The Music Master of Grove Lane Joe Derrane Delivers from Heart and Hearth

By Sean Smith
October 20, 2010
Sean Smith

By Sean Smith
Special to the BIR

“Grove Lane” is to Joe Derrane what “Abbey Road” was to The Beatles.
No, you won’t hear Boston’s legendary accordion player doing covers of “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” or “Here Comes the Sun” on his new CD, which will be out this month. But as the Fab Four memorialized the London recording studio’s influence on their music, so Derrane has likewise paid tribute to the place that has had a significant impact on his vocation — and his life.

Boston Celtic Music Fest- October Notes

By Sean Smith
October 20, 2010
Sean Smith

A column of news and updates of the Boston Celtic Music Fest (BCMFest), which celebrates the Boston area’s rich heritage of Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton music and dance with a grassroots, musician-run winter music festival and other events during the year.
-- Sean Smith

Coming closer to January -- The BCMFest Board is currently confirming its performer selections for the 2011 festival, which takes place Jan. 7 and 8, and will announce the line-up shortly. Once again, there were many outstanding submissions this year, and the board wants to thank all who applied.

Going Back Home: A Visit to the Isle of Mists

By BostonIrish.com... (not verified)
October 20, 2010

By Greg O’Brien
Special to the BIR

“Ireland sober is Ireland stiff,” wrote James Joyce. And so we toast the Isle of Mists in throaty zest after the Shannon-bound Aer Lingus flight finally lifts off a rain-soaked JFK runway at 10:30 p.m. on Sun., Aug. 22 after a four-hour weather delay that featured boisterous thunder and angry bolts of lightening. It was an ill-omened beginning to a family pilgrimage to plumb the depths of our Irish ancestry and in the process rediscover one another.

Should Britain sell Northern Ireland to The Republic of Ireland?

By Ed Forry
October 20, 2010

By Joseph F. Leary
One of Britain’s most respected commentators, Chief Editorial Writer and columnist Mary Dejevsky of The London Independent has written a provocative article on Northern Ireland and the prospect of a United Ireland. In a column published in the Independent in August and two days later in the Belfast Telegraph, Dejevsky suggests – perhaps tongue and cheek - that Britain sell Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland as part of their solution to their budget problems.

“IN-Boston’ schedules launch in city Nov. 3

By Ed Forry
October 20, 2010

‘Irish Network Boston’ (IN-Boston), a new networking organization that will be open to anyone in the Boston area who is interested in participating more actively in the Irish/Irish American community, in in connecting professionally, or just looking to expand their social scene is scheduled for a formal launching next month at the city’s historic Faneuil Hall.

For the Taoiseach, a Bad Day at Galway

By by Bill O'Donnell
October 20, 2010
by Bill O'Donnell

Bad Day At Galway -- And sure don’t we all have the bad day every once in a while. Not so long ago Queen Elizabeth had an entire bad year that she resorted to Latin to describe. But the Irish Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, had a couple of days in Galway in mid-September that have left his Dail allies and his handlers scrambling for euphemisms in attempts to extricate the Irish leader from a continuing series of highly critical public and press thunderbolts. Some even posed the very real possibility that Cowen’s leadership could be hanging on public opinion polls due out in late September.

Celebrating Our Heritage, Staying With Our Mission

Ed Forry
By Ed Forry
October 20, 2010

By Ed Forry

In the fall of 1990, when my late dear wife Mary Casey Forry and I discussed the idea of publishing a newspaper about Irish Boston, we were not well informed about the land of our ancestors. Mary’s mom and dad had come over in the1930s – Mary Kate Kane from Mohill in Leitrim, Martin Casey from Carracastle in Mayo – and she had grown up hearing stories of the hard life that had caused her grandparents to send their children to America. As for me, the only one of my four grandparents whom I knew was Hannah Crotty Forry, and that was when I was a young child.

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