Now blogging from metro Washington, D.C.

Mark Holan’s Irish-American Blog has relocated to metro Washington, D.C.

I am living about five miles west of the Irish Embassy in the Virginia Square section of Arlington, Va. St. Patrick Catholic Church is less than seven miles to the east. Both places are within easy walking distance of the Orange line Metro stops. (More of a hike from Green line stations.)

My condo is about halfway between Ireland’s Four Courts and Ireland’s Four Provinces. Both pubs are sponsoring fundraising events to support Washington, D.C.’s 43rd Annual St. Patrick’s Parade on March 16.

I have joined Irish Network DC and look forward to making new friends in the Irish-American community here while exploring the many contributions that Ireland’s sons and daughters have made to America.

The blog is moving to Washington, D.C.

Mark Holan’s Irish-American Blog is moving to Washington, D.C., from Tampa, Florida, where it has published from since going live in July 2012.

I look forward to once again living in a community with strong ties to Ireland, and easier travel across the Atlantic. That should help provide more original content for the blog.

Fresh posts will begin in a week or two. Follow me on Twitter @markieam.

Irish Central launches website makeover

My wee blog can’t compete with powerhouse Irish Central, which has just launched a redesigned website.

IrishCentral wanted a creative new vision for our site, encompassing all we have learned in our first few years when we quickly grew to be the largest Irish site in America,” founder Niall O’Dowd said in a release. “We hired a full creative, editorial and design team including New York based creative agency Mayday Mayday Mayday to reimagine our digital experience.”

Irish CentralOne new feature is the publication’s first “Power 50” ranking of the most influential Irish Americans, and a piece by O’Dowd speculating on the first Catholic president since JFK in 2016.

The website looks great. Congratulations.

Not much sweetness in Ireland’s post-bailout “success”

Fintan O’Toole of The Irish Times has an op-ed in The New York Times about Ireland being the first country to emerge from its Eurozone bailout. The headline tips off his opinion: “Ireland’s Rebound is European Blarney.”

In part, his piece says:

Everyone wants Ireland to be a good-news story, proof that a willingness to take the pain of prolonged austerity will be rewarded in the end. Ordinary citizens are hungry for some hope. The government, in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, was “determined that Ireland would be Europe’s success story.” An influential board member of the European Central Bank, Jörg Asmussen, says, “The Irish program is a success story.” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany praised Ireland as an example of how crisis countries could turn themselves around.

The only problem is that, for most of us who actually live here, Ireland’s success story feels less like “The Shawshank Redemption” and more like “Rocky.” We haven’t been joyously liberated; we’ve just withstood a lot of blows. We’re still standing, but we’ve taken so many punches that it’s hard to see straight.

Ireland was forced to take 67.5 billion Euro in loans starting in 2010 to prop up banks over leveraged by the property bubble of the 2000s. The damage spread as far as a commercial real estate development in Tampa.

Ireland exited the bailout in December. A few weeks later the country held its first bond sale since reaching the milestone.

Better late than never

There’s a hint of an earlier age to this story, like those recently discovered unopened 18th century letters from Irish people living in the Bordeaux region of France.

Kinealy

Kinealy

In this second week of January 2014 I received a tri-fold piece of mail informing me that Christine Kinealy, an authority on the Irish famine, “has been appointed director of the newly created Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac [University, near New Haven, Conn.] … The Institute will build upon the work of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum … while providing a forum for developing new scholarship about, and new engagement with, this tragic period in Ireland’s history.”

That’s great. I enjoyed my March 2013 visit to the An Gorta Mor archive collection and separate museum. Both are important stops for anyone interested in Irish history.

The only problem with the postal piece? Kinealy’s appointment was announced in August.

Here’s the Spring 2014 schedule of programs at the museum.

Big storms, then and now

Ireland was being battered by huge storms on Jan. 6, including winds of up to 100 miles per hour. It’s the latest in several rounds of rough weather across the country and Western Europe. Irish Central reports:

Islands off the Irish coast have been worst hit by the relentless pounding so far with a resident of Inishbofin of the Galway coast describing the weather as “the worst in living memory. … Thundery rain will lead to major flooding according to the national weather service, Met Eireann, which issued an orange storm warning. Towns and villages recovering from last week’s storms are now bracing themselves for another battering with high seas in excess of 40 feet expected on the south and west coasts.

By coincidence, the storm comes at the 175th anniversary of the “The Night of the Big Wind,” as detailed in this fine piece by Turtle Bunbury at The Wild Geese.

On 6th January 1839, the entire island of Ireland was subjected to a tempest of such ferocity that it became the date by which all other events were measured. The Night of the Big Wind – known as ‘Oiche na Gaoithe Moire’ – was the JFK assassination or the 9/11 of the 19th century. It was the most devastating storm ever recorded in Irish history and made more people homeless in a single night than all the sorry decades of eviction that followed it.

Untitled image from The Wild Geese.

Untitled image from The Wild Geese.

Here’s a link to a site that contains two screens of period news coverage about the storm, including a report from north Kerry that “that monument of Antiquity, Ballybunion Castle, is a heap of ruins.”

Kay Caball of My Kerry Ancestors notes the storm became an important demarcation when old age pensions were instituted in the early 20th century. She writes:

In 1909 the British government, which was still ruling Ireland, instituted a system of old age pensions. When dealing with the rural population of Ireland, where the written records might be scanty, the ferocious storm that blew in from the north Atlantic 70 years earlier proved to be useful. One of the questions asked of elderly people was if they could remember the “Big Wind.” If they could, they qualified for a pension.

Obama’s dis-connect from Ireland

Is it possible that U.S. President Barack Obama will allow a second St. Patrick’s Day to come and go without naming an ambassador to Ireland?

The diplomatic post has been open been since mid December 2012, when Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney stepped down after three and a half years. Several names have been floated since then for the job, but still no appointment. And the clock is ticking up to March 17.

Obama and Rooney. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette image.

Obama and Rooney. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette image.

Brian O’Dwyer, head of the Emerald Isle Immigration Center and a Democratic Party activist, said Obama’s failure to appoint an ambassador was “an absolute disgrace and a real and total disrespect to the Irish American community.” Irish Central‘s Niall O’Down reported the comments in his Periscope column of October 17, 2012. The column also quoted Stella O’Leary, founder of Irish-American Democrats (O’Dwyer is on the board): “There is no shortage of qualified Irish Americans for the job. There has been no communication, no reason given for the delay and this has been to the severe disadvantage of Irish America and Ireland,” she said.

Stuart Dwyer assumed the ambassador’s duties as Chargés d’affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Dublin on September 5, 2013. That’s the same day that Anne Anderson was appointed by the Irish government as Ambassador to the United States, the first woman in the role.

The Obamas flank Anne Anderson. Image from Irish Central.

The Obamas flank Anne Anderson. Irish Central image.

No agreement, but Haass proposal published

Northern Ireland political parties failed to adopt a proposed agreement on flags, parades and the legacy of the Troubles in the final hours of 2013. But the proposal by Dr. Richard Haass has been published by the government.

It begins,

We in Northern Ireland have come a long way. … Despite [many] positive steps, we have further distance to travel. Many continue to await the end of sectarianism and the peace dividend that should be all citizens’ due.

Here’s a quick keyword highlight from the text: flag/s, 36; past, 42; union, 5; republican, 1; Catholic, 0; Protestant, 0; parade/s, 37; (political) parties, 27; Good Friday Agreement, 4; vote, 2; violence, 15; peace, 13.

Best of the Blog, 2013

This is my first annual “Best of the Blog,” a look at some of the most important news stories, historical anniversaries and personal favorite posts of the past year. I am not numbering the list to avoid the appearance of rank. Most links are to my original posts.

Enjoy, and Happy New Year:

  • The most significant personal milestone of the year was the centennial of my grandfather’s May 1913 emigration from County Kerry. I detailed Willie Diggin’s trip in a series of posts and recently published book, “His Last Trip: An Irish-American Story.”
  • The year 2013 marked the 150th anniversary of the Irish Brigades fighting in the Battle of Gettysburg and Irish-Catholic anti-conscription riots in New York City. It was the 100th anniversary of the Dublin labor lockout and the formation of the Irish Volunteers.
  • Ireland also noted the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s return to his ancestral homeland in June 1963. November marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of America’s first Irish-Catholic president.
  • Ireland liberalized its abortion laws in 2013 after a contentious debate with the Catholic Church, including a controversial appearance at the Boston College commencement by Irish PM Enda Kenny. Kenny won the abortion battle, but his effort to abolish the Seanad Éireann was defeated in a nationwide referendum.
  • The Irish community in Boston was in the news with the trial and conviction of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, and the election of new mayor Martin J. Walsh.
  • The Irish Independent obtained recorded telephone conversations between former Anglo Irish Bank executives that revealed the depth of deception leading up to a government bailout of the failed financial institution. The Irish banking scandal and property bust reached all the way to Tampa, where I have covered problems with a retail and entertainment complex called Channelside Bay Plaza.
  • The Gathering Ireland 2013 focused on increasing visitors to their ancestral homeland. Project officials said it delivered more than a quarter million overseas tourists as of Dec. 23.
  • RIP: The passing of Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013, was probably the most significant death in Ireland during the year. Watch New York Times video tribute. The death of Margaret Thatcher also caused quite a stir on the island, though hardly as affectionate.
  • U.S. President Barack Obama and other global leaders attended the G8 Summit at County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. Nevertheless, as the year ended, U.S. envoy Dr. Richard Haass and Northern Ireland political leaders were still trying to finalize on agreement to solve ongoing problems with flags, parades and the past.
  • The past year was the 125th anniversary of the murder of Kerry farmer John Foran, a victim of the agrarian violence so widespread across Ireland in general and Kerry in particular during the last quarter of the 19th century. I look forward to doing more research and writing about this episode and the period in the new year.
This image of Kerry was used to illustrate a New York Times story headlined "Lost In Ireland. I've had it posted at my desk since it was published in October 2010. In 2014, I'll be moving to Washington, D.C. and look forward to seeing what's beyond the hill.

This image of rural road in Kerry illustrated a New York Times story headlined “Lost In Ireland. It was published in October 2010. I’ve kept the picture posted at my work desk ever sense. In 2014 I’ll be moving to Washington, D.C. and look forward to seeing what’s beyond the hill.

Northern Ireland talks near year-end deadline

UPDATE:

RTE reports that Haass will return to Northern Ireland on Saturday.

ORIGINAL POST:

Dr Richard Haass has left Northern Ireland without an agreement on flags, parades and the past. He is considering whether to return to try to complete a deal by the New Year’s deadline, the Irish-American Information Service reports.

Dr Haass and his American talks team including Harvard professor Meghan OSullivan flew home to the United States out of Dublin this morning after late night/early morning talks with the five main Northern parties failed to produce an agreement.

Negotiations concluded this morning at about 4.30am after almost eight hours of talks with progress made but with no final meeting of minds by the five parties of the Northern Executive – the DUP, Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Ulster Unionist Party and Alliance.

Dr Haass said he was prepared to return at the weekend if he felt an agreement could yet be achieved.