The Wild Geese gained a spotlight on 'Communications Corner,' on Queens Public Television (QPTV), the Queens, NYC, public television network. During the broadcast, co-founder Gerry Regan shares his personal background while discussing the ever-growing and very passionate membership of the world's leading social network…

We arrived at Dublin Airport to some fairly typical Irish summer weather, i.e. cloudy with off-and-on showers and temperatures of about 18 (about 65 back in the…

... a trip to Ireland helped.

Mary Harris "Mother" Jones (1837- 30 November 1930) was an Irish-American schoolteacher and dressmaker who became a prominent labor and community organizer. She helped coordinate major strikes and co-founded the Industrial Workers of the World. Mary…

In "Machine Made: Tammany Hall and The Creation of Modern American Politics," author Terry Golway doesn’t sugar-coat the negative aspects of a New York institution that flourished for about 100 years. What he does is swing the pendulum back from a crazy imbalance caused by…

It is a source of great pain and frustration to genealogists that most 19th Irish census returns have been destroyed. The destruction is generally blamed on the fire at the Public Records Office in 1922 during the Irish Civil War. While the 1922 fire did consume a great deal of…

Back before there were affordable and reliable alarm clocks, the occupation of a knocker-up made a few pence a week in England and Ireland by using a long, lightweight stick, often bamboo, to tap on their clients’ upper floor windows and wake them up so they could get to…

Two years ago if you asked me what magic realism was I would have confidently told you that it was “a creative device where magic elements appear within an otherwise realistic environment.” I was sure I understood the concept. After all I had read Allende, García Marquez…

In 2006, British director, Ken Loach won the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or award with his portrayal of the 1919-23 Irish War of Independence and Civil War in “The Wind That Shakes the Barley”. There is a scene in that film where a wealthy landowner who is about to…

On July first, we Canadians celebrate what we refer to as ‘Canada Day’, that day in 1867 when The British North America Act brought the Provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia together with the formal dividing lines for Ontario and Quebec, and these provinces together…

I began to assemble this list of renowned Irish-Americans (including Scots-Irish) to keep me on track when I research and assemble their exploits. When their exploits are posted to my blog, I'll try to strike through their name. For example: Luke Ryan’s name is first on the list…

Widely respected as the jewel in Ireland’s gardening crown, Altamont Gardens are an enchanting blend of formal and informal gardens with riverside walks covering over 40 acres (16 hectares). The estate gains much of its character from the…

Have you ever had the occasion to visit a cemetery and noticed headstones that had coins left on them?  Here are some interesting reasons for the ‘tokens’ being left behind.

The Ferryman

By far the most popular…

I am proud that Gerry Conlon was a friend of mine. Not surprisingly, what brought us together was that the British government kept framing people the same way they framed him.

I first heard from Gerry a few weeks after he got out of prison in October 1989. The phone rang and…

I gave a tour to a group of people at Midway Village Museum in Rockford, Illinois. Of course, when they heard my accent they told me about their trip to Ireland. They had gone on a hill-walking vacation. That is an extremely popular activity with locals and tourists alike. There…

1928: Killenkere, County Cavan Ireland

The following article regarding the author’s grandfather is from a 1928 Anglo Celt newspaper published in County Cavan, Ireland.

… Mr. Matthew Smith, Beagh Upper, Parish of Upr. Killinkere. Mr. Smith resided in Philadelphia until a few years ago, when he returned…

From pagan sites to ecclesiastical settlements, intricate layers of religious and secular cultural history set against rugged mountains, glorious countryside and lush river valleys make County Carlow a perfect base for exploring the Southeast of Ireland. Whether brought here by faith, born and spent their lives here, educated here…

The  following is a transcript from the LIVE Community Chat held here at TheWildGeese.com on Friday, June 20, 2014 with with Éilís Crean, the founder of a very creative online Irish community called…

The  following is a transcript from the LIVE Community Chat held here at TheWildGeese.com on Thursday, June 19, 2014 with with…