The Great Dublin, Ohio Irish Festival

Welcome sign at the Dublin Festival

Mossy Moran--terrific entertainer

A little clip of Molly and Mossy Moran

Brian, Emily, Linda (with 2 kilted fellows behind them)

Fiddler with a dancing doll

Perfect Evening in Cleveland's Little Italy

How about this for a perfect summer evening in Cleveland: Supper with my brothers, sisters, brother-in-law, and nephews at Trattoria in Little Italy. And then down the block for dessert and coffee at Presti's. The best!

We love Presti's! The best desserts!

Trattoria: Bob, Linda, Mary Ellen, Ed, Cody, Nelly, Ryan

Kevin Gerard must have been taking the pictures

Jesuits Challenge House Speaker Boehner on the Immigration Issue/TVPRA Act

Brian Rice sent me this story. The Jesuit priests and brothers in the United States are challenging their high school and college grads--one of whom is John Boehner, who attended Xavier University in Cincinnati. The Jesuits are among the best educators in the world (think Xavier University, Georgetown, John Carroll, Seattle University, Boston College, Fordham, Gonzaga, Loyola, University of Detroit, Marquette; St. Ignatius High School; St. Xavier High School, Rockhurst HS, Walsh Jesuit HS, Gonzaga High School in Washington, D.C.--so many more). The Jesuits are also leaders in the fight for social justice.

U.S. Jesuit leader challenges Jesuit alumni Boehner . . .

http://americamagazine.org/issue/protect-people-border

Protect the People at the Border

The Society of Jesus in the United States (the Jesuit order) is making a personal plea to the 43 Congressional representatives who graduated from U.S. Jesuit high schools and colleges to “uphold the dignity of the human person and the sacredness of human life” when considering policy solutions to address the influx of children fleeing violence in Central America.
In a letter to Speaker John Boehner, (Xavier University) copied to Jesuit alumni in Congress, Father Thomas H. Smolich, S.J., president of the Jesuit Conference, called on Congress to uphold the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA).
Currently, most unaccompanied minors detained by Border Patrol agents are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services, which coordinates their care and provides an opportunity for children to tell their story to an adult they can trust. As part of his response to the increase in the number of children arriving at the border, President Obama asked Congress to consider weakening the TVPRA in order to fast-track deportations of children. Now, House leadership is seeking to change the law, which would allow a single Border Patrol agent to render a deportation decision and quickly deport a child back to his or her home country.
Father Smolich said that a change to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), “would result in children having a one-shot chance to disclose their persecution to a Customs and Border Protection agent or officer….”  He called any attempt to dilute TVPRA “inhumane and an insult to American values,” particularly since some children might have been “victimized by armed men in uniform.”
The letter also asked Speaker Boehner and Congressional alumni of Jesuit institutions to protect the due process rights of vulnerable children and examine the root causes leading children to flee in unprecedented numbers.
“This is not a new crisis, nor is it primarily at our border.  Rather it has been escalating over the last decade…90 children are murdered or disappeared in Honduras every month,” said Father Smolich, who also reminds Speaker Boehner that “this is the equivalent of eight children being executed in your Congressional district every thirty days.”
Recalling the assassination of six Jesuits in El Salvador nearly 25 years ago, Father Smolich emphasized the Jesuits’ commitment to working with fellow Jesuits and lay partners in Central America, who live the reality of widespread violence. They see “the elementary school teacher murdered when he tried to prevent gangs from forcibly recruiting his students; the young girl pulled from her home, offered as a birthday present to a gang leader and then raped by 16 men; lay colleagues of Jesuits assassinated and harassed by the police.”
Father Smolich closed his letter by asking the Speaker and his fellow Jesuit alumni in Congress to “uphold an American tradition” of welcoming “the refugee, the victim of trafficking, the child who has been abused or abandoned.”

Childhood Homes in Willoughby-on-the-Lake

My Dad was born in Cleveland (near E. 87th, between St. Clair and Superior) and moved as a child to Willoughby-on-the-Lake, on Hayes Avenue, about a block from Lost Nation Boulevard and Lakeshore Boulevard. The history of the house is very interesting. I think it started as a lake cottage--there are many in North Willoughby. But then they dug a basement. They raised up the house and used horses in the excavation process. My Aunt Kay Coughlin's grandpa (if I remember correctly, a man named Gilmore) was the person in charge of the job. Also added to this cottage was a front porch and a second floor.When I was a kid in the 1950s, there were only 2 houses on the west side of Hayes Avenue (south of Lakeshore): my grandparents' house (below), and the Sullivan house.

Connie and Cora Coughlin's home, 1920s to 1960 (or so)

The other house on this side of the street belonged to Helen and Ed Sullivan. Ed was my Mom's uncle, my great uncle. Their children were Mary Ellen (my sister was named after her); Sally; John; and Mike. Today the house looks abandoned, maybe foreclosed. Here it is:

Sullivan House on Hayes Ave,

When my Mom and Dad married in 1947, they lived in a house a block away from Hayes Avenue, on Windermere. It was a tiny house. I lived there until I was 3, when we moved to Euclid. Here's the house:

Our Windermere House

Right near my parents' and grandparents' house was McKinley School. I enjoyed the playground there quite a lot. Also, just down the street, at Lakeshore and Lost Nation, was Ray's Tavern (probably not the official name). There was also a grocery store there and a store called Mannino's, which might have been a drugstore. I remember buying penny candy there. I spent a lot of time in the bar with my Uncle Jack and my Grampa. Here's the building from the Lakeshore Boulevard angle:

Ray's Tavern--Lakeshore and Lost Nation

I loved this little neighborhood of Willoughby. We moved after I turned three, soon after my mother accidentally ran over me on Windermere.

Who Will Defend the Wilderness? I Know a Few Warriors!

On my recent visit to Montana I started to think about the importance of defending Wilderness, defending the natural environment. We need to explain the importance of Wilderness to people of good will--and then stand up and fight for it! If not us--then who? I know there are a dozen other critically important things to think about. Please include the natural environment and true wilderness among them.

I am proud to say that my daughter Carolan is one of the defenders. She works much of the time in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, a gigantic and important wilderness complex just south of Glacier National Park. A couple weeks ago we met her after she hiked out (I think that morning it was a 15-mile hike) to the Spotted Bear Ranger Station. She had been supervising and training trail maintenance crews in "The Bob," as the Bob Marshall Wilderness is called. Sometimes she works at the Kalispell office of the Montana Conservation Corps (MCC). Other times she's in the field--The Bob, Glacier National Park, the Kootenai, or some other park or forest in Northwest Montana.

Carolan and Bob at Spotted Bear Ranger Station

Carolan's friend Jeremy Rust is also a defender of Wilderness. He works for the U.S. Forest Service and is Carolan's companion-in-adventure. They recently hiked in Glacier NP from Bowman Lake to Quartz Lake, paddled the length of Quartz Lake, then bushwacked their way up to Cerulean Lake. I don't think many people have had this firsthand experience! I recently saw Jeremy in the Two-Medicine area of Glacier:

Jeremy and Bob, by Running Eagle Falls, Two Medicine area, Glacier NP

I have met many other MCC and Forest Service workers: Lauren, Cliff, Elisheba, Beth Hodder, and many others. They are the hardest working people I know, tough as nails, and vigorous defenders of Wilderness and the Wilderness Ethic (which I will talk more  about in the future).

Poem for the Children of Gaza

The Children of Gaza . . .

Play soccer in the rubble between bombardments

Of their homes, schools, parks, hospitals—

Surgical strikes, of course,

Designed to surgically crush an entire block,

Entire generation, an entire People.

The children, who’ve known nothing but siege and war,

Their entire lives, try to ignore

The stench of death reeking from the neighboring apartment building

In spectacular ruins, not a stone on a stone:

                This is destruction on a biblical scale!

They hardly care who is right and who is wrong,

Wonder when this just war will end,

And they can get back to being kids,

Laughing, kicking a soccer ball on a pitch.

[Bob Coughlin / July 28, 2014]

Just Thoughts: Seattle, Pope Francis, and the Poor

Just Thoughts: What Pope Francis Says about Treatment of the Poor

On a recent trip to visit my daughter, I was struck by the vast gap between the wealthy and the poor in Seattle, one of the most successful and prosperous cities in America. Seattle is beautiful in so many ways: its great port, its geography, its exciting Pike Place Market, the green hills, blue lakes, and spectacular Mt. Rainier dominating the region. The trip from wealthy downtown Seattle to the airport is an eye-opener, however, and you see that this city is similar to all American cities. As you travel south from downtown to the airport, you see a change in the city’s complexion. You see Vietnamese, Cambodian, Latino, African-American, and Chinese neighborhoods. So much of this area is shabby and poverty-stricken. And even downtown you see homeless people and beggars on the street, reminding one of Third World countries. Wealth, prosperity, is not close to an equitable division in Seattle.

In Pope Francis’s stunning “apostolic exhortation,” Evangelii Gaudium, “The Joy of the Gospel,” his explanation of the Church’s position on this issue is unambiguous, and truly radical. The Pope writes, “Our faith in Christ, who became poor, and was always close to the poor and the outcast, is the basis of our concern for the integral development of society’s most neglected members. Each individual Christian and every community is called to be an instrument of God for the liberation and promotion of the poor, and for enabling them to be fully a part of society.”

Later the Pope writes, “In all places and circumstances, Christians, with the help of their pastors, are called to hear the cry of the poor.” And then, in paragraph 192, Pope Francis gets even more specific: “We are not simply talking about ensuring nourishment or a ‘dignified sustenance’ for all people, but also their ‘general temporal welfare and prosperity.’ This means education, access to health care, and above all employment, for it is through free, creative, participatory and mutually supportive labour that human beings express and enhance the dignity of their lives. A just wage enables them to have adequate access to all the other goods which are destined for our common use.”

Wow! Pope Francis made the church’s position on these social issues perfectly clear.