Cletus Is Coming!

I had a really nice e-mail exchange with Cletus McBride the other day. He's agreed to submit to the torment of one of our "Five Questions" pieces on the site. Cletus is one of the most popular Irish performers in the area. And evidently, out of the area, too. For the next several weeks, he's playing a gig at Molly Malone's in St. Thomas, mon.

I was interested in chatting with Cletus because my friend Denise recently gave me his CD, "Corktown," which features his tune of the same name -- a neat little history lesson about Irish immigrants and how they came to take their place in Philadelphia. Denise and I both liked it a lot.

We expect to post Cletus's interview -- along with the tune "Corktown" -- on the site later this week.

In the meantime, we also had a really great interview with Dr. James Murphy, program adviser for Villanova's Irish Studies concentration. I mention it because it just didn't get the traffic we had hoped it would. It should. Denise and I were really impressed wth his insights into the popularity of Irish studies, particularly among the generation just coming up. His responses to our questions were very thoughtful. Anyone interested in things Irish -- anyone who really wants to dig a bit deeper -- ought to check it out.

I'm putting the finishing touches on a Web package about Peadar O'Loughlin and Ronan Browne's appearance at the Irish Center Thursday night. Currently, there's just a photo essay (see it on our home page). But we expect to post video and sound files as well in coming days. Stay tuned. Video's new for us, and I'll be honest -- I don't think we've quite figured it out yet. But bear with us as we learn. I'm sure we'll improve.

Finally, thanks to writer Joe Barron and photographer Bob Raines of the Springfield Sun for the lovely article about us. We're very grateful.

Jeff

Check out Irish Philadelphia's Genealogy Pages

We call it "The Lazy Person's Guide to Genealogy." And no, you probably can't do all of your digging for roots online, but you can sure do a lot.

Denise Foley has written a really succinct, useful little guide. I think we new that it would be interesting to people. But we didn't know it would blow the doors off our fledgling Web site. So it's pretty cool.

We're still plugging along, trying to provide what we think is a helpful service to Irish Americans throughout the Delaware Valley. It started with this blog, but I think Denise and I both realized right away that a blog alone was never going to cut it.

We've also just posted a new travel section. Not as much there as there is in the genealogy section, but we think that in time it could start to become as popular as genealogy.
Stay tuned. Much more to come.