CenterPieceNY

To kick off Season Two, host Paul Finnegan sat down with well-known Irish comedian, author, broadcaster,  MC and podcaster Colm O'Regan.   Of course, the marvels of the Internet allowed both chairs to be separated by the Atlantic Ocean.   The topic? This podcast itself, and podcasting in general.   

Have a listen... and keep an ear out for the rattle of a cicada in the background now and then. Loads of energy after 17 years of dormancy! 

You can find out more about Colm O'Regan on his website: colmoregan.com

A thanks to Purple-Planet and the group Sláinte, of Tacoma, Washington, via freemusicarchive.org for the music.

Learn more about the work of our friends in Galway City, Ireland, at the Celtic Irish American Academy.

Website; CenterPieceNY.com
FaceBook/Twitter: @CenterPieceNY

We have two guests this time around, young thirty-somethings and brothers, Peter and Bryan Fahy, originally from Salthill in Ireland's Galway City, who came to live in New York just only in the last ten years, but are in the States now for the long haul.

But we also have a third guest: the City of The Tribes itself–we are taking a deep 'Blackrock' dive into Galway City, which also happens to be the hometown of Paul Finnegan, the presenter and producer of CenterPieceNY, so this one is close to home. 

We investigate whether Galway lives up to being a city, despite a population size that pales in comparison to other great cities.

So, is it a city?

Is it diverse enough? Cosmopolitan enough?  Complex enough? Intense enough?

You bet it is.

Does it have undercurrents, and underbellies? Does it operate on many frequencies, some hidden, from deep local, to hinterland, to national, to international?

Does Galway have the heartbeat of a city?

You bet it does...

But don't just take our word for it, let the Fahy brothers convince you!

And as Peter and Bryan have discovered, Galway City is the perfect training ground for life in the big, big city of New York.

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A special thanks to our contributors for this episode:

• Lynda Tonery, of Riverside, in Galway, and founder and chief strategist at Treyeo.
• Maddison Rhoa, American author on the rise, who studied in Galway and then simply had to write a novel about it. You can learn more about Maddison, and read some of her writings, here.
• Vinny Warren, of Dun Na Mara, Renmore, Galway, and big-time advertising 'influencer'.

And

A big thanks to Shattered Ego, via David Comer,  for these tracks:
Winter, Big Boy, Kids and Who Cares.
(Shattered Ego are now defunct, but there's always talk of a comeback tour!)

And a couple of Shout Outs:

• St. Pats  Bar and Grill, in Manhattan - Peter Fahy's place.
•  Celtic Hair Design, in Maspeth, Queens.

 
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For more info on our sponsor, and the work of Brian Fahy (aka Dad), visit Celtic Irish American Academy.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @CenterPieceNY.  Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.  And kindly give us a rating, and a review there, or here.

Thanks again to Purple Planet, for our intro/outro music, and then some. And FreeSound.org for some of those amazing sound effects.

This concludes Season 1 of CenterPieceNY.  We'll be back soon, lots more great people and stories in the pipeline.  Sign up for updates so you don't miss out.   Don't stray too far!

Legalizing the Irish.

In the days before Monday October 14th 1991, thousands converged on a post office in Merrifield, Virginia. They had come from throughout the United States and represented countries the world over. They all had one thing in common. They were undocumented immigrants, and by being there, at that post office in Virginia, at that time, they had a real shot at securing a green card, and coming out of the shadows in America.

It was the very first running of the Diversity program, designed to give legal status to some citizens of countries adversely affected by a 1965 immigration law. Among the long list of countries that were to benefit from this program was Poland, Italy and... Ireland.

The rules: applications had to arrive by mail at the State Department during a one week window, not before or after, starting 12.01AM on that fateful Monday. And green card winners were to be selected at random; it was a lottery.

But there was a twist. Each person could submit as many applications as they could muster. The more submitted, the more likely to  be picked from the heap at the State Department. Many had painstakingly prepared hundreds, even thousands, of applications. There was no online, only paper forms, and pens, and envelopes, and stamps.

And better to  get in early too, so the plan was to mail applications as close as possible to the door of the State Department in DC, i.e. at that mailbox at that post office in Virginia. Except a mailbox couldn't handle the deluge of paper that was about to land on it. Knowing this, postal workers at Merrifield had put large baskets in front of their facility.  Even then, it was at times chaotic, even dangerous, as the crowd surged forward, throwing envelopes over the heads of others into the baskets, in what resembled a ticker-tape parade.   

Merrifield was also the culmination of a David vs Goliath struggle–to solve the problem of 50,000 Irish undocumented–for the Irish Immigration Reform Movement (IIRM), a group that started with young Irish activists in 1987 in Queens, New York. 

And did they ever.  By 1990, the IIRM had become a national, powerful grassroots movement that lobbied for, and secured, 40% of all Diversity green cards for the Irish, 16,000 in number, in each of the program's first three years. It put a green card, basically, in the hand of any Irish person that wanted one.  This set-aside for the Irish came to be known as the Morrison Visas, after then Congressman Bruce Morrison.

The IIRM had but one regret, the bounty was temporary. They foresaw it would soon be near impossible again for an Irish person to gain legal status in the US.  And so it is today.

But Merrifield was a shining moment for a generation of Irish that never expected to have to leave its native shore, only to be treated as outcasts, in America of all places.

Sean Benson, from Co. Kildare, the centerpiece of this episode, was one of these 80s Irish, joining the IIRM at the outset, playing a leading role in it, and being pivotal in the early years of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center, the IIRM's social service wing.

Hear Sean's telling of the IIRM's story, and of his life in the decades since.

Further reading:
Legalizing The Irish
Washington Post
LA Times

For more info on our sponsor visit Celtic Irish American Academy.

Facebook, Twitter @CenterPieceNY.  Ratings and reviews here.

Thanks Purple Planet, for the music!

Dubliner Susan McKeown has made a career in music.  This is no small feat, and tells us she is an accomplished singer and innovative songwriter. And now, through the Cuala Foundation, she's become a social entrepreneur in the arts. 

And when you add to the mix that she is also a mother who single-handedly raised her daughter, you're learning about someone who revels in taking on the world when the odds may not be in her favor. In short, she's a warrior.  A Celtic warrior.   

With her dream of making great music, Susan arrived in New York in the early 1990s–landing in a city that could still hear the 1970s echoes of its own decline, a metropolis still awaiting the turnaround that has since restored it to former glories. 

And make great music she did, connecting with kindred spirits on Manhattan's grungy Lower East Side, finding a home at the Sin-é café, an Irish hot-spot for great underground performances during this time.

Building on her formative experiences in this historic patch along Manhattan's eastern flank, Susan has gone on to record many albums, and collaborate with many first-rate performers, on stage and in the studio.

The Lower East Side is famous for its part in the story of America's melting pot, when large numbers of German, Italian, Jewish and Irish immigrants lived in close, crowded quarters.  This concoction of traditions has morphed into a fertile ground for a diverse creativity that lives on to this day.  So it was no surprise that Susan was influenced by much more than her beloved Irish heritage, and explains her extensive work with a Jewish klezmer group, which led to her winning a prestigious Grammy in 2007.   

The early loss of her own mother shaped her, and her unique musical style.  Changes to music's business model, along with being a witness to mental ill-health in those she loved, has led her to implement new models of care for artists, through her most recent venture, the Cuala Foundation.

And, of course, there's the motherhood thing, which has been central to her identity for the past two decades. She raised her daughter, and raised her well, in the turbulence of a performing artist's life on the road.  Step back and give that a moment's contemplation!

For more info on just some of those mentioned in this episode, check out these links:
Veronica Dunne
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Sin-é Café
Jeff Buckley
Johnny Cunningham
Cathie Ryan
Klezmatics
On Holy Ground - trailer
Barry Reynolds

For more info on our sponsor visit Celtic Irish American Academy.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @CenterPieceNY.  Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.  And kindly give us a rating, and a review there, or here.

Thanks to Purple Planet, for our intro/outro music.  And thanks to Susan McKeown for her music in this episode. 

Pat Lally is a Galwayman.

He hails from the county in Ireland that is the second largest of that country's famed set of thirty two.  And that county is Galway.

County Galway is named for Ireland's famous, most western city, Galway City, which sits on the shores of beautiful Galway Bay, itself famed in song, with the Aran Islands strung across its entrance like three precious emeralds in a necklace.  And on those weather-beaten islands, early settlers brought forth elaborate stone forts from the bare rocks.

Galway City divides its county into two halves, and is a gateway to an area called Connemara, the outermost edge of Europe's shrinking Celtic fringe.   Lying to the west of the city, it is a rocky and mountainous region, of immense scenic beauty.  It is known as a Gaeltacht area, where the Irish language has been spoken on a daily basis for centuries, and whose inhabitants speak it with a blas–with a rich and distinct flavor, that is.

To the east of Galway City is where Pat comes from.  Later episodes of this podcast will consider the wonders of the city but for this episode the focus is on that other side of the county, East Galway, as Pat's origin story.

East Galway is the more fertile half.  Farming has always been a staple of the local economy, and the social order has long been associated with land, be it the Anglo-Irish or the native Irish Catholics.  And so it is that Pat was raised on a farm.
 
And even though Pat left Ireland for New York many years ago, he finds East Galway's history and traditions endlessly fascinating.  He is an authority and a storyteller for the region, before his time and since.

In this episode you'll hear of everything from a pivotal battle that put an end to the last shred of resistance the Irish could muster against William of Orange in 1691, letting Gaelic Ireland fall into a long winter.  You'll hear of Pat's days in boarding school at a famous Galway school, the Galway sports world, and of nature in Galway, from the cuckoo to the foxhunts.  And then on to his life and family in New York, and the challenges to his faith, and of his leadership in New York's Galway Association.

And just as everyone of a certain age in Dublin has their own personal U2 story, Pat, like many in Ireland in 1963, has one for President Kennedy!

For more info on our two sponsors in this episode, check out the Celtic Irish American Academy and the Julien Dubuque International Film Festival.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @CenterPieceNY. Visit us at CenterPieceNY.com.

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.  And kindly give us a rating, and a review.

Thanks to Purple Planet, for the background music, and to Dr. Timothy O'Donnell and Sons for their rendition of The Galway Shawl, and also to FreeSound for the sound FX !

Few neighborhoods, if any,  in New York City have gone through as many upheavals over the last 60 years, as has Bushwick in Brooklyn.  For an area that covers a mere two and a half square miles, the sea-changes it has witnessed during this period, both economic and demographic, have been massive.  And its residents have lived through times of great urban peril.

But Bushwick has remained a community. 

How it has retained its distinct and unique identity through so much turmoil, is due in no small part to one man, laboring as he does in the fields of the Lord, a de facto missionary among peoples that are often 'othered', providing his neighborhood a link to the past, and a path to the future. 

That man is Monsignor James Kelly, since 1960 a priest and pastor in Bushwick's St. Brigid's parish.  

And that man is an Irishman, encapsulating the finest, less-heralded, stereotypes of his people.  He is compassionate, funny, welcoming, erudite and above all in his Irishness, the possessor of a keen sense of justice. 

No doubt it was inevitable  that CenterPieceNY would at some point feature a Catholic priest.  But this priest, Fr. Jim Kelly, is special.  He is a natural-born priest, with a jolliness and a joie-de-vivre which sharply contradicts the world of hurt in which he moves, while at the same time complimenting his keen intellect. 

The Gospel calls him only in the direction of social justice, and he follows it there.  When obstacles arise he overcomes them–not by beating them, but by joining them. When the criminal courts became adversarial to his charges, he became a lawyer and legally represented them; when the game switched to immigration court, he went there too; when languages became barriers between him and those in need, he learned them, and became fluent in them. 

There are many that have benefitted from Fr. Kelly's help in the course of six decades, and he often rises to the level of sainthood among them.  He is continuously sought out, this Padre For The Poor.  They say if you want something done, give it to a busy person, and Fr. Kelly, in his 80s, will therefore always be at center of action in his Bushwick office.

In the concrete whirlwind that is Bushwick, his mind often travels to his peaceful childhood home in Adare, County Limerick, in Ireland, and onto the playing fields where his beloved and indescribable game of hurling is played as if life itself depended on it.

No wonder he quotes the line "the savage loves his native shore"  from The Irishman by James Orr.

This episode was not taped in front of a live audience. Have a listen and you'll get it.  Learn of the Burning of Bushwick in 1977, and of Fr. Kelly’s adventures with the late Bishop Eammon Casey,  how St. Brigid's parish got its name, and lots more!

Special thanks to siblings Richard and Princess at District 3 Youth and Adult Center, for helping me with my interview of Fr. Kelly, and for all their hard work.

For more info on our two sponsors in this episode, check out the Celtic Irish American Academy and Sober St. Patrick's Day.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @CenterPieceNY. Visit us at CenterPieceNY.com. 

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.  And kindly give us a rating, and a review.

Thanks to Purple Planet, for the music, and also to David Phillips for his rendition of Danny Boy!

Perhaps it came about from the confines of her upbringing, and the little say she had in decisions that greatly affected her life, but Peggy Cooney has a rebel's soul.  And as with all the rebellious, she has come to negotiate the world on her terms only.

Peggy who has turned 90 years of age in the midst of our great pandemic, was raised in County Meath in Ireland.  Her county is often called Royal Meath, so-named, not for those who have sat on throne of England, but because, at Slane, it once held the ancient seat of the Gaelic High Kings of Ireland.

Peggy spent her childhood in a village called Dunshaughlin, and if you harbor any hope of pronouncing it correctly you'll need to listen to her say it, as she unfolds the stories of her life.  She was happy there with her brother and sister, but along the way she found herself unwillingly in Tuam, County Galway, and later, again against her will, in the post-war ruins of the city of Coventry, in England.

But America, now that choice was all Peggy's.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @CenterPieceNY or visit us at CenterPieceNY.com.   

Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.  And kindly give us a rating, and/or write a review.

And thanks to Purple Planet, and the group Sláinte, of Tacoma, Washington, via freemusicarchive.org, for the music!  

John Houlihan is a native of Ringsend, a fishing village in Ireland,  absorbed long ago into the great city of Dublin, the nation's capital.  But Ringsend still retains its unique customs and traditions, and a flavor of a Dublin of a by-gone era, which John exemplifies.

John came to America in 1970, and has made his home among the Italians of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.  John's working life in New York was mostly spent navigating its vast, and famous, 24-hour subway system as a train conductor–as good a place as any to keep a finger on the pulse of a town that never sleeps.  He witnessed much in his time in Kerryman Mike Quill's union, the Transit Workers of America, including a tragic Tuesday morning in September, in the year 2001.

Listen to John as he tells his stories of his Dublin childhood, and of his adult life in New York, delivered  in one of Ireland's most unique accents. Learn of his passion and knowledge of sports, and of his singing community.  Hear tales of the many marathons he ran, and his dedicated admiration for a founder of the American Navy, Wexford man Commodore John Barry.  And you'll get to hear John's fine tenor voice too.

Thanks to Purple Planet for the music, and to Donal O'Shaughnessy for the sample from his version of Dublin In The Rare Old Times.  And to John himself for his rendition of O Holy Night, perfect for the season that is in it.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @CenterPieceNY or visit us at CenterPieceNY.com.  Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts.  And kindly give us a rating, or write a review!

John McGurrin was a mere lad of twelve years when his family upped stakes in his native County Cavan, Ireland, and headed for New York, unlike many Irish immigrants who arrive on the shores of the United States as young, single adults. It was 1955 and he had his whole life ahead of him, a life that brought him and his family great tragedy and hardship in his adopted country, but also great opportunity and excitement. It's been a life where he's travelled the world over, and a life he continues to live to the fullest, sixty five years later.  It's been a life where he's helped many, of all backgrounds, in all sorts of difficulty, in his work and as a volunteer.  He has embraced the cultures of many lands, and yet his love for his own Irish culture is deep.  He is both outward looking, a cosmopolitan, but remains true in his heart to Ireland, a Hibernian.  Listen and learn the rhythm of John's life through his stories.

And given the season that is in it, and following the year the world has had. we include a special message about self-care, from Rebecca Skedd, CEO of Solace House.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @CenterPieceNY or visit us at CenterPieceNY.com.  Be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks to Purple Planet, and the group Sláinte, of Tacoma, Washington, via freemusicarchive.org, for the music!