Boston Irish Reporter

Appeals Court ruling in BC's 'Belfast Project' case termed 'significant victory' for univesity

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:50:41 +0000

The US First Circuit Court of Appeals has issued "a significant victory for Boston College in its efforts to protect the confidentiality of research materials in the Belfast Project," a BC spokesman told the BIR
On Friday, May 31 the Court ruled that the District Court abused its discretion in ordering the production of interview materials that were not relevant to the second subpoena, issued in August 2011, which sought information on the 1972 disappearance of Belfast resident Jean McConville. In offering the opinion, Judge Juan Torruella stated: “After a detailed review of the materials in question, we find that the district court abused its discretion in ordering the production of several of the interviews which, after an in detail reading of the same, do not contain any information relevant to the August 2011 subpoena.” Read more

BC’s Connolly awarded Ellis Island medal of honor

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:45:08 +0000

Seamus Connolly, the Sullivan Artist-in-Residence at Boston College and director of the university’s Irish Studies music programs, receive the Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO) on May 11 in recognition of his distinguished career as one of the world’s most respected master Irish musicians.
The Ellis Island Medals of Honor annually pays tribute to the ancestry groups that comprise America’s unique cultural mosaic. The medals are presented on Ellis Island to American citizens for their outstanding contributions to their communities, their nation, and the world. Past Ellis Island Medal of Honor recipients include six presidents of the United States, Nobel Prize winners, athletes, and leaders of industry, artists and others whose work has made a lasting impact on humanity.
Actress Mia Farrow, recording artist Dionne Warwick, Surgeon General Regina M. Benjamin, MD, and US Rep. Peter King (R-NY) joined Connolly as this year’s honorees. Read more

Colin Hamell explores lost dreams of The Titanic

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:43:44 +0000

R.J.Donovan

BY R. J. DONOVAN
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
From Hollywood to Broadway, the world has long romanticized the sinking of the Titanic. Further, the story of the 1912 tragedy has focused strongly on the ship being a luxury liner that took to its watery grave a fairly well-to-do list of passengers.
What many people don’t realize is that the Titanic – the largest ship in the world at the time – was designed to transport emigrants. And, that it was built in the shipyards of Belfast.
These two points play a pivotal role in the Tir Na Theatre production of the new play, “Jimmy Titanic,” being presented by New Repertory Theatre in Watertown June 19 to 30. Directed by Carmel O’Reilly, the production had its world premiere last fall at the Origin Irish Theatre Festival in New York. Following a run in Philadelphia, “Jimmy Titanic” made its Irish debut in Donegal in April.
By Belfast journalist-turned-playwright Bernard McMullan, the play is set 100 years after the disaster in the north Atlantic, revisiting the journey of Jimmy Boylan and Tommy Mackey, two proud, young, Belfast shipyard workers aboard the ship’s ill-fated voyage. Read more

The Yanks are coming’ – to the Burren- Backroom series feature on June 19

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:40:45 +0000

Sean Smith

BY SEAN SMITH
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
A New York City-based Irish band called The Yanks might seem a tough sell in the hub of Red Sox Nation, but Bostonians shouldn’t leap to conclusions: As fiddler Dylan Foley explains, he and his mates did not choose the moniker as a tribute to a certain baseball team.
“ ‘Yanks’ are what the Irish call obnoxious Americans, and we are Americans playing Irish music,” says Foley. “And we are obnoxious – sometimes.” Read more

Reading Joyce Reading À Paris

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:36:58 +0000

BY THOMAS O’GRADY
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
I am sitting on the terrace of a café in Paris—in Place de la Contrascarpe, to be exact. In 1921, when James Joyce was putting the finishing touches on Ulysses, he lived just around the corner, in a flat loaned to him by French author Valery Larbaud on a courtyard at number 71, rue Cardinal Lemoine. What better place to thumb through the French novel that purportedly gave Joyce the idea for what is known as “the interior monologue,” the predominant narrative strategy of Ulysses? According to his preeminent biographer, Richard Ellmann, Joyce picked up Les lauriers sont coupés by Édouard Dujardin at a railway kiosk in Paris in 1903—and the rest is literary history: “in later life, no matter how diligently the critics worked to demonstrate that he had borrowed the interior monologue from Freud, Joyce always made it a point of honor that he had it from Dujardin.” Read more

Suffolk University President McCarthy fills role of a Renaissance man in challenging times

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:35:14 +0000

Greg O'Brien

BY GREG O’BRIEN
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
If they handed out frequent flier miles for an extended resume, Jim McCarthy would fly free, first class, the rest of his life. Instead, the president of Suffolk University is flying high in the academic world. To say that he is a Renaissance man is to say that Isaac Newton could count.
The numbers indeed add up for McCarthy – five senior posts at some of the most prestigious schools in the East and in Europe. Before Suffolk, he was provost and senior vice president at Baruch College of the City of New York; dean of the School of Health and Human Services at the University of New Hampshire; director of Columbia University’s Heilbrunn Center for Population and Family Health and a Columbia School of Public Health professor; director of the Johns Hopkins Population Center and a professor in the School of Public Health; a research analyst at Princeton where he received his doctorate in sociology; an analyst at the International Statistical Institute of London; and a visiting professor at venerable Trinity College in Dublin, founded in 1592 if you’re counting. Read more

The value of accommodation

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:32:52 +0000

BY JAMES W. DOLAN
SPECIAL TO THE REPORTER
I refer not to the residential kind of accommodations of which we are all familiar but the adjustments one must make to the inevitable vicissitudes one experiences navigating the rolling swells that sometimes threaten life’s equilibrium.
Adapting to such currents requires patience, self-control, tolerance, understanding, and the capacity to overlook annoyances. By “overlook” I do not mean “ignore” but to look beyond the immediate irritation to something more important than anger or withdrawal. Read more

About blights – the natural, and the man-made

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:29:22 +0000

BY PETER F. STEVENS

Recently, scientists announced the discovery of the actual strain of potato blight that unleashed the Great Famine, An Gorta Mor. The natural villain behind at least a million deaths from starvation or disease and the Irish Diaspora of the mid-1800s was “HERB-1,” the name that an international team of molecular biologists has give to the lethal blight.
The onset of HERB-1, though not its biological identity, came in the summer of 1846. A County Cork farmer noted that same summer: “A mist rose up out of the sea….When the fog lifted, you could begin to see the potato stalks lying over as if the life was gone out of them. And that was the beginning of the great trouble and the famine that destroyed Ireland.” Read more

Delivering hopeful change to both Dublin and Belfast Information technology training for the Irish unemployed and underemployed

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:21:55 +0000

Joe Leary

BY JOE LEARY
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
This is a bit of a personal story for me – testimony to the help that Irish America has provided to the most severely disadvantaged areas of Dublin and the rest of Ireland.
Social planners 50-60 years ago built huge apartment buildings to shelter those who were unable to purchase homes for themselves. As a social experiment they turned out to be disasters. Many of us will remember the “Columbia Point” project here in Boston as a well-intended answer to low income housing. It no longer exists.
In Dublin, Ireland, the city fathers also built many such high rise buildings to house low income families. One such cluster, called “Ballymun,” was located on the way to and from the airport. The Irish American Partnership had just started in 1988 when I traveled to the Ballymun Job Center run by a Jesuit priest, Fr. John Sweeney. Over the next few years Partnership donors provided the Job Center with a number of grants to help the residents obtain employment. Read more

Where to go in Ireland? There’s much to choose from

Ed Forry — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 19:16:29 +0000

by Judy Enright
Special to the BIR
Want to know where to go when you visit Ireland? Well, check out recommendations from some of the Irish who voted for the best place to vacation in Ireland. The Irish Times newspaper recently announced 25 locations shortlisted by their panel of judges from 1,400 nominations submitted since March. The judges, most of whom are in some aspect of tourism, will choose an overall winner.
The top 25 included four islands (Achill, Inis Meain, Inishbofin and Valentia), the River Shannon, two picturesque West Cork spots (the Beara peninsula and Gougane Barra Lake), a few beaches (Caherdaniel and Derrynane in Kerry, Dunmore East in Co. Waterford, Gweedore in Donegal, Rosslare Strand in Co. Wexford, and Strandhill in Sligo) and, of course, Dingle and Dublin City, perennial favorites for tourists.
Also listed were Cork and Londonderry. The gourmet capital of Ireland – Kinsale – made the list too as did: Killarney; Loop Head peninsula, Co. Clare; Louisburgh in Mayo; Boyle in Roscommon and Ballyvaughan in Co. Clare, at the edge of the spectacular Burren. Read more