CenterPieceNY with Paul Finnegan

Linda Bonnar is a successful life coach and entrepreneur.  She's also a former educator, and has built her services around both her experiences in the teaching profession, and her teenager years with mental health struggles in her hometown of Ballinasloe in County Galway in Ireland.  During those fragile, formative years of her childhood she had the misfortune of being targeted by a clique of mean-spirited schoolgirls, which made her road to today all the more difficult.

But she has used that hard journey to be of service to others, through her coaching and her business, Upstrive.    We applaud her willingness to share her life story with us, and her focus on helping others.

And she continues to work on her own mental health constantly, as we all should. We need to do a regular check-in with our feelings, she advises us strongly. We need to work hard at our own self-awareness. 

Have a listen, and you'll also learn the positive role horses have played in Linda's life.  Horses (and a pony!) have been in Linda's life, and that of her family, for ever.  And learn too of Linda's adventures as a teacher in Qatar and Dubai.

Ballinasloe, by the way, is famous for its horse fair, where, legend has it, Napoleon himself bought a horse.  

Some links of note from Linda's story:
UpstriveBallinasloe Horse FairLinda's LinkedIn profile, listing her coaching qualifications and achievements.Thanks to Purple-Planet  for the Intro/Outro music, and to FreeSound for the sound FX, and some music too!

Take a moment to learn more about the Celtic Irish American Academy. Support its work by donating (in USD $, with tax exemption benefits) here: CIAA Scholastic.

Thank you to our sponsor, the Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group. Pay a visit to one of their great restaurants.

A special shout out to Lochlainn Harte, Imaging Manager at Newstalk Radio, for extra, top class, audio mixing.  Recently Lochlainn has worked on As I Remember It: Bertie Ahern & The Good Friday Agreement.

This is our last episode of Season Three.  We'll take a little break now.  Leave a message here and we'll let you know when we'll be back.

Jennifer Muldowney, from Dublin’s fair city, in Ireland, is an author, a podcaster, and a member of that exclusive set of people who has given a TED Talk.

But for this vivacious young woman, all these glamorous activities are in support of her unique, creative, small-ish, and growing business, which, not to put too fine a point on it, services the industry of passing and death. 

Jennifer's work is as much a service to the living survivors, as it is to the departed.

If you don’t know Jennifer, stick around and have a listen, you’ll love her to death.  Pun definitely intended. Stick around anyway if you do know her, and love her to death, as you do.  She’s been giving this mortality stuff a lot of thought, and it's worth your time to pause and reflect.

Remember, as we all learned in school, what Emily Dickinson wrote: Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped  for me -

Some links of note from Jennifer's story:
Jennifer's TED TalkThe Glam Reaper PodcastMuldowney MemorialsDublin City UniversityThanks to Purple-Planet  for the Intro/Outro music, and to FreeSound for the sound FX, and some music too!

Take a moment to learn more about the Celtic Irish American Academy. Support its work by donating (in USD $, with tax exemption benefits) here: CIAA Scholastic.

Thank you to our sponsor, the Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group. Pay a visit to one of their great restaurants.

A special shout out to Lochlainn Harte, Imaging Manager at Newstalk Radio, for extra, top class, audio mixing.  Recently Lochlainn has worked on As I Remember It: Bertie Ahern & The Good Friday Agreement.

When it comes to experiences, life is an embarrassment of riches.  Even more so, if you're an adventurous, wandering type, which might be another way of saying 'if you're Irish'.

Certainly Denis Maguire is, although he has gone about it in his own quiet way.   As a thoughtful playwright, flimmaker and artist, boisterousness is not for him.  Raised in Galway City in Ireland, of rebel lineage, and later a college student in Dublin, he left his native Ireland and headed off to study in Moscow in his late teens.  This was right after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the citizens of the Eastern Bloc were still feeling the fallout from a communist utopia. Only the most pioneering of souls would have made that journey in those days.  Oh, and he didn't speak a word of Russian.  Not then. But he does now.

By the time he returned to Ireland, almost six years later, he'd spent some very formative years in an entirely different culture to the one of his childhood.  It had shaped him, instilling in him a level of russification that took him some time to realize and acknowledge.   You can take the lad out of Russia, but you can't...

Ironically, and literally by chance, New York later became his home, the polar opposite of the Moscow of his day.  So it is not surprising that he now lives in the world famous Coney Island, Brooklyn, which is no longer an island as it was when it was named, but a peninsula, a place geographically neither disconnected nor fully connected to the American  bedrock.  Which could be the metaphor for Denis's inner muse.

One further irony: Denis and  Paul Finnegan, CenterPieceNY's host, lived only a couple of short streets apart in Galway City for several years in the 1970s.  An age gap meant they did not know each other, though they both knew many of the same people, and shared many similar experiences.  It was documentarian Heather Quinlan, a collaborator with Paul on another project, who brought Denis and Paul together for this interview. 

Fair play to you, Heather!

Further info:
Denis's Moscow Alma MaterThe BishScoil Chaitríona, RenmoreDenis on EtsyDenis on YouTubeConey IslandGeneral Commanding Officer Tom Maguire's Story (see p.277)Denis on Instagram: @deniscmaguire  and @deniscmaguireart

Thanks to Purple-Planet  for  Intro/Outro music, and to FreeSound for the sound FX, and some music too!

For tech reasons we weren't able this month to mention the Celtic Irish American Academy, but we'll be sure to do so next month.  Support its work by donating (in USD $, with tax exemption benefits) here: CIAA Scholastic.

Our sponsor is the Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group. Pay a visit to one of their great restaurants.

A special shout out to Lochlainn Harte, Imaging Manager at Newstalk Radio, for extra, top class, audio mixing.

Corina Galvin calls County Mayo in Ireland her home.   She's also been a New Yorker for almost three decades.  And she has accumulated a lot of frequent flyer miles along the way.  That's because her job in event planning and management puts her constantly up in the air, traveling all over the globe, meeting some significant influencers in the process. 

This job, the only career of her working life, also allows her to divide her down time nicely between Ireland and New York, keeping her connections to her siblings, all in the west of Ireland, and her mother, in a very healthy place.  Thus, despite her long stint as an emigrant, she is not perceived as the one over in America by her loved ones at home.  She spends more time with her family than friends she has in Dublin and London can manage.

But New York is very much her second home, a place where she has put down some serious community roots.

In her day job she has met many famous people, and if you're famous you're an influencer these days. 

Corina is an influencer who is not famous, even among the Irish of New York.  That's because she exerts her positive influence much more quietly. 

Let's call her style 'quiet influencing'. 

Many do not know the pivotal role she has played in the inception and development of major Irish community organizations in New York.

Which organizations? Have a listen and you'll find out.

You'll also get to know that hers was a military family, something less common in Ireland than the US.  Her late father was a United Nations Peacekeeper, and her childhood included a Cyprus adventure when he was stationed there.

Some links of note from Corina's story:
Women With AmbitionManhattan GaelsNew York Irish CenterSolace HouseUN PeacekeepingThanks to Purple-Planet  for  Intro/Outro music, and to FreeSound for the sound FX, and some music too!  There's also some music from our previous centerpiece Niall O'Leary.

Take a moment to learn more about the Celtic Irish American Academy. Support its work by donating (in USD $, with tax exemption benefits) here: CIAA Scholastic.

Thank you to our sponsor, the Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group. Pay a visit to one of their great restaurants.

A special shout out to Lochlainn Harte, Imaging Manager at Newstalk Radio, for extra, top class, audio mixing.  Most recently Lochlainn has worked on As I Remember It: Bertie Ahern & The Good Friday Agreement.

There's one side story that arose from our conversation with Corina, and you can read more about it here.

Jane McCooey thrives when she’s bringing people together to solve a problem, to the benefit of all.

When Jane, from County Armagh in Ireland,  is confronted with obstacles, she’s not afraid to reach out for help, and her first port of call is often to tap into the familiar power of sisterhood. 

Before you know it, she’s fallen in with a band of sisters.   She’s done this repeatedly–sports being a prime example–and more recently in the world of work.

Why there, you ask?

Because, you could say, men and women are separated by a common workplace, and maybe that needs to be looked at. 

Along this most ancient of human fault lines, Jane has gotten into her stride tackling the seemingly inherent assumptions in the division of labor between men and women.   And one aspect of work is leadership, which of late often begs the question: “who gets to lead?”   
 
And the answer, too often, is “not a woman.”

So last year, 2022, Jane, an attorney by profession,  founded a vibrant group named Women With Ambition.  

When Jane seeks to create positive change, she does it from within. Her initial goal for Women With Ambition is to nurture positive change from within women themselves.  And Women With Ambition seeks to create changes in men too, also from within, by fostering open conversation and recruiting allies.

Jane is a uniter, not a divider.

Some links of note from Jane's story:
Women With AmbitionUniversity College DublinQueens College, CambridgeMorgan StanleyLiberty GaelsThanks to Purple-Planet  for  Intro/Outro music, and to FreeSound for the sound FX, and some music too!

For technical reasons we weren't able to give a shout out this month to the Celtic Irish American Academy, but we'll be sure to give them one next month.  Support its work by donating (in USD $, with tax exemption benefits) here: CIAA Scholastic.

Thank you to our sponsor, the Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group. Pay a visit to one of their great restaurants.

A special shout out to Lochlainn Harte, Imaging Manager at Newstalk Radio, for extra, top class, audio mixing. 

Niall O'Leary is best known as a performer of Irish dance in the New York area, and further afield.  A lesser known fact about Niall is that he also has his own Manhattan-based architecture practice.

The amazing thing about Niall is how he has managed to satisfy his innate need to create and design in these two very disparate disciplines.  To him there is barely a difference between them. Maybe every young person should be trained to think like Niall, so when they are asked what they want to be when they grow up, they'll transcend the usual labels and actually be able to distill what it is will actually make them happy!  Wouldn't that make for an interesting world?   And, case in point, Niall himself is a happy fellow, as anyone who knows him will attest.  He's also a gifted musician.

Visit Niall's website at NiallOLeary.com.

Niall's alma mater: University College Dublin.

Thanks to Purple-Planet  for  Intro/Outro music, and to FreeSound for the sound FX, and some music too!  Likewise, a thanks to Niall for providing his music for this episode, including sounds of his dancing and spoon playing!

Check out the Celtic Irish American Academy. Support its work by donating (in USD $, with tax exemption benefits) here: CIAA Scholastic.

Thank you to our sponsor, the Fox Lifestyle Hospitality Group. Pay a visit to one of their great restaurants.

A special shout out to Lochlainn Harte, Imaging Manager at Newstalk Radio, for extra, top class, audio mixing.