Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hello, hello. Happy St. Paddy's Day to you all. : ) Since it is that lovely American-Irish holiday that everyone uses as an excuse to get blitzed, I've granted myself permission to use a terrible play on words to start this post instead.

This story about a lay missionary nurse who travels all over the world to help those in need even while holding down a home with a husband and children in Galway certainly makes Irish eyes smile (Boston Globe). My other Irish story I found today isn't specifically positive so much as it's a continued step in the right direction. When I studied abroad in Ireland in 2003, I got a good look at the Northern Irish peace process and the dynamic between the two groups there. The Boston Globe had a story this morning about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams calling for an open dialogue and continued unity in the face of militants trying to rip apart the peace process. 

On a slightly related note, it turns out there is another holiday in Boston today. People from home make fun of me for Patriot's Day, saying it's just a day we get off so we can drink and watch the Boston Marathon. But today's holiday is even more esoteric than Marathon Monday, in that only Suffolk County in all of Massachusetts', like, 30 counties celebrates it. Today is Evacuation Day. Yep, who could forget that? Liquor stores, state agencies, schools and libraries are all closed to celebrate the day Revolutionary soldiers hauled 50 cannon up a hill and drove the British out of Boston. Yeah, I'd never heard of it either, and I've lived her for seven years (Boston Globe).

Here's one for the "you're not going to believe this" files. As Yahoo! Sports reports, a 62-year old novice golfer hit a hole-in-one on her first-ever swing. The kicker was she didn't realize not every golfer does it, even while her golf pro was jumping up and down next to her.

Turns out those Harvard kids are as smart as they're supposed to be. Business school students devised a contest to encourage the use of non-disposable containers and a way to measure usage and reward those teams that were the most green. Who says MIT has a monopoly on experiments? (Harbus.com)

This last one is a nice-feel good story to end on. As reported in the Chicago Tribune, Bashur was a seeming mutt rescued from an Iraqi roadside and shipped home to a father from a paratrooper son. A coincidence helped the father learn a little more about the "mutt" who found a new home in America. 


I will leave you with one final thought...


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