Jim Curley's Posts - The Wild Geese2024-03-29T00:19:56ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurleyhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/68528343?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/blog/feed?user=0fspnslqtw6uj&xn_auth=noGetting to be My Favorite Christmastime Songtag:thewildgeese.irish,2014-12-19:6442157:BlogPost:1339382014-12-19T15:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><strong><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84708949?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84708949?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a> The Boys of Barr na Sraide</strong></p>
<p>Oh the town, it climbs the mountain and looks upon the sea<br></br> At sleeping time or waking, 'tis there I'd long to be<br></br> To walk again that kindly street, the place where life began<br></br> And the Boys of Barr na Sráide went hunting for the wren</p>
<p>With cudgels stout they roamed about to hunt the dreólín<br></br> We searched…</p>
<p><strong><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84708949?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84708949?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750" class="align-full"/></a>The Boys of Barr na Sraide</strong></p>
<p>Oh the town, it climbs the mountain and looks upon the sea<br/> At sleeping time or waking, 'tis there I'd long to be<br/> To walk again that kindly street, the place where life began<br/> And the Boys of Barr na Sráide went hunting for the wren</p>
<p>With cudgels stout they roamed about to hunt the dreólín<br/> We searched for birds in every furze from Litir to Dooneen<br/> We sang for joy beneath the sky, life held no print nor plan<br/> And the Boys of Barr na Sráide went hunting for the wren</p>
<p>And when the hills were bleeding and the rifles were aflame<br/> To the rebel homes of Kerry the Saxon stranger came<br/> But the men who dared the Auxies and to beat the Black-and-Tan<br/> The Boys of Barr na Sráide who hunted for the wren</p>
<p>And now they toil on foreign soil, for they have gone their way<br/> Deep in the heart of London town or over in Broadway<br/> And I am left to sing their deeds and praise them while I can<br/> Those Boys of Barr na Sráide who hunted for the wren</p>
<p>And here's a toast to them tonight, the lads who laughed with me<br/> By the groves of Carham river or the slope of Bean 'a Tí<br/> John Daly and Batt Andy and the Sheehans, Con and Dan<br/> And the Boys of Barr na Sráide who hunted for the wren</p>
<p>And when the wheel of life runs down and peace comes over me<br/> Oh lay me down in that old town between the hills and sea<br/> I'll take my sleep in those green fields, the place my life began<br/> Where those Boys of Barr na Sráide went hunting for the wren</p>
<p> <em>Sigerson Clifford</em></p>
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<p>I'm printing the lyrics up for a New Year's Eve get-together. It's a perfect blend of melancholy, remembrance, and a tip of the hat to heroes of the past. There's an interesting version on Youtube taken from the funeral mass for Paidi O'Se, the Kerry footballer who died in 2012. At the 50th minute of the video when everyone is going up for communion, a woman gets up and sings this song (followed by a man who sings Raglan Road). And the priests and monsignor presiding seem not taken aback by the secularization of the moment. Good for them, and shame on the clergy in the States who won't let "Danny Boy" be played at a funeral.</p>
<p>Happy Christmas to all.</p>
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<p><span class="font-size-1"><em>Top image: Ireland-based trad band Danú</em></span></p>'Machine Made': A Second Look at Tammany Halltag:thewildgeese.irish,2014-07-03:6442157:BlogPost:1038892014-07-03T20:30:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><strong><span class="font-size-7" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84706518?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84706518?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="300"></img></a> I</span>n "Machine Made: Tammany Hall and The Creation of Modern American Politics,"</strong> author Terry Golway doesn’t sugar-coat the negative aspects of a New York institution that flourished for about 100 years. What he does is swing the pendulum back from a crazy imbalance caused by…</p>
<p><strong><span class="font-size-7" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84706518?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="300" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84706518?profile=RESIZE_320x320" class="align-right" width="300"/></a>I</span>n "Machine Made: Tammany Hall and The Creation of Modern American Politics,"</strong> author Terry Golway doesn’t sugar-coat the negative aspects of a New York institution that flourished for about 100 years. What he does is swing the pendulum back from a crazy imbalance caused by prejudices fostered by the English and Anglo-Americans. “The rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey might say, is that Tammany also played a major role not only in enhancing the economic lot of thousands of 19th century immigrants – including many Irish, German and Eastern European Jews – but also in fostering the progressive ideas of 20th century America. The Tammany Hall of Bill "Boss" Tweed matured into the Tammany Hall of Al Smith, Golway shows us.</p>
<p>Tammany was all about jobs. Tammany wasn’t about helping the poor “get their act together” or setting them on the “straight and narrow,” the goal of many reform organizations. It was about a hand-out and a hand-up. "Big" Tim Sullivan, a Tammany stalwart of the early 20th Century said, “I never ask a hungry man about his past. I feed him not because he is good, but because he needs food.” Golway writes, “Traditional reformers, immersed in Anglo-Protestant notions of worthiness rather than simple need, sought to change character and culture as part of a contract-like relationship with the poor and distressed."</p>
<p>Jobs, jobs, jobs. With the Irish, engaged in providing funds so that relatives could join them in this land of opportunity, it was always about jobs. In "The Rascal King," author Jack Beatty tells the story of a Good Government reformer who was campaigning for her Board of Education incumbent in South Boston. When a "Southie" housewife implied that the officeholder might have helped his relative get a teaching position, the reformer, horrified at the suggestion, replied that her candidate would never do such a dastardly thing ... to which the housewife replied, “If the son-of-a-bitch won’t help his own sister, why should I vote for him?” Spoken like a true daughter of Erin.</p>
<p>Jobs for votes. Tammany’s George Washington Plunkett might have put that trade-off in the category "honest graft." Plunkett distinguished “dishonest graft,” which benefits only the individual, from “honest graft,” which benefits some cause or entity bigger than oneself. In voting a ticket to get or keep a job, Irishmen would often band together with other immigrants to be part of a political powerhouse that would represent their interest.</p>
<p>During the "Great Hunger," Charles Trevelyan, the official in charge of British relief efforts, famously said, “The great evil with which we have to contend [is] not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people [i.e., Irish].” This was the same message of 19th century Anglo-Americans, even of some abolitionists who saw injustice below the Mason-Dixon Line, but not above it. These myopic trumpeters of justice included cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose hatred of Tammany Hall translated into blatantly racist cartoons that gained legitimacy gracing the cover of <i>Harper’s Weekly</i>. It was not easy being Irish or any ethnicity in 19th Century New York City</p>
<p>In many minds, Tammany Hall equated to “Boss” Tweed; but Tweed lasted only slightly more than a decade in the mid-19th century as Tammany’s leader, while Tammany lasted into the 1960s when a political upstart named Ed Koch defeated Tammany leader, Carmine DeSapio.</p>
<p>"Machine Made" fills in the gaps in the story – from John Kelly (Tweed’s successor), who brought an organization patterned on the Catholic Church to Tammany; through Richard Croker, who strengthened Tammany by creating a network of local political clubhouses; to Charles Murphy who expressed, in Golway’s words, Tammany’s “discontent with laissez-faire capitalism, [while it] protected immigrant culture and identity from those who demanded conformity with middle-class definitions of Americanism, and continued to develop a pluralistic counterpoint to the nation’s self-image as a Protestant, Anglo-Saxon nation of rugged individuals.”</p>
<p>Later Golway notes, “Under Murphy’s leadership in the second decade of the twentieth century, Tammany redefined reform as a pragmatic, lunch-bucket form of liberalism stripped of the Progressive Era’s moral pieties and evangelical roots.” Tammany made “New York a hothouse of progressive reform long before the New Deal,” in Golway’s words.</p>
<p>Initially, Franklin Roosevelt despised Tammany, likening Murphy to a “noxious weed.” Later, the Patrician from Dutchess County, after getting his feet wet in the nitty-gritty politics of governing, lawmaking and winning elections, would have a more benign view of Tammany and its leader. Golway writes, “Roosevelt, in the end, came to Tammany; Tammany did not come to him.”</p>
<p>Much of the impetus for what would become the New Deal legislation of FDR was born in the social legislation proposed first in New York then in Washington by Tammany Hall leaders such as Al Smith and Senator Robert Wagner. But the machine’s power was waning as immigration – always the base of Tammany’s strength – slowed, and formidable foes such as Fiorello LaGuardia took their toll on Tammany.</p>
<p>At the end of "Machine Made," Golway provides a touching perspective: “It was an imperfect institution, Tammany, often egregiously so. Its alliances with gangsters and other crooked operators deserves history’s rebuke ... But the machine’s absence left a void in New York, still a city of immigrants, and now, in the twenty-first century, many of these newcomers live in shadows that Tammany would have found unacceptable. Tens of thousands of immigrants without proper papers, without citizenship, unable to vote? Tammany’s ward heelers would have seen them not as outcasts but as potential allies – and voters – and would have acted accordingly.”</p>
<p></p>'One Great Irish Spot': Syracuse's Tipp Hill - Where Green Goes on Toptag:thewildgeese.irish,2014-03-13:6442157:BlogPost:827472014-03-13T15:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><strong><span class="font-size-7" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84704245?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84704245?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a> A</span>fter the Erie Canal was finished,</strong> many Irish people settled west of Syracuse on a hill overlooking the canal. This area became known as Tipperary Hill. When the city first installed traffic signal lights in 1925, they placed one at a major intersection in the main business district…</p>
<p><strong><span class="font-size-7" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84704245?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="750" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84704245?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" class="align-full" width="750"/></a>A</span>fter the Erie Canal was finished,</strong> many Irish people settled west of Syracuse on a hill overlooking the canal. This area became known as Tipperary Hill. When the city first installed traffic signal lights in 1925, they placed one at a major intersection in the main business district on Tipperary Hill, at the corner of Tompkins Street and Milton Avenue. Local Irish youths, incensed that the “British" red appeared above the "Irish" green, threw stones at the signal and broke the red light. John "Huckle" Ryan, then alderman of the Tipperary Hill section, requested that the traffic signal be hung with the green above the red in deference to the Irish residents. This was done, but soon New York State stepped in, and city officials reversed the colors.</p>
<p>The red lights were again broken regularly. Members of a group called Tipperary Hill Protective Association addressed the town rulers. On March 17, 1928, Commissioner Bradley met with Tipp Hill residents, who told him that the light would continue to be vandalized. The city leaders relented, and green was again above the red light, where it remains. It is said to be the only traffic light in the U.S. where the green light is on top. At the site is a statue commemorating the StoneThrowers.</p>
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<p></p>Great Irish Romances: Oisín and Niamhtag:thewildgeese.irish,2014-01-29:6442157:BlogPost:751342014-01-29T15:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
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<p><strong><span class="font-size-7" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;">I</span> don’t know what to make of this story,</strong> a great adventure of pre-Christian Ireland. There are many variants to this tale, but here are the basics: Oisín (oh-SHEEN) is one of the…</p>
<p><strong><span class="font-size-7" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;"><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84703349?profile=original" target="_self"><img src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84703349?profile=original" class="align-full" width="750"/></a></span></strong></p>
<p><strong><span class="font-size-7" style="font-family: 'book antiqua', palatino;">I</span> don’t know what to make of this story,</strong> a great adventure of pre-Christian Ireland. There are many variants to this tale, but here are the basics: Oisín (oh-SHEEN) is one of the brave band of warriors known as the Fianna. One day, while hunting, Oisín and the Fianna encounter a beautiful young lady on a magnificent white horse. This lady, Niamh (NEE-if), says that she has come to Ireland to find the great warrior Oisín and bring him to her homeland, Tir Na nOg, the land of eternal youth over the waters to the west.</p>
<p>Oisín immediately falls in love with Niamh and travels with her to Tir Na nOg, where every year is like a hundred years on earth. Three Tir Na nOg years later, Oisín is homesick and decides to visit Ireland. Niamh agrees to let him ride the white horse back to his home, but warns him that if his feet were to touch the ground, he would become an old man. Oisín goes to Ireland, where 300 years have passed, and is saddened to learn that his family is gone and the Fianna have vanished.</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84703399?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="400" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84703399?profile=RESIZE_480x480" class="align-right" width="400"/></a>Oisín then comes across some men attempting to move a great stone. Attempting to assist, he leans over to help push aside the rock, the saddle breaks, he hits the ground and instantly is transformed into an old man. The horse returns to Tir Na nOg without its rider, Niamh’s lover.</p>
<p>Is this a reverse Adam and Eve story, with Oisín's Eve tempting him not with the allure of transient joy, but with an eternity of bliss in a Garden of Eden beyond the sea - or maybe more precisely a Fountain of Youth?<span> </span> Three hundred years of bliss - not bad in the Love Game. But what about Oisín's itch to return home? Let’s concede the passion of his love for the golden-haired Naimh, but also allow the passion he feels for his warrior youth. And don’t forget: Oisín didn’t jump off the horse; he fell. Dollars to donuts, if Oisín doesn’t fall, he returns to Tir Na nOg. That’s my take.</p>
<p>Maybe we can also see Oisín as a fellow Wild Goose, like many of us emigrating to those lands beyond the mist of Ireland’s western shores. We learn from history that the Irish came to 19<sup>th</sup> century North America in great numbers, pined for the "Auld Sod" in song and verse (and continue to do so), but returned to Ireland only to visit. <span> </span>Only 5 percent of those Irish immigrants would return to Ireland for good, compared with about half of Italians, who also came to our shores seeking a new life, then went back to Italy to live. As a friend of my father used to tell him, “The Irish are always talking about Home Rule, but never home to enjoy it.” <span> </span>Ultimately, though Ireland tugs at our very being, for many of us exiles, “our love is in America.”</p>
<p>Sheridan was correct: “Ireland is the land of happy wars and sad love songs.” The story of Oisín and Niamh is one of tragic love and longing, any way it plays out in your mind.<span> </span></p>
<p><em><span class="font-size-1"><strong>Images courtesy of P.J. Lynch: <a href="http://pjlynchgallery.blogspot.ie" target="_blank"><strong>Visit P.J.'s blog</strong></a></strong></span></em></p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><span class="font-size-1"><span class="font-size-2"><strong>Read about other Great Irish Romances at our</strong> <a rel="nofollow" href="http://thenewwildgeese.com/page/gra-xoxo-2014" target="_self"><strong>Grá XOXO headquarters page</strong></a>.</span></span></p>
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<p><a href="//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/"></a></p>1916 and Beyondtag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-12-12:6442157:BlogPost:680632013-12-12T19:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84702448?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84702448?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
<p>I just picked up the CD of <em><strong>Mise Eire / Saoirse?</strong></em> and wonder if any WGers saw it when it first came out in 1960 or have seen the CD more recently. What do you think?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I bought it mainly to hear the background music by Sean O'Riada, said to be the father of the traditional music revival of the 20th century, and am only into…</p>
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<p>I just picked up the CD of <em><strong>Mise Eire / Saoirse?</strong></em> and wonder if any WGers saw it when it first came out in 1960 or have seen the CD more recently. What do you think?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I bought it mainly to hear the background music by Sean O'Riada, said to be the father of the traditional music revival of the 20th century, and am only into the films a short way so far, but I'm struck by what a valuable resource of the times that these films are.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the same subject, CBS came out with a two-record album and book on the Irish Rebellion on its 50th Anniversary. Narrated by Charles Kuralt, the album featured the music of Clancys/Makem and commentary by many who took part in the rebellion and were still alive in the 1960s. I'd love the see the album reproduced on CDs.</p>'The Big Crowd' - When New York Was Irishtag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-11-14:6442157:BlogPost:621902013-11-14T22:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/061885990X/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=thewildgeeset-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=061885990X&adid=1XEBZTFJ0YN7VY4T54ZZ" target="_blank"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84701628?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="350"></img></a> <br></br> <strong><span class="font-size-5">O</span>ne of the joys of my early childhood</strong> was going with my family to the beaches of New York City, particularly Rockaway and Jacob Riis. Getting there was at least half the fun. We’d go over the George Washington Bridge, then…</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/061885990X/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=thewildgeeset-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=061885990X&adid=1XEBZTFJ0YN7VY4T54ZZ"><img width="350" class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84701628?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="350"/></a><br/> <strong><span class="font-size-5">O</span>ne of the joys of my early childhood</strong> was going with my family to the beaches of New York City, particularly Rockaway and Jacob Riis. Getting there was at least half the fun. We’d go over the George Washington Bridge, then head south on the West Side Highway. It was then that the three of us kids in the back of the car would look toward the piers of the West Side to see which of the great liners – the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mary or the United States – was in port. In lower Manhattan, the West Side Highway was an elevated highway jigsawing its way past office buildings and steamship buildings to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.</p>
<p>With that happy memory in mind, I recently read The Big Crowd, a novel by Kevin Baker. In the larger picture of the life of Charlie O’Kane in his later years as Mayor of New York and his exile in Mexico City after he leaves electoral office, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/061885990X/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=thewildgeeset-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=061885990X&adid=1XEBZTFJ0YN7VY4T54ZZ" target="_blank">The Big Crowd</a> presents both a pretty accurate picture of the Big Apple before it became overripe, but a less certain view of the last fully Irish-American mayor of New York City (Robert Wagner had part-German ancestry.).</p>
<p>The end of industrial New York City was at hand. Take shipping. By the mid-1950s, Malcolm MacLean was at Port Newark in New Jersey unveiling a new way to transport goods from foreign ports to inland destinations – containerization. Goods were shipped in containers to U.S. ports, then lifted by giant cranes onto rail cars or domestic vessels for transporting all across North America. Gone was the grunt work of unloading breakbulk cargo by longshoremen and the political power of the unions that controlled the waterfront; an International Longshoremen’s Association official said of the first container ship he saw, “I’d like to sink that son-of-a-bitch.”</p>
<p>The period also marked the height of influence of Robert Moses and the decline of the New York City neighborhood. in the novel, Tom O’Kane, Charlie’s younger brother, castigates his sibling when Charlie as Mayor appoints Robert Moses as city construction coordinator. Charlie responds,” Somebody’s got to be in charge, and who knows this better than Robert Moses? He knows how to build.”</p>
<p>“Maybe once,” Tom replies. “Now I think he just likes to tear down. Look at what he’s doing out at Coney Island. Wiping out a whole neighborhood, and half the boardwalk with it. And the Bronx-”</p>
<p><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">But as Moses was building exit lanes on expressways leading from Gotham to the Levittowns of the suburbs, Eisenhower was doing him one better. The interstate system of highways pointed people and businesses west and south. If you could escape the city and live on Long Island, you could travel just a bit further on a high-speed road and go to North Carolina. If jobs were “going, going, gone” to warmer climes, so were baseballs. In 1957, New York had three major league teams; a year later, just one.</span></p>
<p>In the O’Kane era, the business of New York was shifting from manufacturing to finance. No one anticipated this better than another of Baker’s characters, Cardinal Spellman, a not-infrequent visitor to Wall Street and, along with Moses, one of the shadow characters in this novel.</p>
<p>But a cast of big-name characters doesn’t always sell out the show. <em>The Big Crowd</em> travels at a herky-jerky, back-and-forth pace from New York in the 30s, 40s, and 50s to Mexico after O’Kane leaves New York under clouded circumstances. It chronicles the Big Crowd – described by Charlie’s girlfriend Slim as “a combination of café society and Tammany Hall” – and leaves this reader confused.<span> </span> Its moments of insight and brilliance, particularly in the portrait of the elder O’Kane in exile, are dulled by the sidetracks the novel takes.</p>
<p>A final word of caution: The two O’Kane brothers are both lawyers. One, Charlie, is almost two decades older than the other. They hail from Bohola in County Mayo, Charlie leaves the mayor’s office and is appointed Ambassador to Mexico by President Truman. Does this “plot” sound familiar? You’ve heard this before?</p>
<p>I could live with this intrusion into history, if not for one of Baker’s subplots – Tom’s affair with Charlie’s girlfriend, Slim. I think too highly of Paul O’Dwyer, whom Tom is patterned after, to even contemplate this relationship happening without some proof. I even feel cheap when I google <span> </span>the subject for corroboration.</p>
<p>In his New York Times review, Scott Turow counts this as one of the “dramatic liberties” Baker takes in <em>The Big Crowd</em>. I remain less generous in my appraisal of this inclusion. <strong>JC</strong></p>The Great Hunger Museum: A Destination, Not a Detourtag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-09-28:6442157:BlogPost:528292013-09-28T18:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84700788?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84700788?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"></img></a></p>
<p>In September, after one of my occasional trips to Boston, I decided to take a detour to investigate The Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University. Friends had told me about the collection hosted at the library on the Hamden Connecticut campus, until last September, when it moved into its own building, located about a mile from the main campus.</p>
<p>The two-story,…</p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84700788?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84700788?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a></p>
<p>In September, after one of my occasional trips to Boston, I decided to take a detour to investigate The Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University. Friends had told me about the collection hosted at the library on the Hamden Connecticut campus, until last September, when it moved into its own building, located about a mile from the main campus.</p>
<p>The two-story, 4,750-square-foot building is home to what is said to be the world largest collection of visual art, artifacts, and printed materials relating to the starvation and forced emigration that occured during An Gorta Mor. Works by noted contemporary Irish artists are featured, as well as a number of important 19th and 20th century paintings. In its first year, the museum has drawn more than 9,600 visitor.</p>
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<p><span class="font-size-3"><strong>The Real Story</strong></span></p>
<p>In 1997, the 150th anniversary of the hunger, Dr. John Lahey, Quinnipiac’s President was chosen as Grand Marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City. He determined that to prepare for the position that year, he would learn as much as he could about the “famine.”</p>
<p>What he learned shattered his boyhood perception of the Great Hunger – that “the Irish had been lazy and foolish to have allowed themselves to become so dependent on one crop, the potato.” The truth was that though the potato had failed, they were plenty of healthy crops and enough food in Ireland during those years to support the starving people.</p>
<p>Many visitors to the Quinnipiac museum share the same misconception as Lahey had, one museum official said. Hence the precision of the museum’s name. That misconception is shattered when the visitor enters the museum and views a 15-minute-long introduction to the calamitous event on the museum’s first floor. Outside the seating area for the firm are several pieces of 19th century art and sculpture that increase the interest in what lies upstairs. Besides offices, the first floor also contains printed materials relating to the starvation and forced emigration.</p>
<p>The majority of the artwork can be seen on the second floor. Highlights for me included “Famine Cart” by sculptor John Behan, which depicts a horse and cart delivering not peat from the fields but corpses to a mass grave and Lilian Davidson’s oil painting “Burying The Child,’ which depicts a gaunt man preparing a grave for an infant while two mourning women look on. Acquisitions continue, most recently “The Ragpickers” an oil rendering of old women eking out an existence by collecting rags for a paper mill. It was painted in 1900 by Henry Allan.</p>
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<p>Much of the early funding for the museum’s collection came from Murray Lender, Chairman of Quinnipiac’s Board of Trustees and a principal in Lender’s Bagel’s. Lender gave the university a gift to fund a special room at the library dedicated to the Great Hunger. When the new museum was dedicated last September, Lahey saluted Lender in a special way, saying, “A lot of Irish American artists and supporters helped to make this day possible, but without the support of a son of a Jewish immigrant from Poland who saw parallels in our experience we wouldn’t be [here] to dedicate this new facility. That’s a proof of how important this story is to immigrants.”</p>
<p>When President Lahey began to question the prevailing assumptions about the Great Hunger in the late 1990s, he found one book particularly helpful in his education. “My awakening with respect to Ireland’s Great Hunger came in 1996 when I read Christine Kinealy’s ‘This Great Calamity,’” Lahey told the Irish Voice. No surprise then that this fall Quinnipiac University announced that Kinealy had been appointed Professor of History and Irish Studies at the university. Formerly at Drew University, Kinealy will also serve as Director of the newly created Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac.</p>
<p>In announcing the appointment, Lahey said, ‘As Director of the Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac, Christine will perform scholarly research and organize academic conferences that, along with Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac, will enhance Quinnipiac’s growing reputation as the preeminent authority on the Great Hunger.</p>
<p>The Great Hunger Museum is located at 3011 Whitney Ave. in Hamden, Connecticut. Entrance to the museum is free, though donations are accepted. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, log on to ighm.nfshost.com, call (203) 582-6500 or e-mail ighm@quinnipiac.edu.</p>
<p>Upcoming programs include a lecture by Sinead McCoole, Curator of the Jackie Clark Collection in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland on Tuesday, October 29 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. and readings on the poetry of Seamus Heaney on Thursday, November 7 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.</p>
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<p><a target="_self" href="http://thewildgeese.com/profiles/blogs/focus-on-the-great-hunger"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84698336?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a></p>Your Experiences with Croagh Patricktag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-07-27:6442157:BlogPost:344652013-07-27T22:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699901?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699901?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="400"></img></a></p>
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<p>Tomorrow is the last Sunday in July, and the day that pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick in County Mayo. Has anyone in our group done the climb? Has anyone done it barefoot?</p>
<p>What was the experience like? Did you consider it a real pilgrimage or simply a mountain to climb?…</p>
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<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699901?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="400" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699901?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="400" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p></p>
<p>Tomorrow is the last Sunday in July, and the day that pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick in County Mayo. Has anyone in our group done the climb? Has anyone done it barefoot?</p>
<p>What was the experience like? Did you consider it a real pilgrimage or simply a mountain to climb?</p>
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<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Ezj7R-IZISA?wmode=opaque" frameborder="0"></iframe>
</p>Meeting Devtag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-07-25:6442157:BlogPost:342112013-07-25T22:57:46.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
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<p class="MsoNormal">In 1970, I met with several other friends and teachers in Dublin. One of them had political connections, so we got an audience with the President of Ireland, then Eamon de Valera, at the presidental mansion in Phoenix Park. Some of the visit I remember as comic: we arrived at the gate, all six of us, in a car not much bigger than a VW Beetle.I'm sure the guards were used to limos and grand cars coming up to the gate and thought "who are these jokers sitting…</p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">In 1970, I met with several other friends and teachers in Dublin. One of them had political connections, so we got an audience with the President of Ireland, then Eamon de Valera, at the presidental mansion in Phoenix Park. Some of the visit I remember as comic: we arrived at the gate, all six of us, in a car not much bigger than a VW Beetle.I'm sure the guards were used to limos and grand cars coming up to the gate and thought "who are these jokers sitting on top of one another?"</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They let us through and we waited for a short time in a gorgeously appointed parlor, before a military guard ushered us in. One thing I remember is that the soldier poked the President in the ribs as we neared and De Valera stuck out his hand, I suspect that Dev was so blind at the time that if he had to find our hands instead of the reverse, he might have had problems.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For a minute or two, we talked small talk. The President talked about the visit of JFK in 1963, and all the electronic paraphernalia that Kennedy had brought with him from America including the infamous "hot phone" connection to the Kremlin. Soon after, the soldier took a group picture, and we were gone. Later, I was advised not to make a big deal about the visit while I was in Ireland since the feelings about the 1922 treaty were still strong among survivors of these times.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the photo, I am second from left (god, those sideburns!), My dad, who always found prime positions when pictures were taken, was on Dev's immediate right (looking at the picture). <a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84700000?profile=original"><img width="750" class="align-full" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84700000?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024" width="750"/></a></p>tribute to Felix Dolantag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-07-13:6442157:BlogPost:304742013-07-13T17:06:41.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p class="MsoNormal">Next Saturday, July 20, at the Andy McGann Festival during the Catskills Irish Arts Week, there will be a tribute to the renowned piano and keyboard player Felix Dolan who died this April. Dolan was one of the seminal performers of traditional Irish music in the New York City area, going back to the 1950s, and played for more than 50 years. He was also a really good guy.</p>
<p>Here's the info (only on part of a day-long festival).:</p>
<p>Friends of Felix Dolan: 3:15-4:15…</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Next Saturday, July 20, at the Andy McGann Festival during the Catskills Irish Arts Week, there will be a tribute to the renowned piano and keyboard player Felix Dolan who died this April. Dolan was one of the seminal performers of traditional Irish music in the New York City area, going back to the 1950s, and played for more than 50 years. He was also a really good guy.</p>
<p>Here's the info (only on part of a day-long festival).:</p>
<p>Friends of Felix Dolan: 3:15-4:15 pm</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“A tribute to a Legend. Felix was an integral part of the CIAW from its earliest times. Always a gentleman and an inspiration to all, his loss is felt throughout the CIAW family of fellow musicians, students and staff alike. Here in East Durham, many are eager to take to the stage in what promises to be a roller coaster hour of music, song, dance, tales, laughter and tears as we journey for a short while on the wings of a beautiful dove. We love you Felix. Thank you for your music.”</p>'Transatlantic' - A Voyage Worth Takingtag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-06-24:6442157:BlogPost:274892013-06-24T20:30:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699191?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699191?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="190"></img></a> I recently finished reading "Transatlantic," by Colm McCann. Several years ago, a friend gave me McCann's previous novel, "Let the Great World Spin." I hated it; didn't like the times, didn't like the setting or the subject (mid-1970s drug-infested New York City).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I Loved "Translatlantic." It is story of a family (specifically a grandmother, mother and…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699191?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="190" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84699191?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="190" class="align-left"/></a>I recently finished reading "Transatlantic," by Colm McCann. Several years ago, a friend gave me McCann's previous novel, "Let the Great World Spin." I hated it; didn't like the times, didn't like the setting or the subject (mid-1970s drug-infested New York City).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I Loved "Translatlantic." It is story of a family (specifically a grandmother, mother and daughter) touched by several historic events of the 19th and 20th century: The 1919 flight of Alcock and Brown from Newfoundland east to Clifden, Co. Galway (the first transatlantic flight), the 1845-46 visit of Frederick Douglass to Ireland, and the final days of the Good Friday Peace Accord in 1998. The<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> first half of the book is a man's world; the second half contains a fine study of strong and independent women battered by the world, but not broken by it. History swirls around them from An Gorda Mor to the Great War and from the Suffrage Movement to the Troubles as the characters in the book move back and forth from the Old World to the New and back again.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What remains is collective memory. McCann writes, "We return to the lives of those who have gone before us, a perplexing mobius strip until we come home,eventually, to ourselves."</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A novel to savor.</p>Tragedy Visits Mayo Village on the Titanic, 101 Years Agotag:thewildgeese.irish,2013-04-11:6442157:BlogPost:167132013-04-11T18:00:00.000ZJim Curleyhttps://thewildgeese.irish/profile/JimCurley
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84697482?profile=original" target="_self"><img class="align-left" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84697482?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="450"></img></a></p>
<p><strong><span class="font-size-6">O</span>ne hundred and one years ago today</strong>, 14 people from Addergoole Parish, County Mayo, left for America from Queenstown (today known as Cobh) on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Only three would survive.</p>
<p>These emigrants are still remembered by relatives each April with an early morning ceremony in Lahardane, County…</p>
<p><a href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84697482?profile=original" target="_self"><img width="450" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/84697482?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="450" class="align-left"/></a></p>
<p><strong><span class="font-size-6">O</span>ne hundred and one years ago today</strong>, 14 people from Addergoole Parish, County Mayo, left for America from Queenstown (today known as Cobh) on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. Only three would survive.</p>
<p>These emigrants are still remembered by relatives each April with an early morning ceremony in Lahardane, County Mayo.</p>
<p>Left is a picture taken of the assembled Irish waiting to board Titanic. It was taken by Father Frank Browne S.J., who traveled on the Titanic from Southhampton to Queenstown. An American offered to pay his way to New York, but when Browne asked for permission to extend his trip, his superior denied the request.</p>
<p>The refusal saved Browne's life. The cleric's pictures are the only ones taken on the Titanic that have survived.</p>
<p>May the Good Lord bless those who perished on Titanic!</p>