An ombudsman will review Reporter’s coverage of the State Senate campaign

By BIR News Room
March 6, 2013

Spurred by state Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry’s announcement on Monday that she will be a candidate in a special election to replace state Sen. Jack Hart, who resigned from office last week, The Reporter has taken immediate steps to avoid political bias or impropriety, or the appearance thereof, in its coverage of the First Suffolk Senate race by hiring an ombudsman who will review that coverage for the duration of the campaign.

Deer Island memorial getting a second look

Ed Forry
By Ed Forry
March 6, 2013

The awful years of An Gorta Mor, the great hunger that ravaged Ireland in the middle of the 19th century, saw thousands of Irish board ships that took them across to America. Between 1847 and 1849 some 25,000 souls arrived in Boston Harbor on the “coffin ships,” which under an edict by the city’s health officials were steered to Deer Island, where the passengers would be examined, and if necessary, quarantined to prevent the spread of any communicable diseases from coming ashore.

Enshrining Patrick Cavanaugh

By Thomas O'Grady
March 3, 2013
Thomas O'Grady

By Thomas O’Grady
Special to the BIR

Recently, but not for the first time, I paid a visit to a roadside shrine (as it were) that remembers one of the iconic figures of so-called Bohemian Dublin of the 1940s and ’50s. Actually, the “shrine”—commemorating poet Patrick Kavanagh—has two separate but related parts. The earlier part is a bench dedicated by his friends on St. Patrick’s Day of 1968, the year after his death, fulfilling a wish Kavanagh had made a decade earlier in a poem titled “Lines Written on a Seat on the Grand Canal, Dublin.”

Boston Irish Reporter's Here and There

By Bill O'Donnell
March 1, 2013
Bill O'Donnell

 Cullen & Murphy’s Bulger Book A Winner –I have ordered it,  so I haven’t read it yet, but the true crime story of Whitey Bulger as written by the Globe’s Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy is no doubt the real thing. It has it all, say the early reviews. Cullen and Murphy have decades of experience in covering Whitey and the Boston underworld and as journalists and urban historians they have written what will likely be the definitive account of the Bulger era, warts and all.

IT WASN’T ALWAYS EASY BEING ‘GREEN’ IN BOSTON

By Peter Stevens
March 1, 2013
Peter Stevens

On March 17, Boston will be awash in St. Patrick’s Day revelry. All nonsense such as green beer, green plastic derbies, “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” badges, and faces reflecting various stages of inebriation and emblazoned with painted shamrocks or the Irish tricolor aside, the Saint’s High, Holy Holiday can be celebrated with unabashed abandon. It is worth remembering, however, that what we take for granted in 2013 was not ever so. For the Boston Irish, honoring – let alone celebrating – St. Patrick’s Day proved a long struggle.

West Cork school gets a surprise

By Joe Leary
March 1, 2013
Joe Leary

Every weekday, 24 Irish children, ages 5 to 12, attend a two-room school house in the remote West Cork countryside between the villages of Drinagh and Drimoleague. It is here, under the caring guidance of Principal Teresa Holland, that these children prepare themselves for Irish high school and entrance to the ferociously competitive Irish University system.

The Derryclough National School, however, has barely enough funds to keep operating. Located in the famous West Cork rolling farm country, the school has been seriously limited by constant government budget cutbacks.

Deer Island memorial getting a second look

Ed Forry
By Ed Forry
March 1, 2013

The awful years of An Gorta Mor, the great hunger that ravaged Ireland in the middle of the 19th century, saw thousands of Irish board ships that took them across to America. Between 1847 and 1849 some 25,000 souls arrived in Boston Harbor on the “coffin ships,” which under an edict by the city’s health officials were steered to Deer Island, where the passengers would be examined, and if necessary, quarantined to prevent the spread of any communicable diseases from coming ashore.

Savin Hill’s Tayler stars in Lyric’s Irish-themed comedy

By BIR News Room
March 1, 2013

By Chris Harding
Special to the BIR

Running through March 16, halfway through St. Patrick’s month (as it is known by our neighbors in Southie), the Lyric Stage Company of Boston presents the popular two-man Irish comedy, “Stones in His Pocket.” Savin Hill’s Phil Tayler shares the task of portraying 15 different characters with Daniel Berger-Jones in this piquant, but hardly light-hearted satire about two lads hired as extras when a Hollywood crew takes over a small village in County Kerry.

Gavin Foundation helps those in recovery find a haven

By BIR News Room
March 1, 2013

By Jackie Gentile
Special to the BIR

It can be difficult for those recovering from alcohol or drug abuse to find a place that not only welcomes them, but also helps them navigate their return to their community and their families. The Gavin Foundation in South Boston does just that and has recently expanded to do even more.

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