2 comments about Take a Paddle: Western New York Quiet Water for Canoes & Kayaks (Take a Paddle).

1. Take A Paddle: Western New York Quiet Water For Canoes & Kayaks is a comprehensive, superbly presented, specialized guide for canoe and kayaking enthusiasts. Detailing multiple launch and take-out sites; identifying waterway difficulty levels; providing approximate times to paddle from one point to another; noting amenities and fun diversions suitable for families with children; showing where to camp; what the best season for paddling each waterway; even where to rent canoes or kayaks or find commercial shuttle services, Take A Paddle: Western new York Quite Water For Canoes Kayaks covers more than 250 miles of flat-water creeks and rivers, as well as 20 ponds and lakes. Included are Livingston, Monroe, Steuben, Allegany, Cattaraugus, Erie, Chautauqua, Genesee, Orleans, and Niagara counties.



2. My wife and I bought this book and our canoe in the same week.
   Coincidence? I don't think so. This book overs families a great chance to get outside and share time together.
   The rating system is outstanding and the directions are great.
   This is the type of book that screams out for a second volumn I would gladly volunteer to be a guest contributor should the authors ever decide to do a second volumn.

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3 comments about South Boston, My Home Town: The History of an Ethnic Neighborhood.

1. I had to read this book...and comment on it. Like Thomas O'Connor, I am also a native of Southie. Using a voluminous store of references, and countless personal interviews, O'Connor has written the most comprehensive history of "The Town" I've ever read. He takes the reader from the very beginnings of life in the relatively isolated peninsula settlement, through the cultural, ethnic, occupational, and religious history of the residents, emphasizing their insular nature, seemingly always at odds with the rest of Boston and other outsiders, right through the 80's.

   The detailed background information provided by O'Connor over an entire chapter, regarding the forced busing for school integration and ensuing Southie riots, will give the non-Southie(and maybe some Southies also) reader a much better understanding, and different perspective, on the town. O'Connor is clear on the causes of the riots, namely a clueless judge following the path paved by a self-serving state legislature that passed a law which would preclude busing to Boston's lily-white suburbs, compounded of course by Southie's insular nature and desires to maintain their neighborhood schools. I recommend Michael MacDonald's recently published "All Souls" for a terrific read on the tragic experiences of one very poor Southie family in the projects during the those riots in the 70's, and on through the 80's, into the 90's.

   Overall..a terrific historic work on South Boston by O'Connor..the best Ive ever read.




2. Written by a South Boston expatriate [who hasn't lived in South Boston for decades], the book: 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town - The History of an Ethnic Neighborhood' (c. 1988, 1994) by B.C. history professor Thomas H. O'Connor, ignored the usual tenets of logic and historiography and took a contingent and non-teleological world view of the history of his ex-neighborhood, South Boston.

   Containing all the usual ingrediants of determinism - such as: truisms (e.g. "The Dorchester Heights monument was completed in 1901 ..." p. 107) interpreted with many unreferenced categorical statements (e.g. " 'Most' of the Irish who came to America ..." p 78, and "In 'most' South Boston Schools ..." p. 121, or " ... the anti-semitism among 'some' Irish Catholics ..." p. 186); Professor O'Connor, in an attempt to initiate a self-fulfilling prophecy, simply collected a series of stereotypes which coincided with the media coverage of the anti-forced busing events of 1974-1984 Boston, of which he personally was not involved!

   This blatant manipulation of information is further enhanced by these curiously irresponsible statements that "To a great extent, Irish emigrants brought their traditional drinking habits with them when they came to America." (p. 44) and " ... the potato was the absolute mainstay of the Irish diet." (p. 47). In light of the facts that the first beer pump in Boston is found in South Boston at the German bar "Amrheims"; and in Ireland, the Irish don't just eat potatoes!

   As a further case in reader manipulation, the book 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' contained an anachronism as Prof. O'Connor perpetuated a crude specimen of Boston 'Mytho-history'. On page 254 in Prof. O'Connor's sources is found the screed LIBERTY'S CHOSEN HOME (c.1977) where journalist Alan Lupo related the excited outburst of an anti-forced busing protester in 1974 to then Mayor Kevin White that: "No matter how poor we were, Kevin, we always had clean lace curtains on our windows"(p. 30). And through sheer hyperbole, this exclamation from a non-Irish women found its way into 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' (p. 87) as the 1901 long established tradition of "the lace curtain Irish"! It is undocumented that there has ever been a lace curtain Irish in Boston and this description is specious.

   The book 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' presented a series of inconsistencies and mechanistically biased views of the author's former hometown: Prof. O'Connor emphasized white racism and ignored all the black racism found in Boston (p. 219); constantly referred to South Boston as an 'ethnic' neighborhood, but didn't describe at EXACTLY what point South Boston became a 'white' neighborhood when it came to his description of forced busing (p. 209); the author mentioned historical 'forces' throughout his work with no explanation of exactly what those mysterious 'forces' were? (e.g. pgs. 115 & 246); and in confusing digressions for correlations, Prof. O'Connor committed the 'post hoc' fallacy by constantly comparing two disassociate events: the Irish immigrants in the 1854 North End (Boston) as a "theme" (p. 32) for the behaviour of the Irish American minority in 1974 South Boston, two miles away and 120 years later! (An illegitimate teleology occurs when an author speculates, without sufficient proof, that x causes y).

   The omission of relevant data also marred 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' as Prof. O'Connor listed some of the whimsical nicknames (p. 178) found among South Boston residents but neglected to include his poster boy's, former mayor Ray Flynn, sobriquet of 'Mel' Flynn (and why he earned it). Also omitted from this work was the fact that the Irish American became a vocal minority by 1974, surpassed in the 1950s by Lithuanian, Polish, Estonian, Latvian, and Albanian immigrants fleeing communist persecution by the former Soviet Union - thereby breaking any contingency between the Irish immigrants of 1854 Boston, and the Irish American of 1974 South Boston! There were also 240 Afro-American families, plus a small colony of Mic Mac Indians from the Canadian Maritimes living in Southie when the Federal judge declared the Boston Schools segregated, which escaped the author's attention.

   Though this was supposed to be a history of South Boston, the author tended to drag in the history of all the Irish no matter how far or removed from Southie; e.g. Irish immigrants of New York city. (This is where Prof. O'Connor's specialty in demographics tended to displace his knowledge of South Boston history.) Then, inconsistently, Prof. O'Connor failed to mention the most segregated and insulated neighborhood in Boston's entire history - Chinatown!

   Professor O'Connor's collection of generalizations, unsubstantiated allegations, and unreferenced claims, makes it impossible for the researcher to verify his information. The yarn: 'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town' by history professor Thomas H. O'Connor, is a distorted work which is not history, but encompassed all the worse traits of a poorly written biography. By allowing his imagination to run away with him and indulging in a weak psychobiographic speculation with few sources or no proof, professor Thomas H. O'Connor had produced not a technically proficient work of history, but a weak biography on his ex-neighborhood, with all the veracity and authority of an eighth grade book report.

   Any life long resident of South Boston would immediately pick out the flaws and errors of this work (e.g. Life long South Boston residents do not refer to themselves as 'Southies'!)

   'SOUTH BOSTON: My Home Town: The History of an Ethnic Neighborhod' is a perpetuation of many media stereotypes, documented truisms, vague categorical statements, and added nothing new to the knowledge of South Boston's history.




3. "South Boston My Hometown" is a detailed but very readable history of a unique Boston neighborhood. Written by a native who is a professor at Boston College, the book is remarkably objective considering the South Boston Irish background of the author. If there is any flaw, it is the apology given for the long standing ignorance and bigotry of many South Boston natives. The pitiful anti-semitism of the 1930's and the disgraceful racism of the 1970's deserve no forgiveness. Perhaps a later edition will tell if any effort has been made to educate the new generation of South Boston Irish to avoid the sins of the last century.

1 comments about All Courses Great And Small: A Golfer's Pilgrimage to England and Wales.

1. Well, mr Finegan has done it again. Terrific description of well selected courses in England and Wales.