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Denise Foley

How to Be Irish in Philly

The McDade Dancers, taking it to the street. They're holding a feis this weekend.

The two Irish plays in town have gotten rave reviews. This is your last weekend to see Enda Walsh’s “Bedbound” from the Inis Nua Theatre Company at the Playground at the Adrienne. Conor McPherson’s “Shining City” is also wrapping up its run, so get your tickets now.

There’s a lot going on this week that you need to know about, whether you like Celtic rock, trad, Irish dancing, or Irish conviviality. And hey, who doesn’t like all of those things?

On Saturday, Jamison, the Celtic rock band, is headlining the Benefit for Chrissy (Chrissy Hemphill, an 11-year-old with a degenerative hip disorder) at the Firefighters Union in Philadelphia.

On Saturday night, the Broken Shillelaghs are playing at Heavy’s on the Harbor in Gloucester City, NJ, just over the bridge from Philadelphia.

On Sunday The McDade School is holding its Four Provinces Feis at the Marple Sports Arena in Broomall. If you’ve never been to a feis (pronounced fesh), this is one to see since McDade produces some serious championship dancers.

The Derry Society is hold its spring social at the Irish Center on Sunday, starting at 3 p.m. The Bare Knuckle Boxers and the Shantys will provide the music, and the Cummins and Gibbons School dancers will show you how it’s done. There’s an adult and kids’ buffet.

It’s a busy Sunday. Once again, Blackthorn is raising money for the USO. The second annual USO Rocks the Troops with Blackthorn is on tap at P.J. Whelihan’s Pub in Cherry Hill, N.J.

If you look at our calendar, you’ll see Canadian group Great Big Sea is playing at Sellersville, but the show has been sold out for weeks. You’ll have to call for any last minute cancellations.

Coming up next Friday, Isaac Alderson, Grainne Murphy, and Alan Murray will play in concert at the Irish Center, sponsored by the Philadelphia Ceili Group. Alderson is a world-class flute player, the only American since Cherish the Ladies’ Joannie Madden to win a tin whistle championship, which he grabbed at the 2002 Fleadh Cheoil in Listowel, Ireland. He was also named All-Ireland Senior Champion in two other instruments—uilleann pipes and flute. This is your chance to see hear a world-class musician who defines “triple threat.” And he’s not even 25.

April 23, 2010 by Denise Foley

People

Four Women You’ll Want to Know

Opinionated, spirited, courageous: the inspirational Rosabelle Gifford.

One woman was an Academy Award winning actress who became a princess.

Another courageously left an abusive marriage and took her children across an ocean to safety at a time when society frowned on divorce and single parenthood.

One heads the major division of a multi-billion dollar company that’s an iconic giant in the food industry.

Another, a nurse on a heart transplant team, dealt with her husband’s history as an Irish political prisoner by working tirelessly for Irish reunification and with her son’s death at the age of 15 in a skateboard accident by creating a scholarship for other skateboarders.

These are just four of the women who will receive an Inspirational Irish Women Award on Sunday, May 23, at the Irish Center, 6815 Emlen Street, Philadelphia.

Princess Grace of Monaco

Philadelphia’s favorite daughter, Grace Kelly, who earned her Oscar playing Georgie Elgin opposite Bing Crosby in “The Country Girl,” later became Princess Grace of Monaco who devoted her time to motherhood and charity until her untimely accidental death in 1982.

Rosabelle Gifford

Rosabelle Gifford was born in Gortward, Mountcharles, County Donegal, 90-something years ago. The mother of 5 was living in post-war London when she decided to leave her abusive marriage, spiriting her children out of the country than emigrating to America where she supported them by working as a nanny in Delaware County. Described as “opinionated, spirited, and courageous,” she was honored in 2009 with the first Mary O’Connor Spirit Award by the Philadelphia Rose of Tralee Centre, a major sponsor of the Inspirational Irish Women Awards. Not only did her large family come to support her, so did some of the children she cared for some 50 years ago.

Denise Sullivan Morrison

Denise Sullivan Morrison leads the Campbell USA, North America Foodservice, and Campbell Canada businesses, which represent approximately $4.9 billion of the company’s net sales and nearly 90 percent of the company’s profits.

But for Morrison, there’s more to it than profits. She has served on the board of the Food Industry Crusade Against Hunger and Leadership California and is a founding member and current board member of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, an initiative composed of manufacturers and retailers designed to combat obesity in the marketplace, workplace, and in schools through communication and education. She is also the mother of two daughters–with a great role model.

Liz Kerr

Liz Kerr, RN, is on the transplant team at Temple University, where she daily confronts life and death. When her own son, Patrick, died in a 2002 accident, she made the decision to keep his memory alive by establishing two scholarships—one for students at Roman Catholic High School where Patrick had been a freshman, and another for high-achieving students who share another of Patrick’s loves—skateboarding.

Her husband, Pearse, who grew up in Belfast, became a political prisoner at 17, released only when authorities learned he was an American citizen, born when his parents lived in the States. Kerr, who has Galway roots, serves as the Freedom for All Ireland officers of Ladies AOH Brigid McCrory Div. 25—the person charged with helping make the dream of a united Ireland a reality. Kerr has been lobbying local lawmakers to pass resolutions supporting Irish reunification: Last year, Philadelphia passed the resolution and Kerr and other AOH members are working with state lawmakers to have one passed at the state level.

Artist Patrick Gallagher, the son of Irish immigrants who grew up on the Main Line, is painting portraits of the women which will hang for several months at the Irish Center and then be on display at the Oscar Wilde House of American University Dublin.

Tickets to the May 23 cocktail reception and awards event are $35 and available at www.inspirationalirishwomen.org. They will not be sold at the door. Information on tax deductible sponsorships are also on the website. For more information, contact Denise Foley at 215-884-1936 or 215-779-1466 or email denise.foley@comcast.net.

Two great groups with strong links to the Philadelphia Irish community and the Irish Center in particular will provide the music: The Boyces and Shannon Lambert-Ryan and Runa. The Boyce Family (they include founding members of Blackthorn) and Shannon Lambert-Ryan literally “grew up” at the Irish Center. “That’s where I learned to dance,” says Lambert-Ryan.

Proceeds from the event will go to support the Irish Center, which has been the focal point of the region’s Irish community for more than 50 years. Ten percent has been pledged to Project H.O.M.E., a nonprofit organization founded by another of the winners, Sister Mary Scullion.

The other winners are:

Sister Kathleen Marie Keenan, senior vice-president of Mission and Sponsorship of Mercy Health System, the largest Catholic health care system in southeastern Pennsylvania
Rosemarie Timoney, founder of Timoney School of Irish Dance and a longtime promoter of Irish culture in the Delaware Valley
Kathy McGee Burns, Realtor, president of the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame, vice president of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Observance Committee and mother of nine
Kathy Orr, CBS3 meteorologist, anchor of the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day coverage, longtime supporter of Alex’s Lemonade Stand and other charities
Emily Riley, executive vice president of Connelly Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports Catholic education, the arts and other nonprofits.
Siobhan Reardon, first woman president of The Free Library of Philadelphia

April 23, 2010 by Denise Foley

People

Networking—Irish Style

Teacher Rosaleen McGill and Solas guitarist Eamon McElholm make newcomer Karen McCausland of Tyrone feel welcome.

If you thought of the inaugural meeting of the new Irish Network-Philadelphia organization as a treasure hunt, last night at Tir na Nog in Center City I collected:

Two members of the Celtic rock group Blackthorn
A guy whose company makes a mobile beer table for pubs
Six lawyers
The director of disability services at Temple University
Three old Dublin City University friends who came to the US on a lark because they could get green cards then wound up becoming Americans
Four college students
The creative director of a local theatre company
A Center City business owner
A house painter
The guitarist from Solas
The director of sweaters (yes, it’s a real job) at Anthropologie
An occupational therapist from Dublin who was only there because she couldn’t get home, thanks to an Icelandic volcano

Of course, I’m pretty chatty, but even if you traded fewer business cards than I did, your world would still be expanded dramatically. And that’s the idea behind IN-Philadelphia, the latest in a string of networking organizations aimed at bringing together a varied group of people “from suits to boots” with a common bond: They’re Irish-born or of Irish descent.

IN-USA grew out of the collaborative efforts of the Irish government and American organizers who spun the group from the template set by Bill Godwin, who was then Midwest territory director for IDA Ireland, the agency responsible for industrial development and foreign investment in Ireland. IN Chicago launched in 2003 as way for Irish-born immigrants to share business contacts, experience, and drive business to one another.

Attorney and Wexford native Laurence Banville is chairman of the committee that added IN-Philadelphia to the Irish Network’s growing list of participating cities (New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, and Washington, DC). In January, he met at the Irish Embassy in Washington with Irish officials and other IN groups and thought the concept could be a go in his new hometown.

While many of the other INs are heavy with professionals, Banville thought that welcoming “boots”—people in the trades—as well as “suits” would increase the group’s bandwidth.

“I thought we could bring together all sorts of individuals—landscapers, painters, lawyers, businessmen—to everyone’s benefit,” he says. After all, he points out, lawyers often need painters, and painters sometimes need lawyers. IN-USA is developing a national database of members that will “allow people in Philadelphia to expand outside of Philadelphia,” he says. A website will be up shortly that will let members link to other members all over the country.

Karen Boyce McCollum is a member of the IN-Philadelphia committee. “My favorite aspect of this group is our ‘from boots to suits’ motto,” she says. “This group is open to all people in Philadelphia with an Irish interest. People from all industries are welcome to be part–carpenters, lawyers, doctors, aspiring politicians, newly appointed software engineers, stay-at-home mothers, firefighters with an interest in the accordion, realtors, insurance agents with an interest in raising children, musicians, tour guides/radio hosts, future college graduates, teachers, roofers, etc. Diversity is a plus, especially when it comes to building a strong, well-rounded network.”

For Karen McCausland, IN-Philadelphia came just in time. The Tyrone native and director of sweaters for Philly-based Anthropologie has only been in Philadelphia for two weeks. Rosaleen McGill, a teaching assistant at The Caring Center and singer, introduced Karen to me as “my new friend.”

“This is such a good opportunity for me to meet people and make connections,” says McCausland, who has been an ex-pat—in places like Milan and Glasgow—for the last dozen years.

Noel Fleming, formerly from Dundalk, County Louth, now lives in Phoenixville. He’s a lawyer with Lundy & Flynn in Bala Cynwyd who joined the IN-Philadelphia committee to share his expertise. “I joined because of my friend, Kevin Kent, who is also on the committee. I’m not involved in a lot of Irish things at all—in fact, nothing—but I thought I could help because of the kind of law I practice. This is a nonprofit organization and I practice nonprofit tax exempt law. I wanted to help out.”

The next IN-Philadelphia event is on May 20 at Maggie O’Neill’s Pub, 1062 Pontiac Road in Drexel Hill.

If you ask Gordon Magee—and I did—the Irish Network is an idea whose time has come. The painting contractor from Belfast and Roxborough hasn’t gravitated toward other Irish organizations because, he says, “they seem to cater to an older clientele,” he says. “This was started by people more my age so I thought I’d give it a chance. I think it has a lot of potential.”

It does. I think I found a painter.

April 23, 2010 by Denise Foley

Columns, How to Be Irish in Philly

How to Be Irish in Philly This Week

Tempest—Celtic with a Norwegian twist, in Phoenixville this week.

With any luck, the Irish will be bringing luck to the Phillies on Friday night as they face the Marlins and a bunch of Irish dancers and singers on the field for Irish Heritage Night. One thing is for sure—the Phanatic will be wearing green.

The rest of the week is no slouch. The California Celtic band with the Norwegian flavor, Tempest, is playing at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville on Saturday night, with Burning Bridget Cleary and Coyote Run opening. Sounds like quite an Irish evening with Norwegian undertones.

On Sunday, head over to the Shanachie in Ambler for Family Day with Timlin and Kane, an event so popular they’re doing it twice this year.

Also on Sunday, Scottish singer-songwriter Dougie MacLean is playing at World Café Live (this would be one for How to Be Scottish in Philly, except that a Celt’s a Celt as far as we’re concerned). And at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, Gaelic Storm whips up a storm.

A little change of pace on Tuesday: The Irish Studies program at Villanova University is hosting a special evening with Irish poets Peter Fallon and Seamus Heaney to celebrate 10 years of the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. chair of Irish Studies. Heaney is a Nobel Prize-winning poet and playwright from Northern Ireland. Fallon was the inaugural Heimbold Professor of Irish studies at Villanova.

On Thursday, the inaugural meeting of Irish Network-Philadelphia, part of a larger nonprofit organization that aims to bring Irish and Irish-American professionals together, takes place at Tir na NoG on Arch Street in Philadelphia.

Also on Thursday night, you can hear the strong roots that Irish music has set down in the American Appalachian and bluegrass tradition at the Annenberg Center with “Music from the Crooked Road,” featuring Appalachian guitar master Wayne Henderson and banjo virtuoso Sammy Shelor in addition The White Top Mountain Band, hot, young Bluegrass band Amber Collins & No Speed Limit and other extraordinary musicians.

On Friday, Blackthorn will be playing yet another benefit, this one for the Lions Club in Thornton, PA.

All next week you can see Inis Nua Theatre Company’s production of Enda Walsh’s powerful play, “Bedbound,” at the Adrienne in Philadelphia, and Theatre Exile’s “Shining City,” the critically acclaimed play by Conor McPherson, at Plays and Players.

Coming up in the next few weeks: Danny Quinn returns to the Irish Times in Philly; the Broken Shillelaghs play at the Bristol Borough AOH club; Jamison rocks out in a benefit at the Firefighter’s Union Hall in Philadelphia; the McDade School’s Four Provinces Feis (pronounced fesh, it’s a dance competition) is scheduled in Broomall, and the Derry Society Spring Social is on tap at the Irish Center. There’s even more on our calendar, so check it out.

April 16, 2010 by Denise Foley

Arts

Review: “Bedbound” from the Inis Nua Theatre Company

Brian McCann and Melissa Lynch star in the Inis Nua play. (Photo by Katie Reing)

For an actor, playing a part in Enda Walsh’s “Bedbound” must be like running a marathon every night. For an hour and 10 minutes, its two players—a father and his crippled daughter, trying to sleep in the same cramped, filthy bedroom—are ranting, keening, or reacting silently to each other’s torrent of words with an intensity that seems ultimately unsustainable.

“Bedbound,” a production of the Inis Nua Theatre Company now playing at the Adrienne in Philadelphia, is the story of a man whose ambition, formed when he is very young, is to be king of the furniture business in Cork and, later, in Dublin. And he is willing to do anything, including the most unspeakable acts of perversion and violence, to achieve his desires. He delivers the story of his life—the violence, calculated sex, even marriage in the service of his dream–in agitated monologues aimed at the audience while his daughter, bedbound by polio as the result of a freak fall into a sewage tank, acts them out, playing the roles of the boss and the underlings her father has killed. Or has he? The unbelievable is somehow believable in this brutal and, yes, often funny play.

He had been grooming her to follow in his footsteps when she contracted the disease that has left her with a still, twisted arm, a hunched back, and paralyzed legs. His shame led to his nightly ritual of remodeling his home so that her room has become progressively smaller and smaller, as though he were building her a coffin. In that room, her now dead mother once slept beside her and read to her from romance novels, hushing her fears that the walls are closing in on her by telling her that it was “all a fairy tale.”

For the young girl, played in the Inis Nua’s production by Melissa Lynch, the stories, as horrifying as they are, are life to her. “What am I if not words? I am empty space is what I am,” she says. And it’s the empty spaces, the rare moments of silence, that bring the most terror to these two tortured characters who, in the end, turn to talk to one another, ending this emotionally exhausting play with an unexpected and poignant note of redemption and hope.

Brian McCann, who plays the father, deftly draws a character who is both despicable and strangely endearing, a psychopath with a sense of humor and, as McCann subtly suggests, perhaps even a heart of gold. Melissa Lynch’s performance as the physically twisted daughter of an emotionally twisted man is a tour de force. She ranges from helpless cripple to crotchety boss to obsequious underling to angry daughter so seamlessly that it’s as if she has multiple personalities constantly jockeying for center stage. Even when the father is raving loudly, your eyes are riveted to her face for her reaction, as though everything you needed to know was there.

Director Tom Reing has done a masterful job in bringing a difficult and demanding play to the stage. “Bedbound” is an emotionally taxing play for both actors and theater-goers, but is ultimately touching, satisfying, and memorable in the best possible way.

“Bedbound,” by Enda Walsh, runs through April 25 at the Playground at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA. For tickets, call 215-454-9776 or order online at the Inis Nua Theatre’s Web site.

April 16, 2010 by Denise Foley

People

Three New Honorees for AOH Joseph E. Montgomery Division 65

Kathy McGee Burns and her "date" Mickey Walsh.

As she received the third annual Joseph E. Montgomery Award from Ancient Order of Hibernians Div. 62 on Sunday—the first woman to be given the award—Kathy McGee Burns joked that the event was her “second date” with another award-winner, Mickey Walsh, former president of the division.

The two had actually met when she was 16 and he was 20 and a lifeguard at the Jersey shore. She explained that he had invited her to his 21st birthday party as his date, though because she had lied about her age, he didn’t know how young she was. They didn’t meet again for several decades when she saw him sitting on a stool in the bar at the Irish Center—a home away from home for McGee Burns, who was the first woman president of the Donegal Association and current president of the Delaware Valley Irish Hall of Fame, just two of the many organizations in which she takes a leadership role.

“I went up to him and asked him if he was Mickey Walsh,” she told the crowd at the Spring Valley Banquet Center in Springfield on Sunday, April 11. “He said, ‘Yep.’ Then I asked him, ‘Do you remember your date at your 21st birthday party. He said, ‘Nope.’”

The man of few words laughed heartily along with the rest of the audience.

The AOH—the Joseph E. Montgomery Division, the only AOH named for a living person—is in its third year of its Fleadh an Earraigh, honoring those who live the AOH motto of friendship, unity and Christian charity.

Also honored this year were James Feerick, a 43-year member of AOH Div. 65. The eldest of six children born to James and Anne Frank of County Mayo, Feerick, a lawyer and graduate of Villanova Law School, is also a musician who played with the All Ireland Orchestra and with local musicians Tommy Moffit and Joe Burke. He has served on the board of the Philadelphia Irish Center, and is a member of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick the Knights of Columbus Trinity Council in Upper Darby, the St. Thomas Moore Alumni Association, and the Mayo Association, for which his sister, Sister James Ann, serves as chaplain.

Harry “Mickey” Walsh, also the son of Irish immigrants, a Navy Reserve veteran, ran the family business, Walsh’s Classic Tavern in University City, until 1996 when the business was sold. He is a former Democratic ward leader in Philadelphia’s 27th Ward and worked as a liaison between the juvenile courts and parents of troubled teens to help keep families together. He was the first president of the Haverford Hawks Youth Ice Hockey Club and has volunteered at the Irish Immigration Center in Upper Darby.

April 16, 2010 by Denise Foley

News

One Week To Go and the Fun Has Already Started

The littlest dancers get some one-on-one coaching. (Click on photo to view slideshow.)

It’s now less than a week before the Philadelphia St. Patrick’s Day Parade and the last fundraiser was truly a “fun” raiser, as Parade Director Michael Bradley called it.

Hundreds paid $25 to get into the event, which featured the popular local group, Blackthorn, a silent auction and a live auction with CBS3 personality Bob Kelly as auctioneer. Some items, like a baseball bat signed by Carlos Ruiz and an on-the-field photo session with the Philly Phanatic , went for hundreds of dollars.

The parade is set to march down the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Sunday, March 14, starting at noon. It will be televised live on the CWPhilly and rebroadcast on CWPhilly and CBS3 on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.

For the second year in a row, the parade organizers turned to fundraising to keep the parade afloat after the city, facing a budget crisis, began billing for services like police, port-a-potties, and clean-up, that the city had covered in previous years.

While the financial situation continues to be serious, the fundraisers have been anything but.

March 8, 2010 by Denise Foley

People

Levittown Parade Grand Marshals Are Irish At Heart

: The Mignoni sisters: Ann, Carol, and Rosemarie.

It’s said the Irish and Italians share two parts of the flag—the green and white—but for the Mignoni family, the connection is much deeper.

That’s why the three Mignoni sisters—Rosemarie, Carol, and Ann—were chosen as grand marshals of the Levittown St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which is scheduled for March 13.

Born to Carmen and Carolyn Mignoni, the sisters were raised in a modest apartment in the back of the family jewelr store on Mill Street in Bristol Borough. Carmen was a jeweler and watchmaker who loved Celtic designs, his wife Carolyn, an astute businesswoman with a heart of gold.

Mignoni Jewelers opened its doors in 1947 and the children were raised to keep those doors open and “support whoever came through them.” Their friends reflected the character of Bristol Borough—they came from many nationalities and walks of life. The Mignonis worked hard, and their business flourished.

The Mignoni children were taught the enduring values of faith, family, and respect. Parishoners of St. Ann Church, the family was deeply devoted to the Catholic faith. The family motto: “Honor to serve and help others.”

Over the years, Carmen developed a strong appreciation of the artistry of Irish goldsmiths. He started producing Irish designs, including Claddagh rings. When he died in 1994, his family members discovered his last effort sitting on his workbench—a St. Brigid of Kildare cross. To his daughters, it was a sign of the family’s love and commitment to the Irish.

For their continued support of the Irish community, particularly the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the Ladies AOH, and the Celtic Heritage Foundation, their philanthropy in support of the arts in Bucks County, and for keeping those doors open for whoever came through in need, we proudly salute our 2010 St. Patrick’s Day Grand Marshals, Carol Mignoni Ferguson, Rosemarie Mignoni Szczucki, and Ann Mignoni Mundy.

The 22nd annual parade kicks off at 10:30 AM at St. Joseph the Worker Church in Levittown on Saturday. For complete details, call 215-547-9332 or visit www.BucksIrishParade.com.

(This story was posted by Denise Foley. It was written by Thersa Gallagher.)

March 6, 2010 by Denise Foley

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