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April 2008

Columns, How to Be Irish in Philly

How To Be Irish In Philly This Week

Two fantabulous Irish groups will be joining forces on Saturday, April 12, for a show at the Sellersville Theater. Tempest, that crazy Norwegian-Irish fusion group from California that creates so much energy you’d think they were the aurora borealis, are headlining the show with local group, Burning Bridget Cleary, doing the warm-up (we’ve seen them and they’re perfectly capable of doing a heat-up). Tempest has a strong local following, and they’ll also be appearing on Sunday night at Brittingham’s Irish Pub in Lafayette Hill.

But before that: On Friday night, think about heading to Ardmore for AOH Comedy Night. No, not a bunch of Hibernians cracking each other up—real Irish comics such as Joey Callahan and Ed McGonigle (with the wonderful Oliver McElhone providing the music) all coming together for a good cause, the “Treasures for Our Troops” project which provides essentials and comfort items to soldiers overseas and financial help to the wounded and their families. A worthy cause, a lot of laughs, music—that’s the AOH for you.

And they’re doing it a second time this weekend. AOH Division 1 in Gloucester County, NJ, is holding a benefit for Project Children, a 33-year-old program that brings Protestant and Catholic children from Northern Ireland to the US for the summer so they can get to know one another away from any strife. There will be beef and beer, the Shantys and friends, and raffles.

Also on Friday night: New local group The Pointe will be releasing its first CD at a special performance at Molly Maguire’s in Phoenixville.

One thing you can take off your calendar is the Young at Heart Luncheon scheduled for Sunday at the Irish Center. That has been rescheduled for June. More details to come.

Sign up now to have breakfast on Friday, April 18, with Temple basektball coach Fran Dunphy, one of the all-time winningest coaches in Philadelphia Big 5 history. It’s sponsored by the Irish American Business Chamber & Network and will be held at The Pyramid Club in center city.

A portion of the admission of $35 for members/$40 for non-members will be donated to Coaches vs. Cancer which Dunphy chairs in this area with St. Joe’s coach Phil Martelli. Space is limited so call 215-772-3101 or email irish_event@iabcn.org to make your reservation.

Don’t forget Movie Thursdays at the Irish Center! This week’s film will be “The Snapper,” an hilarious adaptation of the Roddy Doyle novel (adapted by Roddy Doyle himself), starring the ubiquitous Colm Meaney and Tina Kellegher (Niamh from “Ballykissangel”). The plot: A young woman (Kellegher) becomes the talk of the town when she becomes pregnant and refuses to name the father, to the consternation of her Da (Meaney). This is one of Meaney’s best performances (and he’s had plenty).

April 10, 2008 by
News

Up The Tyrones!

With his master's degree in international relations from Northeastern, mild-mannered John Nolan is—just perhaps—overqualified for his job as manager of the Philadelphia Irish Center. But could there be anyone better?

With his master's degree in international relations from Northeastern, mild-mannered John Nolan is—just perhaps—overqualified for his job as manager of the Philadelphia Irish Center. But could there be anyone better?

With his master’s degree in international relations from Northeastern, mild-mannered John Nolan is—just perhaps—overqualified for his job as manager of the Philadelphia Irish Center. But could there be anyone better?

The members of the Tyrone Society of Philadelphia don’t think so. Not that they’re alone. John has lots of fans. (Including us.) But the Tyrones, at their recent ball to celebrate the organization’s 99th anniversary, conferred upon John the 2008 Red Hand Distinguished Service Award. (The Red Hand is an ancient Ulster heraldic symbol.)

The society’s Geraldine Trainor brought John and his wife Mary to the Irish Center stage and praised him for his “quiet, gentle unassuming way.” She noted also his family ties to Ireland. John is the youngest of five children born to Dan (the son of immigrants from Wicklow and Kildare) and Bridie (from Clare) Nolan of Bethlehem. John and Mary would go on to raise six of their own.

John attended Bethlehem Catholic, went on to attend LaSalle College as a political major and attended Northeastern for his master’s. He met Mary while he was working for the federal government in Washington.

After they moved to Mount Airy, Mary joined the Mayo Association (her father is from the county) and John occasionally tended bar. In 1993, he accepted the position as acting manager of the center.

It was never just an act, of course. He’s the real deal, and it didn’t take long for the Irish Center folks to realize it.

Fifteen years later, John says he still finds it hard to believe his good fortune. 

Nattily attired in a tux with a bright red bow tie, John unfolded a well-worn piece of paper with his remarks written on it and recalled thinking of the Irish Center gig as temporary. “I figured I could handle it for a while,” he told his audience. “I didn’t realize that, in accepting this job, Mary and I would be getting quite an education.”

He noted that his father’s people lost touch with Ireland, so there were gaps in his knowledge.

Hanging out on a quiet evening and chatting with some of the regulars did a lot to fill in the gaps. “Some of the best nights here were the nights when there weren’t a lot of people around,” he says.

Being on hand for many of the lectures and concerts and meeting the many celebrities who rolled through from time to time also did much to advance his Irish education. “I learned firsthand about the (1981 H-Block) hunger strike from Brendan Hurson (brother of hunger striker Martin Hurson, the sixth Republican to die in the strike),” he said. “It wasn’t just something you read about. I learned about these things, not from television, not from a book, but from the people who lived through it. I met (Irish republican politicians) Pat Doherty, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.  And it wouldn’t have happened without the Irish Center.”

Like any good employee, he praised his boss Vince Gallagher and made note of all the improvements, overseen by Vince, that have transformed the Irish Center over the past several years. The Irish Center is quite the showplace now, he said, but even when it wasn’t, there was always something quite special about it. “It’s the one place in Philadelphia where everyone from Ireland feels welcome,” he said.

And one of the reasons for that, although he’s too humble to say it, is John himself.

Along with celebrating John, the Tyrones spent the evening celebrating something else pretty special: just being from Tyrone.

April 4, 2008 by
Columns, How to Be Irish in Philly

How to Be Irish in Philly This Week

Start your weekend off right and go to the Irish Center on Friday night, April 4, to listen to a Frenchman play Irish music on his fiddle.

Patrick Ourceau was born in Paris in 1967, but the minute he first heard Irish music he was hooked. He had planned to learn the concertina, but he had such a hard time finding one in France that he switched to the fiddle, which he started learning at the age of 12. He moved to the US in 1989 to play Irish music in New York with the likes of Andy McGann, Paddy Reynolds, Brian Conway, and Tony DeMarco (whose last performance in Philly earned him three standing Os).

Ourceau is accompanied by Dublin guitarist Eamon O’Leary who also came to New York in the late 1980s.

Expect a toe-tapping, get-up-and-dance kind of evening.

Expect an equally rousing adventure if you join the Shamrocks Hurling Club on Friday night at the Irish Times in Philly’s Queen Village for a social. Learn about this great sport that’s exciting to watch and, we hear, equally exciting to play. The Shamrocks and other Gaelic Athletic Association sports teams play on summer Sundays at Cardinal Dougherty High School in Philadelphia and it’s always a blast. What’s hurling look like? Check out the photos.

Blackthorn fan alert: On Saturday night, your boys are playing a benefit for a very worthy cause—the Special Equestrians, which provides equestrian experiences for disabled children. Tickets are $25 and it starts at 7 PM at Finnigan’s Wake.

On Sunday, at Holy Cross Cemetery in Yeadon, the 69th Pennsylvania Volunteers, Irish Brigade, will provide the honor guard for the annual commemoration of the late Irish activist and Philadelphian Joseph McGarrity, who played a pivotal role in the Easter Uprising of 1919, which led to the independence of the Irish Republic. A social will follow at Galileo Hall, 401 Bailey Road, Yeadon, PA, across from the graveyard. Admission to the social is $25 and includes food, drink, and music by Declan McLoughlin.

Monday night offers you a chance to hear Kevin Burke and Cal Scott at Moorestown Community House in Moorestown, NJ. Burke has been called “one of the great living Celtic fiddlers” and you’ll find out why.

On Thursday, join www.irishphildelphia.com and WTMR radio host Marianne MacDonald for Thursday night at the movies at the Irish Center. We’re co-sponsoring this six-week series of Irish films that you need to see—and if you’ve seen them, you need to see again. (We’re on our third go-round with “The Boys and Girl from County Clare,” our first film; and we can recite most of the dialogue for our second, “The Secret of Roan Inish.”) Up next: The Butcher Boy, a gritty film about a young boy’s tumultuous childhood, based on a novel by Patrick McCabe that was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize and won the 1992 Irish Times Irish Literature Prize for fiction. The bar will be open (host Marianne McDonald says you may need a drink with this one–read her review here) and Barry Club manager John Nolan will be serving up his soon-to-be world famous hand-cut fries.

And on Friday, the AOH Comedy Show—sold out last year!—goes on stage at the Palombaro Club in Ardmore. Proceeds from the fundraiser will go to “Treasures for our Troops,” a program that supplies American soldiers with daily essentials and comfort items, as well as providing financial assistance to wounded troops.

You know where to get all the details: Our calendar, which will be seen on the next season of “Dancing with the Stars” if it doesn’t make the “American Idol” cut.

April 3, 2008 by
People

Fighting Hunger, One Tray at a Time

Emily Semon and Miranda Shaw put the finishing touches on a mac and cheese meal.

Emily Semon and Miranda Shaw put the finishing touches on a mac and cheese meal.

How many people does it take to make 6,000 meals?

About 160, working side by side at long tables propped up by apple juice cans for about three hours.

I know that because I saw it for myself on Saturday, March 30, at the warehouse of Aid for Friends in Northeast Philadelphia, just off the Roosevelt Boulevard. Dozens of members of Delaware Valley Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) divisions and their distaff LAOHs filled aluminum trays with slabs of meatloaf, scoops of mashed potatoes, mountains of peas, and puddles of creamy mac and cheese. The individual meals were frozen and will be distributed to the more than 2,000 needy shut-ins served every week by Aid for Friends, a 34-year-old organization that provides three meals a day and an empathetic listener to the homebound, mainly the frail elderly. And it’s all free.

Not for the AOHers, though. They collect money all year long–at parades, Irish events, fundraisers–to buy the food that they whip into meals once a year. And we’re talking enough to prepare more than 60,000 meals since the charity was founded 9 years ago by AOH Div. 87 member Bob Gessler, who was honored by the national organization this year for his efforts.

Though the program started in Philadelphia, the national AOH has adopted the Hibernian Hunger Project as an official AOH charity and it’s quickly spreading across the country from one division to the next.

It’s easy to see why. With Irish music blaring from a portable CD player, the volunteers, bustling in assembly lines, still took time to chat with their neighbors, laugh, and joke. It’s a little like a party–one of the ones that take place mostly in the kitchen.

“This is always a real feel-good kind of day,” said Donna Donnelly, Philadelphia County co-chairman of the organization, who was doing a lot of bustling herself. “But this was amazing. We had members, kids from local high schools, other volunteers. We’ve never been done this early.”

The meatloaf, however, was done before the side dishes ran out, so an executive decision had to be made: The last meals would be light mac and cheese suppers with lots of peas. Then the clean-up. It only took a few minutes to whip off the tablecloths, yank the apple juice cans that raised the folding tables to waist-high for better prep, and fold the tables and put them away. Around noon, the volunteers started to drift away, 6,000 trays of food stocked neatly in a walk-in freezer. It was done. Till next year.

You can learn more about the Hibernian Hunger Project here.

You can learn more about how to volunteer for Aid for Friends here.

April 3, 2008 by