Irish America
Irish America
It was 43 years ago this week that Bobby Sands died on hunger strike in Northern Ireland. After 66 brutal days of starvation his body gave out but his spirit marched on. Eventually ten men died, their extraordinary belief in their rights to live as free Irishmen astounded the world. I was living in San Francisco at the time, 6,000 miles from Ireland, but the anger was palpable … [Read more...] about How Bobby Sands Changed Everything
May 12th - 15th, 2020 Actress Geraldine Hughes plays Molly New York's Irish Repertory Theater celebrated 30 years in 2019 and the founders Charlotte Moore and Ciaran O'Reilly know a thing or two about survival. The premier Irish theater group in the U.S. rebuilt its theater in recent years, and throughout its history has produced a bountiful crop of brilliant … [Read more...] about The Irish Rep Goes Virtual
Irish poet, author, and professor Eavan Frances Boland passed away at her home in Dublin on Monday April 27th at the age of 75. Stanford University, where Boland taught since 1995, said in a statement that the cause was a stroke. Born September 24, 1944 in Dublin, Boland was the director of creative writing at Stanford for 21 years and a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award … [Read more...] about Eavan Boland
Historical accounts of the gay movement in Ireland usually omit women, yet they had a remarkable part to play in the 1916 Rising as just one example and as lifelong advocates for human rights as another example. Mary McAuliffe, a lecturer in women’s studies at University College Dublin, points out that Elizabeth O’Farrell, who was famously airbrushed out of the historic … [Read more...] about The Amazing Role Gay Women Played in the 1916 Rising
By Niall O'Dowd, Publisher When catastrophic change comes it leaves us disbelieving at first and very slow to accept. Such is the way with COVID-19. The warning signs were all there, bird flu and SARS, two forerunners could easily have been contagious killer viruses but we dodged two bullets. The world promptly turned its head away. But like the … [Read more...] about What We Must Learn Learn From COVID-19
