Don't rush away

Let me just stretch Saint Patrick’s Day a little farther and close the week with a song that’s not what you’d call traditional. It’s speaking to me, and right now that’s all that matters.

Van Morrison and The Chieftains, “Irish Heartbeat”.

Peace and love

As you know, I am of the opinion that Saint Patrick’s Day is largely an Irish-American construct—the kind of thing an under-appreciated minority puts on to cock a snook at the majority. After all, you don’t really need to celebrate being Irish in Ireland because you’re in, well, you know, Ireland.

You do need to celebrate it in a culture that looks down on you as a jumped-up ignorant bunch of dirt-encrusted, drink-swilling lowlifes who take orders directly from the Pope and lower property values wherever you go.

So not surprising that someone decided to declare Saint Patrick’s Day an occasion for pretending to be Irish by going pub crawling, drinking green beer and singing rebel songs.

Whatever.

I myself don’t venture into bars or taverns on Saint Patrick’s Day because I don’t like mixing with all those amateur drinkers. But I can still express the sentiment with a song or two. For instance:

“The Back Door”, by Cherish the Ladies, an Irish-American band—one of my favorites. This song encapsulates the immigrant experience for me; they’re talking about the thousands who came over in the 70s and 80s during the last century, but you could extend it to a hundred years before, as well.

The line that has always resonated with me is, “I want my own bed, my own kitchen; I want my nights to myself.”

But I’ll also go back to the old country for something from the Clancy Brothers. Because it isn’t Irish until the Clancys have had their say.

You know how big I am on gratitude, so I’m giving you a song of Irish gratitude.

Sláinte.

Kiitos, Suomi

Here’s what I know about the Finns: they were the only nation to pay us back for debts incurred during the World War I era, and reindeer.

Well, okay—mobile phones, saunas and kicking the crap out of the Soviets. Hurrah for the Finns!

But here’s something new that is entirely to their credit as well. They absolutely nailed the Republicans, who henceforth shall be known as Elephant Cowboys, as well as Mr. Business Wig, the Cuban Robot and the Greasy Rat.

Finnish News Team Reports On U.S. Elections from Funny Or Die

That sucking sound

Youall know my opinion of politicians in general and the presidential landscape in particular; I don’t need to flog these particular horse’s asses.

I watch in wonder as Repubs vie with one another to display what they’re pleased to think is their manhood by strutting their stuff in the form of threats to send other men’s children to various places that are not America to kill still other men’s children. They follow this up with promises to cut support services to the military and to defund the Veteran’s Administration, which to my mind simply screams “We live on Planet Idiot; come join us.”

It reached a new and appalling low this weekend as I heard Donald Trump urge his followers to beat up protesters. I thought my radio had slipped a cog and fallen back to the 1930s when would-be strong men took care of dissent by literally beating it down. 

(This after that whole business of "We'll build a wall, and who's going to pay for it?" Jesus wept—does no one remember the sound of smashing glass?).

It wasn’t just the blond buffoon saying it, it was hundreds of his lemmings shouting their approval, and some of them following through with the violence. Can we imagine that castor oil and camps will not be on the horizon after the election?

Land of the free and home of the brave—WTF?

Gratitude Monday: Getting in place

Second Monday after moving into my new digs, and making progress toward feeling like this is a place where I can live.

I’ve got the kitchen fairly well organized. (Proof of that will be when I start actually, you know, cooking. But we’ll see.) I’ve figured out a workaround for not having screens in the only windows that actually open. (There are slots for screens, but the owners apparently removed them. I’m going to kludge a kind of mosquito netting thing, as I don’t fancy paying for custom screens to be made and installed, but I also don’t fancy sharing my living space with insects.)

And there are only about ten more cartons of books to be unpacked. I’m a ways from having them all on the shelves, as you can’t do that until you’ve got them all out where you can see them, but it’s a huge mental relief to look at the office and see floor where last week there was about four feet worth of cartons and packing paper wall to wall. Still have to get all that in the storage space (I’ve only got a year’s lease here, so I’ll be doing this again sooner or later), but that’ll happen some time this week.

So, on the whole, I’m feeling grateful to be moving forward in this process. I know that the sooner I can get this place settled around me, the sooner I can function at full bandwidth.