per usual, you can listen to Taylor
Swift on Spotify without paying her a dime, and though the outside world is in
crisis, we merely supply weapons to the antagonists now, we’re not sacrificing
our young as in previous generations.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And yet we bitch on. Maybe it’s time to smell the roses;
they were still blooming in Manhattan on Christmas Day, the product of climate
change, no doubt, but even that eventual cataclysm can be prevented, should we
pitch in one more time and do something about it.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But that would take listening to each other, and we don’t
have time for that, we’re too busy whining while being pushed around the
chessboard, the willing pawns of self-serving politicians.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, who’d like to open a couple of good Irish
pubs within strolling distance of Mar-a-Lago and the White House? Rumor has it
that certain politicians may soon be in need of a pick-me-up.</p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-33482285121819866412024-01-12T08:38:00.000-08:002024-01-12T08:38:04.624-08:00WRITE ON, FRANK McCOURT!<p> <span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;">“Any Irish person who’s not writing a memoir is a feckin’ eejit.” Frank McCourt was heard to proclaim when Angela’s Ashes became a bestseller.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">But how to begin, says you.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Anywhere but the beginning! “My name is Paddy Murphy and I was born in Ballydehob…” has been done to death.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">However, if you insist on first things first, then try something like, “If the midwife back in Ballydehob hadn’t dropped me on me bloody head, then this would be a far different story.”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">In any literary effort, be it memoir, play, novel, short story or even some scabrous lines scribbled on a bathroom wall, it’s not how or where you start that matters, but that you begin at all.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Many years ago, after an abysmal attempt at writing a first novel, I read a simple statement by an anonymous Greek dramatist. “Out of character comes story!”<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Thus was I saved from the ignominy of typing Chapter One at the top of an empty page and praying like hell for a way forward.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">No, instead I wrote down the first thing that came to mind about the hero of my next epic - nothing had to be in sequence, just a litany of facts, musings, observations, the majority of which I never used. It didn’t matter – the more I shoveled from my brain onto the page, the clearer my character became.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">I began to see this person in ways I had never imagined. Soon other characters appeared, and I devoted the same granular attention to each. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">The sharper their outlines became, the more I realized I had never put much thought into those around me. Oh, I noticed their obvious attributes and foibles, but being a callow youth, I’d never delved much below the surface. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">And although I’d grown up around strong women and admired their grace and courage, it was as if they inhabited a world of their own. Suddenly, the women characters in my story came much more into focus, and life in general became richer.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">The DNA of my story slowly began to emerge. Don’t rush this process - stories need time to marinate. Keep your eyes locked on your characters and before you know it, they’ll be interacting like old friends – or bitter enemies.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">When that happens, it’s time to take a long warm bath in the darkness to allow your story to wash over you. Assuming you don’t drown, the hour has come to get the main events of your epic down on paper.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Number and name them. These ideas will provide the seeds of your chapters and a road map, as it were.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Then decide which of your characters’ aspirations and actions fit within these chapters. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Don’t worry if some character resists your placement; this rebel may cause a surprise twist in a later chapter - a valuable asset in any story.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Take heart! Although, you have much wrestling and desperate days ahead of you, you’re definitely on your way.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Remember that writing has much to do with rewrites and editing. Don’t become too attached to old ideas, for better ones may be on the way; and, for God’s sake, be careful about soliciting, or even worse taking advice. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">This is your story; you need to make your own mistakes – that’s the only way you’ll really learn. In other words, you Paddy Murphy are a star in the making, and the rest of the world doesn’t have a clue! <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">This might sound egotistical – and it’s better you don’t trumpet it about - but it’s one of the keys to survival and ultimate growth.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">By all means read your story aloud to some empathetic people – Irish American Writers & Artists salons are a wonderful, non-competitive resource in New York City where you can meet and chew the fat with fellow workers of the word.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">But writing is a solitary business, paranoia and despair are always lurking.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">On the other hand, you’ll never be bored or lonely again. Your characters will soon be teeming around in your brain driving you to drink and distraction. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Cambria, serif; margin: 0in;">Your friends may worry about the new faraway look in your eyes, but as you belly-up to the bar, rest assured you and your characters will take up the same amount of space as a James Joyce, an Edna O’Brien or even the dashing, debonair Frank McCourt who continues to inspire.<o:p></o:p></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-10371418823168735812023-12-26T13:42:00.000-08:002023-12-26T13:42:09.813-08:00A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WEXFORD<p><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The first wave arrived home around December 15</span><sup style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">and contained many seasoned “deep-sea” sailors. My father was often among them, suntanned from the long South American run down to Buenos Aires.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Wexford would immediately come alive, Christmas lights seemed to sparkle brighter, while laughter and shouted greetings ricocheted down the narrow streets.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">And every day the excitement grew as the boat train from London deposited boisterous young emigrants from Cricklewood, Kilburn, and a host of other Irish enclaves.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">They strutted around in the latest fashions, the men in their tailored suits, Windsor-knotted ties, and Brylcreemed hair, the women coiffed and radiant as Marilyn, Ava, or Sophia at the Saturday night pictures; everyone in a rush to make an impression, for in less than a week they’d be back in London “digs” at the mercy of landladies, and slaving in factories where the locals called them Paddy, no matter what their names.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Such was my childhood Christmas in the emigrant 1950’s and early 1960’s.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">In many ways Wexford was an ideal sized town – around 12,000 people back then. You knew most people, at least by sight. Everyone nodded their recognition; older men still raised their hats to ladies, and it was a rare person who didn’t formally salute the clergy. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The vast majority of us were Catholics, the churches crowded with daily communicants, while organizations like The Legion of Mary, The Third Order of St. Francis, and The Holy Family Confraternity flourished.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Our three large churches outdid themselves during Advent, with laurel and holly branches bringing life to altars, pulpits, pillars, and dusty stations of the cross.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">One might think that the young emigrants, exiled 50 weeks of the year in heathen England, would sleep in of a morning, but no, they displayed the same universal faith, even arriving well-oiled from the pubs to the lustrous Christmas Eve midnight mass.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The Catholic Church may have had scandalous time-bombs ticking that would explode in the following 50 years, but it provided a regal unity for my childhood Christmases.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Each church boasted impressive choirs, and since we were all versed in Gregorian Chant the old buildings throbbed with a mystical fervor when hundreds of voices joined together in hymn and carol.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">On Christmas Eve, Wexford’s long and winding Main Street would be jammed with crowds of all ages eager to see and be seen. In a rare break with class convention, black-faced John Wilson, the coal-delivery man was allowed to treat his big dray horse to a pint of Guinness in the exclusive bar of Whites Hotel.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">We were blissfully unaware that this was the last gasp before television sucked much of the social life out of Irish towns. Nor was there an Amazon to provide gifts through the click of a computer; instead, we forked over hard-earned savings at family-owned shops, all the time praying that the presents we’d been eyeing for months would still be available.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">The pubs were packed, and the happy hum of men’s voices could be heard from within. Few single women frequented licensed premises back then, reputations were valuable; while married women were already safely at home preparing for Santa’s annual visit.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Christmas Day was devoted to family, and after mass very few ventured outside. Christmas dinner began around 2pm and would stretch into the evening, with much reminiscence, a song or two, or a recitation in front of a drowsy fireplace.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">St. Stephen’s Day, however, exploded with goodwill and welcome visits. Those with access to a car would travel into the countryside to witness the local hunts, when the remaining, red-coated gentry, and Fine Gael farmers with social aspirations, would ride off in search of the wily fox.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">All single people attended the riotous St. Stephen’s night dances in parish halls and hotel ballrooms where mistletoe and romance hung in the air. There was a party or reunion to occupy every night up to New Year’s Eve.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">But the emigrants were already packing their bags, and with tears flowing from drink taken, they jammed the railway station while awaiting the boat train.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Summer holidays seemed an eternity away, and London, landlady, and factory were calling, with only memories to help stave off the loneliness.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;">Those memories would eventually become my own reality, though I chose New York rather than London, as I look back on a child’s Christmas in Wexford.<o:p></o:p></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-22958809486616538772023-12-10T09:43:00.000-08:002023-12-10T09:43:23.524-08:00FAREWELL, SHANE<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal">It was one of those moments you remember forever. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was standing stage-side at London’s Brixton Academy with
Frank Murray, manager of The Pogues, Steve Lillywhite, their producer, and Joe
Strummer.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Black 47 had opened for The Pogues at their 1990 Christmas
Show and now Lillywhite’s wife, Kirsty MacColl, was singing Fairytale of New
York with Shane MacGowan.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The lights were low, just one spot on the couple as a
mirror-ball cascaded above them. The lyrics weren’t as familiar then, and I followed
the story intently.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the heartfelt instrumental outro, Shane and Kirsty waltzed
for a few bars, smiling tenderly at each other - they had scored a knockout.
It’s not an easy song to perform, and they had been uncertain of the timing
during the sound check.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was the best I ever heard Shane sing – before or after. I
wondered if my three companions felt the same, they were much more familiar
with his performances. While Lillywhite rushed off to kiss his wife, Murray,
Strummer, and I stood there silently, unwilling to allow the magic to fade away.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That moment flashed through my mind when I heard Shane had
died. Strummer, Murray, and MacColl have long passed on. Rock ‘n’ Roll is an unforgiving
business.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It might sound like heresy, but Shane MacGowan was never cut
out for it. You need your wits about you and some modicum of balance to survive
its crazy demands.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was familiar with boys like Shane, many Wexford families had
cousins sent home for the summer, their Irish-born parents afraid they’d run wild
on the streets of London.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Meeting him was like a flashback – an Irish face masked by a
thick working-class English accent. With one difference, Shane was a poet. His
speech might have been slurred, but you only had to read his lyrics to realize
that his line stretched back through James Clarence Mangan to Cathal Buí Mac
Giolla Ghunna.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Shane might have seemed anarchistic – and he was in life and
often in performance – but he polished his lyrics until they were smooth as old
paving stones. That’s why they were often as concise and mellifluous as
traditional songs. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He was also an excellent melody writer, something often overlooked;
sure, he sometimes strayed into traditional tunes, but you only do that when
you’re confident your own lines won’t suffer in comparison.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He once told me he was a traditionalist and only wished to
add to the tradition, not advance it, as others of us have sought to do.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He was well read, and one late night in a bar he elaborated
on an idea he had for a story with roots in Ireland’s Civil War. He was very
interested in Frank Ryan, the Irish Republican/Spanish Civil War veteran who
died in Germany during WW2. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How many people even heard of Frank Ryan before Shane
included him in his classic Sick Bed of Cúchulainn?</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But Shane was a punk too, with little respect for the music
business, or its attendant media.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By the late 1980’s, the once Punky Pogues had, of necessity,
become part of the music business; and as you get more successful and popular you
need to be perennially on the road to make a living and stay ahead of the costs.
It’s just the nature of the game.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In those last years with The Pogues Shane was a sick man.
Too many people depended on him, and the road had worn him down, as it does
everyone, except the cosseted and the cautious.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Booze is free, and everything else is available. Shane
should have been at home by a turf fire in Tipperary, safeguarded by friends
and family. There he could have wrestled contentedly with his poetry and
emerged occasionally for live appearances. But truth be told, that’s just another
fairytale – life in the fast lane is addictive and never that simple.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Shane was an original, a bit like Hendrix, Jim Morrison, or Brendan
Behan; he had an idea, and he bludgeoned his way through dumb convention to
achieve it. Getting his songs right meant the world to him; all else was
incidental.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He’s gone now, his best creative years long behind him, but
I’ll always treasure the gift he bestowed on me when he and Kirsty MacColl nailed
Fairytale of New York at Brixton Academy all those years ago. Thanks, man, and farewell.<br /></p>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-51783980840912417122023-12-01T05:18:00.000-08:002023-12-01T05:18:07.298-08:00JOHN FLYNN & THE VILLAGE PUB, PRIDE OF BAINBRIDGE AVENUE<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">There were bars, and there were bars, and then there was The Village Pub. It perched atop Bainbridge Avenue in The Bronx. It was a small place owned by a big man, John Flynn, who passed away last month. The world is a smaller place without him.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I’m not sure when The Village opened but it was in business in the late 1970’s when Durty Nelly’s and The Wagon Wheel were still going strong, over in the Kingsbridge area.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">As Kingsbridge faded, the Irish center of gravity shifted to the Bainbridge and 204<sup>th</sup>Street area. Pubs sprang up like mushrooms. It was the era of the “new Irish” – so many people were fleeing the old country that the joke was “last one out turn off the lights.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Same old story, Ireland could not support its population, but added to this new Diaspora from the Republic were thousands from the British Army occupied “North.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Many of the new Irish were undocumented, they worked off-the-books on building sites and as nannies in Manhattan, they were flush in this cash economy, and they were all welcome on Braindamage Avenue, as it was often called.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The Village was part of that scene, and yet it stood apart too, mainly because John was Irish-American to the core, born in The Bronx.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I once heard that his family was the last Irish to move from their block in the South Bronx. It made sense, for John was like an old time hero out of a Western movie, a man onto himself.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And yet he had a twinkle in his eye. When John was in the house and in good form, which was almost always, the room rocked with good times.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The Village was not an easy place to leave, no matter what time of night or morning – you always had the feeling that you might be missing something – someone might arrive that would raise the craic even beyond its normal fever-pitch level.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">John was different than most bar proprietors, he actually liked music and was choosy about who he booked. He had a firm belief in his own taste – if he liked it, he felt that anyone with half a brain would too.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He didn’t care for background music. He wanted his clientele to get caught up in the songs and the performance.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It was a treat to play for him. In the middle of the third set he would approach Pierce Turner and myself, his eyes flashing, and exhort us to “now really let it rip!”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">One night we came up with a 12-minute rock deconstruction of The Foggy Dew replete with synthesizer and slide guitar solos. I heard a taped version of it recently and wondered how we got away with something so extreme in an Irish bar. Then I remembered it was because of Mr. Flynn pushing the envelope on another wild night in the Village.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">John had a unique love for musicians. I remember one night seeing Morning Star play to a full house in the Village. John was beaming with pride and leading the audience in applause.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">On another rapturous evening he confided in me that Gabriel Donohue, then onstage, was “the best pound-for-pound musician in The Bronx.” The guy should have been a rock critic.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It was common knowledge that he was always good for a loan, even to people who had let him down previously. I know he shifted bookings a number of times to help Pierce Turner & me pay back rent.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I thought the Bainbridge scene would last forever, but a recession turned the early 90’s upside down; soon after the Celtic Tiger boomed and the New Irish returned home in droves.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The lights dimmed on the avenue, and John reluctantly had to let Black 47 go. There were no hard feelings, I would have done the same – we were upsetting the remains of his diminishing clientele.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I lost touch with John, as happens when a venue closes, but I never forgot the man or the scene he created. I think I can speak for many musicians: John Flynn made a difference, for he encouraged us all to be the best we could be.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“One o’clock, two o’clock give us a chance</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">All we wanta do is be rockin’ the Bronx!”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">John gave us a stage. And, night after night, we rocked that joint!</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-88303608763094175702023-11-14T10:55:00.000-08:002023-11-14T10:55:29.125-08:00WOMEN OF IRELAND<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Because I host Celtic Crush on SiriusXM, I’m occasionally asked about the state of the arts nowadays.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Well, Broadway has yet to fully recover from the Covid crisis – it’s a rare night, tickets are not available for the “big” shows, while many new productions are failing to gain traction.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Most likely this is because the theatre demographic tends to be older, and many are still steering clear of enclosed spaces.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">As for live music, let’s put it this way, a band like Black 47 couldn’t exist today. While the audience might still be there, many venues are gone, making touring an unprofitable venture.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Another reason is that people now stream songs (a financial disaster for practically all musicians) rather than buy CDs (a band’s biggest profit maker).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Much the same conditions exist in Ireland, except that the government provided some financial support to professional musicians during lockdown. Perhaps, this helped the local music industry to get back on its feet quicker.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It could also be the pub culture, the booming economy, or the simple need to get out of overcrowded, expensive apartments, but many venues are doing decently; not to mention, there’s a lot of distinctive, original music emerging from Ireland in these recently roaring 20’s.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s a rare week that I don’t get a couple of excellent new Irish tracks pinging their way on to my laptop – much of it from women. Let me tell you about a few of them.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Lisa O’Neill comes instantly to mind. Now some might say that this talented lady has lifted her voice and persona from the late great Margaret Barry, but it didn’t do Bob Dylan any harm that he co-opted Woody Guthrie.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There’s something eerily beautiful about the Cavan woman’s songs. Try Goodnight World from her latest All of This Is Chance album. I have to admit that I cried the first time I heard this lovely song – I don’t know why. Give it the tears test yourself.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">For something totally different, how about Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, also known as CMAT. This Dublin native, by way of County Meath, is a knockout.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I don’t even know how to describe her music except that her first single Another Day (KFC) might fit a campy Country scene - how about a cross between Patsy Cline and the B52’s? And yes, you’re correct, KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Suffice it to say that CMAT recognizes few boundaries on her recently released CD, Crazymad For Me. She writes about lost love, abusive relationships and longed-for weight loss, and I have little doubt she’ll be an international star someday soon.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Two powerful and innovative bands rooted in tradition are Lankum and Jiggy. (By the way, Dan Neely’s weekly Irish Echo column is an outstanding resource for those interested in new and classic Traditional Irish Music).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Radie Peat fronts Lankum, originally known as Lynched. She’s a mesmerizing and authoritative singer and multi-instrumentalist; then again, Lankum may be the premier Irish band of the last 10 years, they continue to impress and progress with every recording. Listen to their majestic The Young People – it will transport you to places forgotten but achingly familiar.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Jiggy’s roots may be in traditional music but their mix is spiced with world beats and modern dance grooves. More a collective than a band, they are often a savior when I’m assembling Celtic Crush sets; though utterly distinctive, their tracks mix and meld easily with any other music of quality.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Aoife Kelly’s haunting voice and fiddle permeate Jiggy’s addictive sound. Do yourself a favor, and savor Silent Place on YouTube, with over 35 million views it has become an international phenomenon. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I hate to leave The Mary Wallopers until last. Perhaps the most invigorating Irish band since Shane’s Pogue Mahones, with their County Louth accents to the fore, they are Culchie Rock at its finest.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The terror of all fey folksingers, try standing still to The Frost Is All Over. Politically correct the Wallopers are not, their humor knows few bounds, and yet they’re subtly indicative of a newfound Irish self-confidence.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But do all these artists a favor. They make at best $0.005 per stream on Spotify, however, if you download a track (which you’ll then own) they can clear $0.80.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Do the math. Support musicians. Wall Street will survive without you!</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-83752081063730710862023-11-04T15:25:00.000-07:002023-11-04T15:25:30.015-07:00BELFAST ON MY MIND<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">If you don’t know Belfast, you don’t really know Ireland.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">That thought always strikes me as I’m departing from Ireland’s second largest city. Through thick and thin, I’ve never lost my fascination with the place.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">With the exception of the border counties, few people from the Republic of Ireland visited “The North” in my youth.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It was the odd diversity of the city that fired my imagination. In Wexford pretty much everyone was Catholic. In Belfast I couldn’t even begin to count the number of sects, churches, kirks, and Pentecostal meeting halls that dotted the city.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Then again, I was just a visitor with little experience of the brooding sectarianism that periodically erupted in the state of Northern Ireland. Still, Yeats’ line “Great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start” often resonated when one crossed over the border.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But I also instinctively recognized that if there were ever to be a united Ireland the seed would spring from Belfast’s stony streets.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Though it’s unlikely to happen in my lifetime, yet I often wonder what such a union would be like?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">While in the Crown Bar on Great Victoria Street some weeks back, I felt I finally got a glimpse of it: a full pub rocking to a hundred conversations – some even political - and little evidence of any divide between the revelers.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There’s an overall sophistication and a to-hell-with-it attitude in Belfast nowadays. I suppose it comes from foreign travel, Internet access, and the passage of 25 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">People just don’t have a lot of time for division anymore. Life has accelerated, especially on the red brick, back streets where friction and memories of past hurts used to fester on damp and rainy nights.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There are still problems, an ongoing lack of a representative government, along with a Legacy Bill passed by an out-of-touch Conservative British government that outrages both communities.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The clientele of The Crown seemed more consumed with rugby and romance, with occasional gripes heard about better health care, education and economic opportunity – much the same as in every other country.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I accompany a tour group around Ireland annually - with a visit to Belfast every second year.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Before we even check into the ever-welcoming Europa (once Europe’s most bombed hotel) we make a stop for lunch at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, an Irish language community center in the heart of the Belfast <i>Gaeltacht</i>.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s a unique cultural establishment and it tends to ground our North American visitors before we undertake a political tour escorted by ex-combatants from each community.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">As you might imagine, these gentlemen give their unvarnished opinions about the origins of the conflict, their parts in it, and their hopes and fears for the future.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">No book I’ve read, or speech I’ve heard, compares to the raw impact of their thoughts. These tours around West Belfast, and in particular the Falls and Shankill Roads are provided by Coiste <a href="http://www.coiste.ie/" style="color: purple;">www.coiste.ie</a>and are not to be missed if you want to get to the heart of Ireland and its troubled history.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Politics aside, Belfast is about the people, their humor, grace, and ability to pick themselves up and bounce back – no matter all the sledgehammer blows they’ve received.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">That goes for their musicians too. From the first time I heard Them, with a teenage Van Morrison singing the Blues like he came from Mississippi rather than Hyndford Street, I was hooked.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">How wonderful then to meet the legendary Terri Hooley once again. He’s the subject of the must-see film Good Vibrations, and the musical of the same name that originated at the Lyric Theatre and recently played New York’s Irish Arts Center.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Terri, the effervescent Greg Cowan of The Outcasts, my old friend Aidan Murtagh of Protex, and Stuart Bailie whose book Trouble Songs is a classic, not only charmed my group of 90, they allowed them an X-Ray view into Belfast’s lyrical, if stormy, soul.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">20<sup>th</sup>Century Punk – its ideals and foibles - was resurrected in the Piano Lounge of the Europa that night. But then, it had never really died, had it? Long life to you Belfast and your devotion to music!</p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Make sure you visit - if you really want to know Ireland.</span> </p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-83219054095627620482023-10-20T14:23:00.000-07:002023-10-20T14:23:49.743-07:00NEITHER HERE NOR THERE - IN THE BRONX<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I had seen him at a number of gigs in The Bronx. He always sat at the bar, up by the stage, where he could take in everything, but not necessarily be associated with us.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I was playing with Turner & Kirwan of Wexford back then, it must have been the late 1970’s.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We had a regular Sunday afternoon gig at the Archway, courtesy of Manager Sean Lynch, where we could cut loose and play lengthy tracks like Traveling People and Father Reilly Says Goodbye from our album Absolutely and Completely.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We drew our own crowd to those gigs. But this was different. We were playing a midweek night, filling in for Dermie Mac, Gerry Finlay, or one of the other accomplished showband-like groups that the Archway clientele longed for.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">To be blunt, we weren’t cutting it. The crowd that remained after enduring a couple of our sets had long stopped dancing.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It wasn’t that we didn’t try, we gave it our best - three jives, three slows, with some old time waltzes tossed in - but our hearts weren’t in it. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We’d crossed over to the dark side - playing all original music down in the Village. Besides Alison Steele on WNEW-FM was raving about us, and wondering what part of heaven we’d dropped down from?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Still, there was only one set to go when I sat down next to the guy who had been eyeing us.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He ordered a Heineken and Jameson’s and shoved them in my direction.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“I bought your album last week and must have played it 10 times by now.” He stated, without the least enthusiasm.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I stole a look at him to make sure he wasn’t a total lunatic. He seemed harmless enough, so I shrugged as if such praise was common.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“Yez have got a lot better,” he added. “Jaysus, yez were fierce bad at first.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Such observations are hard to put a spin on, so I held my peace and took a slug of the Heineken. Late sets could be dispiriting, so I saved the Jameson’s for fortification.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“How long are you over here now, about seven years, right?”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He had hit the nail on the head, but after his earlier “fierce bad” remark, I didn’t want to give him any satisfaction.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“You know that means you’re never going back,” he took a sip from his Budweiser.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“How so?” He had piqued my interest.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“No one goes back after seven years, unless you have a young wan waiting for you. And that’s hardly the case, is it?”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">When I didn’t answer he looked me in the face for the first time and nodded. “You and me are the exact same.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">To my mind we had sweet damn all in common, but he barged ahead. “You and me are neither here nor there. We don’t fit in here and we’ll never fit in at home again.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">At that point Pierce Turner coughed into his microphone to signal that our third set was about to begin.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“I’ll remember that,” I called back to him as I mounted the stage, taking care not to spill the Jameson’s.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“I know you will.” He said. And he was right.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I never saw him again, but I can summon him up at will, though The Archway and Turner & Kirwan of Wexford have long gone.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He was talking about the emigrant’s curse. After 7 years you’ve replaced Manchester United with the Mets. It’s not that you don’t still support the red devils, it’s just that you don’t know the new players, and unless you’re a fanatic you don’t go down the pub early on weekend mornings to get soused and watch the games.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Meanwhile, the “young wan” you left behind has married someone else. And you’ve been talking to your American girlfriend about saving for a house and a family.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Oh, you still cause a great commotion when you do go home, but you don’t go for Christmas anymore; besides, there comes that day when both parents have passed on, and the house or farm has been sold.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">You’ve settled down, made all the right decisions and, for the most part, you’re contented with life; but you notice that you often slip beyond the thread of friendly conversation to that solitary place where you are indeed - neither here nor there.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-11052221854375791232023-10-04T20:29:00.001-07:002023-10-04T20:29:31.361-07:00LUKE KELLY - REBEL WITH A CAUSE<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In a recent Irish poll, Luke Kelly was voted “the best representative of Irish heritage.”</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">What a distinction for this son of inner city Dublin who left school at 13, and eventually took the emigrant boat to England in the dismal 1950’s.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But then Luke, by his early 20’s, was a local legend long before he gained fame internationally as singer/banjoist with The Dubliners.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I had the good fortune to come under his influence early on. As a callow youth, I came second in a talent competition held during the Wexford Opera Festival. The Dubliners were playing a week’s residency at the same venue, so I got to watch them nightly from side stage.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Luke and Ronnie Drew shared lead vocals during these stunning gigs. Every act that visited Wexford in those days “performed.” The Dubliners, instead, straggled onstage and captivated the audience with their songs and naked charisma. They left an indelible mark on the town.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In 1967 the Fleadh Cheoil was held in nearby Enniscorthy. On the closing Sunday evening thousands gathered in the old Town Square.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Traditional heads were hammering out jigs and reels to beat the band when a hush descended on the square as whispered word was passed around that Luke Kelly was about to sing. There was a silent surge forward and some sturdy GAA men took it upon themselves to act as stewards.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">From out of nowhere Luke appeared, his head of red curls flashing in the sunset. He carefully removed his banjo from its case, and a bottle of Baby Powers from his back pocket. Then he was hoisted up on the roof of a car and stood there swaying until he gained his balance.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He took a healthy swig of the whiskey and passed the bottle down to a friend with a nod and a wink.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Some idiot broke the silence and was immediately shushed by a multitude of angry listeners. Luke didn’t even seem to notice. Then he began to sing to the accompaniment of his banjo, and his voice ricocheted across the sacred square where Pikemen had routed the English 169 years previously.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">His first song was The Leaving of Liverpool. But when the chorus arrived, no one joined him on “So fare thee well, my own true love, and when I return united we will be…”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We had no wish to hear ourselves; we wanted to drink in this redheaded <i>seanchaí</i>who had packed so much living into his 27 years.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He seemed surprised but seized the moment and sang another half-dozen songs, one as revealing as the other. On that evening he was the working class hero that John Lennon longed all his life to be.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">What was so striking about Luke? Well, he was the man for that moment in the “summer of love.” The gangly Dublin kid who had endured the hard knocks of class-conscious Catholic Ireland came into his own in the heathen pubs and folk clubs of Northern England.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He came under the influence of proletarian intellectuals like Ewan McColl and Dominic Behan. They raised his political consciousness and taught him how to sing songs without frills or adornment, songs with a message that would soon pierce the hearts of a generation.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">For Luke had that rare gift that I’ve only experienced from two other performers, Bob Marley and Bruce Springsteen – no matter the size of his audience, he was singing to just you alone.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The Dubliners were a groundbreaking band. They liberated their audiences by sweeping away the vestiges of British colonialism and Irish conservatism in a wave of innovation, braggadocio, and musicality.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">As time went on, however, the moments of silence became rarer and Luke seemed to retreat into himself. He’d no sooner begin one of his gems than the crowd would join him in full throat. There were times he appeared disconnected, almost disinterested.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Booze, late nights, and constant travel wear everyone down unless there’s something to look forward to. His health suffered and eventually collapsed. He was only 43 when Dublin came to a standstill for his funeral.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">His music lives on though, his clear rugged voice still cuts through speakers and AirPods, and I’ll never forget that evening in Enniscorthy Town Square when he silenced every whisper and set the heather blazing.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-21806151233801414122023-09-21T07:22:00.006-07:002023-09-21T07:22:35.209-07:00THE OSPREYS ARE GONE<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The ospreys are gone. They left in the weeks after Labor Day.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">When they get the call – genetic or atmospheric - they don’t delay, it’s a long way to Central America.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The male goes first, soon after the female follows, sometimes accompanied by her grown chicks, although the young ospreys seem to know the route and destination regardless.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Ospreys mate for life but they travel separately. The male arrives in Connecticut coastal areas soon after St. Patrick’s Day.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Having secured last year’s nest, he will fish just enough for personal sustenance. Mamma will arrive in a week or so, and dictate just how she wants the nest to look and feel; she doesn’t hesitate to discard any twig or other building material the male may offer, if not to her liking.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">After mating she will take to the nest and lay up to 3 eggs. Poppa’s hard slog then begins. He must feed her, and himself, and as soon as the eggs are hatched, he is the main provider for roughly 50 days until the young can hunt successfully.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">July and August are a treat for those who pay close attention. Where once the male dived alone, now the full family of 5 (if they’ve survived predators or illness) display their skills, swooping down on unsuspecting fish.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The first days of hunting for the young provide moments of hilarity, as a swift, seemingly confident dive may lead to an ungainly belly flop. But they learn quickly, out on the placid Long Island Sound.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There’s a clock ticking down to Labor Day. The young have a flight of thousands of miles ahead. Do they have any notion of this, or is it something genetic that drives them on to their winter home in Central America.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I’ve been watching ospreys for some time. I began soon after 9/11 – I guess that event caused many people to take stock of their surroundings. At first, sightings were rare, but around 2015 - the first summer after Black 47 disbanded - I noticed a jump in their numbers.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I was working on a novel then and making slow progress. Novels are hard to write and the work is draining. I began rising at 6am, and took solace in looking up from my laptop every few minutes for sight of the male as he circled the bay, pausing as hawks do in mid-air to scan the waters below.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I began to synchronize with him. If he dove and succeeded in clawing a fish, then I’d get a rush of adrenalin and finish a difficult sentence or paragraph. He failed often that first month, as did I. But as the summer wore on we both improved.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It took 3 summers of synchronizing with the male before I finished Rockaway Blue.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He returned the following spring in those first awful weeks of the pandemic. He seemed unfazed by all our fears and paranoia.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I wouldn’t say ospreys are methodical, they’re far too skillful and opportunistic, but there was work to be done, and my old friend set about it in his usual driven manner.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I followed his example, as best I could, and began All The Rage, a musical about the Rock ‘n’ Roll life in the East Village, the score of which I finally recorded last week.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I’m pretty sure he didn’t make it back this year, the male who now rules the roost in these waters has stripes on his belly, whereas my co-worker’s under-plumage was white as snow.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I mourned him for a while, but then rationalized that the new male is the son of my old friend, and life must go on.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I had been saving a project called Rebel Girl for the return of the ospreys in late March. It’s the story of the firebrand labor activist, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. She was from The Bronx and gave her first public speech for workers rights when she was 15.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">So, when mourning was over, I dove in. Stripe Belly has more energy than my old friend. I hadn’t noticed that he’d gotten slower with age.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Anyway, my young associate suits the drama and drive of Ms. Flynn, the songs and story already have an odd vibrancy. Hopefully, I’ll have the project ready for the long final polishing by the time my new friend returns in the spring.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-91354819085371018822023-09-06T05:04:00.002-07:002023-09-06T05:04:54.675-07:00MILES DAVIS AND THE MISPLACED HEADSTONE<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I often take a train to New Haven nowadays, and since I find trains very relaxing I invariably feel drowsy as we pull out of Grand Central Station.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Nonetheless, I always awaken as we chug by Woodlawn Cemetery. Miles Davis lies within and I fantasize that the “coolest man in the universe,” gently rouses me with a toot of his golden horn.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Truth be told though, I feel very at home around graveyards. And why wouldn’t I? My grandfather, Thomas Hughes, was a monumental sculptor.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He was a quiet man who had left school at 14 to be apprenticed to his father. When he was 18, Thomas left his native Carlow with a horse and car, a load of limestone, and drove the 50 miles to Wexford town where he set up shop.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Life was far from easy, but he married, raised a large family, and prospered. Some years after my grandmother died, I moved in “to keep him company.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Parents would never part with their darlings nowadays, but Ireland was a different country back then.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I probably still have limestone dust in my lungs for I spent much time in his yard near Wexford Quay.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">On Sunday afternoons, however, we usually took a leisurely drive through the countryside. We would always stop at a graveyard, and he would potter around until some statue or headstone caught his eye, and there he would stand riveted, for what seemed like hours.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It took many years before I realized that he was either figuring out how to create or improve on such a work. For he was an artist, though he had never taken a lesson. Whatever he knew he’d learned through observation and hands-on experience.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">His allies were the traveling people who loved sumptuous memorials. He would stand in his draughty office surrounded by heartbroken families as they pored over pictures of ornate headstones and statues.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">They always paid cash up front, but he willingly offered big discounts for the chance to carve something original.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">When I was 15, I began working for him during summer vacations. Patron Days in cemeteries were held all through those weekends. Families wished their ancestral graves to be brought up-to-date and spruced to their best, with the names of recently deceased added, old headstones cleaned, and new ones erected.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">My job was to mix cement, scour stones and kerbing, and make the tea. There was little rush, you could dream as you toiled; but most of all I loved the peace and quiet that came with the terrain.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I also loved my workmates. Tom Fortune was from “out the country,” while John Redmond was a townie from nearby Monck Street. Between them they had accrued much native wisdom, and when pushed would share it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">They were kind men who treated me as an adult, and I learned much from them about life, including how to maneuver a stick-shift truck. They were both at ease with the world and content with their occupation, for it saved them from the scourge of loneliness in emigrant London.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">One memory still causes a chuckle. We were sent to erect a headstone in a small overgrown graveyard up near Gorey. The person who had ordered the job failed to show.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">However, there was a fairly recently dug grave situated in the general area where we had been instructed to put up the headstone.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It was a routine job and we took our time, savoring the lovely August day. In the late afternoon we departed for home with the contented feeling of another job well done.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">All hell, however, broke loose the following morning for we had raised the headstone over the wrong grave, and to add insult to injury there had been bad blood of long standing between the two aggrieved families.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We rushed back out into a local cold war, and with much difficulty dislodged the headstone and kerbing; we then cleaned up the ravaged grave area as best we could under the stony gaze of the offended family.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The sun was going down as we erected the headstone over the proper grave, amid the muttered taunts and criticisms of the other hostile clan.</p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">It made for a long, difficult day, but such is life, death, and bad blood in a country graveyard. We could have used a couple of soothing toots from Miles Davis’s golden horn.</span> </p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-58305007308020281102023-08-28T05:07:00.000-07:002023-08-28T05:07:40.003-07:00The Curse of the Subways<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">At an out-of-state wedding recently, I fell into conversation with a cheerful gentleman whom I didn’t know from Adam, or Eve for that matter.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Upon hearing that I was from New York City he inquired if the subways were as bad as ever.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I replied that they were quite pleasant nowadays, and compared to the 1970’s the experience was comparable to traveling first class on the Orient Express.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"> “That’s hardly likely.” He declared.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“Why not?” I rose to the challenge.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“Because on the news every night, it’s one thing after another, murders, robberies, all manner of mayhem.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“What channel do you watch?”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“Fox,” he smiled, “like any sane person!”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I began to look for an exit, but it was four deep at the bar, besides my drink was barely dented.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“Listen,” said I, cornered but unbowed, “I’ve never seen as many cops on the trains or in the stations since this new mayor got in.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">“You support that lunatic?”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I wasn’t sure if I did, but Hizzoner Eric Adams had made a promise to make the subways safer, and in my book, at least, he’d kept it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">From there the conversation degenerated, culminating in an exchange of views on a certain Republican presidential candidate. Who knows what would have transpired if the bride and groom hadn’t been called upon to hit the boards for their first wedded dance.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And there we left it, after shaking hands graciously, but this chance clash of opinions got me thinking.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I occasionally take a taxi or an Uber, but like most New Yorkers I’m a subway rider.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Why? Because they run frequently, 24/7, pretty much on time, are relatively inexpensive and safe. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">With a 0 .0001% chance of any violence being visited upon you, you’re more likely to get hit by a cyclist or car on the city’s streets.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">That being said, there are certain rules to be followed, including always keep your eyes peeled – although you’re not in Columbus, OH where violent crime per capita is higher, there is always a need to be vigilant in New York.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Stand with your back to a wall, if possible, and do not approach the yellow border next to the tracks – the train won’t come any quicker because you lean over to check its progress.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Don’t stand in clumps - keep the walkway open. And above all, be courteous. New Yorkers value manners.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There are still some homeless people who ride the subways, although the numbers have greatly decreased. Respect them. There go you but for good fortune.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">As always, New York is in flux, rents are high, the poor are finding it harder to get by, and there is great income disparity.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Still, for the most part, our citizenry coexists peacefully, it’s hard to find a more friendly city, and I’ve been way lonelier in many a small town.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The curse of the NYC subways - and the city in general - is the rise of ear-buds, earphones, and the like.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We live in a very violent country that boasts more guns than people. And although shootings are down 26% in our city in the last year, you still should be aware of anyone approaching you from behind, and that’s unlikely with Taylor Swift massaging your eardrums.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Why anyone would want to program their own soundtrack is baffling anyway. There’s a rhythm and a beat to New York unique to the city. It’s why Bob Dylan, Henry Miller, Miles Davis, Edward Hopper, Joey Ramone, Walt Whitman, LL Cool J, and so many others lived and worked here.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">None of them wore ear-buds above or below ground. They moved to the tempo of Gotham like millions of the rest of us. They watched, listened, and sidestepped to let their fellow citizens hurry past.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">They avoided becoming part of that almost non-existent 0.001% that have been victimized on our streets or subways; of course, you’d never know this from watching, listening to or reading the sensationalist media outlets that exult in misfortune in order to sell advertisements or mold political views.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Brendan Behan hit the nail on the head with his observation that New York City “is a place where you’re least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Should I ever run into my wedding acquaintance again I’ll mention this to him. Perhaps, he’ll come visit.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-48006693372770634532023-08-09T10:04:00.000-07:002023-08-09T10:04:05.216-07:00MAGGIE HIGGINS - THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL AMERICAN WOMAN<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maggie Higgins may have been the most consequential American woman. When it comes to the change she wrought, they don’t come much more important than Margaret Louise Higgins.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">She was born in Corning, NY in 1879 to Irish immigrant parents. Her father, Michael Higgins, a free thinker and atheist, was a headstone maker who specialized in sculpting angels.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Maggie’s mother, Anne Purcell Higgins, married Michael in 1869. Both parents had an enormous influence on their daughter – Anne in particular, for in 22 years she conceived 18 times with 11 children surviving.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">After a married life of almost constant pregnancy and near poverty, Anne passed away at the age of 49 from tuberculosis.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">For some years after, Maggie tended to her brothers and sisters, and domestic duties in the Higgins household. But eventually she rebelled and set out to do her life’s work as a birth control activist. We know her now as Margaret Sanger.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">She became a nurse probationer at White Plains Hospital. At that time, according to Maggie, doctors tended to keep business hours at hospitals, so during the night nurses were forced to make vital decisions about the health of their patients.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">She specialized in obstetrics and gynecology. Women’s lack of knowledge of their own bodies due to church teaching and social convention astounded her.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Precocious and independent, her midwifery skills became well known and she was often asked by grateful patients how they could delay further pregnancies.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Doctors rarely gave such advice, for the Comstock Law of 1873 defined contraception as obscene and illicit; besides most Christian churches railed against it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Maggie might have continued her nursing career to quiet and local acclaim, but two events set her on a different track. She contracted tuberculosis, the curse of the Higgins family, and she came to the attention of William Sanger, an aspiring architect and artist.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">With her auburn hair and vivacious personality Maggie would remain attractive to men all her long life. Sanger was no exception and he fell head over heels in love with this young Irish nurse.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Jewish-Irish marriages were rare in those days but Maggie had long before rebelled against the dictates of the Catholic Church. The two settled in their dream house that Sanger designed and constructed in Hastings-on-Hudson.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Despite her tuberculosis Margaret Sanger had 3 children with her husband.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">William Sanger was an active member of the Socialist Party and Margaret threw herself into political activity.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">One cold winter’s night, a fire from an overheated stove burned down their home. Sanger rebuilt the house but Margaret’s suburban dream was over; she moved her family to an apartment in Manhattan and began socializing in Greenwich Village with such characters as Jack Reed, the subject of <i>Reds</i>, and Emma Goldman.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In a city jammed with immigrants she found much work as a visiting nurse on the Lower East Side and was horrified by the poverty, lack of any sex education, and the drastically high death rate among the newborn.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">She became a member of the International Workers of the World (Wobblies) and along with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn led the successful Bread & Roses campaign for a living wage and better conditions for the textile workers in Lawrence, MA.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But she never lost sight of the fact that working families could not prosper unless pregnancy could be regulated. She did not believe in abortion (except in a medical emergency).</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In 1916 she and her sister, Ethel Byrne, opened the first family planning and birth control clinic in Brooklyn. When they were arrested Ethel went on hunger strike and became the first woman striker to be force fed in the US.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Due to the ongoing publicity and notoriety engendered by the case, Judge Frederick Crane in 1918 issued a ruling that allowed doctors to prescribe contraception.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Margaret Sanger overcame many obstacles in her life’s mission to make contraception available to all women, and in 1960 the FDA approved the sale of Enovid – the first hormonal birth control pill.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">She died in 1966, a year after the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision to legalize birth control for married couples in the US.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">On July 13<sup>th,</sup>2023 the FDA approved the first over-the-counter birth control pill that will allow all women and girls to buy contraceptives. Maggie Higgins’ impossible dream back in Corning is about to come true.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-22808579287871446162023-07-31T09:13:00.000-07:002023-07-31T09:13:33.507-07:00TEDDYBOY ROCKABILLY REVOLUTION<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">One night, while departing the stage in the late, lamented Village Pub in The Bronx, I was approached by a gentleman who remarked: “When all is said and done, Kirwan, you’re nothing more than a trumped up Wexford Teddy Boy.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Since slagging was one of the main forms of communication in Irish immigrant circles, and my admirer was about a foot taller than me, I didn’t dwell on the matter.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">This would have been back in the late 1980’s. I was between bands and had taken to singing old rock ‘n’ roll songs for my bread and butter.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I was wearing a skinny black leather tie, pointed red shoes, with a dab of Brylcreem to grease back my hair. In truth, the slagger wasn’t far off the mark - I was attempting a bit of a Ted look.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Who were these Teddy Boys and how had their influence spread to the wilds of the North Bronx 30 years after their European heyday?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">They first came to prominence in London in the 1950’s when working-class youth, tired of post-World War II rationing and deprivation, adopted long Edwardian style suit jackets, commonly known as drapes.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Sick of the all-pervasive, dowdy black suits, they wore these drapes in rich red or blue colors, over drainpipe trousers, bright shirts, skinny ties, suede shoes, and lime-green socks.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In those gloomy days Ireland’s greatest export was, as ever, its people, and it was a rare Wexford teenager who didn’t spend a year or two knocking London down and rebuilding it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The more stylish of these emigrants were known to strut their Teddy Boy threads on Wexford’s Main Street during Christmas and summer vacations.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Sensing an opportunity, the enterprising Nolan family, introduced Wexford’s first jukebox to their recently opened ice cream parlor; the Teds stocked this magic machine with their favorite Rockabilly music, turned the volume up to 11, and a scene was born.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Their favorites were Elvis, Bill Haley, and Eddie Cochran – all three, oddly enough, with Irish roots. Added to these hell raisers were Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, and a rake of others, mostly Southern White boys ripping up and ripping off Black R&B music.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The local Garda Síochána were leery of these teenage rebels and their exaggerated jive dancing, but as long as they kept it within the confines of Nolan’s small premises and didn’t engage in any of the new-fangled juvenile delinquency, how bad could it be.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The only serious incident occurred when Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock film played at the local Capitol Cinema, where some ancient seats were demolished, and the audience took to jiving in the aisles.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Teds seem to have been a mostly East Coast phenomenon with sightings also in Dublin, Belfast and Ballymena, though it’s hard to believe that Cork, Limerick and Galway didn’t also have their stylish rebels.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The Teddy Boy era faded in the 1960’s when mass marketing began to dictate teen dress styles.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There was a moment when The Beatles might have stemmed the tide of banal commerciality. Take a look at their early pictures, John and George show their unmistakable Ted influences. Then Brian Epstein became manager and insisted upon those silly collarless suits.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">What’s interesting about the Teds is that they designed a style all their own with the help of local tailors. They insisted upon individuality – at least at nights and weekends when free from their factory jobs. For once, men outshone ladies in the couture department.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I still see remnants of the look in Ireland, the drapes have long gone but tight black trousers persevere, albeit with a healthy paunch drooping over an exaggerated belt buckle.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Don’t look too closely though, the wearer, often in his 70’s, may give you the hairy eyeball from behind a fabulously greased grey quiff!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Such characters tend to stand at the bar with a faraway look in their eyes until Elvis, Eddie Cochran or Bill Haley sweep away whatever modern dross is polluting the radio or juke box.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Then all at once they jerk to attention, suck in their beer-bellies, and they’re ready to jive and kick out the jams again, just like they did in Nolan’s ice cream parlor all those Rockabilly, Teddy Boy years ago.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-74753173181735666522023-07-12T06:39:00.002-07:002023-07-12T06:39:34.111-07:00Normans Invasions - Wexford & Sicily<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Christian Brothers in Wexford were not fans of the Normans. They regarded these conquerors who arrived from Wales in 1169 as some sub-species of the hated English, enough said!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I was less convinced, but then I grew up in the shadow of towering Selskar Abbey, a Norman edifice that stands to this day. King Henry II arrived there soon after the Norman invaders to do penance for the murder of Thomas a’Beckett in Westminster Cathedral.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It would appear, however, that he really came to keep an eye on the conquering Norman barons lest they set up a kingdom of their own.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">The Normans seemed to have no trouble intermarrying with the Irish and their names are still popular locally. In fact it would be hard to travel throughout Ireland without tripping over a Burke, Fitzgerald, Butler, Roche, Power, Redmond, Sinnott, or even Rice, one of whom, Edmund, founded the Irish Christian Brothers.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Oddly enough, these invaders were descended from the Norsemen who had already founded Wexford (Weissfjord) centuries earlier. It was as if they were coming home, except that they now spoke French from their sojourn in Normandy.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">They were skilled builders. No sooner had they conquered an area than they set about fortifying it, and building a castle that might also serve as an administrative and religious center. Hence Selskar Abbey in the heart of old Wexford town!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">You can see their footprints in many parts of Europe. Imagine my surprise when I came upon a Norman castle while traveling down the coast of Eastern Turkey some years back.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There it stood, gaunt, and deserted, but still dominating a hill over the sparkling blue Mediterranean. Although much more majestic, it reminded me of Ferrycarrig Castle a few miles up the Slaney from Wexford town.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Sure enough, I discovered that Norman Crusaders built it on their way to create a kingdom in Palestine.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I had heard of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily but was unaware of its breadth and power. They first arrived in Southern Italy in 999AD as mercenaries and over the next 200 years ruled not only the island of Sicily but also the southern third of the Italian Peninsula, and parts of North Africa.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">They have left their mark all over this lovely island and I was constantly reminded of Norman Wexford while on a recent visit.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s fascinating how effortlessly Norman architecture blends in with exotic Sicily, yet that seems to have been a trait of these people – move in, take over, but allow the natives to carry on their local business, as long as they keep the peace and pay their taxes.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">That’s not to say they didn’t commit barbarous acts in medieval Ireland, but such was the case all over our fractious country in the unending disputes between the clans.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And if affairs were unsettled in Ireland, then Sicily was a real hotbed of religious and civil disorder with Muslim, Byzantine, Calabrian, and various other castes and creeds vying for influence, not to mention sundry Holy Fathers seeking to extend their power from the nearby Papal States.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Back in Wexford one had to use one’s imagination to visualize our conquerors – not so in Palermo. Norman mosaics abounded, particularly in the well-maintained churches.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">King Roger II of Sicily personified the Norman desire to integrate with their subjects and surroundings; thus, in a mosaic at the Church of Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio (St. Mary of the Admiral) he made a statement with his coronation fresco.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Abandoning his warrior attire he dressed in flowing Byzantine robes and instead of receiving his crown from the aggressive Pope Innocent II, he instead opted to have an Eastern version of Jesus coronate him.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">On that day too, he declared that Muslim and all other local religions should have the same rights as Christians.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Roger II (Ruggero II) is still celebrated around Sicily but after his death in 1154 his golden age of tolerance began to fade. Eventually a Holy Roman Emperor succeeded him and affairs reverted to their normal sectarian barbarism.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And yet in a quiet church in the bustling city of Palermo, while admiring a beautiful mosaic, I was reunited with the town of my youth and gained some insight into our stormy Norman Irish history.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-20301340183782215062023-06-29T19:23:00.000-07:002023-06-29T19:23:15.113-07:00Welcome Back Paddy Reilly's!<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">So Paddy Reilly’s has reopened.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Welcome back - though your absence was short, you were missed.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s not just that New York City is daily becoming less of an Irish town and any pub is a loss; no, it’s that Reilly’s stood for something – original Irish music that had something to say.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">You may not have noticed it but live music is on the ropes right now. Sure you’ve got Taylor Swift packing them in, fair play to her; but that’s American Express music, it costs an arm and a leg, and is designed to keep you purring and never to offend.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">When was the last time you strolled into a pub and were blown away by some band singing songs that you never even imagined before, all the while challenging you with their opinions?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In the early days, that’s what Reilly’s was about. Chris Byrne and I formed Black 47 in there. We figured that with Bob Marley dead and The Clash disbanded there was an opening for a political band playing original music.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We didn’t have any songs but we did have gigs, as Chris’s band, Beyond The Pale, broke up that night and he had a scattering of engagements to fulfill in The Bronx.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We knocked off some originals that week, compiled a list of interesting songs we could jam on, and the following Friday we hit The Bronx.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Or rather, The Bronx hit us. Let’s just say each of those early gigs was a battle that ended up in a no-decision - basically speaking, we got out alive.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But it was late 1989, a recession was raging, bands were needed on Bainbridge, and we were no sooner fired by one joint than hired by another.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Months later when we returned to Reilly’s we had many original songs, a growing following and an “independent” reputation. When someone demanded a Pogues song, a typical riposte was, “When was the last time you heard The Pogues do a Black 47 song?”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Steve Duggan, manager and eventually owner of Paddy Reilly’s, saw our potential, and why not? The place was jammed, the pints were flowing, enough said!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">But it wasn’t just Black 47. Though we established a residency on Wednesdays and Saturdays, a scene began - soon Spéir Mór were playing Fridays, Rogue’s March Sundays, Paddy A-Go-Go Mondays, Eileen Ivers & Seamus Egan Tuesdays, with a top of the line Seisiún every Thursday. The Prodigals eventually took over Fridays and continue to play there to this day.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">All of these bands made an impact nationally, along with many others who packed this small Second Avenue venue. The key was originality. Everyone was writing their own songs and creating their own style.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There’s nothing wrong with playing standards, but that ground has already been well covered; there comes a time when you’ve got to put your best foot forward and reach for the stars.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Black 47 eventually performed everywhere from stadiums to Leno, Letterman, and O’Brien, but a night in Reilly’s stands out.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">We were introducing a new song, it was long, involved, and barely rehearsed, but as we played something happened that became bigger than all of us; the audience stood rapt in attention and the silence continued for a long moment after we’d finished. The song was James Connolly and it’s gone on to become a civil rights anthem.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s almost impossible for musicians to make a living now, streaming killed CDs, a vital revenue stream for most touring bands, while the pandemic has put the kibosh on so many live venues.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Oddly enough, the humble Irish pub could be the savior. Unlike many celebrated rock venues, pub owners know their business and are willing to take chances. It’s the musicians responsibility to draw the crowds.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Connolly’s on 47<sup>th</sup>Street has a great sound system and a tradition of packed houses, Ulysses on Stone Street has a new state of the art Music Room. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">So welcome back, Paddy Reilly’s! It’s the best of times and the worst of times, but people will always love live music. It’s just got to be original, and say something to the young people of today, much like it did in the Paddy Reilly’s of yesterday.</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-51433079788352483892023-06-14T10:12:00.001-07:002023-06-14T10:12:45.582-07:00Good Vibrations in Hells Kitchen<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Everything changed in November 1976 when The Sex Pistols released Anarchy In the UK.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Punk was born.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yeah, yeah, I know Punk began in CBGB’s a couple of years earlier with The Ramones and Television. I was there, but The Pistols put the politics in Punk, and The Clash set London burning soon after.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Within weeks of Anarchy’s release EMI Records dropped the Sex Pistols for swearing on live TV. They should have given them a medal for honesty, considering the state of the UK in those days.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Rock music tends to rev up and regenerate the more depressed things are politically and economically. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Progressive Rock - the hip music of the pre-Punk era - had become so ponderous and self-referential, you needed actual music training to play the damned thing.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And what’s reading scores got to do with Rock ‘n’ Roll? Just rip out 3 loud chords, take a shot of Jameson’s, open your mouth, and see what comes out – chances are your friends can dance to it, that’s what Punk was all about. Turn up to 11, have some fun, and to hell with the begrudgers!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Over in Belfast in 1976, a self-confessed “old hippy” named Terri Hooley opened a record shop on Great Victoria Street. Terri’s taste was broad and he lamented the fact that Belfast had become a no-go area for international touring bands.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In fact, Belfast had become a no-go area in general, with Catholic and Protestants sticking to their own turf – and never the twain would meet.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Like many music aficionados Terri had little interest in 3 chord manic Rock ‘n’ Roll, but like everyone else he listened to the Almighty John Peel on BBC and he sensed a change coming.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Soon after Good Vibrations opened Hooley noticed that the black leather-jacketed youth from both communities, if not mixing, were sharing space around his shop; and as Punk raised its spiked head he realized that both Protestants and Catholics were buying the same records.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">There would be many ups and downs in the Terri Hooley story, but I won’t spoil them for you, instead go see the musical Good Vibrations that opens for previews tonight at The Irish Arts Center. It’s the real deal.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">You don’t have to like Punk Rock but my guess is even if you don’t give a fiddler’s for this unruly genre, you’ll be humming Teenage Kicks by The Undertones, Alternative Ulster by Stiff Little Fingers or one of the many anthems that a driven group of 12 actors and musicians from Belfast will be delivering for the next month.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Though Belfast has changed immeasurably in the last 50 years, it’s good to look back, from the safety of a theatre seat, at a benighted weirdo like Mr. Hooley who stood up to sectarian conformity, and in his own way set the stage for the ongoing peace process.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Personally, I’m in awe of the musicians who formed Stiff Little Fingers, The Outcasts, Rudi, and Protex, not to mention the stalwart fans who supported them. In 1981 while on tour in Belfast with the punky Major Thinkers, though our gig was cancelled because of the Hunger Strikes, I felt in mortal danger twice in the one night – talk about a tough town!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s to the Irish Arts Center’s credit that they are hosting this Lyric Theatre production, hot off the stage from a blockbuster run at Belfast’s Grand Opera House. And what better space in which to experience this explosive musical!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I can vouch for the state-of-the-art PA system and am looking forward to seeing how the Good Vibrations creative team uses the amazingly adaptable IAC theatre.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">In a way, this will be a coming-of-age production for the Center – a large sized original musical encapsulating an important political and social moment in Irish history.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">It’s time the Punk Spirit of ’76 as portrayed in Good Vibrations was unleashed in New York City, and where better to feel its heat than in Hell’s Kitchen.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">All that remains to be decided is what to wear? Black leather will never go astray, try safety pints in a ripped-up Taylor Swift t-shirt, spiked hair, bovver boots, torn fishnets, studded dog collars!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">If you didn’t live the punk life while it was happening, now’s your chance. Don’t waste it!</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Good Vibrations at The Irish Arts Center, 726 11<sup>th</sup>Avenue, NYC June 14-July 16 </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Box Office 888-616-0274 boxoffice@irishartscenter.org</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-87539197833810027852023-06-02T14:28:00.003-07:002023-06-02T14:28:27.141-07:00Going Up the Country - East Durham on my mind<p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m going up the
country</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Baby, don’t you wanta
go</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Going to take you some
place</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where you’ve never
been before</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m going, I’m going </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Where the water tastes
like wine</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We can jump in the
river </i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stay drunk all the
time</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Around this time of year, Going up the Country by Canned
Heat starts gnawing at my brain. Small wonder, seeing I spent so many Memorial
Day Weekends in the “mountains?” </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m not referring to the Himalayas, Pyrenees, or even the McGillycuddy
Reeks. I’m talking Catskills, and in particular a large-size piece of heaven
known as the Irish Alps.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’d never even heard of these particular Alps until Turner
& Kirwan of Wexford got fired from a lucrative summer gig in Falmouth MA.
I’ve still no notion why this abrupt termination came to pass, though it may
have been for singing an anti-Vietnam War ditty.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a panic, I called Mike O’Brien, nephew of the Clancy
Brothers, who told me that a band had just received the heave-ho at O’Shea’s
Irish Center in Leeds, and if we could make it onstage by 8pm the following
evening, the gig was ours.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I inquired the whereabouts of Leeds, Mike replied
cryptically, “It’s just off the Thruway between Albany and Kingston.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Try as we might, we couldn’t locate Leeds on our hardback Atlas
of America; besides, there was always the chance that Mike, with his refined
Tipperary humor, was having us on.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But with Falmouth a washout, we threw caution to the wind
and set off for Albany in our old Dodge Polara, hoping to buy a local map
somewhere on the Thruway to Kingston.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We did find Leeds eventually - though we sped through it once
without noticing -and we were onstage and pumping out Kinks, Grateful Dead and
Irish Rovers moments before 8pm under the critical eye of Mr. Gerry O’Shea.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We were alternating sets with the fabulous Mike O’Brien and
Chris King, known widely as Trinity 2, and to say we played like demons while
chatting up the crowd like twin demented Johnny Carsons would be an
understatement, for we were in true survival mode: failure could mean
starvation. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thus began my love affair with “the mountains” and it’s
never ended. Growing up on the banks of the Slaney, I’m a seacoast man myself,
but once the Irish Alps get in your blood there’s no getting away from them.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We didn’t even visit the nearby metropolis of East Durham that
whole summer; for we performed 6 nights a week, played poker until way beyond
dawn, slept like lambs, and lay on the rocks beneath a nearby mini-waterfall while
nursing our hangovers through the steamy afternoons; not to mention we partook
of 3 square meals a day courtesy of the angelic, if brusque, Mrs. O’Shea who
felt we both needed “to pack on some pounds before yer mammies see yez again.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Old Gerry ran a tight ship but drink was free to musicians, as
long as you didn’t overdo it. What more could you ask for – 3 months in an
upstate Eden to think, write new songs, and press re-start? </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There was one drawback, Gerry had been a noted boxer, and
loved to throw a ramrod-stiff jab at your shoulder – he would then check upon
your bruises the following day.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was until the Black 47 era that I got to play the capital
of the Alps, East Durham, and that came courtesy of the wonderful Handel family
at the rip-roaring Blackthorne Resort.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Though we played midnights until whenever on Memorial Weekend
Fridays and Saturdays for 20 years - with a headlining gig at the East Durham Irish
Festival in-between - the days seemed to stretch forever and I loved to stroll
the country roads or sit on Connemara-style stony walls and wonder about the
first Irish who settled there.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Do yourselves a favor, go up to the Catskills for a couple
of days full of long nights. It’s like going home, you’ll meet friends you
never knew you had, and as Canned Heat put it, “the water tastes like wine.” </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m not sure they were right about “staying drunk all the
time,” but there will be wild moments ahead of you in those glorious mountains.
Tell them I sent you – and don’t sleep near the rooster!</p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-8662298269871950622023-05-22T10:12:00.000-07:002023-05-22T10:12:01.921-07:00Inishowen Peninsula and Memories of a Rathmines Landlady <p class="MsoNormal"> Pierce Turner and I used to share a flat in an old town
house in Rathmines, Dublin. Once very upscale, the area had fallen on hard times
and was disparagingly known as Culchieland.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On a recent visit I found Rathmines had more or less reverted
to its original patrician state. Our house at 15 Belgrave Square, once a warren
of rooms teeming with refugees from Wexford, Kerry, and Kiltimagh was once
again a one-family home.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I wondered what had become of the communal bathroom, dominated
by a large gas meter into which you inserted shillings in the foreboding presence
of the landlady, before taking your allotted weekly bath. Let me hasten to
assure all prudes that this virtuous senior citizen departed before one
disrobed.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All gone now, even our local, the Hideaway Pub, where my
friends and I murdered copious pints of foaming Smithwicks.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Our set was entirely composed of bogmen, though we did
tolerate a number of nihilistic young ladies who risked reputation and much
else by associating with us.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We were a rambunctious crowd and banned from many establishments,
though we were far from aggressive. The only one who had ever engaged in
fisticuffs was my brother, Jimmy, who had his nose rearranged in an argument with
a rickshaw driver in Singapore during his short-lived nautical career. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He resides in Breezy Point now, and as far as I can gather
is more than welcome in all saloons on that sedate, gated Rockaway community.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Lest I digress further, I’m writing this particular column because
I had a eureka moment in bed one recent morning. I might add that the moment,
such as it was, had nothing to do with my ex-landlady who supervised the
heating of my bathwater back in Rathmines.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It did, however, pertain to a song written by Mr. Turner and
myself in those heady days of the early 70’s. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This lost classic was called Inishowen Peninsula and was
inspired by a gig Pierce did in Culdaff while a member of the Arrows Showband –
remember showbands? You played “six nights and every Sunday” as Brush Shields
once declared, which at a wage of 30 pounds per week came out to roughly 4 quid
a gig.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">No wonder we emigrated and hit the big time at Durty Nelly’s
on Kingsbridge Road and the Bells of Hell in Greenwich Village.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Turner and I could recall the melody of Inishowen Peninsula
– even the chords - but the words escaped us.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hence, the recent eureka moment! I bolted up in bed, heart
pounding, the fog of half a century and the damage done by thousands of pints
had dissipated; I was suddenly back in Rathmines gazing at Turner, his long
brown hair cascading down his shoulders as we recorded the song into a gleaming
new Grundig tape recorder.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I sprinted to my laptop as the forgotten words poured forth.
Acres of undisturbed memory seemed to be available at my fingertips? Would this
be a whole new beginning or might I die of shame? </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Alas it was but a fleeting moment, but Turner & Kirwan
of Wexford, once described as “the hottest thing since Cain and Abel,” may do a
reunion gig in New York City in 2024 to support the re-release of our
meisterwork, Absolutely & Completely. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, here’s to Culdaff, Rathmines, spinster
landladies who oversaw weekly baths, and all the things young emigrants leave behind.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the Inishowen Peninsula</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There is a man who doesn’t know who I am</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or how I plan to go there on my honeymoon</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">With the sun of June</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And Paulie’s collie doggie who we normally call Moon</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Will come soon, </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Will come thatchers</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In from the pastures</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On a sunny kind of winter’s day</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I saw him stroll across the bog</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Separating fog and calling out the name of his dog</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Who must be soggy and so wet</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Where have our souls met</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On a sunny kind of winter’s day</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Birds sing in the treetops on a sunny kind of winter’s day</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And life was so priceless before he went away</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He fell off the edge of Ireland so the papers say</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Someone saw a something floating out to sea</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Or could it be he in Culdaff</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Who’ll have the last laugh</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On a sunny kind of winter’s day</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal">Birds sing in the treetops on a sunny kind of winter’s day</p>
<span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">And life was so priceless
before he went away...</span>
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-66177678142058143022023-05-06T09:58:00.000-07:002023-05-06T09:58:05.506-07:00Linked Forever Rory and Phil<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">They are often linked together by nationality, era, and musical intensity, yet it would be hard to think of two personalities less alike than Rory Gallagher and Phil Lynott.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Rory was shy and retiring, and often seemed uncomfortable even at parties thrown in his honor.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">That’s how I first met him in Dublin. I was a teenage fan and could barely believe he was standing 20 feet away from me.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I could tell he was checking me out too, which was mindboggling as in those days I was at least as shy as he was.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">He walked hesitantly towards me and inquired in his gentle Cork accent if I was driving home that night. When my jaw dropped he realized he had the wrong person.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Almost stuttering, he informed me that I looked like someone from Cork City, and he had been hoping I might give him a lift home.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And with that he was gone, off to bum a lift from someone else, leaving me with the notion that I should steal a car, drive him to Cork, and to hell with the consequences.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I was much more familiar with Phil Lynott, but then so was everyone who lived in Dublin in the early 1970’s.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Phil was the most charismatic person I’ve ever met, and perhaps the most ambulatory, for he always seemed to be walking, this mixed-race, handsome young man with the Crumlin accent that could rip paint off the walls.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Everyone on the music scene shared his ups and down: we rejoiced when he was hired by Skid Row and despaired when he was fired soon thereafter. I was on chatting acquaintance with him for years, which didn’t make me special, because Philo would have talked to the wall - and probably did.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">You’ve no idea of the impact Thin Lizzy’s Whiskey in the Jar had on Irish youth. That wonderful trio of Phil on bass, Eric Bell on guitar, and Brian Downey on drums, shook the living daylights out of the old traditional song, ripped up BBC’s Top of the Pops, and changed Ireland forever.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Rory made it big before Lizzy, of course, and had already been hailed by Hendrix as the greatest living guitarist. But Rory didn’t give a fiddler’s about stardom. He would have been thrilled to be called the greatest Delta Bluesman; but that wasn’t likely unless he’d have settled for the River Lee Delta.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Rory had made his own pact with the devil, much like the great Robert Johnston 50 years earlier at a Mississippi crossroads.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">And it showed! When he hit the stage it was probably the closest I’ve experienced to real religion; the man from Cork, by way of Ballyshannon, had that rare power to make you feel totally alive, out of your head, and spiritually uplifted, all at the same time.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Mr. Lynott’s elixir was of a different kind. He too believed in the redemptive power of rock ‘n’ roll, but he was also totally aware of everything going on around him. Let one of his players drop the intensity for a millisecond and you could hear him berating the offender over the din. Phil demanded 120%, and for the most part he got it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">I never totally bought into the Thin Lizzy dual-guitar playing spectacle, it always seemed a bit contrived, and though Gary Moore was a six-string wizard, nothing compared to the raw Irish passion of the early Phil/Eric/Brian trio.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">How did it all fall apart? That comes with the intensity of the music game – you have to live it to totally understand the pressure. Booze is always free, substances are rarely far behind, and prescribed medications complicate everything.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">You’re living life at hyper-speed, often far from home, and though there’s always company and acclaim, you can be achingly lonely and stretched to the limit.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Rory lived longer than Phil, but he began drinking later in life. So many years have passed but I wish they were both alive and garnering some of the joy they still give the rest of us.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Still, they left behind a tremendous musical legacy, and right now I could use a shot of Whiskey in the Jar followed by a chaser of Messin’ With The Kid.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">Turn the volume up to 11 and take a taste yourself!</p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1690481404661891565.post-79868065463877038152023-04-19T14:52:00.002-07:002023-12-26T13:45:22.391-08:00ON THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INVASION OF IRAQ<p class="MsoNormal">How will history judge us, I wondered while listening to
Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, as he
looked back on the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the invasion of Iraq?</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Wolfowitz had learned few lessons; in his closeted view,
Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man, and the universe was better off without
him.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At best you could say Wolfowitz, a noted American political
scientist and diplomat, was guilty of only viewing the world through a prism of
his own choosing.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We continue to be haunted by his ilk, those who seek to
foist their own particular reality upon the rest of us. Our guilt is that we
allow them to do so.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why do I single out Wolfowitz from the other three architects
of America’s greatest foreign policy debacle? Well, I have little doubt that
Donald Rumsfeld is still arguing his case with St. Peter at the gates of
heaven, having departed this mortal coil back in 2021.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Can you ever forget his smarmy self-satisfaction as he
guided us through nights of “shock and awe,” exulting over the precision
bombing of Baghdad – never mentioning that innocent civilians were dying in
this obscene, videogame-like barrage.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not a word did we hear from Vice-President Richard Cheney,
the main architect of this “war on terror.” </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><p class="MsoNormal">Unlike Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney always
knew when to duck back into the shadows and let retired military experts whitewash
the carnage.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As for President Bush, nowadays he paints pictures down in
Texas and apparently sleeps like a log at night, no second thoughts needed.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After all, barely 4500 American service people died in this
useless war, roughly 10% of those who perished in that other noble overseas
crusade, Vietnam.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There have been many public mea culpas since the end of the
Vietnam disaster, but on the 20<sup>th</sup> anniversary of the Iraq invasion
not a word of apology was to be heard, though the official cause of the war - Iraq’s
possession of weapons of mass destruction - has long ago been disproved.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Needless to say there was little mention of the estimated 400,000
Iraqis killed, and the many millions displaced.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What of the damage done to our own people who served over
there? Well, hey thanks for your service, guys, and what a shame those
ungrateful Iraqis never appreciated all you went through on their behalf! </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it’s way deeper than that. Our institutions have
suffered, there’s now a general mistrust of government, we loathe our
politicians, and much of it dates back to our Iraqi misadventure.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This, by the way, is not a partisan screed. President Biden
and Senator Clinton both voted to authorize the invasion. In fact, I believe Mrs.
Clinton would have been president by now if she’d made a stand against the
invasion. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I have little doubt either that Donald Trump would still be
a reality TV star had we allowed United Nations sanctions to successfully continue
restraining Saddam Hussein.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Contrary to his usual revisionism, Mr. Trump did not
immediately come out against the war; still he was yards ahead of Mr. Biden and
Mrs. Clinton.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But talk about foisting his unique reality upon us, President
Trump has since unleashed a base of distorted prism gazers to whom even he must
serve. Uncharacteristically, the man rarely demands credit for his greatest
achievement, Operation Warp Speed that facilitated the creation of the Covid-19
vaccine. </p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why ever won’t you take a bow, Mr. President, afraid it
might rattle your base?</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Unfortunately, the furor over Mr. Trump’s NYC arraignment may
allow Jerome Powell and the other Federal Reserve commissioners to turn a
booming economy, with historically low unemployment rates, into a recession.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This unelected body of patrician bankers and academics
refuses to even consider other methods of taming inflation except by upping
interest rates.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Temporary wage/price controls, sales and income tax
increases, and other economic restraints are not even given an airing.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Accordingly, your job – but not theirs – may soon be on the
line, for you have had the temerity to gain wage increases that impinge upon
corporate profits, the sole barometer of wellbeing in this economy.</p><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A bleak view of the world, perhaps, but it’s never too late
to apologize for a gross military misadventure 20 years ago, or to prevent an
undemocratic stampede into an unnecessary recession.</p>
<p><style>@font-face
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{page:Section1;}</style></p>larry kirwanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09572331372376720541noreply@blogger.com0