By Tim McCloskey The cold weeks between New Year’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day have traditionally been a slow and painful period for Philly’s downtown Irish bars, but one group of diehard soccer fans have been throwing an annual event… Continue Reading
Photo (above): John Joe battling Jesús Acha Iule Raya of Mexico in 2016 at Sugarhouse Casino (Photo / Daniel Cork / courtesy of Raging Babe) By Tim McCloskey Saint Patrick’s Day festivities start early this year with an old-fashioned Irish boxing… Continue Reading
Photo (above): © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved By Brendan Clay 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens (dir. J.J. Abrams) ends with the movie’s new Force-wielding protagonist, Rey, tracking down a grizzled, bearded Luke Skywalker living as a… Continue Reading
Above: Hill of Tara By Carmel McCaffrey Although Christianity arrived in Ireland in the fifth century AD it did not come to a society unfamiliar with religious rituals or bereft of any deity. On the contrary, the new arrival came… Continue Reading
By Peter Makem Ireland is suddenly a lonely place. Old securities have been shattered since the people of the United Kingdom — specifically the people of England — voted to leave the European Union, voted Brexit, an abbreviation of British… Continue Reading
By Norbert McDermott I was prompted to “put pen to paper,” as my dear mother would say, when I bumped into one Jane Duffin a few months ago – whom, despite me being a month-in month-out reader of the Irish… Continue Reading
By Msgr. Francis A. Carbine The book, The 1916 Irish Rebellion, is a “Triumph.” Published by the University of Notre Dame Press on the centennial of the Rising, this book is a triumph of research, documentation, layout and a prose… Continue Reading
By Brendan Clay Come Easter, America will be joining Ireland and the rest of the global Irish diaspora in commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Ireland’s Easter Rebellion, when the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) led an armed occupation in Dublin on… Continue Reading
By Brendan Clay For those of you who saw Star Wars: The Force Awakens last month, you might have noticed that Ireland made two big contributions to the latest entry in America’s most culturally important space opera. The first came… Continue Reading
By Peter Makem There were 12 times in the year when the small town of Keady burst into serious life. In a tradition going back 200 years, that was the monthly Fair Day when local farmers brought their cattle and… Continue Reading