The year was 1981, and Irish American elected officials – including the junior U.S. Senator from Delaware, Joe Biden – had plenty of reasons to be concerned. Yes, another festive St. Patrick’s Day in Washington D.C., was approaching. But so were some of the darkest days of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Amidst rising clashes on the streets of Belfast, an Irish Republican … [Read more...] about Time for Peace
Issues
Wild Irish Women: Bernadette
After 800 years of colonial rule, Ireland finally got conditional freedom and fell victim to the British Empire’s deadliest legacy, partition. In the six northern counties, bigotry and resentment simmered over the years until it broke wide open in 1968. Then along came Bernadette. In the beginning, there was a single face that symbolized the conflict, a passionate college … [Read more...] about Wild Irish Women: Bernadette
Good Friday and Us
I wonder if we are, as novelist Salman Rushdie has written, at the deepest level of our nature, “frontier-crossing beings.” Is it part of an innate desire to step across borders, and by doing so enter into places that can be disorienting or even dangerous? If that is so, are we not wall-builders as well, determined to keep at bay the foreign, the invader, and the … [Read more...] about Good Friday and Us
Against the Tide
Sean Granahan is determined to keep The Floating Hospital afloat It’s been nearly 20 years since Sean Granahan found himself in a diner on the West Side of Manhattan, staring at a piece of paper. “The numbers weren’t pretty,” Granahan recalls. “In fact, they were un-pretty.” A lawyer, Granahan had spent the previous several years doing work on behalf of a New York-based … [Read more...] about Against the Tide
Filming Ireland’s Pagan Underbelly
One of the many positive effects of the ongoing peace process in Northern Ireland has been a deepening complexity in recent films about the Irish. With former adversaries talking peace, it's no longer possible for Hollywood simply to sentimentalize or demonize Irish characters, as it did just a few years ago in such films as Far and Away and Patriot Games. Some of the movies' … [Read more...] about Filming Ireland’s Pagan Underbelly