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March 2011

Columns, How to Be Irish in Philly

How To Be Irish in Philly This Week

Where’s CBS3’s Bob Kelly when you need him? The city’s on-air traffic controller needs to keep an eye out this week for the various buses shuttling revelers from pub to pub on a motorized version of a pub crawl. There are two of them going on in Philly on Saturday—the Center City-bound Erin Express (which has a second run the following weekend) and the Shamrock Shuttle, which will give you a tour of Northeast Philly’s bars. Fortunately, they’re not taking the same routes so we don’t expect any unfortunate pub crawl accident. At least, not involving the vehicles.

The third pub shuttle is the Running of the Micks (oh yeah, and we’ve taken grief because we call our e-newsletter Mick Mail) which starts out with a footrace before the drinking begins at Finnigan’s Wake at Third and Spring Garden. That’s next Saturday.

There’s so much else going on in this run up to the parades and St. Paddy’s Day we’re just giving you a list:

Saturday

As usual, the Mt. Holly, NJ, parade is the first to step off the curb on Saturday, March 5. Pearse Kerr, a former Northern Irish political prisoner and president of AOH Div. 25 in Philadelphia, is grand marshal.

Queen of Peace Parish in Ardsley is having its annual Irish Night with Jamison providing the music, the Timoney Dancers doing what they do best, and DJ John Purshock. This is a major fundraiser for the parish.

Pick up your kilt from the drycleaners. It’s Celtic Kilt Night at Temperance House in Newtown, sponsored by AOH Bucks Division 2, to benefit the Hibernian Hunger Project.

Team Ratty Shoes, a group of Blackthorn fans who walk every year to raise money for multiple sclerosis research, is having its big fundraiser at North Penn VFW Post 676 in Glenside with music, fun, door prizes, and an auction. When they’re not walking, this group is a party to be around, so you’ll have a good time.

The Shanachie’s genial host, Gerry Timlin, will be performing solo at the Yardley Community Center.

The play, “Brendan,” by Ronan Noone, continues its run at McCoole’s Arts and Events Place in Quakertown. Likewise, “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” is still at Plays and Players Theatre in Philadelphia.

This is also Gael Scoil weekend—an Irish language and culture immersion for kids 7 to 17, now in its fourth year at Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, NJ.

Sunday

A busy day for Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade Director Michael Bradley: In the morning, he’s picking up a “Spirit of O’Hara” award at Cardinal O’Hara High School in Springfield. In the afternoon, he’s presiding over the last and biggest of the parade fundraisers at Springfield Country Club, featuring Blackthorn. Expect to spend the day in Springfield. Lucky for us, O’Hara and the country club are on the same street.

In the afternoon, Father John McNamee, the poet-priest, will be reading from his latest book of poetry, “From Derrybeg and Back.” At the MacSwiney Club in Jenkintown.

Tuesday

The Dropkick Murphy’s will be playing the first of two shows at The Electric Factory. Count on them performing their St. Patrick’s Day singalong, “Kiss Me, I’m —-faced.” The second show is Wednesday.

Wednesday

Duo Gabriel Donohue (he’s from Galway) and Marian Makins (she’s from DC) return to the Shanachie in Ambler after their popular debut performance last month. Donohue is a remarkable musician and Makins has the voice of an angel. We really like them around here.

Thursday

The day starts with the annual wreath-laying at the plaque honoring the Irish who served in the American Revolution on the west side of Philadelphia’s city hall, followed by Mayor Nutter’s proclamation of March as Irish Month in the city. At noon, the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade Association holds its annual luncheon to introduce the parade Grand Marshal—this year, Sister James Anne Feerick, IHM—and the Ring of Honor. Association president Kathy McGee Burns this year has selected a group of eight women to form the Ring, including her daughter Kelly Wall, a judge in Montgomery County.

AOH Notre Dame Division 1 in Swedesburg is hosting its annual Irish Coffee Contest, featuring concoctions from restaurants and pubs in the Conshy area. This is a lead-up to the Conshy parade next weekend.

Dublin-based singer Paudy Timoney is on tap to do some foot-stomping ballads at The Plough and Stars on Second Street in Philadelphia. If you’ve never been the The Plough, whatever is wrong with you? On cold nights there’s a wood and peat fire in the fireplace and, despite the ceiling that reaches to the sky, it’s one of the coziest pubs around. Both real and plastic Paddys love it.

Irish Tenor Michael Londra, whose “Danny Boy” rendition is breaking all YouTube records for views, will be performing at Sellersville Theatre.

Catch Jerry and Shaun of the Broken Shillelaghs at The Blue Monkey Tavern in Merchantville, NJ.

Friday

The John Byrne Band will be performing at The Shanachie in Ambler. If you haven’t caught this group yet, here’s a chance to hear some wonderful Irish and folk music from some top-notch musicians. It’s debut album, “After the Wake,” has gotten lots of air time and critical acclaim. We’re expecting an Amos Lee-like breakout any minute now. (And not just because Byrne Band member Andy Keenan also plays with Lee.)

The Sellersville Theatre is presenting the first—as far as we know—performance in the area of a Canadian group called The Town Pants which mixes Irish trad with acoustic pop, American, and a little Australian and Mexican sounds tossed in. Sounds like stone soup to us. This group sells out quick.

Next weekend

All parades, all the time, including Philadelphia, Bucks County, Springfield (Delco), and Conshohocken. But we’ll cross that particular bridge next week. It’s all on the calendar however, so you can scoop us by taking a look.

March 3, 2011 by
News, People

An Irish Primrose Debuts at The Flower Show

The Kennedy Irish Primrose known as "Inisfree."

Shakespeare’s Ophelia warned her brother about treading down the “primrose path,” a phrase the Bard used more than once in his plays to refer to the pleasant path to self-destruction. But to the Irish, a primrose path meant something quite different. It became traditional to plant primroses around the entrance to one’s cottage to protect against evil fairies.

“And it must work,” says Kilkenny nurseryman Pat FitzGerald. “Have you met any?”

You’re certainly not going to encounter any evil fairies at FitzGerald’s nursery in Oldtown, Stoneyford, in southeastern Ireland, built on the farm where FitzGerald grew up. And you will find primroses. As a child, FitzGerald recalls picking wild primroses by the fistful in the Rath, or Neolithic ring fort, on the property. He and his siblings used to “play hideaway” in the fort, which was covered in primroses, violets, and bluebells and which he rescued from its bramble prison when he founded the nursery in 1990.

“But I’d never grown a primrose till three or four years ago,” FitzGerald told me a few weeks ago on the phone from Ireland. “They were so familiar I guess I treated them with a little bit of contempt.”

Then he met an amateur primrose breeder and retired dentist named Joe Kennedy, a Carlow man living in County Antrim, who has been collecting old Irish varieties of primula—the flower’s Latin name—some dating back to the late 19th century. Out of hardy Irish stock of a perennial primrose known as Garryard, Kennedy had bred some unusual plants with very dark foliage that makes them look almost sensual. They’re a reminder that the primrose’s only magic—its only use—is to look pretty. And they do.

FitzGerald is bringing some of these dark wonders with him to debut at the Philadelphia International Flower Show, which opens this Sunday, March 6, at the Philadelphia Convention Center. Though the theme this year is “Springtime in Paris,” Tourism Ireland is a show sponsor so, among the outdoor Paris cafes and the replicas of Versailles, there will be a tribute to the iconic Irish oak, now an endangered species. FitzGerald will introduce and talk about the Kennedy Irish Primroses on Tuesday, March 8, at 4 PM in the Subaru Gardener’s Studio. (And yes, he’s brought some to sell.)

Appropriately, each of the new primroses carries a name linked to Irish poet William Butler Yeats. The first, Inisfree, comes from Yeats’ poem “The Lake Isle of Inisfree,” and is a mat-forming variety with deep red and yellow blooms with very dark purple foliage. The second, Drumcliffe, named for the village graveyard where the poet is buried, is a rosette forming variety with a creamy white flower that opens with a slight touch of mauve.

And the timing is appropriate too, says FitzGerald. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose family comes from County Wexford. “But this collaboration between a Fitzgerald and a Kennedy to bring old Irish primroses to America is a typically Irish coincidence,” jokes FitzGerald.

Kennedy and FitzGerald are working on 36 more primrose selections, the next of which may be unveiled next year in a variety of colors, including yellow, white, peach, and pink with intensely dark purple foliage.

Patrick FitzGerald

When he started his company more than 20 years ago, FitzGerald had no idea that his was going to be anything more than a local business. In fact, he didn’t even start out to be a nurseryman per se. After college, he set up his first nursery as a workshop for people with special needs, affiliated with the Brothers of Charity. “Our work was to train people with disabilities, brain injuries, and various forms of mental disability to work in the commercial nursery.”

Then, January 2009, he discovered the social network. Facebook. Twitter. Blogging. He got himself Facebook and Twitter accounts and writes a blog called “My Plant” at Blogspot. Suddenly, his plants were showing up in the US, particularly a shrub called ceanothus, a small tree or shrub in the buckthorn family. His variety is called Tuxedo because it has black leaves—actually, a dark chocolate color with striking red stems and lavender blue flowers. And his carex—a kind of grass—called Everillo is making the rounds on other plant sites and blogs.

“The amount of people I’ve made connections with because of it is amazing,” says FitzGerald. “The first place to find out about plants these days is Facebook. People who are in the business are now scouting it. I’ve been using it pretty actively for 18 months now and spreading the word about our plants, and I don’t think it would have happened any other way. We don’t have the budget to take ads in major magazines. In my experience, getting plants into nurseries has never happened this fast. Going to a trade show would cost me something like 1500 euros and I sometimes would come back scratching my head and wondering, ‘Did anything really come of that?’ Social network sites are like a permanent trade show—your door is permanently open and the good and the bad come in.”

Others have noticed. FitzGerald’s company was short-listed for the Irish Times 2011 Innovation Awards in recognition not only of its unique plant cultivars but for the “unique and cost effective route” it took to access world markets.

But posting on Facebook isn’t his main focus, says FitzGerald, “You still have to do the day job. It doesn’t watch the dishes.” And that means getting his primroses ready for the American market. They’re being produced at his lab which is about 20 miles from the old Kennedy homestead in Wexford. Just another one of those typical “Irish coincidences,” he laughs.

March 2, 2011 by