This year marks fiftieth anniversary of John Ford's The Quiet Man, the favorite movie of many Irish Americans. The native Irish tend to see it with more ambivalence, yet the readers of the Irish Times in 1996 voted it the greatest Irish movie ever made. The beguiling comedy-drama won Ford his fourth Academy Award as best director, as well as bringing Oscars to cinematographers … [Read more...] about The Quiet Man Turns Fifty
Music Roundup
Decade This "best of" collection is perfect introduction to Dervish, one of Ireland's very best traditional music groups. Decade samples tracks from ten years' worth of recordings by a band that has gone from playing pub sessions in County Sligo to head-lining concerts before stadium-sized crowds in Europe and South America. Dervish is still relatively little known in the … [Read more...] about Music Roundup
Sláinte! Oats:
The Original Comfort Food
Call me crazy, but oatmeal cookies have never had a spot on my favorite foods list. They're too sweet. I prefer my oats prepared in such a way that I can really taste the full nutty flavor. I even enjoy eating them by the dusty flaky mouth-gumming uncooked handful. That taste quirk may be a result of genetic memory. My father's father, his father, and many of the other male … [Read more...] about Sláinte! Oats:
The Original Comfort Food
Roots: The Lennons
All they need love – The Lennon Clan. Lennon, a surname found throughout all of Ireland, is the anglicized form of O Leannáin, or O Lionnáin, which has also been anglicized as Linnane and Leonard. The Irish surnames O Lonáin (Lenane) and O Luinín (Linneen) have sometimes also been translated as Lennon or Leonard. Many of the O Leannáin clan can be found in County Galway as … [Read more...] about Roots: The Lennons
The Last Word
Why it's hard to be an American in Ireland. Dublin, September 11: Heading home from work, shocked by what I'd seen in the previous few hours, I wondered if people on the train felt the same as I did. Were they horrified? Were they feeling sick? Were they in shock? A group of schoolboys, loud with nervous excitement, talked about what they'd seen. But, for the most part, there … [Read more...] about The Last Word