March 17, 2023

Friday, March 17, 2023. 🍀 Annette’s News Roundup.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

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Joe is always busy.

Biden to declare huge national monument in Nevada, honoring tribes.

Petroglyphs in Nevada’s Hiko Springs Canyon, which is culturally significant to Indigenous people in the area.

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President Biden will designate a sacred tribal site in southern Nevada as a national monument in the coming days, according to two people briefed on the decision, creating the largest protected area of his presidency yet.


Biden will sign a proclamation putting hundreds of thousands of acres around Spirit Mountain — known as Avi Kwa Ame (ah-VEE-kwah-may) in Mojave — off limits to development under the 1906 Antiquities Act, the two individuals said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plans are not yet public.


The move would rank as Biden’s most consequential act of land conservation so far, and it would fulfill a promise the president made to tribal leaders more than 100 days ago.


“When it comes to Spirit Mountain and surrounding ridges and canyons in southern Nevada, I’m committed to protecting this sacred place that is central to the creation story of so many tribes that are here today,” Biden said at the White House Tribal Nations Summit in November. “And I look forward to being able to visit Spirit Mountain and experience it with you as soon as I can.” (Washington Post).

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Kamala is always busy.

Touch the tweet 👇 to watch the Vice President with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday night.

On Thursday, the Vice President was in Iowa.

In Iowa, Kamala Harris Says Republicans Won’t Stop at Abortion.

DES MOINES — Vice President Kamala Harris said on Thursday that a lawsuit seeking to overturn federal approval of a widely used abortion pill amounted to an attack on “our public health system as a whole.”

During her first trip to Iowa as vice president, Ms. Harris portrayed Republican attempts to impose a nationwide ban on abortion as immoral and extreme.

“If politicians start using the court to undo doctors’ decisions, imagine where that can lead,” Ms. Harris said as a judge in Texas considered whether he would issue a preliminary injunction that could take the pill, mifepristone, off the market.

Ms. Harris has taken a lead role on abortion as President Biden prepares to announce an expected run for re-election. Without the votes in Congress to enshrine abortion protections into law, the White House hopes Ms. Harris can help sustain the sort of anger that motivated Democratic voters during the midterm elections.

In her appearance Thursday at Grand View University, Ms. Harris framed the abortion issue as part of a broader struggle for health care and privacy, a strategy aimed at galvanizing the broadest coalition of voters.

This is not only about reproductive health,” Ms. Harris said, adding that overturning F.D.A. approval for abortion medication could set a dangerous precedent, potentially affecting the availability of other medications.

The last-minute trip to Iowa, planned by the vice president’s team only in the past few days, is part of a push by Ms. Harris to get out into the country more to overcome an impression from allies and critics alike that she has not forged a definitive role in the administration.

Top Republicans have flocked to Iowa in recent weeks in anticipation of the 2024 Iowa caucuses, including former President Donald J. Trump; former Vice President Mike Pence; Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador; Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.

Democrats have overhauled their primary calendar, replacing Iowa with South Carolina as the party’s first nominating contest. But the rush of Republicans to Iowa presented an opportunity for Ms. Harris to call attention to restrictions that could be imposed by Republican-led legislatures.

“We need to show the difference that while Republicans are taking health care rights away from them, we in the Democratic Party are saying that is not acceptable,” said Elizabeth Naftali, a deputy finance chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Ms. Naftali said that Democrats could not allow a “steamroll by Republicans” just because the primary calendar had changed.

Most abortions are now banned in more than a dozen states following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year. While Iowa has not banned abortion, it is one of many states the administration fears could soon enact more severe abortion restrictions.

Last year, the Iowa Supreme Court found that there was no right to an abortion under the state’s constitution. A ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy has been blocked by a state judge since 2019 but Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, has appealed the decision to the higher court. The state currently bans abortion after 20 weeks.

Most Iowans — 61 percent — believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll last fall. Thirty-three percent say it should be illegal in most or all cases, and 6 percent are not sure.

“We have just seen a lot of panic and fear among patients who are worried,” said Mazie Stilwell, the director of public affairs for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Iowa.

White House officials acknowledged that there was only so much that they could do to protect abortion access without Congress, but many abortion advocates are calling for policies that would protect both medical officials providing abortions and those seeking them.

“What I know feels frustrating for me and many organizers on the ground is we keep having meetings but there’s not any action,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, the founder and executive director of the reproductive rights advocacy group We Testify.

No major policy announcements came on Thursday. But Ms. Harris described those pushing for abortion restrictions as “extremist so-called leaders who purport and profess to hail themselves as a beacon of freedom and opportunity.”

Stefanie Brown James, a co-founder of the Collective PAC, an organization dedicated to electing African American officials, said such blunt messaging would be imperative for both Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden in the months ahead.

“In the event Kamala Harris continues to be his second in command, it’s important for her now to be out having conversations as much as it is for him to be,” Ms. James said. “This issue is not going away anytime soon.” (New York Times).

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Elections coming up.

Jacksonville,Florida. Tuesday, March 21.

Wisconsin. Tuesday, April 4th.

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An insightful article about the “Bro” culture of the Silicon Valley.

I Was an S.V.B. Client. I Blame the Venture Capitalists.

In 2016, I started a New York-based creative agency that specialized in branded content. Among creative agencies, the trend at the time was for names that sounded like punk bands, and I unfortunately chose the Insurrection. As of last week, the only thing that aged worse than the name was my choice of bank: Silicon Valley Bank, which has now become the most spectacular example of a bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis. (I briefly lost access to our company’s funds, but I’m fine; my deposits were low enough to be covered by F.D.I.C. guarantees.)

There’s plenty to say about how the bank brought this about — making risky investments, issuing communications that did more to alarm than explain. But as I hit refresh on my account balance Monday morning, I was thinking of the high-prestige venture capitalists who herded start-ups like mine to S.V.B. They’re the reason the bank was so overloaded with risky clients, and they’re also the ones who panicked at the first rumors of trouble and advised their portfolio companies to flee, initiating the bank run that brought the whole thing tumbling down.

On Saturday an entrepreneur named Alexander Torrenegra, who was an S.B.V. depositor for two companies as well as his personal accounts, explained what happened on Twitter. “Thursday, 9 AM: in one chat with 200+ tech founders (most in the Bay Area), questions about SVB start to show up.” he wrote. “10 AM: some suggest getting the money out of SVB for safety. Only upside. No downside.”

It’s easy to see how a whisper network of a few hundred C.E.O.s — all convinced they have exceptional vision, all working themselves into a panic — could spiral out of control. But what happened in that chat is an extension of the fundamental way that these venture capitalists operate, which is groupthink on a staggeringly consequential scale.

Top-tier companies like Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins subject candidates to a rigorous screening process that ensures that only the strongest founders leading the most promising businesses proceed to the next level. Or that’s what I once believed, anyway. But the screening process places significant emphasis on culture fit, which is industry-speak for whether a founder fits into the venture capital company’s full portfolio of businesses and conforms to its ideas about how a founder is supposed to look and behave. A founder’s ability to navigate this process is considered a good indicator of the company’s success. Unfortunately for women and people of color, culture fit often boils down to being a white male engineer with a degree from an elite university.

Some screening mechanisms are more subtle, like whether the V.C.s are already in your professional network or one or two degrees removed. The industry line is that relationships will help founders attract capital, talent and business partners. True, but the result is a largely homogeneous and even self-reinforcing community that’s difficult for outsiders to crack.

It’s this sort of insularity, emphasis on existing relationships and reliance on intangible measures of competency that fueled last week’s bank run. The V.C.s expect the companies in their portfolio to use approved vendors. When it comes to legal counsel, that generally means tech-friendly law firms like Morrison & Foerster and Wilson Sonsini. When it comes to banks, it meant S.V.B.

S.V.B., in turn, assessed its clients’ creditworthiness in part by who their funders were. As my colleagues and I saw, an investment from a top-tier V.C. could be the ticket to a package of favored services, including things like home mortgages for the founders of these start-ups.

I opened my account at S.V.B. in 2017, when I had meetings lined up with some top-tier V.C.s to raise money for a digital media company. Like everyone else who heads to Buck’s of Woodside (a favored venue for early-stage deal making) with a deck and a dream, I tried to anticipate the screening mechanisms and make sure I passed. And despite the fact that I was not a first-time founder, had worked in tech and tech-adjacent companies and was decently well networked, I suspected they might regard a 40-year-old woman without an engineering degree as not quite the culture fit of their dreams. I wasn’t contractually obligated to bank with S.V.B., but as with so many other unspoken norms, I was aware that I would be evaluated by my choices.

Disaster has now struck, but I don’t see any public introspection from the investment community participants who both helped create the dangerous conditions and triggered the avalanche by directing portfolio companies to withdraw en masse.

The biggest supposed geniuses of Silicon Valley could have chosen to remain calm and use their influence to work with the bank and help maintain stability in the market. When S.V.B. disclosed its losses last week, it was in the process of restructuring its portfolio to include Treasuries with shorter-term maturities, which would have helped. It had a commitment from General Atlantic — a top-tier company — to help shore up its balance sheet. The bank was doing exactly what it should have done under the circumstances, and had the depositors kept their money there, it could have stabilized as the restructured portfolio became more profitable.

Instead, people panicked. The venture capitalists chose a path that would be disastrous for their industry, freezing up capital, spooking investors and reducing the favored financial institution to rubble. Then they had the temerity to go on social media and congratulate one another for their quick thinking. Upfront Ventures’ Mark Suster, one of the few V.C.s who saw the potential damage of a bank run and publicly urged his colleagues to stay calm, told TechCrunch on Friday, “I’m seeing emails from V.C.s” to their limited partners, “and they are forwarding these things like, ‘Aren’t I super smart?’”

The hubris of high-profile libertarians who howl for regulatory intervention (“Where is Powell? Where is Yellen? Stop this crisis NOW,” tweeted Craft Ventures’ David Sacks) after previously coming out against it is all the more galling. I expect that as soon as the system stabilizes, they’ll all develop amnesia and return to insisting that government intervention destroys innovation.

They are not the only people to blame, of course, but no bank is built to withstand simultaneous withdrawals from all its depositors. One S.V.B. executive told The Financial Times that its biggest risk was “a very tightly knit group of investors who exhibit herdlike mentalities.” The executive continued, “Doesn’t that sound like a bank run waiting to happen?”

I’ll keep my S.V.B. debit card as a souvenir, partly because the giant arrow logo points in the opposite direction that it’s supposed to go into a card reader — an example of a design that obviously went through no user testing. It’s also a reminder that successful people aren’t always the best decision makers. (Guest writer, New York Times).

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Eve and I know what we will be doing on Sunday at noon. You?

Jen Psaki enters TV's weekend fray with show starting Sunday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Seven months into her new television career, it’s clear that Jen Psaki didn’t sign with MSNBC to just dabble in the media.

The former White House press secretary was up early Monday to appear on the 6 a.m. Eastern hour of “Morning Joe” and spoke to Lawrence O’Donnell on “Last Word” 16 hours later. She taped an appearance on Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” on CBS in between.

She’s got a new show to promote — her Sunday series “Inside with Jen Psaki” premieres this weekend — yet that doesn’t fully explain the busy schedule.

“When I look at Jen and her potential, she’s absolutely a big part of our future,” said MSNBC President Rashida Jones. “You’ve seen that already.”

The network is banking on Psaki and her popularity with MSNBC’s liberal audience. She’s already taken a seat at the anchor desk on big events like midterm election night and her former boss’ State of the Union address, and makes frequent appearances on day-to-day shows.

She will write a regular column for the network’s morning newsletter and is developing a yet-to-be-described show for the Peacock streaming service.

Given that she reached the apex of her previous profession, there seems less chance she’ll turn into one of those figures that jumps back and forth between politics and the media. (Associated Press).

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Biden saved Broadway (and god knows how many other industries).

Broadway avoids massive financial crisis after Signature Bank fails.

On Friday, March 10, California regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) after it was deemed insolvent; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was then put in charge. The closure of the California bank set off alarm bells for regulators to look at other banks with risk elements similar to SVB or exposures to the maligned cryptocurrency industry (not to mention that the closure of SVB sent a panic to customers of other mid-size banks). There were rumblings that New York-based Signature Bank, the preferred bank of multiple Broadway shows and ancillary businesses, could be next. By Sunday, March 12 (also the three-year anniversary of Broadway’s COVID-19 shutdown), the New York State Department of Financial Services closed Signature Bank and the FDIC took it over.

Typically, when a bank closes, deposits are insured for up to $250,000. But Broadway productions and companies could have tens of millions (amounting to hundreds of millions for the industry) in the bank. For a few hours that Sunday, it appeared possible Broadway shows and businesses that had been banking with Signature would each have immediate access to only $250,000 in funds — well below the typical weekly running cost of a production. 

We could have seen a situation where everything was frozen and possibly shows could have closed the following Sunday — or even the Thursday, really — if there was no payment there,” said John Gore, chairman and CEO of the John Gore Organization (JGO), which is a presenter, distributor and marketer of Broadway theater worldwide (and the parent of Broadway News). “It literally could have been one week left [for] a load of productions.”

Fortunately, the federal government stepped in. By Sunday evening, the White House ordered that the FDIC would cover insured deposits (up to $250,000) and uninsured deposits (over $250,000) of SVB and Signature Bank at 100 percent. All of the money was safe. 

“It’s a massive crisis that happened so quickly, most people woke up to the fact that it had already been solved,” Gore said. (Broadway News).

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Today on St. Patty’s Day. A Roundup Tribute to Irish Immigrants in America, especially those with the last name McCourt.

Malachy McCourt in his apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “I’m a New Yorker, born, half-bred and bred,” he said, “who outlived my brothers and closest friends.”
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Kicked Out of Hospice, Malachy McCourt Wants One Last St. Patrick’s Day.

The news last summer hit his friends like a punch in the gut: Malachy McCourt had entered hospice care. It wasn’t a complete surprise. Mr. McCourt was about to turn 91, and he was once known as much for his drinking as for his status as a public raconteur. He was part of a lineage that includes Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill, bar-stool champions of the little guy and dispensers of hard-earned wisdom.

But very soon, it seemed, the last of this breed would leave the earth. Throughout his long and colorful career, Mr. McCourt suffered many misfortunes but always bounced back. This time he would not, and another chapter in New York history would be closed.

Then on Nov. 9 came another not-quite shock: Mr. McCourt had been kicked out of hospice for not dying quickly enough.

“Who but Malachy McCourt could outrun the hospice?” said Colum McCann, the Irish-born novelist of “Let the Great World Spin,” who now lives in New York and has known Mr. McCourt for more than 20 years. “Malachy was provocative before it was fashionable, using his platform to speak out about social injustice. Even in his 90s, he supports young talent, especially in the Irish American community. He has helped us uncover what it means to be an immigrant away from home, how one exists in new space, always pushing the edge.”

Later I heard from the actor Liam Neeson, who shared much of Mr. McCann’s warm sentiments. “Malachy has always reminded me of a type of Merlin,” Mr. Neeson said, “a wise one with a delicious sense of humor.”

I, too, have been privileged to know Malachy McCourt for quite some time. His more famous brother Frank — who wrote the best seller about their childhood, “Angela’s Ashes” — taught creative writing at Stuyvesant High School from 1972 to 1987. I took his class in 1981, when I was 15. He became my mentor, and I came to know the McCourt clan. I volunteered to produce two microbudget documentaries for Conor McCourt, Malachy’s son, during the mid-1990s. Malachy transformed my mother’s somber Jewish funeral service into a lively Irish wake — at her request.

When I heard he was dying, I asked if he was up for an “exit interview.” He laughed and assured me he was eager to beat his obit. “But hurry up, love,” he warned. He was worried he might not see another St. Patrick’s Day.

I soon found myself in Mr. McCourt’s Upper West Side living room. He sat in the electric wheelchair he has needed since 2021, surrounded by books and keepsakes, including a poster from his 2006 Green Party run for New York governor with his long-shot slogan: “Don’t Waste Your Vote, Give It to Me.”

TThe once plump and cheerful New York storyteller was now gaunt and cheerful. He explained he had a heart condition, skin and prostate cancer, and muscular degeneration. “I was doing OK at first,” Mr. McCourt said, “before I slipped and broke my leg on my way to bed.”

In his soft brogue, he played the hits, starting with his birth in Brooklyn in 1931, the second son of Irish immigrants. After his baby sister’s crib death, the grieving family returned to Ireland on a steamboat. Just 3 years old, Malachy roamed the decks, singing the song “Paddy Reilly” for bread and jam.

This time in Ireland is well documented in “Angela’s Ashes.” The family of six slept in one cramped room. Frank and Malachy, the oldest boys, shared a bed with their twin brothers, who later died six months apart at age 4. The fragile mother, Angela, entered a catatonic state, smoking Woodbines and staring blankly into the fire, lost in grief.

Years later, on a rare sunny day in Limerick in 1952, Malachy, then 20, kissed his mother goodbye. Frank had returned to America first and sent his brother the $200 liner fare. Malachy expected to see him when he arrived at the docks, but Frank had already joined the U.S. Army and been shipped to Germany. A friend Malachy met on the boat helped him get a job on Welfare Island (which was later renamed Roosevelt Island) as a dishwasher and cleaner for $35 a week. This was enormous money in his mind; it was enough to rent a furnished room in Manhattan on Third Avenue and 58th Street.

“Soon after I arrived,” Mr. McCourt told me, “I discovered that my literary hero, P.G. Wodehouse, was listed at 1000 Park Avenue in the Manhattan directory. So I rang him. And he said, ‘Wodehouse!’ And I said, ‘McCourt!’ And he replied, ‘Yes, sir, what can I do for you?’ And I replied, ‘Yes, sir, you brightened my life and my brothers’ lives in Ireland with your writing.’ He replied, ‘Very good.’ I took that as a positive and said, ‘I’d love to meet you sometime.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I am rather busy, but thank you for asking.’”

Mr. McCourt’s childhood home in Limerick, Ireland. He grew up in slum housing, which his brother Frank McCourt wrote about in his book “Angela’s Ashes.”

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Third Avenue in Manhattan in that era was crowded with Irish bars with neon shamrocks. It was in a pub conversation with a New York rugby pal that Mr. McCourt scored a free summer share on Fire Island, where he sold Bibles on the beach for extra cash. During the summer of 1956, he met a couple of young writers for “The Tonight Show,” who thought that the new host, Jack Paar, would love the way this young Irishman could tell a story.

In the spring of 1958, Mr. McCourt made his debut on “The Tonight Show.” Despite being visibly intoxicated, he captivated Mr. Paar with a wild tale about how he avoided paying the electric company by sending his bills back after stamping them with the word “deceased,” sparking a national trend and his public career.

Following his TV appearances, an entrepreneurial couple offered Mr. McCourt a partnership in a pub on 63rd Street and Third Avenue as long as he worked behind the bar. Malachy’s Pub opened on May 12, 1958. When White Rock Beverages launched a national ad campaign featuring Mr. McCourt as “America’s most famous bartender,” celebrities like Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton started showing up.

At this time, ostensibly to discourage prostitution, women were prohibited from sitting alone at a bar. Mr. McCourt defied convention by welcoming anyone to sit and chat, inadvertently creating what some say was the first singles bar in New York. It was especially popular with the women from the ladies-only Hotel Barbizon across the street; they would sneak out after curfew, the story goes, wearing only raincoats — with nothing underneath.

One day at Malachy’s, Linda Wachsman, a striking model who went by the name Linda Claire, caught his eye from across the bar. They soon married and had a daughter, Siobhan, in 1959, and a son, Malachy Jr., a year later. However, Mr. McCourt’s repeated infidelities and heavy drinking led to their separation in 1961.

Here, Mr. McCourt paused his monologue and grimaced. “It still shames me,” he said. “I was a mule.”

In October 1963, after his excessive drinking led to him being fired from the bar that bore his name, he stole back into his apartment — Linda had kicked him out — and drunkenly threatened to kidnap their children. He was arrested and held overnight on $1,000 bail. Even after his release, he spiraled further out of control; after meeting a man in an uptown bar with a shady scheme, he agreed to smuggle gold to India, where it sold for twice as much as in the West. He didn’t care if he was caught, he said, risking years in prison.

By the end of that tumultuous year, Mr. McCourt was the part-owner of a new pub called Himself. He remarried in 1965, to a woman named Diana Galin, and was eager to leave the bar scene after he and his customers were held hostage during a robbery. (Two days later, he said, the same robbers killed another bartender in the neighborhood.)

Mr. McCourt had been making occasional TV appearances, and he jumped at the chance to host a talk show, “Sound Off With Malachy McCourt,” on Channel 9 in New York. His first show, on Sept. 9, 1968, featured the actors Richard Harris and Sean Connery. The next guests included Muhammad Ali, who had refused to fight in Vietnam, Betty Friedan and the Columbia University students who had protested by barricading themselves in their dean’s office. After a deluge of angry calls to the station’s owner, “Sound Off” was canceled 10 days after it went on the air.

Mr. McCourt landed a couple of commercials (Imperial Margarine and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups), and he was nearly cast as Father Mulcahy in Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H,” but he could not quite make it as a performer.

Then, in the 1970s, his luck turned. After scoring a radio slot on WMCA, Mr. McCourt also gained new fame as Kevin the bartender on the ABC soap opera “Ryan’s Hope.” By the end of the decade, he and his brother Frank started performing “A Couple of Blaguards,” a storytelling show about their bumpy lives. The show became a modest hit at the Village Gate downtown. Stuyvesant High School hosted a special presentation for students when I was a junior.

When I met him in the 1980s, his energy was practically perpetual, but at this point in the conversation, all the talking and reminiscing seemed to have tired him out, and he needed a break.

In the 1970s, Mr. McCourt gained new fame playing the role of Kevin the bartender on the ABC soap opera “Ryan’s Hope.”

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Conor McCourt stopped by to update his father on his St. Patrick’s schedule. He was to march (by wheelchair) during St. Pat’s For All, an inclusive alternative to the traditional Fifth Avenue parade. He and other Irish American dignitaries would have breakfast with Mayor Eric Adams at Gracie Mansion.

Conor recalled his dad’s role in “The Dain Curse,” a 1970s mini-series. His father had to shave off his trademark red beard for the part, and Conor and his younger brother, Cormac, did not recognize him at the door. When they realized who he was, they fell down laughing and called, “Mom! Dad has a visitor!” Mr. McCourt grinned at the memory. “And she introduced herself as Mrs. McCourt before the shock registered,” he added.

Bad habits don’t change with a fresh shave. It wasn’t until the death of his estranged, alcoholic father in 1985 that Mr. McCourt stopped drinking.

But the biggest change would come a decade later, when “Angela’s Ashes” came out. There was a 25,000 first printing for his brother’s book, and expectations were modest. It was a runaway best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. The once-anonymous Frank McCourt was now lionized by presidents and movie stars.

Mr. McCourt’s copy of “Angela’s Ashes,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir written by his brother Frank.“

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The twins died and my father deserted us in Limerick,” Mr. McCourt recalled. “So when Frank got accolades and celebrity treatment, I felt like he earned it all because, as a child, my big brother worked and earned money and gave it all to Angela, which allowed us to eat.” Long the star in the family, Malachy was now known as “Frank’s brother.”

“Which stung,” he said. “But just a bit.” In 1998, Malachy’s own memoir, “A Monk Swimming,” hit the best-seller list, reducing residual jealousy.

Frank died in 2009, and then his two youngest brothers, Mike and Alphie, died shortly after.

“Every day I wake up at 91, I am happy without a coffin over my head,” he said. “I don’t know where I’m going, but I do know from whence I came. I’m a New Yorker, born, half-bred and bred, who outlived my brothers and closest friends.” He was grateful, he added, for the companionship of his wife Diana, whom he described as his “great love.”

From left, Alphie, Mike (who was getting married), Malachy and Frank McCourt with their mother, Angela, in 1968.

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Mr. McCourt tries to maintain his public life, and now that he’s no longer in hospice, he has resumed his role as a co-host of a Sunday morning radio show on WBAI.

In early March, he was invited to attend opening night of Craic Fest, an Irish film and music festival that was celebrating its 25th year in New York. The movie showing that night was a documentary about Richard Harris. Introducing the film was the Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan (who once cast Mr. McCourt in “The Field,” a 1990 film starring Mr. Harris).

Just as the lights were about to dim, Mr. McCourt wheeled himself into great applause, with Siobhan, Conor and two of his nine grandchildren following him. Mr. Sheridan’s face glowed with pride and relief. “It wouldn’t be a party,” he announced, “without Malachy McCourt.” (New York Times).

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