Stay Away Queen

The Periscope column “Time for Queen to Visit,” (June 15-21) stated that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has apologized for the Irish famine, started an investigation into Bloody Sunday and is searching for a political statement in Northern Ireland.

His apology will not bring back the millions who suffered and died under his predecessors, and it costs him nothing.

Bloody Sunday was the inevitable outcome of a genocidal war that the English are still carrying out against the Irish. The queen spoken of in the article put medals on the soldiers responsible to honor their murderous rampage.

If Mr. Blair is searching for a political solution, why doesn’t he try removing the thousands of British combat troops and British civil administrators from Northern Ireland and allow the Irish to rule themselves.

The queen visiting Ireland would be spit in the face of every man and woman who fought to free Ireland of this deviant pack of vultures.

Liam O’Cainte Bergenfield, New Jersey

Spain is Crazy!

Nil Gaeilge marbh agus nil cos amhain san uaigh agus an cos eile ar an bhruach in aon chor! Ta brod an domhain orm mar go mbionn beagnach gach duine in ar Oileann Iathglas Eireann abailte ar mathair teanga a thuiscint agus saghas comhra a dheanamh tri mean na nGaeilge.

Nil me cinnte go bhfuil Gaeilge ag gach Eireannach i Meiricea no nach bhfuil, ach buiochas le Dia bionn alan daoine cosiuil le tu fhein ag baint trial as, fiu amhain i Woodside agus anseo i gCullen & Dykman.

I mo thuairim fhein, ceapimse nach mbionn tu ach ag cur leithsceal uafasach sna smaointi paisti scoile leisciuil nach thatnionn obair bhaile, scrudaithe agus ar uile go mor leo. Oscail do shuile mas e do thoil e agus feicfidh tu go mbionn Gaeilge an teanga is tabhachtai duinn inniu agus sa thodhchai freisin. Mar a dearfa, tir gan teanga tir gan ainm.

Mise le meas.

Now for some English — I am proud that most Irish folk I know in Woodside and even some Irish Americans here at Cullen and Dykman understand and speak Irish to demonstrate that our mother tongue is neither dead nor on the brink of death. I felt that John Spain’s article last week only served to give Irish school kids an excuse to dodge homework by saying that our own language is either not important or less important than other people’s languages.

Colleen Kerwick-Danila Brooklyn, New York

Marbh Spain!

A shean, an dilseoir Spain.

Níl é marbh an Gaeilge ar chor a bith. Tá sé an-beo ar fud an domhain. Is Meiriceánach-Éireannach mé agus usáid mé mo chuid gaeilge gach lá. Agus beidh sé nó sí mo pháiste ina g(h)aeilgeoir nuair tiocfaidh sé/sí isteach an domhain seo i Samhain.

An bhfuil Gaeilge marbh? Ní hea. Is é do mheabhair (agus Hoosier’s) marbh, cinnte!

Translation — John “the loyalist” Spain, Gaelic (more properly, Irish language) is not dead at all. It is very much alive all over the world. I’m American-Irish and use my Irish every day.

And, my child will be an Irish speaker when he or she comes into this world in November.

Is Irish dead? No. Your mind (and Hoosier’s) is dead certainly!

Christopher A. Williams Pearl River, New York

GAA — Ireland at Its Best

While it is all too easy to ignore the absurd ranting of Jerry Hoosier, who clearly knows as much about Ireland and Irish history as I do about his home of Cypress, California, recent snide comments and attacks on the Gaelic Athletic Association, most recently Frank Geraghty’s letter, are a different story.

The GAA represents quite simply not only what is best about Ireland and the Irish, but presents a snapshot of what sport used to be before it became totally corrupted by big money, overpaid, arrogant athletes and sporting cartels that treat the fan like the foolish dupe he/she too often is.

The GAA is a living invitation back to the time when fans were attached to players who were attached to teams who were attached to places. To be in Ireland during the championship and see county colors flying every place is to be reminded that in GAA-land, players still mostly come from where they were raised and still stop to say hello to their friends and neighbors.

There are no doping scandals here, no drunken louts in the stands, and no need to separate different county supporters using a phalanx of riot gear-clad police forced to cordon off half the town on game day.

The average GAA player and supporter is a humble, low key person who truly is a role model in his or her city, town or village. Ticket prices, even for big matches, are reasonable (including nearly free ticket plans for youngsters) and supporters are not manhandled by overzealous security guards and stuffy sportcrats wearing earpieces, so you can feel very much at home among 60,000 people in Croke Park.

When All-Ireland honors are earned in long starved counties like Tyrone, it is a genuine sporting accomplishment not the result of a series of stock market-like player personnel transactions.

In scenes more reminiscent of racketeering than athletics, U.S. owners extort monies from cowering local officials to subsidize stadiums that make a handful of insiders richer. (The amateur GAA is being criticized by Geraghty and others for resisting the incursions of money-centric organizations that arrogantly demand access to Croke Park, a world class stadium funded mostly by GAA supporters themselves.)

And while everyone, Geraghty included, is entitled to follow their preferred sports, it goes without saying that any five minutes of a competitive championship hurling encounter in a place like Thurles will always be more exciting than even a 10 year retrospective like “Soccer’s Most Exciting Moments.”

Soccer could truly be one of the world’s most boring games. Think of a nil-nil result where the evening’s television highlights are three shots on goal and two wides with an off sides call and a corner kick thrown in.

Geraghty takes a dig at “small town” GAA people who, he implies, lack the sophistication to appreciate soccer or to fawn over lavishly paid snot-nose professional athletes. He says in effect that it’s time for the Irish to get on the “world stage,” which means to become less Irish.

It is true that in modern, prosperous, globalist Ireland, the GAA is unabashedly Irish, promoting such un-world stage things like the games, the music, the culture and the language and showing that old is not always bad and neither are things that are authentically Irish.

The next time you talk to an Italian American visitor to Ireland who raves about the great welcome she received in a place like Mayo, remember that the chances are that just about everyone she crossed paths with is probably connected in one way or another to the GAA.

No, the Irish are not better than anyone else, and the GAA is not perfect. But my mind goes back to the day two years ago after an All-Ireland semifinal when I saw a South Korean visitor attempting to get onto the pitch at Croke Park after the match to take pictures.

He nervously approached the steward who unhesitatingly threw open the game and invited him onto the field. Try that at the Meadowlands!

In that interaction, that willingness to welcome a visitor and make him feel at home, the complete inability to be officious or pretentious, the civility that should be the basis for sport, I glimpsed the best of the GAA and Ireland, and to me they are inseparable.

Eugene O’Donnell Brooklyn, New York