While the season has not taken Northern Ireland to brink of civil war, as happened all too often during the turbulent 1990s, this summer certainly illustrates that many tensions, sectarian and otherwise, continue to bubble in the Northern cauldron.

Summer has always been the most dangerous season in the North, with Protestant fraternal organizations, led by the Orange Order, holding hundreds of parades celebrating Protestant King William of Orange's pivotal 1690 victory over Catholic rival James II at the Battle of the Boyne.

Ominous may be the right word to describe Northern Ireland conditions today:

On Saturday evening, March 14 this year, two British soldiers, Mark Quinsey, 23, and Cengiz Patrick Azimkar, 21, were shot and killed by automatic gunfire as a pizza delivery truck pulled up to their barracks in County Antrim.

Two days later, on Sunday evening, March 16, Police Constable Stephen Paul Carroll, 49 and a Catholic, was investigating a call for help in Craigavon, County Armagh when he was shot in the back of the head by a sniper.

At 92, Francis Patrick Brennan, dean of Boston's banking community, a first-generation Irish American who elbowed his way into the core of the once Yankee-dominated financial world where Irish need not apply, a vigorous, brassy, high-octane individual with a street-smart quotient that would intimidate the best at Harvard, hasn't lost a step.

Don't be fooled by the walker. His intellectual gait is impressive for a man half his age.