Here are some hilariously....

Mixed feelings about St. Patrick's Day....

Sure and the color green first brings to mind good things – it is the color of life, springtime, money, or a green light to go on and get there in time. The Green Movement is positive in favor o’ the planet. These green things and absinthe, we like a lot.


We have mixed feelings about Saint Patrick’s Day, just as not everything green is all that good – there being the green of nausea, or infection, or algae in the fish tank.

My wife’s of Irish blood, and lived there awhile as a young teacher. There an old tinker woman held her face, looked in her eyes and recognized her from a former life. There she saw Ogham symbols carved in trees and stones, or stones stacked in a special secret way at gravesites, a silence and a subtlety that spoke volumes about Catholic oppression in centuries past.

Come the Internet, there came a worthy worldwide revival known as Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism. We have no reverence for such “saints” as Patrick, and would not care to celebrate the cruel scourge he instigated to replace Celts and Druids with Christians.

Crediting old Pat with driving snakes from Eire is almost as wrong and silly as young-earth creationism. There never had been any snakes there – the Ice Age saw to that.

I always remember the 17th of March as the anniversary of my departure from Hendrick Medical Center. They drove me out proper, they did, in good Christian style.

SGTex
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It's my birthday....

.... and I've spent much of the day thanking my wonderful Facebook friends for the sweet greetings they've been leaving on my wall.

Is the rest of the world as involved as we are (I am) with social networking?  Frankly, it would be a different world if we hadn't the ability to chat across the miles.  I was telling someone today how often one of my friends on the other side of the planet is on their way to bed and I'm just getting up and wishing them a good day, lol. 

I thought this cartoon was cute.  Every time SGTex coughs or sneezes he gets a "Bless you!" from me...and vice versa, so I kinda related to these sheep, haha.

Well, I must say it's been quite a day.  A good part of it was getting the chance to talk to family folks.  That doesn't happen too often, with me being down here in Texas in the middle of the prairie and they're quite a ways elsewhere.  Months can go by between conversations and years will pass between actual face-to-face visits.  That is not a good thing.  I haven't seen one brother for 13 years, now.  Some family members I have yet to meet.  What's up with that?!  Anyway, never mind.  I guess I'm allowed to get personal on my birthday, on my blog, right?  ;~)

I hope that when you have birthdays they are happy and makers of great memories.  There's salmon about to go on the grill out in the back yard and a chocolate cake with pink striped candles is waiting in the other room. 

So, I'm just sitting here at my desk wishing all of you the best possible day or night, wherever you are, and whatever time it is there.  If you happen to stop by and read this, don't be shy.  Say hello.

Love!

Shawn
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