A letter to the editor of the Irish Independent (subscription required) laments the sorry state of Irish music, and a “widely-held ‘it’s Irish so it must be good’ mindset.” Ouch! And this writer says that they should make gardai learn Irish, a point of contention in many areas. Finally, a writer supports the idea that promotion of Irish is a duty of the State.
Football Dreams.
For some reason I tend not to remember many of my dreams; the only ones I do tend to happen when I wake up during them. I had one last night that involved the University of Hawai’i football team, and all I remember was a newspaper headline. UH Warriors 45, USC Trojans 17. I just had to document it here in case it comes true. Otherwise, it was just a dream
Planxty 2004 DVD.
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my copy of Planxty’s DVD, recorded live in 2004 at Vicar Street. The production and sound are great, and musicianship amazing. While I have an affiliate account at Amazon.com, I will eschew pointing to them and instead point you to Dara Records site. Nearly every other site I found had it for much more than the $20 (plus $2 shipping) I got from Dara.
Podcasting on High Tech Hawai’i.
Hawai’i podcasters Todd Cochrane of GeekNewsCentral.com, Peter Kay and Ryan K. Ozawa, will appear on David Lassner’s “High Tech Hawai’i” program. It should be a blast; I’ve appeared on HTH about four times already. Unfortunately we don’t have cable in our area and I’ll have to wait until the program is available online.
John Roberts has no Irish.
Referring, of course, to his lack of knowledge of Irish language, not lack of ancestry. “US Supreme Court nominee John Roberts was concerned that an Irish language letterhead sent by President Reagan to the Irish ambassador might show secret support for the IRA.” I recommend Guinness therapy, in moderation of course!
Just testing.
Just a test post.
Double dose of Hawaiian news on CNN.com
Every once in a while an interesting tidbit on the Hawaiian people or Hawaiian culture shows up linked on the CNN.com website, but today there were two. Hawaiians revive ancient sport — lava sledding and Hawaiians turn to native healing.
Migration woes.
I spent the past several days trying to get the data moved over from my old PowerBook G4 to a newer one. I had about 60Gig of data (a lot of raw audio) on that, and wasn’t surprised that it didn’t go flawlessly. Apple’s Migration Assistant tool is cool, but the transfer froze not long after it attempted to move my own account over. A friend at Apple suggested it might be file corruption, and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. I never actually identified the offending file, but did narrow it down to a folder that had…
Irish music is cool in Clare.
“Wayne Webster wandered along the only street in the tiny village of Feakle in western Ireland, clutching his fiddle and looking for a place to play. It was after midnight and the catchy rhythms of traditional music spilled out of the town’s four pubs, but there was barely elbow room anywhere, let alone space for another fiddle.” Sounds like I’m missing a great summer for Irish music in Co. Clare.
Home Sweet Home.
I got back to Hilo last night after four days on Maui, a week in England. That doesn’t include the 30 hours of travel and layovers each way between Maui and Sheffield, which featured a total of five planes and five trains. The International Council For Traditional Music conference was incredible. My presentation well, but I had a Homer moment and forgot to turn on my iPod/iTalk combination prior to the start of my presentation, so no audio. Actually there was a bit of a distraction as one presenter before me insisted on using her own computer, forcing me to…