While launching this first edition of the new online literary boxing magazine, boxersandwritersmagazine.com, I happily report that 2008 kept me busy in a very positive way. While running a personal training business, contracting freelance writing work as well as writing fiction, drama and poetry for future publication, and making ends meet with a three-quarters time third shift job at a homeless shelter for children, time to publish this magazine or train like a real athlete is scarce. In fact, the time management challenge is the main—if not the only—reason I haven’t boxed professionally in recent years, although my desire to do so before I’m too old is extreme. But one must thoroughly dedicate many hours a day to training, even on the entry level of the sport, so until I’m able to finance that kind of discipline I’m grateful at the chance to share my talents publicly. Luckily I was able to do so on August 8, 9, and 10 at the 2008 Minnesota Irish Fair on St. Paul’s Harriet Island.
‘Irish’ Danny Morgan, the former Super Middleweight boxer from the Twin Cities who fought three world champions, invited me to participate in the third annual theatrical exhibition at the Minnesota Irish Fair, where we paired up with others in period costume, fighting in 1908 as Grandsons of Fenian rebels who’d followed the great William O’Donahue, whose grave rests in Rosemount, Minnesota, over the Canadian border to attack the British Army there. I wrote a narrative and published a play book that was distributed during the exhibition, and I included in it an article on Morgan, who is also an artist, that featured his drawings. It was the most literarily structured boxing presentation at the Irish Fair yet, but it also lacked effective organization and publicity, so the pictures presented here are the only ones I have available at this time. Please enjoy them, as well as the feature article about Morgan, his boxing career and military service, and his art. The exhibition was a Bogside Boxers Productions event directed by Danny Morgan and written by me.
