Even now, here 30 years since, when I turn to the southwest in Ennis from Shannon, and head out on the peninsula that ends at Loop Head, and somewhere on that road get my first wind of turfsmoke, I remember the first time and the sense that I had then of coming home."The name's good," the man in the customs hall had said, letting my bags pass without a look. I had a hundred … [Read more...] about Nora, an Excerpt
Irish Diaspora
Confessions of a
Bronx Irish Catholic
Over the years, I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what it means to be Irish. Occasionally, my public writings and ruminations on the subject have led to me being described (and dismissed) as a "professional Irishman." If only it were true! Unfortunately, I'm still a semi-pro, forced to make a living at activities unrelated to my ethnic investigations.A … [Read more...] about Confessions of a
Bronx Irish Catholic
The Irish as Playful Souls
The old St. Patrick's Day quip about there being two kinds of people – those who are Irish and those who wish they were – turns out to be not so far from wrong.The research my colleague Michael Hout has carried out shows that there are a lot more Americans claiming to be Irish than one might expect from immigration records, because the children of ethnically mixed marriages … [Read more...] about The Irish as Playful Souls