Storytelling The Sea Speak Project

20/03/2026

Starting off World Storytelling Day - Ireland with a Storytelling Session with the Students from Scoil Bhríde Girls NS at the Clara Library with Storyteller Daria Marie Walsh.

12/03/2026

March is a storyful month, with World Book Day, International Women's Day and World Storytelling Day. March is full of stories crying to be told and heard. March is a wonder with Spring Awakenings and Stories being told for the first time to new ears.
Join us for World Storytelling Day - Ireland - wherever in the world you might find yourself.

03/03/2026

I'm delighted to announce that I will be travelling to County Roscommon for World Book Day Ireland. I will be Storytelling, from the Chronicles of Lorcan the Lamb and His Woolly Coat, at St. Michael's Special School for the day. I'm pictured here with the Book I penned, "The Blueberry Monster".

21/11/2025

World Storytelling Day - Ireland joins the world in Story on 20th March 2026, under the Theme 'Light in the Dark'.
https://momentofimpact.co.uk/wsd?fbclid=IwY2xjawONbX1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR7PPVX3Elq_hKMhDYKvZJeVRAFEbquorNmD9EInD0SCBDKlDdx8ByZO3-SziA_aem_mLnWIWkZX_2euMxpg_5wDg

Oral storytelling is tens of thousands of years old, and has strongly regained popularity because of its deeply satisfying power to unite and entertain. Here's what storytellers have in store for you on this special day...

27/09/2025

From 1964: A reminder of the long lasting, negative, Environmental effects of Coal Mining.
""Dauphin County Desert" | Photograph of the "Burning Banks" above Williamstown, PA in 1964
This photograph, taken from the Harrisburg Evening News of February 4, 1964, shows the desolate scene on the towering culm bank looming over the Dauphin County mining town.
The massive pile, made up of rock and coal dirt, had been burning for more than 40 years and left a foul-smelling cloud hanging over the eastern side of Williamstown.
The photograph was captioned:
"DAUPHIN COUNTY DESERT - Smoke, containing foul-smelling fumes, rises off the top of a burning culm bank in Williamstown.
It is the type of bank the state Mines and Mineral Industries Committee hopes to eliminate or control through research under an appropriation requested from the 1964 Legislature."
The "Burning Banks," as they were known locally, were removed during Operation Scar Lift in the 1960s and 1970s."

"Dauphin County Desert" | Photograph of the "Burning Banks" above Williamstown, PA in 1964

This photograph, taken from the Harrisburg Evening News of February 4, 1964, shows the desolate scene on the towering culm bank looming over the Dauphin County mining town.

The massive pile, made up of rock and coal dirt, had been burning for more than 40 years and left a foul-smelling cloud hanging over the eastern side of Williamstown.

The photograph was captioned:

"DAUPHIN COUNTY DESERT - Smoke, containing foul-smelling fumes, rises off the top of a burning culm bank in Williamstown.

It is the type of bank the state Mines and Mineral Industries Committee hopes to eliminate or control through research under an appropriation requested from the 1964 Legislature."

The "Burning Banks," as they were known locally, were removed during Operation Scar Lift in the 1960s and 1970s.

27/09/2025

The Stories of the past are echoing to us today, the Lessons we need to remember.
"Captain Thomas C. Fitzgibbon sat in the encampment of the 14th Michigan Volunteer Infantry in August 1862 when he took up his pen to write a letter to a close friend in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
In it, he addressed the core issues at the heart of the escalating conflict that tore apart the United States of America.
The Irish-born officer addressed his letter to Michael W. Morris, a pillar of the Irish immigrant community in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The two men had become close friends while establishing new lives in the United States in the late 1840s and 1850s. Morris originally settled in Wayne County before moving to Pittston and establishing businesses that made him into a pillar of that Coal Region community.
Fitzgibbon lived for a time Northeastern Pennsylvania before heading west to Michigan.
In Fitzgibbon’s telling, his introduction to the realities of slavery in the South made him into an abolitionist. He addressed the horrors of slavery directly: physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Southern enslavers.
Read the letter here: https://wynninghistory.com/2020/08/18/fitzgibbon-letter/"

Captain Thomas C. Fitzgibbon sat in the encampment of the 14th Michigan Volunteer Infantry in August 1862 when he took up his pen to write a letter to a close friend in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.

In it, he addressed the core issues at the heart of the escalating conflict that tore apart the United States of America.

The Irish-born officer addressed his letter to Michael W. Morris, a pillar of the Irish immigrant community in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The two men had become close friends while establishing new lives in the United States in the late 1840s and 1850s. Morris originally settled in Wayne County before moving to Pittston and establishing businesses that made him into a pillar of that Coal Region community.

Fitzgibbon lived for a time Northeastern Pennsylvania before heading west to Michigan.

In Fitzgibbon’s telling, his introduction to the realities of slavery in the South made him into an abolitionist. He addressed the horrors of slavery directly: physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Southern enslavers.

Read the letter here: https://wynninghistory.com/2020/08/18/fitzgibbon-letter/

27/09/2025

"Follow the gleam" | Photograph from 1910
This photograph by Lewis W. Hine shows a Welsh coal miner in a lighted, open-flame miners' lamp in a coal mine in Pennsylvania.
(Photograph: Art Institute of Chicago)"

"Follow the gleam" | Photograph from 1910

This photograph by Lewis W. Hine shows a Welsh coal miner in a lighted, open-flame miners' lamp in a coal mine in Pennsylvania.

(Photograph: Art Institute of Chicago)

27/09/2025

Photographs are tiny capsule Stories just waiting, and wanting, to be Told.

Families in a Coal Region patch town | 1904

This photograph shows several families together in an unidentified "patch town" or company mining town in the anthracite coal fields of Pennsylvania.

From a 1904 book by Peter Roberts about social issues in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

14/06/2025

There is no better Story for today, then that of the famous quote by American Olympian, and 1908 Team Captain, Martin Sheridan, “That flag dips before no earthly king”.
A link to the PDF Story: