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Volume 4, Issue 6
St. Paddy's Day in other than religious terms
Four young military men, that being Kevin Delly, now a respected journalist and broadcaster; Barry Bishop, now a respected MD; Lorenzo Young, now a respectable purveyor of Porsches, and meself, in no way respectable, hied ourselves down to the St. Patrick's Cathedral early with flasks in our pockets, a song in our hearts and loving intentions toward as yet unidentified young women we'd meet at the parade.
We had to stop at St. Pat's so Kevin could light a candle where his parents were wed and where he had been baptized and made his first communion. The church was packed with early mass visitors. The three of us stood in the back; one Jew, one Black Baptist and one fallen away Irish Catholic waiting for our faithful friend.
Sure as Christ made little green apples an aged priest with a brogue as broad as 42nd Street walked up to us and greeted us cheerfully saying he was so happy to see young men in uniform going to mass. Mass had ended just a few minutes before we arrived.
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Volume 4, Issue 6
St. Pat's Day: A global favorite
Inasmuch as there are two sorts of people in the world — those that are Irish and those that wish they were Irish — Hornpipe decided to see how St. Patrick's Day is being celebrated in other far flung corners where the real and wishful Irish gather on that holy day to hoist a libation and remember their roots.
Canada
A good old-fashioned Irish breakfast starts the day in Montreal to help the faithful recover from the previous nights honoring Patrick himself. From nine o'clock onwards, crowds at the parade breakfast in Huley's Pub on Crescent Street, consume heaping plates of rashers, sausages, black and white pudding, eggs, ham and spuds, washing down the lot with Irish coffees and stout. Irish music featuring an impressive repertoire of songs, traditional and modern, waft out from a stage.
A 177th consecutive St. Patrick's Parade at noon started with temperatures well above zero, a 'gorgeous day' as thousands lined St. Catherine Street for three hours of marching bands, Irish dancers, shamrock-bedecked floats and sundry celebrities and politicians! Beer, whiskey shooters, hip flasks and king cans are clinked openly...
(Other areas reviewed in this article include Asia, Moscow, Poland, Australia, and Paris.)
Volume 4, Issue 5
Tradition is the glue of family life
We pulled up in front of the soup and salad palace and as we got out of the car Wolfe Tone noticed with surprise that the Middle Eastern woeners of the joint had gotten a jump on the holidays by having their Christmas decorations installed already. It was the day after Halloween.
Grumbling curmudgeon-like about commercialism, I pointed out to Wolfe Tone that the steady retro-extension of the Christmas season would eventually overtake his August birthday and I would only have to buy him presents once a year. He explained that such a possibility "sucked"; that I was indeed a "grouchy old dude", and then he paused for a moment before inquiring of the whereabouts of our Christmas decorations.
Most 14-year-olds aren't very curious about the decorations until it is time to get them down. Down being the operative word from my childhood when they came from the attic in a traditional ceremony. Wolfe Tone was curious shaded with anxiety about our Christmas "stuff" because we've only been building our collection and traditions for about five years.
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Volume 4, Issue 5
Christmas recipes
Bread sauce
You will need:
- 1 onion
- whole cloves
- 1 pint milk
- 225g / 8 oz white bread crumbs
- 15g / 1⁄2 oz butter
Method:
Mixed Spice
- 30 g / 1 oz ground nutmeg
- 30g / 1 oz cinnamon
- 15g / 1⁄2 oz ginger
- 8 g / 1⁄4 oz ground cloves
Method:
- Mix well and store in an airtight jar or tin. (Keeps indefinitely.)
Christmas Cake
You will need:
- 250g / 8 oz / 1⁄2 lb butter
- 250g / 8 oz / 1⁄2 lb soft brown sugar
- 4 lightly beaten eggs
- 315g / 10 oz plain flour
- 10 ml / 2 level teaspoons mixed spice (above)
Sieve the flour and the spice together.
- 250g / 8 oz seedless raisins
- 250g / 8 oz sultanas
- 125g / 4 oz chopped cherries
- 125g / 4 oz chopped walnuts
- 160-240 ml / 8-12 tblsp Guinness
Method:
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Volume 4, Issue 4
World's travails remind one to live now
War talk abounds the world over. Uneasiness caused by the events of September 11, 2001 is unabated.
Children are abducted from their beds and abused and killed by twisted people beyond the pale of civilization.
Floods ravage central Europe and parts of China. In Germany, thousands of homeowners who were refused flood insurance are devastated.
Hurricanes are hitting around the Gulf of Mexico. Volcanoes are rumbling in Central America.
Diseases once thought eradicated are reappearing. A new mosquito-borne malady is spreading across the US, killing the small, weak and elderly.
Another multi-national mega-corporation goes under due to the greed and chicanery of its executives and thousands are out of work and broke in several countries.
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Volume 4, Issue 4
Book of Kells shows heart of Irish art in antiquity
Every nation has its artifacts that reveal the most prominent traditions of that nation's art and artisanship. Almost all these type of artifacts have one aspect in common, they contain clues or statements about the nation's political or religious history. Most of them are products of the immediate past millennium and do not represent truly ancient ideas and technology.
Only a handful of nations, most prominently Egypt and China, offer the world a view into their extremely distant past via these artifacts. And while not a nation featured in the currents and conflicts of the first millennium, Ireland offers up one of the most beautiful, sophisticated memoirs of that time in the artistic creation of the illuminated Book of Kells.
According to tradition, the book is a relic from the time of Columba (d. 597) and even the work of his hands, but judging by the character of the ornamentation and the date of the composition, the book can be placed no earlier than the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century. The book's history is almost as ornate as the book itself.
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Volume 4, Issue 2
Stereotypical Irish beauty no match for the reality of a fine Irish soul
Men the world over will pass up the favors of any other four beauties on the off chance that they might get an opportunity to talk to that alabaster-skinned Irish woman with the flaming mane down to her waist and ice blue eyes that could hold off an invasion with a hard stare of charm the entire arm with just a few soft, flirting words from her honeyed, pink lips.
This stereotype thrives on male desire and has little to do with the reality of Irish and true Irish-American women. If there is a stereotype in the Irish women I have known it is best illustrated by the story of my friend, Jane O'Toole.
A hard life does not necessarily make a hard woman. Jane was a beautiful, brilliant, black-maned, dark-eyed, young Irish girl who took to the drink enthusiastically. In a few years she had botched her life in Detroit so badly that she ran away leaving behind everything she loved including her husband and two small sons. She landed in San Francisco at the end of a years-long bender.
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Volume 4, Issue 2
Irish presidents reflect women's power
Ireland is one of the few nations in the world to have a female head of state but to have two in a row demonstrates the empowerment of women in the political life of Eire. May Robinson and Mary McAleese started out life in opposite ends of a torn nation but soon the opportunities available in education and politics brought them onto the same path - that path clearly leads to a new and continually more prosperous time for Ireland. As the nation benefits from these changes, citizens understand the leadership of these two women has been pivotal in gaining great stature in the European Union.
Current President Mary McAleese came to office as Professor Mary McAlesse, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University, Belfast and Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies.
Born Mary Leneghan, in June 1951, in Belfast President McAleese is the first Irish head of state to come from the North. Her father is from Croghan, Co. Roscommon and her mother is from Mahgera, Co. Derry. Her father had a famous pub in the Falls area of Belfast, the Long Bar on Leeson Street. After losing their business and home in Belfast during the "troubles", Mary's parents moved in the early 1970's to Rostrevor, Co. Down. Mary is the eldest of nine children. Family holidays were spent in Roscommon and the President still takes breaks there, at her granparents' cottage at Croghan.
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Volume 4, Issue 2
Determined reporter paid with her life to expose criminal underworld
In the mid-1990's, a meteoric but doomed rise, one of the most intense women in Irish journalism history brought the underbelly of Dublin and its cold-blooded criminal class to public attention through her articles.
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