February is usually the worst month of winter here, but this year March is vying to usurp that dubious honor. We’ve had far more snow in March than we had in December, January, or February and it disgusts me. The big snow that fell last week created a problem for us that we hadn’t had to deal with before. An ice dam formed on the front porch roof (that’s ice dam, not damn ice, although I might have muttered that under my breath at some point last week). A thick ridge of ice formed along the edge of the front porch roof, filling the gutter and creating big icicles that dripped down onto the steps coating them in ice and making them treacherous. No matter how much salt we spread on the steps, the constantly dripping water washed it away and the ice reformed. One morning, Hannah slipped and fell on it. Finally, on Wednesday, we bought a gutter heating cable and between us, Stacey and I managed to install it in the ice filled gutter. It alleviated the problem a little.
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| Ice trouble on the front porch. |
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| Putting up heating cable. |
On Thursday the temperature rose to almost 50°. I was not in school that day. Around noon I heard the thumps as the icicles dropped off the south-facing side of the house. The front of the house, the part with the porch and the ice problem, faces north and did not benefit as much from the warmish sunshine. The icicles on the second story eaves dropped off, but the ice dam, though slightly diminished, remained through most of the day – dripping, dripping, dripping. It finally disintegrated late in the afternoon.
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| When the sun warms protruding stalks in the long border. |
Just before chore time, I went out and sat in my little greenhouse for half an hour. It was a lovely 78° in there. Despite the warmth of the day, the chickens did not venture out into their yard. They don’t like to walk in the snow. After Hannah got home from work that afternoon, she and I took a walk up the road to the hollow. It was too nice to stay indoors, but too snowy to do much more than walk on the road. The road was not too muddy, but in the hollow it was icy so we turned around and came back.
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| View from inside the greenhouse. |
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| Our walk up the road. |
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| The hollow, still icy. |
Friday was Saint Patrick’s Day. It was a gray and rainy day, which from what I understand of Ireland’s climate, was appropriate. I am not Irish. As far as I know, I don’t have any Irish ancestry. In fact, my ancestors were probably among the English oppressors of the Irish, at least on my father’s side. But even so, I’ve long had a fascination for the Irish and the other Celtic peoples. I’m not sure where it came from. During much of my formative years, I lived around my maternal grandfather, who was of solid Pennsylvania German stock and very outspoken in his dislike of most ethnic groups (a real life Archie Bunker). He had a very low opinion of the Irish (and just about everyone else). Somehow, sometime along the way, I became fascinated with the Celtic peoples – the Irish, Scots, and Welsh. Much later, in my early twenties, I even tried to learn Welsh, out of a book, which proved impossible. They don’t seem to use enough vowels. I think my love of the Irish might have started in elementary school when we made happy art projects for Saint Patrick’s Day – pictures of shamrocks and leprechauns and rainbows with pots of gold – and we learned Irish songs. After all these years, I can still sing Sweet Molly Malone, Danny Boy, and one verse of The Wearing of the Green. But I don’t remember ever doing anything special at home for Saint Patrick’s Day back then – we ate no special food, we put up no decorations. We weren’t Irish – and Grandad wouldn’t have approved of pretending we were.
In 1972 we moved to Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Chicago is crazy for the Irish. While we lived there I saw for the first time some huge Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations – decorated houses, parades, parties – they dye the Chicago River green! It didn’t matter if you were Irish or not. On Saint Patrick’s Day everyone was Irish.
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| The Chicago River on Saint Patrick's Day. |
My wife’s family, on the other hand, has a solid Irish line. Her third great grandparents, John McDonnell and Margaret Campbell and their seven children, including her great-great-grandmother, Jane McDonnell Shillig, immigrated from County Antrim, Ireland, to the United States in 1845, settling in Iowa. So after Stacey and I were married, our family had a real reason to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m sure my children can remember years when we had a dinner of corned beef and cabbage (although I found out later that the Irish in Ireland consider that a purely American thing) and everything on the menu was green – green salad, green jello, mint ice cream, green frosting on a green cake, green Kool-Aid to drink. Like the Chicago River, there was a lot green dye involved.
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| Stacey's Irish grandma, Jane McDonnell Shillig. |
We do love Celtic music at our house. Frequently on an evening Miriam will play her tin whistle and Hannah her violin, I’ll attempt to play the bodhran (an Irish drum), and Stacey will play her autoharp and we’ll work our way through Irish jigs and reels and ballads. We aren’t very good, but we have fun and sometimes we don’t sound half bad.
During the week I listened to various sorts of Irish songs – bawdy pub songs, lively jigs and reels, heartbreaking ballads, and sentimental love songs. Some in English, some in Gaelic, which makes almost any song sound mystical and sad. There are so many Irish songs about tragedy, drinking, and death, but they make them all sound lovely. Oddly, the song I consider to be the most Irish of them all, Danny Boy, was written by Frederick Weatherly, an Englishman. It is not as old a song as you might think. The lyrics were written in 1910 and in 1913 it was set to the Irish folk tune, Londonderry Air. Still I love it, maybe partly because for so many years I was called Danny. A good rendition of it can move me to tears. It is, like so many Irish ballads, a sad song.
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,
It's I'll be there in sunshine or in shadow,—
Oh, Danny boy, Oh Danny boy, I love you so!
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Avé there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!
There are varying opinions about its meaning. Some believe it is a parent singing to a son going off to war, others say the son is leaving Ireland to live in another country. Despite being famously sung by tenors, one of the earliest printings of the music says it is only to be sung by a woman.
The Irish seem to have a genetic sadness in them, I think. So much of what they sing about is their love and longing for Ireland. That’s because so many of them left Ireland. Since around 1700, between 9 and 10 million people born in Ireland have emigrated. That’s more than the population of Ireland itself, which at its historical peak on the eve of the Great Famine, was 8.5 million. The poorest of them went just across the Irish Sea to Great Britain. Those who could afford it went further, including almost 5 million to the United States. The current population of Ireland is only around 5 million, but an estimated 80 million people worldwide claim some Irish descent, which includes more than 36 million Americans. I am not one of them, but Stacey and my children can make that claim. I would love to visit Ireland someday.
This year for Saint Patrick’s Day we invited the Shilligs and our friends Bob and Nancy Jones over for dinner. We had our traditional (American) Saint Patrick’s Day menu – corned beef brisket cooked with cabbage, potatoes, and carrots, Hannah made a pistachio salad (it’s green), Nancy brought green jello salad, Julie brought cornbread, and for dessert Miriam made us mint brownies (green again), angel food cake,and dark chocolate gelato. It was all delicious and we enjoyed the conversation as much as we did the food.
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| Our Saint Patrick's Day dinner. |
Saturday was cold and blustery. There were light flurries of snow off and on all day with bursts of sunshine in between. Today it is the same. On the way home from church we hit thick squalls of snow that lasted a few minutes and then were gone. A moment ago I looked out the window and it was snowing so hard I could hardly see the Shillig’s house across the garden. Now the sun is shining. But the weather map gives me hope. For most of the week it is supposed to be in the 40's and 50's. Maybe by the end of the week the snow will be gone and there will crocuses. We are leaving on Thursday to go down to North Carolina to visit family there. I promised my mother back in October that we would come. The Thayns are also going. We won’t be home again until next Monday. Kurt and Julie are minding the farm while we are gone. The Journal will be late next week, but it will be filled with the details of our adventure. Until then, good Sabbath.
