Dear Friends,
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In addition to conversations about solar farms, small businesses, and crop rotation for home gardens, I launch into a very personal rant about St. Patrick’s Day.
For those who have followed by blog over the years, you may recall that Ireland is my second home. (Visit my website, search for “Ireland,” and you’ll find relevant blogs a’plenty.) I’ll share photos, then tell you why St. Patrick’s Day should be, well, not cancelled, but at least reimagined.
My uncles, Tom and John, in front of the home place in County Roscommon, with me (middle) and my two brothers. A cousin, Katie Kelly, stands in the doorway. (Photo: Shirley Fallon, June, 1966)
Me standing in nearly the same spot where the previous photo was taken, a few years later. (Photo: Shirley Fallon, November, 2010)
The eight-acre oak forest my Dad and I planted at the home place in 2000. (Photo taken in 2016.)
Ok, about that rant. It bugs me more than a little that the holiday celebrating the land of my heritage is pretty much about one thing: Booze. Lots of it. Some of it a sickening shade of green.
Sure, raise a glass or two of your beverage of choice. We do that pretty much any holiday, right? But Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, is that all we can come up to show pride in what it means to be Irish?
Instead of glorifying drunkenness, let’s celebrate Ireland’s vast wealth of writers, poets, musicians, and warriors.
Let’s celebrate a people who won independence after 800 years of oppression under the heel of British imperialism.
Let’s celebrate a people who survived despite England’s attempt at genocide (known in sanitized history books as “The Great Famine,” because everything Great Britain did back then had to somehow be associated with greatness).
I’ve got a lot more to say on the subject, but will leave it at that. My Paddy’s Day vent begins at the 37:38-minute mark of this week’s program. I hope you’ll listen to the whole show, of course. Thanks to Rob Hach, Karen Kubby, and Kathy Byrnes for excellent conversations about solar energy, small businesses, and home-garden crop rotation.
This Saint Patrick’s Day, if you’d like to experience Irish music in a traditional seisiún, our “band” plays this Thursday in West Des Moines at Sully’s (10:00 a.m.) and The Hall (12:00 noon). This Saturday, we’ll be in Harlan, Iowa, at the Brick Wall Gallery. Details for all of the above on the Des Moines Irish Session Facebook page. Sláinte!
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(01:58) Solar farming, with Rob Hach, CEO of Trusted Energy;
(15:59) Challenges facing small business owners, with Karen Kubby, Co-owner of Beadology;
(37:38) Reimagining Saint Patrick’s Day;
(55:24) Rotating crops in your home garden, with Kathy Byrnes.
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Ed Fallon