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« Previous Entries Next Entries »Tradition informs work of Chicago emigrant
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007A heartwarming tale about an Irish immigrant in Chicago: Paddy Homan, a 32-year-old Cork-born tenor, uses his musical talents to cheer the elderly and disabled clients he visits in his day job as a social worker.
“We all love him”, says 91-year-old Lilly Allen in the report, by Judith Graham in a recent issue of the Chicago Tribune.
On Mr Homan’s visits to his clients, he not only checks to make sure that they are being adequately cared for by his colleagues at Wellspring Personal Care; this director of client care services uses his talents as a tenor and bodhran player to reach out to them in a different way. His colleagues praise his work:
“I saw right away that he had what we look for in social work — the essence of everything we do — the ability to connect,” said Sheila McMackin, president of the home care agency where Homan now works as director of client services.
Particularly for people with dementia or mental illness, “there’s very little sharing that goes on,” said Dr. Steven Fox, Wellspring’s medical director. “All that people will hear from professionals is ‘I have a plan for you.’ Not, ‘I’d like to spend time with you and learn more about you,’ the message Paddy gives.”
The report also carries a video, in which Mr Homan describes how his work is informed by home tradition:
Particularly in the wintertime, not many people call to people’s houses. Where I come from back home, there was a tradition of people calling to each other’s house . Now in some small way – even though I’m in a professional capacity – I somehow see it that I’m sort of carrying on that tradition as well.
I’ve ways been singing, and where I come from back home there’s a great tradition of singing. But there’s something – music can reach beyond any barriers that one might have. You might think you’re going into a home to say hello, you might sing a song and you’re totally going down a different route. And that’s nice.
Read the news article on the Chicago Tribune website.
Watch the video on the Chicago Tribune website.
Dail calls for bilateral agreement on US undocumented
Wednesday, November 7th, 2007TDs from all parties have united to call for a bilateral agreement between the US and Ireland to legalise the undocumented Irish in the US.
The motion was proposed by Fine Gael. Fine Gael spokesperson on community, rural and Gaeltacht affairs Michael Ring said Ireland had a responsibility toward the undocumented, adding,
“The situation facing undocumented Irish in the US has become more precarious since 9/11, with many of them unable to obtain driving licences, travel to or from Ireland, even at the most upsetting times when they need to attend a family funeral.”
Minister for State for Foreign Affairs Michael Kitt said that the Government has said it would explore all possible alternative options in the event that comprehensive reform legislation, which would have provided a path to citizenship for all of the 11 million undocumented in the US, failed.
Those options included reciprocal initiatives for young people, as well as non-immigrant visa exchanges between Ireland and the US.
Some sources say, however, that there are difficulties that would prevent reciprocal work visas from covering the undocumented.
 Read the Dail debate on the Oireachtas.ie website.
Immigration scholar retires
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007One of the leading scholars of Irish immigration to the US is retiring. Charles Fanning, who founded the Irish and Irish immigration Studies programme at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, is leaving teaching after 14 years there, reports the Southern Illinoisan.
Dr Fanning has written and edited more than ten books, including “Exiles of Erin: Nineteenth-Century Irish-American Fiction�, and “The Irish voice in America�, both of which won awards. He began his academic career with a doctoral dissertation entitled, “Finley Peter Dunne and Mr Dooley: the Chicago Years�. Mr Dooley, a creation of Chicago-based Dunne, was a fictitious Irish born-bartender. He says that he will continue to write, and is planning a work of fiction as his next effort.
The new director of the Irish Studies programme will be creative writing professor Beth Lordan.
Read the report in the Daily Illinoisan.
J-1ers go west as traditional spots lose pull
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007California is the big draw this summer for Irish students working in the US summer on J-1 visas, according to journalist Carole Coleman. She reports on RTÉ that there is a growing trend for students to go to the western state, as numbers fall from the traditional favourites of New York, Boston and New Jersey.
Bernadette Cashman of Irish Outreach San Diego says that 2,500 J-1 students arrived this summer; the group contacted employers in advance to and provided orientation for hundreds of the students.
While many are attracted to the sunny weather and the beaches, the city’s proximity to the Mexican border is another big draw: students who are under 21 can buy drink legally in Mexico. High rents and competition from other European students in many of the traditionally Irish areas are serving as additional disincentives.
In a similar vein, the student-run Daily Californian carries an article on the Irish students spending the summer in Berkeley. Journalist Sonja Sharp quotes an area employer as saying the city has become “In the past three or four years, Berkeley’s just become a Mecca� for Irish students A 2005 USIT survey showed that 35% of students wound up in California.
The RTÉ report mentions that some students are having trouble with the wait for their social security numbers. The Emerald Isle Immigration Center’s Padraig Nolan says that some students in the New York area have been forced into debt and even gone home.
See the news stories:
ACIS 2008 National Conference: 16-19 April, 2008; Iowa
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007The American Conference for Irish Studies will host its 2008 conference in St Ambrose University, Davenport, Iowa. The Conference theme is “The Global Irish: Conflict, Coexistence and Community.”
Organisers are inviting 20-minute papers on any Irish Studies topic, particularly those that address how the Irish both in Ireland and abroad have endured and interpreted their experiences of conflict, coexistence and community.
Presenters must be members of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Please send one-page abstracts in .pdf or .doc format to Dr Ryan Dye at DyeRyanD@sau.edu by December 1, 2007. Include your name, institutional affiliation and contact informationin that document, as well as the body of your email.
Visit the conference website.
Visit the American Conference for Irish Studies website.
Book highlights Irish contribution to US slang
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007Snazzy, slugger, balony, lollygag: all of these words entered the American vernacular thanks to the Irish speakers who migrated to the US in the last century, according to a ground-breaking new work.
Jack Cassidy has recently published “How the Irish Invented Slang: the Secret Language of the Crossroad”. The book has received substantial attention in Ireland in recent weeks, and noted Irish American essayist and novelist Peter Quinn has weighed in on the subject with a review posted on the publisher’s website.
Quinn lauds Cassidy’s “momentous” revelations, noting that his discoveries have made a “hugely significant breakthrough in our ability to understand the origins of vital parts of the American vernacular”. Quinn continues:
He has solved the mystery of how, after centuries of intense interaction, a people as verbally agile and inventive as the Irish could seemingly have made almost no impression on English, a fact that H.L. Mencken, among other students of the language, found baffling. What was missing, it turns out, wasn’t a steady penetration of Irish into English, but someone equipped with Cassidy’s genius – a unique combination of street smarts and scholarship, of memory, intuition, and intellect – who could discern and decipher the evidence.
Read the review on the Counterpunch website.
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