Faith and Begorrah
Mamacita says: 
May you be buried in a
casket made from the wood
of a 100 year old oak
That I shall plant tomorrow.
Oh, tis a wondrous thing to be Irish, although the same could not be 
said earlier in our country’s history. Many people do not know how unwelcome the Irish were here, in those days. We’ve since learned wisdom. About the Irish, anyway; some people are still working on wisdom in general.
I loved to read about Beany Malone for so many reasons, some of which were the casual ways their Irish ancestry was a part of their everyday lives. Beany’s cousin Sheila McBride was the also the source of one of my favorite expressions, “pogue ma’ hone.” It means, “the back of my hand to you.”
Click here for some cool St. Patrick’s Day experiments for you and your kids to do, stolen borrowed from the Master Magician Scientist, Steve Spangler.
What’s a little green water between friends?
This picture is by Tim Nyberg, a fantastic artist who draws awesome things which look even more awesome than they originally looked before he drew them so awesomely. He drew this one for the Wittenburg Door, which is a wonderful thing in and of itself; the site is down right now but you can still see it in its archived glory. (Don’t click the link if the corncob makes you walk funny.)
What is it supposed to be?
Why, it’s St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, of course.
It was no mean feat, and I should know.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all. If you’re not wearing green, strangers are allowed to pinch you.
What’s that? I can’t hear you. Come a little closer. . . thaaaaat’s right. Gotcha.
I repost this, adding a little here and there and subtracting a little likewise, each March 17, so if it looks familiar to you, you’re not crazy. Well, not about this post, anyway.
Pogue Ma’Hone to you all, for you know why you deserve it even if I don’t.
Beware the Ides of March
Mamacita quotes from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: Act 1, scene 2, 15–19
Caesar: Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar!” Speak; Caesar is turn’d to hear.
Soothsayer: Beware the Ides of March.
Caesar: What man is that?
Brutus: A soothsayer bids you beware the Ides of March.
And what, pray tell, are the Ides of March, that Caesar needed to be warned against them? Should we all beware the Ides of March? What are Ides?
There is no reason for any of us to beware the Ides of March. Or the Ides of September. Or the Ides of February. Etc. Heck, my beautiful daughter was born on the Ides of June.
The Ides of any month are simply the 15th of any month. The soothsayer (truthspeaker) was merely warning Caesar that something bad was going to happen on March 15. Caesar had already had other warnings – one from his wife! Caesar was very superstitious and took the warning seriously; however, this didn’t prevent him from leaving the house on March 15 anyway and walking out into the public forum.
. . . . where his best friends were waiting for him with daggers, whereupon they jumped him and stabbed him to death. For his own good, and for the good of Rome, they believed.
Caesar was just too ambitious, they thought. So, rather than risk his rise to power and popularity, they offed their best friend.
Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius – the three musketeers, the Bobbsey triplets, the inseparable pals. Caesar trusted them; he loved them; they were his friends.
Which is why, when Caesar saw who was attacking him, he cried out, in disbelief, “Et tu, Brute?” Which means, simply, “Even you, Brutus?”
But Brutus and Cassius, and the others, had realized that their pal Caesar was a little too cocky for Rome’s own good, and when even one’s best friend brags in public that he was as elite and cool as a god, one must do something to protect the nation.
“Beware the Ides of March.” And now you know what that means, and why Caesar was warned to be careful of that day.
It was, like, you know, cuz the soothsayer somehow knew that Caesar’s dearest and most beloved friends had had enough of his bragging about his coolness and were going to take him down. And they did.
But even when I was a kid and first read that scene, something inside of me SAW the expression on the man’s face when he realized that his best friend in all the world had stabbed him in the back. It was a heartbreaker.
And now you have a perfect example of another expression. Backstabber. Stabbed in the back.
Shakespeare is so awesome; I loved the language even as an elementary student. It’s exactly the same language that you’ll find in the King James Version of the Bible, which I also love.
Perhaps one of you can also answer a question that has puzzled Shakespeare fans for years: Why in the world did the man bequeath his second-best bed to his wife?
I tend to agree with Jane of Lantern Hill, who was of the opinion that “Perhaps she liked it best.”
P.S. Don’t be afraid of the language. Relax, and try to see the poetry and the amazing graphics in Shakespeare’s witty turn of phrase. It’ll knock your socks off, if you let it.
Big Speakers. Not A Euphemism.
Mamacita says: Back when I was in college, one of my friends had a map of North America on a corkboard, hanging on his wall. When things were slow, we would take turns throwing a dart at the map, and wherever the dart landed, we would hop in a car and drive there.
A couple of times the dart landed in Canada or Mexico; with my supreme skill at the bad lucks I always had mono or strep then.
Eventually we made a rule that it had to be a place that we could reach and return from, over one weekend. That helped immensely. Mike cut down the map to show only those places.
Sometimes, we just had time to cross a state line before we had to head back to school. Why did we do this so often? I don’t know. We were in college. We were young. We were creatively silly. Do you really need a reason? We didn’t. It was fun. And we were young enough that going almost anywhere without asking permission first was a novelty. To cross a state line was a high that couldn’t be gotten any other way. I never mentioned this to my parents. Mom still doesn’t know.
Mom still doesn’t know lots of things.
I’m counting on you all not to tell her. Thank you very much.
Mike, the map’s keeper, was a great guy. Cute, too. He was an awesome dancer, and had the biggest stereo speakers of anyone I knew. (Back then, that was a plus, not a minus!) (This is not a euphemism.) (Then again, I wouldn’t know.) He could supply the music for an entire neighborhood with a flick of a switch, and often did. We used to go dancing all the time, a large group of us, at a club attached to a semi-sleazy motel on the far east side of town. It’s no longer there. I was always thankful that it never got raided when I was there; my parents would have removed me from college and put me in a convent school. And we weren’t even Catholic.
By “semi-sleazy,” I mean that it had a working neon sign. Truly sleazy motels don’t have neon. Or if by chance they do, it doesn’t work. At least one letter is blown out of a sleazy motel neon sign. It’s a rule.
And I never saw the inside of the motel, so I can’t enlighten you about that. Which is not to say that I was never ASKED. . . . .
I dated Mike for a year, in college. Several years ago, I got a call from one of the old ‘gang’ and was told that Mike had died. Of AIDS. His partner was calling people in Mike’s address book to let them know. I hadn’t even known he was gay. Everybody else did, and knew it even back then, but I never suspected. It wouldn’t have made any difference; I would have still liked him; but I didn’t know. Looking back, I can see it, but at the time, I didn’t.
Maybe that was why he was never pushy about the motel. He asked, but he never insisted.
Whenever I think back on college memories, his face is what I see first. I wish I could still see it. Somehow, wherever he was, everybody was happy, everywhere was fun, and everything was cool. He was so funny, so kind, so snarky, so witty. He also wore hilarious boxers. To dinner. When he was at our table, it didn’t much matter what the menu had in store for us; dinner was awesome when he was sitting with us.
Wherever he is now, I’m sure he is having that same effect. Big speakers and all.
P.S. Definitely not a euphemism. BIG speakers.
P.P.S. Shut up.
P.P.P. S. I really miss him.
