Boyle the Kettle (August 2020)

The Divide
Put on your Wellington’s if you plan to wade through the morass of the racial divide. The rioters and protesters succeeded in making life more miserable for everyone.
It is interesting to know there are 130,000 gang members in Chicago and there are more in the Suburbs. Many of those gang members join for protection. This is nothing new, it’s been going on as far back as the 1950’s.
How can we make things better in those marginalized communities? What we’ve seen lately are groups of volunteers along with the city of Chicago cleaning up the neighborhoods. How do we provide economic opportunity? Maybe a Peace Corps and what about the trade unions offering apprenticeships? If you want to ease the tension when you meet a stranger on  the street, simply say,”Hello, then watch the smile on their face.
Letter from Shea
Last month we printed a Letter from Mr. Steve Shea. Shea is seething with hate and he is incapable of looking at things objectively. He probably threw tantrums when he was a child. I doubt if he has ever belonged to an Irish organization. He believes in “my way or the highway.” No doubt, Steve was a playground bully. He also sees himself as an intellectual, but had to use the thesaurus to come up with the word diatribe. Just as he has judged me, I have now judged him! Take a hike Stevie!
A. J. Freund
This little boy, just five years old, was beaten to death by his mother and his father in Crystal Lake, Illinois. This little boy only weighed forty pounds. He was buried in a shallow grave in Woodstock, Illinois.
Every time I see his picture wearing his baseball cap with a wonderful smile on his face it breaks my heart.
His mother, Joann Cunningham, was sentenced to 35 years + 3 years of court supervision, with no time off the sentence for good behavior.
Too bad she didn’t get life.
Covid 19
An article in the AARP bulletin spells it out. Obesity and hypertension are big problems. Being overweight makes people more vulnerable and harder to treat, and Black and Hispanic populations have higher obesity rates in general (38.4 percent of Black adults and 32.6 percent of Hispanic adults are obese compared with 28.6 percent of White adults, per the CDC).
Hypertension: High blood pressure has historically been more prevalent in African Americans - 40% of Black adults have it c compared with 28 percent of White and Hispanic adults - and the condition appears to be linked to poor COVID-19 outcomes. About 57% of people hospitalized in the New York City area had hypertension.
Ireland
If Ireland was a dart board what would you aim for. My first dart would land on the Dingle Peninsula, my second dart would hit Kilkenny.
Dingle for all of its breathtaking beauty. Dingle town has wonderful pubs, restaurants, and art galleries.
Back in 1970, I took my uncle, Tom Boyle, for an outing. When we got to the beehive huts Tom spent a lot of time talking to an old woman whose family owned the land the huts are on. They spoke in Irish. Tom couldn’t climb the hill to see the huts since he had been crippled since age 12. In Dingle Town we stopped at the Benner’s Hotel for dinner. There were pictures of the cast of Ryan’s Daughter, Robert Mitchum, Trevor Howard, Sarah Miles, Christopher Jones and John Mills in the dining room.
Our dinner was delightful. White tablecloths, soup, salad, and the entree. I don’t think Uncle Tom ever dined in this kind of elegance before.
After dinner we picked up two hitchhikers, teenaged girls who wanted to go out to Slea Head. The Blasket Islands were off shore and no one has lived there since 1953. We stopped at Gallarus Oratory Chapel built completely out of stone with no mortar. We paused at the Crucifixion site further down the road. Soon we came upon Sela Head Beach. I pulled into the car park and the girls went down to the beach. Moira was from Toledo, Ohio. She had freckles and long reddish-brown hair. Both were very good looking, but Moira’s raven-haired cousin from Belfast took first place! Uncle Tom had stretched out on top of a stone wall, just lying there and enjoying the warm sun for a while. When I said, “let’s move on,” Tom said, “Wouldn’t you be content just to stay here?” I said, “I’ll stay here just as long as you want me too!”
Kilkenny next month!
Columbus Statue
Chicago, July 17, 1,000 protesters stormed the statue of Columbus in an attempt to topple it, calling him a “murder and a thief.”
The police were defending the statue and had fireworks and other incendiary devices thrown at them, along with rocks and frozen bottles. Outnumbered the police saved the statue, but 18 policemen were sent to the hospital.

Let’s find out who planned this and lock them up, meanwhile the ACLU is claiming the police used excessive force.