Boston Historian Takes On Famine Myths – Dr. Francis Costello has strong ties and a legion of friends in the Boston area, but he is spending his time these days away from a classroom in Belfast leading a cross-community project he co-founded to shatter some myths of the Irish Famine and correct the historical record.

Costello, who many will be familiar with from his years in Boston, was chief of staff for Congressman Joseph Kennedy and served as press secretary to Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn during his stateside years. He also was co-chairman of the nonprofit Boston Ireland Ventures that helped promote cultural and commercials ties between Boston and Ireland. Costello took on the Belfast Famine project as a labor of love because he is well into his book on the global impact of the great Irish Famine and the new study under his direction, “Sharing the Past,” is right in Costello’s wheelhouse.

During his time over the past fifteen years in Belfast where he lives with his wife, Anne O’Connor-Costello and their four sons, Dr. Costello has had a growing reputation as a history lecturer at University of Ulster, Queens University, and other university forums; he is also a business consultant and author.

As a historian, Costello is primarily concerned with setting the record straight, shattering some of the crusty myths and shibboleths and sharing the past with the people of the North. “What is rewarding about this project,” Costello says, “is that it is driven by the grassroots up. There are very harrowing stories about people’s ancestors and families from Larne and the Shankill and amidst the Famine’s disease and death that impacted Protestant and Catholic working class people alike,there was a kindness and a willingness to help one another.”

The “Sharing the Past” lecture series will travel across the Irish countryside collecting memories and stories of the 1845-1852 period, when one in five people in Belfast, for example, had been affected by some sort of contagion linked to the Famine. The project team has already visited close to a hundred venues, including workhouses from the Famine period, and has interacted with local citizens with stories handed down from the mid- nineteenth century.

Costello strongly believes that the Famine period that saw some 1.5 million deaths and a similar number who left Ireland never to return is “a story that must be told and ordinary people are helping to tell that story with poetry, original historical research, and music.”

Irish Landmarks Promote St. Patrick’s Day – It is ostensibly a tip of the cap to Ireland’s national Saint, but who would be surprised if the global landmarks celebration had a positive impact on Green Isle tourism. Now into its sixth year of green-lighting famous landmarks in the USA, Europe, and globally, the marketing campaign has added a couple of new landmarks to light up, including the Colosseum in Rome, the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, and the Sacre-Coeur Basilica on the Montmartre in Paris.
Other celebrated landmarks done up in Green for St. Patrick’s Day include Niagara Falls, Christ the Redeemer in Rio, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the spectacular Burg Al Arab Hotel in Dubai. Still more sites resplendent in green are the town Hall of Munich and landmarks in Oslo, Lisbon, the Sky Tower in Auckland, and a castle in Disneyland, Paris.

In the US, green sites already include the John Hancock Center, the Navy Pier, the Wrigley Building, all in Chicago. In addition to the Diaspora millions of Irish have an international array of friends from countries across the world.

Irish Banks Undergoing Scrutiny – The Irish Dail has finally gotten around to taking a more comprehensive look at the activities and possible illegalities that pervaded Irish banks and other financial institutions that many allege were instrumental in Ireland’s fierce recession. The headlines here and in Ireland about the behavior of banks like the Anglo Irish Bank and its CEO, expatriate David Drumm and his wife seeking but not finding relief in Boston courts, has been a sad soap opera for the working people of Ireland. The Anglo Irish “lent” its officers huge bags of euros with no collateral demand as they laughed all the way out the door, with never a thought about repaying.

A major question on the lips of the punters who are today paying for the bad behavior and greed at the hands of a series of rogues and thieves abetted by poor and inept regulation (when there was any at all) who played and partied their way into Ireland’s worst financial disaster, is: “Where did the money go?”

The Irish rate payers are in hock for something like $75 billion and nobody to date has answered the question of where that enormous amount of money went, then disappeared, and has since been replaced by massive amounts of public money.  Austerity (for rate payers) is the only answer to date, and a poor one.  Is it any wonder why Irish citizens are in the streets protesting. Maybe the Dail banking inquiry can come up with the answer!

Gratuitous Advice for Boston’s Mayor – Marty, it has been a terrible winter, a baptism of unrelenting white stuff along with an MBTA that can hardly get its clients from point A to Point B, while the Olympic drumbeat goes on, and we are all tired of the search for scapegoats and folks we can toss under the bus, or indict, or investigate to buy some time.

The bridge to the old homeless shelter is history (Chapter 2 is on the way), the white stuff will be history certainly before July, and the gist of this Boston-born observer’s advice to a good Connemara man who has all the heft and heart needed to do the job is: Stop the whining and try to consign to history the late good mayor’s chronic ailment – a thin skin. It’s tough to shake but it never makes things easier. Never.

The Patriots won and so will Boston. Roll with the punches and put up with the naysayers for a few more weeks and behold, it will be spring in Boston with the Sox opener mere days away. You are going to be a great mayor!

Gaels, Gates, Glad Hands, a Gala Super Bowl – Two Irishmen, Richie Whelan from Dublin and Paul McEvoy from Tipperary, had themselves a grand old day in Phoenix on Sun., Feb. 1. They attended the Super Bowl, got in free, and until the final minute of the Patriots-Seahawks brawl, it was a day to remember. The two lads admitted they sneaked in past one ticket taker on a tip from an obliging security guard. Whelan discussed the entry strategy: “We just walked in behind these 20 first-aid workers, straight up to the front door, and hid in behind them.... We walked past another security guard that wasn’t paying attention. We could see the field, then the stadium, and the atmosphere was insane.”

The jolly interlopers from Ireland found two seats just four rows from the field that were unused during the second half. Tickets there were selling earlier in the day for $25,000 a seat. Yes, true. The game didn’t end all that well for Whelan, who saw his beloved Seahawks beaten in the last minute by the Malcolm Butler interception. But what a day for two delightful chancers.
Did You Know That … the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade issued more than 620,000 passports last year. May and June were the busiest months for applications, with the greatest number issued from London and Canberra. Other leaders in passports issued were New York, Sydney, San Francisco and Ottawa.

Barbershop Quartet Fills the Gap – On a recent US Airways flight to New Orleans there were a few delays and passengers were a bit out of sorts. A flight attendant knew that among the flyers was a barbershop quartet, Port City Sounds. To ease the grumbling, hostess Kari Mann asked the quartet to sing a few of their favorites. The remainder of the trip was a dream as the singers filled the several hours until the plane landed a group of contented passengers on the ground.

This short tale reminds me of a few flights on new Aer Lingus planes in the nineties when the electronics and the sound on several inaugural and early flights from Boston to Belfast were inoperative and were replaced by two young guitar-playing & singing minstrels who moved along the aisles entertaining passengers, especially toddlers and youngsters throughout the flight to Belfast. It was just like having our own buskers on board. An enduring memory for this traveler.

Frustration in Ireland No Cause for Abuse – In late January of this new year there was a troubling upbeat in protest demonstrations, much of it attributable to the government’s new water tax. Protest groups, which once confined dissent to public buildings, now gathered in front of government ministers’ homes, while other officials reported receiving “serious threats” that have rarely been seen or heard in Ireland.

However, those forms of angry protest and personal threats to Dail members were hardly the worst of the battering that politicians and public figures took.  Irish television was overrun by scenes of President Michael D. Higgins being verbally abused, cursed, and the target of some of the most venomous, fury-driven language ever directed at a sitting Irish president. Higgins, or Michael D. as we remember him in Boston, is a 73-year-old former Labour Party president and longtime Dail minister & member who has served honorably and has been an extremely active supporter of the Irish working class in his career and presidency. In Finglas in late January, Higgins was called, “traitor, sell-out and parasite” among other graceless epithets.

Protests are the voice of the people. They are as valid in the streets of Finglas as they are in front of the American White House. But abuse such as Higgins faced, having to be hurried into his car by garda to avoid being physically attacked, is beyond the pale.  The Irish Times said the verbal attacks on President Higgins “mark a new low in political discourse.”I agree.

Balancing the Scales, Remembering a Good Friend – In this space last month I wrote a short item about the appointment of an old friend, former Deputy Consul General in Boston Brendan Rogers, who was named Ireland’s Ambassador to Thailand and Myanmar late last year.

In keeping the focus of that earlier report on the new ambassador, I intentionally left until now to write about the former Consul General in Boston, Patrick Curran, of Co. Waterford. He was Brendan’s longtime friend and colleague and my friend during their tenure here together. Brendan and Pat, my choice as the most popular and productive diplomatic team in my knowledge, spent long days and late evenings seeing to the welfare of Irish-born visitors and members of the emigrant community. They ran the Boston Marathon together, they worked with community groups and charities here and in Ireland, they bought over young boxers and runners from Limerick, and during their four plus years together in Boston, they proudly showed the Tricolor at great heights and to a warm and lingering embrace by the people of Boston.

Brendan reports that Pat, now happily retired after a long and distinguished career in the Irish Foreign Affairs Department, lives in Ring, Co. Waterford. During his diplomatic years, he was Head of Mission in Lesotho, Uganda, and Zambia and also served in the Secretariat in Belfast and as Head of Development in Pretoria, South Africa. At home in Ring, Pat is a member of the local historical museum and an active participant in community affairs.

The Month to Recall Patrick & the Past – March has always been a happy time going back to small parties we had to Celebrate the Day as newlyweds living in Brighton. Now, I make a few Irish coffees for neighbors and our guests walk home. Over the years on St. Patrick’s Day, some spent at nearby events, others on the road or traveling  in distant places (never, by happenstance, in Ireland on March 17), I recall St. Patrick’s Day celebrations that are part of the memories that we pull out of the file around this time of the year.
One of my favorites was March 17, 1980 on State Street, Chicago, marching along that historic route with Congressman John Anderson, the Independent candidate for president and other staff from the campaign. The crowds were heavy and the noise of the multiple street rallies was like a tonic to us, even though we were sharing the crowd with other candidates. I remember that there were candidates and signs and fans as far as the eye could see, and on one corner I caught a glimpse of a campaigning Ted Kennedy, smiling and happy, looking to his upcoming scrap with Jimmy Carter.

In 1985, I was on stage in Southie to make an award to Mayor Flynn at Bill Bulger’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day breakfast. I was treated well, happily ensconced amidst the musicians but I continued to eye the side door as a possible escape route after a long, standing stint and aching feet. I hung in there and was glad I did. It was a different kind of fun to be so close to the jokes and barbs by some of the Bay State’s well-rehearsed politicians. And of course, I was right where the action was. Another good day in Southie.

It was just ten months after President Clinton’s 1995 White House conference on the Irish economy, when alongside Boston’s John Cullinane and Frank Costello I was back in the White House again for the 1996 St. Patrick’s Day gala.  Filled with bold names and famous faces from television and Time magazine, etc., it was a wonderland of media big foot types and the Irish “Friends of Bill” from Boston to San Francisco and beyond.  Great fun, and the fine music  by local Irish musicians and the elite Marine Corps band made it a day to remember.

RANDOM CLIPPINGS
Congratulations to Catherine Shannon, Professor Emerita of Westfield State College who has been named as the Eire Society’s 2015 Gold Medal recipient. Catherine reminds me that she is again involved with the Charitable Irish Society’s March 17th annual dinner. The featured speaker that evening will be award-winning historian and novelist Peter Quinn. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh will be on hand. The dinner will be at the Fairmont Copley Plaza in Boston. Phone 617-330-1737 for tickets/info. … With Greece fighting to avoid default on its recession bailout, Ireland, which has done a top job of paying down its debt, is steering clear of that imbroglio. … Air Lingus continues to spread its wings with new direct flights from Dublin to Dulles Airport, Washington. … Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein Leader and Co. Louth Dail member, is the latest to publicly urge the Irish government to push for the Narrow Waters bridge project linking the North with the Republic. … The action continues at Stormont to formally create an opposition that could take opposing policy views to those espoused by the NI Executive.

The international art market flourishes with a record price of $300 million for a Paul Gauguin painting of two Tahitian girls. … Adare Manor Hotel and golf resort in Limerick has been purchased by Irish businessman JP McManus for $34 million. Sellers were Americans Tom & Judy Kane. … Canada and New Zealand are offering inducements of visas and new jobs to attract Irish residents to emigrate. … This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler
Yeats. A Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Yeats died in 1939. … The New York Irish will be hosting likely presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at their St. Patrick’s Day event. It’s another sign that the former first lady and secretary of state is just an announcement away from a presidential Candidacy. … Line of the week via Bill Reynolds’ ProJo column on David Letterman’s remark to Bill Belichick “We invited Pete Carroll to be on the show. He passed.”… A good sign of Ireland’s recovery is the 2114 tourist spending there of about $4 billion and visitors of 7.3 million., both increases.
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CELEBRATE St. Patrick’s Day by remembering those without shelter or enough food, especially the young. Emulate the Irish at home, the most generous givers in the world.