Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day has never been very high on my list of holidays. Nothing against it, just it was never particularly special.

A couple of random recollections.

I was in China for 3 weeks some 8 years ago, part of a team of mostly teachers (plus a couple of ringers, including me) from Wisconsin and Northern Illinois who were teaching in a summer school program to offer English language and American cultural immersion. Each of us prepared a lesson on a particular state or major city of the U.S. Having gone to graduate school at The World's Greatest Journalism School, it was natural for me to pick New York City. When it came time to pick a holiday associated with the city, I chose St. Patrick's Day, and on one of my presentations I talked a dear friend and fellow teacher into serenading the class with "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."

Red hair, of course, is associated with the Irish. DairyStateKid#1 once won a red-headed-kid contest at Irish Fest in Milwaukee. But years before that, he had the greatest comeback ever to a nosy question about his hair. Neither his mother nor I have red hair (I don't have much hair at all, to be sure), and in a restaurant with his mother for lunch one day when he was about 3, he was approached by a well-meaning older woman. "Where did you get that lovely red hair?" she asked.

"It started growing on my head when I was a baby," was his reply.

Finally, here's a lovely little essay on today through an Interfaith lens.

Top o' th' mornin' to you all.