Ride 'em cowboy!  Texas has enough Irish connections to make the rest of the country green with envy.  The characters include the good, the bad and the ugly.  There was Texas Ranger John B. Dunn of Sligo, Spanish Viceroy Juan O'Donoju (O'Donohue),  Richard King of the King Ranch and bandit Will Bonny (alias Billy the Kid and Kid Antrim. Sam Houston's family hailed from Co. Antrim, as well. At the Alamo, were the Scots-Irish Davy Crockett, William Travis and Jim Bowie.

So visit Fort Worth's White Elephant Saloon with The Irish American Post and see who else is of the Gael there.

And then ride with jockey Glen Murray and sing along with Joe Burke, read a good history of the Irish and let's all go to Ravinia to see Chicago actor John Mahoney do Shakespeare.
 
 

Oh Lord, How I'd Love to Be Irish
By Marilyn Taylor
Oh Lord, how I'd love to be Irish!
The Irish are nothing but hot,
and they've gotten incredibly stylish-
but Irish is what I am not.[More]
 

Reflections on the blanket
By Lynn Caldwell
I'm sitting in a theater in a shopping mall and I'm flashing back to grade 12 history class with Mr. Helmkay at Ladysmith Secondary on Vancouver Island. It's a strange connection. What's even more strange is that the theater is on the Falls Road, a line that snakes through the heart of working-class Catholic Belfast. [More]
 

What They Said
News review
A review of June comments from Ireland and Northern Ireland taken from news reports, the Irish American Information Service and Post staffers. It was a busy month as the British and Irish governments signaled a joint refusal to be deflected from an upbeat approach to the Northern Ireland peace process after their first post-General Election ministerial talks. [More]
 

Celtic cowboy world alive and well in Forth Worth
By Martin Hintz
"I'm an habitual sumbitch," says one old guy hunkered down in Fort Worth's White Elephant Saloon, as he scratches a beefy thigh with a gnarly left hand. Red suspenders are stretched taut over a full belly, while he mutters mournfully into his can of Coor's Light.[More]
 

Music comes first with Joe Burke
By Kerry L. Bryan
Joe Burke never seems in a hurry. To meet him is to feel immediately at home. He is a comfortable presence, a white-haired, solid figure of a man, soft-spoken and good-humored. Then you watch and listen to him play his button accordion — and you are in awe that those fingers can move so fast yet with such precision.[More]
 

Bottom's Up for Actor Mahoney
By George Houde
The summer will be warm and sweet, with Shakespeare under the stars and American pop fiction under the lights and John Mahoney relishing every moment. Born of Irish and Scottish blood, raised in England, and self-modified into an American who has one of the most endearing roles on television, Mahoney remains a performer of modest pronouncement and high achievement.[More]
 

Books relate the Irish American experience
By Thomas Gildea Cannon
The past four centuries have witnessed one of the largest migrations in human history: the emptying out of Ireland and the filling up of America with more than seven million immigrants from the Emerald Isle. This migration was part of a mass movement known as the Irish diaspora.[More]
 

Not just horsing around
By Martin Hintz
For Glen Murphy, life means horses. The 33-year-old El Paso jockey has been riding since he was 16, mostly galloping around tracks in the South and in the Upper Midwest. Hawthorne and Arlington parks in the Chicago area are also among his favorites, although a tumble in 1994 at the latter Wind City track laid him up for eight months with a broken neck.[More]