Ireland

Ireland joined the growing group of countries that offer national recognition of same sex couples with passage of the Civil Partnership law. So the country that many of my ancestors came from, that was very conservative until recently, with laws against divorce and abortion, has now jumped ahead of the US in recognizing at least partial equality for gay and lesbian couples. I wonder why the Democratic party here, whose leader, our President, claims that he supports granting the same rights to same sex couples that married heterosexual couples have, hasn't introduced some form of national civil partnership. The Democrats want our votes and our money for their elections this fall, but where is their support for us? Maybe I should become a Green. I really agree with more of their agenda than the Democrats', but a vote for the Greens takes one away from the Democrats, which is almost the same as voting for a Republican - look at Florida in 2000 (thanks Ralph Nader) for proof.

wearing green

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone. My mom's family is about half Irish, and I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, which has a big parade and party on St. Patrick's Day each year. The last time that I was there, over 20 years ago, it just seemed to be an excuse for everyone to get drunk though.

So today I'm wearing green - socks, pants, shirt, tie, all in totally different and clashing shades of green. (My husband David told me that if I was wearing green underwear not to show anyone - I once showed my purple underwear when a coworker commented on her purple bra. Do something once and you're labeled forever.) The tie even has shamrocks. Why not go all out?

Speaking of shamrocks, the one thing that drives my mother crazy is people confusing a shamrock and a four leaf clover. The shamrock has three leaves, not four. She's normally quite but anyone who confuses the two gets a lecture from her about the difference and the history of the shamrock. I won't go into it here but you can probably find it on Wikipedia.

I think about my Irish ancestors today. Imagine leaving your home country, never to return, because people were literally starving. But the unbelievable part of the Irish potato famine is that Ireland exported food during that time. The English land owners exported the food grown on their farms, even as the natives were dying. Even today there are areas with large unmarked mass graves from what I saw on a documentary. But there wasn't a mass uprising and war about the situation. Why not? Were my ancestors too meek? Maybe someone who knows more about this can enlighten me.