Ireland Journal
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Triple Liz Throw-down and Other Three Rivers Concert Highlights!
The annual evening concert of the Three Rivers Storytelling Festival was held at 8:00 p.m. on June 16th at the Sheraton in Athlone. Danielle Allison and Mary Dillon got the room set up and managed the door. Chas Moore and the SAI musicians played before and between stories. Liz Weir and Eddie Lenihan were the…
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Liz Weir’s Seventh Visit to Study Abroad Ireland
Liz Weir visited The Irish Storytelling Tradition as part of this year’s Three Rivers Storytelling Festival on Wednesday, June 15. She is the only teller who has visited my class every one of the seven summers I’ve been teaching in Study Abroad Ireland. It’s a tradition. She started off by talking to us about her…
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Second Stories
On Tuesday, June 14, we heard 15 of 20 stories of the second round. The numbers in parentheses refer to our on-going count for the summer. (37) Alison Vincent told Paddy Corcoran’s Wife from W.B. Yeats’ Fairy and Folktales of Ireland. (38) Sarah Stevens told The Brewery of Egg Shells, also from Yeats. (39) Nikki…
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Picking Up Speed
Last Monday, June 13, marked the “only-two-weeks-left” point in our experience and everything began to speed up. We were so busy that I didn’t have the time to write a single blog post. So, here it is Sunday, the 19th, and I’m going to spend the day catching up on laundry, paper grading, and blog…
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Presidential Pottery at Shannonbridge
I don’t know if you heard, but Barack Obama was in Ireland a couple of weeks ago. Just kidding! Wait until you see the t-shirts! My favorite shows Mr. Obama, of the Moneygall O’bamas, hoisting a pint of Guinness to his lips. Below the image it says “Tall, Dark, and Had Some.” This is a…
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Clints and Grykes – Cliffs and Gripes
First the gripes. Our driver for our day-long trip to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher was no Tom Kirwan. Tom, who is the Flagline bus driver we have for most of our field trips, is legendary for his driving skills. And although I doubt he would consider himself a tour guide, whenever he…
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Plugging the Festival
Thursday afternoon Danielle Allison and I stopped by the studios of Athlone Community Radio to be interviewed by Mairead O'Connor. Mairead hosts Athlone Today on weekdays from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. We talked about storytelling, the festival, and I told a story, all in 15 minutes. We were pleased to get to plug our big…
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Pat Speight Comes to Study Abroad Ireland
The Three Rivers Storytelling Festival brought Pat Speight to my class on Thursday, June 9th. All of my students were there, plus six of the remaining twelve in the program. I was very pleased that so many of them got to hear Pat – The Hat, as he brands himself. Speight is pronounced just like…
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More First Stories
Wednesday morning we heard the rest of the first stories told by students in The Irish Storytelling Tradition 2011. As with the first eight tellers, I was very impressed with how well the new tellers chose stories that fit their personalities, or revealed something about them we wouldn’t have known had they not told the…
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Clare’s Last Story Night
On Tuesday night, June 7th, Danielle Allison, Laura Rutherford, and I drove to Galway to attend Clare Murphy’s last Story Night. The event, which was also Story Night’s fifth birthday party, was held at The Blue Teapot Theatre on Munster Avenue. We arrived early, and Clare directed us around the corner to Kava, a fabulous…
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First Student Stories of 2011
Our entire class was devoted to telling stories today. Since many of our participants had been away over the weekend and all of them had been in Dublin yesterday we started off with personal stories. No surprise that my perspective is that the most significant souvenirs they will return with are the stories of…
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The Love Embrace of the Universe on a Quick Trip to Dublin
We took the students to Dublin for the bank holiday today. In all the previous years that I’ve participated in the program, we’ve spent the weekend closest to Bloom’s Day in Dublin. But this year we are taking our weekend excursion in Galway so we can visit Inish Mor and the Cliffs of…