Of the images found in ABOVE THE GROUND: A True Story of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the photograph that grabs me is of Peter Heathwood. He was the innocent landlord who was renting an apartment to Artt on the Antrim Road in Belfast. He got shot by Loyalist thugs who mistook him for Artt in 1979. He's been in a wheelchair ever since. In 2019, when he picked me up at the bus station so we could go to his house … [Read more...]
Author Dan Lawton Hopes ABOVE THE GROUND Can Create Space for Important Conversations Amidst Divisive Times
When Kevin Barry Artt was born, his mother had to give birth to him in a convent in a small town, out of sight of people who would be scandalized that a baby had a Protestant dad and a Catholic mother. If he'd died some years ago, he might have been buried in a cemetery in Ballymurphy that is said to have an underground wall, invisible from the surface, that divides Catholic dead from Protestant dead. The bigotry and absurdity of it seem … [Read more...]
