We caught her at last year’s Irish Festival on Penn’s Landing.
Hope you’re feeling like a festival, because there are plenty of them coming up. Just this weekend you can hear a couple of local Irish bands (Celtic Spirit and Clancy’s Pistol) at the annual Molly Maguire’s Irish Festival in Lansdale (on Saturday); catch Derek Warfield and the Young Wolfetones headlining the Scranton Celtic Festival (also on Saturday) or hear our own Seamus Kelleher at the Irish Festival at Spring Lake, NJ (Saturday too).
Coming up in the next couple of weeks: The annual 3-day festival (May 31, June 1-2) sponsored by AOH Notre Dame Div. 1 in Mont Clare, PA, and the Penn’s Landing Irish Festival on June 2 which will feature a special dance tribute to little Jane Richard, the Irish dancer who lost a leg in the Boston Marathon bombing. There’s a Mass before the Penn’s Landing Festival at the Irish Memorial.
Also, on June 1, there’s GaelFest, which features Joanie Madden and her All-Star Band (when she says “star” she means some of the best Irish musicians around), Mickey Coleman, Girsa, The Pride of Moyvane Ceili Band, and Blackwater. The Allentown Hibernians and the Na Toraidhe Hurling Club in Philadelphia will be presenting a hurling exhibition, along with the Long Island Gaels and Hoboken Guards. There will also be a Gaelic football exhibition by the New York Police Department Gaelic Football Club and the St. Barnabas GFC. As you can probably guess from the lineup, it’s a drive up the New Jersey turnpike—the event takes place at the Christian Brothers Academy, 850 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft, NJ. It runs from 10 AM to 10 PM and is sponsored by the Claddagh na nGael division of Comhaltas in New York.
Speaking of Gaelic football, this Sunday’s game at the Cardinal Dougherty fields is postponed, but you can catch some action on Thursday at 6:30 between the Kevin Barrys and the newly resurrected Tyrone GFC. With Gaelic teams disappearing over the last few years, it’s heartening to see one returning.
Before we leave the weekend, two more events: the Shanty’s at the Red Rooster Inn on Saturday night and a Human Rights Benefit for Michael Campbell, a political prisoner being held in deplorable conditions in a Lithuanian prison. The Shantys and the Bogside Rogues will be performing at The Red Rooster Inn, 7960 Dungan Road in Philadelphia on Sunday. A local woman, Mary Larkin, is lobbying to have Campbell transferred to an Irish prison to serve out his sentence.
Also coming up: Would you like to learn to speak Irish? The Satharn na nGael, a day of immersion in the Irish language, is scheduled for Saturday, June 1, at the Irish Center. There are classes for beginners, intermediate and advanced Irish speakers, as well as “craic” in between. (First Irish lesson: Craic means fun.) For information, contact Marcella Reis at 610-352-5722.
And on May 26. Archbishop Chaput will say Mass at Old St. Mary’s Church in Philadelphia and preside over the memorial service for Commodore John Barry, father of the US Navy, who is buried in the historic church’s graveyard. This is an annual event also attended by the Commodore Barry Society of New York. A dinner follows at the Irish Center.
You can find more information on all of these events and more on our calendar, recently named one of People magazine’s sexiest calendars alive.
