O'Neill-Malcom Branch

The Irish book discussion group meets once a month. It meets on the first Monday evening of the month. Meetings commence at 7:00PM. Often the group meets at:

   The Four Provinces Restaurant ("Michael Collins" table),
   150 West Broad Street
   (at the intersection of Route 7 (Broad Street) and Route 29 (Washington Street),
   City of Falls Church, Virginia,
   (703)534-8999.

Meetings are also held at participants' residences and these meetings usually consist of a potluck dinner. Each month the group decides where the next month's meeting will be held. It is important that participants check each month to discover where the meeting is being held.

The group reads both fiction (novels, dramas, poetry and short stories) and nonfiction (history, political studies, sociological studies, biographies). The readings are suggested by participants and votes are held as to which of the suggested readings will actually be read by the group. The readings alternates so that one month the reading will be fiction, the next month nonfiction, the following month fiction and continuing in this manner throughout the year. Meetings are held twelve times a year. In general members will know approximately six months ahead of time which readings are to be discussed since the voting is done on a alternating quarterly basis. That is to say, one vote will be for the next three fiction readings and a second vote will be for the next three nonfiction readings. This method permits members to read ahead and to order their books from the source that is best for each member. This may include reserving a selection(s) from the public library. Also, if a participant misses one meeting, said participant knows which reading is scheduled for next month.

The current schedule is:
Monday, 5 January, 2004--"Rebels; the Irish Rising of 1916" by Peter de Rosa
Monday, 2 February, 2004--Fiction to be determined
Monday, 1 March, 2004--Saint Patrick's dinner/party/celebration; location to be determined
Monday, 5 April, 2004--Nonfiction to be determined
Monday, 3 May, 2004--Fiction to be determined
Monday, 7 June, 2004--Nonfiction to be determined

PLEASE NOTE: When the first Monday of the month is a federal holiday, the book group meets on the first Thursday.

Our Ellis Island/NYC trip is this coming weekend. I will have a report for you next week.

A second Irish book discussion group will soon begin meeting in the upper Montgomery County/Howard County area of Maryland.

PLEASE NOTE: Our July and August meetings will be cookouts held at Frances McCoy's complex at 7:00PM as usual. You are expected to bring your own beverage (s) and sidedish(es). Please advise me as to what you wish to have grilled for you. I will go to the supermarket the day of the meeting and purchase that which you wish to have grilled for you. We will split the cost of this purchase equally among those in attendance. May I please ask a favor of our grill orders this year? Please do NOT order elephant ear on a bun. Buns that size are very, very difficult to find.

Please coordinate with Frances what beverage(s) and sidedish(es) you will be bringing. You may contact Frances by email at famccoy@msn.com or by telephone at (703)528-4530.

In case of rain or otherwise inclement weather, Frances has a tarpaulin which we can use. We would need about four volunteers to hold it over the assembled group and volunteers would work in seven-hour shifts. Willing to volunteer to be a tarp holder-upper?

For more information or to make a suggestion or contribution,
please contact Ed Moran at Literature@ccenova.org

Two Recent, Notable Books on Irish America

In his 30 or so years in this country, Mick Moloney has had an impact on Irish-American music that rivals that of the great musician, tune collector, and commentator Francis O’Neill, the Chicago police chief of a century ago whose work preserved a significant swatch of Ireland’s musical patrimony. Moloney has carved out a different groove: as the primary producer for Green Linnet Records in its early days, he got the label off the ground while helping to establish new reputations and rescue the music of some nearly forgotten masters. At the same time, he launched his own impressive recording career, releasing a host of important albums, featuring his virtuosic playing on the tenor banjo and mandolin, as well as his accomplished singing. To top it all off, he received his doctorate ten years ago, writing a dissertation on the history of Irish music in America.

His latest production is a savory book entitled Far From the Shamrock Shore: The Story of Irish-American Immigration through Song (Crown, 2002; $32.50). In 14 enticingly illustrated short chapters, each rooted in a particular song, Moloney tells an abridged version of the story of the Irish in America. Bound into the book, and helping to justify the price, is a CD that includes all of the songs discussed. (There is a separately released CD, on the Shanachie label, called Far from the Shamrock Shore: The Irish-American Experience in Song, which is not quite the identical twin, but a close relation nonetheless, of the book’s CD.) It’s fair to say that Moloney has never been in finer voice than he is here, re-inventing each song with authority and feeling.

Moloney mines his 1992 dissertation to fill this book with a wealth of accessible knowledge and information, told in a direct and appealing way. Songs are morphing into all kinds of texts these days: just out, for example, are full-length “song biographies” of “White Christmas” and “Amazing Grace.” The gold standard in Irish-American music, when it comes to this new history-through-song genre, is William H.A. Williams’s ’Twas Only an Irishman’s Dream: The Image of Ireland and the Irish in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800-1920 (University of Illinois Press, 1996), a brilliant, readable study offering a comprehensive history of the Irish in America through song.

Far from the Shamrock Shore is inventively designed, with wonderful, eclectic illustrations, all contained in a 10”-square format. Its look closely resembles that of another excellent gift book, Journey of Hope: The Story of Irish Immigration to America (Chronicle Books, 2001; $24.95) by Kerby Miller, the dean of Irish immigration history, and his wife, Irish-born Patricia Mulholland Miller. The Millers distill a wealth of knowledge and research from earlier projects, including Kerby Miller’s widely influential 1985 study, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America. Where Moloney offers a music CD to bring his subject to life, the Millers fill Journey of Hope with tipped-in facsimiles of such documents as letters, maps, and a Famine-era eviction notice.

Both these books illustrate the way that the Internet and the multimedia environment in which we live have fundamentally altered book publishing. We have learned to expect our consumption of knowledge to be richer and more entertaining, not to mention many-layered. And, as these books show, there is no reason why print cannot successfully adopt any number of non-traditional techniques as a way to reach more readers.
—Terence Winch