On next Sunday morning, July 19th, I will be leaving for my annual sojourn into the mountains of West Virginia to attend Irish Week at the
Augusta Heritage Arts Center at
Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, WV. This marks my 20th year of going down to Irish Week and I'm not tired of it yet. What's made it a bit bittersweet the past few years is the fact that my first few years down there, I went with a dear friend, Mike Lindsay, who died of a massive stroke a few years ago at age 51. Ever since then, it's felt a little sad going down there remembering the times we had when we went down there the first few times I went. Still, I do enjoy it a great deal and always have a terrific time. What makes it really neat is that I have a lot of friends I've made over the years that I see year after year there to where it almost feels like a little bit of a family reunion. A few years ago, the head coordinator of Irish Week, Mick Moloney, retired, as did the head of the Augusta program at D&E, Margo Blevin, and having new people at the helm of both has taken some adjustment. Naturally, it has a different feel, because new people are in charge and new instructors have replaced the old ones who used to come, giving the whole Irish Week a different feel than it used to have for so long under its old leadership. So things are still in sort of a "shakedown" mode as everyone gets used to the new leadership and the inevitable changes that this has brought about. Naturally, there are instructors that many of us wish were still coming, as they added their own special touch to the week, but like everything on this earth, things must change, so we all have to adjust to the new feel of Irish Week.
It's still the fun it used to be but the singing "seisiúns" that I prefer to go to at night have become so popular that it gets tough for everyone to have a chance to sing, so at best, you maybe get a shot at one song per night. I don't get to do much singing during the rest of the year so I have no lyrics memorized and have to constantly rely on my large notebook of song lyrics that I have collected over many long years, so I feel so hamstrung by my over reliance on that. I'd love to find or start a singing session in these parts that would regularly force me to learn more songs that I could then in turn take to Augusta each year. There was, for a short time, a singing and song session at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, where I go to church. It was on Friday nights but sadly, I didn't manage to attend any of them and it stopped, probably due to disinterest and lack of attendance. I'd like to have summer night "front porch singing parties" if I had my own house with a nice big front porch where I could have such a thing, but chances are, I'll never be able to afford my own home and the front porch on the house where my apartment is located does have a huge front porch, but it's used by the downstairs residents, so I'd feel a little funny holding a party there when the bedroom of one of the downstairs residents has a front window that looks out on the porch, and I wouldn't want to disturb anyone's studies, since all of the other residents where I live are college students. So the front porch of my house isn't really available to me, although come summer, most of the people living downstairs are gone for the summer, so, maybe one of these days, I can use the porch for a summer night singing party with plenty of citronella candles to ward away the inevitable mosquitoes. Well, it's a thought, but I'm going to be mostly away for the next few weeks and the remainder of the summer is going to be far too busy for me to hold a front porch singing party, so maybe I can plan on next summer if the downstairs residents leave for the summer like they mostly have each year. For now, I'm just looking forward to some good singing next week at Augusta.
On next Sunday morning, July 19th, I will be leaving for my annual sojourn into the mountains of West Virginia to attend Irish Week at the Augusta Heritage Arts Center at Davis and Elkins College in Elkins, WV. This marks my 20th year of going down to Irish Week and I'm not tired of it yet. What's made it a bit bittersweet the past few years is the fact that my first few years down there, I went with a dear friend, Mike Lindsay, who died of a massive stroke a few years ago at age 51. Ever since then, it's felt a little sad going down there remembering the times we had when we went down there the first few times I went. Still, I do enjoy it a great deal and always have a terrific time. What makes it really neat is that I have a lot of friends I've made over the years that I see year after year there to where it almost feels like a little bit of a family reunion. A few years ago, the head coordinator of Irish Week, Mick Moloney, retired, as did the head of the Augusta program at D&E, Margo Blevin, and having new people at the helm of both has taken some adjustment. Naturally, it has a different feel, because new people are in charge and new instructors have replaced the old ones who used to come, giving the whole Irish Week a different feel than it used to have for so long under its old leadership. So things are still in sort of a "shakedown" mode as everyone gets used to the new leadership and the inevitable changes that this has brought about. Naturally, there are instructors that many of us wish were still coming, as they added their own special touch to the week, but like everything on this earth, things must change, so we all have to adjust to the new feel of Irish Week.
It's still the fun it used to be but the singing "seisiúns" that I prefer to go to at night have become so popular that it gets tough for everyone to have a chance to sing, so at best, you maybe get a shot at one song per night. I don't get to do much singing during the rest of the year so I have no lyrics memorized and have to constantly rely on my large notebook of song lyrics that I have collected over many long years, so I feel so hamstrung by my over reliance on that. I'd love to find or start a singing session in these parts that would regularly force me to learn more songs that I could then in turn take to Augusta each year. There was, for a short time, a singing and song session at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent, where I go to church. It was on Friday nights but sadly, I didn't manage to attend any of them and it stopped, probably due to disinterest and lack of attendance. I'd like to have summer night "front porch singing parties" if I had my own house with a nice big front porch where I could have such a thing, but chances are, I'll never be able to afford my own home and the front porch on the house where my apartment is located does have a huge front porch, but it's used by the downstairs residents, so I'd feel a little funny holding a party there when the bedroom of one of the downstairs residents has a front window that looks out on the porch, and I wouldn't want to disturb anyone's studies, since all of the other residents where I live are college students. So the front porch of my house isn't really available to me, although come summer, most of the people living downstairs are gone for the summer, so, maybe one of these days, I can use the porch for a summer night singing party with plenty of citronella candles to ward away the inevitable mosquitoes. Well, it's a thought, but I'm going to be mostly away for the next few weeks and the remainder of the summer is going to be far too busy for me to hold a front porch singing party, so maybe I can plan on next summer if the downstairs residents leave for the summer like they mostly have each year. For now, I'm just looking forward to some good singing next week at Augusta. 
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