September CD Reviews

By Sean Smith, Special to the BIR
September 7, 2018
Sean Smith, Special to the BIR

Dan Gurney, “Ignorance Is Bliss” • A native of New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley, Gurney is a cross-platform app developer, co-founder of the live web-broadcasting site Concert Window, and not so incidentally, one of the country’s finest traditional Irish accordion players. “I like knowing how things work – finding answers,” he writes in the sleeve notes of this album, his second solo release.

First-time author delves into Boston’s racial divide

By Daniel Sheehan
September 1, 2018
Daniel Sheehan

BY DAN SHEEHAN
REPORTER STAFF
Michael Patrick Murphy knows that history is cyclical. The South Shore native spent the formative part of his adolescence in South Boston and Dorchester, attending Boston College High School and UMass Boston. At that time, running from the late ‘80s through the early ‘90s, racial tension was at a high level. Although the desegregation of the city’s public schools had been happening since the mid-1970s, it was just starting to take place at private and parochial schools, which at that point were almost exclusively white.

‘Hamnet,’ Shakespeare’s Lost Boy, at ArtsEmerson

By R.J Donovan
September 1, 2018
R.J Donovan

BY R. J. DONOVAN
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
Shakespeare stands as one the world’s most famous writers, yet much of his personal life lies blurred in mystery. The Bard had only one son, Hamnet, born in 1585 and named for a local friend. The playwright reportedly spent little time with his family in Stratford-upon-Avon, abandoning them to further his career in London. In 1596 he received word that Hamnet, then 11-years-old, was seriously ill. By the time he returned to Stratford, the boy was gone, never having had the opportunity to know his father.

Northern Ireland appears ungovernable

By Joe Leary
September 1, 2018
Joe Leary

BY JOE LEARY
SPECIAL TO THE BIR
The intransigence, bullheadedness, and pigheadedness of politicians throughout the world have frequently brought suffering, pain, and poor government to the people they are supposed to serve. Whether this occurs because the leaders believe they are legitimately representing their constituents or simply that they are stubborn, the result is the same.
Our American Civil War with its 600,000 dead is a good example of the devastation wrought when politicians fail in their duties.

All-Ireland hurling heroes Limerick to play at Fenway in fall

By BIR Newsroom
September 1, 2018
BIR Newsroom

Hurling will return to Fenway Park this fall and the triumphant Limerick team— fresh off its All-Ireland senior championship in August — will lead the pack.
The Limerick Leader reported on Aug. 23 that the third Fenway Hurling Classic in four years will be played on Nov. 18. Four counties will be represented in the double-header match-up: Limerick, Clare, Wexford, and Cork, according to the newspaper and subsequent reports.

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