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St.
Patrick's Day Parade Part II --- Stories from an Irish lady who
used to participate in the parade.
Stories by one
of our friends who usually participates in the St. Paul St. Patrick's Day
Parade: She is half Irish and half Swedish.
Her clan
usually marches as a group in the parade, but this year St. Patrick's Day was on
a Monday, when everybody had to work. So they decided not to do the
parade this year. For her clan this day is one of the annual union and
after the parade they will go on a picnic to have pizzas since her
uncle has a big portable oven for pizzas to serve for 50 people;
this is cool!
For parades, two leaders of the group hold a banner which paints the family name
like
Pic 1.
Now we can understand why some banners were followed by many people like 100
while some by fewer people like 10 or 20 because some clans are small while are
big. We saw many clans*. This
reminds me of the
US
because Irish used
to be new immigrants too. We're sure that they have been proud of
that they are Irish as successful settlers in the
US
because their
ancestors ventured into this country ages ago. Besides clans, we saw at least
few kinds of Irish dogs which are famous. Also, bagpipers led the
parade. We thought the bagpipes were more for the Scottish, but it looks
like they represent the Irish as well. Parade marchers often
interact with spectators in many ways, which is kind of nice.
We
stopped by the
Landmark
Center
to check what the
Irish (Step) Dance & Music looked like**. Youths on the stage,
the majority of whom were girls, were performing the Irish Step Dance to
live music. This dance looked the same as River Dance.
(See
pix)
The Irish Step Dance (maybe the Celtic Dance as well) has been
popular since River Dance and Lord of the Dance became popular in the
1990s. The music is so cheerful. There are several booths that
sell Irish stuff. Most of the crafts are Celtic. The metallic
Celtic items look really cool!
By the way, the St. Paul Parade started at
noon
and the
Minneapolis Parade was performed in the evening. We heard that on
this day all the public buses in Twin Cities Metro areas were free for
people not to drive cars.
Tips:
People may ask you, "Are you Irish?" Probably "Good
answer" would be, "Yes, I'm Irish for Today." (Note:
Everybody is Irish for this day) After this, if someone continues to ask
you, "How about tomorrow?", then you may say, for example, "I'll
be Japanese tomorrow."
J
Words:
family < clan < tribe
*) For examples, Callagan, Callaghan, Carrigan,
Coleman
, Conley, Connelly,
Conroy, Fitzpatrick, Gibbons, Kennedy, Madden, McMahon, O'Malley, O'Neill,
O'Shea, O'Toole
**) At an event you usually get a wrist band by paying the admission ($4 for
this event) . You have to put it around your
wrist and the two ends fasten together by adhesives while at the event
place. This wrist band is a kind of neat way to check if a
person has already paid the admission or not. Note: It's impossible
to give the wristband to others because you have to tear the band.
Japanese
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