'The Fighter's' 'Irish' Micky Ward - a working class hero - SEE VIDEO

Read more: Irish Micky Ward: "The Fighter" speaks out

This Sunday, when Hollywood big wigs gather for the 83rd annual Academy Awards, The Fighter will be looking to have the biggest night for a heavily-Irish movie in five years, since The Departed was up for a bunch of awards, including a Best Supporting Actor nod for “the fighter” himself, Mark Wahlberg.

Given what is going on in the world, given the angry, messy state of the union here at home, it’s tempting to dismiss the Oscars as little more than a gathering of pretentious, pretty folk.

But can we actually find deeper meaning in the Oscar-nominated films? In The Fighter? Is there a deeper message for our time in this inspirational flick?

Joyce Carol Oates thinks there might be. The only trouble is that the message may be a frightening one.
Oates is a best-selling author, as well as long-time chronicler of the boxing world.

According to an essay in this week’s New York Review of Books, Oates likes The Fighter, even if she has some questionable things to say about Irish culture along the way.

For example, the characters in the movie, Micky Ward and his half-brother Dicky Ecklund, have “crude-rhyming nicknames,” and thus are “quintessentially working-class Irish, suggesting the playful camaraderie of a pub society in which men remain adolescent and “unattached” through their lives, so long as they don’t “return to their homes where wives and mothers exert authority.”

You need more than one hand to count the stereotypes in that statement.

But in the end, Oates sees a connection between The Fighter and another recent movie about an Irish American boxer.

“Like Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby (2004) … The Fighter is, if not a champion film for all time, a very good, poignant, and commendable expression of its era—postindustrial working-class urban America, bereft of history as it is bereft of jobs, strong unions, pride in one’s work.”

Talk about a back-handed compliment. Trouble is, I think Oates is on to something.

The Fighter, after all, is about an old mill town which lost its decent union jobs a long time ago. Micky Ward rises above that, but what about everyone else in the town?

It’s no wonder the governors of New Jersey, Wisconsin and elsewhere are picking on public-sector unions. There are no other unions left to pick on!

I love that today’s anti-union forces want teachers, cops and firefighters to behave more like private sector workers. Because if the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that the private sector never screws up, right?

But okay, fine, go ahead, treat government workers like the private sector. I’ll sit back and wait for my cut of a billion dollar bailout.

Full disclosure here -- as regular readers of this column know, I am a member of the New York City teacher’s union.

Which, first and foremost, means I understand how unions can at times become lazy and complacent.
But this effort to transform public sector union members into public enemy number one is as frustrating as it is bizarre.

Are you trying to tell me that after the events of the last several years -- the trillion dollar wars abroad and the billion dollar bailouts at home -- that men and women who educate millions of inner city kids every day, and who run towards danger when the rest of us run away, are solely responsible for the poor financial health of states across the nation?

C’mon! Interestingly, Irish Americans -- once the backbone of organized labor -- seem to be evenly split on this fight, just as they have become more or less evenly split between the Republicans and Democrats in the last 40 years.

For me, though, there comes a time to draw a line. Yes, unions need to sacrifice during tough times.

But simply because the private sector has been pillaged is no reason to do the same to the public sector.
To bring this back to The Fighter, it’s great that Ward emerges as a champion in his Hollywood movie.

But these times seem to call for a leader who can rally not just himself and his family but the working and middle classes, who are being unfairly attacked these days.

That great Irish Liverpudlian John Lennon once wrote that “a working class hero is something to be.”
It is, indeed. So, who will answer the bell?

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Read more: Irish Micky Ward: "The Fighter" speaks out

How the CIA got ‘Wild’ Bill Donovan

Given what New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg apparently thinks about the Irish, he almost certainly would have had some trouble back in January of 1940.  That was when “Wild” Bill Donovan was out and about talking up a new movie starring fellow Irish Americans Pat O’Brien and Jimmy Cagney. 

The movie was The Fighting 69th, about the famously Irish National Guard brigade which leads the St. Patrick’s Day parade down Fifth Avenue every year. 

Given the stars and subject matter of the movie, you can imagine our mayor envisioning the brigade kicking off the march, while dozens of “inebriated Irishmen” hang out of their Fifth Avenue windows.

That moment back in 1940, however, was actually pivotal for one of the most important, lesser-known figures in 20th Century American history – “Wild” Bill Donovan, who earned the Medal of Honor as a member of the Fighting 69th back in World War I.

Donovan, who died exactly 52 years ago, in February of 1959, is back in the spotlight these days.  Just last week, Martin S. Quigley, who was America’s chief spy in Ireland during World War II, died at the age of 93.  Quigley worked directly under Wild Bill Donovan during the war.

This comes just as a brand new biography of Wild Bill hits bookstores.  Wild Bill Donovan: The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage (Free Press) by Douglas Waller outlines Donovan’s humble Irish roots, his service with the Fighting 69th and his relationship with Cagney and O’Brien, not to mention Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Joseph P. Kennedy.

Most importantly, Waller argues, we are still living in the cloak-and-dagger world of diplomacy more or less created by Donovan.  The OSS, after all, was the forerunner of the CIA. 

So, any time you here about intelligence gathering or paranoid “spooks” working for “the agency,” you can thank this humble Irish Catholic from Buffalo.

Donovan was born on New Year’s Day, 1883, the son of Timothy and Letitia Donovan, from Ulster and Cork, respectively. 

Though dubbed “a poor Irish Catholic boy from Buffalo” this week in a New York Times review of Waller’s book, Donovan went on to earn a stellar education. 

It was at Columbia, while playing football, that he earned the nickname that stuck with him for the rest of his life.
A 1905 Columbia graduate, Donovan worked as a lawyer before leading a cavalry troop of the New York State militia, during the build-up to World War I.  In the Great War, Donovan served as major, then colonel, ultimately earning the Medal of Honor for his service in France.

Donovan is still the only American to receive four of the nation’s highest military distinctions -- the Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal and the National Security Medal.

After World War I he was a U.S. attorney (who vigorously prosecuted bootleggers), and entered politics – as a Republican, of all things!

Donovan ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor (against the sainted Al Smith) in 1922 and governor in 1932.

Donovan was a vocal critic of Franklin Roosevelt, though unlike some Irish American isolationists Donovan seemed to grasp the threat raised by Nazi Germany and the looming European war.

In fact, on the eve of World War II, Roosevelt tapped Donovan to visit Britain, where Joseph Kennedy was serving as ambassador and had raised a stink by declaring that Britain was not ready to fight in World War II, and adding that the U.S. should remain isolated from the tensions. 

Donovan disagreed, arguing Britain could serve as a bulwark against Nazi imperialism – especially with U.S. aid.

This came in handy when Roosevelt had to decide who might be the best person to centralize all U.S. intelligence during and after the war. Donovan was selected as the head of the Office of Strategic Services -- the OSS. 

Donovan fell out of favor with Washington big-wigs, in part because he picked a fight with J. Edgar Hoover.  But when the Cold War rose and the CIA was formed, though Donovan was not its leader, he had set up the infrastructure which remains deeply flawed but utterly fascinating to this day.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

The enemy is...multiculturalism - foiling home-grown terrorist plots

In his new book The Matchmaker of Kenmare, Irish novelist Frank Delaney sends his characters on a tour of World War II-era Ireland.

Soon, they become sucked into the era’s foggy diplomacy, visiting the war-town landscapes of both England and Germany. These characters are able to move around without raising too much suspicion, in part, because they are from Ireland, and Ireland, of course, was neutral during World War II.

We can argue some other time about Irish neutrality in the face of Nazi barbarism. What this does remind us of is that people – and nations – have had to make tough choices in the past.

During World War II, the Irish weighed their unique history with British imperialism against the realities of 1940s politics and made their choice.

This is interesting to think about as British and American politicians are now saying some provocative things about religion, immigration and terrorism on both sides of the Atlantic.

Over in Great Britain, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron blasted the very concept of multiculturalism.

As The New York Times put it, Cameron criticized “the country’s decades-old policy of ‘multiculturalism,’ saying it has encouraged ‘segregated communities’ where Islamic extremism can thrive.”

Cameron criticized what he referred to as the “hands-off tolerance” of Britain and other European countries, adding that they had encouraged Muslims and other immigrants “to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream.”

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, Congressman Peter King, new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, prepared to hold hearings next month which will focus on the role Muslim Americans have played -- or not played -- in foiling home-grown terrorist plots.

King, for years a well-known presence in Irish American circles, is no knee-jerk immigrant-phobe.

Indeed, there is understandable concern on both sides of the Atlantic about terror, and about whether or not immigrants are assimilating, or are instead participating in plots to destroy the very nations they once chose to adopt as their homelands.

Which brings me back to World War II. Let me call upon another expert, though not a novelist or congressman or prime minister.

My mother grew up in 1940s Brooklyn, when another global war was raging. In talking to her over the years I’ve gotten a fairly strong sense of what her block in East Flatbush was like, in part because there were many other blocks just like it.

It was -- though no one used this word back then -- a “multicultural” block. Mostly white ethnic, with plenty of working class Irish, German and Italian Americans.

That bears repeating because, as any regular viewer of the History Channel knows, among our enemies during World War II were … the Germans and the Italians!

The Irish, of course, were no enemy. They were simply neutral.

Which is kind of how some Fox News devotees view the French these days. It’s not that they’re against the global war of terror. They are just kind of neutral.

The point is not that everyone on my mother’s block got along. From what I can tell my grandmother showed no prejudice, mainly because she hated everybody.

But here, living side by side, were the children of immigrants from nations the U.S. was fighting a bloody war against. Yes, of course, there were spasms of anti-German sentiment, and some Italian-Americans were indeed sent to camps, and a handful of rough Irish kids teamed up with members of the German American Bund and dreamt up terrible anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

But in their day-to-day lives that multicultural Brooklyn block endured. And did so under circumstances that seem more disturbing than our current concerns over terror and multiculturalism.

Yes, we should be vigilant, and we should demand that immigrants grasp what is great about America. But there is a fine line between vigilance and fear-mongering.

We want our immigrants to know what is great about America. But it seems as if the native-born also need to be reminded from time to time.

(Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

Why Ronald Reagan beats John F. Kennedy as a better presdient

The 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration recently passed, and the event was marked by much hoopla. 

There were nostalgic observations about the brilliance of JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you…” speech that frigid January morning back in 1960. 

And there was also a fair bit of blarney, such as pundit Chris Matthews on The Colbert Report implying that JFK became president at a time when there were still “No Irish Need Apply” signs. 

(Matthews, by the way, more than made up for this slip by writing a brilliant piece in The Washington Post about the very Irish, bipartisan friendship between Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan.)

Things also devolved into the absurd when it was revealed that the History Channel would not be running a docu-drama based on the life of JFK and other members of that fabled clan.  Apparently, certain Kennedy family members did not want the shocking news revealed that JFK might have had a roving eye!

What not many people have noticed is that all of these JFK memories came just as folks on the other side of the political aisle were celebrating the centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Perhaps people have not linked these two events because JFK is arguably the most iconic Democrat of the past half a century, while Reagan is the most iconic Republican.

That being the case -- to go along with the fact that both Reagan and JFK have strong Irish roots -- it does beg the question -- who is the greatest, the most enduring, Irish American president?

JFK’s Irish roots, of course, are beyond reproach.  The story of the journey from the wharves of Boston to Harvard to the White House has been told many times. 

Perhaps this is what Ronald Reagan’s son Ron Junior had in mind when he traced his own presidential dad’s roots in his new book My Father at 100.

Yes, we know Reagan’s dad was an Irish Catholic with a drinking problem, and that Dutch’s great-grandfather, Michael, left Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary, for the
U.S. 
But Ron Junior traces the Reagan roots all the way back to 10th century Ireland. 
None of which is necessary.  Because in the end, Ronald Reagan’s greatest impact on Irish America – for better worse – could be seen in the past several decades. 
In that sense, Reagan is very similar to JFK.

Fifty years ago, it may have been hard to find a “No Irish Need Apply” sign. 

But many Irish were still working class members of tough ethnic neighborhoods, not to mention devout members of a foreign religion.  (It was only in 1950 that Paul Blanshard’s best-selling anti-Catholic tract American Freedom and Catholic Power sold almost half a million copies.) 

Thus, the election of JFK was seen as an arrival, if not to the mainstream, then at least respectability.

Ah, but how the times swiftly changed.  That hard-earned respectability was often sneered at as JFK’s noble 1960s veered off course and steered the U.S. into a period bordering on cultural anarchy. 

A mere five years after JFK’s death, Reagan, in his run for the governor’s seat in California, tapped into Irish American frustration.  A group that had striven so hard for acceptance was now being told that it was lame and square to strive for acceptance. 

As the old saying goes, you become more conservative when you actually have something to conserve.  This was only more true by 1980.

And of course, it is easy to see a connection between JFK’s poignant journey to his ancestral home in New Ross, Co. Wexford, in 1963, and Reagan’s trip to Ballyporeen some 20 years later. 

But Reagan probably cemented his relationship with the Irish and other white ethnics in 1986 during the 100th anniversary celebrations for the Statue of Liberty – which was seen as a new Plymouth Rock for generations of Irish Americans who had intermarried with other ethnic groups.

Who’s the greatest Irish president?  In just 1,000 days, JFK did set a tone and agenda remarkable for its ambition, from civil rights and the cold war to space exploration.

Reagan, though, was a game-changer.  Even Democrats who have sought to carry JFK’s torch -- Obama, Clinton -- have voiced admiration for The Gipper and even copied certain policies, from cutting taxes to cultural conservatism.

Again, for better or worse.

(Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

The joke is on the Catholics

Earlier this month, another anti-Catholic skirmish broke out. The debate centered on -- of all things -- a Doritos commercial in which a priest and pastor are brainstorming about ways to raise funds.

If nothing else, give Doritos points for good timing. This all happened just as the New York Archdiocese announced that nearly 30 Catholic schools would either be closing or consolidated.

One wonders if the church higher-ups might actually consider dispensing Doritos instead of Communion wafers, if the orange-dusted snack would actually put fannies in the pew and, thus, more dollars in the collection plate.

Anyway, some people got all riled up. They said mocking the sacrament of Communion was offensive.
The only trouble is that the commercial was never really an officially-sanctioned advertisement. The Doritos ad, instead, was one of several proposed ads which were entered into a contest which was designed to produce an official advertisement.

Either way, the corporate big wigs got nervous and pulled the ad.

It should not be surprising, though, that this had the apparent effect of actually encouraging other advertisements that poked fun at the sacraments.

Perhaps you’ve seen the ad for Red Bull energy drink, in which the slacker boy enters a church confessional and begins speaking to an Irish priest, complete with red hair and a bad brogue. (What? No freckles? No Irish Spring theme song?)

The boy confesses vague sins related to females, and the priest questions him, asking him about this particular girl or that particular girl. In the end, the boy is told to say something like 40 Hail Marys.

The boy, though, is quite happy. He says he’s now got a couple of hot prospects in the female department, all thanks to the pushy questions from the Irish priest.

I don’t know if the ad is new, but I don’t recall seeing it until the whole Doritos mess went down. I’ve since seen the ad about 20 times since.

So what can we take out of this? Sometimes, professional spotters of anti-Catholic humor actually encourage the very forces they are hoping to tamp down.

I’m not sure why the likes of the Catholic League and Bill Donahue have not gone after Red Bull. Let’s face it, that’s got to be pretty much what Red Bull wants. After all, you can’t pay for that kind of exposure.

Meanwhile, some Catholic bloggers and letter writers who have commented on the Red Bull ad take this as an opportunity to flaunt their own angry side. They believe Catholicism remains the only religion which is okay to mock, a patent falsehood to anyone who has seen an episode of Seinfeld or The Simpsons or Family Guy in the past decade or so.

Others add bitterly that Catholics are at least more tolerant than Muslims, who would surely set about torching the corporate offices of any company which so much as mentions Islam -- much less the prophet Mohammed -- in anything so crude as an advertisement for chips or drinks.

What all of this does do is deflect attention from some real problems the Catholic Church is facing, around the world, but particularly in America and Ireland. In case you’d forgotten, we have Dennis Leary to remind us.

Leary has a new stand-up comedy special out called Dou***bags and Donuts. The special, which can be seen in repeats on Comedy Central, opens up with a rousing musical number that may very well be the most offensive song ever recorded about the ills of the Catholic Church.

Suffice it to say, not much of it can be printed here, but the emphasis is on the sex scandals which have rocked the church in both the U.S. and Ireland.

Leary’s raucous song, which features rather graphic descriptions of horny priests and exploited boys and bodily fluids, makes both the Doritos and the Red Bull ad look like grade school productions.

But who is to blame? Is it Leary, the angry lapsed Catholic? Or the high church officials who let things go so far?

Anti-Catholicism isn’t dead. A Protestant main character in Jonathan Franzen’s best-selling novel Freedom is an unabashed hater of the Pope. The trouble is, more and more people baptized into the church are coming to the same conclusion.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

What is so great about New York Irish?

In the current issue of New York magazine, a wide range of heavy hitters weigh in on what the cover calls “New York’s Greatest-Ever Everything.” As in, New York City’s greatest book, mayor, TV show, athlete and more.

Trouble is, there is a decided shortage of Irish names among both the greatest as well as those choosing the greatest.

So, as the Irish have always done, we’ll do for ourselves when no one else is interested. What follows is a highly subjective attempt to come up with “Irish New York’s Greatest-Ever Anything.”

MAYOR: Laois-born William Grace was the first Irish Catholic mayor of New York City, elected in 1880, and in the century that followed over half a dozen mayors had Irish roots.

They are a colorful bunch, from party boy Jimmy Walker (who fled New York with his mistress before he could be sacked in the wake of a scandal) to John O’Brien, who served exactly one year in office.

Grace was also a hugely successful businessman (and sent massive donations to Ireland in the 1870s), so his status as a trailblazer makes it hard for him not to be seen as New York’s greatest Irish mayor. He was anti-Tammany, but we won't hold that against him!

GANGSTER: The line between crime and politics was often fine for the New York Irish, and this is another tough category, with the likes of Owney “the Killer” Madden and Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll competing with more recent thugs such as the Westies’ Jimmy Cooney.

My vote goes to “the Gentleman Gangster,” Mickey Spillane, the West Sider who married into the fabled McManus political clan and went to war with Cooney in the late 1960s.

BOOK: New York’s greatest Irish book could be the toughest category yet, with Peter Quinn’s Banished Children of Eve doing battle with Jimmy Breslin’s Table Money and Pete Hamill’s Forever.

Then there’s National Book Award winner Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland. Another little book called Angela’s Ashes also had a number of Brooklyn scenes.

I’ll go with something slightly different here and pick Eugene O’Neill’s play Iceman Cometh. It is written by an Irish artist of the highest order, and depicts how the Irish fit in (or didn’t) with the rest of New York’s crazy melting pot.

ATHLETE: While the likes of Derek Jeter and Paul O’Neill can claim some Irish ancestry, this category calls for hefty Hibernian roots. It comes down to the great Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford and voluble tennis star John McEnroe.

Honorable mention goes to 19th century boxer “Old Smoke” John Morrissey who, in his spare time, was a political leader who orchestrated the death of anti-Irish leader Bill “the Butcher” Poole.

BAR: There are the old stalwarts like McSorley’s, literary dives like the old Rocky Sullivan’s, and quirky joints like Café Sine. My vote goes to the Village’s the Lion’s Head, which was not technically an Irish joint, but took to heart the old the Brendan Behan maxim that a great bar is a place “for drinkers with writing problems.”

MOVIE: This is a tough category, as there are dozens of solid movies (State of Grace, Brothers McMullen) but not many brilliant stand-outs. But when you crunch all the numbers, based simply on the big names and history and the best scenes (as opposed to some of the laughably bad ones), the best New York Irish movie could be Gangs of New York.

TV STAR: A battle of heavyweights between All in the Family’s Carroll O’Connor and The Honeymooners’ Jackie Gleason. You really can’t lose with this one, but in the end I’ll take Gleason for the sheer tenement tackiness of The Honeymooners.

UNION LEADER: Mike Quill. ‘Nuff said.

YEAR: It must have been somewhat lofty when, in 1928, a son of the Lower East Side, Al Smith, was nominated as the first Catholic presidential candidate. The Irish hadn’t come all the way, and they were going to be slapped when Smith not only lost big, but faced burning crosses and other nastiness from the KKK on the campaign trail.

Still, they had come far, and, for awhile, it must have been surreal to see Smith, with his cigar and Tammany ties and thick Noo Yawk accent, running for the highest office in the land.

Let the debate begin!

Predictions for a wacky New Year

It's that time of year again. Time to look back on the year that was and, more importantly, look ahead to the New Year.

In January of 2011, for example, I suspect that a slew of big-time Hollywood actors and agents are going to relocate from the sun and surf of California to the gritty streets of Boston.

After all, from Good Will Hunting and The Town to Gone, Baby Gone, Mystic River and The Fighter, there is a lot of gold to be found in the triple-decker house and Irish bars of every little Massachusetts burg from Southie to Lowell to Dorchester.

Of course, when all those Hollywood types get there, they may discover there’s not quite that many rugged Irish men and feisty Irish women as there used to be.

And that accent! Where’s that accent? They may feel the need to train the locals to talk more like the Boston Irish do in the movies, because they can’t seem to find that odd inflection anywhere on the actual streets of Boston.

Some of the new movie projects we can expect to come out of the Boston Irish Hollywood machine? A remake of It’s a Wonderful Life, with the Jimmy Stewart character now recast as a bank robber with a mean mother and heroin problem.

In February 2011, we can expect another shocking announcement from Pope Benedict. His holiness raised many eyebrows not long ago when he said that it might be okay for Catholics to use condoms in certain circumstances.

In 2011, look for the Pope to say that birth control, the death penalty, pre-marital sex and harmless white lies are also acceptable under certain circumstances.

The shocking thing about this announcement, of course, is that it puts the Pope in agreement with just about every Roman Catholic on the planet.

Right around St. Patrick’s Day we can expect a flood of new tape recordings from jolly old Richard Nixon. “Tricky Dick” is the gift that just keeps on giving.

This month we heard a bunch of old recordings in which, after bashing the blacks and the Jews and the Italians, Nixon had this to say: "The Irish have certain -- for example, the Irish can't drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean.

“Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish."

In the new 2011 tapes, Nixon goes on at some length about the distinctions between the “real” Irish and the “fake” Irish. The real Irish, according to Nixon, have lots of freckles and wear Aran sweaters, even in July.

The fake Irish? Well, to Nixon, that’s pretty much anybody named Kennedy. Or with big teeth.

Nixon, of course, was completely drunk at the time he said this.

Politics will also dominate the summer of 2011 when supporters of the DREAM Act introduce a new version of this bill, which presents a path to citizenship for immigrants who came to the U.S. at a young age and are now planning to attend college or enter the military.

Supporters make concessions, saying that these undocumented immigrants will now be required to serve three to five tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan, after which they will be eligible for college financial aid. (Even though they may not survive the combat tours and will probably be in their 40s by the time they return.)
“We don’t want our illegal immigrants in college!” an opponent of the DREAM Act II will snarl.

“They came here knowing they’d be mowing lawns and washing dishes. If we wanted more college students in the U.S. we’d somehow make it more affordable for working class white kids to go to college!”

The DREAM Act II, will fall one vote short in the Senate, when a Democrat switches his vote at the last minute, claiming, “We simply didn’t want to make the Republicans mad.”

Finally, for all of the doom and gloom, the ties between Ireland and America will remain strong in 2011.

Given the terrible state of the economy in both nations, an Internet campaign will link the Irish on both sides of the Atlantic whose homes are currently in foreclosure. This way, Pat from Long Island can spend a few weeks in the home belonging to Danny from Sligo and vice versa. By the time the bank officials come knocking, they’ll both have moved on.

Happy New Year!

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)