Confession number 1: I am a horticultural disaster. Last week we attended a homeschool group session on plants. The girls were supposed to bring lists of ten plants found in their garden. Other than grass and weeds, we could boast the sum total of two. (In case you are wondering, daffodils and grape hyacinths, which are the only plants to have survived my black thumbs and Tevye's propensity for indiscriminately pulling out anything he thinks looks untidy).
Confession number 2: I don't get St.Patrick's Day. All that green and sentimentality for the emerald isle is simply baffling to this Englishwoman with no Irish links. Singing "Glorious Saint Patrick, great saint of our isle" at Mass seems kind of geographically misplaced in Bedfordshire. I do like St.Patrick, who is a great saint. It is just that the whole cultural thing that goes right over my head.
Nevertheless, a happy belated St.Patrick's Day to those of you who don't share my cultural inadequacy!
Ducking ...
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Confessions
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2 comments:
Well, another myth blown to smithereens. I thought all English were brilliant at gardening!
I have known lots of Irish immigrants (recent ones, that were born there). You know how they would celebrate st. Patrick's day? They'd go to mass.
I think St. Patrick's is a big deal because the US made it a big deal. Irish were really discriminated against when they first got here. They truly pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and became a cultural force. The fact that everybody is Irish these days on St. Patrick's day is such a turn around. My father (b. 1919) remembered the KKK burning a cross on his aunt's lawn. He lived across the street. All the Irish lived in one neighborhood, the Italians in another, etc.
I think St. Patrick's Day is a testimony to Irish grit.
(BTW, my ancestors hail from County Cork though I have an English great grandmother.)
I'm with you on that, Kathryn. As a Murphy with obvious Irish roots, I've never got it either. None of my family celebrate it, not even the ones still living in Ireland.{g}
Patrick was a terrific christian role-model and evangelist and as such deserves to be remembered, but what has that to do with putting green dye in your toilet sistern? LOL!
Dorothy
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