I’m trying to figure out why there is so much dislike among some in Boston for the Irish. It’s not that we are some homogeneous group always sticking together and fighting off others. We may actually be the worst group for that. Didn’t that book about Gypo Nolan take place in Ireland?
I never had many talks with my grandfather, James Connolly, who immigrated from Ireland. I sometimes think it was because he was like the old lady who lived in the shoe. He had so many grandchildren he didn’t know what to do. Or, was it just that he was a taciturn man having come from a land of story tellers that required there be some listeners.
One day I recall suggesting to him that the Irish never got a break in Boston because of the Yankees. He said to me: “From what I could see the worst people to the Irish were the Irish.” The only other words I remember from him was when I visited him a short time before his death. He said, “I wish to live to see one more St. Patrick’s Day.” Unfortunately the good Lord called him home before that time.
I suppose some of the jealously of the Irish is understandable just for the reason my grandfather touched upon which was St. Patrick’s Day. That was a big holiday in Boston with Boston’s biggest parade. A public holiday in Suffolk County for many years promulgated under the guise of celebrating the withdrawal of the British forces from the city as the Revolutionary War was getting underway. The parade was located in South Boston and circled Dorchester Heights right dab in its middle of Southie. That was the only connection to George Washington. It was where he set up his cannons positioned in such a fashion that they could have easily destroyed the British fleet sitting like ducks in the harbor.
That was all pretense since there were no Evacuation Day celebrations. It was a pure Irish holiday which must have stuck in the craw of many. It ran smoothly for many years until a group of gays wanted entry into it; then litigation took place. In all the courts in the state the gay group prevailed. Upon appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court the justices voted 9 – 0 against the gay group. How could it be that so many Massachusetts judges were so wrong that not one Supreme Court justice supported them? (There was one Massachusetts judge who was the exception.)
Some suggested they were just pro-gay and wanted to aid them. I suggest that they were not so much pro-gay as anti-South Boston and the Irish that the parade represented. One is tempted to say that’s all ancient history now. The last I heard the grand marshal of the parade is gay which is all to the good.
But it still celebrates St. Patrick. Perhaps it won’t for long. Someone may file suit to say having a parade named after a saint injures their feelings. Think that’s far fetched. Do your remember the Vermont judge who agreed the Vermont DMV was right when it refused to let a person have a license plate that read “Irish” because it was considered offensive?
The gay phobia is gone. The Irish one strongly continues. I suppose what most upsets those possessing those feelings is that the devil-may-care Irish are little concerned about their attitude. That then heightens their efforts to libel the Irish race in ways they’d never dare write or speak about any other race.
Unfortunately among those who have a dislike for the Irish are other Irish, the lace curtain type seeking to blend into the suburbs like Wellesley who frown upon the others. Former FBI agent Fitzpatrick exemplified this when he wrote something to the effect that he may be Irish but not Boston Irish. Of course the knock on the Boston Irish may come because one not familiar with the city would think the only gangsters in Boston were Irish.
Fitzpatrick called Bulger, “the titular head of the Irish OC gang.” The original gang, Winter Hill had two heads, neither one was Irish. Black Mass book talked about the Devil’s deal between the FBI and the “Irish Mob.” At the time the deal was made the Winter Hill Gang, of which Whitey, an Irishman, was a member was not Irish but led by an Italian and German. When the leadership fell into Whitey’s hand, the real power behind the gang was Steven Flemmi. He was the guy everyone feared, not Whitey, according to a bookie, Jimmy Katz, who testified at Whitey’s trial. No one called it the Italian gang. Even the murderous time in the 1960s is blamed upon the Irish when the McLaughlin/McLean feud only brought about one-quarter of the murders.
Making all the gangs Irish was also a way to make all the Irish politicians gangsters. That fit in perfect with the authors of Black Mass and other disgruntled types like Dershowitz whose intent was to go after Whitey’s brother Billy. The truth is that it wasn’t the Irish who were the worst gangsters in Boston or who died the most in the gang wars. But you’d never know that reading the Boston media or books about Whitey.
It is my understanding that gays were never discouraged from marching in the Parade–just a gay message was banned. (larry DiChiarra (?) bemoaned the action of the gay leadership. ” I always had a great time in that parade. Watched from a friend’s window along the parade route.”
Remember-everyone is Irish on St. Patty’s Day. ( I never knew that “Paddy Wagon” was an ethnic slur. Poor me. Who can make me whole?
Ride in a “Black Maria” instead.
https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2014/01/08/black-maria/
Ron Bryan (see above) was a life long student
of Seth/Jane Roberts
His ideas of portals and consciousness came from Seth
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/474304-seth-speaks-the-eternal-validity-of-the-soul-a-seth-book
Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you to stop suffering.
The Irish never threw Parnell to the wolves ; They chose to eat him themselves … YEATS
I am half Sicilian and half black Irish and Tory P.E.I Scots English . The straight paternal shot is what it is . The black Irish and Scots-English was a different set of qualities. When Nana got dotty as Time wore she once said to me in a reproach belied by deep love and a Victorian appreciation for the primacy of her pure Anglo blood line : But you’re Irish !!! …. Of course , existentially ,that roguish identity owed all to her choice of a husband . But I took her rally without objection or grudge .
When it comes to the push and shove of survival and needing good fighters in your cause there are none more enthusiastic than the Irish . For in truth they love to fight. And they are completely medieval in the intensity of their loyalty to their Liege . Whoever that happens to be .
Other than that they are a Wild bunch .
Mickey Ward would concur with you.
Jack Powers would poesy you back
http://www.thesomervilletimes.com/archives/8821
Stone Soup Poetry founder Jack Powers: Looking back
On October 27, 2010, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times
Jack sends his good regards, Freeh !!!
Jack was invited to speak at the Somerset Club in 2003 . It was a event to honor him as the sniffed at by Lincoln Yankee prim butt literati Bohemian that he was . We were coursing around quite a bit from those Mechanic St. digs at the very portal to the North End. And I do mean .. Coursing . Depending on his intoxicating artistic interpretation of … Bounding on and along the cultural Main was , Jack had a tendency to go off course . And of course I would take the helm.
I dissuaded him from the Somerset Club gig fearing that the prim butts would see him in his Chaliced Cups and riot primitive Hibernian and give him the sidelong neighbor knowing look : Oh, these Irish !!! …And worst of all their condescension long conditioned as the coping mechanism of the much less talented … particularly as a Compassionate Human …than Jack .
We remain very tight .
RIP Jack
I had the thorough run of Jack’s Mechanic St. Royal Court . We shared means and Goods . During a quite lean winter it was understood that the Larder , unlike Jack”s precious and priceless Ginsberg personally given memorabilia ,was fair prey for hungry wolves. Pack wolves are funny . They will fight over food with you , but their loyalty forbids them from easily rifling you for what they could sell for a King’s ransom .
Jack always left his door open and would be in and out and knew that I was in and out. And hungry .
He had a five foot draft chested dark green Apocalypse Now briefing cabinet with three cavernous draws in the back room . He put a can of Starkist white tuna in it with this note in Power Capitals ; Do Not Take This Can Of Tuna Fish !!!
Red blood to a Wolf ; And Jack was a very serious Wolf btw . And of course I snaffled that with happy smackings of my bloodied and slavering jaws ; as he absolutely counted upon being as always happy to step up to the World and ask itself its own time flowing eternal question to him : BUT IS IT ART
We missed each other that day . And the next day this note especially and thunderously left for me in the poetry of the Master was : ONLY JOHN KING MCDONALD WOULD STEAL A MAN’S LAST CAN OF TUNA FISH !!!
Man, did he fucking love me !!!
And he turned …. Everything … ART
Yes, I know Margaret N. of course and the earnest, fastidious Doug Holder who adored Jack both .
JACK LOVES ADORATION
There was a seasoned eye in dapper dye and good expensive bespoke for himself threads who I met and talked to one afternoon emerging from the Courtyard Jack shared with Julio’s Restaurant. In fact Julio introduced me to this Sicilian gentleman.
He talked to me as if he was a proud relative . He was deeply aware of Respect he was owed and he treated me with the Respect he clearly knew I had earned.
And told me if I needed work to see him.
I asked him his name .
I AM MR. RAYMOND
Such a Patriarca Society in which to choose to Live .
Jack was a Beacon of Love to me
starting sometime around 1970.
I taught classes at his Beacon Hill
Free School .
The classes were on Prisons and the
Human Potention Movement of Abraham
Maslow. The school was located in the
vacant Boston Policr station precinct
building at 3 joy street.
His girlfriend at the time was an assistant to
famed educator John Holt. I believe her name was
Peggy Durkee.
Jack and I shared a mutual friend named
Danny who had done rime at MCI Concord
prison for kidnapping and armed robbery.
Danny’s partner in the crime was a guy named
Floppiano who would later distinguish himself
wacking people for Patriaca.
I remember taking his mom to visit him at Concord
in my 1954 MG TF.
Later when I was working for William Dowd the Harpsichord
builder I invited Danny and my cousin Richie , a Marine just
discharged from the war in Viet Nam
over to the shop on the weekend where I had hired a nude
female model and had her pose on the Go Bar Deck while
I taught them both how to draw stick figures.
Jack helped sustain me financially and
artistically by getting me a gig to videotape the
first night celebration in Lawerence and a gig
videotaping Lawerence Ferlenghetti giving a reading
in Worcester. see https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nfZW-4LFGfw
I could anecdote you all day about Jack Powers but that
would not serve Matt in his becoming and being.
in other newes
https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/01/19/kennedy-king-families-to-congress-reopen-probes/
KENNEDY, KING FAMILIES TO CONGRESS: REOPEN PROBES
also see
https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/01/11/georgia-poised-to-pick-vulnerable-barcode-voting-technology/
JANUARY 11, 2019 | JENNIFER COHN
GEORGIA POISED TO PICK VULNERABLE BARCODE VOTING TECHNOLOGY
Anecdote you want Freeh . Thankyou !
You knew barefoot Lenny then Freeh . A Eyetalian character I was with post magical hour on Cambridge St. when all the hungry for life would hit the pizza shops after last call , had a confrontation at the counter. The Crazy fucking Joey , bouncing at the B.U. student nursery known as OUR PLACE , had refused the barefoot and Christ militant Kenny admission the previous weekend. The Apostle of Cool was not amused to see my ever glib and wisecracking pal . A pair of sturdy lads ,Batman having the red hair and doing the talking, were in back of us and knew Lenny and indicated their readiness to war for him . Lenny looked at me . He told them that it was alright.
Loving Lenny was a seriously tough hippie .
This was when Stone Soup on corner just before Buzzy’s .
Crazy fucking Irish .
★ the barefoot and Christ Militant Lenny !!!
Freeh ..cuz’ Jack and you made me smile : He handed me a copy of Poe’s THE BELLS and told me to tell him what single word the entire poem pivoted upon. I scanned the familiar favorite : TINTINNABULATION, Jack .
Ohhh , He loved that !!!
I marvel at the way many Irish-American sports fans root for Notre Dame. I love sports and am mostly Irish-American, but I have never felt any connection whatsoever with that school.
Perhaps I’m missing lots of historical background here, but I just don’t understand what this is all about. Is it the Fighting Irish nickname and mascot that lead to such mass appeal for ND?
Hi Matt,
My father, a Boston police officer, also hated the Irish. We lived on Spencer Street in Dorchester, a few blocks from a Jewish neighborhood near Talbot and Blue Hills avenues. My father would angrily denounce the Irish as lazy and shiftless and then, by way of contrast , he pointed to our neighboring Jews, whom he always described as intelligent and industrious. I can’t tell you how many times I heard that speech as a boy. My father never suggested that the Irish should follow the example of the Jews because he didn’t think we were capable of doing so. None of this rubbed off on me, however. I was very proud to be Irish, then and now. ( I’m also OK with gays marching in the parade.)
Dan,
You have to remember the police named the wagon used to pick up clients the paddy wagon and some called their clubs paddy whackers. I’d guess your father’s attitude came from the clients he dealt with. The Jews weren’t into the crime stuff some of the Irish did with the drinking and brawling so he’d have had less reason to interact with them at a police street level
Matt
I just found out today Irishman Ron Bryan passed
away this winter.
Several years ago I invited Ron Bryan to spend
the night at my home.He was on his way ro speak
at a conference in Rangeley Maine. I had a chance to interview
him that night on video before he departed for Rangeley Lake the next day
when I drove him to the conference.
His work on locating portals to other dimensions using remote viewer
Joe McMoneagle was groundbreaking as well as his current research
in Germany to determine if atoms have consciusness.
https://www.callawayjones.com/ronald-arthur-bryan-phd/
WOW
in other Irish Tribal newes
is Roy Cohn an Irish name?
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/1/28/wheres_my_roy_cohn_film_explores
“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”: Film Explores How Joseph McCarthy’s Ex-Aide Mentored Trump & Roger Stone
STORYJANUARY 28, 2019
also see
Is Arthur Murtagh part of a Irish gang?
https://archive.org/stream/nsia-FBIMurtaghArthurSA/nsia-FBIMurtaghArthurSA/FBI%20Murtagh%20Arthur%2008_djvu.txt
EX-FBI AGENT
Arthur Murtagh
“We never looked
for conspiracy/’
in a relatively short space of time,” he
continued, adding that their assassina-
tions effectively eliminated strong
leadership in the civil rights and lib-
eral movements in the nation.”
Summing up his feelings about the
FBI, Murtagh admitted: “I was
ashamed to be a part of it. It was a
disgusting, degrading experience.”
He recalled an incident that hap-
pened to him the day King was as-
sassinated. “One agent stopped me in
the hallway at the Atlanta bureau and
announced: ‘They just got Zorro! They
shot him in Memphis!’
“Zorro was the FBI code name for
King. The agent was jubilant, really
excited and happy.
“…is Roy Cohn an Irish name?”
Could be. When I look at the family trees of distant cousins on Ancestry DNA, I see the surnames Coan and Coen, sometimes differing in spelling from one generation to the next. Among them are Margaret Coen, born 1845 in Ballmoe, County Galway and the married couple John Coen and Ellen Connoly, also from Galway.
Then you got the Coen brothers…
whose great new film reinvents the Wesrern Genre
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
love it…..
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_ballad_of_buster_scruggs
in other Irish Spring news
https://www.pressherald.com/2019/01/30/our-view-mental-health-looms-large-in-fatal-maine-police-shootings/
Resize Font
Our View: Mental health looms large in fatal Maine police shootings
More access to care could head off crises and keep officers from having to be called at all, a new study suggests. But will we follow through?
DA Hynes was the one who covered up the FBI DeVecchio
scandal in Brooklyn
Exact duplication of the Whitey Bulger fiasco in Boston
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-metro-brooklyn-charles-hynes-dead-age-83-story.html
Former Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, famed for Howard Beach racial attack prosecution, dead at 83
By GINGER ADAMS OTIS , GRAHAM RAYMAN and LARRY MCSHANE
| NEW YORK DAILY
MS,
The thing with the FBI and MLK can be put right in the lap of J. Edgar whose biggest fear was that a capable and charismatic leader of American blacks like would come around and lead blacks into a revolt against the United States and the leader would be influenced by communists. MLK was his worst nightmare come true.
Irish Upon A Star ★
IT IS A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT FULL OF SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING NOTHING
THAT IS THE DRIVEL WE GET FROM THE LEFTISTS TODAY, THAT’S WHY MANY OF US HAVE STOPPED READING EDITORIALS IN THE GLOBE, NYT, ETC
YES, ON ANOTHER ACCOUNT, THE BARD AND POETS (YEATS) WERE CORRECT: THE WORST ARE FULL OF PASSIONATE INTENSITY, THE BEST LACK ALL CONVICTION
BRING BACK C.S. LEWIS, BILL BUCKLEY, THOMAS SOWELL, MILTON FRIEDMAN, THE LATTER BEING THE ONLY ECONOMIST I EVER UNDERSTOOD
UP THE REPUBLIC
GOD BLESS AMERICA
PROSECUTE THE FED POWER ABUSERS
I’ve written about all these corrupt bums in three piece suits and black robes before.
Remember Wyshak when asked why he was recommending probation for the Congressman’s wife who laundered $4 million dollars of her brother’s offshore gambling earinings said, “Because she’s the Congressman’s wife” and at the same time he recommended 8 years in prison for a bookie’s wife, a fifty year old nurse with a clean record, who simply deposited her husband’s earnings.
Corrurpt bums like Wyhak and the Sterns Gang and the judges who abet them are toasted in the Federal Courthouses.
Corrupt bums like Muellar who assembles a team of all liberal democrats including HIllary supporters to investigate Trump’s team . . .and he sees no problem with this . . .
Corrupt bums like Fed Prosecutors and Top Wash D.C, officials who withhold exculpating evidence . . .
Corrupt bums who send 30 vans with men armed with long guns to arrest a man two cops could have picked up at a coffee shop
This is what we’ve been writing about for the past 30 years and more: Read Walkowski’s two books, From Trial Court and Affirmative Action Affirmative Discrimination
Read One Life, The Fix, Character ASsassins I and II, Three Billboards, Mac the Dog (the novel) and now Spiritual Glue, soon to be published.
We’ve been warning you.
Let’s get back to the day when we rid America of the Leftists and or at least marginalize them, ignore them, Stalinism, Marxism, Maoism, Castoism have been tried and found wanting .see Venezuela
Let’s get the good liberals like Tip O’Neill debating the good conservatives like Ronald Reagan, the good liberal like Alan Dershowitz (yes he had a bad vendetta with Bill Bulger, too bad) debating good conservatives like Bill Buckley and Thomas Sowell.
Prosecute the FED Power Abusers. EXPOSE THE REST OF THIS NEW DANGEROUS MAFIA
No one is quicker to knock a successful Irishman than another Irishman.
Except for the Honorable Joseph Nolan, of the Mass Supreme Court, who sided with Veterans and the U.S. Constitution, it is true that every judge, court and administrative law judge, and all the law professors but one, and many big wig big named lawyers from big named law firms, all ignored the clear language of the Free Speech clause of the U.S. Constitution, and tried to impose their liberal leftist view of what a St. Pat’s Parade should look like. Read Walkowsi and Connolly, From Trial to the U.S. Supreme Court . . .for the big picture
The No-Nothing hatred of the Irish was an anti-Catholic hatred. That 19th, early twentieth century hatred extended to Italians, Poles, Lithuanians and other Catholics.
Today the hatred comes from LEFTISTS. THE LEFTISTS AT THE GLOBE AND ELSEWHERE PROMOTED THE ANTI-IRISH CATHOLIC HATRED AND STILL DO.
HERE ARE TODAY’S ENEMIES OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND ENEMIES OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION: THEY ARE SPELLED OUT IN THE ACRONYM M.A.F.I.A.
M=MEDIA (the leftists elements thereof; leftists are a majority of the MSM)
A= ACADEMIA (the leftist elements thereof predominate in academia; liberals (leftists are part of the liberal segment) make up the majority; conservatives are a minority in academia)
F= FEDS (both leftist elements and power-drunk rightists subvert the constitution; Wyshak, the Sterns Gang, Comey and Muellar are among them, and all those Hillary-supporting idealogues in the FBI and Justice are among them. Leftists and power-drunk in FEDs abuse power and ignore Constitution. Who doubts that?
I = International Interventionists like the Neocons and the Hillary Hillarites Hillarians who support intervention in places such as Libya, Syria, Yemen, etc . . .they say we can never bring troops home from 100 countries because the enemy may gain on us . . .their prescription is perpetual war
A = ATHEISTIC ANTAGONISTS . . .not all atheists, but the leftist elements among the atheists who want to drive religion out of the public sphere and the word Irish off license plates
this was all spelled out in Mac the Dog . . .read it and weep . . . .
the new leftist M.A.F.I.A. is the enemy of the American People
The tale
“From what I could see the worst people to the Irish were the Irish.”
Living in both Boston and Ireland, I can assure you your grandfather was correct then and now.
The best word is ‘Envy’
“Behind a lot of this begrudgery lies the unexamined and unspoken assumption that there is only so much happiness to go around. And guess what? The others have too much and I have too little.
“Begrudgers cannot accept that the happiness of one person doesn’t have to diminish the happiness of everyone else. Maybe they have never thought about it. That’s aside from the fact that you can never make assumptions about other people’s level of happiness – a lot of us are very good at faking it.”
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/irish-roots-home-of-begrudgery-1.2474870
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
No wonder there was antagonism between the Yankees and the Irish among them.
Henry: I’m not so sure the begrudgers didn’t like those who were happy bc of the limited amount of happiness; I thought they just didn’t like happiness in anyone other than the rare time they had it.
Matt, I feel that with your reply to Henry Barth in the topic ‘unhappy’ you’ve described me quite well.
In fact, the word unhappy is found in the English translation of my Irish surname. This too makes me unhappy.
“… Henry Barth *on* the topic of …”
Damn proofreader deigns to take a lunch break!