mimblr.com

DETROIT, June 5 /PRNewswire/ — Detroit Red Wings players, coaches and staff will participate in a parade to celebrate the 2008 Stanley Cup Championship on Friday, June 6, 2008, starting at 11:00 a.m. The parade will end with a celebration rally at Hart Plaza.
The parade route and additional details will be announced on June 5.
Fans are encouraged to come to Hockeytown and celebrate the return of the Cup!
SOURCE Detroit Red Wings

newsblaze.com

HOLYOKE - The last time Francis X. Healy attended the St. Patrick’s Parade, he was in high school
Today the native son and former major-leaguer will be honored as the John F. Kennedy National Award recipient during the 57th annual parade.
“I think it’s a magnificent award, and I’m very flattered,” Healy said yesterday at The Delaney House, adding he will share the honor with the teachers in his hometown.
“I’m doing it because they deserve it more than I do,” said Healy, whose late sister, Marina, taught at Kelly Elementary School. He said the award will be placed in the school library, which is named after her.
Healy’s brother, Bernie, and sister-in-law, Mary, are also teachers who live in the city.
Healy, 61, broke into the majors in 1969 with the Kansas City Royals, and also played for the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees before retiring in 1978 and starting a successful radio and television career.
Healy recalled marching in the parade as a Little Leaguer, but after high school stopped attending because of his career. “I was going to spring training every year, so when they had the parade. … I wasn’t here,” he said.
Healy lives in Madison, Conn., but he and his wife, Gloria, have a home in Holyoke. Healy’s parents, Bernard and Marina, still live in the city, as does his brother and his sister, Ann Tucker. Another brother, Patrick, lives in Westfield.
The John F. Kennedy National Award is the highest honor given by the St. Patrick’s Committee of Holyoke. It is given to an American of Irish descent who distinguished himself or herself in their chosen profession. Past recipients have included actor Pat O’Brien, actress Maureen O’Hara, authors Jimmy Breslin and Tom Clancy, and the late president’s brother, U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

masslive.com

Then he and his best beloved walked down Fifth Avenue with a grand painting of the street and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the background. He, his best beloved and lots of people who dressed in their Easter finery.
“On the avenue, Fifth Avenue, the photographers will snap us, And you’ll find that you’re in the rotogravure.”
The what? Maybe the old timers and fellow columnist Dick Cosgrove will be the only people who remember the “roto” section of years long past. Newspapers, especially in the large cities, had their own color sections on Sunday; out here in the ’burbs, we rely on the syndicated inserts, such as USA Weekend. Oddly enough, in New York City it’s still referred to as “the roto section.” Some things never change.
Chiff.com, an Internet site, indicates the parade, which started in the mid-1800s, is still going strong. Didn’t realize that. Of late, New Orleans has been hosting a Gay Easter Parade and the rules indicate that it’s a lot more tasteful (read: covered up) than the Mardi Gras. There’s also a “Haute Dog” Easter Parade in New York, but you don’t want to see the photos. Poor dogs.
“Easter Parade” was originally another song. From archive.org, is this note: “Very neat to come across the recording of ‘Smile and Show Your Dimple.’ It was a WWI song written by Irving Berlin. He never believed in wasting anything and when he needed an old-time-sounding song for a 1930’s review, he recycled it as ‘Easter Parade.’ He modified the melody, but you can hear the newer song in the beginning of the chorus.”
The Easter Bunny is an old Eastern European symbol of the Resurrection, as it comes out of its hutch in the Spring. The Easter Egg is another symbol of new life and eternity.

citizensvoice.com

I shall be tipsily waving the flag of a certain European country this evening, celebrating its long history with plenty of national booze and, I trust, a few of its more delectable eats in the company of hundreds of its proud citizens who for myriad reasons find themselves displaced this side of the ocean these days.
It’s in my diary. March 17: “La Grande Soirée de la Francophonie” in New York. “Manhattan’s conversations will take on a distinctly French accent” on this night, the invitation confidently asserts. Mais, qu’est-ce que c’est cette nuit? Did Sarkozy move Bastille Day forward just like the United States last weekend unilaterally leapfrogged the rest of the world moving its clocks to summertime three weeks early?
No, not that. It seems that this is an annual bash when France honours a person or institution for helping evangelise its culture and tongue in North America. The winner this year is the City University of New York in whose buildings we will be gathering. Bravo. So maybe this is not a conspiracy, as I was beginning to suspect, to snub the Irish, for whom 17 March also has a certain significance.
Certainly, if Britain had organised a “Bagpipes and Big Ben Night” in New York today that would have been the allegation. But even we are not that insensitive. And who in their right mind would try to compete with the Irish in America on St Patrick’s? They turn the Chicago River green, clog city arteries with parades and their public house merriment is such to make Bourbon Street in New Orleans seem tame.
Truth is though, this year things are slightly out of kilter. While the 5th Avenue Parade – green stripe painted down the tarmac – will begin this morning as usual at 10, in other places celebrations have happened already. In Savannah, Georgia, where St Patrick’s Day has become a big tourist draw, most of the fun was last Thursday. Boston, Philadelphia and Milwaukee had their parades at the weekend.

independent.co.uk