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The Irish Community Comes Together for the Meehan-Guilin Family Benefit

Kathy Meehan-Guilin with Her Father Jimmy Meehan

Kathy Meehan-Guilin with Her Father Jimmy Meehan

 

This past Sunday, close to 500 people gathered at the Irish Center to show their support for Kathy Meehan-Guilin. The daughter of Donegal native Jimmy Meehan, one of the most beloved members of Philadelphia’s Irish Community, Kathy was diagnosed with breast cancer in February of 2014, and it’s been a long road. From April to July, the mother of three children (Jimmy, 18; Moira, 14 and Anna, 13) underwent chemotherapy treatment, in early September she had a mastectomy and she’s about to begin six weeks of radiation. And in the midst of all of this, her husband of 19 years, Dave, was laid off from his job.

Among the Irish, there is a particularly strong tradition of community, and when someone in the extended family is in trouble, people come together.  So when word got out last spring about Kathy’s diagnosis, the Irish in Philadelphia mobilized. Calls were made, a committee was formed and Jim Boyle and Liam Hegarty took on the role of co-chairing a fund-raising effort.

“Tom Boyle called me and said, ‘Jimmy Meehan’s daughter needs help,'” Liam explained. “That was all it took. Thirty people showed up at the first meeting. Historically, you start out with a large group of volunteers, and people fall away. Not with this group. You couldn’t go wrong with this group. Everyone pitched in immediately, everyone took on a job.”

The fundraising initially began by reaching out with a leaflet that members of the group took to local parishes and grocery stores, telling Kathy’s story. Volunteers spent untold hours collecting money and selling raffle tickets.  Vince Gallagher and Marianne MacDonald talked about Kathy’s story on their Sunday Irish radio shows. Leslie Alcock, who is the Director of Community Programs at the Irish Immigration Center of Philadelphia, was appointed the group’s Public Relations person, and set up a Facebook page and sent out newsletters. In June, the planning began for Sunday’s big event—a culmination that brought out everything that is wonderful about a community that knows how to pull together.

The Irish Center donated the space, Paddy Rooney’s Catering in Havertown donated the food, local musicians donated their time and talents, raffle donations poured in from local pubs and restaurants and individuals who donated baskets of goods as well as larger items that included a bicycle, a signed Donegal Jersey and tickets to an Eagles game.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Kathy said. “I’m amazed at how many people showed up. The way these people have been so generous, it’s a source of strength. It’s really lifted my spirits—people just want to help. Strangers, people I don’t even know. I don’t know how to thank everybody. People come up to me and say, ‘You’re Kathy, Jimmy’s daughter, I know your father.’ People have been so good. I feel cocooned, wrapped in so much love.”

Jimmy Meehan understands: “It’s the Irish Community. With this community, you can’t lose. We’ve been a very active and close-knit family for years. It’s how you were raised. You take care of family and neighbors and anybody close to you. If a time arises when someone needs help, we’ll take care of each other.”

And Leslie Alcock understands why so many people want to help the Meehan-Guilin family: “Everyone knows how much Jimmy has done for the community over the years. He always looks out for his friends, he’s always so kind, the first to volunteer and do anything to help out; he’s never just sitting back.You ask him to do something and he always says yes.”

The community isn’t finished helping yet. As Kathy begins her radiation treatment, a “Take Them a Meal” program has been set up. The schedule can be accessed by going to the website:  TakeThemAMeal.com and typing in the name “Meehan-Guilin” and password “4829.”

As Leslie summed it up, ” All the work that went into this, all the time and energy, it warms your heart. There’s so much good in the world.”

For more information, visit the Meehan-Guilin Family Benefit FB page

Some photos from the day:

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News, People

Quizzo Night at the Irish Center

 

"Is Feidir Linn" AKA "Yes We Can," The Winning Quizzo Team

“Is Feidir Linn” AKA “Yes We Can,” The Winning Quizzo Team

 

Think Quizzo is only an American invention? It’s not. The team trivia game played in bars, churches and other venues may be all the rage now, especially here in Philadelphia, but its roots are planted firmly in Ireland.

The history of the game, known as Table Quiz or Pub Quiz in Ireland, harks back to the 1950’s and the introduction of television. Before most families could afford to buy their own TV sets, the pubs became the the place to go not only for eating, drinking and socializing—but also for calling out answers to the popular quiz shows of the day. Pub owners, never ones to miss an opportunity for bringing in more patrons, began offering their own live quiz nights. And thus a tradition was born.

So when the Commodore Barry Center AKA The Irish Center here in Philly was looking for fun and innovative ways to raise money for its fundraising campaign this summer, Marianne MacDonald and Tom Ivory came up with the idea to host a Quizzo night. Years ago, the Center used to host Quizzo games, but the crowd outgrew the ballroom’s capacity and moved to another location. The success of last Friday’s event, however, is poised to herald in a new era of Irish Center Quizzo nights.

“Coming up with the idea was easy,” Tom explained. “They are the go-to quick fundraiser for sports clubs and things like that in Ireland.”

The idea may have been an easy one, but the questions weren’t. Covering everything from history, pop culture, literature, sports, politics and movies, the ratio was split between Irish and American trivia. The most difficult category? Hands down, sports. The ratio was about 70% American sports to 30% Irish sports questions, but they were still brain busters.

But with a full house—there were 18 tables of six players each—the night was a rousing success and raised about $2500 for the Irish Center’s fundraising effort. The Plough and the Stars, one of Philadelphia’s most popular Irish pubs, not only donated $1,000 to the event but also provided six $50 gift certificates to the winning team.  And that winning team was led by Siobhan Lyons of the Immigration Center. The team, named “Is Feidir Linn,” which is Irish for “Yes We Can,” lived up to its moniker. 

“I think one of the hardest rounds was the round about Philadelphia,” Siobhan revealed. “Had it not been for Cathy Moffit, who was only supposed to be on our team as decoration, we would have been destroyed. It was pure fluke that we ended up as the Quizzo Dream Team.”

But there were plenty of prizes to go around—all donated by individuals and local businesses—and many teams were able to win for feats such as having a perfect score of ten out of ten for a single round. That particular accolade went to the third place team, The Withered Roses of Tralee, made up of Kathy Guerin Scriber, Demi Brooks, Vince Gallagher, Carmel Boyce, Mary Beth Phillips and Lori Murphy.

Tom and Marianne had a lot of fun coming up with those formidable questions, and have promised more Quizzo nights in the future.

“Yes,” Tom announced. “We will do it again. Definitely.”

 

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Dance, Music, People

Rambling House Night at the Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival

 

Sean Og Graham, Mickey and Niamh Dunne

Sean Og Graham, Mickey and Niamh Dunne

 

The Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival may have ended last week, but there are still musical riches from the event that need to be shared.

In Ireland, a Rambling House is a long-held tradition, an evening where people gather to share music, songs and stories in an atmosphere based on community and good cheer. The Irish Center here in Philly was the setting for just such an event on the second night of the Festival.

Hosted by Galway native Gabriel Donohue, whom we now claim as one of Philadelphia’s finest musicians, he brought his music and stories to the evening as well as introducing and joining in on the fun. The special guests of the evening were Niamh Dunne and Sean Og Graham, who are part of the super group Beoga, but have been touring recently as a duo, performing songs from Niamh’s solo album “Portraits.” And as an added bonus, Niamh’s father, Mickey Dunne, a talented Uillean pipe and whistle player, was along for the craic. The musical legacy of the Dunne Family is well-known in Ireland and includes the late Pecker Dunne.

Among the wealth of talent present for the evening were singer Briege Murphy who hails from County Armagh, Philadelphia’s Rosaleen McGill, Terry Kane and Ellen Tepper (who play together as the Jameson Sisters) and some outstanding younger musicians from Philadelphia: Uillean piper Keegan Loesel and fiddlers Alex Weir and Haley Richardson. Keegan, Alex and Haley recently returned from Sligo where they competed in the Fleadh Cheoil.  

So, if you were unlucky enough to have missed it, or if you were wise enough to have been present for the unforgettable evening and want to relive the experience, sit back and enjoy some of the videos from the Rambling House.

Music, People

Sean Keane: Honoring the Past and Forging a New Future

Sean Keane Performing at the Philadelphia Ceili Group Festival

 

“I don’t really know much about singing. I don’t know an awful lot about songs. I’ve just been at it all my life.”

While the third part of that statement is undeniably true, anyone who heard Sean Keane sing at the Philadelphia Ceili Group’s 40th Annual Festival, or attended his rarely given singing workshop at the Irish Center this past Saturday, would be quick to argue the first two points.

The Keane Family of Caherlistrane, County Galway, has long been recognized and revered for not only their own musical talents, but for their role in preserving the songs and tunes of Ireland when the old ways were changing, when “the people wanted to shed that era of the darkness…and the music was being thrown out with a lot of the antique furniture and the thatched houses, and it wasn’t acceptable in a lot of the pubs.”

Sean, the youngest of the seven siblings in his generation, became aware at a very young age that he was part of a family steeped in music.

“By the time I was born, and by the time I was old enough to become aware of my surroundings, my grandmother’s house was well established as a place where musicians and singers would have been coming for a long, long time to play songs and tunes.  I grew up in a house of music. When I was maybe six years of age, I became aware of being in a family that had singing going on. I remember it as vividly as if it happened this morning. It was a summer’s day, and I was running through my grandparents’ house and there was an old man—well, he seemed old to me because I was so young—and he was sitting with my grandmother. And she was writing out a song. She collected songs from all sorts of people. A lot of different people would come to visit the house and and she would exchange songs and tunes with them. As a result of it, when she passed away, or even before she died, if we were looking for a song, she had a big old brown leather suitcase and it was just full of handwritten songs. It was a great source of material for us.”

But on that particular summer’s day, Sean’s grandmother, Mary Costellow Keane, was arguing with the man over the words of the song he was dictating to her. It stopped Sean in his tracks, and he listened as his grandmother said, “I’m not writing that down. It’s not right.” And the singer pushed back, “Will you write it down, woman, I’m telling you ’tis right.” But Mary Keane crumpled up the paper she’d been writing on, and threw it into the fire. And Sean thought, “Wow, that’s that.” But what stuck with him were the lines they were arguing about. “I don’t know why those lines would have any kind of influence on a six year old, but it was ‘I had seven links upon my chain, For every link a year, Before I can return again, To the arms of my dear.’ Just those lines, I never forgot them.”

That song was “Erin’s Lovely Home,” and Sean ended up recording it on his first album.

It was right after he became aware of the kind of singing that surrounded him that he entered his first Fleadh Cheoil being held in the nearby town of Tuam. The song he chose was “The May Mountain Dew” and he won. He continued on competing and winning, and it took him to Dublin. And then he was hooked: “Travel was the the one thing that attracted me to the competitions because I’d get to different towns and so on and that was great. The excitement of actually going to a new town—that would give me the boost to to sing and to learn new songs—and to get better and to hone it. I thought if singing a traditional song could bring me to Dublin, I’m going to learn them all.”

He went on to win thirteen consecutive All-Irelands before the draw of being a teenager caught up with him, and though he stopped competing, he never stopped singing, or absorbing the music that enveloped him.

His aunts, Sarah and Rita Keane, “they had something unique going on as well. When they used to sing together, it was in unison—not using harmonies, but singing along in unison. And that was a bit unusual at the time, and I suppose it kind of is unusual because traditional songs are so personal and your ornamentation and the way you would sing it, and the phrasing, is a very personal thing. But they just knew the way each other would sing the song…It set them apart. They generally sang together and that’s why they became Rita and Sarah—you never hear one mentioned without the other. But Mary, their other sister, used to sing with them as well. So there were three of them singing the one song in unison and it sounded like one voice all the time.”

Sean also played with his family’s Ceili Band, Keane’s Ceili Band. He started out playing the flute and whistle during summer holidays, sitting behind the others learning tunes and just playing away. His father sang and played the accordion and drums. Rita played the accordion. Sarah played the fiddle.  One uncle also played the accordion and another played flute, and Mary sang. “They had different roles in the band, but they all sang and they all played. They would have been brought round to any weddings, christenings, funerals—any kind of occasion that was in the area. They were kind of the musicians of the area. They would always play, and there was never any money exchanged hands. It was never about that. It was my grandmother’s motto that you don’t get paid for a God given gift. It’s your gift and you’re meant to share it and you don’t charge for that. Because we’d be at this whether we got paid or not—that was the attitude I was given, and that’s the attitude I’ve kind of maintained.”

At 17, like many of his generation, Sean left Ireland for London, but not for singing. “I went over there working. In Ireland at that time, we all had to emigrate. The way I put it, there weren’t enough stones on the road to kick for us all. I was an engineer, and did a load of other things in my life as well. I’ve always been working with my hands. And I enjoy that as well. I’ve done a bit of everything—engineering, steel fabrication, building houses, digging holes in London, woodworking. I love woodworking and I still have my workshop at home where I do little bits for myself and little bits for friends.”

After a few years, he returned home, but soon after began touring professionally with the London based band, called She Gui, which in English is Fairy Wind. “A fairy wind,” Sean explained, “is on a summer’s day, you see little leaves or bits of particles of dust rising in the air like a little tornado. On a summer’s day in Ireland, you’ll see it in the hay fields, and you’ll see little wisps gathering in one place like a tiny twister. And they call that a fairy wind.” The band toured a lot in Europe, in England, and then in Ireland. But after about two years, most of the band was ready to move on, and Sean later joined up with the band Reel Union along with his sister Dolores, her then-husband John Faulkner, Mairtin O’Connor and Eamonn Curran.

He stopped playing music professionally when he got married. “We had a child, and a new home and a mortgage, and all the rest of it. So I was just out working. It was my wife, Virginia, who encouraged me to sing. She said, ‘You need to record an album and do this because it’s really what you should be doing.’ And I said ‘Well, I will, if you manage me.’ And she was a schoolteacher, and said, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about music and the management.’  And I said, ‘Well, I’ll teach you the little bits I know.’ So we went from there. She was my manager for 22 years. She passed away four years ago.”

“It was a very short time after Virginia passed away and the phone was ringing with managers saying ‘Oh, we’ll look after your work, and oh, we’ll do this and we’ll do that.’ But I didn’t want to do that. So I stopped for a few years.”

The break, however, is over. Sean got a new manager last year, and this past December he recorded a new album called “Never Alone.” It’s a 45 track, 3-pack CD of some of the songs he’s recorded over the years, as well as six new songs.

“I went back at it last year. Johnny B. Broderick wrote a song he wanted me to record, called ‘Paint Me a Picture of Ireland.’ And we did it for The Gathering that was last year, and released it. Johnny was the manager of a special needs center in Ireland, and that’s how I got to know him. I used to go in there and sing songs, and he’d give me a ring and say, ‘Sean, come in and do a few songs’ and I’d do that a few times a year. He’s also a poet and when he wrote ‘Paint Me a Picture of Ireland,’ I knew there was something to this song. And Johnny is now my manager. I asked him, “Johnny, would you be my manager?’ And he said, ‘Manager? I know nothing about managing music.’ And like with Virginia,  I said, ‘Well, I can guide you.’ So, he’s doing it now, and I love working with him.”

“This new CD is like the end of an era, and the beginning of an era. I decided to take a compilation of all the stuff we had up to that time, and then also on it are the new songs. I recorded the Beyonce song ‘Ave Maria’ and Dylan’s ‘Make You Feel My Love.’  They’re not traditional songs, but they’re just songs that I love to sing. I don’t care where they come from—what genre they are or anything else. I don’t like to analyze it too much, but it’s like the soul of the song. If you get into the soul of the song, and present it that way—and that’s where I receive it so I think that’s what people receive when they listen to it. You can have your words and your melodies and everything else, but it’s where it comes from when you’re singing that’s the important thing. It’s as simple as that.

“The title track, ‘Never Alone,’ is a track I got from a guy named Colm Kirwan. He lives down in Nashville now, and he’s the son of Dominic Kirwan who’s a well-known singer in Ireland. Colm is writing songs, but he sang that song, which is a Lady Antebellum song, one night in Nashville at a place we play called McNamara’s. It’s loosely based on the old Irish Blessing, ‘May the road rise up to meet you,’ and I thought, ‘God, there’s another song I want to sing.’

“I have my own recording studio, but now I record with my guitar player, Pat Coyne, and he has a studio called Mountain View Studios in the mountains of Connemara. And we just go back there and and we sit in and we record. When I go home from this tour, I’m recording a Christmas album—or maybe slightly, loosely based on Christmas. I’m hoping to have it out this year.

“So now I’m back at it again with as much enthusiasm as I’ve ever had for music, which is a great thing. I’m glad to have that back. It’s the most important thing. I suppose those few years have left me treating the love for what I do as even more precious than I ever did before. It’s just as my grandmother said, if you have a gift that you’ve been given, you cannot sit around with it—you have to go and use it. I think that applies for everybody, no matter what you do. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m just trying to keep up to the gift that I was given, bring it to wherever it’s going to go and enjoy every minute of it.”

And that is the legacy of the Keane family from Caherlistrane living on.

 

Follow Sean Keane on Facebook

Watch the video of The May Morning Dew

Watch the video of the title track from Sean’s new CD Never Alone

Watch the video of Sean singing Home

Watch the video of Paint Me a Picture of Ireland

 

 

News, People

Meet Maria Walsh, the 2014 International Rose of Tralee

Maria Walsh of Philadelphia, 2014 International Rose of Tralee

Maria Walsh of Philadelphia, 2014 International Rose of Tralee

Here are a few things you probably don’t know about the new International Rose of Tralee, Maria Walsh, the first Rose from Philadelphia:

After emigrating with her family from Boston to Shrule, County Mayo at the age of seven, she grew up dreaming of becoming the Rose of Tralee, though she never thought it would happen, up until the second, while standing on the stage at The Dome in Tralee, she heard announcer Daithi O’Se say the word, “Philadelphia” after an interminably long drum roll. The Irish bookies had her pegged the winner from the start, but even her family didn’t bet on her.

She once appeared in an Irish reality show in which 40 people were vying for position on an Irish football team. “I was second to the last to get kicked off but then I tore my groin muscle and couldn’t play. I had an Oscar worthy moment when I cried on national TV–and I don’t cry,” confesses the 27-year-old who combines delicate Audrey Hepburn good looks with a wicked Irish sense of humor.

Her ease and naturalness in any situation may have played a large part in winning her the Rose of Tralee crown, but it worried her handlers—and her—just a bit. Her language can be, well, salty. “Before I went out on stage they told me, ‘Don’t swear, and talk slower,’” she recalled this week, sitting, crownless (though she volunteered to go get it) in the atrium near her office at the fashion house Anthropologie, where she’s the studio manager, in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. No F-bombs were dropped, to everyone’s relief, including hers.  As she came off the stage, she said teasingly, “‘Did I swear?” and they said no, and I said, ‘grand!’” She laughs.

The Rose isn’t the only honor she’s won that brought her fame. In 2005, she was named “Hostess of the Year” for Ireland’s No Name Club, an organization founded in 1978 for young people 15 and older who want a nonalcoholic alternative to pub culture to meet and socialize. Since the age of 12, Walsh has been part of the Pioneers, a Catholic organization whose members take a pledge not to drink.

She tans. She credits her mother’s Connemara roots. One of four children of Vincent and Noreen Walsh (who, like her daughter, was born in the US but grew up in Ireland), she shares her dark, Black Irish skin with her mother and youngest brother, while their two other siblings inherited red hair and freckles. “They’re the typical white Irish people,” she says laughing.

She once wanted to become a nurse “so that I could help people.”

One of the Rose commitments she’s looking forward to the most is spending a week in Calcutta with the Hope Foundation, an Irish charity that provides shelter, education and medical aid to the city’s poorest children—the homeless. She’ll also be going to Chernobyl with her fellow Roses and escorts to work for a week with abandoned and orphaned children, most of whom have mental and physical disabilities.

No, it’s not just the Miss America Pageant with an Irish accent, and Maria Walsh is no ordinary pageant winner. She’s a funny, confident, gutsy woman who plays Gaelic football, loves banter, doesn’t pass up a chance to do volunteer work (“I still get roped into collecting at the church gate for some charity when I go home,” she says), and, until she fell in love with a woman two years ago, never really thought much about being gay. “I dated boys up right up until that, but this was the first time that I found someone I was willing to work my life around,” she says simply. (She’s still close to her now ex, who lives in Ireland.)

She still doesn’t think much about it—much like her Philly supporters–and probably wouldn’t talk about it except that after her win, she got a phone call from a reporter the Irish Sun newspaper who said she wanted to talk to Walsh about “your sexual orientation.”

She still doesn’t know how the reporter found out, though she’s not particularly secretive about it. “Maybe they found something on social media sites—I don’t know,” she says. She hadn’t discussed it with anyone in the Rose organization because “it just never came up, nor should it. I identify with a lot of things, with Pioneers, with volunteer work. . .what am I supposed to say? ‘Oh, by the way, I’m gay?’ It was not a thing for me. Why should it be?”

The Rose organization didn’t blink either. “They don’t get nearly enough credit for being ahead of their time,” Walsh says. In recent years, the 55-year-old Rose of Tralee Festival has increasingly been called “irrelevant” by social commentators, though, after this year’s event, the critics may backpedal on that one. The Rose organizers gave her the go-ahead to talk to the reporter and, ultimately, she was happy with the article and the subsequent mini-storm of stories that followed.

“My biggest concern was this would become a negative issue for the Rose of Tralee organization or the Philly Rose Center. But there was a very positive response. Basically, what people have been saying is “what a great ambassador for the Rose, fair play to her,’” Walsh says.

Her parents already knew and although her Dad has expressed some trepidation for her, they were more than accepting. “My Dad said he was worried about my future, how this would affect my career, whether I’d be able to get married, how I might be hurt because of how I chose to live. He said, ‘You’re choosing a hard life, Maria,’ and I said, I’m choosing my life.”

She wasn’t worried about their reaction. Maria Walsh is her parents’ daughter. Her mother was her Pioneer role model, and both parents are heavily involved in community work. Her father helped expand the town’s community center at largely his own expense when grants fell through; her mother is the chairperson of the local ladies club (“so I got roped into tea mornings all the time,” Walsh says laughing).

Volunteer work may be in the Walsh genome, but she also credits her upbringing for giving her confidence to strike out on her own path from early on, whether it was eschewing alcohol, moving to the States for work, or falling in love with a woman. “I grew up in a great family atmosphere,” says Walsh. “If I wanted to do something, my parents would never say, no you can’t do that. It would be ‘what time?’ and ‘where?’ and they’d be there. They’ve always supported what’s best for me.”

The sudden death of her cousin Teresa in a car accident several years ago brought profound sadness—she was only 19—but has since become a source of strength. In her cousin’s honor, Walsh had three little ladybugs—what the Irish call ladybirds, and something her cousin loved—tattooed behind her ear. And not long after, with some friends, she went to Eddie’s Tattoo on Fourth Street to have the words, “The trouble is—you think you have time” tattooed on her forearm. It reminds her, she says, to carpe diem, to seize the day.

“It’s because of Teresa,” she says. “It’s often difficult to find the time for everything, for work, friendship, love. You’re always saying, oh, I’ll do it tomorrow. I even say it, even though I have this to remind me. The truth is, you don’t always have tomorrow and that can help make big decisions easier to make. That’s why I entered the Rose of Tralee. It’s why I try to make the most out of every day.”

And to make the most out of the opportunities that come her way. She wasn’t, she admits, thinking that she might become a strong role model for other young women like her when she sat down with a reporter to talk about her sexuality. But it’s what’s happened. “There are a lot of young people out there who are struggling with their identity. I’ve gotten a lot of letters and I just got one recently from a young woman who thanked me for coming out publically because it made it a lot easier for her parents to understand her,” she says.

As she told the RTE’s Ryan Tubridy, host of “The Late Late Show” last week: “If I could help one young person come out and deal with it in a positive way, then my year as the Rose of Tralee will already have been completed.”

But she hopes she’s a role model in other ways too, and that also appears to be happening. Case in point: She was on the plane on the way home from Ireland last Sunday after appearing on the “Late, Late Show,” when a little Irish girl came up to her and asked her if she was the Rose of Tralee. “She said, ‘Can I have a photo with you?’ I said, ‘ yes, give me a couple of seconds, where are you sitting?’ So I got my crown and sash and went to where she was sitting. She was literally shaking with excitement. I gave her my crown and my sash to put on. And I asked her, ‘So, do you want to be the Rose of Tralee when you grow up?’ And she said, ‘Oh yes, now that I’ve met you.’”

Walsh smiles. Mission accomplished: One childhood dream realized, and successfully passed along to someone else’s childhood.

People

A Second Homecoming for the New Rose

Rose of Tralee Maria Walsh--a definite kid magnet.

Rose of Tralee Maria Walsh–a definite kid magnet.

The cheers that rose when the International Rose of Tralee, Maria Walsh, walked in the front door of St. Declan’s Irish-American Pub on Walnut Street in Philadelphia last Saturday were only partly for her. The Mayo-Kerry semi-final Gaelic football match was on three TVs and Mayo had just scored.

“Oh,” said Walsh, a rabid Mayo supporter, as she craned her neck around to see the screen. “Maybe I should just walk in and out the door a few more times so they score.”

Sadly, that wouldn’t have helped. Mayo lost to Kerry which will be facing Donegal in the all-Irelands this year. But that didn’t dim the festivities for long. The crowd had come not just to watch the game but to cheer Walsh, the first Philadelphia Rose of Tralee ever to bring home the international crown.

Children clamored to sit on her lap while she watched the game, wearing the jersey given to her by the Mayo team after she attended a game during Rose week. Everyone wanted their photo taken with her, including a group of tourists from Tyrone who gathered under the tri-color—the Republic’s flag—flapping in the breeze outside the pub, which is owned by Irish immigrant Aidan Travers and American Marty Spellman, whose daughter, Elizabeth was the 2012 Philadelphia Rose.

A large contingent of the Philadelphia Mayo Association was also there—and again, not just to watch the game. That’s because Walsh grew up in Shrule, County Mayo, after being born and raised for the first seven years of her life in Boston. The Mayo Association has adopted her as one of their own, which she referenced when she made her first public speech as the new Rose, standing behind the bar with a mike in her hand.

Here’s what she had to say, which made them love her even more:

“Three years ago I moved to this great city of brotherly love and I didn’t know a soul. And somehow, a day later, I ended up on the Notre Dames [Ladies Gaelic] Football team, because, like all great Irish, they find you as soon as you enter a new city. There’s a GPS tracker I think on every Irish person that leaves the homeland.

“I fell in love with the city and fell in love with the Irish community and kind of fell into the Rose family here and they welcomed me with open arms. Of course, the Mayo Association. . . I believe I became a member but I didn’t know I became a member. Actually I think [member] Attracta O’Malley is down there asking me to pay my membership.

From all the homecomings I’ve had, for anyone watched me on TV, I have a bit of an identity crisis: Born in Boston, raised in Shrule, County Mayo, did a short stint in New York, and then I found my home, my favorite home in Philadelphia. A lot of people are claiming me, but it was a fantastic honor to hear Philadelphia being called Tuesday night last. This is home.”

Walsh had to fly back to Ireland this week to appear on the RTE program, “The Late, Late Show,” and after that, a whirlwind of other activities will take the Rose around the country and throughout the Delaware Valley during her year’s reign. To see her on Irish TV, where it’s expected that she will talk about the interview in the Irish Sun in which she told a reporter she is gay, go to the online streaming site of RTE on Friday September 5 at 4:30 PM.

View our photos of Maria’s homecoming party here.

 

News, People, Photo Essays

Happy Redhead Days!

Courtney Vincent of Upper Dublin.

Courtney Vincent of Upper Dublin.

This weekend in the Dutch city of Breda, redheads from 80 countries will gather for Redhead Days, now an annual congruence of natural redheads that started unintentionally in 2005 when an artist, looking for models for paintings of redheads inspired by the redhead paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Gustav Klimt, put an ad in the local newspaper.

From 150 gingers (he only needed 15), the festival has grown to more than 7,000 redheads of every hue, from strawberry blond to carrot red to copper to auburn. This weekend the international gingers will party, compare hair color, consult with hair and fashion experts, have their photos taken, and enjoy the exhibit called “Red Hot,” photographs of sexy red-haired men shot by British photographer Thomas Knight. (It’s in New York this week. Here’s a preview.)

I had my own redhead festival of sorts over the last six weeks, photographing redheads like Courtney Vincent, above, all over the Delaware Valley. You can see our Ginger Snaps here or below. (There’s text and more photos on our flickr site.)

Why such an interest in a hair color that occurs in just about two percent of the world population? Well, it’s just that. Red is rare. If you’re Irish or Scottish, you may find that hard to believe since there are more redheads in the Celtic population than most others. The statistics are conflicting and confusing, but in general about 12 percent of the Irish and 15 percent of Scots have red hair. By one estimate, as many as 80 percent of people carry the recessive gene for red hair, even if there are no redheads in their families. So that Internet rumor that circulates every few years that redheads are going to become extinct? Unlikely.

Redheads are like the original X-men—mutants. The hair color is caused by a series of mutations of the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene, which acts as a switch between red and yellow pigments and black and brown pigment. (If you’re looking for yours, it’s on chromosome 16.) Because it’s a recessive gene, both parents need to carry it for you to have red hair.

But the trait isn’t limited to the Celts. Two of the earliest known redheads were a 43,000-year-old Neanderthal from Spain and a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal from Italy. There were redheads among the ancient Greeks, and the Romans encountered plenty of redheads when they were conquering southern and western Germany, where they still abound.

While largely a European phenomenon, random redheads are found in the Middle East, Central Asia, and in China. A tribe called the Udmurts, living in the Volga Basin in Russia, are the only non-western Europeans to have a high incidence of red hair (10 percent of the population).

No matter where they think they come from, all redheads share a common ancestry that can be traced back to a single Y-chromosomal haplogroupL R1b. What’s a haplogroup? Glad you asked. Think of it as like a big clan. And if you have red
hair, you’re part of it. Because it’s linked to a Y chromosome, the ancestor you all share is a man. (Possibly those Neanderthals mentioned above, but more recenly a Norwegian: recent studies suggest that Vikings may have been involved in the spread of red.)

There are a few other things you redhead share, besides the pale skin and freckles.

About those freckles. They’re just nature’s way of saying you’re at risk for skin cancer. Even worse, that MC1R gene predisposes you to melanoma, the most lethal of all the skin cancers. Harvard researchers found that along with red hair, the gene may make redheads more susceptible to the damaging effects of ultraviolet rays of the sun, in part by getting in the way of the cancer-protective effects of a tumor-suppressor gene called PTEN.

One thing that may protect you is your pain tolerance. You don’t have much. You may avoid getting a sunburn because studies show that redheads feel pain more acutely than people with other hair colors. You’re especially sensitive to the cold. Scientists believe that the ginger gene causes another gene that determines cold sensitivity to become overactive.

Anecdotal evidence—that’s just unconfirmed reports from the field—suggests that redheads may need more anesthetic when undergoing surgical or dental procedures. In one small study, a researcher gave electric shocks to women of many different hair colors (yes, that’s how they do it) and found that the redheads needed about 20 percent more anesthetic to dull the pain. Redheads also bruise more easily.

Do cold-sensitive redheads nevertheless have fiery tempers? That one’s just myth. So if you’ve been trying to pass off your frequent outbursts as “my redhead coming out,” you are now officially busted.

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Music, People

The Best of All Gigs

Sean Kennedy

Sean Kennedy

Sean Kennedy was a reluctant percussionist.

“I was a piano player. My mom and dad told me I had to play piano when I was young, starting in fourth grade.”

When he was in 8th grade at St. Catherine of Sienna School in Horsham, Archbishop Wood High School sent literature to the school recruiting prospective band members, and inviting them to a meeting.

“If it wasn’t for a persistent nun, I never would have gone to that meeting. She said, ‘you should go to this meeting. Take this flyer home to your parents and let them know.’ I never showed them the letter. The night of the meeting, late spring of 8th grade, the nun called. She said, ‘put your mother or your father on the phone,’ and 15 minutes later I was being driven over to the meeting.”

Which is how Kennedy wound up playing xylophone in the band—not a big stretch for a piano player.

Then, at one early practice, the snare drum line started to do its stuff.

“I had never heard live drums in my life. The moment the battery started banging out 16th notes, I could never forget that sound. I was standing looking from behind the xylophone, and I thought: Those guys are good. That’s when I got excited about being a drummer.”

Fast-forward about 25 years. Sean Kennedy is now a music teacher, instructor, director of the jazz band, and 6th grade band director at Sandy Run Middle School in Upper Dublin. He’s also an accomplished professional jazz musician and arranger, playing drums in the Sean J. Kennedy Quartet, which has opened for Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Kimmel Center. He’s played with the Philly Pops Orchestra, and he’s accompanied numerous other groups, including the Philadelphia Boys Choir and Chorale. He’s recorded four CDs.

One more thing: Sean Kennedy is a quarter-finalist in the second annual music educator Grammy, a prize that offers a $10,000 honorarium for the winner.

“One of my students parents nominated me for it, Kennedy says. “About 7,000 people were nominated.” The Grammy folks contacted him, asked him to fill out online list of questions. He then moved on to the second level.

“The second level was more complicated. There were more questions, and they wanted videos. They wanted uncut videos of me teaching students, and they wanted to see the kids’ interactions. We put video camera in the back of the band room. They also wanted a video of me answering four or five questions. What do I do different from other people. What are my proudest moments, those kinds of things.”

Finally, they wanted video recordings of people talking on Kennedy’s behalf. One who responded was a professional singer, once a piano and flute player in the jazz band.

“She’s going to be a star. She was in West Side Story on a European tour, as Maria.”

Another was Marc Zumoff, Sixers play-by-play announcer. Kennedy taught his son. And it probably won’t hurt that he has connections with players in the Conan O’Brian band, who also submitted videos. “I’m friends with two of those guys.”

After that, another form, this one longer … and now he waits. Finalists are announced in September.

The experience seems to have been humbling, and affirming at the same time. Many teachers go through their entire careers, and might not hear this kind of feedback often.

“The coolest thing was how quickly all of these people responded. It’s really a cool thing. If I go no further in this Grammy process, I consider this gift. Even though people may not otherwise say it at time, it shows me that the job of teaching music is important.”

That Kennedy has wound up in such prestigious company is in large part due to the influence of his own music teachers, including Wood’s band director Gary Zimmaro.

Visit the studio attached to his home, and it’s easy to see that when they infected him with his passion for music, jazz particularly, they did a pretty good job of it.

Instruments and music memorabilia fill the crowded little space. In a place of prominence is five-piece drum set. Every other square inch of the room is cluttered with musical instruments. Cymbals are stacked up in one corner. A set of marimbas—like a xylophone, but a lot bigger—is off to one side of the room, partially covered by a plastic tarp. A shiny chrome snare drum is over on a shelf. Music books, many of them tattered, seem to fill in all the spaces between the instruments.

There’s a big poster of the famous—and infamous—jazz drummer buddy Rich hanging on one wall. Over the door is a picture of Kennedy with the gifted jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson.

Across the ceiling, where some people might have canister lights, Kennedy has lights shaped like drums.

Oh, yeah, those teachers of his got him good. They showed him that it was possible, even desirable, to be two things at once: a dedicated music educator and a professional musician.

“Probably toward the end of my sophomore year, I was really getting into the band. I was always the last one coming out of band practice. Ray Deeley, our drum guy, he played with Sinatra. Ray’s stories of real-life music, it really blew me away. I wanted to learn more about big band, bee-bop, everything.”

Other instrument instructors had the same background. They taught music. They played music. They told good stories about real-life gigs.

Kennedy distinctly recalls when he decided to be both an educator and a professional musician. “I was with the band, outside of the girls gym (at Archbishop Wood). We were getting ready to play at a pep rally. I said to myself, I want to do this, whatever ‘this’ is.”

He went on to earn his BS and MS in percussion at West Chester. He’s been an educator ever since, taking joy in those small “ah-ha” moments, realizing he’s gotten an important point across.

“Most of the kids are receptive to everything. They’re like blank slates. If I come in and say, let’s listen to Bach,’ and then I play the trumpet solo from ‘Penny Lane,’ they say, ‘Hey, that sounds like Bach.’ It’s great that a 12-year-old is putting these things together.

“Teaching music and playing music for me, there was never a distinct separation. Most of my early heroes did both. What a great gig. I was patterning my future after these guys. I figured, hey, they have a car, and they’re feeding their families, and it’s all with music. I’m very fortunate to live in two worlds. You really can’t get to0 much better than that in music-making.”