"Sometimes it is a spiritual experience, but most of the time it's not...You have to work very hard to get that. But that's okay. There's no free lunch, y'know?" – Van Morrison Leave it to Van Morrison to lend a bit of welcome perspective at the end of From a Whisper to a Scream, a three-hour history of Irish pop music, originally produced for RTE, now available on video. … [Read more...] about Music: From a Whisper to a Scream
Archive
Lacey Meets Brecht in Dublin
Tyne Daly, known to TV viewers as Mary Beth Lacey, takes on a new role in Dublin. The character of Mary Beth Lacey is as firmly fixed in the collective televisual consciousness of the Irish as it is in Americans – perhaps even more so. Yet it's hard to imagine Tyne Daly, the person behind the persona, being swamped by autograph seekers in a Stateside mall; it wasa … [Read more...] about Lacey Meets Brecht in Dublin
Passings
John Joseph Moakley Irish America lost a skilled and big-hearted leader with the death on May 28 of Massachusetts Congressman John Joseph Moakley, the South Boston Representative raised in a housing project who became one of the most influential leaders in Congress during his 15 terms there from 1973 to 2001. In January of this year he was diagnosed with incurable … [Read more...] about Passings
Film Forum: Land of the Second Chance
Once the most popular form of American filmmaking, the Western has not fully recovered from the commercial and critical debacle of Michael Cimino's 1980 epic Heaven's Gate. Although a far better film than conventional wisdom would indicate, Heaven's Gate provoked widespread derision because Cimino dared to use the disreputable Western form for a serious purpose, to question the … [Read more...] about Film Forum: Land of the Second Chance
Northern Roots Southern Branches
By James W. Flannery, Contributor
Photos Courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress
August / September 2001
Photos Courtesy of U.S. Library of Congress
August / September 2001
Will a re-examining of the Ulster Scots advance the idea of a "pluralist society" or lead to further separation? Southerners like to say they are not like other Americans, and often base that claim on their characteristic ways of talking, storytelling, preaching, dancing and, above all, playing country music. But few of them realize that those very qualities can be … [Read more...] about Northern Roots Southern Branches