St. Patrick's Day

When I went to buy the materials for these bows, the guy helping me happened to be from Southie and asked me if I was going to the parade. The truth is I've only been once, and it was okay. Actually there was a lot of racism (not directed at me) and I could feel my mindset changing just from those few minutes of being exposed to it. I was a teen back then. Well now my kids are really young and I just don't think it's a good idea and the guy at Home Depot from Southie agreed with me. Although a lot of people come in for the parade and see it as a very family friendly event. But I think it would just be too stressful with Jonah, who likes to run off into crowds. The fact that a lot of people are drunk doesn't help either.

But you know Chinese New Year used to be a very family UNfriendly event. With local thuggish types (who we all thought were cool) lighting firecrackers on themselves and punks throwing them at others and blowing up various things that should not be blown up. (I'll admit to being on the fringes and somewhat participatory in such activity. But it was because there was not much else to do. You couldn't go right up to the lion heads the way the audience can now with many teams. And I believe eventually CNY will have a ton of kids with their own lion heads, more like Halloween, and eventually the monetary take away for the teams will probably be mostly coupons, produce, pennies, and candy and not as much cash.

St. Patrick's day surely has more to offer than just drinking and violence. Or perhaps there is another way to go about such traditions. For instance plenty of drinking games can be changed into child friendly versions. And come to think of it you could brink back traditional Shilleagh (sail eille)fighting in a no-violent manner with pool noodles. There's Gaelic football, and why does the focus in the parade seem to be on cars. Often times not particularly interesting or different cars. Maybe I miss all the interesting stuff like Marching Bands and bagpipes that are at the beginning.

You have seen a change in St. Patirck's day specials. I think that came after Riverdance took off. Maybe someone should make a little fair that has someone presenting, performing, and maybe even teaching all of these Irish Cultural things, like for small children.

It was back to some half hearted stretching and animal poses this morning. The kids woke up at 6:30 so my warm up for a pre-workout ending up being my workout. But it was good, I sort of got everything I needed out of it. Noah has been less into Kung Fu since I made the bows, and archery was going to be our St. Patrick's Day activity, but I think it might be a little cold for that. Maybe we'll venture out for a little bit anyway. And today at the library there is St. Patrick's day arts and crafts.

Maybe I'll blast some Irish music or something.