Erin go Bragh

St. Patrick's Day is pretty much the perfect holiday for me. It was originally observed to celebrate a Christian Saint, it now commemorates the country I have been in love with all my life, and it gives me an excuse to wear ridiculous amounts of green without being laughed at.

And today is already off to a great start, celebration-wise. Allow me to share a bit of my obsessiveness:

Breakfast: a bowl of Lucky Charms (On a side note, it's always the marshmallows that get the press, but have you ever looked closely at the cereal pieces? Just what are they? I swear I saw an icthus.) and a cup of Irish Breakfast tea (with a little milk, this may be my favorite variety of black tea)

Clothing: Green socks, green Dropkick Murphys t-shirt (I already wore the Ireland football [read: soccer] jersey on Sunday for the parade fiasco, and I'm wearing green every day this week as a challenge to myself to do so without repeating anything--not so hard, actually), and green USF track jacket.

Accessories: Chipped, forest green nail polish replaced by a fresh coat of springier peridot green, green belt (which I wear most days), and harp earrings to go with the silver harp necklace I bought in Ireland four years ago (the 12-stringed harp is the official symbol of Ireland, for anyone who didn't know). (Sadly, my other key accessory, a pin of a frog sitting on a shamrock that reads "kiss me, I'm Irish" is at home in South Dakota, out of my reach, along with my Celtic cross pendant made with real conemara marble from Ireland. Still, wearing *all* of that at once might have been a bit much for tutoring at the writing center.)

Music: Dropkick Murphys has already been playing on my iTunes, and I'll probably mix in some Celtic fiddling later as well, and of course my favorite tune, Barrage's "Until We Meet Again".

Dinner: This one is rather out of my control, but Bartol has advertised an Irish dinner tonight. Last year they served corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread, and if that repeats I will be very happy indeed.

And, as if just to make this day even better, the sun is shining, the puddles are gone and Boston is set to hit a high of 60 this afternoon. It's a wonderful day to be alive, Irish or not, although of course everyone in the world is Irish today.

And it seems as though the luck of the Irish really is with me today. As rare as finding a four-leaf clover is finding a teaspoon in Bartol. At some point we were inundated with soup spoons, and lately that's all a person can find. But today at lunch, after scooping out the last bit of my favorite flavor of ice cream, I went to the utensil racks and found one! It was dead center, showing just barely enough for me to see that its curve was different from all the spoons around it. I plucked it from the buch with joy and returned to the table triumphant, to applause from my friends (yes, they really were that impressed).

It would be lovely if this luck, or these blessings, rather, continue. I have a five pager paper due tomorrow that has yet to be written. But since I already have an extensive outline prepared and late last night solved the problem of the accompanying diagram, I feel like I'm in pretty good shape. I'll spend my evening writing instead of attending the certainly overcrowded party at the Beehive, but when I finish I'll be dancing a jig to celebrate!

To close, I offer this saying I found on Island Ireland. May it be said of me as well.

What Shall I Say About the Irish?
The utterly impractical, never predictable,
Sometimes irascible, quite inexplicable, Irish.
Strange blend of shyness,
pride and conceit,
And stubborn refusal to bow in defeat.
He's spoiling and ready to argue and fight,
Yet the smile of a child
fills his soul with delight.
His eyes are the quickest to well up with tears,
Yet his strength is the strongest
to banish your fears.
His hate is as fierce as his devotion is grand,
And there is no middle ground
on which he will stand.
He's wild and he's gentle,
he's good and he's bad.
He's proud and he's humble,
he's happy and sad.
He's in love with the ocean,
the earth and the skies,
He's enamoured with beauty wherever it lies.
He's victor and victim, a star and a clod,
But mostly he's Irish—
in love with his God.

-Kim

St. Patrick

I don't do half measures when it comes to showing my Irish pride and love for both the country and the color. The picture doesn't quite give the full effect, but I also have green fingernail polish and a bright orange long-sleeved shirt under the jersey (to symbolize both northern and southern Ireland?). This look is actually a bit toned down from some years, but I think I may have been the most green clad person on campus today.

You would think, that in the city of Boston, so full of Irish, there would be more recognition of the holiday, but I felt almost as strange in my regalia as I do at home, surrounded by people who almost forget the holiday exists. There should have been something going on today, but I couldn't find it. Suffolk county even has the day off as a regional holiday, called Evacuation Day (ostensibly to celebrate driving the redcoats out of the city during the Revolutionary war, but we know it's a vacation day now only because of the Irish), so it's not like there wasn't the opportunity.

But Boston is a strange city. Apparently they celebrated St. Patrick's Day over the weekend. There was a big parade in Southie on Sunday, which I didn't know about until too late and couldn't have attended anyway because I had a paper to write. So apparently I missed it. Darn! I was all excited about St. Patrick's in Boston being a huge event, but somehow I totally missed it. Well, the cafeteria had decorations up today and served us corned beef and cabbage and Irish soda bread, which was amazing--so I suppose it wasn't a total loss. But the only other way for me to be involved in any celebration today would be to head out to one of the pubs and drink green beer, which doesn't at all sound like something I want to do.

Next year I'll be prepared. If the parade happens on the weekend, I will clear my schedule to be in Southie and see a marching band with kilts and bagpipes!

And I'm wearing green for the rest of the week, just because I can!

-Kim

Random trivia: The 12-stringed harp is the official symbol of Ireland. It's hard to see, but check out my jewelry in the above photo.