John Fitzgerald, a New Yorker, went to Ireland to play baseball. When he found out he was ineligible for the national team, he did the next best thing - he made a documentary about them. COLIN MURPHY talks to Fitzgerald about how baseball has found a place in the Irish sporting lexicon. Filmmaker John Fitzgerald doesn’t remember exactly how he happened upon the website for … [Read more...] about Paddy Play Ball!
Issues
The Irish Revolution in America
Tom Deignan explores the role that Irish America played in the Easter Rising of 1916. Ninety years ago this month, in May of 1916, over 20,000 Irish-American nationalists and their supporters flocked to New York City’s Carnegie Hall. They were not there for a night at the opera. They went, instead, to voice their anger. Just one month earlier the ill-fated Easter Rising had … [Read more...] about The Irish Revolution in America
Book Reviews
NON-FICTION Former New Yorker writer Bill Barich is best known for his horse racing book Laughing in the Hills, published 25 years ago now. For his latest book, Barich has again written about horses, but this time added Ireland as a topic as well in A Fine Place to Daydream: Racehorses, Romance and the Irish. Barich fell in love, moved to Dublin and took quickly to the Irish … [Read more...] about Book Reviews
Clean Green!
Natural Cleaning Solutions. Spring is in the air and summer is a-coming in! The clocks have been set ahead, the days are longer, and the light is brighter. But with the drapes pulled back, and sunshine illuminating the corners of every room, suddenly everything looks a little dingy. The windows could benefit from a good washing. The chandelier has lost its gleam. Ditto the … [Read more...] about Clean Green!
Two Saints & A Surgeon
In the 1930s and 40s the neighborhood doctor was vital to the community. Dr. Hubert Kubel’s office was on the ground floor of a five-story-over-basement apartment house of the type with low-rise stoops leading from the sidewalk up to the hallway entrance. Across the broad cobble-stone thoroughfare and trolley tracks of 138th Street stood the Gothic-style edifice of St. Luke’s … [Read more...] about Two Saints & A Surgeon