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1 week ago | 
irishecho.com | Sean Creedon |Geoffrey Cobb |Mike Houlihan
Tommy Finnegan is the son of a Chicago Firefighter and has been playing the pipes in The Shannon Rovers Pipe Band for 27 years. He sez, “I’m not musically inclined.”
He got the itch to join the band when he was a little kid, meeting the late Irish rebel and Rovers founder Tommy Ryan at a family party and told him he wanted to play the bass drum.
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1 week ago | 
irishecho.com | Sean Creedon |Geoffrey Cobb |Ray O'Hanlon
Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost is the newly elected Pope.
The College of Cardinals voted four times before white smoke appeared from the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel.
The new pope has taken the name Leo XIV.
A graduate of Villanova University, Prevost has been based in Rome for a number of years.
His roots are on Chicago's South Side.
“Peace be with all you,” were his first words to the crowd in a packed St. Peter's Square.
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1 week ago | 
irishecho.com | Ray O'Hanlon |Jay Mwamba |Daniel Neely |Geoffrey Cobb
Ironically, the artist who best captured the subtle and ephemeral beauty of the West of Ireland was an outsider. Belfast-born Paul Henry painted canvases that are regarded as the best canvases ever painted of the region. No artist influenced Irish and international perceptions of rural traditional life and the landscape more than he did. Earlier artists had painted Irish landscapes, but these scenes looked like paintings in England or France.
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1 week ago | 
irishecho.com | Geoffrey Cobb |Jay Mwamba
A Robin's Work News May 02, 2025 by Irish Echo Staff Pic of Day: A new study shows an alarming and continuing decline of bird populations in the United States. This Irish (European) Robin is more concerned with seasonal duties though would certainly be concerned for those avian cousins across the Atlantic. RollingNews.ie photo.
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2 weeks ago | 
irishecho.com | Geoffrey Cobb |Jay Mwamba
Our New York Irish history can often lie hiding in plain sight, especially in Astoria, Queens. If you peer between the cracks of a chain link fence on 21st Street and 26th Avenue, there, you might notice a small, forlorn graveyard with a few ancient, weathered gravestones, many of which have sunk partially back into the ground while a few others have toppled over.
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2 weeks ago | 
irishecho.com | Sean Creedon |Geoffrey Cobb
John Lee, left, co-host of the Irish Stew podcast, and Ciarán Byrne, one of four panelists, at Ryan’s Daughter, on East 85th Street, Manhattan’s Upper East Side, following Tuesday evening's live recording of an episode on the role of theatre in telling contemporary stories of Northern Ireland around the globe. The Irish Stew team (Lee and Martin Nutty) said the episode will be available to hear on Monday.
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3 weeks ago | 
irishecho.com | Geoffrey Cobb |Sean Creedon
For the first time since 1995, both Leinster football semi-finals will be played at provincial venues. On Sunday next Kildare will play Louth in O’Connor Park Tullamore with a 2pm throw-in, while two hours later old rivals Dublin and Meath meet in O’Moore Park, Portlaoise.
There was a time in the 1980s and ‘90s when Meath were well able for the Dubs, but not anymore. When Colm O’Rourke replaced Andy McEntee as Meath manager in July 2022 he told Meath followers that the target was to beat Dublin.
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1 month ago | 
irishecho.com | Jay Mwamba |Daniel Neely |Geoffrey Cobb
After the madness of St. Patrick’s Day every year it is time for the other March madness, college basketball’s National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Men’s championship, which is one of the most watched sporting events of the year.
This year St John’s University, which earlier this month won the Big East Championship, is one of the tournament’s top contenders.
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2 months ago | 
irishecho.com | Fintan O'Toole |Geoffrey Cobb |Jay Mwamba |Tom Phelan
“Good fences make good neighbors,” wrote Robert Frost. What he didn’t say was that porous fences can lead to murder.
In Ireland, farmers’ land is not just a spread of acres of soil. Down to their sandy bases, farms are saturated with the sweat, blood and identity of the owners—and of their ancestors. Irish farms do not have names like “Lake View Farm,” “Debicot Park” or “Primrose Acres.” Instead they are known by the surnames of the families who have worked the soil for generations.
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2 months ago | 
irishecho.com | Fintan O'Toole |Geoffrey Cobb |Jay Mwamba |Peter J. McDermott
“As the twenty-first century opened, Irish was everywhere all at once—on television, the internet, stages, screens, and bestseller lists,” Marion R. Casey writes at the outset of her latest book, “The Green Space.”
“Every March, supermarkets sold shamrock-shaped ravioli, and retailers pushed green. New York’s Museum of Modern Art named the Aran sweater one of the world’s most iconic garments,” she continues. “To explain this requires a history.”
And Casey is an historian.
