Trad Youth Exchange plays its message: Mutual enjoyment keeps the music going

By Sean Smith
December 8, 2014
Sean Smith

Tin whistle players performed a medley as part of the Trad Youth Exchange concert.Tin whistle players performed a medley as part of the Trad Youth Exchange concert.

There was absolutely no space in The Burren Backroom, certainly not on the stage: Twenty children in two rows occupied most of the platform, and a third row of eight sat along its front edge. The 28 kids – ranging in age from pre- to mid-teens – also held an assortment of instruments, including fiddles, concertinas, flutes, tin whistles, bodhrans, and the odd banjo, guitar and set of uilleann pipes. The audience in the Backroom, meanwhile, filled every seat and just about every spot on the floor.

What packed the Backroom to full capacity had been billed as a concert, yet that worad seemed somehow an insufficient description. This had all the earmarks of a landmark event that spoke to the continuing legacy of Irish traditional music, and the spirit of community and fellowship it inspires, across great distances and generations.

‘Christmas Carol’ is Cheryl McMahon’s holiday specialty

By R.J. Donovan
December 8, 2014
R.J. Donovan

In Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol,” miserly Ebenezer Scrooge forsakes capitalism to discover the true spirit of Christmas after crossing paths with Ghosts Past, Present, and Future.  Since it was published in 1843, the story has stood as a holiday classic, whether in print, on the screen, or on stage. 

In 1989, the North Shore Music Theatre was preparing a production of the timeless tale, adapted by the theater’s then artistic director, Jon Kimball, and his staff. 

Listen for the touch of Appalachian at 12th part of ‘Celtic Sojourn’ book

By Sean Smith
December 8, 2014
Sean Smith

Back for its 12th year, “A Christmas Celtic Sojourn” will once again turn to new faces and sounds as well as familiar favorites in celebrating the Christmas holiday season through music, song, dance, and storytelling from Irish, Scottish, and other, related Celtic traditions.

A forward step for Famine-era memorial on Deer Island: MWRA joins plan for marker where 900 Irish pilgrims died

By Ed Forry
December 8, 2014

There has been some progress in developing a plan to establish a memorial in remembrance of the hundreds of Irish Famine-era emigrants who lost their lives before reaching the mainland of Boston.

In 1847, the city of Boston opened a quarantine station on Deer Island in Boston Harbor in 1847 for the treatment and cure of thousands of Irish who had made the long ocean journey to escape the Great Hunger. While many survived, some 900 died and were buried in graves on the island, located just off the town of Winthrop. The island is now accessible by a causeway, and currently houses Boston’s huge wastewater treatment facility.

Things are looking up for people in the North this holiday season

By Joe Leary, Special to the BIR
December 8, 2014
Joe Leary, Special to the BIR

With a Catholic majority looming in the near future and the British government cutting back on funds to run the Northern Ireland government, rather profound changes are coming to this small province. One change may arrive before Christmas.

For all the attention it gets, Northern Ireland, with its population of 1.8 million, has fewer people than the three medium-size Massachusetts counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Plymouth. In fact the distance between the two largest cities on either side of Northern Ireland is about the same as between Boston and Hyannis.

A new dispute- taxing households for their water- flares up all across Ireland

By Bill O'Donnell
December 4, 2014
Bill O'Donnell

BY BILL O’DONNELL
We Reap What We Sow – In the years since the Irish bailout following the recession that hit Ireland and much of the world a staggering blow, Irish taxpayers have involuntarily contributed over 29 billion euros (roughly $389 billion US dollars) to the Irish exchequer. Given the crowd scenes and protests in the news from Greece, Spain, and other similarly hard-hit EU constituencies, the Irish people have been relative paragons of restraint.

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