A review of the latest FX hit, Lights Out “It’s a family drama. It’s about my relationship with my wife and children.” – Holt McCallany about his character, Patrick “Lights” Leary It’s the buzz of Cable TV. Lights Out (Tuesdays at 9 p.m. CST) is Fox Television and FX Production’s latest small-screen success. And it’s about a fictional Irish-American ex-heavyweight … [Read more...] about Lights On: Lights Out
Issues
What Are You Like?
Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains The leader and founder of The Chieftains, six-time Grammy-winners and the world’s most popular Irish traditional music group, grew up in Donnycarney, Co. Dublin and inherited his love of music from his parents. His first instrument was a plastic tin whistle. He later graduated to the uilleann pipes learning to play from the great pipe master Leo … [Read more...] about What Are You Like?
A Glimpse of Ireland Past
Sharon Ni Choncuir discovers that 'Romantic Ireland' is still alive. ‘Romantic Ireland is dead and gone. It’s with O’Leary in the grave.’ This was Yeats’ lament in the Ireland of 1914 and it was often repeated during the Celtic Tiger years. In our frantic quest for materialistic modernity, Ireland and its people were said to have forsaken the traditions of the past. But how … [Read more...] about A Glimpse of Ireland Past
Portraits of the Irish Leaving Home
Photographer David Monahan has been powerfully documenting the recent wave of Irish emigration in photographs taken just before their subjects' departures to different corners of the world. “It is my wish to photograph people of all nationalities, who have made the decision to move from Ireland for economic reasons[:] in and around the city, juxtaposed with landscapes that are … [Read more...] about Portraits of the Irish Leaving Home
His Brother’s Keeper: Commodore John Barry
John Barry, the father of the American Navy, went to sea as a child to escape the Irish penal laws and rose to command the entire U.S. fleet. Tim McGrath writes that Barry's skills as a mariner and warrior were rivaled only by his heart. On a fine spring day in 1787, John Rossiter’s merchantman, the Rising Sun, glided towards the Philadelphia waterfront after a successful … [Read more...] about His Brother’s Keeper: Commodore John Barry