Wearin' O The Green

My people are more Celtic Scottish than Irish, and in the end, if I felt like forking over the bucks for DNA analysis, probably more Ancient Russian tribal with its Asian roots and Teutonic embellishments, but on St. Pat's everyone within striking distance of Chicago is Irish. And so we wear our glowing green, and I paint on Shamrocks and don my ridiculous hats. And I sip a Jameson and read some McCourt in a quiet place.

I have been to the Emerald Isle thrice. It always feels like home. I feel like I am on a very long road to get back to a flat in Galway, or a cottage on the western coast, where fairies might live amid the moss, and the lilt of the speech and the sadness of the tunes gets into my very bones and feels like my own heartbeat. The Irish are a race of tale tellers, and there is something quite old and tribally, limnally very human about them.

So lift a glass to me homeys today.