[caption id="attachment_69795" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Governor Martin O'Malley."]
For the second time in a couple of weeks, Maryland governor Martin O'Malley took a trip up I95 to New York City and a politically potent event. His first foray, as recorded in a photo in the Echo a couple of issues back, was for a meeting with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
His second visit, on Thursday of last week, was to preside at the roundtable meeting convened by former president Bill Clinton for the visiting taoiseach, Enda Kenny, and tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore.
Suffice it to say, there was a lot of talk at the event, held at New York University, about O'Malley in the context of the 2016 presidential election. Indeed, the conversation seemed to almost entirely ignore the 2012 election, now just months away.
O'Malley, the man behind the Celtic rock band O'Malley's March, is being widely tipped as a leading Democratic contender for the party's nomination in a year that will have a special resonance for Irish Americans. And O'Malley, as readers know, is about as Irish American as you are going to get.
Also doing the rounds in various conversations - this after speeches from Clinton, Kenny, Gilmore and words from Irish jobs minister Richard Bruton, was the name of New York governor Andrew Cuomo.
The prospect of these two going at it four years from now would be quite a, well, prospect. In the meantime, eyes will be on both for any hint or indication as to future political plans.
Irish eyes and Italian eyes, and those many eyes that are a combination of both.
TRAVEL AND THOUGHT
Ireland snagged the cover of a special New York Times Magazine last Sunday. The cover photograph was a scene on one of the Aran Islands and the top story, by John Jeremiah Sullivan, was entitled "My Debt To Ireland."
Unfortunately for the Arans, and the rest of the old sod, Sullivan does not head the IMF or the like, but is a mere writer, though one with a keen eye and edgy perspective on the land of his ancestors.
IF was especially interested in his take on the phenomenon (a polite term for it) of so-called "ghost estates" which dot the post-boom Irish landscape and seem destined to remain for the foreseeable future.
Wrote Sullivan: "They actually impinge on the appearance of the countryside, there are so many."
Indeed. Never have ghosts been so damnably physical.
MARA, HURLEY INDUCTED
Thos Nast is not in the latest class of the New Jersey Hall of Fame because of his nastiness towards the Irish but two Irish Americans are inductees. The late Wellington Mara (see Golway column, Page 14) and basketball coach Bob Hurley made the class of 2012.
Eh, Which Is It?
Ah the perils of newspaper websites and headlines atop headlines. This from the Irish Times the other day: "Greek Austerity Vote Welcomed." And right underneath: "Shops Looted and Buildings Set Alight in Athens as Deeply Unpopular Measures Approved."
