Category: St. Patrick

Corn beef

Roger O’Green here. It’s not just because my last name is Green, and my middle initial is O, that I’ve always related to St. Patrick’s Day. It’s the Irish potato famine story of the 1840s that brought so many Irish to the United States which has always resonated with me. Indeed, it was a black man and and Irishwoman whose marriage in the 1870s formed the foundation of one of my favorite books, The Sweeter the Juice.

More to the point, there is a daguerreotype of a woman, some ancestor of my maternal grandmother, who we believe to be Irish, still in my mother’s possession. So when I’m doing the wearin’ of the green, I come by it (faintly) naturally.

I was walking past a bar/restaurant in Albany yesterday and there was a handwritten sign describing a “corn beef and cabbage” dinner. Oh, where is that guy Jeff Deck when I really need him? He would have corrected the sign to “corned beef”.

Here’s my favorite corned beef story, which happened ten years ago this week, but which I wrote about a mere three years ago. ROG

ROG

An Irish Blessing


(Found here)

From JEOPARDY!, Thursday, May 17, 2007
The largest art theft in U.S. history was at 1:24 a.m. on this date in 1990, while Boston slumbered after partying.
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Apparently, there could have been some ethno-theological near-catastrophe going on today: St. Patrick’s Day arrived during Holy Week. This convergence hasn’t happened since 1940, when the wearing of the green collided with Palm Sunday, and before that, 1913, with the holiday on Monday of the sacred period. Of course, Albany, with its large Irish Catholic population, had its parade, check that, PARADES and The St. Patrick’s Day mass, which CANNOT, apparently, be substituted for one of the Holy Week masses, on Saturday. So there can be time for both the saints AND the sinners, who, of course, are usually the same people.

Naturally, every day is St. Patrick’s Day for me; with a name like Roger O’Green, how can it be otherwise?

So my friend Mary sent me some appropriate factoids from something called FITNET:

There is a factoid floating around that Coca-Cola was originally green. To the best of my research this is false and would fall under the category of urban legend. Although the concoction was at one time sold in green bottles. Maybe the rumor was related to the position the company takes on the environment.

“Lord, keep my memory green.” -Charles Dickens

“Research is a scientific activity dedicated to discovering what makes grass green.” -Russell Baker

“A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, ‘At my age, I don’t even buy green bananas.'” -Claude Pepper

“Are you green and growing or ripe and rotting?” -Ray Kroc

“Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.” -Barbara Jordan

“If you can sell green toothpaste in this country, you can sell opera.” -Sarah Caldwell

“I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia.” -Dorothy Parker

“It’s not easy being green.” -Kermit the Frog
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The JEOPARDY! question: What is March 18? (Check the time!)

ROG

ROG
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