The concert presenter was so excited. “We’re bringing you a show of Irish music, and it’s not even March!” she said, bubbling over with enthusiasm. When the woman behind me muttered to her companion “I’m Irish three hundred and sixty five days a year, how about you?” I had to smile. So am I, and so was the featured musician that autumn evening.

March is a time of year when many people, with connections to Ireland and with no connection at all, find their thoughts turning to the small island off the northwest coast of Europe. There’s more to it all than green beer, corned beef and cabbage, a few too many pints and a few overdone renditions of sentimental ballads and hearty drinking songs. Across the years, the people of Ireland have woven their own strands of green into the fabric of American life. If listening to Celtic Thunder or Lord of the Dance or Celtic Women or those pub drinking songs has you intrigued by Irish music, take a listen to these Irish American musicians. Open your ears, and just perhaps your mind and heart, to more of what it means to be Irish and American.

Liz Carroll plays the fiddle, and composes with such power and imagination that many of her tunes have become standards wherever Irish music is played across the world. She has played with groups including Trian and Cherish the Ladies. It was recently announced that TG4, Ireland’s irish language television network, will honor her with their tradition composer award this spring.

A fine place to hear Carroll’s work is on the album Double Play, where she joins up with guitarist John Doyle for a range of traditional and original tunes. There’s a high speed set which includes Paddy Glackin’s Trip to Dingle, and The Top of the Stairs, a geography that goes from the west of Ireland to the midwest of the United States and back again. The pairing of Castle Kelly and Galway Rambler find Carroll’s fiddle evoking another sort of journey, while Lament for Tommy Makem is a contemplative tribute to a musical friend.

“Somewhere Along the Road is about my identity being an Irish American in the world, that was my central idea with that album,” says Cathie Ryan. Thinking about this, Ryan, a first generation Irish American who has lived and worked in both countries, chose a deeply felt love song in Irish, an Appalachian ballad, a pair of jigs in Irish she named the Raking and Rouging set, and her own reworking of the story of Ireland’s pirate queen Grace O’Malley. She considers, too, the intertwining of Ireland and America in two thoughtful songs she wrote for the album, the emigration song Rathlin Island (1847) and In My Tribe. “In my tribe, music is blood memory,” Ryan sings.

Shannon Heaton has that blood memory of Irish music and the connections that being Irish American brings, as well. She often explores that in songwriting and singing. For her album The Blue Dress, though, she chose to work on that idea through the sound of her flute. There is a phrase in Irish which is used to mean both playing the flute and feeling the pulse, an intimate connection which is present through the album. Against the Grain is a generous and joyous set of original jigs written to honor friends. Red Molly comprises slip jigs from the tradition, while Aunt Jane’s Trip to Norway pairs that original reel with traditional ones. The title track is a gentle yet powerful waltz which Heaton, in her notes, dedicates to the fun and freshness of playing irish music.

There’s a lot of that fun and freshness going around in Irish music, in March and through the rest of the year as well. Take a listen. Take several. You’ll be well rewarded.

Landscape makes such a difference when you’re collecting giant dishes.

As I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, when I visited the Very Large Array in New Mexico, the terrain was flat enough that I could spot the dishes (actually radio telescopes) at a very long distance. But when I pursued my space geekdom/giant radio telescope fascination to Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, the mountainous jungle landscape hid all but the top of a 450-foot tower that suspends a 900- ton platform over the 1,000 foot diameter reflector dish.

When I finished climbing 500 steps to the visitor’s center, and stepped out onto the viewing platform—well, let’s just say “disappointed” wasn’t a word in my vocabulary at that moment.

Hello, world’s largest reflector dish! Constructed out of 38,788 aluminum panels, this sucker is so big, it looks fake. (Or am I the only one who suspects that something this huge is probably made out of cardboard? This, however, was not made out of cardboard, but rather aluminum panels—38, 778 of them, to be exact.) If you’re not impressed by the size, perhaps you’ll remember Pierce Brosnan scampering all around it during his turn as James Bond in the movie GoldenEye.

Arecibo was apparently in danger of being shut down this past summer, but it’s gotten some funding for asteroid tracking and atmospheric observation that will keep it open until 2016. Which means there’s enough time to add it to your own, personal collection of gigantic dishes—which I hope I’ve encouraged you to start immediately.

_{All photos by Alison Stein Wellner.}

Everyone reacts to a relationship breakup differently.

Very few, however, would get together with their ex and transform the breakup into a work of art.

But that’s just what artist Drazen Grubisic and film producer Olinka Vistica did.

 Unsure what to do with their treasured items such as the small white wind-up bunny that they had once dreamed of taking pictures of around the world, they jokingly thought about setting up a museum.

It was a pretty hare-brained idea that was initially cast aside but then revisited a few years later once the pain was eased.  And the idea grew and turned into a traveling show around Europe, featuring not only their own hopping bunny but also donations from broken up friends and others along the way.

From there, it was only a short jump to becoming the Museum of Broken Relationships.

In this Museum of Broken Relationships, every object tells a story.

Donated by the broken hearted around the world, they are displayed with captions that tell the full but,  of course, one sided stories.

Some are funny.

Some are delightfully vindictive.

Some are just sad.

The caption on a tin of Love Incense simply states ‘doesn’t work’. Written along side a pair of never worn suspenders ‘I never put them on. The relationship might have lasted longer if I had’. By the candy G-string, the comment ‘After four years, he turned out to be as cheap and shabby as his presents’. Then there’s the axe used to smash all the furniture and the innocent gnome hurled through the windscreen in a fit of rage.

They are all things that anyone who has had a broken heart (and who hasn’t) can relate to.

(image courtesy of the Museum of Broken Relationships)

There are always stacks of CDs coming and going around my desk. Up on the shelf over to left, though, is one that has been in place for a good few years now. Not a fancy looking one: it is a plain CDR with the words new music written across it in marker.

One very snowy night I’d gone up to Massachusetts to see a good friend play a concert. We’d been talking back and forth through e-mail and in person for a year or so about her next record. It was done. “In a few weeks I’ll have finished copies, with packaging and liner notes,” she said as we talked before the gig. “Would you rather wait and have me send you a copy then? or shall I make one now from my computer?” Of course, I wanted it right then. When I see that shiny silver disc, it reminds of that snowy night, of sitting on the floor of South Street Station in Boston the next day with people rushing by on the way to their trains while I was quietly listening to this gorgeous music, of friendship, and of other times I’ve heard her sing the songs she put on that album.

All this to came mind a few weeks ago when, at the Museum of Newry and Mourne in Newry, in Northern Ireland, I came across a booklet telling of the work of the Reminiscence Network and the Valuing Heritage by Valuing Memories Project.

Four museums across Northern Ireland, in Craigavon, Newry, Derry, and Omagh. each had put together reminiscence boxes. These are containers filled with objects having to do with a certain time period — the 1950s, for example, or the 1980s — or with a certain activity, going to the seaside, going to school, working in a trade. What the people of the museums did with these boxes struck me as both creative and generous.

A worker from the Reminiscence Network was appointed to each museum, and trained museum staff and volunteers in ways to talk with people about their memories , how to get such conversations started, and how to keep ideas flowing. Together they thought of ways they might connect with groups in each community. As it turned out, they had quite a few adventurous ideas.

The Craigavon Museum brought students at a primary school together with elders from nearby to sit and talk over what going to school is like now and what it was like sixty and seventy years ago. These conversations flowed easily as both children and seniors looked at and passed around pencils and slates and school books from the box.

In Omagh, workers took a box to a care facility for people living with depression and dementia, and found that handling the objects brought back memories and encouraged sharing that lightened the residents’ days — and those of the staff there too, who were glad to see their patients engaged and talking with workers and each other. In County Down, elders told their stories at a local library and materials in the boxes helped them and their listeners see what they were talking of, and sparked more stories. A heart and stroke recovery group started a scrapbook project after they’d spent time with a box, and a creative writing project is underway from a men’s group. Elders who hadn’t visited the museum in Derry were inspired to do so, and share their stories related to the things they saw there. Now many of them see the museum as a vital part of their days and visit often. At a community center, people from all generations gathered for a day long celebration of seaside holidays, sharing food and fun and stories inspired by working with objects in a box.

As these projects have unfolded, interest has come from other museums and other groups. Workers in these first projects have experience and knowledge they are glad to share. Personal and professional connections have been forged as well, and people touched by these projects now see their museums as resources and places of community and connection.

Powerful stuff from holding an object in your hand and thinking about it and sharing stories that go with it for you, I am thinking. I am thinking, too, that the friend who gave me that CD and I have fallen out of touch over the years. It might be time for me to tell her the stories I remember.

more about Northern Ireland’s Reminiscence Network and the Valuing Heritage by Valuing Memories Project.

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An entire wing of the City Palace Food Court now stands vacant, collecting dust under dim lighting. Where there’d once been a vegetarian food stall, there’s nothing but an empty napkin holder on the counter; the Indian stall is gone and the som tam food stall is gone too. Ditto the overpriced packaged dessert stand and what used to be nearly a quarter of the entire dining area.

While the food court across the street at Platinum Fashion Mall–City Complex’s sister (and more modern) wholesale shopping center–enjoys a major boon in visitors and is packed every day during the lunching hours, City Palace is experiencing the exact opposite: an exodus of customers that’s begat a curtain call on many of its food vendors. Frankly, it felt a bit depressing when I walked in from the fifth-floor stairwell and I considered turning back and writing this place off for good, until a piercing off-pitch serenade wafted through this cavernous emptiness and assuaged my concerns that all was lost at City Palace.

Much of the liveliness may have been sucked out of this always rough-and-tumble food court, but the bizarre lunchtime karaoke that has always lured me back was still in full swing. Awesome.

My e-coupon loaded up with a 100 baht balance, I browsed the 15 food stalls lining the wall that still remained, all of them offering slightly different versions of fried rice, noodles, soups, and som tam for 30 – 75 baht. Staffers and diners alike have always been somewhat surprised to see me, a farang, wandering through this untouristed court that’s mostly frequented by seniors and wholesalers who work downstairs in the maze of shops. The seniors seem to come for the karaoke, and the sellers probably come for the convenience: the vendors probably think I’m lost, though as with most restaurants in Bangkok it usually only takes a few return visits before the staff recognize you as a regular.

Though her former stand in the now-empty wing has been abandoned, the somewhat surly woman I used to favor for som tam is still here. I’ve learned to order this dish in Thai since I eat it four or five times a week (phom tong-gon som tam, prik sam met, my ow goong-hang, let kow knee-ow krup), which surprises and amuses both her and the other woman waiting next to me.

Her som tam is always delicious, but it’s hard to foul those up in Bangkok and I can get one anywhere: there aren’t nearly as many spots to enjoy one while listening to ear-splitting, completely care-free karaoke, though. One by one, a steady stream of Thais make their way into the spotlight of the twinkle-lit stage located at the head of the dining area, grab the microphone, and belt their way through somber, traditional Thai songs.

Lyrics are displayed on a 40-inch flatscreen TV running slow-motion nature videos in the background, and during each song a young girl in her mid-20s works the small crowd, signing up willing participants and marking down their request. As the karaoke supervisor, she also joins in on a few numbers, singing a duet with one gentleman and, yes, banging a tambourine for another woman’s song.

Like so many things in Thailand, lunchtime karaoke at the City Palace Food Court is as sweet as it is bizarre. Nevermind the screeching and wailing that fills the dining room from concert hall-sized speakers: polite, sincere applause follows every tune, and the singers seem genuinely happy as they exit the stage. There’s no pretense here: this is a purely therapeutic exercise. Despite the food stall closures, the occasionally surly service, and the puzzled looks, it’s an exercise that keeps me coming back.

Photos © Brian Spencer