Riverfront Irish Festival

Yesterday, I went to the Riverfront Irish Festival, which is held along the Front Street pedestrian mall in downtown Cuyahoga Falls. What's nice about it is that it's free (including parking!) and it's right downtown along the river. There was the usual collection of overpriced, fattening festival food and oversized people noshing on all this stuff, and the usual ticky tacky faux Irish stuff and T-shirts proclaiming stuff like "Irish Attitude", and "Irish Princess", and "T'is Himself" and all that other stereotypical stuff about Irishness that Americans love to gobble up. But oh, well, all in good fun, I suppose. There were also the usual collection of bad faux Irish bands that played anything that vaguely resembled Irish music, along with the usual "pop-Irish" stuff that is oversung, overplayed and has become almost cliché as a result, but when people think of Irish music, this is what they expect to hear. Far be it for them to be exposed to real Irish music - hell, they'd probably get all haughty and say that "that's not Irish!", the subject of a really funny song by Robbie O'Connell, chronicling his early days as an Irish musician in America, trying to sing real Irish songs and all the while being told "That's not Irish music!". People want to hear all that tacky "Tura-lura-lura" and "Black Velvet Band" crap instead of good old Irish ballads, and if they do get the real music played to them, it's usually in an easily digestible "rock 'n' roll" format, like one band who played yesterday. I sat through two of their concerts, admittedly, because they did feature various bagpipes as a part of their instrumentation, but they were more a rock band than a traditional Irish band. Still, they weren't bad, all things considered, but I still would rather have heard real Irish music instead of the filtered down stuff you hear at most Irish festivals nowadays. There are a few more Irish festivals in the area yet to come this summer: The Ohio Irish Festival, which used to be held on the grounds of the West Side Irish American Club, but is now held in the Flats entertainment district near downtown Cleveland, and the Cleveland Irish Cultural Festival, held on the grounds of the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds. I've been sorely disappointed at the music at the Ohio Irish Festival in recent years since its move to the Flats, but the Cleveland Irish Cultural Festival still has top notch groups like Cherish The Ladies and other more "trad" groups that play there each year, so it's well worth going to. You still get your hokey faux "Irish American" music at that one, but that seems endemic anymore for any kind of Irish Festival. It's what brings in the crowds, so I guess they have to cater to what sells.

FATHER'S DAY

I've always rather dreaded "Father's Day" for the simple reason that I never had a father, at least not one that I could easily remember. Having lost my father just weeks after my 4th birthday, I only have a few shadowy memories of him, at best, and even those have begun to fade with time and distance. But I did make a pilgrimage today out to my father's grave to stand and contemplate what life might have been like had he survived long enough to see us grown into adulthood. I also wanted to say a Happy Father's Day to him in spite of his being gone these 47 years now and to thank him for giving me life and the chance at a college education. I guess his passing is something I will never truly get over, and you don't, not when a parent dies very suddenly and unexpectedly. That is why I always feel bad whenever I hear of anyone who loses a parent too soon. I think of the children who have to live with this loss for the rest of their lives and what it will mean to them. Whenever I hear of someone being killed in the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan who leaves behind young children, I know what this will do to the rest of their lives. Or even in the case of the very untimely and unexpected death on Friday of newsman Tim Russert, who was only 7 years older than me - he leaves behind a son, how old, I don't know - but still, to lose your father so close to Father's Day must be so hard. That is something his family will always remember this time of year, that their father, son and husband died just around Father's Day and it will doubtless make this holiday hard on them from now on. You just have to move on and know that even when someone is taken to soon like that, sure, time will lessen the sorrow, but it never fully heals. You carry it around like an old wound scar for the rest of your days. You cry on occasion, as a way of cleansing the wound from time to time, and you move on until it opens again and you cleanse it anew by the tears each time. I still cry over my father, even though I barely remember him. I guess it's the not knowing how my life might have turned out had he lived that sometimes gets to me. The knowledge that I will never know what it's like to have a two parent nuclear household is also sometimes hard to consider. Not that I mind having come from a single parent household, it's just the constant wondering how having had a father might have changed things in my life, maybe, just maybe, for the better. But that kind of wondering can drive you crazy, so it's best to just content yourself with who you are and what you have in life. Still, there will always be that little voice inside that can never quite quiet itself that forever wonders...."What if....?"