Tuesday, March 17, 2020

St. Paddy's Day No More We'll Keep, at least for this year.

Not much St. Paddy's Daying around here this year.

Not that I would have gone, but the parade was canceled.

Not that I would have gone out, but the pubs are all closed. 

Not that I feel much in the mood to do much of anything.

I will go out to St. Francis House for my last volunteer shift before the volunteer program is shut down for the duration. And I'll wear my shamrock earrings. After that, I have two phone meetings - my work has been mostly virtual for years - and then I'll make some boxty (mashed potatoes with cabbage). If the spirit moves me, I might make myself a Baby Guiness (Kahlua topped off with Bailey's: it really does look like a pint of Guinness. Or would if I had a shot glass that looked like a pint glass). 

I might put on some Irish music. Then again, I just got a few new CD's: Four Tops, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye. So I might listen to Motown instead.

Since I'm not really in the St. Patrick's Day mood, I thought I'd just lightly annotate the list of earlier posts in honor of the day. Anything highlighted in green is worth a look, IMHO. 

2019 - It's the Ides of March. Other than at Pink Slip contains a recipe for barmbrack (a.k.a. in our family, "Daddy's Favorite")

2018 - Alittle bit of heaven... with apologies, this is mostly just a list of prior St. Patrick's Day posts.

2017 -Faith & Begorrah provides a mini-reivew of an Emmet Cahill concert, plus a picture of a special lemon meringue pie.

2016 - Kiss Me, I’m Half Irish - not much to see here, other than a toss off of the fact that the only white European ethnic group absent from the Worcester of my girlhood was German, which was kind of too bad for my German mother. 

2015: The Wearing o’ the Green - not much to see here, either, other than a bit of a crank on how the world turns into a vomitorium on St. Patrick's Day.

2014: St. Patricks’ Day 2014 - this was a sad one. It was the first month anniversary of my husband's death, and a week or so before his memorial service, where a very nice young Unitarian seminarian sang The Parting Glass. This post includes a video of an old Liam Clancy version, which is lovely. And you know what they - or at least G.K. Chesterton, say about Irish music: “The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.”


2013: The Ides of St. Patrick’s Day - where I ruminate of what it might have taken to make me identify more with being German than being Irish. Here's a good piece by my Irish-German cousin Ellen, a fellow blogger, which also touches on her "mixed" heritage. Ellen grew up in Chicago, where all of our German relatives were, plus a lot of other Germans to boot. But she felt more Irish, too. I wonder if it had something to do with this being in the 1950's when WWII was not that far in the rear-view mirror, and German pretty much equaled Nazi?

2012: Answering Ireland’s Call - more of less on the Irish economy.

2011: St. Patrick’s Day 2011 - thoughts on an upcoming trip to Ireland, our first since the crash and burn of the Irish economy in 2008.

2010: St. Paddy’s Day No More We’ll Keep - my observations of the drunken revelry in downtown Boston on the weekend before St. Patrick's Day.

2009: Irish Eyes Not So Smiling These Days. - reflections on the Irish economy - did this used to be something of a business-related blog? - the year after the big meltdown.

2008: You Say Po-tay-to, I say Po-tah-to. Who’s Irish and Who’s Not. One of my favorite Paddy's Day posts, in which I desribe a moment of fifth grade bravery when, during an ethnic-identifcation exercise, when we were supposed to say what our roots were, and god forbid you said anything other than Irish, I dared say I was German. This post also contains the recipe (that of my beloved Aunt Margaret) for the world's best Irish soda bread. And, yes, I did bake a bunch of loaves last weekend.

2007: Kiss Me, I’m Irish. My very first St. Patrick's Day post. Sigh. 


Happy St. Patrick's Day to you. Hope you don't go stir crazy, staring at your four walls while we're all waiting for the angel of death to pass over. 

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