Strong push to give Old Irish Goats rare breed status

By BIR News Room
December 2, 2013

By Judy Enright
Special to the BIR

It would probably be fair to call me a stalker – in the nicest sense of the word, of course.
This feral goat is currently in captivity being treated for injuries. Doesn't he look like he's smiling?This feral goat is currently in captivity being treated for injuries. Doesn't he look like he's smiling?

For at least a decade, I have stalked Old Irish Goats all around Mulranny, Co. Mayo. I desperately wanted to photograph them with their shaggy, unruly coats and huge, almost other-worldly horns.

Friends had advised me to drive the curvy Belmullet road. “The goats are always there on the hillside,” they said. Yet, no goats, no matter how many times I drove the route.

“They are always in the town (Mulranny),” friends said. I had never seen them there until one evening when we went to dinner at the Park Hotel and the most magnificent, regal Billy Goat, sporting a long, grey beard, was there, busily snacking on the hotel’s specimen plantings. Of course, I didn’t have my camera!

Dot’s Warren back home in ‘I Love Lucy’

By R.J. Donovan
December 2, 2013
R.J. Donovan

Lucy: Carolynne Warren misses Dorchester’s sense of neighborhood.Lucy: Carolynne Warren misses Dorchester’s sense of neighborhood.
Christmas is coming a little early for Dorchester native Carolynne Warren, who has built a successful career as an actress and entrepreneur in Los Angeles. The actress will find herself onstage at Boston’s Colonial Theatre from Dec. 3 to Dec. 22 as a member of the national tour of “I Love Lucy: Live On Stage.”

When she was growing up on Geneva Avenue in Fields Corner, she says she never dared dream of such a gig. Her Boston story includes local iconic highlights like the school dances at Florian Hall, Mass at St. Peter’s, dance classes at Fields Corner, high school at Boston Latin, and regular appearances “in my Nana’s kitchen.” Along the way, she picked up a diploma from Harvard University along the way.

Warren has been a member of Second City in Chicago, has appeared in several one-woman shows, and is the founder of Hey Dollface! Productions. She was back in Boston previously to appear in “Menopause: The Musical” at the Stuart Street Playhouse and “The Light In The Piazza” at SpeakEasy Stage.

‘New sounds’ emphasis helps keep Celtic Sojourn a ‘fresh’ attraction

By Sean Smith
December 2, 2013
Sean Smith

Boston-area musicians Maeve Gilchrist and Mariel Vandersteel will be among the featured performers as “A Christmas Celtic Sojourn” begins its second decade of flavoring the Christmas holiday season with music, song, dance, and storytelling from Irish, Scottish and other Celtic – even non-Celtic – traditions.

For Gerry Adams, storms clouds ahead

By Bill O’Donnell
December 2, 2013
Bill O’Donnell

By Bill O’Donnell

Storm Clouds Gathering For Gerry Adams –Sinn Fein Party Leader and Dail Deputy from County Louth, Gerry Adams has led a relatively charmed life as prisoner, negotiator with the British, Good Friday peacemaker, and immensely successful politician with stakeholds in a persistently divided Ireland. However, that charmed life may be about to be interrupted by British government and loyalists forces in the North who finally have the scent of a weakened Irish republican in their sight.

Destiny has meaning on the Stonehill campus: Father John Denning is now holding the reins

By Greg O'Brien
December 2, 2013
Greg O'Brien

Rev. John Denning, of the Congregation of Holy Cross, the newly inaugurated head of Stonehill, the college his order founded in North Easton in 1948, hardly needed an introduction to the campus when he took office two months ago as the institution’s 10th president. Friends say his appointment was the completion of divine order for a priest who had spent the previous 13 years at Stonehill building spiritual and cultural bridges in positions ranging from Director of Campus Ministry, to Vice President for Mission, to Vice President of Student Affairs.

A Q & A with Mary McAleese

By BIR News Room
December 2, 2013

Belfast-born Mary McAleese served two terms as president of Ireland during 1997-2011, the first native of Northern Ireland to hold that office. McAleese’s presidency was marked by her advocacy for peace and reconciliation through regular trips to Northern Ireland and by hosting visitors from the North at her official residence. This fall, McAleese is serving as the Burns Visiting Scholar in Irish Studies, accompanied by her husband Martin. She recently spoke with Sean Smith of the Boston College Chronicle.Excerpts from that interview follow:
  

SALUTING A SCHOLAR FOR A JOB WELL DONE; A fond adieu to Robert O’Neill, Director of Burns Library at BC

By Peter Stevens, BIR Staff
December 2, 2013
Peter Stevens, BIR Staff

For the last 26 years, Robert O’Neill has been the director of the John J. Burns Library at Boston College. Now, as he prepares to retire this month and head for the warmer clime of Arizona, he leaves a deep legacy. The library, under his and his staff’s tutelage, stands as one of the finest university research institutions anywhere. Its rich Irish collections have garnered worldwide acclaim, due in no small measure to the foresight of Robert O’Neill.

When Northern Ireland was at war Remembering can help prevent future horror

By Joe Leary
December 2, 2013
Joe Leary

The tragedy of the people of Northern Ireland killing each other was memorialized this past October by the families and friends of the 18 victims who died 20 years ago in two of the most tragic atrocities in the North’s difficult history.

Today, as American observers sometimes become frustrated by the sporadic rioting and slow progress on agreement on nearly everything in Northern Ireland, we should recognize that going back to the old days is not an option. Interested Irish Americans should have patience and always focus on improving the hard-won peace.

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