A window on my past in an old just discovered video -- Rolling back the years to Tipperary, Ireland 1959

The 1959 Fleadh Cheoil festival in Thurles, County Tipperary

The past reaches out at the most unlikely times.

My brother Fergus, a Minister of State in the Irish government, was recently researching the history of the Fleadh Cheoil, (pronounced Flah Keoil) the annual massive traditional music festival held in different towns throughout Ireland with a view to attracting it to Drogheda, the town he represents.

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He came across this footage from 1959 of the Fleadh Cheoil festival in Thurles, County Tipperary, the town I grew up in. It contains fleeting footage of my father who was one of the organizers and offers an amazing glimpse into the life and times I grew up in. I was six at the time.

As the video opens it is the Whit weekend May 17, 1959 and the Fleadh Cheoil is clearly  the biggest thing to hit Thurles, Tipperary in decades.

The big march is taking place through Liberty Square in the center of town. The men are still wearing caps, there is an occasional  horse and cart, and the locals are done up in their best finery for the special occasion.

The parade of local dignitaries is under way, heavy on the Catholic Church monsignors and one glimpse of a purple cassock, the Archbishop perhaps.

The local and national businesses, including, a garish P. J. Carroll’s cigarette float, Dwans soft drinks, Bulmer’s Cider (still around) and Phoenix Beer are all represented. There is a blacksmith’s forge on the back of a truck, the fire belching out of it as it parades along. The kids must have loved that.

Once a glimpse and gone forever.

Later there are couples chastely dancing a reel as the musicians play (there is no sound) and then a hurling game, with a presentation to the winners.There are children marching, my family speculate we may be among them, but we will never know.

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Then there is a main stage with the priest making a speech, followed by a local dignitary. The camera pans and catches my father, 53 years old, hair slicked back with hair oil in the contemporary style, seated on the podium.

The video cuts to a medal presentation and then fades to black.

Fifty three years ago, in a small provincial town in Ireland, the air of excitement is palpable, the local pride bursting at the seams.

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I sit in a New York office thousands of miles away and ponder the imponderable past. Oh to be able to step into that video, walk up to the man on the stage and introduce myself again.

So much to say, but alas, will never be said in this life anyway.

But a peek at the past has made it possible to imagine.

Here’s the video:

In my father’s time -- he walked barefoot to Midnight Mass in Dingle -- My daughter looks for the same spirit of Christmas a century later

Back in the early 1900s my father walked barefoot to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve from his village to Dingle in Co. Kerry, a distance of seven miles.

My 13-year-old daughter this Christmas expects to finally get that fancy iPhone accessory she has wanted for a while. She adores Christmas.

Two different generations, connected through me, but the magic of Christmas holds in both cases.

I think my father got the better of it, though, and that is a reflection on modern times, where Christmas has become about cash machines ringing, not sleigh bells.

I mean how much more do we all need or want?

The simplicity of life back in rural West Kerry around 1915 was total. I don’t want to draw a sentimental veil over the hardships, but there is no doubt there was a neighborliness and companionship that has all but vanished in most places now.

Christmas brought the best of that spirit together.

As I write this I am listening to my father, dead since 1978. Like me he was a writer, except he wrote in the Irish language, something I have tried and failed to do.

He recalled, most vividly, on numerous radio programs the Kerry he grew up in long ago.

One of the greatest gifts I ever got was when I was presented with his radio talks from long ago from the Irish radio archives.

It happened when my brother, Fergus, a politician in Ireland, and I were on the same station this Easter talking about families and brotherhood.

So I turn on and tune in. At first when I listened, the sound of my father’s voice upset me as I had not heard it since 1978.

Did he really have such a distinctive Kerry accent? Yes he did, and when he spoke Irish it connected me in a profound way to all the generations who came before him who used it as their first tongue like he did.

Kilcooley, his village, seemed like an especially magical place at Christmas. Christmas Eve was when they would walk with shoes tied around their neck to the little church in Dingle.

They would never let the townies in Dingle see them without their shoes on, so they begged and borrowed a pair from neighbors or whoever to make sure they looked the part.

Often times he remembered it rained on that journey into town and they would arrive, bedraggled and drenched, but happy in their childhood and shared experience.

He described the visiting to the various neighbor’s houses around Christmas time when there were no distractions, neither radio or television, but just the old folks and the fairy and ghost stories and the talk of who was in America and when, if ever, they would return.

These days we talk about Facebook integration and the global community. What Facebook hopes to catch is what my father’s neighbors had all those decades ago, a tight knit, utterly integrated group of human beings whose lives were linked and interdependent.

“I Scath a cheile a maireann na daoine,” says the old Irish expression, which loosely translates, “In each other’s shadow the people live.” That was how it was in West Kerry long ago, never more evident than at Christmas time.

I suppose I straddle both worlds, remembering a time when there was no television and a neighborliness that has long since vanished in most parts.

As for my daughter, what will she tell her grandchildren? Santa Claus will still be around to charm them and to thrill, as will the feeling of warmth and appreciation that Christmas inevitably brings.

They never met, my daughter and father, but they have much in common, including a love of the spirit of Christmas, that surpasses all else.

 I like to think that somewhere out there he will watch her unwrapping her presents, seeing the magic of Christmas once again rekindled in her eyes.

Proving the Irish Famine was genocide by the British -- Tim Pat Coogan moves Famine history on to a new plane

The Famine memorial on the quays in Dublin City

The most significant section of Tim Pat Coogan’s new book on the Irish Famine is not his own writing, but his printing of the United Nations definition of genocide.

“The Famine Plot”, published by Palgrave MacMillan, was released in America last week and Coogan should have been here to launch it but in a separate but equally confounding plot he was denied a visa to come here by the American Embassy in Dublin.

The conclusion from his book is unmistakable. Ireland’s most prominent historian, who has previously created definitive portraits of both Michael Collins and Eamon De Valera, has now pointed the finger squarely at the British during the Famine and stated it was genocide.

It is a big charge, but Coogan is a big man, physically, intellectually, and in every sense and makes a very effective accusation. Coogan has painted a portrait of devastating neglect, abuse, and mismanagement that certainly fits the genocide concept.

I mean if we go back to that time, Ireland was the equivalent of Puerto Rico or Samoa, massive dependencies on the United States today.

If there were a massive food shortage in either of those two countries, we know the US would step up to the plate, literally.

Back in Famine time, the same potato crop disease occurred most heavily in Scotland, outside Ireland, yet there were relatively few casualties as the landowners and government ensured, for their own sakes as much as anything, that there was no mass death.

That was not the case in Ireland, where a very different mentality prevailed. The damned Irish were going to get what they deserved because of their attachment to Catholicism and Irish ways when they were refusing to toe the British line.

Read more: Tim Pat Coogan slams American Embassy as ‘Kafkaesque’ after visa refusal

As Coogan painstakingly recounts, every possible effort by local organizations to feed the starving were thwarted and frustrated by a British government intent on teaching the Irish a lesson and forcing market forces on them.

Charles Trevelyan, the key figure in the British government, had foreshadowed the deadly policy in a letter to the “Morning Post”, after a trip to Ireland, where he heartily agreed with the sentiment that there were at least a million or two people too many in the benighted land and that the eight million could not possibly survive there.

“Protestant and Catholic will freely fall and the land will be for the survivors.”

Shortly after, he was in charge of a policy that brought that situation about.

One Trevelyan story and one quote suffice.

“British Coastguard Inspector-General, Sir James Dombrain, when he saw starving paupers, ordered his subordinates to give free food handouts. For his attempts to feed the starving, Dombrain was publicly rebuked by Trevelyan…”

The Trevelyan quote is “The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”

Tim Pat Coogan has done an enormous service with this book.

Read it and weep.

Barring of writer Tim Pat Coogan from U.S. is an absolute disgrace - America’s greatest friend in Ireland insulted by the U.S. Embassy

Tim Pat Coogan

The barring of Tim Pat Coogan from coming to America for a book tour is disgraceful. He was refused a visa when he applied for one for his new book tour.

It is one in a clear pattern of a number of recent clueless decisions at the American Embassy in Dublin at the consular level that defy logic.

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Ambassador Dan Rooney is clearly unable or unwilling to use his own discretion in some of these cases.

Ever since Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith played a stellar role in the Irish peace process by running her embassy with an iron fist, the functionaries have done their very best to keep incoming ambassadors powerless.

Never mind that Kennedy’s role stand suit like a beacon in the annals of American diplomacy in Ireland. An ambassador the bureaucrats cannot control is a dangerous person indeed it seems.

They did not succeed in the Bush era where excellent appointments ensured that many political issues were retained at the ambassadorial level.

That does not seem to be the case today. The Tim Pat Coogan case is a travesty but senior Irish government officials have told me it is by no means the only strange decision emanating from the embassy in recent times.

There seems to be a hardening attitude there to make it as difficult as possible for people to come to the U.S. from changes in how the J1 one year visa program is being administered to several high profile turndowns.

Blink and you might think you were back in the McCarthy era.

Put simply, there was no greater defender of America in Ireland for the past few decades than Tim Pat Coogan, especially at times when the anti-American sentiment there was at its highest.

His pro-American stances, both in his Irish Press newspaper and his writing about the power of the Irish Diaspora were major factors in keeping the American flag flying in Ireland.

He played a key behind the scenes role in the Irish peace process, especially in the early days when his contacts with Father Alex Reid, the unsung hero of the entire process, were vital.

He was deeply trusted by the Kennedy family and it was a famous meal in Dublin he had with Senator Edward Kennedy convincing him of the need for a visa for Gerry Adams that swayed the Massachusetts senator as well as helping bring President Clinton into the loop.

Visiting Irish Americans are always assured of a hearty welcome from Tim Pat and his backing for America and stance against the anti-American rhetoric so often spouted in Ireland made him this country’s prime defender.

Yet this is the 77-year-old man who the American Embassy just refused a visa to come to America too and humiliated him in the process?

Is there no institutional memory whatever at the embassy that can separate and remember a friend? No one who was able to realize the deep insult they had just inflicted on America’s greatest journalistic ally there?

Where was Ambassador Rooney in all this, as we know he was personally aware of the case?

There are so many questions but one undeniable fact. It will be a blot forever on the Dublin embassy that it humiliated one of its greatest supporters and Ireland’s leading historian by refusing a visa to launch his new book on the Irish famine.

Disgraceful is the word for it.

Money from immigrants to be a key part of Irish recovery? -- Back to the sad 1950s for Irish economy if this keeps up

Photo Credit: DAVID MONAHAN

Is Ireland heading back to the days when money from emigrants abroad was a mainstay of the economy?

A recent report by a leading hedge fund in Britain stated it was highly likely that emigrant remittances would play an increasing role in the Irish economy.

We have all heard tales of the 1940s and 50s when money from emigrants in Britain and America kept many an Irish family going through very hard times.

Former Irish Times writer John Healy wrote very movingly about his aunt in Brooklyn who kept his family in rural Mayo going.

He had always imagined she lived in finery in America, but when he eventually visited her it was in a fourth floor walk up in a dingy building. She had sacrificed everything to keep them all together back in Ireland.

She had never married, had kept down two jobs and scraped and saved to see her relatives in Ireland better off.

That was not an unusual story.

When I lived in England during the mid 70s, the final stops at the weekend were always the same for many in my construction crew.

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There was the pub on Friday night and the post office on Saturday morning to send money home to the folks. Despite the fact that many were living in abject conditions themselves and saving little, the money home was always a sacred duty.

Many a rural town and village depended on those remittances in the form of money orders and it is so strange to see them being talked about again

The emigrant parcel was a lifesaver in many homes, especially from America. As the emigrant trails have started up again there will be many households back home, especially where the breadwinner has left, awaiting those funds again.

They won’t come via post office money order I'm guessing but by wire and bank transfer.

Soon the technology will exist where funds can be transferred by cell phone - thanks to Irish businessman Denis O'Brien who has created just such a system for Haitians for which he was praised in a Time Magazine cover story by Bill Clinton.

Leave it to an Irishman to come up with way for emigrant remittances to be conveyed at speed back to the family back home.

The hedge fund expert in Britain stated: "Having not depended on remittances for many decades, Ireland, like Portugal, will come to rely on these once more.”

 Plus ça change, you might say.

Latest "Get Gerry Adams effort" is led by deeply troubled woman -- Dolours Price has long history of mental illness after force-feeding

Political activist and former volunteer for the Provisional IRA Dolours Price
(Photo: Pacemaker)

Long ago and far away there seems little doubt that Gerry Adams was a senior figure in the IRA in West Belfast.

How could he not be? His neighborhood was under siege from the British Army and every able-bodied man back in the days when the Troubles were at their height was involved.

What is interesting about recent attempts to get Adams to admit the past is how the context is never given.

Decades of  complete Unionist misrule led to a tinder-box situation after civil rights marchers were batoned and beaten off the streets in 1968 and 1969.

It all  inevitably exploded and then all hell broke loose when the British Army was called in to defend the indefensible status quo we had Bloody Sunday and a fully fledged IRA campaign. That was the Northern Ireland that Gerry Adams grew up in

Dolours Price, now Gerry Adams chief accuser was caught up in it too, coming from a strong Republican family.

In March 1973 she was arrested on board a plane going to Ireland just as a 300 pound bomb detonated at the Old Bailey courts and one person was killed and many injured Her sister Marian was arrested alongside her.

Her time in prison did not go well. She and her sister went on a hunger strike and were force- fed for 200 days an horrific experience which has caused much of the mental trauma she experiences today.

Almost 40 years on, Dolours Price the former wife of actor Stephen Rea, is sadly still suffering the effects.

“She had a history of psychiatric problems and substance abuse,” said journalist Ed Moloney.

“She has been diagnosed with PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], had been hospitalized repeatedly, and....(is)  taking strong psychotropic drugs.

Indeed, on the day she spoke to [The Irish News] she was on day leave from St Patrick’s psychiatric hospital in Dublin.” Moloney said referring to the controversial interview she gave  to that newspaper where she first alleged Adams sent informers to their death.

She is unrepentant about her past and makes no bones that she wants to destroy Adams and the process if she can.

The Irish Sunday Times quoted her this weekend  saying she defended her acts while in the IRA and actually enjoyed them. “It was an exciting time, there was no real order or structure to everyday life, the war had taken away all normal routine ... I should be ashamed to admit there was fun in it in those days,” she said.

The same Sunday Times article notes that in 2001, Price was found guilty  in a Dublin court of stealing prescriptions. “She seems to have an alcohol problem but is taking steps to address it,” said Judge Thomas Fitzpatrick .

Five years later Price was disallowed access to Maghaberry prison, where she was visiting a dissident republican prisoner “She was verbally abusive and threatening and was in no condition to be allowed into the visiting area,” said a senior Prison Service source.

She has also received three convictions for theft in recent years and has attempted suicide.

Little wonder Adams does not feel it is politic to pursue her accusations against him in court.

Last weekend he stated: “I am not of a mind to trail Dolours Price through the courts . . . she is unwell.”

Those who are putting her up to the statements she is making, given that she is a seriously ill woman have a lot to answer for it seems to me.

She should be allowed time and space to try and recuperate from her many problems It is sad to see her used as a “Get Gerry Adams” vehicle by sections of the media.

Did Irish leader Daniel O’Connell help make the Famine happen? -- “Graves are Walking” book tells powerful Irish Famine truths

Famine memorial in Dublin

“Striding nearer every day
Like a wolf in search of prey
Comes the famine on his way”

That poem in “The Nation,” the journal of the Young Irelanders, who were the Irish republicans of 1846 summarizes what was occurring as Ireland headed full tilt for the Famine and disaster.

In his new book “The Graves are Walking” John Kelly gives an extraordinary insider account of the events that led to the Famine and the machinations on high and the suffering of the peasants below.

It is still an insane thought that the most successful country in the world at the time allowed millions to starve in Ireland, its’ closest colonial neighbor.

Imagine the US, the land of plenty, allowing millions of Hawaiians to starve in a Famine there and you get some sense of the absurdity.

This book reveals insights which have rarely been glimpsed and it does not shun controversy.

The role of Daniel O’Connell as liberator of the Catholic masses is well documented.

But also documented here is O’Connell’s disastrous decision to throw in his lot with Whig leader Lord John Russell who became Prime Minister in July 1846 at the beginning of the worst period of the Famine.

O’Connell did so to help gain the repeal of the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland, which was at the source of so many of Ireland’s problems.

But in the process he backed a man who had become a fully-fledged free trader who insisted that market prices must be received and no government intervention made – even when the result was millions of Irish starving because they could not afford to buy the imported corn.

Russell’s predecessor, the Tory leader Sir Robert Peel, as Kelly points out, had adopted a far more humane policy and had been widely praised for ordering and freeing up imported corn for starving Irish the previous year when the worst of the Famine was blunted.

Kelly has made a profound point about O’Connell that it was the biggest mistake of his life as Russell paid no heed to repeal and the Irish starved by the millions.

The book is scathing about the various British viceroys who came over to Ireland during that period, but kind to the many incredible charities, such as the Quakers and many American organizations as well who did their best to alleviate the suffering.

There is a hilarious chapter on Monsieur Alexis Soyer, a French chef who had proclaimed he had the perfect ingredients for a gourmet soup to save the starving Irish and was much praised in The Times of London and elsewhere.

He even demonstrated this for hundreds of aristocrats in Dublin watched by a “large and brilliant assemblage” and no doubt by the starving peasants as well. Even Monty Python could not have done such a scenario justice.

M.Soyer, gourmet soup and all were soon dispatched back to Britain and obscurity.

The fate of the Famine ships is also discussed in great detail, as is the sense of impending doom in cities such as Montréal as the famine increased and the Irish boats kept coming, discharging their wretched cargo.

The scenes at Grosse Ile, the quarantine Island as depicted by Kelly would bring tears from a stone, while the unlikely rise of the Irish in New York from Famine masses to political power is also documented.

A great read if you’re Irish and even if you’re not. "The Graves Are Walking" is already deservedly a best seller in Ireland.

The view from Ireland when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon - A moment of history like no other in that summer of 1969 or since

Neil Armstrong

I was sixteen years old in the summer of 1969, working my first summer job in an electrical plant about ten miles from my hometown of Drogheda on Ireland’s East Coast.

The night and morning of the moon landing is impressioned on my brain forever. Like 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination I can recall it as vividly as yesterday.

My family had gathered around our black and white television set to await the great moment.

RTE, the Irish television channel, was the only station we had and things were still pretty primitive.

A presenter called Kevin O’Kelly was the only host. He sat there literally for hours, trying to fill in the waiting as we awaited word on when Neil Armstrong, who had piloted Eagle the craft that had landed on the moon just after 9:00 pm our time, would open the hatch and step onto earth’s closest neighbor.

There was no panel of experts, no animation or simulation. All O’Kelly had was a (very) rough replica of the lunar module and he kept telling us we would get live pictures when the Eagle hatch was opened.

Several of my siblings fell asleep as I did myself. I can only remember one other occasion staying up as a family, which was the Muhammed Ali/Sonny Liston fight some years before.

We were awaken by a shout from our Dad soon after 3.a.m

Kevin O’Kelly had just pronounced that “the hatch was open” and we were about to witness history.

Except that we could see very little. There was a very blurry image of a man descending a few steps onto lunar soil and then the immortal words -- “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” etc. It was arguably America’s greatest moment.

It was history as we had never known it or never will again, Man had reached past his earthly existence and stepped on another world. I rushed outside to look at the moon and imagined all the billions of people who had looked up at earth’s closest neighbor and how tonight was different. The man in the moon, actually the two men on the moon as Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong, had become fact not a children’s fairy tale.

I went back to bed but not to sleep. My boyhood mind was fired by the images and voices I had just seen. I knew the world would never be the same again. It was a turning point in history. I hope today’s young people see the day when a man like Armstrong lands on Mars --- that only seems a matter of time too,

So farewell Neil Armstrong, a brave hero if ever there was one, and thank you for what you gave us ----a moment of history that stopped the world as we knew it and made sure it would never be the same again.

A heroic Vatican priest who saved Jews from the Nazis -- New book tells amazing story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty - VIDEO

Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty

Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty may be one of the greatest Irish men who ever lived, yet his story is hardly known.

Growing up in Ireland I never heard his tale, but I suspect I know why. He was the heroic Monsignor, based in the Vatican, who saved thousands of Allied soldiers from the Nazis and also saved hundreds of Jews from the death camps.

Perhaps because he was helping the British in the war effort his story drew a veil of silence in Ireland but it should not have. World War II was a time for people of all backgrounds to choose sides
between a monstrous evil and a force to battle that evil.

A new book I have just finished reading outlines in great detail the heroic and extraordinary efforts of a great humanitarian and Irish history.

The book is entitled “Hide and Seek” The Irish priest in the Vatican who defied the Nazi command by BBC journalist, Stephen Walker.

Though an intensely proud Irishman and deeply nationalist after seeing the Black and Tans in operation during his years in the seminary, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty realized early on that he needed to be
on the side of the good guys.

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That contrasted sharply with the position taken by Pope Pius XII who dithered while the Nazis over ran Europe.

Flaherty organized the escape route for allied troops who had escaped POW camps or had been shot down but survived.

Through an incredibly close network of friends and confidantes he set up safe houses all over Rome and in the Vatican itself where his work soon drew grave suspicion from the Nazis.

The book is a fascinating account of the stand off between Flaherty and the head SS man in Rome, Herbert Kappler.

Kappler suspected O’Flaherty and had him under surveillance at all times. O’Flaherty comes across as a Michael Collins however, hiding in plain sight, appearing each morning on the steps of Saint Peter's and meeting with those who were organizing the freedom runs.

He helped everyone who sought refuge, including many Jews, which infuriated Kappler. The SS commander tried to have O’Flaherty kidnapped with a view to summary execution but somehow O’Flaherty always managed to survive, earning him the nickname of the “Scarlet Pimpernel”.

Once, having left the neutral confines of the Vatican for a freedom route meeting, the Nazis raided the house and O’Flaherty, who was hiding in the cellar, was saved by sheer luck when two coal-men came to drop their supplies and he “borrowed” one of their outfits and strolled past the SS wearing the outfit and carrying a sack.

After the war he was celebrated all over the world but refused most of the honors. Kappler was tried and found guilty of war crimes. Amazingly O’Flaherty visited him frequently in prison and Kappler converted to Catholicism. O’Flaherty retired to his native Kerry for his final days and passed away there in 1963.

In a poem to celebrate his life, poet and fellow Kerry man Brendan Kennelly wrote of O'Flaherty:

"There is a tree called freedom and it grows
Somewhere in the hearts of men
Rain falls, ice freezes, wind blows
The tree shivers, steadies itself again."

The Israeli government planted a tree in his honor in 1973.

Was there ever a more courageous Irishman?

A clip from "Scarlet and the Black". The true story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty:

Remembering the Famine and its impact on the US -- Voices of those who survived still live on

I gave a speech in Drogheda, Ireland, yesterday on the impact of the famine in America. I was one of several speakers, including Prime Minister Enda Kenny, who is speaking today on the occasion of the national commemoration of the greatest European catastrophe of the 19th Century.

Here is an excerpt of some of my remarks:

“Missing Friends was the series every week in John Boyle O’Reilly’s Boston Pilot newspaper which allowed Famine era immigrants to America to seek out families and freidns who had gone before them.

It was the Facebook of its time. Famine emigrants rarely wanted to discuss the horrific nature of the voyage or the awful conditions they had to endure.

On Missing Friends, however, we hear their voices resonate.

It is not surprising  they never wanted to talk about it and who could blame them they were ripped from their families, catapulted across the bitter bowl of tears arrived penniless, many speaking no English.

Here are some of their voices from the past.

“Of JOHN QUILMAN, late of the parish of Inch, co’y Tipperary, who sailed from Waterford with his family last April.  His daughter, Mary Harrington, wishes him to know that her husband, James Harrington, died on their passage to this country; also her two children since. She is now in Troy and wishes to know where her father is.  Any information respecting him will be thankfully received by Mary Harrington, care of S. Duffy, or Mrs. Daly, Fifth street, Troy, N. Y.
27 November 1847

Of ANTHONY and PATRICK WATERS, natives of co. Mayo. They are informed that their sister, Mary, who was married to Patrick Boyle, is anxious to hear from them. Her husband died on the passage.  Should this meet their eye they will write to her immediately, care of the editor of the Pilot,Boston, Ms.
4 December 1847

Of BERNARD MURPHY, who emigrated from Co. Armagh, parish of Grangemore, townland of Aughmagorgan, in April last, with his father and 2 sisters. He was parted from his father at Quarantine Island, below Montreal. It is supposed he went to Kingston. Any information respecting him will be thankfully received by his father who is now living in Dover. If by letter, address Patrick Grimes, Dover, N. H., or John Doran, No. 6 Canal street, Boston, Ms.
11 December 1847

Of CATHERINE GILLEN, who landed in Boston last spring, with her father and family. She was sick and went to hospital and has not been heard from since. Any one knowing anything of her would confer a favor on her father, Hugh Gillen, by writing a letter to him in care of John Devlin, Pawtucket, R.I.
18 December 1847

Of BRIDGET CARROLL, a native of Killacooly, parish of Drumcliff, co. Sligo, who was taken into Grosse Isle hospital, below Quebec, in June last, and has not been heard from since. Any information respecting her will be thankfully received by her brother, Patrick Carroll, care of Mr. Samuel Downer, Second street, South Boston, Ms.
1 January 1848

Of PETER and ELLEN CARR, natives of county Down, parish of Gervathey, who left home in April and landed in St. John, 4th July.  They came in the ship Ambassadress. Ellen had the fever and was taken to Patridge Island, and Peter remained with her.  Any information of them will be thankfully received by their brother, JohnCarr, Lawrence City, Ms.

Of DENNIS MCCARTHY, late of Killmichael, co’y Cork, who sailed from Liverpool on the 1st of last May, and left his wife, Ellen Ahearn, in Quarantine near Quebec, in June.  She is now in Troy, N. Y., and wishes to know his whereabouts.  Any information respecting him will be thankfully received by addressing a line to Ellen McCarthy, care of Stephen Duffy, Troy, N. Y.

'Son  missing' John Fallon ‘had light hair, blue eyes; was about four feet, four inches in height; wore a blue spencer, a new scoop shovel cap, a fancy pants and had a freckled face.'

The voices of these emigrants resonate still.

As we can see many of the emigrants themselves were in despair, their dreams of a new life shattered by the reality of what awaited them. Only the Blacks in chains fare worse than the Irish.

As one famine emigrant put it plainly 'We thought we could not be worse off than we were; but now to our sorrow we know the difference. At home we had the chance of a doctors care and the certainty of the spiritual administration of a priest. Should death overtake us there we would be buried beside our beloved dead, in consecrated Irish ground, with the prayers and last blessing of our church. Here we have nothing.'

In April, 1847, Stephen E. De Vere, a compassionate landlord, travelled as an emigrant to Canada in a converted lumber and cargo boat.  His description of conditions is appalling.

'Before the emigrant has been a week at sea he is an altered man.  How could it be otherwise?  Hundreds of poor people men, women, and children of all ages from the drivelling idiot of ninety to the babe just born, huddled together without light, without air, wallowing in filth and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart, the fever patients lying between the sound, in sleeping places so narrow as almost to deny them the power of indulging, by a change of position, the natural restlessness of the disease. The food supply was of the poorest quality.  Drinking water was mixed with vinegar to kill the stench.'

Yet they changed America, among the famine emigrants Patrick Kennedy, great grandfather of an American presdient, later Micheal Regan ditto, and indeed, Fulmouth Kearney ... William Ford, 1846 father of Henry Ford, the man who changed America, to name but a few.

In the American Civil War, 250,000 fought for the Union. They helped create the American political system, built the Catholic Church, changed the face of Ireland and America. Their legacy is with us all today.

The poet Evan Boland said it best:

“Like oil lamps, we put them out the back —
of our houses, of our minds. We had lights
better than, newer than and then
a time came, this time and now
we need them. Their dread, makeshift example:
they would have thrived on our necessities.
What they survived we could not even live.
By their lights now it is time to
imagine how they stood there, what they stood with,
that their possessions may become our power:
Cardboard. Iron. Their hardships parceled in them.
Patience. Fortitude. Long-suffering
in the bruise-colored dusk of the New World.
And all the old songs. And nothing to lose.”

Bobby Sands death was moment when all changed in Northern Ireland -- Turning point for ‘The Troubles’ reached 31 years ago this week

It was 31 years ago yesterday that Bobby Sands died on hunger strike in Northern Ireland.

I was living in San Francisco at the time, 6,000 miles from Ireland, but the anger was palpable among the Irish American community there.

We gathered outside the British consulate as a group walked behind a mock coffin chanting “Bobby Sands MP” in recognition that he had been an elected member of the British parliament.

In retrospect letting Bobby Sands die was one of the greatest mistakes the British made in the history of Northern Ireland.

His election before he died to the House of Commons showed the Sinn Fein leadership, still very much the junior partner to the IRA in 1981, that politics could actually work and bring tens of thousands out onto the streets and into polling booths.

Sinn Fein learned well and the political evolution began on that May night that the death of Sands was announced.

I for one, considered that the Sands death was a turning point in my beliefs.

Up to that point I had little time for the IRA, believing that the frequent atrocities and bombings were totally counterproductive in terms of building worldwide support for a united Ireland. John Hume’s “agreed Ireland” seemed a better concept.

I would not have been caught dead at an IRA man’s mock coffin demonstration outside a British consulate before Bobby Sands.

I saw many others like me on that night, people who had a deep ambivalence about the situation in Northern Ireland but who were utterly inflamed and upset at what Margaret Thatcher had just allowed to happen.

From Sands' death on, Sinn Fein began to take more and more prominence in the republican debate.

It is a long haul but there is a direct line from there to the peace process and the ultimate entry of Sinn Fein into shared power in Northern Ireland, an idea that would have been inconceivable that May evening 31 years ago.

But it happened, and the stage was set with the death of Bobby Sands.

As Yeats remarked, “all changed, changed utterly” from that point on.

What were Nike thinking, marketing Black and Tan sneakers for St. Patrick's Day? Irish Americans surely deserved better than that

What were Nike thinking?

They have a $3 billion dollar budget worldwide for marketing and the best they can come up with for the Irish this St. Patrick's Day is the 'Black and Tan' sneaker.

Did no one at this giant company just check on Google exactly what most Irish relate the term Black and Tan to?

It was the equivalent of Al-Qaeda for a generation of Irish during the War of Independence. A bunch of merciless thugs and scum, many from British prisons, released on the Irish to kill and shoot as many as possible and terrorize them into subjection.

Surely not a fitting name for a St.Patrick's Day-themed pair of sneakers?

Nike made the elementary mistake of linking their product to a drink called Black and Tan on sale in some bars. But the drink has nothing like the world wide reputation or impact that the original term does.
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It is a marketing strategy straight out of the "Nova," the car marketed in Hispanic countries which means "no go," and the Ford Probe, which reminded every woman of a gynecological inspection.

It is up there with Umbro marketing Zyklon runners a few years back in Israel -- Zyklon B was the form of gas that killed millions of innocent Jews in the Holocaust.

The sheen has come off Nike in recent years with lots of issues around child labor in their Far East sweat shops.

This latest gaffe will certainly not help with Irish Americans and neither should it.

Nike should just do it -- get rid of these offensive sneakers.

Belfast's ugly peace walls are better left standing - US funding for effort to take them down is misguided

Peace wall, Belfast

The International Fund for Ireland (IFI) has allocated $3.8 million to take down the peace walls in Northern Ireland.

Bad idea.

The IFI money comes mainly from American taxpayers and this use of their hard-earned dollars makes me wonder what planet they are living on.

Northern Ireland is still decades away from being a totally normal society.

Yes, it is horrific that walls still have to be erected between warring communities, but hardly surprising.

Just last week a young Catholic man was almost murdered when he was beaten and chased when he found himself in a Protestant neighborhood.
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The peace walls serve a real purpose, dire though they might look and seem.

Northern Ireland has come a very long way. There are almost no deaths now attributed to The Troubles. A civil society is slowly growing up as well as a cross community government.

Those are magnificent achievements and the peace walls have played their part, ugly as it may seem.

Anyone who has spent time in Belfast knows how closely many of the warring communities live in close proximity to one another, especially in Belfast.

A wrong turn and you can find yourself, like the young Catholic man last week in hostile territory indeed.

On many of my visits there I relied on the graffiti and color of the curbstones, red white and blue in Protestant areas, to warn me if I had strayed.

The peace walls also protect during the marching season when the annual rush of blood to the head among Protestant marchers occurs and violence spikes.

Some day in the future the walls will come down but it it not imminent.

Which is why this is a waste of American taxpayer's money in my opinion.

The intent to do good is very clear and should not be denigrated.

But it clashes with the still sad reality in my opinion.

Sectarian killings could increase and tensions rise if the walls come down prematurely.

IFI money far better spent on cross community projects that will breed understanding and eventually friendship for the next generation.