arts and culture
« Previous Entries Next Entries »An Post stops service aimed at emigrant market, encourages immigrants to write home
Friday, March 9th, 2007An Post says declining emigration is the reason that the postal service will not produce its St Patrick’s Day cards this year. The Irish Independent reports that a spokesperson called the move “a sign of the times”, adding:
We introduced the cards in 1984 at a time when emigration was very high in Ireland. Sales and distribution followed the emigrant trail at the time. Over the 1990s and since 2000, there has been a very definite and steady decline in sales.An Post is not in the card business but this was our annual foray into greeting cards. It’s a commercial decision.
In recent years, sales in no way cover the outlay of production costs, marketing and distribution to upwards of 1,400 post offices around the country,
Instead, the comapny will concentrate on encouraging immigrants to send cards home on their national holidays. Post offices will remind customers to send cards for such holidays as America’s Independence Day and China’s National Day on October first.
An Post will not produce these cards, however – perhaps the nation’s holiday card makers will step up their production of international holiday cards?
Self-proclaimed "plastic Paddy" weighs in on rugby controversy
Saturday, February 24th, 2007The Irish Times carries a letter today regarding the rugby match between England and Ireland this evening at Croke Park. Much has been made over the controversial matter of “God Save the Queen” at the stadium, which was the scene of a massacre of 14 innocent people by British paramilitaries in 1920. Dr Richard Lanigan writes from Surrey, England to say that he was the grandfather of Dick Lanigan, who stood
beside Mick Hogan for a team photograph moments before Hogan was shot dead in that travesty.
He goes on to say, however,
On Saturday Grandad would also recall that England gave his son and many other people a living when the Irish Republic could not provide work for the m in the 1950s and 1960s. I spent many happy times with Grandad when my parents broke up in the 1960s and he never commented that his grandson considered himself to be English back then. Today his great-grandchildren have an English mother and a “plastic Paddy”
for a father.If he were alive, I am sure he would be cheering on the Irish with the rest of the family, hoping sportsmen can set an example where politicians have failed.
The letter was favourably commented on during RTE’s morning show on Saturday.
Read the letter at the Irish Times website.
"The Country Boy" tours nation with 1950s emigration tale
Monday, February 19th, 2007The Country Boy, a play written by John Murphy in 1959, is on tour around Ireland. The Irish Times calls it “a gentle, old-fashioned hymn to the Irish emigrant, a theme which, five years later, would receive a more sophisticated and cutting-edge treatment in Brian Friel’s ‘Philadelphia, Here I Come!’”.
The play tells the story of a Mayo-born emigrant who returns home for a visit, fifteen years after he left for New York. On his visit home, his troubles are revealed, including alcoholism, unhappy marriage and regret.
The play is getting good reviews and after its opening in Armagh, is touring Virginia, Coleraine, Roscommon, Belfast, Cookstown, Dun Laoghaire and Tallaght.
See a review at Roscrea Online.
Diaspora centre a future tourist attraction?
Tuesday, January 16th, 2007Minister for Tourism John O’Donoghue has suggested he would support an tourist attraction that would tell Ireland’s emigration story.
“I would accept there is a case for a new attraction such as an Irish diaspora centre, based on something like the Ellis Island museum in New York”, he is quoted as saying in the Sunday Times. Mr O’Donoghue made the remarks as he discussed raising Ireland’s tourism potential through the development of cultural and tourism centres.
Read the entire article at the Sunday Times website.
Flight of the Earls commemorated
Friday, January 12th, 2007
The four-hundredth anniversary of the Flight of the Earls, one of the seminal events in the early history of emigration from Ireland is being commemorated this year. The Flight of the Earls, of course, marked the end of the old Gaelic aristocracy. Hugh O’Neill and Rory O’Donnell, fearing arrest by the new Lord Deputy of Ireland, fled to the Continent along with ninety of their followers. They set sail from Rathmullen, Co Donegal, and their departure cleared the way for the Plantation of Ulster.
The men intended to go to Spain, where they hoped to gain support from the King and then return to liberate Ireland. They never returned. Many of the men became officers in the Spanish Army, while Rory O’Donnell and Hugh O’Neill both died in Rome – O’Donnell in 1608 and O’Neill in 1616.
The Flight of the Earls is enormously important for those interested in emigration history. Dr John McCavitt says in his Flight of the Earls website:
Perhaps the most important aspect of the Flight of the Earls for people of Irish descent, and for countries that the Irish migrated to, is that the Flight effectively inaugurated the Irish diaspora. The early seventeenth century witnessed Irish men and women dispersed as far afield as the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Newfoundland, even the Amazon (O’Briens). As a direct result of the Flight, Irish soldiers, the original ‘wild geese’, saw service in Sweden, Denmark, Poland and Russia.
The official website for the commemoration was launched in Donegal last night. Events will include a conference in February; the production of “Making History”, Brian Friel’s play about the flight; a history conference in May; a summer school and more.
See the Flight of the Earls Commemoration website.
Aisling Center’s book a sell-out hit
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007New York’s Aisling Irish Community Center’s collection of memoirs written by Irish immigrants who arrived between 1927 and 1964 has become a hit. One local paper calls “While Mem’ry Brings Us Back Again” the “‘it’ gift” of the holiday season.
The Journal News reports that the first edition of 1,500 copies has already sold out, with orders coming from as far away as Massachusetts, Florida, California and Ireland. A second printing is due in January.
The paper quotes Aisling Board of Directors member John Mooney, who says little had generation, and they’ve laid the groundwork of first- and second-generation immigrants to become so successful,” he said.been written about this generation of immigrants. “This was sort of the silent
On a personal note, your correspondent ordered the book as a gift for her father, a Kilkennyman who left for New York in 1963 – only to find he had not only already read the book but had also bought three copies to give to friends.
Read the Journal News article.
Read the original post on the project.
Order the book from the Aisling Irish Community Center.
« Previous Entries Next Entries »