Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
American International College football team rides its defense to a 17-14 victory over Bentley
While the defense didn’t quite shut down the visitors from Bentley University on Saturday, the damage was limited. AIC intercepted Bentley quarterback Bryant Johnson five times - three in the fourth quarter - and gave the offense one last chance.
Senior quarterback Rob Parent found tight end Trevor Perryman over the middle for a 17-yard touchdown pass with 3:48 remaining, as the Yellow Jackets downed the Falcons 17-14 at Robert J. Abdow Field.
AIC finally exhaled when Paul Branco missed a potential game-tying 42-yard field goal with a minute remaining.
“All camp, it’s been on our shoulders,” AIC senior linebacker Terrence Holley said of the defense’s role on a team with a young offense. “We finally came together today and played 60 minutes of complete football.”
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Michael Carney gets a Doctorate Degree from Ireland
Michael Carney of Springfield, a retired court officer, wins honorary doctoral degree in Celtic literature from National University of Ireland
By Stephanie Barry
October 10, 2009, 2:00PM
The 89-year-old retired court officer traveled back to his homeland recently to receive an honorary doctoral degree in Celtic literature from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
His family says the honor caps a lifelong devotion to preserving the language and promoting the culture – since growing up on the tiny island off the west coast of Ireland, tending bar in Dublin and emigrating to the U.S. in 1948.
For his part, Carney says he was surprised when the invitation came from the university in September.
Carney follows other recipients including President John F. Kennedy and Nelson Mandela, among others. He chuckles at the comparison.
“To think of it ... a former president and a poor fisherman’s son from the island honored at the same famous college,” he said.
University officials called Carney a “true living link to our heritage and tradition” during a conferral ceremony at the Blasket Center in Kerry on Sept. 21. Carney was joined by his four children, two sons-in-law and two grandchildren.
“As you can imagine, we are all very proud,” son-in-law Gerald W. Hayes said, adding that though Carney was never a writer by profession, he serves as a proxy for the island’s rich literary legacy.
For a three-mile wide island with 150 inhabitants before it was evacuated by the government in 1953, Blasket produced a surprising number of writers.
They include Peig Sayers, Tomás Ó Criomhthain and Maurice O’Sullivan, who wrote in Gaelic about life on the island. Their books were translated into dozens of languages, Hayes said, and Sayers’ memoir, “Peig,” is mandatory reading for students in Ireland.
Carney said the simplicity of life there spawned a great tradition of story-telling. He knew little English when he traveled to the mainland at 16 to take a job as a “bar man,” he said, and the little he did know he gleaned from tourists when he was a boy.
“I tried to talk to them to learn English while they came to learn Gaelic,” he said. “It was a two-way street.
He wrote a Gaelic language column for The Irish Times while he lived in Dublin, and taught adult language courses in Gaelic in this city.
For 20 years here, he worked as a store manager at local A&P markets before applying for a job as a security officer at the Hampden County Hall of Justice. Carney retired from there in 1993.
He was president of the John Boyle O’Reilly Club – the city’s Irish-American social epicenter – for 16 years and served on its board of directors for eight more.
Obama picks up a Nobel Peace Prize
Obama: Nobel Peace Prize is 'call to action'
- Story Highlights
- President Obama awarded 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
- "I am both surprised and deeply humbled," Obama says at White House
- Nobel committee praises Obama for efforts to "strengthen international diplomacy"
- Obama will donate roughly $1.4 million award to charity, White House says
(CNN) -- President Obama said Friday that he was "surprised and deeply humbled" by the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
The committee said it honored Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
Obama said he viewed the decision less as a recognition of his own accomplishments and more as "a call to action."
The decision appeared to catch most observers by surprise. Nominations for the prize had to be postmarked by February 1, only 12 days after Obama took office. The committee sent out its solicitation for nominations last September, two months before Obama was elected president.
Obama had not been mentioned as among front-runners for the prize, and the roomful of reporters gasped when Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel committee, announced that the president was the winner.
The Nobel committee recognized Obama's efforts at dialogue to solve complex global problems, including working toward a world free of nuclear weapons. 
"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said.
Jagland said the decision was "unanimous" and came with ease.
He rejected the notion that Obama had been recognized prematurely for his efforts and said the committee wanted to promote the president just it had Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 for his efforts to open up the Soviet Union. Ed Rollins: Obama now must earn it
"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population," the committee said of Obama.
Obama said he did not feel he deserved "to be in the company" of past Peace Prize winners, but would accept the prize while pushing for a broad range of international objectives, including nuclear nonproliferation, a reversal of the global economic downturn and a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
He also acknowledged the ongoing U.S. conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that he is the "commander in chief of a country that is responsible for ending a war and working in another theater to confront a ruthless adversary that directly threatens the American people" and U.S. allies.
"This award is not simply about my administration," he said. It "must be shared" with everyone who strives for "justice and dignity."
It was just before 6 a.m. that the president learned he had won the award, said Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. The announcement by the committee caught the White House off guard. One senior administration official said that "we were quite surprised."
Some analysts have speculated that the prize could give Obama additional clout as he forms a new strategy for the war in Afghanistan and attempts to engage Iran and North Korea. Another senior administration official told CNN he hopes the White House can "use it for the positive."
The domestic political consequences are unclear. Obama's supporters hope the prestige associated with the prize will strengthen the president's hand in the health care reform debate. A top Republican from George W. Bush's administration, however, argued that "this will backfire on them for a while" and asserted it was "a gift to the right." Zakaria: Nobel honors Obama's 'bold gambit'
Obama, the first African-American to win the White House, is the fourth U.S. president to win the prestigious prize and the third sitting president to do so.
Former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, last year's laureate, said it was clear the Nobel committee wanted to encourage Obama on the issues he has been discussing on the world stage.
"I see this as an important encouragement," Ahtisaari said.
The committee wanted to be "far more daring" than in recent times and make an impact on global politics, said Kristian Berg Harpviken, director of the International Peace Research Institute. Praise, skepticism greet Nobel announcement
While most Nobel prizes are awarded by committees based in Sweden, the Peace Prize is determined by a five-member panel appointed by the Norwegian parliament.
Wangari Muta Maathai, the Kenyan environmentalist who won the 2004 Peace Prize, said the win for Obama, whose father was Kenyan, will help Africa move forward.
"I think it is extraordinary," she said. "It will be even greater inspiration for the world. He has shown how we can probably come together, work together in a cooperative way."
Mohamed ElBaradei, who won the 2005 Peace Prize for his efforts to prevent nuclear energy being used for military means, said Obama deserved to win for his efforts to bring Iran to the table for direct nuclear talks with the United States.
"I could not think of anybody who is more deserving," said ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
