Since it’s Friday afternoon, 4:10 (I leave at 4:30), and I’ve finished all my “MUST DO” stuff for today, it’s time for a nice blog about the PERSONAL RESEARCH PROJECT. (Nothing else is apparently getting done until I complete this).
Since I last wrote:
- Heard back from Prof. Dave V. from Quinnipiac University regarding any knowledge he may have about the US Traveller population
- Response: Not his area of expertise. But he was VERY nice.
- Got called back by a representative of the Irish Consulate in
- Response: “Try Googling (which sounds really funny in an Irish accent, BTW) ‘Irish Travellers’ to get some information. Or the Irish Traveller’s movement main website (which I already have).”
- Comment: I did ask about the “AMERICAN Irish Travellers”. They were very nice at the Irish Consulate, but I don’t think they were listening. I'm going to try the Consulate in DC and see if it gets me anywhere.
- Hit a GOLDMINE of information regarding the US Travellers from…criminal reports. ::sigh::
- NOTE: It’s important to know that these are not ‘actual’ criminal reports (i.e. from police departments). They manifested mostly from press releases, which apparently can be quite skewed. Check out this article from a wonderful website called "Travellers Rest" (which I will describe in more detail later) to get a real perspective of the press’ misinformation on the Travellers.
- Found this amazing website called "Travellers Rest". It’s actually written by a sedentary Traveller, (which means he now lives in a ‘normal’ home). I wrote the author of the site, and am SO hoping that he’s still monitoring his inbox…update (hopefully!) coming soon…However, from this website I found…
- An EXCELLENT article entitled “Apocrypha to Canon: Inventing Irish Traveller History” by Dr. Sinéad ní Shuinéar. It was published in History Ireland a few years ago. I have a real hope that I can get in touch with Dr. Shuinéar and possibly get a copy of her thesis, which is apparently quite good…
There’s a fair bevy of other stuff too, but it’s mostly in bits and pieces and therefore I will hold off until I’ve made sense of it to post about it.
I really am happy with how everything is going right now. And to think, pretty much all of this has stemmed off of Tommy Tiernan, whose Irish accent I enjoy so much (not to mention the amazing comedy) that I’m trying to emulate it for the Renaissance Faire, which got me to learning about Irish history, which brought me across the Irish Travellers, which got me thinking about “The Riches” with Eddie Izzard (another amazing comedian), which led me to wondering about the population of Irish Travellers in America…
Hold on…it ought to be an interesting couple of months!
1 comment:
I think if I had applied half of your dogged determination to this project to any of my college coursework, I'd be sending rockets into space or something, instead of pushing paper as Excel Queen. :)
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