St. Patrick's Day

My friends Marilyn and Donna celebrating St. Patrick's Day in 2015 in the Circle@Crown Café.  Notice they are wearing green.  Neither of them is still with us, but today (reminded by this photo) I'll think of them and St. Patrick, patron saint of Ireland, who is said to have died on March 17 around 493 A.D.

Let me end this blog post with a bit of humor:  "A best friend is like a four-leaf clover:  hard to find and lucky to have."

An Irish proverb for St. Patrick's Day

The background color is green for St. Patrick's Day,

and I loved a black cat that I named Clawdia.

So this proverb is perfect for my blog today.

I miss you, Clawdia, my little black kitty with a heart on your chest.

Books worth sharing

Today is St. Patrick's Day.  It is a holiday to commemorate Patrick's death.  He's the patron saint of Ireland, and this day was chosen because he died on March 17th around the year 492.

I wish a happy St. Patrick's Day to all of us who are Irish and those who want to be Irish, even if only for this one single day each year.

I'll be wearing GREEN today.  Would you like to join me?  I wish you the luck of the Irish:

May good luck be with you wherever you go, / and your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow. /  May your days be many and your troubles be few. / May all of God's blessings descend upon you. / May peace be within you. / May your heart be strong. / May you find what you're seeking wherever you roam.

Did you just now read that in a sing-songy way as I did?  Oh, yeah, I thought you did.

The Night Country ~ by Loren Eisley, 1947, social science (Nebraska), 241 pages

Toward the end of his life, Loren Eiseley reflected on the mystery of life, throwing light on those dark places traversed by himself and centuries of humankind.  The Night Country is a gift of wisdom and beauty from the famed anthropologist.  It describes his needy childhood in Nebraska, reveals his increasing sensitivity to the odd and ordinary in nature, and focuses on a career that turns him inward as he reaches outward for answers in old bones (from the back cover).

The Covenant of Water ~ by Abraham Verghese, 2023, literary fiction (India), 736 pages

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, the story is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction:  in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning — and in Kerala, water is everywhere.  At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time.  From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl — and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi — will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.

My neighbor is reading those two books

Betty, who lives across the hall from me, emailed me about one of them:  "Would love to hand it over to you when I’m finished."  After I read the books, she and I plan to discuss them.

Something Worth Leaving Behind ~ by Brett Beavers and Tom Douglas, introduction by Lee Ann Womack, 2002, inspiration, 66 pages, 10/10

If I will love then I will find

I have touched another life and that's something

Something worth leaving behind

Deb at Readerbuzz hosts the Sunday Salon

St. Patrick's Day

Pizza sounds good to me, though it is NOT very Irish for St. Patrick's Day, is it?  Notice the shamrock shape of the topping.  Not GREEN, but I wouldn't want GREEN pepperoni, if that's what that is.  Or is it strawberries?  Or tomatoes?  Oh, well.  Happy St. Patrick's Day, anyway!  Today, I'll try to remember to wear GREEN, because my ancestry is part Irish.

Why do we wear GREEN on this day?  Leprechauns are actually one reason we're supposed to wear GREEN on St. Patrick's Day — or risk getting pinched.

The tradition is tied to folklore that says wearing GREEN will make you invisible to leprechauns, who like to pinch anyone they can see.

I speak fluent Blarney

Yes, I truly DO speak fluent Blarney (talk that aims to charm, pleasantly flatter, or persuade).

Yes, I'm part Irish (along with Scottish, English, and French).  Today is St. Patrick's Day, so let's celebrate by wearing green!

I have a choice of green shirts, and I have some green beads like those in the calendar photo.  I may even wear my light green pants.  By the way, did I forget to mention that today EVERYONE is a little bit Irish?  So go for it and have a great time!

I often find myself pondering strange ideas, like the odd fact that 39 years ago when I was 39 years old, I did something foolish on St. Patrick's Day.  That was half my lifetime ago!  So today, I'll let it go and be happy that it was something that I could (and did) un-do.  I'm just glad it was St. Patrick's Day and not April Fool's Day!