If you ask someone if they are Irish or a woman my age if her name is Jen, you will get the same answer. The person or the girl will either say “yes,” or “no, but my friend is.” There are a lot of Irish and Jen’s in this country. I’m not sure where the Jen’s came from, but many of the Irish came over during The Famine of 1845-52, or “An Gorta Mor,” in Irish (the Great Hunger).
A potato blight left the fields of the subsistence farmers covered in black rot and unable to pay the rent to their English landlords. A million people died and many more emmigrated to America to become cannon fodder for the Civil War, extras in period movies that show tenaments, and New York City cops and firemen. This left the island bitter and desolate for a very long time and also with a deep connection to the United States where now every Irishman had some family. Only in the past ten years has a massive amount of tourism caused the economy of Ireland to flourish and the population to increase. You can learn more about this at the Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park.
St. Patrick’s Day is an Irish-American holiday, similar to Columbus Day for Italians, Cinco de Mayo for Mexicans, and Halloween for Transylvanians. It was not such a big holiday back on the island, until the increased tourism made it so. As I said yesterday, today I will be at The Edge after work to celebrate my Irishness, because today everyone is Irish (except those damn limey bastards).
(Today’s picture stolen from Go-go Magazine in Denver.)
…
Site of the Day: Please only yell “Freebird” as a heckle, not just as a whim.