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JUNE / JULY 2015
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TÁ DES ANSEO
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Yeats’s Sligo The Normandy Landing An Irish Woman in Vietnam This Is How We Fly The Ted Kennedy Senate Institute
AFTER TWO YEARS LIVING IN CHINA COMEDIAN DES BISHOP IS BACK IN THE U.S.
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contents | june / july 2015
Features
14 Concern in Nepal
In the wake of the earthquake that killed 7,000, Concern Worldwide responds. By Kieran McConville
COVER STO26RY
Arts + Culture Comment
p.
Clan Willis
In Nashville, a family and a band get their first TV show.
16 Irish Eye on Hollywood The latest from Tinsel Town. By Tom Deignan
p. 44
18 Hall of Fame Honors
Inez McCormack
Photographs from the Irish America Hall of Fame Inductee Luncheon.
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20 In The Line of Duty
p. 45
Thousands gather to mourn officer Brian Moore. Photos. by Peter Foley
Jimmy’s Hall
An Irish socialist gets his due at the Tribeca Film Festival.
22 Kennedy to Kennedy
The Edward M. Kennedy Institute opens in Boston. By Patricia Harty
26 Des Bishop is Seriously Funny The Irish comedian/social commentator is back in New York after a two-year stay in China. By Adam Farley
p. 46
Foot Tapping
This Is How We Fly combines trad and pop at the Irish Arts Center.
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30 A Champion for G.I.s
p. 48
Irish Dave welcomes WWII veterans returning to the site of the D-Day landing. By Jerri Donohue
Departments
34 Mama Tina
The story of Christina Noble who has changed the lives of countless children in Vietnam. By Sharon Ní Chonchúir
37 Yeats’ Sligo
Touring Sligo through the poetry of W.B. Yeats. By Deborah Schull
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42 Wild Irish Women
The rebel countess of 1916, Constance Gore-Booth. By Rosemary Rogers
49 What Are You Like?
Actor Barry Ward takes our questionnaire and talks about his latest success
52 Roots: Oscar Wilde
Getting to the bottom of Wilde’s Irish heritage. By Peter Garland.
54 All Too Human
Rob Doyle talks about his debut novel, changing Dublin, and leaving Ireland. By Matthew Skwiat
4 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
The late labor leader is remembered at a New York union hall.
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First Word Readers Forum Hibernia Roots Crossword Books Sláinte! Those We Lost Family Album
LAST WORD:
Great Hunger in the North. By Christine Kinealy p. 64 Cover Photo: Courtesy Beck Lee
Enjoy the Waterford Crystal Factory Experience. Book your tour online today. Visit waterfordvisitorcentre.com or phone +353 (0)51 317000
Dublin to Waterford Car - M9 - 1.5hrs drive Bus - 11 daily scheduled departures to Waterford Train - 8 daily departures to Waterford Cork to Waterford Car - N25 - 1.15hrs drive Shannon to Waterford Car - M6 - 2hrs drive
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the first word | By Patricia Harty
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High Notes
ne of the many highlights of our recent Hall of Fame lunch was Notre Dame’s president Rev. John Jenkins’s tribute to Don Keough, the late great Irish American who contributed so much to Ireland and Irish Studies. “Don loved everything Irish,” Jenkins said, “but he also insisted it can’t be all about Ireland, and challenged us to found the Keough School of Global Studies at Notre Dame, to open ourselves to all cultures, all peoples, all religions around the world. “I do think that is a very Irish trait,” Rev. Jenkins continued, “[that the Irish], a people who have gone to all corners of the world, be a people that can sympathize with all peoples, all languages, all cultures.” Many of our stories in this issue give truth to that concept. We bring you a firsthand account from an aid worker in Nepal, where the Irish organization Concern Worldwide is helping in the recovery effort following the devastating earthquake. And we take you to Vietnam where Janet Noble, an Irish woman from Dublin, has transformed the lives of thousands of children. Another heartwarming story takes us to Normandy where “Irish Dave,” a Belfast man, provides a welcome for WWII veterans returning to the site of the D-Day landing. Our cover story too, has a global slant. Des Bishop, the renowned comedian/ social commentator, has just returned from a two-year stay in China. The trip was just the latest in a series of efforts Des has made to measure the human environment, having previously spent time in marginalized communities in Dublin and Belfast. Other stories too speak to the cross-culture connectiveness of the Irish, including a piece on the Willis family whose mix of Irish music, country and gospel has made them the focus of a hot new reality show, while a report on the group “This Is How We Fly” shows an amalgam of musicians, Irish and otherwise, who are producing a great world music sound. But perhaps nowhere does the all-embracing nature of the Irish have a more lasting and life-altering effect than right here on the homefront where teachers, often the unsung heroes of the world, are introducing students to the best of our heritage. This truth was brought home to me on March 27, when the Irish American Heritage & Culture Committee of the Department of Education, City of New York named me Irish Woman of the Year. (I can honestly say that no previous honor has meant as much to me.) What makes this organization special is not just the pride these educators take in their Irish heritage, and the support they give one another, but their outreach into other communities through the students they encounter in their schools. The Committee gives out annual prizes to students for oration and art, and this year’s honorees were on hand at Brooklyn Borough Hall to receive their prizes. Proud parents from every imaginable ethnic group sat in the audience as their sons and daughters, whose names, read aloud, produced a kind of American music – Yazmine Hussein, Zhuo Biao Chai, Victoria Pysher, Raymes Kahalid, Christ Augustin, Alana Todd, and Amina Asif – were called upon to receive their awards. In a stirring moment, Emma Gomez, a student from the Bronx, who earned the top prize in oratory, gave a flawless rendition of a speech President Mary McAleese had given at the dedication of New York’s Irish Famine monument in July 2002. The whole evening was an experience that reached deep into the fabric of American life and the Irish part in it. One that showed us in our best light. And one that those students will carry with them for the rest of their lives. I will too. Mortas Cine.
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Vol. 30 No. 4 •June/ July 2015
IRISH AMERICA Mórtas Cine
Pride In Our Heritage
Founding Publisher: Niall O’Dowd Co-Founder/ Editor-in-Chief: Patricia Harty Vice President of Marketing: Kate Overbeck Art Director: Marian Fairweather Advertising & Events Coordinator & Music Editor: Tara Dougherty Deputy Editor: Adam Farley Copy Editor: John Anderson Contributing Editor Matthew Skwiat Financial Controller: Kevin M. Mangan Editorial Assistants: Julia Brodsky R. Bryan Willits 875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 201, New York NY 10001 TEL: 212-725-2993 FAX: 212-244-3344 Subscriptions: 1-800-582-6642 E-MAIL: submit@irishamerica.com www.irishamerica.com Irish America Magazine ISSN 0884-4240) © by Irish America Inc. Published bi-monthly. Mailing address: P.O. Box 1277, Bellmawr, NJ 08099-5277. Editorial office: 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. Telephone: 212-725-2993. Fax: 212-244-3344 E-mail: submit@irishamerica.com. Subscription rate is $21.95 for one year. Subscription orders: 1-800-5826642. Subscription queries:1-800582-6642, (212) 725-2993, ext. 150. Periodicals postage paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Postmaster please send address changes to Irish America Magazine, P.O. Box 1277, Bellmawr, NJ 08099-5277. IRISH AMERICA IS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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letters | readers forum
St. Patrick’s Diaspora
How Irish Is Hillary?
Megan Smolenyak and Irish America have seemingly made a thorough effort to find an Irish connection for Hillary Clinton. But alas, Jones are Jones, Welsh are Welsh, and Celts encompass a broad category of European peoples. Furthermore, an almost-marriage by Hillary’s father to a part-Irish women does nothing to qualify her as Irish. Lady Clinton is a Brit through and through, so, with reference to Megan’s research article, “What difference at this point does it make?”
Hillary will be our President when Ireland gains its freedom.
Terrance O’Hare, submitted online
Pierre Rochon Cornwall, Ontario
Carroll O’Connor Castle Rock, Colorado
Upcoming Events
Editor’s Note: We honored Hillary for her role in the Irish peace process. We never claimed she was Irish.
As a Pakistani-Canadian, I must say that I value the overall patriotic and nostalgic slant of your magazine. The many articles reminds me, again and again, that distance in this “global” world is really irrelevant and we can always feel proud of our national identities, wherever we are. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is now also a candidate for the American presidency, can not only aim at the highest post in the country but also help in resolving intricate political problems like assisting in navigating the delicate Irish Peace Process. Keep it up. You are performing a great humanitarian service!
Jalaluddin S. Hussain Brossard, Quebec
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Montserrat is called, “The Emerald Isle of the Caribbean,” both for its shape and also for the Irish origins of some of its citizens. During the time of Oliver Cromwell, many Irish were sent to the island as slaves; some later on as indentured servants. The coat of arms of this British Overseas Territory consists of an Irish woman standing, holding onto a cross with her right hand and touching the top of a harp with her left hand. She is wearing a green dress. Another part of the Americas where St Patrick’s Day is a public holiday is Newfoundland in Canada. Those familiar with the hit television series “Republic of Doyle” will have noticed Newfoundland’s popular but unofficial flag – the tricolor with its green, white and pink vertical bands.
TOP: Hillary Clinton speaking at the 2015 Irish America Hall of Fame Awards. ABOVE: With genealogist Megan Smolenyak, who wrote of Clinton’s Welsh ancestry in the April/May issue of Irish America.
TOP: The flag of Montserrat (top) and the unofficial tricolor flag of Newfoundland (above).
The next official McGrath Clan Gathering will be held in Dungarvan, Co Waterford, Ireland, in June 2016. It will run from Thursday 23rd to Sunday 26th in the beautiful coastal town on Ireland’s south coast. There will be Talks, Day Trips, Clan Dinner and some great Irish Traditional Music, in an area rich in McGrath heritage and famed for it’s quality of trad music. Visitors will have the option of taking a fiveday-four-night tour immediately after the Clan Gathering to other areas associated with the history of the McGrath Clan. For details or to be put on the mailing list, visit mcgrathclangathering.com or email danmcgrathmedia@gmail.com
Dan McGrath Dungarvan, Co. Wexford
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The O’Connell Family
As a longtime subscriber to Irish America I truly enjoyed the story on Emmett O’Connell. I know Emmett’s brother Kevin and his family very well from our days in the military and the NYPD. Over the years Kevin would tell many stories about Emmett and his explorations. He also spoke glowingly about the success of his sisters, Greta, Geraldine and Deirdre. I would like to suggest that you consider a future article on Emmett’s parents, his brothers and sisters. The O’Connells emigrated from Ireland and raised their children in the South Bronx section of New York City in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The South Bronx was a very diverse neighborhood, fondly referred to as Fort Apache. The O’Connell story would be a truly impressive Irish story of moving to the U.S. and the return to Ireland. Following is the little I know of four of the five O’Connell children: Emmett O’Connell – businessman, explorer, etc. Kevin O’Connell – a wonderful friend and loyal Irish-American. Kevin was famous in the New York City Police Dept. as a patrolman, detective and educator of new police officers. He was also a U.S. Army officer, Director of Human Resources and Recruitment at Motorola Corp, Austin, Texas, and in the Irish tradition, is a great storyteller. Geraldine O’Connell Cusack – educator, world traveler, and author of Children of the Far Flung (2004) and other books. Deirdre O’Connell (Kelly) – founder and artistic director of the famed Focus Theater in Dublin and teacher of the famous Stanislavsky acting method. There is much more to the story of the O’Connell family than I know or can tell. I truly believe that were it to be told by Irish America magazine it would make for a fascinating read. Bill McCarthy McLean, Virginia
Notre Dame
The writer of Fr. Hesburgh obituary quoted him as wondering who would believe the Pope was right in saying Notre Dame wasn’t Catholic. Just a few years ago the American hierarchy castigated the school for honoring President Obama, and Cardinal George noted. “Notre Dame doesn’t know what it means to be a Catholic university.” The institution is as patently secular as its football program is mediocre. Hillary an Irish heroine, and Notre Dame Catholic? It must be strange to dwell on the East Coast and be oblivious to what transpires in America.
Thomas F. Mahoney, Buffalo Grove, Illinois
TOP: Irish America magazine co-founders, Niall O’Dowd (left) and Patricia Harty (right) presenting Emmett O’Connell with the House of Waterford Crystal Colleen Bowl at the 2015 Irish America Hall of Fame.
Follow the Music to Limerick
Dear Editor, The article “Follow the Music & Your Heart” in Irish America (Feb. / Mar. 2015) recounting a holiday trip to Ireland contained a disturbing comment about Limerick. In the midst of a glowing account of a trip to Ireland, your contributor Liz CunninghhamPurchia quoted the advice of Peter Curtin: “We stopped for a cup of coffee at the Roadside Tavern in Lisdoonvarna where the owner, Peter Curtin, got us sorted. He sent us across the River Shannon on the ferry, avoiding Limerick, saying, “the only thing to see there are four lane highways, and you’ve probably seen enough of those in the States.” We Limerick people have our own antidefamation league and have to insist that your contributor was, to quote Humphrey Bogart, “misinformed.” There is a lot more to see in County Limerick than the new four lane highways, which, incidentally, are part of a countrywide road network. Limerick county has such marvels as the world renowned picturesque villages of Adare, Pallaskenry and Glin; the DeValera museum in Bruree; and some of the most fertile dairy farmland on the planet – the Golden Vale. Our city, Limerick, has a charter older than London’s, is home to the biggest collection of Celtic art and artifacts in the world in the beautiful Hunt Museum, and has a literary and artistic tradition second to none. Limerick City is the spiritual home of Irish rugby and the only place in the world where the All Blacks, the national team of New Zealand, has been held scoreless, by Munster, our local rugby club. In 2014, Limerick was Ireland’s City of Culture and Limerick was recently awarded The Irish Times Theatre Award. We are sorry your contributor and her touring party were warned away from Limerick. They would have been most welcome.
James O’Malley, John Hartnett, Carl Shanahan, and David Brennan Limerick City, Co. Limerick
Visit us online at Irishamerica.com to leave your comments, or write to us:
Send a fax (212-244-3344), e-mail (submit@irishamerica.com) or write to Letters, Irish America Magazine, 875 Avenue of the Americas, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001. Letters should include the writer’s name, address and phone number and may be edited for clarity and length. JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 9
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hibernia | news from ireland World Irish Dance-Off
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Form, function, and hair at the Irish World Dance Championships.
airspray, fake wigs, and oodles of bling were on full display in front of 20,000 spectators for the 45th installment of the Irish World Dance Championships which took place in Montreal at the Palais des Congres in April. It marked the first time the event took place on Canadian soil and proved to be a massive crowd pleasing event that saw more than 5,000 competitors put their feet to work in a dance-off of epic proportions. This was no mere dance hall recital, but an event that saw the best of the best from around the world give it their all as the audience looked on in amazement. The event is commonly referred to as the “Olympics of dance” as top dancers work
as much as 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. The championship has been growing in both popularity and attendance every year since its founding. Dancers, both male and female, compete either individually or as teams and are accompanied by a band with live musicians. The event proves beneficial not only for the dancers, but for the behind the scenes activities which involve finding the right shoes and the trials and tribulations of settling on a wig, some of which go for as much as $250. This year the 17-time world title holders from Illinois, the Trinity Academy of Irish Dance, had hoped to add number 18 to their ever-growing list. Unfortunately, they didn’t quite make it. But dancers Mackenzie Holland and Peter Dziak came in 7th and 8th place respectively – not bad for 5,000 competitors. – M.S. IRISH POST
Ireland’s Action Plan for Jobs Brings Results
n his April 28th Spring Economic Statement speech, Finance Minister Michael Noonan T.D. announced that Ireland currently has the fastest growing economy in Europe. He said that 95,000 new jobs have been created since 2012, with a record 20,000 being created last year. The jobs are being created across a number of sectors including medical research. Ciaran Murray, CEO of ICON (pictured above), announced plans at the end of January to create 200 jobs in a new Global Innovation. Richard Bruton, Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, said ICON, the Dublin-based global provider of outsourced development services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology industries, was “a great example” of what the Action Plan for Jobs is working to achieve. Minister Noonan estimated that by 2017, outward migration will switch to inward migration and that 200,000 new jobs will be created by
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2018 over and above the jobs replacing those lost during the downturn. Noonan continued, “There will be more people working in Ireland by 2020 than ever before.” Despite these sanguine pronouncements, Noonan urged caution, reminding Ireland not to remake the mistakes that left her “on the verge of bankruptcy” five years ago. – J.B.
Denis O’Brien Scholarships For Boston
Irish businessman Denis O’Brien has created a fellowship that will, on an annual basis, offer two Irish students a fully-funded master’s degree in business administration at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, where O’Brien himself earned his M.B.A. in 1982. The Denis O’Brien Fellowship is available to Irish citizens with exceptional academic or career achievements.
Dublin Mural to touchingly brave four-story mural of two men embracing was recently plastered on the side of a Dublin building on George Street. The black and white image is meant to be a “poignant representation of same sex love,” according to its painter, Joe Caslin. His image is a homage to marriage equality, an issue soon to be taken up in a May 22 referendum. The mural is said to be inspired by Frederic William Burton’s “The Meeting on the
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Michael Longley Given Freedom of City Award in Belfast
ichael Longley, poet, educator, and promoter of the arts, received the highest honor that one can receive from the Belfast City Council on March 23, 2015. The Freedom of the City title, much like the Key to the City awards given in American cities, is, according to Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon: “the city’s formal expression of the high regard, esteem, and affection in which our citizens universally hold an individual who has made an outstanding positive contribution to our city and its reputation,” and in Longley’s case: “It is also Belfast’s greatest way of saying thank you to Michael, a citizen of such creativity, compassion, and unassuming grace.” Amongst the distinguished figures who paid tribute to Longley at the ceremony, poets Frank Ormsby and Irish President Michael D. Higgins expressed admiration for Longley’s cultural and literary contributions. Higgins was keen to note that Longley, “so often in the vanguard,” had a less obvious but not insignificant influence in creating the social context for the Belfast Agreement. “Even in the darkest days,” Higgins said, Longley and other artists “kept up an unbroken conversation, a common commitment to the humane and the decent, a common belief in the constructive and salvific power of the imagination as a human good.” Amongst Longley’s manifold works are elegiac poems that confront the memory of the Troubles. Longley, who served on the city’s arts council for many years, also took the opportunity to remind legislators of the importance of funding the arts and stressed that: “Without the beautiful things, our society will die.” – R.B.W.
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Tom Moran Named QUB Chancellor
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NLI to Make 400,000 Parish Records Digitally Available Online
he National Library of Ireland recently announced that it will be digitizing their parish records and providing free online access starting on July 8th. These records are considered the most important resource for researching Irish family history prior to the 1901 Census, and the NLI has referred to the digitization as the greatest ever genealogical project in the library’s history. The records date from the 1740s to the 1880s, cover over 1,000 parishes, and while they have been available on microfilm since the 1970s, this is the first time they will be available for free online. To access these records, one would have had to visit the National Library in Dublin or pay a third-party researcher to do so. Fee Berry, who lives in the UK, expressed excitement at accessing the records to search for her grandmother, as the cost had prevented her from doing so in the past. Clara Doyle of Ireland Reaching Out echoed Berry’s sentiments, calling the website “a great advancement for those researching their Irish family history,” as people all over the world can soon research their Irish ancestors without leaving their homes. – J.B.
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Gay Marriage
Turret Stairs” which was voted Ireland’s favorite painting in a 2012 poll. Caslin’s image is similarly taking Dubliners’ hearts by storm with hundreds of selfies posted across the social media spectrum, support from celebrities and politicians, and with write-ups in The Irish Times and Buzzfeed. The mural has been so successful that Caslin is considering installing a second image of two women embracing, but a location has yet to be chosen. – M.S.
Donegal’s Northern Lights
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, the sun’s eruption of solar flares allowed the Northern Lights to be seen in spectacular form throughout Ireland, like this shot in Sleive League, Co. Donegal. (Noel Keating / YouTube)
homas Moran, chairman of Mutual America and head of Concern Worldwide, U.S., has been named Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast. Moran, a native New Yorker with roots in Cavan and Fermanagh, received an Honorary
Doctorate of Science in Economics from Queen’s in 2006 for his achievements in business and public service. As chancellor, Moran will be both an ambassador and advisor for Queen’s, and will also attend degreeconferring ceremonies.
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hibernia | happenings
Galway’s Druid Theatre Company comes to Lincoln Center in New York this July with DruidShakespeare: The History Plays. Penned by Mark O’Rowe, the production pares down versions of the bard’s four plays about the English monarchy. The plays will be presented as a marathon theatrical experience, or in two consecutive installments by the Druid Ensemble, a “remarkable company,” according to The New York Times.
The Grey Nuns at Quinnipiac A
new exhibit on the Grey Nuns hosted by Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University opened April 1. A private event launching the exhibit took place on March 31 with the Canadian Consul General, Quebec Delegate to New England, and the Irish Consul General of New York all in attendance. The long overdue exhibit shines a light on the untold number of English and French Canadians who pro-
vided charity and support for the thousands of immigrants who fled
A photo from the exhibition.
Ireland during the Famine. Foremost among them were the Sisters of Charity, who
Gallipoli Remembered
were more commonly referred to as the Grey Nuns. Theirs is a story of compassion and resolve during a time of great suffering and one which has been largely overlooked. The exhibition, “Saving the Famine Irish: The Grey Nuns and the Great Hunger,” was a joint collaboration between Christine Kinealy, founding director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute and professor of history, and Jason King, Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow at Moore Institute at Galway University, and the Arnold Bernhard Library. Kinealy said of the exhibit, “The story of the Grey Nuns, and of the other religious orders who helped the dying Irish immigrants, is one of kindness, compassion and true charity” adding “this is a remarkable story that deserves to be better known.” – M.S. The exhibition runs through 3/18/2016
onsul General Barbara Jones laid a traditional Irish green laurel wreath to commemorate the more than 3,000 Irish serving with Allied forces who lost their lives during the WWI Gallipoli campaign. The Anzac Day dawn service, on the centenary of the Allied landing at Gallipoli on April 25, was held at the Vietnam War Memorial on Water Street in lower Manhattan. Anzac Day, a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand, commemorates n April 18 in Kinsale, County Cork, the more than 11,000 Lt. Michael Murphy was honored at a Australian and New commemoration of the Irish Veterans AssociaZealand soldiers who tion’s and a plaque was dedicated to his memory. died in Gallipoli. The Navy SEAL, a Long Island native, was Pictured left to right: Ertan . killed in Afghanistan in 2005 after exposing himYalçin, Consul General of Turkey; self to enemy fire in order to aid his team. His Peta Conn, Consul General of New Zealand; Barbara Jones, actions earned him a posthumous Medal of Honor Consul General of Ireland; and in 2007, among many other accolades, and his Nick Minchin, Consul General of heroism is depicted in the film Lone Survivor, Australia. starring Irish American Mark Wahlberg.
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(Pictured: DruidShakespeare actress Aisling O Sullivan)
Kelly Cares Gala Honors
STUART RAMSON / INVISION FOR KELLY CARES FOUNDATION / AP
he Kelly Cares Foundation's 5th Annual Irish Eyes Gala took place at the JW Marriott Essex House, on Monday, March 16, 2015 in New York. Established in 2008 by Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly and his wife Paqui, the Kelly Cares Foundation has donated over $2 million to support causes locally, nationally and globally.
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Pictured left to right: Recipients of the Spirit of Giving Award, Steven, Conor, and Patti Ann McDonald, Paqui and Brian Kelly; and former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.
Lone Survivor SEAL Honored O
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Irish Veterans Association acknowledges and offers support for any military veteran of Irish heritage and aims to help veterans bond through a shared background. Lt. Murphy’s family traveled to Kinsale, their ancestral homeland, for the ceremony. “We look on it as celebrating Michael’s life of service rather than dwelling on the tragedy of his death,” Dan Murphy, his father, told the Irish Examiner. – J.B.
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A Challenging Response –
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Concern Takes to the Hills of Nepal
By Kieran McConville
oncern Worldwide has been responding to emergencies around the world since it was born amid the chaos of the Biafran war in Nigeria 47 years ago. Floods, famines, wars, and earthquakes all provide different challenges and test the skills and ingenuity of those who respond. The latest disaster, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake here in the south Asian nation of Nepal, will present its own unique set of challenges. Concern’s emergency response team was preparing to deploy within hours of the quake, with team members converging from all over the world – Ireland, Canada, the U.S., the UK, India, and Germany. And straight off it became clear that the biggest obstacles to overcome would be logistical. Our flight from New York brought us to Abu Dhabi and then onward to the Nepali capital, Kathmandu. Or at least to the skies over Kathmandu, where we circled for an hour before redirecting south to Lucknow in India and a long wait for air traffic congestion to clear. It wasn’t to be, and our flight returned to Abu Dhabi, to try again the following day. For us, frustration at a delay in getting to work, while for others onboard, heartbreak at missing the funerals of loved ones who perished in the earthquake. Key to any emergency response are logisticians, or “loggies” as they’re known in this world. These are the men and women who make things happen, organizing everything from in-country communications to accommodation and enormous cargo planes of relief supplies. In the days after this disaster, their job would be frustrated by a lack of capacity at Kathmandu airport, a bottleneck in the supply chain of much-needed aid. Road convoys of pre-positioned supplies began to make their way from the Indian cities of Delhi and Mumbai, with traffic and border delays to overcome. But in the midst of this great logistical web, it’s often easy to lose sight of what is most important – or more to the point, who is most important. Heartbreaking images of people desperately searching through the collapsed rubble of homes and ancient temples in Kathmandu served to remind us of the human cost. Over 7,000 people lost their lives on April 25th and hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless. The response from around the 14 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
world was amazing, and the international searchand-rescue crews who joined local teams in those first few first days did an incredible job. But the scale and complexity of this disaster would soon become really clear. We bump and crash our way up a steep hillside, within view of the snowcapped Himalayas. This is the district of Gorkha, close to the epicenter of the earthquake. Here in the hills it’s strictly four-wheel-drive territory, and eventually even off-road vehicles are no use. Nepal has the lowest road density in southern Asia and nearly 90 percent of the population is rural. The communities here are among the poorest in Nepal, eking out a living by terracing the mountainsides and growing maize, rice, and potatoes. The village of Bakrang gives us a good idea of what has happened here, far from the glare of international publicity. It has literally been flattened. People sift through the piles of timber and brick that were once their modest homes, hoping to salvage whatever they can. “Most of my things are buried under there,” says Chandra Kumari, gesturing to a pile behind her. “I can’t get at them – they’re buried.” Of the 793 houses in this village, 515 have been destroyed. And virtually no house is undamaged. People are finding what shelter they can amid the ruins and under tarpaulins. Many are elderly and frightened. “When the earthquake came… it was shaking us
TOP: Concern Worldwide's Humanitarian Coordinator, Ros O'Sullivan, discusses the Nepal earthquake response plan with logistician Grahan Woodcok. Concern is working with local partners to reach some of the worst affected communities with relief supplies. TOP RIGHT: A man stands in the rubble of what were offices and shops in Gongabu, Kathmandu one week after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake rattled the capital on April 25th. ABOVE RIGHT: Tulasa Aryal, 58, sits on the porch of her earthquake-ravaged home in Bakrang, a village near the epicenter of the earthquake. Roughly an hour’s drive from Gorkha, Bakrang is among the hardest hit villages in the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal on April 25. Out of 793 houses homes in Bakrang, 515 were completely destroyed.
PHOTO BY: CRYSTAL WELLS/CONCERN WORLDWIDE
world news | nepal
PHOTO BY: CRYSTAL WELLS/CONCERN WORLDWIDE
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ABOVE: Kieran McConville standing in front of a collapsed building in Kathmandu. Kieran works in the Communications Unit of Concern Worldwide and travels extensively to document the organization’s emergency response and development work around the world. He is originally from Limerick, Ireland and lives in New York City.
PHOTO BY: CRYSTAL WELLS/CONCERN WORLDWIDE
all around,” Kamala Neupane tells us, tears falling from her eyes as she sits in front of her shattered home. “Everybody was screaming.” Kamala is 54 years old and lives alone. At the other end of the village, Tulasa Aryal takes a dented cooking pot from the makeshift tent that is now her home, and begins to prepare some rice. For now, food is not the priority problem. “How can we stay in that?” she says, pointing to the tent. “The monsoons are coming. We need shelter and we need clothes – then we will need food.” This scene is replicated in hundreds of villages across rural Nepal, and in many cases the situation is much worse, with landslides blocking access to already remote communities. Concern worked here for five years up to 2010, and it is the local partnerships formed during that time that are now key to getting help for the people who need it most. In some of the hardest hit districts emergency team members have embedded with local organizations and are working with them to figure ways of overcoming the obstacles this awe-inspiring terrain presents. Tarpaulins, blankets, hygiene kits, and water purification tablets are among the supplies that will be delivered in the initial response, reach-
ing around 14,000 families. Beyond all of that there will be other needs, and already plans are under way to see how the team can best put the generosity of Concern’s supporters to longer-term use for the people of Nepal’s mountain villages. Throughout this organization’s 47 years, it has formed a reputation for not just responding to emergencies, but for staying on to help communities rebuild, recover, and develop. It’s never straightforward, and in this case it’s logistically very challenging, but it’s also a humanitarian imperative. IA
LEFT: Kamala Neupane, 54, Ayushma Singh, eight, Ayush Singh, five, and Pratap Neupane, 23. Kamala Neupane lived in the home and was in Bakrang when the earthquake hit. Her husband passed away years ago and her children all live outside of Bakrang, so she spent the hours after the earthquake trying to reach her children. her son, Pratap, is student in Kathmandu and came back to Bakrang to help his mother recover what they can from the rubble.
About Concern Worldwide
Concern Worldwide is an international non-governmental organization dedicated to reducing extreme poverty and has nearly 3,000 personnel working in 29 countries around the world in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Caribbean. Concern Worldwide targets the root causes of extreme poverty through programs in health, education, livelihoods and microfinance, HIV and AIDS, and emergency response, directly reaching nearly 7.4 million people in 2014. To support our emergency response in Nepal, visit concernusa.org. JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 15
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hibernia | irish eye on hollywood Irish talent meets American controversy in the upcoming film Icon. Icon is a biopic about American cyclist Lance Armstrong, who won seven consecutive Tour de France races and survived cancer, only to be brought down by revelations that he used performance-enhancing drugs. Ben Foster will portray the cyclist, while Roscommon native
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By Tom Deignan
The good news? Liam Neeson’s next movie is not an action revenge movie. The bad news? It’s not exactly Schindler’s List either. In June, look for the Ballymena native in Ted 2, the sequel to the first comedy starring Irish American Mark Wahlberg as a man-child with a wife and a foul-mouthed teddy bear best friend. Neeson is among the
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Chris O’Dowd
(Bridesmaids, This is 40) will portray Irish journalist David Walsh. It was Walsh’s book Seven Deadly Sins (a reference to Armstrong’s tainted victories) that shed light on Armstrong’s drug use, though not before more than a decade of allegations of shoddy journalism. Dustin Hoffman, Lee Pace, and Jesse Plemons are also slated to star in Icon, which is expected to hit U.S. screens in August. Next year, look for the always-busy O’Dowd to appear in Tim Burton’s next film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
Louth native Evanna Lynch (best known as Luna Lovegood to a generation of Harry Potter movie fans) is the lead actress in an upcoming movie entitled My Name Is Emily. But Irish director Simon Fitzmaurice has to be considered the true star of the movie. Fitzmaurice wrote and is currently directing My Name Is Emily, even though he was diagnosed with ALS a number of years back. The film explores a teenaged love affair that is put to the test when the girl (Lynch) leaves her foster home and sets out to find her father, a writer who has been living in a psychiatric ward.
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TOP: Irish journalist David Walsh, who wrote the book on the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. LEFT: Chris O’Dowd. ABOVE: Liam Neeson, who has been an advocate for Irish carriage drivers, at the New York City horse stables. BELOW: Evanna Lynch (right) with George Webster in My Name Is Emily.
star-studded Ted 2 cast, which also includes Amanda Seyfried and Morgan Freeman. Afterwards, Neeson will lend his vocal talents to The Nut Job 2 in 2016. It appears Neeson will have to put his brains to use in another movie also slated for next year. To be directed by Martin Scorsese, the film is entitled Silence. Though details remain sketchy, the film is based on a novel of the same name from the 1960s. Silence tells the story of a Jesuit missionary in 17th century Japan. The missionary faces persecution and the novel has been praised for raising profound questions about good, evil, and God’s influence on earth. Neeson will also appear in a horror-fantasy entitled A Monster Calls in 2016.
Speaking of fantasy, Ethiopian-born, Limerick-reared actress Ruth Negga (Breakfast on Pluto) will appear in the 2016 film Warcraft, based on the popular video game. Most recently, Negga teamed up with a load of top Irish talent, from director Stephen Bradley to actress Deirdre O’Kane, in Noble, the biopic of Irish activist Christina Noble (see page 34). Others in the Warcraft cast include Paula Patton, Dominic Cooper, and the aforementioned Ben Foster.
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Irish-American comic Colin Quinn is slated to appear in one of the more highly anticipated comedies of the coming summer. Quinn – a Brooklyn native – will star in Trainwreck, which was written by sizzling hot comedian Amy Schumer. Schumer, whose show on Comedy Central is one of the network’s top-rated programs, also stars in Trainwreck, which is based on much of her stand-up material. Rounding out the A-list comedy talent behind the film, Trainwreck will be directed by Judd Apatow (Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin). Trainwreck also features Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live) and Tilda Swinton. Quinn, who was most recently seen in several episodes of HBO’s Girls, can also be seen in a recently posted Internet satirical cop show entitled (you guessed it!) Cop Show.
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Rhys Meyers
With Wolf Hall on PBS closely analyzing the dirty deeds of the British monarchy, it’s easy to forget that Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers did that for a number years on the Showtime series The Tudors. Rhys Meyers has kept plenty busy since that series ended a few years back. The Dublin native has at least three movies slated for release in 2015 including Stonewall, a historical drama about the rise of the gay rights movement in America. The film will explore the seemingly uneventful evening of June 28, 1969, when patrons gathered at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village. A police raid tapped into anger over years of abuse, and an uprising followed. Many date this as the birth of the modern gay rights movement. This film is particularly relevant given the raging debate over gay marriage, which has risen all the way up to the Supreme Court in recent months. Rhys Meyers will also appear in the upcoming movies Byrd and the Bees and The Damascus Cover.
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The Irish Film and Television Awards (held May 24) featured top Hollywood Irish talent – and shined a light on fascinating movies American audiences might have missed. Frank and Patrick’s Day each earned nine IFTA nods while Glassland (starring Wicklow-reared Transformers: Age of Extinction star Jack Reynor) picked up six nominations. Directed by Irishman Lenny Abrahamson, Frank is an offbeat exploration of a rock band, starring Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar nominee Michael Fassbender, who will soon be appearing in big-budget flicks such as Steve Jobs and Assassin’s Creed. TV shows heavy on Irish talent which also earned IFTA nominations included Love/Hate and Vikings (each earning seven nominations) while Charlie, The Fall, and Game of Thrones each earned three nods. In TV acting categories, Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan was nominated for The Fall, while Game of Thrones’s Aidan Gillen earned a nod for Charlie.
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Speaking of Love/Hate, A-list Boston novelist Dennis Lehane (Shutter Island; Gone, Baby Gone; and Mystic River) continues his immersion in the West Coast world of TV and movies with a planned U.S. version of the RTÉ series. The Hollywood Reporter recently noted that the show will be
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set in a “gritty Hawaii that tourists don’t see.” Lehane is helping to develop the American version of Love/Hate for Showtime. Aside from many best-selling novels (most recently World Gone By), Lehane has also written for critically acclaimed TV shows such as The Wire and Boardwalk Empire. He has also written original screenplays such as (most recently) The Drop, starring Tom Hardy and James Gandolfini. The Irish Love/Hate is an intense, often controversial look at the Dublin underworld, and is currently available on Hulu and Netflix. Love/Hate has proven to be a big international hit, with producers importing it to Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Israel, Brazil, Norway, and numerous Latin American countries. The sixth season of Love/Hate is slated for RTÉ broadcast next year. TOP LEFT: The Stonewall Inn in New York’s West Village, as it appeared in 1969. BELOW: Jared Harris, son of Limerick-born Richard Harris. BOTTOM: Writer Dennis Lehane.
Finally, Jared Harris is a sec-
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ond generation Irishman in Hollywood (his father was hellraising Oscar winner Richard) so it makes a certain amount of sense that he would appear in several reboots of famous stories. In May, Harris was in Poltergeist alongside Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie Dewitt. The film was a new spin on the 1982 supernatural classic directed by Steven Spielberg. Next up, in August, look for Harris in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a new take on the 1960s Cold War TV show. The reboot is directed by Sherlock Holmes whiz Guy Ritchie and also stars Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer. Unlike the new Poltergeist, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. film remains set in the 1960s, and follows a team of spies trying to maintain a fragile peace as the superpowers and their allies gather larger and larger piles of nuclear weapons. Jared Harris also took part in a little bit of showbiz history recently, directing one of the final episodes of the acclaimed TV show Mad Men, in which he’d also starred for a number of seasons before his character, Lane Pryce, committed suicide. IA JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 17
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hibernia | hall of fame
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n March 16th, Irish America magazine celebrated the 2015 Irish America Hall of Fame inductees at a luncheon which was held at the The J.W. Marriott Essex House, on Central Park South in New York City. Hillary Rodham Clinton, former Secretary of State, was honored for her work on behalf of the Irish peace process. Robert J. McCann, CEO of UBS Group Americas, was honored for his philanthropic work. Emmett O’Connell, head of Great Western Mining, was honored for a lifetime of commitment to Irish and Irish America relationships, and Pat Quinn, the co-creator of the Ice Bucket Challenge, was honored for the millions he raised for research into ALS. CLOCKWISE: Patricia Harty and Niall O’Dowd present Secretary Clinton with the House of Waterford Crystal Colleen Bowl Hall of Fame Award. Bob McCann, his wife Cindy, and their daughters Madeline and Meredith. Patrick Keough and Rev. John Jenkins. Caitlin and Wendy Harty. Ryan Tubridy, James Morrissey, Jr., Jim Clerkin, Sec. Clinton, and James Morrissey. Elgin Loane, publisher of The Irish Post U.K. Bagpiper Coleen Yoke. Hugh Gordon and Clyde Tuggle of Coca-Cola with Sec. Clinton. Kathleen Staunton and Sec. Clinton.
Photos by Nuala Purcell & Ben Asen 18 IRISH AMERICA
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LEFT TO RIGHT: Top row: The ladies of Guinness raise a glass to the Hall of Fame honorees in celebration of their contributions to the Irish community. 2nd row: Mary Pat Kelly with Minister Heather Humphreys. Kate Overbeck and Brian Senecal. Kate and Bob Devlin, with their grandson Jack, pose with Sec. Clinton. 3rd row: Wayne Reuvers, Brian McGuinness, and James Delaney. Megan Smolenyak and Sec. Clinton. Michael Dowling, Daniel LeSaffre, and Ed Kenney. 4th row: Honoree Emmett O’Connell and his wife Ray with Sec. Clinton. Honoree Pat Quinn escorts Sec. Clinton. 5th row: Oisin O’Connell, Patricia Harty and Sean Connick. Elaine Brennan, Colin Neill, and Dr. Joe Mulvehill.
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Thousands Mourn a Fallen Officer
ABOVE: The family of police officer Brian Moore: left, his mother, Irene, center, his sister Christine, and his father Raymond, right. LEFT: Police officers carry Moore’s coffin from St. James Catholic Church in Seaford, New York
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amily members, friends, neighbors, and thousands of police officers from across the country, gathered at St. James Roman Catholic Church in Seaford, New York, on Friday, May 8, to pay their last respects to NYPD officer Brian Moore, nearly a week after he was shot in the line of duty. Moore, 25, who was part of the anti-crime unit of the 105th Precinct, was on duty in Queen’s Village when he questioned a man he suspected of carrying a weapon. Demetrius Blackwell, 35, opened fire, shooting Moore in the head. Moore died two days later. It was discovered that Blackwell’s weapon had been stolen from a pawn shop in Georgia. Born into a family of police officers, Moore had always wanted to join the NYPD. His father and his uncle were on the force and so were his cousins. A childhood friend told a TV news crew that as a kid “Brian would dress up as a policeman for Halloween.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Moore represented the very best of New York City. “We are all gathered to mourn the loss of a great man – a young man, but a very great man. And we are all heartbroken, as are the people of our city.” Moore, who was only on the force for five years, had already earned several department medals, and made more than 150 arrests. Everyone who spoke during the funeral remembered Moore’s sense of humor and his smile. “Any funeral is difficult but maybe especially a slain police officer’s funeral because you can’t help but be reminded of what a violent society we live in. Will it ever change?” commented photographer Peter Foley who covered the funeral. – PH.
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ABOVE: The scene in front of St. James Catholic Church in Seaford, New York. MIDDLE: A sign commemorating the fallen officer. LEFT: Police officers carry Moore’s coffin from the church. PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER FOLEY
TAKING OFF 5,000 TIMES A DAY. TAKING ON
EVERYTHING ELSE. Congratulations to the 2015 Irish America Hall of Fame Inductees.
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Edward M. Kennedy Institute Opens in Boston
A new institute honoring the life and legacy of Senator Ted Kennedy opened in Boston with a historic ceremony featuring President Obama, Vice President Biden and other dignitaries.
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hilly weather did not deter the hundreds who turned out for the dedication of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate on Monday, March 30, in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Kennedy, who was known as “The Lion of the Senate” for his long tenure (47 years), was warmly remembered in a ceremony that included President and Mrs. Obama, Vice President Biden, and political heavyweights such as Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh. It was a gathering that brought together many of the Kennedy clan including those members who are keeping the legacy of political service alive. Chief among them was the late senator’s last surviving sibling, Jean Kennedy Smith who as ambassador to Ireland (1993-98) used the full measure of her influence to propel the peace process forward. Ted Jr., who bears a close resemblance to his father, and is now a state senator in Connecticut, spoke at the dedication, as did Ted’s son Patrick, a former U.S. Representative for Rhode Island. In a moving moment that brought the crowd to their feet, Patrick thanked his mother Joan Kennedy for her love and support. Caroline Kennedy, the ambassador to Japan, was there with her husband, designer Edwin Schlossberg, who created the interactive software that will enable visitors to the institute – the centerpiece of which is
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a full-scale representation of the Senate Chamber – to learn about the Senate. Present also, were numerous members of the Robert Kennedy family, including Courtney Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former Lieut. Governor of Maryland, and many of the younger generation of Kennedys including Ted’s great-nephew Congressman Joe Kennedy III (D-Mass.) The temperature in Boston, just emerging from one of the worst winters in its history, was freezing and though the morning was bright enough, the tent that housed the opening ceremony, in front of the new institute, offered little defense against the biting wind that blew in from Dorchester Bay. But the warmth of the Kennedy clan was all enveloping. From my seat in the second row, I watched as William Smith (Jean’s son) insisted that Anne Anderson, Ireland’s ambassador to the U.S., take his scarf. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, worried about the female members of the Boston’s Children’s Chorus, who sat facing us in short-skirted uniforms, left her seat to try and procure blankets, as two of her daughters gave up their coats and another volunteered her shawl for the youngsters to cover their knees. Meanwhile, Courtney Kennedy, my pal who got me a last-minute invite, raced about making sure that all her guests had seats. As well as conviviality, the Kennedys are known for their good looks, and it’s evident that the JFK trademark of great hair and winsome smile has passed
PHOTO: BRUCE T. MARTIN
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on to the younger generation, particularily in the case of the Kennedy Townsends. “Now I know why the Kennedys have so much hair,” Trent Lott quipped, glancing their way. “It’s to keep their heads warm.” Much was made of the late senator’s bipartisan spirit. Lott, a Republican, who serves on the institute’s board with the other former Senate leader, Democrat Tom Daschle, talked of Ted’s ability to “cross the aisle,” as did others. Senator McCain, commented, “[Ted] had a real zest for political argument, and the harder you went at it the more he enjoyed it, and the more he laughed about it when next you met him. I miss fighting with him. It’s gotten harder to find people who enjoy a good fight as much as Ted did.” Vice President Biden recalled Ted Kennedy as a mentor who had looked out for him when he was a freshman senator recovering from the devastating accident that killed his wife and daughter. “Forgive me for saying in the city of Tip O’Neill, but I think he was wrong that all politics is local. All politics is personal. And no one, no one in my life understood that better than Ted Kennedy,” he said. Victoria Reggie Kennedy, Ted’s widow, who is the co-founder of the institute, explained that the institute was created to give visitors a deeper understanding of the workings of the Senate. “My husband loved the United States Senate and the incredible difference it could make in people’s lives,” she said. “He thought it was one of the most important institutions in our democracy. And it was his dream to build a place where everyone could be inspired to feel that same sense of service.” Dr. Jean F. MacCormack, the president of the
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: First Lady Michelle Obama, Courtney Kennedy, Peter McLoughlin, Patricia Harty, and President Obama at the Kennedy Institute opening. A recreation of Senator Kennedy’s Capitol Hill office, and a replica of the Senate Chamber. Victoria Kennedy. OPPOSITE PAGE: The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
institute, explained that through the use of technology, “We’re making the history of the U.S. Senate come alive like never before.” (Following the dedication, Vice President Biden presided over a session in the institute’s full-scale Senate chamber recreation that brought together current and former U.S. senators with students from all 50 states.) President Obama, in bringing the dedication to a close said, “No one made the Senate come alive like Ted Kennedy. What better testament to his life than this place he left for a new generation of Americans – a monument not to himself, but to what we, the people, have the power to do together. “Ted understood that the only point of running for office was to get something done – not to posture; not to sit there worrying about the next election or the polls. To take risks.” The president went on to praise the Kennedy family: “May we all remember the times this American family has challenged us to see what we can do, to dream and say why not, to seek a cause that endures and sail against the wind in its pursuit, and live our lives with a heightened sense of purpose.” – Patricia Harty
“My husband loved the United States Senate and the incredible difference it could make in people’s lives.”
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2015 is the year of Irish design.
Engaging the worlds of fashion, architecture, animation and many more, the yearlong program called Irish Design 2015 is a celebration of the beautiful and innovative ideas coming out of Ireland today.
ID2015 aims to foster dialogue and collaboration, curated to not only provide a showcase of exceptional crafts in Ireland, but also to encourage the best environment for growth and innovation. Building on Ireland’s well-established communities of architecture and animation, the program will highlight the everyday effects design has on sustainability, style, and enterprise. From textiles to sculpture, to web design and engineering—the talent in Ireland cannot be overstated. By encouraging investment and competitiveness, ID2015 hopes to expand the future of Irish design by advancing employment opportunities and export potential. Events span from fascinating museum exhibitions to conventions and festivals. In the Making at Dublin Castle kicked things off as among the first exhibitions of the year, an exploration of objects in various stages of manufacturing.
Ireland’s International Creative Expo at the RDS
promises to be one of the best trade events of ID2015 presenting expertly selected workshops and presentations of Ireland’s most vibrant crafters.
Beginning in July, the exhibition Irish Design Here/Now in Dublin will explore the breadth of Irish ingenuity and chart the development of Ireland’s creativity with a focus on Ireland today. ID2015 will nurture the most exciting environments for Irish Design to flourish through inspiration, collaboration, and exposure.
Come discover the genius of Ireland and celebrate a time of true innovation.
For more information visit irishdesign2015.ie or ireland.com TI advertoiral.indd 1
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Des Bishop y l s u o i r e S Is Funny
By Adam Farley
TOP: In or out?: Bishop on the Great Wall of China. Before moving there, Bishop admits he knew nothing other than two cultural stereotypes: the famous photo of the man in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square, and the kung fu movies he used to go see in Times Square. He is happy to have those images busted. RIGHT: Suit up: Bishop in “Under the Influence,” from 2013.
He grew up in Queens, went to high school in Ireland, spent a year in the Gaeltacht, two years in China, and just bought an apartment back in New York. Here is an incomplete list of things he has done stand-up sets or made RTÉ documentaries about: living on minimum wage, alcoholism, his father’s lung cancer, low-income housing, the state of the Irish language, the marginalization of the working class, his diagnosis and treatment for testicular cancer, and, most recently, learning Mandarin in China. Yeah.
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n March, Des Bishop was in New York performing his new show “Made in China,” a spinoff of his Breaking China documentary series which aired in Ireland last year. The show was playing at the Barrow Street Theater, an off-Broadway black-box style venue as cramped as it is quaint, located in the landmarked Greenwich House in the West Village, and known for being bold. So it wasn’t surprising when the lights dimmed for Bishop’s entrance, and a photoshopped image of Mao Zedong giving the audience the middle finger appeared projected on the backdrop. Or when the synth horns of Chinese hip hop began to play over the sound system. Or when Bishop finally emerged, rapping along in Mandarin, and got the audience to shout out the infectious single-word refrain with him. (His energy is contagious. He knows this, and plays it up.) Or even when he nailed the first punch line of the evening, feigning a shocked contentedness that he was able to make a group of white people shout the Chinese word for the male reproductive organ. And the audience ate it up.
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week later, we’re walking down a street around the corner from the theater, and Bishop, though not dressed in the navy suit, white French cuff shirt, and floral tie he wears for the show, is talking with the same energy he does on stage – which is to say fast, manic, and with that specific 718 swagger only a working class white guy from Queens can have. And yes, he still has his accent, which gives a kind
of old-world weariness and knowledge to everything he says. We’re discussing his recent move back to the city. He hasn’t lived in New York permanently since 1990 and he’s joking that the only times he’s been back to his native Flushing for any amount of time have been to take care of his ailing parents. His father died in 2011, just a week after My Father Was Nearly James Bond, the documentary Bishop made on coming to terms with his father’s sudden diagnosis of terminal lung cancer, aired on RTÉ, and Bishop spent much of 2010 in New York. This time, it’s his mother. And he’s trying to find a balance between the show (its first run in the U.S.), settling into Flushing again, finding caretakers, coordinating family time, and everything else that comes with having a family member in failing health. It’s taking a toll on him, and he says as much. “But not for long!” As soon as he says this, he does what he always does when he wants it to be clear, on stage or off: he just made a joke. (The night I saw “Made In China” contained a number of these moments, too.) “I’m only kidding. Only kidding,” he says, putting his hand on his chest and leaning ever so slightly backwards, in earnest. This is what Bishop does best – take the audience (or a profile writer) out of their sense of cultural safety with humor. But it’s also where responses can vary widely from show to show, and city to city. When I asked him about the audience response once we get to a café not far from Washington Square Park, he acknowledged New Yorkers were “just a little bit more polite,” which explains his “only kidding” tick that evening. I almost take offense, and I’m not even from the city in the first place. But he explains. New York is a diverse city, and maybe because of that “there’s an alarm that goes off in people’s heads a little quicker here than other places” when a comic does work that challenges stereotypes about other cultures. “I guess the thing that’s hard to understand for people is I developed the show in China. These are jokes about Chinese people that Chinese people find funny. They’re observations about Chinese people that are not jokes about race. They’re jokes about the things that were happening around me,” he says. “But I know that it’s hard for people to see it as something other than a joke about race. And there’s very few jokes in the show that rely on stereotypes, but a lot of comedy does rely on stereotypes and not all of it is inappropriate.” The success of this work hinges on his ability to navigate the line between confession and astute observations of culture, often at the expense of widely known stereotypes and assumptions about cultural norms. This is a good thing. And he does it well, having honed what Corey Kilgannon, writing in The New York Times, calls his “caustic observaJUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 27
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TOP: Comic duel: Des Bishop and fellow stand-up Tommy Tiernan compete in the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival soccer match in February, 2008. ABOVE: Rebels: Des Bishop with his father Mike at Croke Park after a Cork All-Ireland hurling victory in 2004.
tional wit” over 25 years living in and joking about Ireland. But it’s not without its criticisms. Prior to Breaking China, Bishop made a series called Under the Influence, which took an unforgiving look at the role alcohol plays in Irish cultural identity. The series, which also focused on Bishop’s own early struggles with alcoholism (he has been sober since 1995), generated a small controversy when it aired in Ireland, though Bishop was already in China at the time. (“Which was handy because a lot of people were angry.”) Much of the criticism was leveled at Bishop himself, and came in the form of what he called “passive aggressive xenophobia.” Basically, “people trying to say I’m not Irish and always putting me in this ‘he’s not Irish’ [category].” That form of critique, he says, is easier to dismiss as trolling, because he’s comfortable with his sense of national identity. But he takes to heart the real criticisms of the topic of alcoholism the series stirred up. “When I see people getting angry about that subject matter, I always think, well this is what you want, to a degree. You want people to be angry about it because you are genuinely talking about a thing that’s difficult to hear. Challenging Irish people about how their identity is too linked to booze is difficult, and that’s the challenge in making a series like that. And it stands up,” he says. “I take the genuine criticism and I’ll have a think about it, especially because that’s an issue thing,” Bishop says. “If I want to completely shut myself off from everything people don’t agree with, then that shows that I’m a bit narrow minded, that I’m not willing to learn more.” Still, “When intelligent people dismiss you as nonIrish I always wonder where that’s coming from.”
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ishop is 39 now, and grew up in Flushing at a time when the neighborhood was predominantly Irish and working class. But it was also a time, Bishop says, when “we were sold this idea that we were upper middle class” even though “everybody’s parents were blue collar.” It was a time in New York City when working for the city meant making a living wage, and he had a comfortable childhood. “We all played on our own and we were all fine.
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Outside, unsupervised, our parents called us home,” he says. “I think that it’s healthy. And you navigate your way around relationships and it’s not as involved. You had a bit more say in who you hung out with. “I was raised in the more traditional Irish American way. A little bit of slapping going on,” he says, before clarifying that he thinks the current evolution of parenting is good, even if it is “a bit sanitized.” “But this concept of thinking that evolution only brings positivity is naïve, because of course we’re going to find out that there’s consequences to this way too,” he adds. “But it’s fine, you know, trial and error.” One of the biggest trials came during his freshman year at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens with people he’s asked me to call, simply, “the Italian American kids from Howard Beach who were a little bit connected.” No names. Never names. One of these connected kids’ friends liked Bishop’s girlfriend, and the rest of the connected kids put pressure on him, as they say. “So, I sort of fell afoul of those guys. Which was frightening, especially in 1989 into 1990. That was a high profile time. And there was a real energy around those guys in my school. It’s mostly about the fact that those guys had a lot of—” he pauses. “People sort of looked up to them. That was the neighborhood that it was.” Was he bullied? “Well, back in 1990, it wasn’t like I was being bullied, they would probably say that I was going through some ‘tough shit.’” At the same time this was happening, Bishop was also in trouble a lot for joking around. He thinks it would have been “a relatively normal level for probably a bit hyperactive kid – not that crazy.” (For this, we will take him at his word, because Bishop, performing or not, is an exceptionally self-aware human being and isn’t one to shy away from talking about his past behavior.) He also was starting to have some problems with alcohol, getting in trouble for drinking, and disengaging with school. He wasn’t a terrible student, but he didn’t enjoy it, and didn’t fit in with the other students. That’s the real reason he moved to Ireland in the middle of high school, he says, not alcohol. “So when the idea came up to go to Ireland, which was suggested to me by a cousin, not by my parents, I jumped at it. And I was lucky, because I never felt like I fit into Queens really. I played the role, but I never fit into my neighborhood really. I went to the wrong school… particularly in terms of the vibe. There was a lot of tough guy stuff going on. And so I put on a show, but I was not a tough guy. So I was happy, you know, when all that shit went down, I was happy enough to get out.” Bishop may not have been particularly acquiescent to the Queens tough guy stereotype, but he does still have his Queens confidence, and of course his accent,
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all of which set him apart when he moved to a Wexford boarding school at the beginning of the following school year. “I liked being the unique character – the kid from Queens in a rural boarding school… and it was great because it was just everything you could want as a result – I got interested in school, I had great fun, I found it all really inspiring, [especially] Irish history.” He ended up on the student council, and went to University College Cork, where he studied history and English and became interested in the Irish language. This distinguished him from his contemporaries at UCC, according to Joe Lee, head of the department of modern history while Bishop was there (now director of Glucksman Ireland House at New York University), who remembers his “appreciation of, and love for, the Irish language at a time when it was fashionable for quite a number in his age group, even in Cork, to be dismissive of it.” Learning the language, and attaining fluency in it, would become the subject of his third series for RTÉ, In the Name of the Fada, for which he moved to the Gaeltacht for a year. It was this series which gave him national acclaim and fame, in a traditional sense (You can read Irish America’s first interview with him from 2008 – in Irish – online.) But back to his beginnings. In his third year at UCC, he was friends with a guy who ran a comedy club in Cork (Bishop had been sober for two years and knew the guy from “not drinking,” he says) who would give him and his friends free tickets. They went all the time, and Bishop started competing in what were, essentially, one-liner contests where the audience voted for the winner. One night, says Bishop, “I guess I just started talking for quite a while so [the emcee] was like, ‘That’s it. In two weeks time you’re doing a spot. Do twenty minutes.’” Most Irish comics start out with five to seven minutes. Bishop was in the deep end. But, two weeks later, he did it. “I guess the beginning and the end were good. The middle was rubbish, but I guess it was good enough that it was a good experience.” From there, he fell straight into it. He moved to Dublin that summer, worked to establish himself, and when he began his final year, he already had one foot out the door. “I was on the train most of my final year of college just going back up to Dublin as much as I could.” He finished with a 2.2 – a second class honors degree – and finds it hilarious that UCC recently gave him their Alumnus Award. (He told me in his speech he told the students that college is really about the extracurricular activities, because he knows he was an average student, “but the other stuff made me. Some of those relationships that I made in college still exist today.”) He moved to Dublin immediately after graduation and a couple years later the head of development at RTÉ approached him to do a TV show about working and living on the minimum wage. The show, The Des
Bishop Work Experience, was a reasonable success, and led to one of his most enduring friendships – with a Chinese immigrant who Bishop calls Seamus. They met while working at a Waterford Abrakebabra, and in 2004, Bishop went with him to China for the first time. Since then, he’d been thinking about doing a show in China.
The Many Faces of Des Bishop
“Y
ou go to a place, you adapt, you learn about people, and then you find a way to sort of throw it back at them in a way that makes them laugh, you know? And then you find the bits that are universal.” Bishop is responding to a quote I’ve read him that he gave The New York Times about liking “messing with people’s identity.” “You find the things about China, you find the things about Mount Vernon [a Protestant Belfast estate where he did stand-up workshops for his second series, Joy in the Hood], you find the things about working on minimum wage that aren’t just funny to the people who know what you’re going through. But when you show them, they’re also funny to everybody else, and hopefully informative. That’s kind of the formula.” He really does love it, too. When In the Name of the Fada wrapped, he seriously considered moving to the west of Ireland full-time. But the next thing happened, and he moved on. So when the opportunity came for him to stay in China after Breaking China was done shooting, he jumped at it. He spent almost two years there, went on two TV dating shows (no luck), and now is trying to convince his girlfriend Shauna to move from China to Flushing with him. (“We get on great, but it’s a killer long distance. So it really depends on whether she wants to emigrate.”) “I used to cycle around the first year living in China, finish school, go somewhere on my bike, I’d listen to Chinese hip hop on my headphones, and I just thought to myself like, ‘How did I end up here? How is this my life?’ It was just the freedom to wander around this other city and not know anybody and yet be so comfortable and so content in that scenario,” he says. Really? “Oh yea, so happy. I absolutely loved it. But who knows, there may be a psychiatrist or psychologist reading this article going ‘I’ll tell you what that is. That’s a serious condition that guy has.’” IA
TOP TO BOTTOM: Des Bishop through the years: “Desfunctional: Live at the Roisin Dubh,” in Galway, 2009; “Live at Vicar Street,” 2005; The Des Bishop Work Experience, his first RTÉ series, 2004; In the Name of the Fada, 2008; “My Dad Was Nearly James Bond,” which also became the title of Bishop’s memoir, 2011; “Tongues,” 2008; “Fitting In,” 2006.
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IRISH DAVE
The Yanks Who Liberated Normandy
Belfast native David Ashe retired to Normandy, France, and became a champion for visiting GIs who had liberated his adopted homeland during World War II. By Jerri Donohue
I PHOTOGRAPHS: EDDY BERTELS
n September 2011, Guy Whidden, a World War II veteran from Frederick, Maryland, peeled off his 101st Airborne Division jump jacket in the men’s room of the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville, France. Whidden next shucked a polo shirt, emblazoned with the image of a deployed parachute and the words “502 Normandy Holland,” and handed it to David Ashe. Standing in his undershirt, the elderly vet commanded, “You will earn this in the next week.” Ashe, a retiree from Belfast, spent the next three days helping Whidden locate the graves of comrades and to decorate them with French and American flags. In a ritual often observed by relatives and friends, the two men applied damp sand from Omaha Beach to the lettering on each headstone.
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The episode is typical of Ashe’s relationship with Whidden and other American veterans. They call him “Irish Dave;” he calls them “the boys.” He has hosted several in his home in Normandy, served as “go-fer” during their stays in France, and joined them at military reunions and D-Day re-enactments in the United States. He maintains contact through e-mail and trans-Atlantic phone calls. Their bonds were forged during Ashe’s ongoing project to honor the Yanks who liberated Ravenoville, his adopted village in Normandy. A self-described “blow-in who came to live in France,” the Belfast native chose to retire in Normandy after numerous pleasant vacations there. Reasonable real estate prices drew him to Ravenoville, a village of about 260 residents, and so Ashe built his retirement home there in 2009. Having read Currahee!, the wartime memoir of Donald Burgett who fought at Ravenoville, Ashe knew his adopted home figured among the first liberated towns. Curious, he quizzed his neighbors about that time. “I learned there had been a battle over two days for
PHOTO: DAVID ASHE
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my village, between American paratroopers and the German garrison. By sheer coincidence, the field that I bought on the eastern fringe of the village just happened to be where the fight began on D-Day.” On June 6, 1944, a battle erupted in buildings across the street from Ashe’s current property and in adjacent fields, including the land on which his house now stands. “In the ditch bordering the road, I found parts of a German rifle, grenade, and perhaps most importantly, Garand clip loaders and spent cases – evidence of the fight right outside what today is my front door,” Ashe says. During previous sojourns in France, he had befriended Bob Murphy, a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division who survived the battle for nearby SainteMère-Eglise. Ashe did not question Murphy about his wartime experiences. Little by little, however, he learned more about the ordeal Allied troops suffered during the invasion. He felt a growing respect for Murphy and other former G.I.s he encountered. Ashe believed the men who fought for Ravenoville deserved recognition. Because of the tiny commu-
nity’s significant D-Day history and the absence of any memorial to its liberators, he resolved to offer one on his own property. Ashe then embarked on a 15-month quest to identify the paratroopers who saw combat at Ravenoville or on nearby Marmion farm back in June 1944. This entailed tracking down men from both the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. In the chaotic hours after they jumped into enemy territory, members of both groups stumbled upon one another and then fought the Germans side-by-side. Ashe found their names by poring over George Koskimaki’s D-Day with the Screaming Eagles and other personal accounts. He studied well-researched histories, such as Mark Bando’s 101st Airborne: Screaming Eagles at Normandy and Joseph Balkoski’s Utah Beach. In addition, Ashe consulted researchers, museum curators, online forums, and the National Archives and Records Administration. To date, he has identified 96 of Ravenoville’s liberators. Ashe contacted veterans still living, and relatives of those who had died. Judy Cahoon Egan, whose late father fought at Ravenoville, caught Ashe’s
PHOTOS STARTING AT FAR LEFT: David Ashe and his partner, Céline Schwab Lautour, organize the annual ceremony at the Ravenoville Eternal Heroes Memorial. Ashe, the founder of the monument, believes in peace and reconciliation and flies both the U.S. and German flags. Ashe (left), 90-year-old Robert Noody, and Vincent Speranza (center) entertain the crowd with their Blues Brothers rendition of "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." Ashe wears the baseball cap of a former paratrooper who was unable to attend the June 5, 2014 event. Ashe's memorial to the Americans who liberated his adopted village.
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TOP LEFT: Donald Burgett, one of Ravenoville's liberators, watches the 2014 commemoration events at the Memorial. ABOVE: Former "Screaming Eagle" Robert Noody (left) chats with one-time adversary Kurt Keller, a German veteran.
Dan McBride as a young G.I.
Bob Noody as a young G.I.
enthusiasm and assisted him in the search. Nancy Donovan Gooding, the daughter and niece of World War II veterans, also pitched in. Meanwhile, Ashe designed and set about building the monument. “The memorial is heavily laced – deliberately – with symbolism,” Ashe says. “It faces east, toward Utah Beach, from where the seaborne reinforcements came – the cavalry if you like – to relieve the airborne troopers.” A short plaque recounts, in French and English, the story of Ravenoville’s liberation. Behind it loom three columns listing the paratroopers who liberated the village. One panel acknowledges the men who died there, and Ashe included the names of other liberators who survived that battle only to be killed elsewhere in Europe. He notes that tourists visit the beaches as historically important locations, and they learn about D-Day in museums. But for many soldiers, the invasion was just the beginning of months of combat. “For these guys who lived through D-Day, each day thereafter, until the war’s end . . . was another DDay,” Ashe says. Ashe chose the dimensions of a 1944 American parachute – 28 feet in diameter – for the circular base on which he set the columns in an arc. He repeatedly drove his battered Peugot 106 to Utah and Omaha Beaches to retrieve sand for the foundation and stones to outline the base. He surrounded the columns with pebbles he fetched from the beach below the Normandy American Cemetery. “I built the entire memorial with my own two hands,” he says of the project he calls “a labor of love.” “I dug the foundations, removed the earth a wheelbarrow-load at a time, mixed the concrete, laid the foundations, built the columns, rendered them, built the catwalk decking walkway, shoveled tons of gravel, and planted the memorial conifers.” Ashe says he wanted “individual, living memori-
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als” to the men who didn’t go home, and so he lined 18 conifer trees directly opposite the columns. “The trees face west, towards the memorial and beyond, toward America,” he says. At the foot of each conifer, Ashe placed a plaque indicating the name, rank, unit, and date of death of one of the Americans killed. A nineteenth tree represents the unidentified dead of Ravenoville. “To this day, no one knows exactly how many Americans or Germans died,” Ashe says. By the time Ashe erected the monument, he had located nine living liberators of Ravenoville. Only Donald Burgett could travel to France for Ashe’s dedication of the Ravenoville Eternal Heroes Memorial on June 6, 2012. In the course of his research, however, Ashe has become close to veterans like Robert Noody and Daniel McBride, who fought on D-Day but not at Ravenoville. With Ashe’s encouragement, Noody, McBride, and several others attended the inauguration. Ashe co-organized the event with his partner, Céline Schwab Lautour. They decided to invite Johannes Börner, a German veteran of the Normandy campaign. Börner eventually was captured, and like many Germans, remained a prisoner long after the war ended. He settled in France, married, raised a family, and operated a restaurant. “Peace is a very strong element of the memorial, peace and reconciliation,” Ashe says. “What better way than to introduce a German paratrooper to American paratroopers who had fought one another 68 or 69 years before?” “The boys welcomed him,” he says of the Americans’ reaction. “They all said after the ceremony, ‘a paratrooper is a paratrooper.’” For the dedication, and at annual D-Day observances since then, Ashe developed certain protocols. He always introduces the veterans to the crowd and the vets always place floral wreaths at the monument. Everything is conducted in both French and English, and opera singer Lorraine Rowan sings “The Star
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ABOVE LEFT: Guests admire floral tributes placed at the monument. ABOVE: 101st Airborne Division veteran Daniel McBride traveled from New Mexico to attend the commemoration.
Spangled Banner” and “The Marseillaise.” The 101st Airborne Association sends a representative every year. Last year, 400 people turned out to honor the veterans at the Memorial on June 5. Guests included Brigadier General (U.S.A.R., Ret.) Theodore Shuey, Major General Richard Thomas, and John Beyrle, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, whose late father was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division. In addition to re-enactors wearing World War II-era American uniforms, 25 active duty German paratroopers attended. Ashe permits impromptu additions to the program, such as his and Noody’s Blues Brothers’-style rendition of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” “There’s a lot of informality,” Ashe says. “We do it the Irish way. And it seems to work.” In contrast to official events throughout Normandy, attendees do not have to wait for hours to shake hands with former GIs or to thank them for their role in World War II. The audience easily connects with the Americans. Last year, 89-year-old Vincent Speranza asked to read a four-page poem about his experiences during the Battle of the Bulge. “He took the microphone, stood in the center of the memorial, and I held his cane while he read,” Ashe recalled. “And everybody cried.” After the inaugural ceremony in 2012, Ashe expanded his tribute to include other former soldiers, his friends who had not been involved with the liberation of Ravenoville. “I wanted to honor them while they are still here,” Ashe says. “I hit upon an idea. Why not plant olive trees for each one of these guys, to represent peace and eternity?” On June 5, 2013, many of his friends returned to ring the memorial with olive trees. In some cases, a son or daughter planted the tree in memory of a deceased veteran. Ashe later installed plaques relating each man’s name, D-Day rank and unit.
Ashe plans to erect a bronze statue of an American paratrooper facing the Memorial as though he were reading the names upon it. In 2013, just weeks after the annual ceremony, Ashe received a surprise visit from the family of Corporal Ollie Barrington. They made the pilgrimage to see the tree Ashe planted in honor of Barrington, who survived the fighting for Ravenoville, but was killed in Belgium that December during the Battle of the Bulge. The group proudly showed Ashe photographs of the 23-year-old paratrooper. Ashe instantly realized Barrington’s face was ideal for the bronze statue. With the family’s cooperation, he commissioned a prototype modeled after Barrington, naming it “The Last Full Measure” in a nod to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. In 2014, Ashe gave statuettes with Barrington’s likeness to the deceased paratrooper’s 93-year-old sister and 31 other veterans or their relatives who attended the annual ceremony in Ravenoville. Ashe, who has already spent $10,000 of his own money on the memorial, finds himself engaged in a new battle – one against time. Hoping to raise funds for the life-size statue while veterans are still living to see it, he sells the statuettes for $150 each. “If I had the money, I would build this yesterday for these boys,” he says. He notes that four men died in the year after trees were planted at the memorial in their honor. Ashe ensures that all the vets know how he feels about them, and he telephones Noody and McBride almost every week. “I tell them I love them each time I end any conversation,” Ashe says. “These guys are closer to me than family.” IA Jerri Donohue is a freelance writer in Brecksville, Ohio whose work has appeared in regional, history and religious publications. Her favorite subjects always relate to World War Two.
ABOVE LEFT: Ellen Womer, daughter of Sgt. Jack Womer, kneels beside the olive tree she planted with her father in his honor in 2013. The D-Day veteran died before the 2014 commemoration. Ellen brought her father's photo and ashes to the ceremony. The upturned Garand rifle with fixed bayonet and helmet is a tribute Ashe puts beside the tree of each hero who died in the preceding year. Jack Womer’s ashes were permanently interred elsewhere in Normandy a few days later. ABOVE: Robert Noody, a veteran from Star Lake, New York, kisses the paratrooper statuette he received at the 2014 ceremony in Ravenoville, Normandy.
David Ashe launched a Facebook page for the memorial. For more information or photos, visit: facebook.com/ RAVENOVILLE-44-THEETERNAL-HEROESMEMORIAL/
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movie watch | Noble
The story of Christina Noble, whose memories of her povertyridden childhood in Dublin inspired her to help thousands of children in Vietnam, is now the subject of a major movie. By Sharon Ní Chonchúir
Tina
C
hristina Noble isn’t quite what I expected. I had anticipated someone akin to Mother Teresa dressed in a simple cotton sari, but the woman who greets me in the foyer of Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel is wearing a fluorescent pink fluffy jacket, and her peroxide blonde hair is pulled back off her face into a messy bun. If she doesn’t look like she belongs in one of the grandest buildings on St. Stephen’s Green, it’s because she doesn’t. Noble belongs on the streets of Vietnam where she has worked with street children for the past 25 years. Mama Tina, as she is known to the children, may not be as polished as the people who surround her in the Shelbourne Hotel, but she has a far more interesting story to tell. It’s a story that is told in a new film called Noble. Directed, written and co-produced by Stephen Bradley, this biopic is the brainchild of his wife Deirdre O’Kane, one of Ireland’s best known standup comedians, who stars in the film. O’Kane was struck by Christina’s story many years ago. “I read her books 20-odd years ago and thought to myself that I was definitely going to meet her one day,” she remembers. “Then, after I started my career as a stand-up comic, an email arrived asking if I’d emcee an event for the Christina Noble Foundation. I ended up doing it every year for five years and got to know Christina as a result.” The idea to make a film about Noble wasn’t an immediate one. “Steve had always wanted us to work on a project together but I never had any ideas to suggest,” says Deirdre. “He brought me out for lunch for my 40th birthday and asked me again. I was exasperated at this stage and almost without thinking about it, I said I wanted to make a film about Christina. The idea must have been in my head all along. I just didn’t realize it.” It was the combination of Christina’s story and
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the strength and warmth of her character that intrigued Deirdre. “Her story can be grim and relentless but Christina herself is a fun-loving person,” she says. “She bursts into song anywhere and everywhere. She’s a fighter whose spirit has not been broken.” I see these aspects of Christina’s personality for myself when we meet up in early February. She tells me of growing up in the Dublin tenements of the 1940s. Her mother suffered from ill health and her father spent what little money there was to be had on drink. “He was injured in a boxing match and was left with permanent ringing of the ears. He started to drink as a result,” she says of her father. Her parents were from different backgrounds. “My mother was from the country and was very particular. She’d put my hair in rags to make it curly,” she recalled wistfully. When she was ten, her mother died and Christina and her siblings were sent to different orphanages. She spent four years in an industrial school run by nuns in the west of Ireland, eventually escaping to Dublin, where she slept rough in a hole in the ground she dug for herself in Phoenix Park. There, she was gang raped, resulting in a pregnancy she carried to term. Christina was sent back to the nuns, who forced her to give up her baby. When her story gets too much for her to recount, Christina starts singing instead. As a child, she used to busk to make money for her family. Now she appears to find consolation in singing. “I love singing,” she says. “Everywhere I go, I
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get people to join me in a song.” The young Christina also found solace in her faith. “I used to cry and cry at the thought of Jesus being crucified,” she says. “I loved God and Jesus so much. I still do.” At the age of 18, she went to England and soon got married. She had three children, but her marriage proved to be difficult and unhappy. Misery appeared to be all that life had in store for Christina, but this changed following a strange dream she had in 1971. “In the dream, naked children were running down a dirt road fleeing from a napalm bombing. The ground under the children was cracked and coming apart and the children were reaching to me. One of the girls had a look in her eyes imploring me to take her to safety. Above the children was a white light and the word ‘Vietnam.’” At that time, Christina wouldn’t have been able to find Vietnam on a map but 18 years later, in 1989 after her marriage ended, she decided to visit the country. She had very little money, but her first sight of the street children of Ho Chi Minh City made her realize why she was there. “The children needed me,” she says. “Everything I have done since then, I have done for the children.” The film portrays exactly what Christina has done. It shows us how she set up the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation and how it runs various shelters, medical centers, educational scholarships, and other schemes that have transformed the lives of approximately one million children in Viet-
nam and, since 1997, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, too. The film cuts between Christina’s life in Vietnam, her early life in the tenements and the industrial school, and her life as a teenager and young married woman in England. Deirdre portrays Christina as she embarks on her new life in Vietnam, and it’s a role she clearly loved playing. “It’s so special to me; I may never have another job like it,” she says. “I want everyone to know there are people like Christina out there doing miraculous things. She has achieved amazing things and she shows us that we can, too.” Although she relished the role, the moviemaking process was not easy for Deirdre and her husband. Their first challenge was convincing Christina to give them permission to make the film. “It took us two years to get her to sign over the rights,” says Deirdre. “Christina has had her trust in people shaken a lot, but I knew we were the right people to make the film. I felt it was divined.”
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Christina Noble surrounded by Vietnamese children she has rescued. Irish comedian and actress Deirdre O’Kane, in a scene from the film, shot in Vietnam. Liam Cunningham as Christina’s father in a scene from her childhood in Dublin.
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movie watch | Noble
TOP: O’Kane with her husband Stephen Bradley, who is the director of Noble. ABOVE: Christina Noble with one of the children she rescued.
Getting permission was merely the beginning of the process. Whittling Christina’s eventful life down to a manageable screenplay was the colossal task facing Deirdre’s husband Stephen. “I took a back seat while they got to know each other,” says Deirdre. “They spent a lot of time together and she took him to different places, including Phoenix Park where she had lived in a hole in the ground.” Capturing the essence of Christina’s personality was Deirdre’s challenge. “She’s so multifaceted and there’s too much of her to show in 100 minutes,” laughs Deirdre. “I’d been observing and watching her for years, but I decided it was best to just focus on the actual screenplay. I read it every day for four months and listened to recordings of her voice using my headphones so I could get her accent.” Gathering a cast came after that. Deirdre plays the older Christina, and Sarah Greene, the Corkborn actress best known for her recurring role as Sarah in the television series Vikings, plays her as a young woman. Noble also stars Brendan Boyle (who plays John Bates, the valet in Downton Abbey) as Gerry Shaw, the businessman who helps Christina fund her project, and Liam Cunningham (best known as Ser Davos Seaworth, the former smuggler in Game of Thrones) as Christina’s father. Finally, there was the crucial test of ten weeks filming in Vietnam. “It was chaotic and constantly felt as though the wheels were going to come off the entire film because there is no infrastructure there,” says Deirdre. “People usually film in Thailand
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instead, but we wanted to be true to Christina’s story and we wanted to use kids from her foundation in the film.” Their efforts were ultimately worthwhile. “Vietnam is an incredibly special place and there was good karma for us everywhere,” says Deirdre. “There’s a scene in the film where I sing a song in a bar and afterwards the barman told me Christina used to sing in that same bar 20 years ago. I didn’t know that. We’d just picked the bar at random. That sort of thing kept happening throughout filming – there were so many people who had stories about Christina and what she’d done.” Noble, which opened across the U.S. on May 8 to good reviews, won the Panavision Spirit Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and prizes at Dallas, Nashville, San Diego and Newport Beach. “The story keeps the kettle boiling throughout the ever-engaging 100 minutes, which might be down to the funny scene/angry scene/uplifting scene/touching scene (and repeat) narrative style, or the performances [Stephen Bradley] wrangles out of his three leads,” Gavin Burke wrote in a review for entertainment.ie. Justin Lowe, praised the acting in the Hollywood Reporter, writing, “O’Kane nicely captures Noble’s signature mix of compassion and defiance as a survivor for whom defeat just isn’t an option. The young actors playing the childhood and teenage versions of Noble capably lay the groundwork for O’Kane to build upon. The Vietnamese casting is similarly strong, particularly Nguyen as the suspicious and protective caregiver who lets down her guard just enough to give Noble the fighting chance she needs.” “Our American distributor is Aspiration Films and their name is a good match for our film,” says O’Kane. “You can’t help but have more love for humanity and a bigger and more open heart after you hear Christina’s story. I think her story is also important for those who are down on their luck. Christina was 44 when she changed her life. A lot of people think their road is carved out for them by the time they arrive at that age, but for her, it was only beginning.” From what I saw when I met Christina in Dublin, her story is far from over. She had just returned from New York where she had been given the Albert Schweitzer Leadership for Life Award. And although she was recovering from a recent medical procedure, she was already planning to return to Vietnam as soon as possible. “I can’t sit at home when the children need me,” she says. “I have to go to them.” IA
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Yeats’s Sligo
PHOTO: CHRIS HILL
On the 150th anniversary of W.B. Yeats’s birth we look at some of the places in Sligo that inspired his best-loved poems.
W.B. Yeats statue, Co. Sligo.
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Cattle, Benbulben Mountain, Benbulben, County Sligo
Swear by what the Sages spoke Round the Mareotic Lake That the Witch of Atlas knew, Spoke and set the cocks a-crow. Swear by those horsemen, by those women, Complexion and form prove superhuman, That pale, long visaged company That airs an immortality Completeness of their passions won; Now they ride the wintry dawn Where Ben Bulben sets the scene. Here's the gist of what they mean. Many times man lives and dies Between his two eternities, That of race and that of soul, And ancient Ireland knew it all. Whether man dies in his bed Or the rifle knocks him dead, A brief parting from those dear Is the worst man has to fear. Though grave-diggers' toil is long, Sharp their spades, their muscle strong, They but thrust their buried men Back in the human mind again. You that Mitchel's prayer have heard `Send war in our time, O Lord!' Know that when all words are said And a man is fighting mad, Something drops from eyes long blind He completes his partial mind, 38 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
For an instant stands at ease, Laughs aloud, his heart at peace, Even the wisest man grows tense With some sort of violence Before he can accomplish fate Know his work or choose his mate.
Gyres run on; When that greater dream had gone Calvert and Wilson, Blake and Claude Prepared a rest for the people of God, Palmer's phrase, but after that Confusion fell upon our thought.
Poet and sculptor do the work Nor let the modish painter shirk What his great forefathers did, Bring the soul of man to God, Make him fill the cradles right.
Irish poets learn your trade Sing whatever is well made, Scorn the sort now growing up All out of shape from toe to top, Their unremembering hearts and heads Base-born products of base beds. Sing the peasantry, and then Hard-riding country gentlemen, The holiness of monks, and after Porter-drinkers' randy laughter; Sing the lords and ladies gay That were beaten into the clay Through seven heroic centuries; Cast your mind on other days That we in coming days may be Still the indomitable Irishry.
Measurement began our might: Forms a stark Egyptian thought, Forms that gentler Phidias wrought. Michael Angelo left a proof On the Sistine Chapel roof, Where but half-awakened Adam Can disturb globe-trotting Madam Till her bowels are in heat, Proof that there's a purpose set Before the secret working mind: Profane perfection of mankind. Quattrocento put in paint, On backgrounds for a God or Saint, Gardens where a soul's at ease; Where everything that meets the eye Flowers and grass and cloudless sky Resemble forms that are, or seem When sleepers wake and yet still dream, And when it's vanished still declare, With only bed and bedstead there, That Heavens had opened.
Under bare Ben Bulben's head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid, An ancestor was rector there Long years ago; a church stands near, By the road an ancient Cross. No marble, no conventional phrase, On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
PHOTO BY: HOLGER LEUE 2005
Under Ben Bulben
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PHOTO BY :BRIAN MORRISON 2010
The Hosting of the Sidhe
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
The host is riding from Knocknarea And over the grave of Clooth-na-bare; Caolte tossing his burning hair And Niamh calling Away, come away: Empty your heart of its mortal dream. The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round, Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound, Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam, Our arms are waving, our lips are apart; And if any gaze on our rushing band, We come between him and the deed of his hand, We come between him and the hope of his heart. The host is rushing ’twixt night and day, And where is there hope or deed as fair? Caolte tossing his burning hair, And Niamh calling Away, come away.
The Song of Wandering Aengus I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor I went to blow the fire a-flame, But something rustled on the floor, And someone called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl With apple blossom in her hair Who called me by my name and ran And faded through the brightening air. Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun. ALISON CRUMMY / FAILTE IRELAND
TOP LEFT: Knocknarea, County Sligo. ABOVE: View of the statue “Waiting On Shore” from Coastal Walk, Rosses Point, Co. Sligo. LEFT: Lough Gill, County Sligo.
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“When I first wrote I went here and there for my subjects as my reading led me... but presently I convinced myself... that I should never go for the scenery of a poem to any country but my own, and I think that I shall hold to that conviction to the end.”
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– W.B. Yeats (1908)
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1 BENBULBEN and DRUMCLIFFE CHURCHYARD At his request, Yeats’s body was laid to rest in France and later removed to the churchyard in Drumcliffe, under Ben Bulben mountain, where his great-grandfather had served as rector. St. Columba founded a monastery here in the sixth century. Today, a magnificent 11th century high cross and remnants of a round tower still stand. The epitaph on Yeats’s gravestone derives from the last lines of “Under Ben Bulben.”
3 KNOCKNAREA Dominating the landscape of Sligo town is this monolithic limestone hill. Scholars believe the unexcavated cairn conceals a Neolithic passage grave dating to 3000 B.C.E. In Irish lore, it is the grave of Queen Maeve. Yeats’s poem “Red Hanrahan’s Song of Ireland” describes the impact of the changeable weather on this landscape: The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea, And thrown the thunder on the stones for all that Maeve can say. 40 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
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2 LOUGH GILL and INNISFREE Named for the Irish goddess Gile, this beautiful freshwater lake and the rocky highland of Sleuth Wood that dips into it are the backdrop for Yeats’s poem “The Stolen Child.” As a teenager, Yeats had wished to imitate Thoreau by living on Innisfree. Later, while living in London, he longed for the seclusion of a pastoral setting, and he credited the sound of water from a fountain in a shop window as the inspiration for “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” whose subject represented for him a life of simplicity surrounded by beauty.
4 BALLYSADARE Yeats often stayed at Avena House, his cousins’ home in Ballysadare. While there, he heard an old peasant woman singing a song; he would later reconstruct the song from three lines “imperfectly remembered.” The result was the well-loved poem of unrequited love “Down by the Salley Gardens.” “Weeping salley” was another name for weeping willows, which grew in thickets, or “salley gardens” – a favorite meeting point for lovers. In 1909 the poem was set famously to the Irish love song “The Moorlough Shore” by composer Herbert Hughes.
5 ROSSES POINT Yeats and his brother Jack spent many happy summer holidays with their cousins, the Middletons, in this village, whose name also refers to the surrounding peninsula. Now in ruins, their home, Elsinor Lodge, was built by the smuggler Black Jack, whose ghost, the family claimed, would tap on the window panes at night. Yeats’s grandfather Pollexfen owned a shipping company there, and the seas, fishermen, and water lore were part of every visit. Yeats claimed that his poem “The Meditation of the Old Fisherman” was based on a conversation he had with a Sligo fisherman. 6 SLIGO TOWN In Sligo Town is the great black and white ancestral mansion overlooking the quays to which Yeats’s family moved soon after his birth. On the Douglas Hyde Bridge, the Yeats Society's headquarters house the Yeats International Summer School, the Hyde Bridge Gallery (including a photographic exhibition on the Yeats family and Sligo), and Lily's and Lolly's Cafe. Just over the bridge, outside the Ulster Bank on Stephen Street, is artist Rowan Gillespie’s bronze statue of Yeats, engraved with excerpts of his most famous works.
By Deborah J. Schull, CEO and founder of Cultural RoadMapp, hands-free audio tours for motorists, currently in development. Research by Meg Maher. For more information: deborah@culturalroadmapp.com culturalroadmapp.com
N O W AVA I L A B L E F O R P U R C H A S E : Fa min e Fo lios—fo u r e s s ays by distinguished scholars & ar t historians Luke Gibbons | Christine Kinealy Catherine Marshall I Niamh O’Sullivan
F O R M U S E U M I N F O R M AT I O N , P L E A S E V I S I T W W W. I G H M . O R G 3 01 1 Whitn ey Ave n u e I H a m d e n , C o n n e c ticut Untitled-1 1
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wild irish women |
Constance Gore-Booth
The Rebel Countess Rosemary Rodgers, continuing her series on Irish women of note, profiles Constance Georgine Gore-Booth, the social agitator and revolutionary who took part in the Easter Rising of 1916.
BELOW: Constance is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. Éamon de Valera, pictured here, gave the oration. Thousands lined the streets of Dublin for her funeral procession.
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evolutionaries are, almost by definition, romantic – what else could explain the fact that the iconic image of Che Guevara (whose Grandma Lynch, incidentally, was from Galway’s Lynch tribe) is still ubiquitous 50 years after his death? Countess Markievicz, the fierce and courageous Irish revolutionary at the heart of the 1916 Easter Rising, cultivated her romantic image by fusing her flair for theatrics with her great heart and earned forever a place in Ireland’s history and imagination. Constance Georgine Gore-Booth was born into County Sligo aristocracy, married into Polish nobility (hence the “Countess”), and as a young girl in Lissadell, her family’s estate, she was immortalized in poetry by her Sligo neighbor, W.B. Yeats. He admired her beauty, “lonely wildness” and likened her to a gazelle. Indeed she was always in mad motion, a comet whose life followed an astounding trajectory: in 1887, she was presented before Queen Victoria as “the new Irish beauty” but, within 29 years, she was sitting in Kilmainham Jail, under a death sentence for participating “in an armed rebellion against His Majesty the King.” At the turn of the century Count and Countess Markievicz were at the center of Dublin’s artistic set and fixtures in society gatherings at Dublin Castle. Before they even arrived in Ireland, the publisher A.E. Russell enthused, “The Gore-Booth girl who
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married the Polish Count with the un-spellable name…will help create an art atmosphere.” He was right. The Countess was a talented landscape artist and the Count, though penniless, was a handsome writer and one of the few men around who was taller than his very tall wife. He wrote and staged plays in which she starred, and the artsy-but-elegant couple settled into a Georgian mansion with their daughter Maeve and the Count’s son by his late wife. In 1906, the Countess took a solitary painting retreat in a cabin in the countryside. It was there that she had what could only be called an epiphany. She discovered some Irish revolutionary literature left by a former tenant, the poet Padraic Colum. Instead of painting, the Countess read and kept reading with increasing passion. To borrow again from Yeats, she had “changed, changed utterly” and returned to Dublin a rebel dedicated to Ireland’s freedom. She joined Sinn Féin and founded Fianna Éireann, a youth movement. The Countess, who had an amazing talent for reinventing herself, turned social agitator, joining forces with union leader “Big Jim” Larkin and James Connolly in The Lockout of 1913, the labor strike which led to the creation of the Irish Citizen Army. She, so often accused of haughtiness, ran soup kitchens and personally delivered food and medicine to the strikers’ families and other starving Dubliners who she saw as the “dispossessed people of the old Gaelic race.” It was her relationship with James Connolly, the scrappy and brilliant socialist from the slums, that proved the most significant of her life. He was her mentor and Madame, as she was now known, was his protector, providing him with a home (and a bodyguard) while he stayed in Dublin. When World War I broke out, both were active in the Irish Neutrality League – not only were Irishmen volunteering to fight for the Empire that had enslaved them but there was danger that the British government would, at any time, impose conscription. It also meant that the longdelayed Home Rule for Ireland bill would be put on hold once again. During a rally at Liberty Hall Dublin, Connolly denounced the war as the work of “a small clique of rulers and armament workers.” He took one side of a tremendous banner, “We Serve Neither King Nor Kaiser But Ireland,” the Countess took the other – they unfurled it and a photograph
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Dublin, 1922 – Constance and her “fixie.” She earned the nickname “Velo” (“cyclist” in French) as it was her preferred means of transportation.
and Maeve was off in Sligo to live with her grandparents at Lissadell. The Countess always remained close with her husband, less so with her daughter. Maeve spent her childhood in Ireland but had the “misfortune” to be at an English boarding school in 1916 where she earned notoriety as “the Rebel’s Daughter.” In 1919, Madame was sentenced again, this time for sedition; while in Britain’s Holloway Prison, she ran for a seat in Parliament. The Irishwoman with the Polish name won and became the first woman ever elected to the was taken that went around the world. British Parliament. In accordance with “In Memory of Eva GoreIn 1916, Connolly, commandant-genSinn Féin, she refused to take an oath of Booth and Con Markievicz” eral of the Easter Rising, co-signer and allegiance to the King and when the co-architect of the Proclamation of the other Irish M.P.s voted to form the Dáil The light of evening, Lissadell, Irish Republic, Poblacht Na hÉireann, apÉireann she cast her vote as fé ghlas ag Great windows open to the south, pointed the Countess as Lieutenant and Gallaibh (“imprisoned abroad”). Two girls in silk kimonos, both second-in-command of the rebel position Released in 1919, she became the Beautiful, one a gazelle. at St. Stephen’s Green. On the morning of Minister of Labor of the first Dáil ÉireBut a raving autumn shears Easter Monday, Madame marched through ann, the only woman in the world (savBlossom from the summer’s wreath; The older is condemned to death, gas-lit Dublin streets at the head of a coling another in USSR government) who Pardoned, drags out lonely years umn of the Citizen Army. She was wearing sat in a government cabinet. In 1922, Conspiring among the ignorant. her dark green uniform, a slouch hat with she joined forces with Eamon de Valera I know not what the younger dreams – a pin of the Red Hand badge of Labour in opposing Michael Collins’s AngloSome vague Utopia – and she seems, and riding breeches covered with a long Irish Treaty (all three were veterans of When withered old and skeleton-gaunt, dress. She carried a rifle and the Mauser the 1916 rising) and supported the An image of such politics. automatic she had dubbed “Peter the Republican cause in the Irish Civil War, Many a time I think to seek Great.” taking up arms against the Free State One or the other out and speak During the fighting, word spread of her Government. Of that old Georgian mansion, mix fearlessness (and recklessness). When it The fierce progressive had, sadly, bePictures of the mind, recall That table and the talk of youth, was all over and the rebels had surrencome isolated from the other feminists Two girls in silk kimonos, both dered, she wanted to continue the fight but of her generation since they concenBeautiful, one a gazelle. reluctantly followed orders to cease firing. trated on suffrage and pacifism while She turned her gun over to the arresting her focus was revolution and warfare. Dear shadows, now you know it all, officer who, in a typical twist of inbred Madame Markievicz may have backed All the folly of a fight Irish politics, just happened to be one of the wrong man in de Valera. The Free With a common wrong or right. her cousins. At her court-martial, Madame State government gave women the vote The innocent and the beautiful announced, “I did what was right and in 1922, while de Valera – in office, in Have no enemy but time; stand by it,” and was sentenced to death by one way or another, from 1927 to Arise and bid me strike a match firing squad. When her sentence was re1973 – engendered a culture that was And strike another till time catch; Should the conflagration climb, duced (“because of her sex”) to penal Catholic Church-centric, reactionary, Run till all the sages know. servitude for life she was both insulted and and oppressive toward women and their We the great gazebo built, infuriated, huffing, “I do wish your lot had rights. They convicted us of guilt; the decency to shoot me.” It was during Before her death in 1927, she was Bid me strike a match and blow. the Rising, in the heat of battle, that the once more imprisoned and elected to — W.B. Yeats (1933) Countess had yet another epiphany. Seeing office. She gave away all her possesthe faith of the rebels, hearing the zen sions to the poor of Dublin and died droning of the rosary, she decided to conpenniless in charity ward, possibly vert to Catholicism, which she did soon after being released in the from tuberculosis. Her husband (who had from 1913 lived in General Amnesty of 1917. Ukraine, but the two corresponded always) arrived for a deathbed And where were her husband and daughter during all of this? The visit that Constance described as the happiest day of her life. She Count had moved to the Balkans to work as a war correspondent was 59 years old. IA JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 43
The Willis Family
art scene | music
The Willis Clan have carved out quite the reputation for their musical skills. A film and a documentary honor two Irish heroes. A Scandinavian & Irish group make music in New York.
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here is a moment during a Willis Clan performance when the stage lights seem to go away and you’re swept into that ancient time and place where Irish music and dance were born as rituals that could bind a community together, banish fear and lift sorrow by unleashing a spirit that resisted all domination. Certainly those original sessions were family affairs and perhaps that is why the 12 Willis children, eight girls and four boys ranging in age from four to 26, create a kind of elemental frisson. But perhaps it’s also because this high-energy “make a joyful noise” performance comes from a place of tragedy. In 1994, Toby and Brenda Willis were a young married couple with two toddlers and another child on the way, when the family was struck with unspeakable horror. The van carrying Toby’s parents and six of his brothers and sisters hit a metal object on the highway and burst into flames. First responders were able to save the parents, but all six children died. Only Toby, his sister Amy, and brother Dan who had not made the trip remained. An investigation showed that the drunk driver whose reckless driving was responsible for the accident had bribed an official to acquire a license he was not qualified to have. The ensuing scandal sent an Illinois governor to jail.
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But Scott Willis, Toby’s father, is a minister, and he and his wife Janet found in their faith a sustaining strength that astounded and inspired the wider community of Chicago. Brenda and Toby found an unexpected way of coping with the unimaginable pain when they attended an early performance of Riverdance and found solace in its music and dance. Brenda Willis told me this story when I stopped in to see the family on their mountaintop in Tennessee about 20 miles from Nashville. I arrived just in time to watch the last episode of the reality show about the family which premiered May 5th on GAC (Great American Country) and will be shown every Tuesday for the next 13 weeks. My cousin Tom McGuire had insisted that I visit the family and write about them for Irish America. Like him, the Willises are South Siders. There was a further bond – his girlfriend’s brother Jim Duffy had coached Toby Willis to an Illinois State Championship in wrestling in 1988. It was a life-changing event for Toby. Northwestern University offered him a scholarship where he went on to compete as a wrestler, but he also mastered computers. He would go on to provide the technical support for the family’s performances. “We both wanted a big family, and I thought our
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boys would be wrestlers,” Brenda told me. What about the girls? “Somehow, the combination of the physical and spiritual we saw in Riverdance answered the need we had for all our children to reach beyond themselves. It was something we could do as a family.” The family’s most immediate Irish roots are in Mayo but they are an American amalgam (see Willisclan.com), and that is reflected in their music, which combines traditional Irish with country, pop, sacred music, and even barbershop. The children mastered the bodhran, fiddle, uilleann pipes, accordion, tin whistle, and guitar, learning from great Irish musicians: Joanie Madden, Liz Carroll, Paddy Homan, Cathy Jordan, and Moya Brennan. And dancing, always dancing. The Willis Clan have won dozens of medals
here and in Ireland, and appear in Irish festivals across the U.S. In 2014 they led fans on a tour of Ireland, which they will repeat this June. It was their appearance on “America’s Got Talent” that alerted the country to this unique clan and they became regulars on the Grand Ole Opry. And now, through this reality show, we will all get to know this family and learn how the music that began in ritual has the power to heal, has connected them to the past, and made the future possible. Their latest album, released on May 19th, is called Heaven, and its that reaching for the spiritual that makes Irish music and the Willis clan unique. – Mary Pat Kelly
Film
A Challenging Woman Remembering Inez McCormack
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“The combination of the physical and spiritual we saw in Riverdance answered the need we had for our children to reach beyond themselves.”
nez McCormack, the late labor leader and human rights activist from Northern Ireland, once said that her greatest achievement was “seeing the glint in the eye of the woman who thought she was nobody, and now realizes she’s somebody.” McCormack would have had a glint in her own eye had she witnessed the turnout for a recent screening of a documentary on her life in Manhattan. Jointly hosted by New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and the Service Employees Union (SEIU) local 1199, the event took place at the union headquarters on 42nd Street on April 9th. Local 1199 represents home care and healthcare workers, primarily women, mostly immigrants, and they turned out in droves for the screening. Titled Inez McCormack: A Challenging Woman, the film focuses on McCormack’s work as a union organizer (she was the first female president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions), her role in Northern Ireland’s peace process (she fought for the inclusion of women in the Good Friday Agreement), and the Belfast human rights organization she founded, Participation and Practice of Rights (PPR). Among those on hand to offer accolades was Susan McKay, the award-winning Northern Ireland journalist and writer who, working with filmmaker Trever Brindley, produced and narrated the documentary. It was McKay who McCormack turned to when she was diagnosed with terminal cancer in late 2012. “There was always something of a command when you were contacted by Inez,” McKay told the audience. “You were called into service.”
In the documentary, scenes from McKay’s final interview with McCormack, who left hospice to take part in the project, are matched with scenes of her as a young activist organizing striking hospital workers in Belfast, and visions of Northern Ireland in the early days of the Troubles. And interspersed throughout the film are tributes from many of Inez’s admirers, including Hillary Clinton; Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland; and Irish President Michael D. Higgins. “They were lining up to take part,” said McKay. The screening was bookended by more tributes. New York’s Deputy Consul General Anna McGillicuddy called Inez an “inspiration.” Patricia McKeown, who now heads the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said that it was always difficult to be the first anything, and that Inez, as the first woman president of the union, was “a battering ram” against prejudice. George Gresham, president of Local 1199, said SEIU was Dr. Martin Luther King’s favorite union, with the responsibility and legacy to fight for working people. “Inez was in that league as well. And in the sense of solidarity, made us feel not so alone in the struggle,” he said. He went on to describe her “fighting spirit,” saying, “Inez was one tough motherf—.” Others referred to McCormack as the “awkward voice,” and “the clever strategist.” Mary Kay Henry, the International President of SEIU (born into an Irish family of 10 siblings in Detroit), flew in for the occasion, and later tweeted: “Inez’s legacy continues in the working women who are uniting in the fight for equality.” And it was the women who spoke from the audience, often in halting English, who won the day. “I just want to say thank you for caring,” an immigrant from Colombia said. There was a glint in her eye. As President Higgins said in the documentary, “Inez didn’t belong to us – she belonged to the world.” – Patricia Harty JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 45
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arts | film
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What Would Jimmy Do?
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turned in 1931, after de Valera and Fianna Fáil took control, thinking they would be more sympathetic to the progressive politics he had learned in America, and he rebuilt the hall. He was wrong. And because of this, he has been almost entirely written out of all but local Leitrim history. On a Wednesday evening this past April, a few days after what would have been Gralton’s 129th birthday,
P. HARTY / IRISH AMERICA
n August 1933, James Gralton became the only Irish citizen to have been deported from Ireland. Despite having no evidence to substantiate their charge that he was a subversive communist, de Valera’s government, in collusion with the Catholic Church and complacent county politicians, forcibly removed Gralton from his country without trial. He never returned and died 12 years later in New York, at the age of 59. Known in his local Leitrim as Jimmy, he left school at 14, moved to Britain, and joined the British Army. He deserted in protest of having to serve in India, objecting to the British troops in Ireland, and moved to New York in 1909. There, he formed the beginnings of his more radical politics, working with labor unions, decrying the conditions of workers, and founding the James Connelly Club, a socialist club based on Connelly’s writings. He returned to Ireland in 1921, before the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed, and became involved in land agitation. He formed the radical Direct Action Committee, which organized much of his efforts to regain land for tenant farmers from which they had been evicted, and ran it out of a hall he built on his father’s land. In that hall also, he organized community activities like art classes, dances, history lessons, and Irish language courses. But these populist activities were at odds with the Fine Gael government and the Church, and the Free State forces led him to flee the country by mid-1922. He re-
white shirt and tie, a navy blazer, black jeans, and offblack leather oxfords with blue laces to match, a far cry from how he was last seen in the film, being carted away to deportation after six months on the run. But if he had any inclination to make like his character and bolt out the second floor to avoid being cornered by police – or industry people – he didn’t show it. The film is directed by Ken Loach, and serves as a companion sequel to his 2006 Palm d’Or-winning The Wind that Shakes the Barley, and by
Rivals on screen, but not on 39th Street. Barry Ward (right) with Jim Norton, who plays Father Sheridan in Jimmy’s Hall, the Leitrim priest who had James Gralton branded as an “antichrist” and, some sources argue, incited the local IRA to burn the hall down on Christmas Eve, 1932.
Barry Ward, who plays Gralton in the new film Jimmy’s Hall, walked into a penthouse living room near the U.N. headquarters in New York, and just 11 blocks north of Bellevue Hospital where Gralton died. He was there for the Irish Film Board reception of the movie’s North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival later that night. It was raining outside and the room was nearly at capacity – the door to the patio was closed. Ward was dressed in a
thematic extension Michael Collins, completing a trilogy of the troubled conservatism that bedeviled the Irish republic. Set between 1931 and 1933, the movie follows Gralton’s return to Leitrim from the U.S., the resurrection of the hall, and the efforts of the Church and the local IRA to shut it down. The climax takes the form not of an action/ adventure chase, or even an ideological stand-off, but of a tenderly subversive slow dance shared between Gralton
and Oonagh (played by Simone Kirby), his lost love who married another. At the reception though, there was no such radicalism, and Ward soon settled into a routine of congratulations, small talk, and catching up. “We just bought a house, finally,” Ward told one man, referring to the place in London where he and his girlfriend of 15 years, Laura, live with their one-year-old son, Tom. Kevin Ryan, an actor of Copper fame, asked him how he liked it. “I’m hardly ever there,” he said. “But it’s a great place.” Ward asked about the Boston Marathon medal Ryan was wearing, unavoidably nestled, ascot-like, in the space on his chest left open by his low-buttoned shirt. “It was pissing rain the whole time. But that’s why training in Ireland’s good for you.” (He told The Boston Globe after the race that he “would come back in a heartbeat. It reminds me of Dublin.”) “What was your time?” “4:16,” he said, adding that it was the fastest celebrity time. These were old friends coming together, as were most of the guests. But even in a room of recognizable faces, there were the unfamiliar. Elsewhere, one woman approached a twenty-something man, dressed in a plaid shirt, tie, and jacket. “I think we’ve met before. You look familiar.” “It’s possible? I don’t think so though.” “Oh, are you famous?” She appeared only half joking. He was not, it turned out. One wonders how recognizable Jimmy Gralton would have been here, and how he would have felt on this 52nd floor. He was 44 in 1931, and balding. Ward is pictured at center. – Adam Farley
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arts | music
here is always a welcoming buzz of familiarity at the Irish Arts Center. On a night in late April, This Is How We Fly made their New York City debut. The quartet of fiddle, clarinet, drums, and percussive dance had drawn in a full house for opening night: few sharply-dressed Wall Street types, an award-winning violinist (who looked borderline indecent without his haughty trademark concert waistcoat) lurking by the coat rack, and a moody couple lingered on the fringe of the tight social scene, watching a merry chorus of “How are you’s” that made it clear the arts center is as much a community as it is a stage. For this night, skeptical excitement was the general mood of that community. This Is How We Fly comprises Dubliners Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Seán Mac Erlaine, on the fiddle and clarinet, respectively, Stockholm’s Petter Berndalen on drums and Michigan’s Nic Gareiss on, well, feet. A few of the more jaded were prepped for a gimmick, while others were tripping gleefully over each other to get to their seats. A man took the stage on behalf of the Irish Arts Center once the room settled. “There’s this thing called managing expectations – none of that is needed tonight.” A cool and measuredly scratchy fiddle quieted the room, a hypnotic melody with no discernible beat just yet. One foot, though, couldn’t be stopped from tapping in anticipation of a night of enthusiastic audience stomping. His companion set him straight
48 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
with a sharp slap to the knee – this wasn’t that kind of trad. This Is How We Fly’s music is a potluck spanning genres and centuries: Irish fiddle met with Appalachian twangs and
The energy of improvisation carried throughout, an inquisitive exploration of each member’s breathtaking ability. If there is one commonality in the group, it’s a love of experimentation. Toward the end, it came time for Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, the star fiddler, to take
Not depressing. This Is How We Fly (from left): Seán Mac Erlaine, Nic Gareiss, Petter Berndalen, and Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh at the Irish Arts Center in New York.
a jazzy disregard for any restraint. Mac Erlaine and Ó Raghallaigh trade the melody back and forth as Berndalen lifts and textures their voices. Gareiss’s dancing adds a brushy percussion that when combined with the visual effect of his swift feet is entirely mesmerizing. That night at the IAC, no one escaped the trance. This Is How We Fly has struck gold in finding and embracing that playful quality that no band can fake – chemistry. After a few songs, each member took the stage for a solo showcase. Gareiss was first up. He told a bit of his history, the dance
laugh from the audience – it’s not a simple question in this room. Everything about Gareiss was charming. His smile was unabashed, like a child watching you open a gift he knows you’ll love. And he had it every song – a smirking “just wait for this” tone that pervaded the show. Berndalen took his solo moment to show the audience a bit of a time lapse of his percussive style. He told the history of Swedish folk, humming a measure of a typical tune as he built and built the rhythm around it, showing off quickly and exactly how it’s done.
the stage for his solo. He braced the audience for what he promised would be a depressing original. He is known to the room, having enchanted Irish Arts Center audiences for years in various ensembles, and the anticipation was palpable. When he spoke, his voice was soft and accommodating, a rhythmic contrast to the arresting and demanding way he makes his bow and strings talk. The audience leaned forward and began to breathe softer, waiting as Ó Raghallaigh took his time tuning. He glanced up at their quiet impatience. “Are you depressed yet?” – Tara Dougherty
AMANDA GENTILE / IRISH ARTS CENTER
T
Foot Tapping . . .
he’d studied. “Any Irish speakers?” he asked the group. The question immediately dissolved the audience into a series of side conversations. “No?” “Yes!” “Don’t you?” “I thought you spoke.” “Not anymore.” “He does.” Gareiss waited for the chatter to stop. A self-conscious
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what are you like | By Patricia Harty
BarryWard
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ctor Barry Ward, 32, plays the lead role in Jimmy’s Hall, directed by Ken Loach with a screenplay by Paul Laverty, the movie is based on the life of Leitrim man James “Jimmy” Gralton, who returned from the U.S. in the early 1930s and set up the local hall as a place for young people to dance, learn music, and take part in political discussions. He soon comes under fire from the local priests and is eventually deported back to the U.S.. Ward, who has received rave reviews for his portrayal of Gralton, was born in Dublin. He began his career at age 14 in Roddy Doyle`s highly acclaimed BBC drama, Family. By the age of 16 he had completed a BBC six-part series Plotlands. An award-winning Irish language short called Lipservice followed and soon after came his first feature, Sunburn, shot in the U.S. featuring Cillian Murphy. He has had a wide-ranging career across theater, film and television. He played the young lead opposite Peter Mullan in The Claim and appeared in
Jimmy’s Hall is about a real person – did you feel a sense of responsibility in playing the role? A sense of responsibility comes with every
role; being a long-time fan of Paul Laverty and Ken Loach, then finally getting to work with them, brought its own responsibility; my character [Jimmy Gralton] was a very responsible individual so that was something I was aware of throughout. How did you build up the character? It always
starts with reading for me. For this, I read books set in 1920s Manhattan to get a sense of where Jimmy’s coming from in the film’s opening scenes; I reads books about Irish history and politics to get a feel for what was going on at the time when he left, and what he was returning to. I carried a copy of the Communist Manifesto with me everywhere, and finding parallels between Gralton and James Connolly, I read his writings and a biography. Physically preparing for the role involved myself and Simone Kirby [who plays Oonagh, Jimmy’s love interest] dancing for a month around London, and then I moved to Leitrim for a month before shooting began, to work on farms. Ken insisted I get callused hands. It was really useful spending time immersing myself in that part of the world, trying to eat as Jimmy might’ve ate, and “shpake” as he spoke.
Did it surprise you that the church had such a hold on the people? No. Growing up in ’80s and
’90s Ireland, and as a product of Christian Brothers’ schooling, I was all too aware of the church’s hold. When the horrors inflicted in their name came to public attention it was obvious that such crimes going unpunished could only be perpetrated by an extremely powerful lobby.
Describe the last dance between Jimmy an Oonagh. That’s probably the scene people talk the Turner Classic Movie Short Film Award nominee Watchmen, alongside Cillian Murphy. He played Patrick Jones in the highly acclaimed Channel 4 series City of Vice, and then opposite James McEvoy in the much feted BBC Film MacBeth. Other recent film credits include Shooting for Socrates and Blood Cells Bypass. His theater credits include highly acclaimed productions of The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Translations, The Plough and the Stars, Lay Me Down Softly, Whistle In The Dark, and Down the Line at the Abbey Theatre. Ward lives in East London. He and his girlfriend, Laura, recently became first-time parents to a son, Tom. Jimmy’s Hall premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York on April 22nd with a pre-screening reception at the residence of the Irish Consul General in Manhattan. When did you decide you wanted to be an actor? I never really decided –
it just sort of happened. I was street cast as a 13-year-old for the BBC drama Family and continued from there. I guess around my late teens I made the conscious decision that acting was what I wanted to do full-time when I met and worked with some very talented and passionate people. It rubbed off, I guess. Realistically, it was another few years before I fully committed. 50 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
about most. In a way it’s the climax of Jimmy's story with Oonagh. It’s romantic, suspenseful, beautifully lit and shot. As neither myself nor Simone knew what was to come. Ken doesn’t give actors the script until the evening before the scene to be shot. We were oblivious to its place and function in the overall film. However, there was a buzz about it when we were doing it. I remember specifically Paul Laverty being very excited saying so many factors came together all at once, technically, with actors and crew at the top of their game. In post production it was a scene subject to much debate and experimentation with long discussion about the inclusion or omission of a musical score.
Did you already know how to dance? I never
danced, and still can’t, really. Myself and Simone had about one month of rehearsals before shooting began, to get some moves down. It was a lot of fun, it was also hard work and ego crushing. I’m definitely not a natural but as a result of trying I now
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have a newfound respect and admiration for those who do. I highly recommend it to everybody.
Do you have a hidden talent? No. I display them all shamelessly, no matter how ill-honed. I can say the alphabet backwards, and I can do the Cossack dance. But not at the same time. What was your first job? I seem to remember
packing sacks with spuds in a local fruit’n’veg shop. A mate got me the gig and I got a fiver. I can’t recall if it was one week’s work, or a day.
What is your earliest memory? Looking through the bars of a cot at my baby sister. She was around fourteen months which would make me around three years old. Do you have a personal hero? There are many
people living and dead whom I greatly admire – some I have the pleasure to know. Here’s a football team’s worth: Albert Camus, Che Guevara, John Lennon, Ken Loach, Cillian Murphy, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell, Roberto Baggio, Noam Chomsky, Bob Dylan, Diego Maradona.
Your proudest moment? The Cannes screening
and response to Jimmy’s Hall was special. Any number of goals scored playing football. Holding my boy. I am not sure any of these moments constitute pride. They may well be other things, or combinations of many.
What is on your bedside table? It is ever changing but right now it’s Tarantula by Bob Dylan. Who is your favorite author/songwriter/director/playwright? Again, ever changing but always
up there are Joyce, Tom Waits, Antonioni, and Caryl Churchill.
Best advice ever received? Work harder. Me to
my younger self. Never heeded.
Do you remember the first piece of drama you saw? No. Must’ve been TV and most likely Ameri-
can. A-Team and McGyver caught my imagination. I was a fan of Star Wars, but the toys more than the films. I loved Indiana Jones, The Goonies, and Stand By Me. Raising Arizona changed everything. Do you have a favorite quote? “The sun shone,
having no alternative, on the nothing new.” Beckett, Murphy. “War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery.” Orwell, 1984. “Making the beast with two backs.” Shakespeare, on sex. Best opening line in a book or a piece of music? See above for Beckett from Murphy.
Also Camus, The Outsider – “Mother died today… or was it yesterday.” Musically, the sounds of an airplane beginning the Beatles’
White Album. Obviously owing to what is to come, not the airplane sound in itself. Favorite country you have visited?
India. I also love France and Italy. Spain I could live in, too.
Favorite place in Ireland? Dublin. I
love cities. The bigger the better. Though I grew very fond of Leitrim whilst there. It is very beautiful and unspoiled. And my family originates there.
Favorite quality in friends? Ability
to make me laugh. Possessors of a spare fiver. Favorite sound? Son’s laugh.
Your greatest extravagance? Book
purchasing. Can’t get enough.
Your most prized possession?
Perhaps my projector.
Describe your perfect day. There is no such thing, but starting it and finishing it with my partner Laura and our son Tom comes pretty damn near. Throw in some good food with friends and a sunny sky filled with sunnier sounds and I might just retract that first statement. If you had to identify with a historical figure, who would it be? Someone unimportant, anony-
Last dance: Barry Ward as Jimmy and Simone Kirby as his old love, Oonagh in Ken Loach’s new film Jimmy’s Hall.
mous. I like how Fernando Pessoa went about things. He died unpublished in his lifetime, leaving a hoard of manuscripts written under hundreds of pseudonyms (heteronyms, he called them). Or maybe Young Werther…
What would you be doing if you weren’t an actor? A teacher probably. Maybe football
would’ve panned out differently for me. It’s not something I’ve given much thought to. What question do you wish someone would ask you? Who are the top five directors you want
to work with? Okay, ten.
What movie will you watch again and again?
The Big Lebowski. It is so good – so quotable. Spinal Tap because it is Spinal Tap. What’s next for you? I’ve a few films due for
release so most likely I’ll be attending festivals and doing press for each of them. Shooting for Socrates premieres in Belfast, Pursuit will show in Galway, Blood Cells in Edinburgh, and three others to be announced, most likely next year. IA JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 51
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roots |
By Peter Garland
Is Oscar Irish?
A
Oscar Wilde, the playwright, novelist, poet, and critic of world renown, has long been labeled Anglo-Irish, but an examination of his roots puts the question of Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde’s Irishness to rest once and for all. ll Irishmen must feel a little defensive when someone points out that some of our famous writers are Anglo-Irish – as if they are just English men and women whose family has been resident in Ireland for centuries, but whose blood remains Anglo. Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900) is a case in point. Despite his Gaelic given names, Oscar and Fingal, despite his mother’s fiery Irish patriotism (her poetry one of the mainstays of the Young Irelanders Movement of 1848), and despite his father’s keen interest in Irish antiquities and Irish folklore, one might still worry that he is one of these English Irishmen – not really one of us. Well, set your Irish hearts at rest, for Oscar’s paternal great-grandmother was none other than Margaret O’Flyn of Connaught, and his grandmother, also on the father’s side, Emily Finn (Finn, as in the hero of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake) was the daughter of John Finn of Ballymagibbon, near Cong, County Mayo. Emily and Dr. Thomas Wilde had Sir William Wilde, father of the author. Oscar, you’re indeed one of us – thank goodness! Oscar’s paternal grandfather, Thomas Wilde, was born in the village of Kilkeevin, County Roscommon, in 1815. Rather than assiduously attending the Royal School, he is said to have spent his time exploring cahirs (stone ringforts) and fishing with his older friend Paddy Walsh. Walsh, one of whose legs was six inches longer than the other, was a great fiddler, hunter, and fisherman. He was also a funerary assistant, acting as an aide to the women who properly laid out the bodies in the caskets and, atop the coffin lid laid crosswise, the attendant food and drink for the mourners. From him, the future Sir William Wilde, later the eminent eye and ear specialist and father of Oscar, learned 52 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
the outdoor life. Young William also spoke the Gaelic language, something that his son Oscar never did. The Finn family of Ballymagibbon harbored Augustinian canons driven from the monastery at Cong, including the Lord Abbot, Fr. Prendergast, who stayed with the Finns until his death at the age of eighty-eight in 1829. He is described as a “fine, courteous, white-haired old man,” and it is probably from him that young William Wilde first derived his interest in the relics of ancient Ireland, some of which were in the possession of the Abbot himself. (Now in the possession of the National Museum of Ireland.) These included the Cross of Cong, “reputed to be one of the finest specimens of enameled and jeweled metal work of its age in the Western world.” Father Prendergast also possessed the Shrine of St. Patrick’s Tooth, a beautiful jeweled and decorated reticule of wood, bronze, and precious stones, said to have been made to hold one of the saint’s teeth. He even had a bit of discolored ribbon said to have been dipped in the blood of the English King Charles I, decapitated at Whitehall in 1649. This culture was the heritage of William Wilde, father of Oscar, before he went up to Dublin to be trained as a surgeon and emerge as reportedly the most distinguished ear and eye doctor in Europe. Sir William passed on many of the stories – lived and heard of his Western Ireland boyhood to his son – as well as bequeathing Oscar a large share of the purest Irish blood. Thank goodness. IA
TOP: Oscar Wilde. Photograph taken in 1882 by Napoleon Sarony. Albumen silver print. Metropolitan Museum of Art. FAR LEFT: William Robert Wills Wilde M.D. LEFT: Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (born Jane Francesca Elgee in Wexford) was an Irish poet under the pen name “Speranza.” BELOW: Memorial to Sir William Wilde and his wife in Mount Jerome Cemetery, Dublin.
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PHOTO: AL HIGGINS
All Too Human:
Exploring the adolescent male psyche in Rob Doyle’s Here Are the Young Men
Breakout novelist Rob Doyle discusses the existential strands of isolation that run through his debut, as well as the processes of writing, his relationship with Ireland, his views on Irish and American literature, and finally what he’s working on next. By Matthew Skwiat
T
he publication of Dublin native Rob Doyle’s debut novel, Here Are the Young Men ushered in the arrival of a new literary talent whose darkly tragicomic story became one of the best reviewed books in Ireland last year and was shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year Prize. It appeared on The Irish Times Books of the Year lists of Colm Tóibín and Tara Flynn, with Tóibín noting its “sheer style” and “integrity of vision.” Doyle, who holds a first class honors degree in Philosophy and an M.Phil. from Trinity College, has been writing fiction for years with publications in the Dublin Review, Irish Times, and Gorse. Speaking to Irish America from Ireland last year, he noted his passion for writing, saying, “I’ve always needed some creative form or outlet. When I don’t have some form of expression, I’m just not happy or satisfied.” He found his initial passion in music, playing for a band in his youth, writing songs and unleashing his inner voice. Here Are the Young Men reiterates that passion – the title comes from a Joy Division lyric, and the book itself brims with its own soundtrack of adolescent angst with music from The Pixies, The Ramones, and The Clash. Those references were important, not only in conveying the biographical underpinnings of the story, but by placing the novel in its own time and place, circa 2003 Dublin at the tail end of the Celtic Tiger (“things that I experienced or noticed growing up”). “In the novel, that milieu which is the Dublin days of a certain era, are set amongst these young guys.” It is this gritty underbelly of Dublin that Doyle brings to life so effortlessly. He captures the boredom, fears, and anxieties of boys on the edge of manhood in an Ireland about to bust. This bold and direct
54 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
effectiveness has drawn many comparisons to other controversial counterculture works of literature like A Clockwork Orange and Trainspotting. For Doyle, those characterizations are sound. “I would definitely think [those works] make sense as markers which give readers the sense of which kind of lineage this novel is in,” he said. But he also notes that Here Are the Young Men “is its own novel and stakes out its own territory.” That is a territory in which few novels have gone before. What makes Doyle stand out from the rest is his innate sense of dialect where he is able to capture the tonal musicality of an Irish brogue. “I found it wonderfully liberating when I realized I was writing a novel set in Dublin and set among Dublin characters. It was just ready to be reaped,” he said. “I could just take chunks out of this grand voice, this dialect that was waiting in my unconscious or my memories, waiting to be exploited.” You wrote Here Are the Young Men in London, America, and around the world. Did you find that distance to be important? Yeah, absolutely. It was kind of a surprise to me. After studying, I spent a number of years wandering around the world. I assumed I would end up writing about all of that stuff. The first book I had in mind would be about somewhere exotic or far flung, but then when I came to London and started to write, it was a revelation to me that I wanted to write about Dublin, or that was what came naturally. And yet having that distance was crucial. Its temporal distance and spatial distance. I completely understand that Joycean idea of completely leaving the place and reconstructing it in fiction like he did in Ulysses. It’s wonderful because when you’re not there, that’s when fiction can happen at its best.
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Where you have to reinvent or reimagine the city so it comes from a more intense place. You are using your memories and emotions and imagination. Plus, when you’re away, the writing, the energy, is fueled by a kind of longing and nostalgia. It was written with a kind of longing and yearning for Dublin where I grew up. It’s very beautiful, despite its drawbacks. Speaking of Joyce, one of your characters mentions Dubliners and Ulysses, and there is reference to Wilde’s “Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Do you read any classic Irish authors? I do – I love Wilde. I loved Wilde since I was a teenager, but I haven’t read him in a while. Joyce is an ongoing interest. I prefer Ulysses to the rest of it. And Beckett, of course. I have a strange relationship with the Irish literary tradition. Not all of it really excites me, but the major ones are all of interest. American culture seems to have a strong impact on the characters in the novel. They are listening to American music, TV, video games. Was that deliberate? These are guys who are growing up in Ireland more on American culture than Irish culture. Living in Ireland, it feels almost more exotic to hear traditional Irish music than it would be to hear American blues music or something like that – that’s how convoluted things have become. It’s funny that a lot of the novelists and authors I read growing up and who influenced the novel and me in general would be American authors who explore those themes. Themes of media saturation or technological inundation of daily life, people like Don Delillo, Bret Easton Ellis. David Foster Wallace is really the master of all of this. The novel takes place 10 years ago at the end of the Celtic Tiger. In your opinion, has Irish society gotten better or worse since then? It’s very hard, when I think about that question, to separate my own subjective experience of things from any objective sense of how things are. In the intervening years since I left Ireland, I think that in Ireland things did change. There are lots of problems; the economy has collapsed and is very slowly coming back into shape. It’s a far more tolerable and tolerant place to live. Kind of gentler. There is more of an open-mindedness, less of a crassly materialistic outlook which really did predominate for a while. How do you write? The weird thing about my writing process is I feel it’s something nebulous or something that hasn’t become particularly hardened into one definitive thing. It depends. When I was writing that book, it was very straightforward. When I was living in London writing the early draft, I would come home from work in the early afternoon and bring my laptop to the library. I had a particular project to work on. Sometimes I’ll
write on a train with pen and paper. There has been no absolute hardened process that has taken place yet. I’m weary of the puritanical tradition of getting up every morning and starting up at nine o’clock. I’d be wary of that because I don’t want to take away that joyful or gleeful side of writing. I’m kind of attracted to the idea of hovering around a desk and only writing when the mood takes you. The character Jen always seems to be in the background. She appeared to be the one light or the glue that kept all these characters together. Is that something you wanted to do? I’m really happy with the character of Jen because [the novel] is such an intense exploration of masculinity and young masculinity and the contemporary male psyche. That’s what it tries to be and that is what it is. She really is the only major female character in it. I didn’t really plan the novel, I just followed my intuition and let it come out whichever way it came out – trust in the unconscious. She kind of offers a certain amount of hope to Matthew, who is more or less the protagonist throughout. She offers him a kind of sense of hope or a groundedness, but then he can’t seem to accept it. He can’t seem to reach out to the sources of life or goodness or nourishment. Throughout the novel, the characters wrestle with reality vs. artifice. There is a very thin layer between reality and artifice. Care to explain that? Kearney and Rez, in a way, are the flip sides of the same coin. They are both struggling under an inundation of simple reality, and they are both struggling in their own way from separating reality from unreality. For me, it’s the media landscape and the kind of hallucinatory holographic reality that we all live with these days. [Kearney] is going to play his video games and is not interested in separating the real from the spectacle of the video game, whereas Rez is smoking too much weed and worrying that he can’t tell the difference between the simulation and the real. They are not really new ideas, but very rich material to explore in fiction because they are very prominent, prevalent worries and experiences that people have. What’s next for you? I’m putting finishing touches on a new book of short fiction due out next year. It’s very different, it’s not in the lineage of the traditional Irish short story. There are more influences like Borges, Bolaño, and Thomas Bernhard. After that, I will take a break from short fiction. I certainly intend to be in it for the long haul, not necessarily novels. A lot of my favorite books these days are working on the margins of the novel, somewhere between fiction and nonfiction, but I do certainly want to be writing books for the rest of my life. IA
Here Are the Young Men was published in Ireland and the U.K. by the Lilliput Press last June and is due out in the U.S. this June from Bloomsbury. His forthcoming novel, This Is the Ritual, will be published by Lilliput and Bloomsbury in January 2016.
JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 55
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crossword | By Darina Molloy Across
1 Let the ____ fall where it may (3) 4 The Hills of ________ (7) 6 This little girl is granddaughter to Hillary & Bill Clinton (9) 8 (& 23 down) Downton Abbey actor (4) 9 See 2 down (5) 12 Hawaiian garland (3) 13 See 27 down (7) 15 Group of female deer (4) 16 What Laura Ingalls called her dad (2) 17 The county seat of Silver Bow County, Montana (5) 18 Five Children and ___ (2) 20 Chemical symbol for argon (1, 1) 22 (& 39 across) This author's newest book is The Heat of Betrayal (7) 25 Site of a failed Allied offensive in WWI (9) 26 Dublin's competitive swimming arena, in short (1, 1, 1) 28 (& 44 across) Tyrone singersongwriter who wanted “to take you to the island” (4) 29 See 12 down (4) 30 See 35 down (7) 31 This county celebrated its first ever international day on May 2 (4) 34 President Obama's Irish forebears (7)
36 See 47 across (3) 38 Controversial operator of Corrib Gas Project (5) 39 See 22 across (7) 41 Pen name of George William Russell (1, 1) 42 “I Wish I Was in _________,” song (13) 44 See 28 across (5) 45 Not off (2) 46 See 24 down (4) 47 (& 36 across) This iconic comedy celebrates its 20th anniversary this year (6) 48 See 3 down (6)
Down
1 Wood used for making hurleys (3) 2 (& 9 down) Sinead Cusack son who stars in The Woman in Gold (3) 3 (& 48 across) Former Coke president and charity enthusiast who died in February (6) 4 This Bill is Mayor of NYC (2, 6) 5 Pertaining to the ear (5) 6 (& 40 down) The popular subject of a film starring Deirdre O'Kane which focuses on her tireless charity work (9) 7 As soon as possible (1, 1, 1, 1) 10 Irish for May (9) 11 South Asian country that suffered a devastating earth-
Win a subscription to Irish America magazine
quake in April (5) 12 (& 29 across) Fourth largest lake in Ireland and second largest in Northern Ireland (5) 13 Chemical symbol for iron (1, 1) 14 Actress _____ Flynn Boyle (4) 19 AMC's Revolutionary War drama (4) 21 This clan had an international gathering in Westport in May (5) 23 See 8 across (10) 24 (& 46 across) Irish American director of Guardians of the Galaxy (5) 25 SpongeBob SquarePants's pet snail (4) 27 (& 13 across) This Dublin actor
Please send your completed crossword puzzle to Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue, Suite 201, New York, NY 10001, to arrive no later than July 1. A winner will be drawn from among all correct entries. If there are no correct solutions, the prize will be awarded for the completed puzzle which comes closest in the opinion of our staff. Winner’s name will be published along with the solution in our next issue. Xerox copies are acceptable. Winner of the April/May Crossword: Kevin J. Skehan, Columbus, OH
56 IRISH AMERICA JUNE /JULY 2015
30 32 33
35
turned down a role in Grimsby to spend time with his sons (5) See 33 down (2, 6) Derek Shepherd's brain surgeon sister in Grey's Anatomy (6) (& 30 down) Former President's son who campaigned for a yes vote in the Marriage Equality referendum (6) This Irish American
37 40 41 42 43
actress played a 'Red' in Orange is the New Black (4) The _____, otherwise known as Croagh Patrick (4) See 6 down (5) Old-fashioned aye (2) A ___ in the machine: a minor person in a larger organization (3) This Mr. Swanson is a key character in Parks & Recreation (3)
April / May Solution
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review of books | recently published books Poets and the Peacock Dinner
Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland
irginia Woolf wrote, “one cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,” a message that permeates Lucy McDiarmid’s sumptuous new book Poets and the Peacock Dinner. McDiarmid, a professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey, masterfully illuminates the little-known dinner that took place on January 18, 1914, an event that brought together in various degrees the lives of Ezra Pound, W.B. Yeats, and Lady Gregory. The book grapples with the complexities of art, politics, and the “male homosocial friendships” that permeate literary history. The event itself was planned in many ways as a tribute to a forgotten Victorian poet, Wilfred Blunt, whose anti-imperialist rhetoric, fight for Irish Home Rule (he was jailed in Galway prison in 1888), and literary grandeur (he was the grandson-in-law of Lord Byron) made him a prominent connection to the past and a symbol of literary subversion that inspired the next generation of Modernist writers. While the dinner only lasted five hours and produced one nowfamous photograph, McDiarmid unwinds its literary legacy, going into detail on how the occasion came to be, the
Eds. Jennifer Redmond, Sonja Tiernan, Sandra McAvoy, and Mary McAuliffe
By Lucy McDiarmid
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symbolism of the peacock, and the clever marketing campaign spearheaded by Pound and Yeats. McDiarmid writes, “It would be eaten for an audience. It was a ritual staged by professional poets to provoke and edify other poets and all members of the ‘world of letters.’”
While the occasion was overwhelmingly male, McDiarmid highlights the contributions of Lady Gregory, the literary linchpin that brought these men together through her relationship to them: her affair with Blunt, her partnership with Yeats, and acquaintance with Pound through Yeats. She, more than any of the other poets, was responsible for the event and its later success – an ironic twist considering she never attended. McDiarmid’s book brings into focus a world on the brink of change and an event that managed to connect the pre- and postVictorian world by traditionally paying homage to the literary past while making way for the poets of tomorrow. – Matthew Skwiat
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(Oxford / 240p / €20)
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he editors’ introduction to Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland describes the book as a continuation of previous work on the role of women in modern Irish society while entering new ground, examining concepts of gender and sexuality, including how the two had been elided previously. The collection, according to the editors, “draws attention to the liminal, marginalized and interstitial narratives” that have been historically ignored. Many of the themes are familiar: emigration, the female body as the physical evidence of sin, the virgin mother as the personification of Ireland, women as being simultaneously dangerous and vulnerable. The contributors examine these familiar topics through the lens of previously marginalized parties, such as female convicts engaged in same-sex relationships, female alcoholics, and intersex citizens. The opening chapter, by Bláthnaid
Born with Teeth
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Nolan, offers a look at the lesbian subculture of 19th century Tasmanian penal colonies and suggests that many of the women entered into same-sex relationships as a form of protest against the patriarchal, parochial system that had imprisoned them. Some of the chapters illustrate how the Irish government attempted to legislate sexuality. Maeve O’Riordan’s chapter takes a touchingly personal look at the courtship of Mabel Smyly and Dermod O’Brien, a heterosexual, uppermiddle-class Anglo-Irish couple in 1901–1902. While neither of their narratives could be considered marginal (unless one considers that all female narratives were marginalized at the time), as they both fit into their prescribed gender roles, their letters to one another – not explicit by today’s standards – gently pushed the boundaries of the established sexual practices of the day. Although Irish women’s history has seen an upswing in academic attention, many subgroups have remained egregiously underwritten. Sexual Politics in Modern Ireland begins to rectify that situation by offering an engaging look at some of the women whose stories had been left untold. – Julia Brodsky
(Irish Academic Press / 208p / €24.99)
By Kate Mulgrew
s her readable and revealing new memoir Born with Teeth makes clear, stage and screen actress Kate Mulgrew came of age just in time to ride a powerful wave of interest in Irish American culture. Reared in Iowa, where “vast numbers of children...populated those Irish-German households,” Mulgrew cultivated a passion for the arts at a young age. Poetry was her first love, but Mulgrew’s bold mother, whose boarding school classmates included lifelong friend Jean Kennedy Smith, declared: “You can either be a mediocre poet or a great actress.” The latter option was too difficult to resist. The first projects which introduced Kate Mulgrew to a wide audience were deeply Irish. First there was the groundbreaking TV soap opera Ryan’s Hope, which explored a sprawling Irish-American clan and sought to achieve a level of authenticity few previous daytime dramas had. Then, a few years after leaving Ryan’s Hope, Mulgrew starred opposite a young Pierce Brosnan in the epic miniseries The Manions of America. The 6-hour special closely examined the lives of Famine-era immigrants from Ireland, and the struggles they faced, and the lives they built in America. Ireland itself plays a central role in Born with Teeth. Mulgrew goes there to
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The Green Road
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By Anne Enright
nne Enright was recently appointed Ireland’s first fiction laureate. Anyone who has read her 2007 Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Gathering or The Forgotten Waltz, her 2012 encapsulation of the excess and fall out of the Celtic Tiger, knows full well what a perfect choice that was. Enright looks unblinkingly at contemporary Irish life. Her singular observations are at turns wry, beautiful and utterly devastating. The Green Road, her latest work, centers on the
Summer Reading Madigans – the ultimate Irish family. They’re each such a type – a bit of every Irish person you’ve ever been, met, known, and resented but still loved. There’s Rosaleen, the matriarch, eternally disappointed but still commanding as only an Irish mammy can be. There’s Dan, the eldest, who shatters Rosaleen with his decision to join the priesthood and the distance created when it doesn’t pan out. Constance is the ultimate devoted daughter, wife, and mother, slightly embarrassed by, but still delighted with, her developer husband’s financial success. Emmett is the crusading aid worker who can handle anyone’s problems but his own. Hanna is the baby, whose young perspective introduces the novel and hardens later into one of boozesoaked pain and personal disappointment. The Madigans each get their own chapter, their space to tell their
stories, in the intervening years between the novel’s beginning in 1979 (the year Pope John Paul II visited Ireland), and its climax, in 2005, when they all return home to County Clare, together under one roof for the first time in decades. Rosaleen has decided it’s time to sell the family home and, via Christmas cards, summoned her children to gather around her. Wonderfully familiar drama ensues as their adult selves come face to face with inescapable family order. The shifting perspectives and fragmented structure of The Green Road depart from The Gathering and The Forgotten Waltz, both intimate studies of one character’s mind. It’s exciting and rewarding to see Enright expanding her scope – no one is safe and we’re all better off for it. – Sheila Langan
(W.W. Norton / 304p / $26.95)
work but also to unwind, spend time with family, and (unwittingly) find love. Mulgrew does not shy away from dark moments in her life, from a brutal crime to a difficult decision when she found herself young and pregnant. Even the seemingly glamorous acting life has moments of great despair. (“This business will kill you. Strip you of your soul, steal your humanity,” an utterly depressed Richard Burton rants to a young Mulgrew.) A divorce sent Mulgrew into a particularly bleak emotional (as well as financial) spiral. And new love later came calling just as Mulgrew was about to audition for the role of Captain Kathryn Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager. The role would introduce Mulgrew to a new generation of fans – but she nearly blew the opportunity off entirely. If there is a single clear theme in Born with Teeth (Mulgrew literally was, by the way) it is the actress’s artful perseverance. For all of the obstacles and changes, Mulgrew has reinvented herself once again, as “Red” Reznikov on the Emmy Award-winning Netflix drama Orange Is the New Black. And as the emotional conclusion of Born With Teeth proves, when it comes to Hollywood, and even life, Richard Burton was all wrong. – Tom Deignan
(Little, Brown & Co. / 320p / $28)
History
The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe By David Kertzer
This year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for best biography, the book is a frank and revealing look at the behavior of the Vatican during World War II. (Oxford)
Memoir
The Negotiator
By George Mitchell
Senator Mitchell, one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, reflects on those negotiations and gives a candid and personal account of his trials in the moments leading up to its acceptance. (Simon & Schuster)
Poetry
A Terrible Beauty: Poetry of 1916 Ed. Mairead Ashe FitzGerald
A collection of poems written during and around the Easter Rising, including favorites from Pádraic Pearse, Yeats, and Sean O’Casey, with less familiar names rounding out the selection. (O’Brien)
Fiction
The Melody Lingers On By Mary Higgins Clarke
Another work of measured suspense from one of Irish America’s premier thriller writers. The assistant to an interior designer becomes more and more woven into the disappearance of a disgraced financier, Arachne-like, until she has no choice but to cut the cloth. (Simon & Schuster)
The Blessings
By Elise Juska
New in paperback this summer, Juska’s examination of an Irish Catholic family reeling from loss offers new perspectives on the time-honored tradition of big family novels. (Grand Central)
Miss Emily
By Nuala Ní Choncuir (Nuala O’Connor)
Reimagining the life of Emily Dickinson through the voice of her Irish maid, the book is a stellar debut from one of Ireland’s emerging voices. (Penguin)
My Mother’s Secret By Sheila O’Flanagan
From the best-selling and award-winning romance writer comes a story set on holiday in Rome where a family must come to terms with a secret that cant be kept any longer. A riveting and thoughtprovoking read. (Headline Review) JUNE / JULY 2015 IRISH AMERICA 59
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The long days of summer are upon us, and gardens everywhere are in bloom. Admiring the pretty flowers will satisfy some, but Sláinte columnist, Edythe Preet, likes to eat her plants.
age is similar to coffee. Nutritionally, dandelions are rich in vitamins A, C, and K, plus calcium, iron, potassium and manganese. And if the leaves are plucked but the root left in the ground, the plant will re-grow as if by magic! Three other blossoms – elderflowers, gorse, and the wild rose – also have long Irish culinary histories. The shrub-like elder tree (Gaelic: trom) has flourished in Ireland for more than six thousand years. As its spindly wood was better for burning than construction, the Brehon Laws categorized the elder as a ‘third class’ tree, but its flowers and berries reshly picked salads from one’s own garden, were prized culinary delicacies. Like its cousin the even if only from a few container plantings, honeysuckle, which many a child has sipped for its are one of the great gourmet pleasures. And nectar, elderflowers have a heady sweet scent, and nothing pretties a bowl of mixed greens like folklore tells of unwary sniffers who have fallen into a confetti of colorful petals. Nor is anything so a deep sleep and been carried away to live with the show-stopping as a floral bedecked dessert. fairies. Merely dipping a bunch of elderflowers into Luscious chocolate mousse crested with candied a light apple jelly will infuse it with a subtle floral violets, squares of shortbread shot through with tiny taste. Pancakes made with fresh elderflowers stirred lavender buds, or a lattice of scented geranium into the batter are an annual Irish springtime treat. leaves baked into a pound The blossoms can also be cake will have your guests dried and brewed to make tea oooing and aaahing over your or flavor fruit tarts and vinekitchen expertise. gar, but their most exotic use Modern chefs would like to is when they are made into take credit for adding floral elderflower wine, cordials, flourishes to our dining desyrup, and liqueur. Nutritionlight, but they have merely ally, elderflowers have a high revived a culinary custom as vitamin C content. old as civilization itself. Gorse (Gaelic: aiteann) is a Flowers have been used in large shrub that grows as cooking since the days of the hedgerows all over Ireland. It Egyptian dynasties, the Greek was categorized in Brehon philosophers, and the emperLaw as one of the Losa Fedo ors of Rome. (Bushes of the Woods), and In ancient Ireland what to because the branches are very WILDFLOWERSOFIRELAND.COM eat was more a matter of surthorny, Druids believed the vival than a matter of presenting pretty plates, but it gorse had protective power. The thorns were also a is not a stretch to imagine Neolithic Celts gathering good reason for planting the densely branched bushes flowering plants as food. Chief among those haras a living fence to thwart intruders and deter herds vested would have been the ubiquitous dandelion. from straying outside their pastures. In early spring, With its fluffy seed pompoms so easily carried by the gorse is covered in bright yellow blossoms, earning wind, dandelions flourish all over the world and have it association with Lugh, the Celtic god of light and a 30-million-year botanical pedigree. Every part of genius. Unlike most plants, the bushes flower much the plant is edible. The leaves taste like chicory; the of the year, giving rise to the proverb: “Only when flowers can be used for tea or made into wine; when gorse is out of bloom is kissing out of fashion.” While the roots are roasted and boiled, the resulting bevergorse foliage was used mainly as animal fodder, the
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Gather Safely! Before adding flowers to your culinary repertoire, a few cautions are imperative. Never eat a flower, its leaves, roots, or bulbs unless you have researched whether it is indeed edible. Some plants, and 60 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
in some cases parts of plants, are so poisonous that they will kill. A few of the deadliest are all members of the Narcissus family (including daffodils). One must also take care not to ingest any flower or plant part that has been treated with an insecticide. This is especially true of commercially grown plants. Never
eat blooms that are on a plant when you buy it. Always pinch these off and wait until a new series appears. Lastly, some advice how to prepare flowers for culinary use. Carefully trim away each petal’s white base, which is almost always bitter. The same rule applies to most flowers’ calyx, stamen, and pistil.
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sláinte | recipes coconut-vanilla scented flowers have long been the primary ingredient in refreshing cordials as well as a flavoring and coloring agent in whiskey. Presently, wild food advocates champion even more creative uses for the blossoms, including ice cream! Roses grow throughout the world and 60-millionyear-old fossils have been discovered in North America, but Ireland’s own native variety is the wild dog-rose (Gaelic: feirdhris). The fragrant pale pink five-petaled flowers can be found on sprawling bushes all over the island. As the blossoms fade they are replaced by small round seedpods known as ‘rosehips’ that ripen to dark red through the summer. Since the 16th century, rosehips have been an autumn culinary delight. Simmered slowly with water and sugar, they reduce to a thick jam that is delicious on toast, stirred into muffins, filling tarts, or served as a condiment with roast meats. Packed with twenty times more vitamin C than oranges, tea brewed from dried rosehips is a good winter cold preventive; they have also long been used to prevent and treat scurvy. While visiting Ireland in the early 20th century, the dog-rose inspired Irish American stage actor, songwriter, and singer Chauncey Olcott, whose hit tunes include “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” to compose the famous romantic song “My Wild Irish Rose.” When it comes to promoting culinary uses for Ireland’s edible flowers, Myrtle and Darina Allen, of County Cork’s Ballymaloe Cookery School, deserve bouquets of gratitude. Lavender, nasturtiums, pansies, violets, chrysanthemums, daylilies, roses, scented geraniums, and more grow in the school’s kitchen garden among a wide variety of vegetables and herbs. The flowers regularly appear in the Ballymaloe restaurant as garnishes on salads and soups, flavor enhancements in drinks, and embellishments on desserts. Chives and herbs such as basil, sage, and borage produce blossoms that are often more potently flavored than their leaves. Pansies and johnny-jumpups are members of the violaceae family that includes spring violets, and all can be candied whole or made into sweet syrups. Marigolds pack a triple bonus: they are beautiful border plants, their scent deters many insects, and the petals are lovely accents on salads and vegetables. One easy floral recipe involves carnations, which were brought to England by the Normans and arrived in Ireland with the Anglo aristocracy. The tiniest members of this family are called dianthus or pinks. Nursery plants are rarely scented, but pinks grown from seed frequently smell like cloves. In Medieval times when spices were prohibitively expensive, pinks flavored wine that had begun to sour. While modern vintages are sublime on their own, one must admit that adding pinks petals to a light Chardonnay would be a fine way to toast a summer day. Sláinte! IA
RECIPES Rosehip Jam
(To prepare rosehips, cut off stem and flower ends, then cut each rosehip in half and remove seeds.) 1 cup prepared fresh ripe rosehips (approx. one-half pound) 3 ⁄4 cup water 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 2 cups sugar 1 (1.75 ounce pkg) powdered fruit pectin 3 ⁄4 cup water
Put the prepared rose hips, 3/4 cup water, and lemon juice in a blender; blend until smooth, about 15 seconds. Small bits of rose hips skin are okay. Gradually add the sugar while blender is running. Blend until sugar is dissolved, about 30 seconds or so. Stir the pectin into the second 3/4 cup water in a stainless steel or enamel saucepan. Bring to a boil; boil hard for about 1 minute. Slowly pour into the rose hip mixture; blend for about 30 seconds. Pour into small containers with lids. Store some in the refrigerator and use within a few weeks. Store the rest in the freezer where it will keep for up to a year. Makes approximately 4 cups. (allrecipes.com)
Gorse Flower Ice Cream 250 450 250 6 150
ml milk ml cream gr gorse flowers egg yolks ml honey
Bring the milk and cream gently to the boil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add gorse flowers and leave to infuse for 30 mintes. Whisk the egg yolks with a little of the infused liquid and add to the saucepan. Heat gently till mixture barely thickens. Add the honey. Strain through sieve. When mixture is cold put it into an ice cream maker. Makes 1 litre.
(WicklowWildFoods.com)
Elderflower Cordial 25 heads elderflowers 1.4 kg sugar 1 liter water 1 organic lemon
In a stainless steel or enamel pot, bring the water to a boil. Add the sugar and stir until it has dissolved. Grate in lemon zest and juice. When water has cooled add blossoms. Leave to infuse for at least 24 hours, covered. Strain through muslin or double cheesecloth. Cool and refrigerate. You can also freeze some for use at a later time. Serve chilled or add to sparkling water for a refreshing drink. Garnish with a sprig of mint.
(WicklowWildFoods.com)
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
ABOVE: Rosehips. OPPOSITE: Gorse flowers.
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those we lost | Cardinal Edward M. Egan 1932 – 2015
ardinal Edward M. Egan, the former archbishop of New York, died in March of cardiac arrest at the age of 82. He led the Archdiocese of New York from 2000 to 2009, years marked by sexual abuse scandals and economic distress. Born in a Chicago suburb in 1932, he showed an early vocation for the priesthood and, despite his battle with polio, graduated at the top of his class. He spent much of his early career in Rome as a student, teacher, and canon lawyer and judge. In 1988, he was named bishop of Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he dealt with both debt and scandal. After inheriting the debt-ridden Archdiocese of New York in 2000, Egan closed several schools and churches, as well as merged several parishes in accordance with the shifting Catholic populations. This rendered him rather unpopular, despite his claiming to have eliminated the archdiocese’s operating deficit. When the Church’s sexual abuse scandals broke, Cardinal Egan staunchly denounced molesters and suspended over a dozen priests in the archdiocese. He still drew criticism from both sides; victims and their advocates decried the lack of a public disclosure, while other clergy claimed the cardinal had failed to support his accused colleagues. In 2002, he issued an apology for the Church’s handling of the cases. According to his friends, he was most comfortable in the role of parish priest and often accepted invitations to officiate anniversary Masses and confirmation sacraments, especially after he stepped down as archbishop. In 2007, Cardinal Egan initiated the enormous renovations on St. Patrick’s Cathedral, to be completed in 2016. Many of the cardinal’s admirers will count his finest moment in office as his response to the September 11th attacks, when he offered guidance and comfort both to political leaders and the people of New York. “He was passionate about education, and about improving the lives of the most disadvantaged New Yorkers,” said Joseph J. McShane, president of Fordham University. “He will be sorely missed by the Church and the city that he loved.” – J.B.
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FROM TOP: Cardinal Edward M. Egan; Mary Keefe and Norman Rockwell with the “Rosie the Riveter” Saturday Evening Post cover; and Anna McMurray.
Mary Doyle Keefe 1922 – 2015
ary Doyle Keefe was the face behind Norman Rockwell’s iconic “Rosie the Riveter” image. She died in April at the age of 92. In 1943 while America was embroiled in WWII, Rockwell contacted Keefe, his neighbor, for a series of photographs to be taken over two sittings. Keefe was paid five dollars for each sitting, but the real payoff was the painting. Rockwell took inspiration from Michelangelo's Isaiah on the Sistine Chapel and the 1942 song “Rosie the Riveter” by Evans and Loeb. The likeness between Rosie and Keefe can only be found in her red hair and pale Irish skin, as Keefe was neither a riveter nor quite so muscular. She said as much in an interview with
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the Norman Rockwell Museum in 2002 saying, “Except for the red hair I had at the time, and my face, the rest I don’t think is me at all.” Keefe was born in Bennington, Vermont on July 30, 1922 and graduated from Temple University, later marrying Robert Keefe and working throughout New England as a dental hygienist. She is survived by her four children, 11 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Over the years, Rockwell’s image has become a symbol of the emancipated woman that coyly mixes genders while upholding patriotic zeal. Rosie is a woman who has grown out of the cloistered confines of the home and is ready to take Germany, and the world, by storm. Keefe herself never forgot the now classic image that bears her likeness and continued to give interviews throughout her life, including a notable appearance on the Tonight Show (riveter in hand) in the 1990s. She also remained fond of her relationship with Rockwell, cherishing the letter he sent her in 1967 that read, “The kidding you took was all my fault because I really thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.” – M.S.
Anna McMurray 1925 – 2015
hen she took to the stage in America, a wave of nostalgia came crashing over the transfixed minds of the audience, because their eyes had seen the grace and grandeur of a Belfast style of Irish dance. Anna McMurray, who brought Irish dance to the U.S., died in March, after teaching for more than 70 years. For McMurray, this Irish dance was just as much about preserving the Irish past as it was about creating an identity in the present, and that is why we must celebrate the memory of the Irish dancer and teacher Anna McMurray (née McCoy), who was just as much a force for artistic syncretism as she was a conduit of tradition. Anna and her dancers were first seen in America on film and on stage in the 1940s and 50s. They performed in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, as well as New York, where they brought Irish dance to the stage at Carnegie Hall for the first time. They were broadcast into American living rooms, appearing on Arthur Godfrey’s popular TV program in 1955. Their performances captivated the American public and caused a curiosity and a demand for the new Belfast- Derry style, which was soon being taught throughout the United States. “The wonder is not that these dancers were so popular in America,” reported The Cork Examiner in May, 1957, “but that America ever allowed them to return home.” Anna and her students won countless awards, victories, and honors throughout Ireland, America, and Europe, but behind the accolades was always a passion for teaching, and her legacy remains in the steps and style of her students. – R.B.W.
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last word | The Great Hunger in Ulster
Window on the Past
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Historian Christine Kinealy debunks the myth that Ulster was untouched by the Great Hunger.
he myth of Ulster exceptionalism and affluence has roots in the Great Hunger itself. As early as 1849, Protestant loyalists were laying the foundation for a binary, two-nation view of the Famine. Objecting to a new tax that was to be levied on all parts of Ireland, the Belfast Newsletter claimed: “This is not the way to secure the affections, or reward the loyalty, of the sturdy men of the North, who, proud that they have been able to feed their own poor, and even to give of their abundance, in times of need, to the poor of distant provinces, will now be compelled to feed the starving masses in whom bad landlordism, disloyal teaching, a false religion, and an inherent laziness have combined to render at once the shame and the canker of their country.” Later generations of unionists built on this fissured – and sectarian – division of the country. As late as 1996, during debates in Belfast City Hall about erecting a famine memorial in the city, Sammy Wilson, a Democratic Unionist councilor, objected on the grounds that “There is no evidence that the Famine played any part in the history of Belfast.” Despite Unionist objections (with the honorable exception of the Progressive Unionist Party) a beautiful stained glass window was eventually installed in the City Hall, although relatively few people – including Belfast residents – know of its existence. So what was the impact of the Great Hunger on the north? The towns of Belfast, Lurgan and Ballymena, which were part of the prosperous “linen triangle,” all suffered severely. Workers in the local linen mills traditionally ate potatoes, so the blight deprived them of their usual foodstuff. Moreover, the potato failure coincided with an industrial downswing, leaving thousands unemployed. Government relief in the north proved to be no more efficient than relief in the south in coping with the crisis. By February 1847, for example, mortality in the Lurgan workhouse equaled levels in the most impoverished workhouses in County Cork. In the predominantly Protestant district of Ballymacarrett in Belfast, privately funded soup kitchens had been operating since 1846. By 1847, 12,000 people were receiving food rations from these establish64 IRISH AMERICA JUNE / JULY 2015
ments every day, representing more than 60 percent of the population. The distress was so severe that Ballymacarrett was likened to Skibbereen, a small town in west Cork, that had become the unwitting barometer of extreme suffering – and that suffering was being replicated in all parts of Ireland. Mortality was so great in Belfast that the town’s cemeteries were overflowing with dead bodies. Dr. Drew, a leading Anglican clergyman, described their condition as “shameful to any Christian community.” Moreover, the usual rites of burial were no longer being observed. Following a visit to the Shankill cemetery – then and now located in the heartland of Protestant Belfast – Dr. Drew wrote: “A few days since I turned away in disgust when I observed the manner in which the bones and skulls were thrown up and about and in which the spade was stuck into the coffins and dead bodies which had seemingly been but a short time deposited.” In July 1847, relief provided by the government peaked, with more than three million people receiving free rations of soup every day. For Orangemen, this was the month of their annual Twelfth of July processions. The Belfast Chronicle chastised the Orange Order for wanting to march as usual, pointing out: “… in every town and village and cluster of cottages, death is busy with his victims, and shall we hear, as though in wilful mockery of these solemn judgments, the air ringing with merry music, and the voice of triumph and jubilee, when thousands of our fellowcreatures are perishing of disease and want?” The Rev. Hartley Hodson, chaplain to the Orange Order, also urged restraint, asking: “How many, alas, of your flags have but too recently enwrapped the dead? Suffer then the days of their mourning to be ended before you drag them forth to help in an untimely mirth. What one of your lodges is unbroken by death, unstricken by disease, unreached by affliction? Nay, where is the house that has escaped?” The local Orange lodges decided that the processions should go ahead, but acknowledged the suffering of their community by agreeing that no music would be played. Statistics of mortality and emigration are often used as indicators of suffering during the Great Hunger. While they cannot convey the cultural or psychological loss endured by the Irish people, they provide a crude measure of the enormity of the tragedy. The 1851 census records a population loss of 16 percent for the province of Ulster, while Connacht and Munster lost 20 percent, and Leinster, 15 percent. Clearly, no part of Ireland and no tradition was untouched by the Great Hunger. IA
TOP: The little-known stained glass window commemorating the Great Hunger in Belfast City Hall.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Professor Christine Kinealy is Director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University. She is author (with Gerard McAtasney) of The Hidden Famine: Hunger, Poverty and Sectarianism in Belfast (Pluto Press, 2000), and an editor of Irish Hunger and Migration: Myth, Memory and Memorialization (Quinnipiac University Press, 2015).
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The Road to Bright City
photo album | the hynes family
John B. Hynes, Mayor of Boston (first row center, with hat in hand), outside O'Dea's Hotel in Loughrea, Co. Galway with his uncle, Thomas Hynes (first row, third from right). On October 17, 1953, Mayor Hynes received a Civic Reception from the Loughrea Town Commissioners.
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y grandfather John Bernard “Barney” Hynes and his brother Thomas J. Hynes emigrated from Loughrea, Galway, Ireland to Boston, Massachusetts in 1875. They were in their early teens. Barney got a job with the Elevated Railroad Company, where he worked for 40 years and moonlighted at night singing, mostly at Irish wakes. Tom went to Harvard where he spent countless hours on the athletic fields – as the groundskeeper. Tom managed to buy a rooming house on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge and actually made enough money to return to Ireland where he bought a pub and a farm in Loughrea. Barney had five children: Tom, Sr., my father, born in 1895; John B., born in 1898; and later Mary, Jimmy, and Joe. For the first generation born in the U.S., it was work and a hard-scrabble education. For my father, John B., and Joe, college at night after a full day’s work led to civil service work at City Hall, the Parks Department, and the Courts. When Mayor James Michael Curley went to jail in 1948, John B. Hynes, then City Clerk, was appointed mayor. (The president of the city council should have been mayor pro tem, but he was under indictment.) Following his five-month imprisonment, Curley returned to office. In his book, I’d Do it Again, he wrote: “I returned to my desk at city hall the day after Thanksgiving and relieved Johnny Hynes, the tem-
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porary mayor during my absence. In two hours I received sixty persons in my office and found jobs for them. Hynes was visibly upset when I told the press I had accomplished more in five hours than he had in five months, and his resentment deepened to the extent that he decided to run against me in the next mayoralty campaign. When I heard this, I drank a toast to him at a city hall luncheon and said, ‘Johnny can have my job any time,’ I said. ‘Whenever I quit.’” Hynes beat Curley by 13,595 votes in a bitterly-fought campaign and served three consecutive terms from 1950 to 1960. One of the few home movies we have in color is Mayor Hynes doing an Irish jig in our living room at a family party. Notable in the film is the blue smoke and brown whiskey glasses. Growing up as a kid in West Roxbury, my Irish heritage was deeply influenced by the neighbors with families of five, six, and seven kids. Mrs. Burns baking Irish bread on Saturdays and Mrs. O’Connell going off to 6 o’clock mass every morning set a standard that did not go unnoticed. When my father died in 1949, leaving a widow and five children, the extended Irish on both sides of the family tree were always there to lend their support. In my generation, there was a transition to private Catholic schools and colleges. My older brother, John B. (“Jack”) went to Notre Dame where his study was interrupted by WWII. In 1944, while flying a B-17 over Germany, he was shot down. He survived P.O.W. camp and returned to graduate from Notre Dame. Today, John B. Hynes, Jr., (the son of Mayor John B.) is the elder statesman of the clan. Also a Notre Dame graduate, he has had a distinguished career as a journalist and T.V. newscaster. His son, John B. Hynes III, a Harvard graduate, is focusing on the development of the Seaport Square 24-acre site, which is to be completed within this decade. From impoverished beginnings and no education, to night school and elite colleges (the Hynes family has multiple degrees from Boston College, Notre Dame, Harvard, Emmanuel, Regis, Middlebury and M.I.T.), we have seen the evolution of our family from blue-collar laborers to civil servants, to politics and law, to distinguished careers in media, business, science, education, and real estate. God bless America. – Thomas Hynes, Boston, MA
Editor’s Note: Tom Hynes is co-chairman and CEO of Collier International’s Boston office, a full-service commercial real estate firm. He is a former Business 100 Keynote Speaker.
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