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Deep Thoughts
Mar. 17th, 2014 06:27 pmI had a kind of deep thought about Tumblr today. Tumblr is, for me, like Pinterest, but with all things fannish. Shawn can lose a day just re-pinning pretty, useful, interesting, curious things she finds on Pinterest. Me, I can do the same on Tumblr, because it's, like, all the things *I* love.
Yep. That's it. That's kind of all I've got.
Brilliant, right?
If you can't tell, it's a bad allergy day for me. Here's a stinker: somewhere around 40, I developed pretty intense allergies. Spring seems to be all about my eyes itching and running and my nose dripping. If it has a season, I'm probably allergic to it. Snow mold? *achoo!* Tree pollen? *ATCH-hoo!* etc., etc., etc.
Oh, and it's St. Patrick's Day. I woke Mason up with the story of Irish history, as told by me. "Once upon a time, there was an island so green, it was call the Emerald Isle...." and it went from there to the Pale to 1916 to the Partition to how grandpa once met Martin McGuinness and didn't even know it. So, maybe you can see the slant. I will say I tried to color in many of the shades of gray as possible, despite my obvious leanings. And it was a short story, so it's not like he got the complete indoctrination... ;-)
Then, just because I was on a roll, I dug out one of my old cassette tapes (because our car still has a cassette player) and I regaled my poor family with a lot of loud Irish rebel music on the way to work and school. Afterwards, Mason told me he had vague memories of me singing some of these song to him (which I did) when he was really little. He asked, "Isn't there one that goes, 'duh-da-something of the I.R.A.!" And I sang for him, "The broad, black brimmer of the I.R.A."
Probably you think I was brain-washing my infant, but the truth of the matter is [a) I probably was, don't we all?] and b) to be fair, infant-Mason loved the sound of voices, so we sang to him a LOT. The only songs I knew all the words to happened to be Irish rebel songs. Shawn made me hum the more violent bits of "Sean South," but otherwise there was a lot of 'for our native land!' etc., for Mason.
Which, of course, is also only strange because I have not a drop of Irish blood in me--at least so far as my family knows. We're German, Czech and Polish for the most part (though our surnames never seem to quite match the countries we're from Wieland from Poland, Klein from Bohemia, Morehouse from Germany, etc.)
Mason's donor, C105, (as we call him, since it was his catalogue number), listed his ethnicity as 100% Irish, so Mason is at least half and a bit more from Shawn's side.
But my interest in Irish politics has always been kind of baffling. It's one of the few things in my life that I look at and I honestly wonder: past life? Because I remember, very clearly, some time in the 1980s getting a copy of some political newspaper, it might even have been called "Arise!" and reading articles about South Africa and all sorts of injustice all over the whole world, but the one bit that I read over and over with mounting fury? A story about Bobby Sands and the Hunger Strikers. After that, even the tiniest AP articles reprinted in our LaCrosse newspaper about this land I've no connection to nor have ever visited, would get me furious... or hopeful... but whatever the feeling, it was always INTENSE.
At one point in the late 1990s, I had an on-line subscription to An Phoblacht. I read all of it, cover to cover, but the thing I lingered on? The notices about death anniversaries. There'd be this little section in the back with one or two lines, "For my brother Bryce, who died on the streets of Derry...." or whatever.
So, I can't explain it, but I can sing you a rousing chorus of "Come Out, Ye Black and Tans" on a moment's notice!
Yep. That's it. That's kind of all I've got.
Brilliant, right?
If you can't tell, it's a bad allergy day for me. Here's a stinker: somewhere around 40, I developed pretty intense allergies. Spring seems to be all about my eyes itching and running and my nose dripping. If it has a season, I'm probably allergic to it. Snow mold? *achoo!* Tree pollen? *ATCH-hoo!* etc., etc., etc.
Oh, and it's St. Patrick's Day. I woke Mason up with the story of Irish history, as told by me. "Once upon a time, there was an island so green, it was call the Emerald Isle...." and it went from there to the Pale to 1916 to the Partition to how grandpa once met Martin McGuinness and didn't even know it. So, maybe you can see the slant. I will say I tried to color in many of the shades of gray as possible, despite my obvious leanings. And it was a short story, so it's not like he got the complete indoctrination... ;-)
Then, just because I was on a roll, I dug out one of my old cassette tapes (because our car still has a cassette player) and I regaled my poor family with a lot of loud Irish rebel music on the way to work and school. Afterwards, Mason told me he had vague memories of me singing some of these song to him (which I did) when he was really little. He asked, "Isn't there one that goes, 'duh-da-something of the I.R.A.!" And I sang for him, "The broad, black brimmer of the I.R.A."
Probably you think I was brain-washing my infant, but the truth of the matter is [a) I probably was, don't we all?] and b) to be fair, infant-Mason loved the sound of voices, so we sang to him a LOT. The only songs I knew all the words to happened to be Irish rebel songs. Shawn made me hum the more violent bits of "Sean South," but otherwise there was a lot of 'for our native land!' etc., for Mason.
Which, of course, is also only strange because I have not a drop of Irish blood in me--at least so far as my family knows. We're German, Czech and Polish for the most part (though our surnames never seem to quite match the countries we're from Wieland from Poland, Klein from Bohemia, Morehouse from Germany, etc.)
Mason's donor, C105, (as we call him, since it was his catalogue number), listed his ethnicity as 100% Irish, so Mason is at least half and a bit more from Shawn's side.
But my interest in Irish politics has always been kind of baffling. It's one of the few things in my life that I look at and I honestly wonder: past life? Because I remember, very clearly, some time in the 1980s getting a copy of some political newspaper, it might even have been called "Arise!" and reading articles about South Africa and all sorts of injustice all over the whole world, but the one bit that I read over and over with mounting fury? A story about Bobby Sands and the Hunger Strikers. After that, even the tiniest AP articles reprinted in our LaCrosse newspaper about this land I've no connection to nor have ever visited, would get me furious... or hopeful... but whatever the feeling, it was always INTENSE.
At one point in the late 1990s, I had an on-line subscription to An Phoblacht. I read all of it, cover to cover, but the thing I lingered on? The notices about death anniversaries. There'd be this little section in the back with one or two lines, "For my brother Bryce, who died on the streets of Derry...." or whatever.
So, I can't explain it, but I can sing you a rousing chorus of "Come Out, Ye Black and Tans" on a moment's notice!