Day of St. Patrick
By Jay Brodell
Sunday is St. Patrick’s Day, and in many parts of the world the day is one for amateur drunks and [good grief] green beer. Hidden among the roots of St. Patrick’s Day are 800 years of struggle, genocide, discrimination and death. The tale of the Irish is one well known to Jews, Palestinians, blacks, Nicaraguans, Mexicans, Chechens, untouchables and other socials classes or ethnic groups that are not permitted full participation in a free society. If the Irish drink to excess, it could be to hide the pain. The ethnic history is full of dark days, including the efforts at genocide by the British when the Emerald Isle was hit by the potato blight and subsequent famine in the mid-1840s. The colonial rulers actually exported food from starving Ireland at the height of the famine. The famine was the impetus for millions of Irish to leave their island, perhaps for the United States, where the culture began a slow climb from the gutter. The women found work, as is the case with downtrodden groups, but the men were under employed. Except where there were canals to dig or Civil Wars to fight. A lot of Irish found employment and sometimes death as draftees or paid designates in U.S. Civil War regiments. Soldiering is an Irish tradition because the country was nearly always at war. A few did well in Latin America’s revolutions against Spain. Originally, the St. Patrick’s Day parade was a way for the Irish to show their strength and confront the discrimination of the day. Harry Truman scored points when he became the first U.S. president to show up at a New York St. Patrick’s Day parade in 1948. Some 12 years later, an Irish Catholic won the presidency. The Catholic faith kept the Irish under suspicion in the predominately Protestant United States, and provided another obstacle for the national group to confront. The St. Patrick’s Day parade itself used to be a church-sponsored respite from the rigors of Lent, the 40-days before Easter when fasting and abstinence from meat is the norm. In Ireland and later in the United States, the church withdrew the rules for one day, the anniversary of St. Patrick’s Fifth century death. The national patron has spread far and wide. His fame even echoes in the names of some Costa Ricans. His day has been distorted by those who feel compelled to drink until they drop. They used to close the pubs in Ireland on that day. The only announced party here is at Sharkey’s downtown on Saturday night. .And for those who need a dose of their roots, the History Channel on cable has an Irish history marathon planned for Saturday night at 8 p.m. Vendor dies, boy hurt
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff A vendor died on the spot and a boy with him suffered bullet wounds about 1:30 p.m. Thursday on a road in a place designated as Finca Three in Guápiles. Investigators at the scene said the pair had been intercepted by three men and a gun was fired. However, they had little other information. |
Remembering to Remember Lately more and more friends are asking me to remind them to do something or do I remember the other name of "whatshername." In a way, this is flattering. They must think I am not afflicted with the loss of memory that seems pandemic among the expats here. Some of us are actually forgetting what we are talking about in the middle of a sentence. I have a solution for remembering forgotten names: I just go through the alphabet because I know that that name is in there somewhere. It can take a couple of run-throughs, but it usually works. It does, however, slow down conversations. Then we really forget what we were talking about. The other day I happened to be looking up how to remove water rings from wood in a little book I have and I came across a chapter on how to remember things. (The book is Meg Bracken’s "I hate to Housekeep Book." remember her?) The suggestion I liked was aimed at remembering a short list of things. It helps when you wake up in the middle of the night and think of three things you have to buy at the store. I tried it the other night. First what you do is simply remember a flagpole, a pair of red bloomers and a tricycle. (One, two, three. Got it?). Still in bed I pictured a cup of coffee balanced on the flagpole. Then the rubber gloves, one on each leg of the bloomers, and finally a bottle of soda water careening down a hill on a tricycle. I didn’t get to the store for two days, but once there, I remembered the kilo of coffee, the rubber gloves and the soda water. But for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I had associated with the rubber gloves. I kept seeing them on the antlers of a reindeer. Whatever works, I figure. From now on, number two is a reindeer. Forgetting is one of the downsides of being a member of the over-the-hill gang (That’s not an insult. That’s a euphemism). Last week was not a good week for me, and I topped it by getting a virus in my computer. Unknown to me, it sent out an ersatz message to everyone in my address book, which, if they opened it, or their antivirus program didn’t catch it, would have played havoc with them, too. My computer got the virus because I forgot to update my virus program. So this is an apology to everyone who got that message (don’t even think of opening it. Delete, delete!) and a lesson to us all. That should also be a feature of maturity: we can now put into practice all of the lessons we have learned throughout our lives . . if we could just remember them. This week started out much better because the concert season has begun. You have to love a country that turns an old airport into a public park for all the people and a former prison into a children’s museum with an auditorium where performances like the symphony can be held. And then adopts the idea of Sunday morning concerts for those of us who tend to fall asleep at the Friday evening ones. I am not a music critic, but I have found that when I am listening to and watching the performance of classical music I never have a negative thought. If my mind wanders at all, it is always to something very positive. It was a wonderful concert on Sunday beginning with a joyful overture by Bedrich Smetana and then works by Rachmaninoff and Richard Strauss. I thought the pianist played one of the sweetest pianos I have heard in a long time. Both of the longer works contained passages that have become familiar because they have been used as themes for movies. The beginning of the Strauss opus, "Also Sprach Zarathustra," was in the beginning of the movie "2001: A Space Odyessy." The Rachmaninoff had an incredibly romantic section that I was sure was used in "An Affair to Remember." I turned to my seat companion and asked, "Wasn’t this part the background music for "An Affair to Remember." With Cary Grant and whatshername when they met on the top of the Empire State Building? He said he couldn’t remember, then he muttered something else. I think he said, "Just listen to the music," but I’m not sure. I hope I’m not losing my hearing, too. More of Jo Stuart’s columns can be found HERE |
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