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Happy—As Best You Can—St Patrick’s Day by cineSOURCE staff
Students from Aquinas College in Minnesota, get their Irish on. photo: courtesy Aquinas College
IN THESE TROUBLED TIMES, WHO
better to honor than the Irish.
First and foremost, we must maintain our cultural rituals, even if only symbolically, for the healthful balance they provide. Second, the Irish have long provided song, good cheer and art, despite suffering at the hands of the English, the Potato Famine, dislocating immigration and severe poverty.
Moreover, the Irish are pretty model multiculturalists. First in their immigration across all English-speaking lands (and some non, like Mexico). Then their integration in those societies and mixed marriages with other oppressed tribes.
And finally their recovery from the 2008 recession, their emergence as a modern economy titan AND their acceptance of immigrants to Ireland. While the above picture highlights integration in Minnesota, which has long had a large Somali population, Ireland itself—population only five million—has accepted over a half million immigrants, mostly from the European Union, of which it is a member, but also hundreds from Somalia.
While there are the inevitable complications, the Irish err on the side of true love, rejecting conspiracies of hate and fear for kindness and optimism, and the healing of advanced ideas and art.
And so we celebrate St. Patrick's Day and the Irish doubly, both in history and example and by lifting a Guinness and saying:
“Sláinte,” Gaelic for health and pronounced “slawn-cha.” Posted on Mar 17, 2020 - 07:40 PM