B'Gorah!

So its my People's Holiday, where green Guinness is rampant and its considered patriotic to be drunk. *sigh*

I'm an O'Neil and plucking proud of that fact. I really love and cherish my Irish heritage. It somehow makes me feel just a bit stronger and founded in the world. I can't articulate why, I just do.

I'm also a Stuart on my Scottish side and a bit of Welsh so when people ask me "what I am" I say Celtic. It's the most accurate answer I've been able to come up with. I love them and everything about them. Their music, their folklore, their history, their fashion, their stories, their art - everything. Even Michael Flatley hasn't been able to bust that bubble of awesome that tightens up my chest when I hear a fiddle or a bagpipe (and that's a miracle).

We were the original feminstis (I should say "womanists")

the original emergency preparedness experts

the original scholars

the original gurrila fighters

the first ones to understand Faerie

we don't understand "no" (to our benifit and detriment)

we have the coolest hair EVER

and a myriad of other things

(see How the Irish Saved Civilization)

Basically - we're awesome. I think if we all didn't have a drinking problem we'd have taken over the place already. It's the Universe's way of keeping us in check I think.

My Irish comes out in different ways at different times I think. For instance, I was at a St. Patrick's Day party on Saturday night where a group of guys were watching a boxing match. I had never really seen a boxing match aside of those in Rocky and stuff, so I obviously had no idea what was going on. I just saw two exhausted and bleeding men doing their best to beat the crap out of the other. After 12 rounds both of them were still standing and so I said

"well I guess its a draw then"

and the other 15 guys in the room just turned on me with a "what?!" look and I said

"well a fight is only over when there is one guy is standing - that's how you can tell who won. Right?"

and all 15 of them erupted in laughter. I heard a few I like your styles and that's what I'm talking abouts but I was in earnest. I, who have never been in a real fist fight and child of a pacifist hippy, truly thought that's how it is.

I chalked it up to my Irish blood and giggled it off. Some guy named Pacquiao won but I still don't think he did. He's not Irish though, and neither is the boxing assication apparently...

Anywho -
To honor me people I've found some quotes from people that know mine best.

"We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English."
- Winston Churchill

"If you could drink dreams like the Irish streams
Then the world would be high as the mountain of morn
In the Pool they told us the story
How the English divided the land..."
- John Lennon, "The Luck of the Irish" (song)

"Well, it takes all kinds of men to build a railroad."
"No sir, just us Irish."
- Railroad barons in "Dodge City," Warner Bros (1939)

"I saw a fleet of fishing boats...I flew down almost touching the craft and yelled at them, asking if I was on the right road to Ireland. They just stared. Maybe they didn't hear me. Maybe I didn't hear them. Or maybe they thought I was just a crazy fool."
- Charles Lindbergh

"Ireland, sir, for good or evil, is like no other place under heaven, and no man can touch its sod or breathe its air without becoming better or worse."
- George Bernard Shaw

"This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever."
- Sigmund Freud (speaking about the Irish)

"For the good are always the merry,
Save for an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance"
- W.B. Yeats, "The Fiddler of Dooney"

"I started with rock n' roll and...then you start to take it apart like a child with a toy and you see there's blues and there's country...Then you go back from country into American music...and you end up in Scotland and Ireland eventually."
- Elvis Costello

"There are only two kinds of people in the world, The Irish and those who wish they were."
- Irish Saying

and my personal favorite....

"No man is an Ireland."
-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!!

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
~ Celtic Blessing