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Posted by Jim on March 28, 2020
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Posted by Jim on March 5, 2020
Frances Mulraney @FrancesMulraney Mar 05, 2020
New York may have to hand over its title as the oldest St Patrick’s Day parade in the world. iStock
The world’s oldest St Patrick’s Day festival was in St. Augustine, Florida, some 420 years ago.
Boston and New York have long laid claim to being the centers of Irish immigration that saw the very start of St. Patrick’s Day parades before they had even started in Ireland itself with start-up dates of 1737 and 1762 respectively.
In truth, St Augustine in Florida beats them to the mark and is, in fact, home to the oldest St Patrick’s Day parade in the world. (Waterford in 1903 held the first St.Patrick’s Day parade in Ireland.)
According to new research unearthed in Florida, St Augustine may have well over a hundred years on Boston and New York, holding its first St Patrick’s Day celebration in 1600 and its first parade in 1601.
The sensational information was uncovered in December 2017 by historian Dr. J. Michael Francis in a gunpowder expenditures log in Spain’s Archivo General de Indias, or AGI. The documents reveal that spring festivities which included a feast day of San Patricio (St. Patrick) was held in the year 1600 in St. Augustine, Florida.
“While artillery pieces often were fired to help guide ships safely across St. Augustine’s protective sandbar, they were also fired during times of public celebrations and religious festivals,” Francis wrote in his blog for PBS.
“In March of 1601, St. Augustine’s residents gathered together and processed through the city’s streets in honor of an Irish saint, who appears to have assumed a privileged place in the Spanish garrison town. Indeed, during these same years, St. Patrick was identified as the official ‘protector’ of the city’s maize fields.”
The professor and Chair of the Department of History and Politics at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, has studied the records on and off over the past 30 years and he was certainly surprised to discover this information on a St Patrick’s Day celebration written in Spanish in Florida.
“It was certainly a surprise … it did not register the first time I looked through it. … It was written in Spanish, and it took a few seconds before it actually hit me that this was a St. Patrick’s Day parade/procession,” Francis explained to Renee Unsworth from totallystaugustine.com.
“I don’t know how much it will change the national perception (of St. Patrick’s Day) which has evolved into something so unique. … It certainly forces people to pause.”
St Augustine is regarded as the oldest city in the US. Image: iStock.
The news was also welcomed by recently-retired City of St. Augustine archaeologist Carl Halbirt who was recently named Parade Marshal of the 2018 St. Augustine St. Patrick’s Day Parade taking place on March 10.
“The history of St. Augustine, its diversity, and place in American (U. S.) heritage is often overlooked by people who do not live in Northeast Florida,” Halbert said to totallystaugustine.com.
“Yet, it is a city of firsts and oldest in terms of the country’s European ancestry. The discovery of this particular cultural tradition only adds to the city’s mystic and place. The late historian Luis Arana stated that ‘we have only scratched the tip of the iceberg’ regarding the historical records (and I might add the city’s buried archaeological record). Dr. Michael Francis’s discovery of these documents adds to St. Augustine’s cultural heritage.”
From his research, Francis believes that the St Patrick’s Day parade in St Augustine was influenced by the Irish priest Richard Arthur.
Read more: Leprechauns thank SantaCon for surpassing St. Patrick’s Day drunkenness
Did the first St Patrick’s Day parade take place here in St Augustine? Image; iStock.
“It is likely that Richard Arthur was responsible for the Irish saint’s short-lived prominence in St. Augustine,” he writes.
“When Arthur disappears from the historical records, so too do the references to the Irish saint, and soon thereafter, the memory of the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations and processions began to fade from public memory.
“Today, St. Patrick’s Day is one of St. Augustine’s most popular celebrations, but its early seventeenth-century origins have long been forgotten.”
While St Augustine could prove to be the oldest St Patrick’s Day parade in the world, as there was no continuation of the parade throughout the past 400 years, Boston and New York could still continue that they are the owners of the oldest continuous parade.
New York may have to hand over its St Patrick’s Day title. Image: iStock.
The first parade was held in New York on held on March 15, 1762, in Bowling Green in lower Manhattan. Before this time, St. Patrick’s Day was honored as a Catholic feast day on which a special Mass was attended and nothing more, but in a show of national pride, Irish soldiers within the British Army marched through Bowling Green in honor of their patron saint, with New Yorkers claiming that this would spark a trend that would result in the worldwide festivities we celebrate today.
Boston, on the other hand, could claim the first celebration but not first St. Patrick’s Day parade. On March 17, 1737, as a gesture of solidarity among the city’s new Irish immigrants, Boston’s Irish community joined together in festivities of their homeland.
Either way, all three locations in the US were hundreds of years before the first St Patrick’s Day parade in Ireland which was held in Waterford in 1903.
Posted by Jim on March 1, 2020
Irish-American Heritage Month is celebrated by proclamation of the President and Congress in the United States to honor the achievements and contributions of Irish immigrants and their descendants living in the United States. It was first celebrated in 1991. The heritage month is in March to coincide with Saint Patrick’s Day, the Irish national holiday on March 17. Heritage Months are usually proclaimed by nations to celebrate centuries of contributions by a group to a country.
Saint Patrick’s Day is a Roman Catholic religious holiday that honors the saint, who introduced Christianity to Ireland in the early fifth century. It has developed in the United States as a celebration of all things Irish. With large ethnic Irish populations, Boston and New York City both claim the world’s first Saint Patrick’s Day parade, while Philadelphia claims to be the second oldest behind New York City. In New York City, it occurred on March 17, 1762, featuring Irish soldiers serving in the British military protecting the Colonies during the French and Indian War. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman, of Scottish descent, attended the New York Saint Patrick’s Day parade and gave a speech to attendees. This was a proud moment for the many Irish whose ancestors had to fight stereotypes and prejudice to find acceptance in the United States. In 1960 John F. Kennedy was elected as the first Irish American Catholic President; in 1961 he was in New York to review the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.
In tribute to all Irish Americans, the US Congress, by Public Law 101-418, designated March 1991 as “Irish-American Heritage Month”[1] Congress again proclaimed March as Irish-American Heritage Month for 1995 and 1996.[2]
Within the authority of the Executive Branch, the President of the United States has also issued a proclamation each year since 1991.[3][4]
Each year in March, the Irish Taoiseach visits the United States for Saint Patrick’s Day. A Shamrock Ceremony takes place in the morning at the White House where a crystal bowl containing shamrock, a traditional symbol of Ireland, is presented to the President in the Oval Office. This is followed by a Friends of Ireland luncheon hosted by the House Speaker in the U.S. Capitol or the Rayburn House Office Building.[5][6] The luncheon is attended by the President, Vice President, the Taoiseach, the Speaker, and other officials.[7] In the evening, a Saint Patrick’s Day Reception takes place at the White House.[8]
Posted by Jim on
An essay originally written by Bobby Sands in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh in 1979. When one spends each day naked and crouched in the corner of a cell resembling a pigsty, staring at such eye-sores as piles of putrifying rubbish infested with maggots and flies, a disease-ridden chamber pot, or a black, disgustingly-scarred wall, it is to the rescue of one’s sanity to be able to rise and gaze out of a window at the world.
My cell window, fortified by thick concrete slabs which serve as bars, affords me with a view of nothingness, unless a barbed wire jungle and rows of blank faceless tin timbers offer an artistical appreciation unknown to me. It’s what passes by, lingers, or materialises, in front of my humble little window that saves me, that can dampen depression, allow me to contemplate, serve as an enjoyable distraction from my surroundings, and provide me with a once unknown pleasure.
On a dreary, dull, wet, morale-attacking November afternoon, when one’s stomach is empty, and when the monotony begins to depress and demoralise, it is soothing in many respects to spend a half-an-hour with one’s head pressed against the concrete slabs, gazing in wonder, and taking in the antics of a dozen or so young starlings bickering over a few stale crusts of bread. Circling, swooping, sizing up and daring an extra nibble, continually on their guard, and all their tiny nerves on end, the young starlings feud among themselves, the greedy one continually trying to dominate and always wanting the whole haul to himself, fighting with his comrades whilst the sparrow sneaks in to nibble at the spoils.
But the ruler of the kingdom of my little twenty-yard arched view of the outside world, is the seagull, who dominates, steals, pecks, and denies the smaller birds their share. The seagull takes it all. In fact, his appetite seems insatiable. He goes to any length to gorge himself. Thus I dislike the seagull, and I often wonder why the starlings do not direct their attention to the predator, rather than each other. Perhaps this applies to more than birds.
During the summer months, finches were abundant, and the music of the lark a constant symphony of sound and a reminder of life. The various crows, the odd magpie, and the little wagtails are still to be seen and heard from dawn to dusk.
In the late evening, when most of the prisoners of war are sleeping, when a hush descends, amplifying the gentle sound of a breeze, one can gaze upon the ocean of sky arid the multitude of stars that seem embedded and ablaze. In that black root of nothingness that not even the moon in all her beaming regalia can penetrate, and one can dream a thousand dreams of yesterday, of childhood and happiness, of love and joy, and escape through make-believe and fantasy. The evils that engulf each day, forgotten about, and tomorrow as far away as the unreachable stars.
On many a summer evening and cold winter night I stand with only my old shabby blanket wrapped tightly around me, my breath pouring out into the blackness, in ghost-like clouds, just dreaming. Many a day in the eternal hours, I stand watching the birds and listening to the lark, trying to discover its whereabouts in that stagnant blue ocean above me that represents the outside world, and I long for the liberty of the lark.
I suppose, to many, a few birds, the sound of a lark, a blue sky, or full moon, are there, but unnoticed most of the time. But, to me, they mean existence, peacefulness, comfort, entertainment, and something to view, to help forget the tortures, brutalities, indignities and evils that surround and attack my everyday life.
Today, the screws began blocking up all the windows with sheets of steel. To me this represents and signifies the further torture of the tortured, blocking out the very essence of life: nature!
A few words I once read came echoing back to me today: ‘No-one can take away from a person his or her ability to contemplate. Throw them into prison, give them hard labour, unimaginative work to do, but you can never take away from them the ability to find the poetry and music in life: And I also realised that, here, my torturers have long ago started, and still endeavour, to block up the window of my mind.
Posted by Jim on February 24, 2020
WTC
Retired Firefighter Daniel R. Foley Rescue Company 3
WAKE
Tuesday, February 25, 3:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Wednesday, February 26, 3:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Westchester Funeral Home
190 Main Street Eastchester, NY 10707
FUNERAL
Thursday, February 27, 10:30 AM
Holy Family Church
83 Clove RoadNew Rochelle, NY 10801
All Off-Duty Members should attend in Class A Uniform.