The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).The annual St.Patrick’s Day Spring Carnival reached a climax in Derry as thousands of people came together to watch and take part in the annual event (Martin McKeown).
The Cross Border Orchestra of Ireland, which has been promoting peace since 1995, will again grace the Carnegie Hall stage Friday evening, March 17. The celebration St. Patrick’s Day concert marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Based in Dundalk, Co. Louth, the CBOI is composed of over 130 young musicians, from age 14 to 24, from all over Ireland and Northern Ireland. View their version of “Where the Streets have No Name,” filmed at locations across the island of Ireland, here:
DUP urged to restore powersharing institutions by US senate leader
By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA in Washington DC
Today at 03:20
The DUP has been urged to restore power-sharing by the leader of the US senate at a gala dinner attended by senior political figures from Northern Ireland.
Among the high-profile guests at the dinner were former Irish president Mary Robinson, PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne and the US Special Envoy for Northern Ireland Joe Kennedy III.
Also in attendance were Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald, her vice president Michelle O’Neill, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, UUP leader Doug Beattie, Alliance Party leader Naomi Long and SDLP leader Colum Eastwood.
Chuck Schumer praised the slow and “sometimes spluttering” progress made to achieve peace in Northern Ireland, before urging the Stormont institutions to be restored.
The US Senate Majority Leader also said he hoped the Windsor Framework “clears the way for the DUP to join Sinn Fein in a power-sharing agreement decided by the people of Northern Ireland in the last election, an amazing election.
“I say to all parties in the north, but especially the DUP, let’s get to the people’s business.”
Mr Schumer also referenced a group of Irish fishermen’s campaign to oust a Russian naval ship away from the Co Cork coast in 2021, quoted novelist James Joyce, and said Mayo would win the All Ireland Football Championship.
“I come from Ireland’s 33rd county – Brooklyn, New York!” he said.
He also praised the Irish rugby team – telling the congregation that if they had been sent to Ukraine, the war would be over within a week.
Republican Kevin McCarthy, the great grandson of a labourer from Co Cork, referenced the opposition that led to him eventually to becoming the Speaker of the House of Representatives – on the 15th ballot.
“A true Irishman never passes up a good fight,” he said. “But as an Irishman we also know when the fight’s over, you bring peace, you keep the peace, and that’s what we will do.”
During his address, Irish premier Leo Varadkar thanked the US for its response to the invasion of Ukraine, paid tribute to the late Congressman Brian Donnelly, and reflected on the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
He told guests: “This remarkable achievement took real political leadership – and a vision that was not afraid of compromise – and it allowed us to break the cycle of violence that had ravaged the island of Ireland for 30 years.
“A new generation of young people were given the freedom to dream big dreams for the first time.
“It would never have been possible without the support of our friends here in the United States, including some of the people in this room.
“In many ways, America is the thirds co-guarantor of the Agreement.”
The Taoiseach added: “Twenty-five years on, Northern Ireland is a very different place. It has its problems and has yet to live up to the full promise of Good Friday 1998 but it is unquestioningly a much better place than it was and there are so many opportunities available to young people that were unimaginable for too long.
“In this St Patrick’s week, let us remember that peace in Northern Ireland is one of the greatest and most significant success stories in American foreign policy.
“At critical junctures, the intervention of the United States drove the process forward.
“I believe the best way of celebrating a quarter of a century of peace on the island of Ireland, is by seizing this opportunity to make it a shining example to the world of what can be achieved when hope overcomes fear,” he said.
Irish, susceptible to disease, soon become a “remedy” among the community and a symbol of national pride.
IrishCentral Staff Writers
Mar 06, 2023
Soda water was the drink of choice for 19th-century Irish immigrants. GETTY
How soda water, Irish sounding-brand names and all, become a medical, emotional and spiritual part of the 19th-century community.
Today, sparkling water is a trendy alternative to sugary sodas in our health-conscious culture. From 2009 and 2014, the volume of carbonated bottle of water sold in the U.S. increased 56.4 percent. Nearly 800 million liters of soda water are expected to sell annually.
However, sparkling water isn’t anything new. According to researcher Meredith B. Linn, Irish famine immigrants in the 19th century were huge fans of the beverage.
Archaeologists have discovered numerous soda water bottles at the former dwellings of 19th-century Irish immigrants, Linn revealed in the paper Elixer of Emigration:Soda Water and the Making of Irish Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City, published by the Society for Historical Archaeology. Her study focused on findings from Five Points, a working-class neighborhood in New York City during the 19th century.
A substantial number of these bottles were found at the site of two tenements inhabited almost exclusively by Irish immigrants and first-generation Irish Americans. The number of bottles found greatly exceeded the number of similar bottles found in association with German, German Jewish, and Polish immigrant residents at the same site and those found in association with Scottish, English and American-born families in Greenwich Village. This pattern was consistent with what was found in Irish immigrant-related sites in New Jersey and San Francisco around the same time period.
JSTOR Daily reports that Irish immigrants, who were “steeped in water remedy beliefs,” viewed soda water as a health-related drink.
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“Historical records and oral histories indicate that Irish people generally had faith in apothecaries that was equal to or exceeded that which they had in physicians,” says Linn.
Irish immigrant communities were susceptible to disease. In response to the potato famine, many immigrants survived crossings in filthy steerage compartments to come to the U.S. Their immune systems were depleted and many suffered from diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, and anemia.
JSTOR Daily reports: “Soda water soon morphed into a symbol of national pride. In response to their new clientele, soda water bottlers began to sell water in bottles embossed with Irish-sounding brand names. These clever strategies meant that Irish people not only bought more water, but saved bottles for reuse at home, often filling them with homemade remedies when the soda water was gone. It became common to keep Irish-named soda bottles on display in the home and share soda water with visitors—a ritual that in turn ‘would have been absolutely critical for the survival of most immigrants and constituted a kind of social medicine.’”
Irish immigrants would come to have a medical, emotional, and spiritual connection to the sparkling drink.
According to Linn: “Soda water was a commodity that resonated with Irih immigrants on multiple levels, and one that they actively used to remedy physical, emotional, social, and economic ills resulting from diaspora and emigration.”
“GOD REST RITA O’HARE. GREAT WOMAN AND GREAT IRISH PATRIOT.”
I first met Rita O’Hare in interesting circumstances. In August 1974, I was home in Ireland on holiday from America. I was asked to visit one of the political prisoners in Portlaoise Prison, County Laois, Irish Republic.
It was shortly after the famous escape of 19 political prisoners from that prison.
When I arrived at the prison, the guard at the “front desk” said, ‘Well, Father, who are you here to see?” “Kevin Mallon,” I said with a smile. (Now, Mallon, a Tyrone man, would have been one of the best-known of the 19 escapees, and a famous Irish Republican). But fair play to the guard, without missing a beat to my cheeky response, said: “Ha, ha, Father, you better search the bogs of Ireland for him.”
NON-VIOLENT PRISON SIT-IN
Anyway, when I gave the name of the person I had really come to visit, I was told I had to see the “governor” or whatever the man in charge was called. I met with him and, although he was friendly and respectful, he told me I could not see the person. So, in an equally friendly and respectful manner, I told him I would not leave the prison and would stage a “nonviolent prison protest sit-in.”
I left his office and went back to the waiting room, which conveniently had a public telephone. I called the Irish Press in Dublin and told them about my ”sit-in.” (Later on, a reporter told me that phone had been removed!)
While there, a young redhead woman, with two young children, approached me to introduce herself: it was Rita O’Hare.
I told her I was doing a “ nonviolent sit-in,” and she immediately said: “Do you want me to join you?” I was impressed by her spontaneous willingness to help. But, I said, “ Ah, no, Rita, you have two little children with you. The guards will just carry me out and I will be fine.”
I never saw Rita again until years later she came to Washington as the Sinn Fein representative to the United States.
Ballymurphy Massacre Congressional Hearing
There is one thing, in particular, I am grateful for Rita doing. In December 2010, she brought leaders of the Ballymurphy Massacre Committee to meet with me so that I could arrange a Congressional Hearing on the Massacre, which I was proud to do. On March 16, 2011, the Chairman of the Committee, John Teggart— whose father was one of the eleven innocent civilians assassinated by the British Army in the Massacre—testified before Congress. I was proud of him. He was a powerful and most impressive witness. And I know John and his Ballymurphy Massacre Committee will share my sadness at Rita’s death.
All of this has flooded back into my mind when I heard of Rita O’Hare’s death. May God rest her noble Irish soul. She was a great woman and a great Irish Patriot.
