Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The Banjo Burke Festival 2011

The Banjo Burke Festival is on Columbus Day Weekend, October 7-10, 2011. This event is unique in that it will be held entirely in public houses around East Durham. Sessions with musicians cooperatively making music are a feature of the Catskill Irish Arts Week, too, but the Banjo Burke Festival will be held, even its workshops, ceili sets, and concerts, in the pubs.

The musicians committed to appearing are:

Brian Conway
John Nolan
Aine Meenaghan
John WhelanPauline Conneely
John Walsh
Rose Conway Flanagan
Joy Grimes
Pride of Moyvane Ceili Band (Margie Mulvihill, John Reynolds, Felix Dolan, Jimmy Kelly)
Hearts Content (Tom Dunne, Linda Hickman, Iris Nevins)
Ceol na gCroi Ceili Band(John Nolan, Linda Hickman, Brendan Fahey)
Pat KaneJameson Sisters
Lawson

Concerts on Saturday are from 3:00 to 6:00 PM and 7:00 to 9:30 PM. The workshops, continuous music, sessions, house concerts, ceili sets, and a breakfast are all fit in around those.

More information can be found at http://www.joebanjoburke.org/ . You can register at: Register for Banjo Burke Festival. The website is thorough but if time is running short and you have questions you can call: 607-225-9928

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Irish Short Films

This post is simply a list of short films in the Irish language on YouTube with English subtitles. They vary in quality and style. However, they have multiple uses. They are uniquely entertaining. They mostly show the most common dialogue words used in Irish. They can help Irish language students learn conversational Irish. If you can read English, you don't have to speak Irish to understand the dialogue. Or even Chinese or French, but you'll see what I mean.

Fíorghael (Irish Language Short)

Féileacán (Irish language short)

Fluent dysphasia - Classic irish language short film

Fluent dysphasia -(part 2)Classic irish language short film

yu ming is ainm dom. full version

Ní Féidir! (Short Irish-language Film with English subtitles) 2011

Identity Crisis (Irish short film with English subtitles) 2001

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An Interview On a Documentary on the Irish Catskills

For an expanded discussion by Reverend Harold Good of reconciliation in Ireland: Click here.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

‘Bloody Sunday’ Victims Are Offered Compensation

A Defense Ministry spokesperson in the British government announced on Thursday, September 22, 2011 that relatives of victims of the 1972 Northern Ireland shootings by British troops, that became known as “Bloody Sunday," will be compensated.

Some relatives have already rejected the compensation.

A Ministry of Defense spokesperson said, “We acknowledge the pain felt by these families for nearly 40 years, and that members of the armed forces acted wrongly. For that, the government is deeply sorry. We are in contact with the families’ solicitors and where there is a legal liability to pay compensation, we will do so.”

Fourteen people were killed by members of a British parachute regiment as they marched in Londonderry (also referred to as Derry) on Jan. 30, 1972. Thirteen more were wounded.

Prime Minister of Britain David Cameron had already offered an apology in June of 2010, saying that a thorough second investigation concluded after one of the longest and most costly public inquiries ever in Britain, that the Bloody Sunday shootings were “both unjustified and unjustifiable.”

“Bloody Sunday” was a seminal event in the three decades of gurilla war in Northern Ireland that claimed more than 3,600 lives from both traditions in Ireland and beyond.

Sisters Linda and Kate Nash, whose teenage brother William was among 14 innocent and unarmed men who died, stated they wanted no part of monetary compensation, but suggested the Ministry of Defense could set up bursaries (scholarships) with the money.

Victims have spent decades campaigning for justice. They had branded the original investigation into the massacre a whitewash. Now that investigation has been repudiated by the second investigation and the British government is responding with meaningful compensation.

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For an expanded discussion by Reverend Harold Good of reconciliation in Ireland: Click here.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11 In Ireland: The Tenth Anniversary

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Crowds gathered to pay their respects outside City Hall in Belfast, and at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin.

The City of Belfast in Northern Ireland joined with those New York and around the world by observing 1:46PM, the time it was in Ireland when ten years ago the first passenger jet slammed into north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The Belfast Telegraph reported Isobel Gallagher from New Jersey and her sister Geraldine McGeown from Belfast, at the city hall memorial, recalled the death of their cousin Jean Andrucki.

Isobel related, "She was in the Port Authority building,"Her mother phoned her to tell her to get the heck out. She said she just had to get two older ladies on to the stairwell and then she was going to leave. But it turned out the stairwell was full of smoke. That was the last time her mother talked to her."

Niall O Donnghaile, the Mayor of Belfast said: "We are not strangers to the circumstances where a loved one leaves the house for work and never returns home again. There are so many people in this city and across Ireland who live with that experience every day of their lives. So we share a common bond of hurt, of bewilderment, of loss between the people of New York, and across America, and Belfast."

A recorded message from the Fire Department of New York's Edward Kilduff was broadcast to those assembled. He thanked the people of Belfast and the emergency services in Northern Ireland for their support.

Mary McAleese, the President of the Republic of Ireland, spoke at the ceremony at the RDS Concert Hall in Dublin, and said, "The television pictures are etched on our minds and the tide of grief has never ebbed.

Ireland stood then, as we stand today, shoulder to shoulder with our friends and family in the United States.

We share our remembering as an act of solidarity with all those who were bereaved or injured and with all those who gave their lives or sacrificed their health in order to help, for if terrorism manifested the meticulously planned worst of human nature that day, there were surely so many others who with no more than a heartbeat to decide, displayed a selfless generosity and spontaneous courage of astounding depth."

She ended with a plea. “May love triumph always.”