In 2025, Boston Irish Tourism Association (BITA) celebrates its 25th anniversary as a distinctive cultural tourism organization that promotes culture…
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A cool way to experience Ireland is to ‘settle yourself,’ a common Irish phrase that means to get your bearings…
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Edited by Michael Quinlin First published in 2005, this 10th anniversary edition includes 20 short stories and excerpts from a variety of master short story writers. In his Introduction, Michael Quinlin writes, “While other nations have cultivated visual arts, architecture or even cuisine to define their civilizations this race of storytellers has always used language…
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In the 18th century, the annual Pope’s Day holiday in Boston every November 5 was a chilling demonstration of the deep-seeded anti-Catholic sentiments prevalent in New England in the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War. One of those bizarre and archaic pastimes that measure a lack of progress in the human condition, Pope’s Day…
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Nestled between Christmas season and St. Patrick’s Day, the winter months in Ireland are full of magic, comfort and delight for intrepid travelers. The winters are rarely extreme, with an average temperature between 40 and 46 degrees, and don’t be surprised to wake up to clear blue skies and sunshine. When Ireland is occasionally blanketed…
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Michael Coffey Michael Coffey’s first collection of short stories is a masterpiece of exquisite writing and daring revelations. His characters are overwhelmed by their inherited circumstances, poor life choices and lingering regrets, which they somehow rally to accept with poise and even grim humor. Lonely priests, rakish cognoscenti, and troubled teenagers frequent the pages, but…
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America’s oldest commissioned ship, the USS Constitution, was first launched on October 21, 1797, and is berthed in the Charlestown Navy Yard. The USS Constitution is operated by the US Navy, a partner of the National Historic Parks of Boston. Known as Old Ironsides for its durability during battle, the USS Constitution has some important Irish connections. During the War of…
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United States President Jimmy Carter joined numerous elected officials, political dignitaries and members of the Kennedy family to formally dedicate the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum at Columbia Point in Boston on October 20, 1979, before seven thousand people. In addition to President Carter, participants at the ceremony included Caroline Bouvier Kennedy, John…
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Eugene O’Neill, one of the great American playwrights and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, died of bronchial pneumonia at the Hotel Shelton on Bay State Road in Boston on November 27, 1953, at age 65. His wife Carlotta Monterey was by his side. O’Neill is buried at the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plains, a…
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Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) today celebrated the upgrade and expansion of Terminal E, the airport’s international terminal at Boston Logan International Airport, and also marked the airport’s 100-year anniversary with a new exhibit. Read press release. The improvements were made in part thanks to a $62 million grant by the FAA as a part of the new Airport…
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Lorenz J. Finison This well-researched, well-written book traces the emergence of competitive and leisurely cycling, which was prompted by mass production of bicycles and the growth of sports in American life in the late 19th century. In Boston, African-Americans, Irish, Italians, Jews and old line New Englanders all took to the roads, strengthening ethnic and…
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On September 29, 1845, fugitive slave Frederick Douglass and Irish liberator Daniel O’Connell met in Dublin, when Douglass was on a 4-month speaking tour of Ireland. Both men were duly impressed by one another, and though it was the only time they met, they formed an alliance based on their utter advocacy for freedom and…
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William E. Watson and Eugene J. Halus, Jr., Editors A broad collection of Irish-American achievement, this volume is divided into four categories: Irish-American emigration; political and economic life; cultural and religious life; and literature, the arts, and popular culture. It strives to balance historical and contemporary figures. Many Boston Irish names are included: President John…
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This week the U.S. Census Bureau released detailed information about the 2020 US census, revealing that 38,597,428 Americans identified themselves as having full or partial Irish ancestry. Read the press release here. Previously, the Census Bureau released 2020 Census data on the Hispanic or Latino population and major race groups such as White, Black or…
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To mark the 150th anniversary of the first permanent Irish Catholic settlement in Worcester, Massachusetts, the city’s Irish-American community erected a Celtic Cross on Worcester Common on September 18, 1977. The 15 foot high memorial, weighing over 13,000 pounds and made of Barre Vermont granite, was designed by Joseph Calcagni. It features patriotic, religious and family symbols pertinent to Worcester, America and Ireland. At the…
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Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr / Foreward: Dolly Parton Wayfaring Strangers is a treasure of a book, a publishing delight. Readers will be enthralled with this well-conceived, well-written and well-produced history about how music from Scotland and Ulster got to America, and how it flourished by reinventing itself while staying true to its roots. The…
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The National Parks of Boston will begin a $30+ million restoration of Dorchester Heights Monument starting on September 15. Funded by the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), rehabilitation work will be complete prior to March 17, 2026, Evacuation Day, during the nation’s 250th birthday year. The Monument and its surrounding area will remain closed to the public…
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Donal Ryan Tipperary-born novelist Donal Ryan’s novels offer insights into today’s Ireland, in the aftermath of the Celtic Tiger. The story-lines aren’t always pleasant, with recurring themes of government ineptitude and greedy, wily connivers, bullies and losers somehow made bolder by the Celtic Tiger myth that money buys happiness, or class. But while the writing is…
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The Catalpa whaleboat out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, pulled off one of the most daring rescues of the 19th century when it retrieved six Irish prisoners from a British penal colony in Freemantle, Australia. The escape plot was hatched for months by Irish leaders in America including Fenians John Devoy and John Breslin, who masterminded…
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Patrick Taylor Author Dr. Patrick Taylor, born in Bangor County Down and now living in British Columbia, has written over a dozen popular novels that take place in the colorful Irish village Buckyballybo. It’s old time storytelling, where the characters share the joys, complications and sorrows of village life. In this tale, World War…
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On August 11, 1834, the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts, a Catholic-run boarding school for girls of all denominations, was set afire by workmen furious about the growing presence of Catholics in the town. About a dozen frightened nuns and some 57 young female boarding students, still in their nightclothes, rushed from their beds onto…
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On August 7, 1961, President John F. Kennedy used 22 pens to sign into law the Cape Cod National Seashore. The new park, covering forty miles of beaches, ponds, marshes and uplands, created a permanent place for people to enjoy one of the nation’s great natural resources, while preventing the commercial development of the land that would have…
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From the Fitzgerald Kennedy Private Collection, 1878-1946 Foreword by Caroline Kennedy Arranged and Edited by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation Hachette Books 368 pages / $45.00 / October 2013 Think of this exquisite coffee-table book literally as a family album, with photos, snippets from letters, humorous asides and personal reflections. But it’s a family album…
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A graveside event honoring Gaelic poet Patrick F. Hagerty (1870-1936), was held at St. Michael’s Cemetery in Springfield MA on Sunday, June 20, 1953, by members of Clan Na Gael and IRA Veterans of America, according to a story in The Boston Globe. Hagerty, whose Irish name was Pádraig Ó hÉigeartaigh, played a pivotal role in the…
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Terry Golway Noted author, journalist and academic scholar Terry Golway has steadily built up a lasting literature on the Irish perspective and role in American history and politics. He is especially animated and astute when discussing his beloved New York, a topic immense and unwieldy like the city itself. Golway’s latest book, Machine Made, offers…
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Jennifer Nugent Duffy Who’s Your Paddy will cause controversy, disagreement and hopefully enlightened discussion, because the topics – whether racism is “a socially constructed response or an inherited trait?” as well as “the complexities of Irishness” – are timely and urgent. Nugent Duffy is Assoc. Professor of History at Western CT State University, and the…
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