Michael Shay's Hummingbirdminds

The title poem of Eavan Boland's collection "The Lost Land" always moves me. It begins as a confessional with "I have two...

Blame my errant imagination. As I read "Glorious Exploits," a new novel by Irish writer Ferdia Lennon, I kept hearing Roddy Doyle....

My sister sent me a packet of stuff she cleaned out of her attic. In it, I found a printout from The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundati...

I don't have a hangover, that's the main thing. Many prior St. Patrick's Day holidays involved drinking and then hangovers. Some...

My sister Molly sent me a packet of family letters and documents a few months ago and asked me to make sense of them, see if they came toget...

From the Poetry Foundation essay on Scottish poet Robert Burns: Burns was identified as odd because he always carried a book. A countrywo...

A Thomas Nast cartoon in Harper's Weekly depicts ape-like Irishmen beating up police on St. Patrick's Day 1867.   Great read fr...

What does it mean to be Irish-American? Skin cancer, for one thing. We are light-skinned, except for the Black Irish who are not so much b...

A typical St. Patrick's Day celebration in Cheyenne What do you think of when St. Patrick's Day rolls around? Toasting your ...

St. Patrick's Day parade in Montreal.  The Laramie County Democrats Grassroots Coalition (LCDGC) is the FUNdraising arm for the Dem...

In "Dead Wake," Erik Larson tells the story of the last Atlantic crossing of the R.M.S. Lusitania, Larson is a fantastic storytell...

"Skibbereen 1847" by Cork artist James Mahony (1810–1879), commissioned by The Illustrated London News, 1847 I have never bee...

What does it mean to be Irish in America? That's topic enough for a book or two. I'm Irish enough. My maternal grandfather left ...

My people are in town for a party. My people are the Celts, descendants of a loose band of European tribes who eventually settled Ireland,...

It’s April 16 in Wyoming, the snow is falling and I’m wearing my father’s cream-colored cableknit cardigan. Sometimes it’s called an Aran s...

As a kid, I bore a startling resemblance to TV's Howdy Doody. Each St. Patrick’s Day, I ponder what it means to be an Irish-American...

On the road to the Black Hills this St. Patrick's Day. Too preoccupied with the upcoming St. Patrick's Day Pub Crawl in Deadwood to ...

I'm not going to be in town, but maybe you will be and are looking for something a little less green-beer-oriented on St. Patrick's...

Looking for some especially depressing books to read during St. Patrick's Day week, I chose The Great Shame, and the triumph of the Iris...