Tips on genealogy session at ICC June 25

By Kiera Murray
June 2, 2016
Kiera Murray

The Friends of Irish Research will present The School of Irish Genealogy at
the Irish Cultural Centre on June 25 at 1 p.m. Richard Reid will discuss advanced methods on the genealogy search tool FamilySearch, and Robert Murphy will talk about dual citizenship.

Users generally only need some basic information to get started on FamilySearch, such as parents’ and grandparents’ names, county or town locations, and partish names if known, says Reid.

Bountiful color makes Ireland sparkle in springtime

By BostonIrish.com... (not verified)
June 2, 2016


By Judy Enright
Special to the BIR


Color is the operative word in Ireland these days – brilliant color from the greenest of fields and occasional blue skies to flowering plants, trees, and bushes whose colors pop when sunshine hits them in gardens, yards, and along the roadside.

Flowers flourish on the Emerald Isle – especially in the nearly tropical south - and present a mixed palette of yellow (gorse and iris), pink, white and red (rhododendrons), white (wild garlic), orange (montbretia), and most other colors in the flower world throughout the year.

Lúnasa’s Crawford believes the band’s ‘marriage of sounds’ undergirds its staying power

By Sean Smith
June 2, 2016
Sean Smith

Yes, yes, Kevin Crawford says he and his Lúnasa band mates are well aware that their 20th anniversary is coming up in the next year, and they will most assuredly do something to mark the milestone.

“We’ve only really just started putting out feelers,” said Crawford during a recent stop at Boston College while on tour with his fellow Lúnasan Cillian Vallely and guitarist (and Worcester native) Patrick Doocey. “We just don’t know the direction yet. We want to celebrate, but also want to have something to market.”

That would seem to suggest, oh, perhaps making a new album?

Broadway’s Ciarán Sheehan is Billy Bigelow in ‘Carousel’

By R.J. Donovan
June 1, 2016
R.J. Donovan

Broadway’s Ciarán Sheehan will be in town from June 9 to June 19 to kick off Reagle Music Theatre’s 48th summer season with Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Carousel.” The classic musical tells the challenging love story of Julie Jordan, an innocent New England mill worker, and Billy Bigelow, a swaggering carnival barker. Ciarán stars as Billy opposite Boston’s own Jennifer Ellis as Julie.
The Dublin-born actor-singer-producer made his Broadway debut in “Les Miserables” – mentored by legendary producer-director Hal Prince (“Evita,” “Cabaret”) – and subsequently starred in more than 1,000 performances of “Phantom of the Opera,” both on Broadway and in Toronto.

His credits include roles at The Irish Repertory Theater and in Frank McCourt’s “The Irish And How They Got That Way,” “Finian’s Rainbow,” and “Camelot” (with Jeremy Irons). As well, he produced and starred in a sold out run of “The Molly Maguires” at the Kirby Center in Pennsylvania.

As a solo artist, the charismatic Sheehan has sold out Carnegie Hall, appeared at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, opened the dedication of the Irish Hunger Memorial in New York City, and sang at funeral services for Beau Biden at the request of Vice President Joe Biden. He also has three PBS musical specials under his belt.

Ireland settles on a"Minority Government;" Kenny remains Taoiseach

By BillI O'Donnell
June 1, 2016
BillI O'Donnell

Irish Government Seeks Steady Footing – After a couple of months of negotiations, bargaining, offers spurned, and offers finally taken, the two major parties in Ireland have settled on an accommodation. In actuality, it is something called a “minority government,” and it offers a way forward to both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail.

BIR gives hundreds of books to ICC library

By Kiera Murray
June 1, 2016
Kiera Murray

The Boston Irish Reporter has donated more than 300 books and videos to the Irish Cultural Centre of New England in memory of the late BIR publisher Mary Casey Forry.

“Over the 26 years that we have published our Boston Irish Reporter, our newsroom has gathered hundreds of works relating to Ireland, many of which we have reviewed in our pages over the years,” said Ed Forry, Mary’s husband and current publisher of the BIR.

Some in US see British exit from EU as threat to progress in North

By Francis Costello
June 1, 2016
Francis Costello

A vote by a majority in Britain in the upcoming (June 25) referendum to exit the European Union poses a serious threat to the Northern Ireland economy in the view of several US commercial and political leaders, Democrat and Republican alike.

Each of those interviewed has shown a long-standing commitment to building peace and stability in the North that should give some pause to those seeking to minimize the impact of a “Brexit” from the EU.

HIGH PERFORMERS IN THEIR SPHERES: The revolutionary Thomas Meagher, and the golfer Christy O’Connor, Sr. deserve acclaim for the lives they led

By Peter Stevens
June 1, 2016
Peter Stevens

“The Immortal Irishman,” indeed. Some lives splash across a larger-than-life canvas. Such a saga is that of Thomas Francis Meagher. In the finely wrought new biography “The Immortal Irishman: The Irish Revolutionary Who Became an American Hero,” National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Timothy Egan has brilliantly captured the proverbial force of nature that was Thomas Francis Meagher.

In many ways, Meagher’s story embodies the quintessential struggle of immigrants escaping oppression to seek a better life in America. As the Great Famine ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, the handsome, well-educated Irishman unleashed his fiery oratory against the British government, denouncing Ireland’s oppressors as at least a million of his fellow Irish perished from starvation and disease.

Meagher translated his words into action when, as a leader of the Young Ireland movement, he launched a revolt against British rule that the empire crushed, in the process transporting Meagher to a prison colony in remote Tasmania, where and early death from hard labor loomed a certainty.

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