by Jeff Meade<\/p>\n
If you were looking for a place to celebrate the beginning of St. Patrick\u2019s week in Philadelphia, the Commodore John Barry Arts and Cultural Center in Mt. Airy \u2013 known to many simply as \u201cthe Irish Center\u201d \u2013 was the place to be on Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Billed as a post-parade party, drawing participants from the annual spectacle on Market Street, it was really more of a family-friendly open house for all comers. Being Irish was optional.<\/p>\n
Every room was jammed, a tidal wave of green. Folks wearing the sashes of the Donegal Association rubbed shoulders with folks who couldn\u2019t find County Donegal on a map. A band called the Birmingham Six banged out tunes in the ballroom. Here and there, a pint of Guinness might have been raised.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were surprised. We generally start at 3, but the parade downtown seemed to have gone quickly, so people started showing up at 2,\u201d said Lisa Maloney, board chair and president of the center. \u201cI\u2019d say we had about 250 to 300 people there, coming and going. The ballroom was filled. The Fireside Room was filled with dancers, and we had a separate contingent of Ireland\u2019s County Mayo Council and the Mayo Association in the dining room.\u201d<\/p>\n
In what proved to be a big day for Philadelphia\u2019s Irish, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin \u2013 Ireland\u2019s prime minister \u2013 was in town for the parade but didn\u2019t make it back for the party. Something about a prior engagement with the President.<\/p>\n
In his place was Deputy Consul General Katie Daughen, who is no stranger to the center. She\u2019s visited a few times, but this was her first post-parade party in Philadelphia. Asked about her parade day, she laughed, \u201cI don\u2019t want to even call it a day. Call it a season.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a more serious note, Daughen noted the importance of the Barry Center to the Philadelphia Irish diaspora. \u201cThe center was one of the first places I came to visit when I took my post in New York in April. It\u2019s a really important channel for us to know what\u2019s going on, but to be able to reach out to the community and connect as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
In that sense, the party also had a serious purpose. The party, Maloney says, \u201cis absolutely vital. This event brings in people who don\u2019t normally come to other events. Kids run around; everybody enjoys the music. We try to engage the crowd so that they do come back for our other events throughout the year, and we are going to try and focus on trying to have even more family-friendly events so that we draw these people, not just on St. Patrick\u2019s Day, but throughout the year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Jeff Meade If you were looking for a place to celebrate the beginning of St. Patrick\u2019s week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-141371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-philadelphia","9":"tag-philadelphia-headlines","10":"tag-philadelphia-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}