Grand Time On Seamus Heaney Birthday – On Sunday afternoon, April 13, at the auditorium on the Bridgewater State University campus an audience of friends and fans came together to mark the 75th birthday of the poet Seamus Heaney, who died last August. It was an old-fashioned, memory-laden birthday bash with stories, anecdotes, and travels with Seamus tales, interrupted by applause and laughter. A lovely day for a lovely man.

The speakers and many in the auditorium had known Seamus for decades and knew of his ties to the Massachusetts state university system and to an array of faculty members who kept their close ties to the poet, both before and after his Nobel Prize award in 1995.
The principal organizer of the birthday tribute was Bridgewater State University Professor Emeritus Maureen Connelly, who worked closely on the program with Bridgewater’s Librarian and rare books archivist Orson Kingsley. Maureen and Seamus were friends for forty years. She made available to the university Heaney notes, letters, and assorted artifacts that she had accumulated over the years of friendship with the internationally celebrated poet.
Among the speakers and participants in the warm, engaging afternoon of fond reminiscences and happy times spent with the poet were Kevin Cullen, the Boston Globe columnist; Shaun O’Connell, author and professor of English as UMass Boston; Robert “Bobby’ Breen, a retired Boston firefighter and inspiration for Heaney’s poem, “Helmet,” and Catherine Shannon, professor emeritus at Westfield State College. In addition, a number of those attending also participated with personal recollections of the poet.
The musical accompaniment, much of it performed in tandem with readings from the poet’s writings, was by Tipperary-born harpist, Mairead Doherty,  a longtime friend of Seamus who has written music for the harp inspired by Heaney’s poetry. She is a graduate of the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin and has resided in the Boston area for years.
It was a grand afternoon in Bridgewater and Seamus Heaney, who loved the craic and the chat and was gifted with genius and a kind heart, would have loved the free-wheeling event.
Religious Columnist Criticizes Border Mass – George Wiegel, a widely-read syndicated columnist appearing in Catholic regional newspapers, was heavily critical of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley and eight bishops for holding Mass on the border between Nogales, Arizona, and Mexico. Weigel, a dependable “yes man” over the years for conservative elements in the Vatican, told a ETWN  television audience of his displeasure. He called the Mass, which included the delivery of communion wafers through the 20-foot-high security fence,  “politicized” and “political theater.” He also expressed concern about immigration reform and the Catholic approach to that hot button issue.
In his Nogales remarks, O’Malley said, “The desert is lined with unmarked graves of thousands. We are here today to say they are not forgotten.”  The cardinal, who speaks fluent Spanish, has been outspoken in favor of reform that includes a path to citizenship and a halt to an “inhumane deportation and detention system” that often splits apart families.
Somebody should send a memo to Weigel that the Church is changing and he represents the rear guard elements of discredited Vatican ills. We’re moving on, George!
Belfast Authors To Sue BC Over Tape Miscues – According to the Belfast Telegraph, the leading newspaper in the North for Protestants/unionists, the Belfast Project authors are “intending to sue Boston College after the university admitted procedures about when controversial material would be published weren’t checked by lawyers.”
The intended plaintiffs, Ed Moloney, Anthony McIntyre, and Wilson McArthur, who did the research and supervised the tape recordings, contend that BC “didn’t check with its lawyers before collecting taped confessional oral histories from IRA and UVF members detailing their involvement in murder and other crimes committed during the Troubles.”
The key individual representing Boston College in the agreement covering the taped interviews is the former librarian at BC’s Burns Library, Robert K. O’Neil. He retired after 26 years at BC and is moving to Arizona to enjoy the weather there and spend more time with his grandchildren.
Moloney, an Irish-born veteran journalist and author, said regarding the agreement, “We went ahead on the basis that the contract had been cleared with lawyers and it was safe for the participants. Had we known the true position, the project would have been stillborn” It is at this delicate intersection where Moloney and his colleagues’ contention and Boston College’s intentions re the tape recordings and legal backup come into sharp conflict with one another. That conflict, resulting in an ongoing bitterly contentious relationship between the Moloney group and BC, focuses directly on O’Neill, his central role in the project, and his statements on the record regarding his actions as Burns Librarian.
O’Neill stated in open federal court that he had never read the agreement supporting the Belfast Project at BC, for which he was nominally in charge. Coupled with that is the fact that O’Neill now admits (in a major Chronicle of Higher Education article) that it was a “mistake” not to specify that confidentiality only extended “to the extent American law allows.”  O’Neill also says he did not run the wording past a lawyer.
An interesting sidebar item to the immediate issues in any upcoming lawsuit is that O’Neill and Thomas Hachey, executive director of BC’s Irish program, each received, according to the Belfast Telegraph, a 25 percent cut of the royalties from Moloney’s best-selling “Voices from the Grave.” In the preface to the book, O’Neill and Hachey described it as “the inaugural volume of a planned series of publications drawn from BC’s Oral History Archive on the Troubles.”
 (Disclosure: Bob O’Neill and I served for many years together as directors of the Eire Society of Boston. We were also both presidents of the society and I wrote Bob’s citation when he was awarded the Society’s Gold Medal. Also, Bob and I had discussions and correspondence when I was inquiring about Boston College acquiring the papers and artifacts of Dublin author Christy Brown, of “My Left Foot” fame.)
The Flattery Never Ends – It seems that the British have a fixation on co-opting Irish books and authors for its UK books lists.  Just as we Gaels are becoming used to having Ireland annexed in print as part of the British Isles (even saw it in the pages of the New York Times Books section), we still see Irish books labeled British. This time it was a major British newspaper, the London Telegraph, taking ownership in its “top 20 British novels” of these: Joyce’s “Ulysses,” Flann O’Brien’s “At Swim Two-Birds,” Iris Murdoch’s “The Sea, The Sea,” and John Banville’s “The Sea.” Seamus Heaney had a wry disclaimer when they did it to him.
American Investors Buy Vast NI properties – A deep-pocket American investment firm has purchased some 850 properties, most of them in Northern Ireland. The sales also include other properties in the Irish Republic, the UK, and Europe. The transaction between Cerberus Capital Management and NAMA, the Irish government’s troubled assets bank, saw land and buildings valued before the crash at almost $7 billion sold for $1.5 billion. Many of the properties are located in once-strong commercial locations across the North.
The new deal means that Cerberus, with solid Boston area links, is now Northern Ireland’s biggest landlord. The price had all the elements of a fire sale, but NAMA was keen to sell off many of the properties they had acquired under duress during the 2008-9 crash and the subsequent recession. The Stormont government in the North, represented by First Minister Peter Robinson, expressed delight, saying the deal was excellent news for the economy. NAMA was also happy to dramatically cut its inventory.
 The huge sale, though far from Boston and the US, could have an impact on some corporate holdings in the Boston area. Cerberus, organized in 1992, is one of the world’s leading private investment firms with extensive property holdings in this part of the US and around the world. Familiar names dot the corporate chain of command.
Top Cerberus executives include former vice president Dan Quayle and John Snow, Treasury Secretary in the second Bush administration. Many readers, especially given Boston’s large Irish population, might be surprised to learn that Cerberus already owns a community-based local hospital company, Steward Health Care, which it bought in 2010.  Cerberus/Steward owns eleven area hospitals, including Carney, St. Elizabeth’s, Norwood Hospital, and Quincy Medical Center; around here it employs 17,000 people and serves more than 150 communities.
The Fractious Conservative Circus – It must be getting closer to 2016 or folks like Rand Paul, a sure candidate for the Republican nomination in 2016, wouldn’t be trying to create some headlines or possibly move to the center with the no-incumbent election on tap. The growling drum beat from Paul, a US senator from Kentucky, is his claim that Dick Cheney, who was out of government in 1995, said that going to war in Iraq would be a disaster, too expensive, no exit strategy, etc. Shift to Cheney as CEO at Halliburton. Then he becomes George W. Bush’s VP and suddenly, says Paul, Cheney is a war dog, all for going into Iraq, where just as coincidentally Halliburton and Cheney can make a “modest living” with one of America’s biggest military contractors. Maybe it’s just another mean-spirited rumor. Cheney already clearly qualifies for war criminal status.
Maybe this isn’t true either. Latest news from the corporate boardroom is that Texas-based KBR, a longtime subsidiary of the aforementioned Halliburton, is under investigation for claims that the company required employees seeking to report fraud to sign confidentiality agreements.
 And news from Planet Beck. Glenn Beck, broadcasting from a closet near you, was covering last year’s Boston Marathon bombing when he zeroed in on a Saudi Arabian student, and falsely called the student a suspect and also repeatedly identified the innocent young man as a participant in crimes after the student had been cleared. The student, himself injured in the bombing, is suing deep pockets Beck for defamation and other insults. Here’s hoping that Beck, now out in the wilderness, has some money left from his earlier highly paid network gigs to soothe the plaintiff’s pain and suffering.
NOTABLE QUOTE
“Deep wounds, which this has turned out to be, because it was about collusion which affected the whole of Northern Ireland. A deep wound cannot be stitched over and just left because it won’t heal. It will fester and eventually burst. And that is what’s happening in Northern Ireland at the minute.”
– Geraldine Finucane, widow of Belfast lawyer Patrick, who was assassinated at his home while having breakfast with his wife and children in 1989. She has been asking Britain for an open, public hearing for years without success.
Bertie Still Here, Playing Small Ball – Bertie Ahern, former Taoiseach and Fianna Fail Leader and retired statesman, had a few unkind words to say about Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin and even avid Bertie watchers are unsure what raised the Ahern bile. All Bertie said was he “didn’t think much of Martin” and he “wouldn’t be saying anything nice about him.” Hardly the words of an ogre, as Charlie Haughey painted Bertie, and usually not enough to raise a ripple even among the thin-skinned denizens of the Dail.
But we have unearthed the reason for Bertie’s pique. It seems some eight months ago Deputy Martin, speaking on Northern Ireland at the Merriman Summer School, mentioned a litany of former politicians from Albert Reynolds to John Hume. But not a word, nary a mention, of the man who presided over the closing days of the Celtic Tiger. Nothing about Bertie. And that wrapped it. Who can blame Bertie for reacting to Martin’s snub. He didn’t savage anybody when they took away his car and driver. But leaving him off the heroes list. Take that Micheal!
The Last Time I saw Cobh – It has been eons since I last walked the seaside streets of Cobh. What triggered memory of that historic port of departure was the report that a town memorial garden with an impressive glass wall has been opened there 102 years after 123 passengers boarded the Titanic at its last port of call. Only 44 who boarded her that day would live to talk about their interrupted voyage.
When last we were in Cobh it was a quiet Friday some days after the 9/11 bombings in 2001. We had overnighted in quiet Waterford with friends and had begun our drive to Cobh for a quick visit and then on eastward. The auto, a Fiat, was down to fumes. Out to dinner late with friends I neglected to get some petrol and that day was the official Day of Commemoration for the 9/11 losses, so ordered by the sympathetic Irish government.
My fellow travelers and I began an unpromising search for a station foolish enough to ignore the Garda. We drove on, mile after mile, slowing, then pulling into stations that were closed. Were their no renegades on the Irish roads?  Finally, I saw a door flash open, and I pulled over. A station owner was retrieving something from his office. The signs outside read “No Petrol Today.”
After 10 minutes of pleading, and reminding him we were Yanks and on our way to relatives across the country, and how much we loved Ireland, all our trips there, chatter, chatter. Your station owner never said a word, reopened his office, and, still silent, he appeared to do something to a wall panel inside. He motioned me to pull next to the pump, and he did his thing. Wished us a whispered good luck on our trip and wouldn’t accept a penny more than the pump display called for. We never saw another petrol station opened on our journey that day.
RANDOM CLIPPINGS
Report on the Irish banking elite: David Drumm, the ex-Anglo-Irish bank chief, owes his old bank some $7 million on an unpaid loan he took out during the halcyon days when he was making $6 or $7 million annually. Not a word from Dublin about a trial or the like. … The queen in London just turned 88, and not a word about her son, the presumed heir to the throne. Do you think he’s timed out? … Last count for Trina Vargo’s Irish Alliance, with 17 supportive members of Congress signing on, but nothing happening. … The West is having a rough time. Now it’s the Aran Islands Air service desperate to keep the planes flying between Galway and the isles. … Galway’s Eyre Square has already had one botched city square re-do and plans are on to build an open air concert space. Better luck this time. … Killybegs, the fishing village in Donegal, has some new jobs on the horizon to staff the coming world’s largest marine food plant. … The North is still nicely exploiting TV’s Game of Thrones film locales for visiting tourists. … Ted Kennedy, Jr. is running for a state senate seat in his home area in Connecticut. Nice to see someone willing to start at the political bottom. He’s a gutsy 52 and we wish him luck. … For former NI Secretary of State Peter Hains’ call for amnesty for all re Troubles-related crime, a solid rejection by his own party. … Maybe age is catching up to me but “The Pope’s Cologne” perfumeis a bit over the top.  If the Vatican is broke, throw some big-lira art works out to auction. … A 100-year old Galway whiskey from the Nun Island Distillery just sold at auction for $5,500. … The tallest building in Ireland (Belfast’s Obel Tower) at 28 stories has just been sold for $32 million. … If you’re in Belfast, they have just opened an exhibit, “Art of the Troubles,” at the Ulster Museum thru September. Another perspective.
Finally, please spend some money on holiday in Ireland. The folks there could use a break. If they’re home working you know they’re not bankers. Those folks are all off on Marbella or the like.