‘Tiger’ Is the Best!

On Friday, June 17, I was one of the lucky people privileged to attend the invitation only performance of Michael Flatley’s new show Celtic Tiger in Birmingham, England.

All I can say is wow! This show is going to blow all other Irish dance shows out of the water.

The purpose of the Birmingham performance was to film the show for a DVD that is supposed to be released in the autumn, hopefully in time for the U.S. portion of the world tour.

Celtic Tiger will premiere in Budapest on July 9, and then go on to Prague on July 12 and then tour other parts of Europe through the summer before coming to the States in the fall. It will knock the socks off everyone when they see it.

Just as Michael promised in earlier interviews, the show chronicles the plight of the Irish people from the early Celts to the Vikings and the British invasion of Ireland and then through the Famine and the troubles of the early 20th century up to the present time. There is a very rising patriotic finale that will have everyone in attendance on their feet.

Be sure to bring your Irish and/or American flags with you to the show! At the end of the first half you will be ever so proud of your Irish heritage, and by the end of the second half your American genes will be soaring through the roof!

Michael Flatley is dancing even better than he was four years ago in the Feet of Flames tour, and he has whipped his very talented troupe of dancers into the most rehearsed and most professional looking dance troupe I have ever seen.

Their steps were so precise and in unison that they appear to be as one. Their lines were straight as an arrow and they all moved together at all times.

Besides Irish dancing, there is a little American tap, flamenco, salsa, ballet and even a bit of hip-hop break dancing included in the show. But it’s Michael’s amazing feet that will astound you.

It’s hard to believe that he is almost 47 years old. He just keeps getting better and better. I can hardly wait to see what he will do when he turns 50!

Elizabeth Klos, Cocoa, Florida

Saluting an Angel

I would like to comment on the article in last week’s paper about the Galway-born teacher, Brigid Higgins, who has been working at Sloan-Kettering Hospital, and retired last week.

What an inspiring story. Working with cancer patients is so, so difficult, but when a child contracts the horrible disease it’s twice as bad.

I have nursed my husband and mother through bouts of chemotherapy, and it was hell on earth for them. As one oncologist told us, it takes poison to release the poison already in your body.

To see such suffering on a daily basis must be emotionally draining to say the least, but it’s obvious that Ms. Higgins has what it takes to brighten the lives of the children who are dealt a raw deal in life. Our world could use many more like her, and she is indeed an angel.

I wish her all the best in retirement, and her continued volunteer work with Sloan. I’m glad to see that she’s continuing with the hospital. People like Ms. Higgins don’t come along every day.

Carol McCaffrey, Stamford, Connecticut

Gaelic Is Thriving

It’s a bit sad to watch John Spain suffer some kind of frantic break from reality whenever someone mentions the Irish language.

In his column in the June 22-28 issue, Spain claimed that the language is spoken by “probably less than 100,000.” Well, if that were accurate, that would still be a pretty significant number of people in a small country who deserve the basic and internationally-recognized inalienable human right to speak their own language.

But, as we know, the Republic’s latest census (2001) reported that at least 1,570,894 (42% of the Republic’s population) claim fluency in Irish, and by all estimates personal daily usage is somewhere in between the two numbers.

Besides being 15 times John’s number (where does he get this stuff?), that’s double the 789,429 (28% of population) reported only a generation ago in the 1971 census, and triple the lowest reported number of 540,802 (19% of population) reported in the 1926 census.

If this trend were to continue, one has to wonder how long it would take before Irish re-establishes itself as Ireland’s majority language. And by all objective measures, denied by no one, more people can now read and write the language than at any other time in the language’s roughly 2,500-year history.

Further, none of these numbers captures the worldwide explosion of Irish language usage on the Internet among the Irish diaspora. So some kind of renaissance is obviously going on, despite whatever Spain has to say about it, which is apparently a lot and wholly inaccurate.

Spain claims that Irish kids are the worst linguists in Europe because of the Irish language, when actually by all reports English kids are the worst linguists in Europe and Irish-speaking kids are among the best linguists in Europe.

Spain seems particularly incensed that Irish speakers have finally won, through the 2003 Official Languages Act, the right to use just their own language in their own communities, even on their road signs. One can imagine John landing in France and demanding that “Pee-Air” explain to him in English how to get to “Pah-Ree.” As a friend said recently, if you want to explore the world through English, you can always go to Disneyland.

He then proceeds to attack the language on an economic basis, pointing out that it would be cheaper, worldwide, if everyone were to speak English, therefore the basic human rights of non-English-speakers like the Irish should be ignored or crushed.

Well, yes, dictatorships are always less expensive and more efficient to operate, and yes, it’s unfortunate that the Tower of Babel fell, so now people around the world speak different languages instead of God’s own original language, English.

But it’s hard to imagine that the Norwegians, Welsh, Czechs, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Poles, Israelis, Québequois, American Indians, Polynesians, Aborigines, Basque, Catalonians, Galicians, Flemish, Finns, Xhosa, Zulu, etc., will readily give up their right to speak their own languages just because John Spain has decided what’s best for them, having fought so hard to win back that right from various other imperialists, dictators, and conquerors over the last 150 years.

And if the almighty dollar (or euro) is the only criterion by which to teach a subject in or out of school, why not get rid of God, religion, athletics, art, history, music, philosophy, social studies, and literature? I’m not too sure about science either, given that not many kids become scientists.

Why not just stick to math for business, computer tech for business, and, well, that’s enough for a kid to learn, isn’t it? Especially given Spain’s opinion that Irish kids are too stupid to learn both their own language and English, despite the fact that most other countries around the world now teach their children their own language plus two or three or four other languages including English.

Personally, I don’t subscribe to John’s claim that Irish children can’t learn. Instead, for me, the natural assumption would be that the problem has been the teaching method, not the kids. As an American, I certainly had no problem teaching Irish to my kids here in America.

The Irish language is not only alive and kicking, but undergoing some kind of renaissance. And instead of being subjected to Spain’s rantings, I’ll bet your readership would like to see the Irish Voice undertake an actual, factual attempt to report on what’s going on with the worldwide Irish language renaissance.

How about it?

Jerry Kelly,
Member, Publicity Secretary
Cumann Carad Na Gaeilge/
The Philo-Celtic Society
Long Island, New York