Erin Go Blog

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all my fellow Irish, and anyone else who feels like being Irish for a day (as I noted on Twitter, a "day pass" is free). Not only am i wearing green, but the green in question is a T-shirt that came from Ireland itself, when Mom and Dad went there a few years ago (Mom and Dad went to Ireland, and all I got was a pretty cool T-shirt...and some Guinness, though I would have enjoyed the factory tour they took even more). My T-shirt says Sláinte!, which is an old Irish toast roughly meaning "good health." As I noted a few years ago, it was a popular slogan for the Bennigan's restaurant chain, which lost its good health a few years ago. (UPDATE: Someone at a place where I ate later in the day saw the shirt and immediately asked me if it came from Bennigan's. Heh.)

Once again, it's spring break, so I don't get to see the amusement that takes place when the kids at school who forgot to wear green find creative ways to avoid being pinched (safety-pinning a green ribbon to one's shirt--or even a piece of green construction paper--was a popular avoidance technique). But I imagine that there will be a lot of green to be seen when I'm out and about later in the day.

So what do you plan on doing to celebrate the day today? As I've said before, I'm not a big fan of group identity politics or anything of the sort, but I'm perfectly happy to spend one day a year celebrating the most outward portion of my heritage (I'm only a quarter Irish, with the rest being English and French, but my name is pretty much all Irish, all the time).

Another celebration of Green: Best of luck to the men's basketball team from my alma mater, North Texas, which is playing Kansas State in the first round of the Big Dance tomorrow. It'll even be on TV locally, at the expense of the Baylor game that's slated to tip off around the same time. Kudos to CBS 11 for realizing who the "home" team is between the two.