Sunday marks the anniversary of the final day of horse racing at Arlington Park. The Arlington Heights oval is expected to remain dormant next year, too, after the Illinois Racing Board s formal award this week of 2023 race dates to Hawthorne Race Course in Cicero the owners of which are touting grand plans to start building a casino.
THIS Saturday will mark 50 years from the horrific events of the summer evening of July 9, 1972, when British soldiers shot and killed two adults and three children in the Springhill/Westrock area. Those killed included 38-year-Old Paddy Butler, who died after he was hit by the bullet that killed Father Noel Fitzpatrick,who was trying to help the wounded and dying. Martin Dudley (19) was shot in the back of the head by a second British Army sniper and seriously wounded as he got out of a car. 17-year-old John Dougal was shot dead and his friend Brian Pettigrew was seriously injured as they tried to assist Martin Dudley. 13-year-old Margaret Gargan was shot dead by another British Army sniper. And 15-year-old David McCaffrey was shot dead as he tried to pull Fr Fitzpatrick and Paddy Butler out of the line of fire. As in the case of the Ballymurphy Massacre case and that of Bloody Sunday just six months earlier, the British lied about the circumstances surrounding the Springhill/Westro
LAST week US Congress member Richie Neal, Chair of the Ways and Means Committee on Capitol Hill, led a Congressional delegation from Washington to Brussels, London, Dublin, the Blaskets, Derry and Belfast. The delegation met with a very wide range of political representatives, including government representatives as well as civic society. The Blaskets you ask? Why there? Well, in 1953 the last people who lived on the Blasket Islands were forced to leave their beautiful islands off the coast of Kerry because of the lack of necessary services. Some of them went to Springfield in Massachusetts in the USA. That’s Richie’s district. So naturally a visit to Ireland had to include a visit to Dunquin and then a short helicopter flight to the Great Blasket. I wonder what Peig would have thought of that?But I digress/“Arís,” says you. So, to the point of this epistle. In the course of his visit to our part of Ireland, Congressman Neal spoke of the Planter and the Gael. Now way back