21 Jul 2008, posted by Robbi

Sarah Conlon from West Belfast yesterday passed away two days ago. Often I have written of these brave women who fought for their causes when men acted simply as armed guerillas. In the north of Ireland there has been turmoil, grief and violence beyond any possible word. We still live with the pain of loyalist torture, the era of the (FREE!!) Shankill butchers, the PIRA, Ian Paisley's bread and butter riots, the BBC's lies and scaremongering and

17 Jul 2008, posted by Robbi

I've been gaining interest in old-timey music, listening to the likes of Dyad and Bruce Molsky. At the minute I'm learning a book of songs and was thinking of really getting stuck-in. I've been worried that changing my route completely could be a bit scary and quite hard, but I've just gained such as love for the old American songs, which are based and/or inspired so much by Irish traditional music. Did you know that country music came from Irish trad music?

I'd love to, some day, visit the Appalachian Mountains and find out where all that inspiration came from. Songs like 'Silver Dagger' and 'Little Birdie'. I love the whole oddness of the songs - how they stay within the boundaries, yet still, completely overcome them and cross them. For the next few months I'm not going to be doing any recording or writing, just reading and learning and singing. I've learnt a lot recently about music in general and want to come to grips with it all.

Cheers to a new start, and to many good laughs along the way, present and future!

12 Jul 2008, posted by Robbi

Of course I watched the speech of First Minister for the north, Peter Robinson's speech as new first minister. It took a second read to fully see his sense. Robinson has embraced his Irish heritage as Ian Paisley has done in the past by acknowledging St. Patrick as this island's patron saint. It pains me to say it, but Sinn Féin has a lot of catching up to do. Robinson quoted the Irish proverb 'Tús mhaith, leath na hoibre' - a good start is half the work. Something small like this helps create admiration for these politicians...

25 Jun 2008, posted by Robbi

Hallo! Hope you like the new design! Keep an eye for a lot of updates and content. We're still putting all of the new content up, so stay with us over the next few days! And join the mailing list in the new 'Interact' page!

Update: We're standards compliant (both CSS & XHTML), and we've fixed the site for Internet Explorer. I'm working on a few other sites at the minute, so stay in tune for info on some great causes!

Le gaol,
Robbi.xoxoxo

27 Jun 2008, posted by Robbi

Today we are in a very frightening position as far as national and international politics are concerned. Our governments do not have the courage to stand against Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. My own government does not have the courage to stand against inequality. The party which I deeply supported until recently, Sinn Féin have disgraced themselves in using Gaeilge, my first language as a weapon. The DUP aren't happy to support my language unless equal funding is given to the Ulster Scots dialect, something that they look at as a language...