Denver's Saint Patrick's Day Parade!

I was in Colorado last week in order to visit this little leprechaun ...my grandson "L".  He was all dressed up in a shirt I bought for him in Ireland, even before I knew he was going to be a "he"'.  We had just found out my daughter-in-law was expecting not long before my husband and I visited Ireland in May 2008.  My little grandson is a blend of many nationalities but I think his drop of Irish blood shined through pretty well in this photo! What do you think? Last Saturday we all decided to go to Denver, Colorado's, 48 annual Saint Patrick's Day Parade that was held on March 13, 2010.

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Being a life long resident of New York City, I've been to many a wonderful Saint Patrick's Day Parades in New York, but The Denver St. Patrick’s Day Parade bears the reputation as the largest parade west of the Mississippi River and one of the largest in the United States.  Over three hours long and with over 200 individual units massed together in a parade of 10,000 plus participants, they wind through the streets of Lower Downtown Denver entertaining an audience of over 200,000 viewers.  As you can see in the photo mosaic above, there were many traditional floats and marchers such as Bagpipers, Emerald Societies, Irish dancers, etc.

This parade also honored World War II Iwo Jima veterans who rode by in vintage cars to the applause and cheers of the crowd.

There was also a very fun, retro theme, Star Wars float for the Denver's Wings Over The Rockies Air and Space Museum.  It was really a crowd pleaser for both young and old!

There was definitely also a fabulous wild west theme to the parade!  Where else but in Denver would you see cowboys, longhorn cattle, alpacas and stage coaches riding by?

As a little girl of five I wanted to grow up to be a cowgirl.  I'm sure it was the influence of watching Dale Evans, Hopalong Cassidy, Rin Tin Tin, and the Lone Ranger on TV.  It may be many years later but I still get excited to see anything "Wild West" and Denver's parade made me realize that Irish Americans may have immigrated through Ellis Island in New York, but the lure of the west called to them over the years, and they are also a part of its history.

Finally, what would a parade be without clowns? The Colorado Clowns were well represented, which is why in this sea of Saint Patrick's Day green I found a little PINK for Pink Saturday!

Happy (post) Saint Patrick's Day!  If you'd like to read the interesting history of Saint Patrick see this link on the Denver St. Patrick's Day Parade web site.

Happy Pink Saturday! Be sure to visit Beverly at the How Sweet The Sound blog to see a list of blogs participating today with all 'their wonderful pink discoveries!

The Irish Hunger Memorial, New York City

The Irish Hunger Memorial, designed collaboratively by artist Brian Tolle, landscape architect Gail Wittwer-Laird, and 1100 Architect, is located on a one-half acre site at the corner of Vesey Street and North End Avenue in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The Irish Hunger Memorial garden is a monument to those who perished during the "A Gorta Mór" (Gaelic for"The Great Hunger" as it was called in Ireland), and is also a symbol to highlight areas of the world affected by hunger today. 

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The Great Irish Famine that killed over a million in Ireland, between the years 1845 and 1852, was caused by the potato blight which all but destroyed the main source of food of the time. The famine also caused the great Irish Diaspora. By the end of 1850, the population of Ireland had shrunk from 8 million to approximately 5 million, and the majority headed for the U.S., arriving at Ellis Island by the hundreds of thousands.

As you walk into the tunnel entrance of the memorial you will hear an audio track playing accounts by contemporary writers and musicians who have responded to the meaning of the Great Irish Famine and the challenge of hunger in the world today.

The exterior and interior walls of the memorial are covered by almost two miles of the illuminated text of famine poems, statistics, and quotes.  Listening to the recordings. and reading the quotes brings a greater understanding to the history of famine in the world, both past, and present.

The texts include old Irish proverbs, such as "Hunger will break through a stone wall" and "The well-fed does not understand the lean." Others are quotes from U.S. presidents: "Hunger does not breed reform, it breeds madness and all the angry distempers that make an ordered life impossible"--Woodrow Wilson, 1918; and "Every day 25 percent of our food supply is wasted"--Bill Clinton, 1998.

The tunnel leads out to a authentic, roofless, stone, famine-era cottage. The cottage was brought over from County Mayo, Ireland, and highlights the typical home of those abandoned by victims of the famine. The cottage dates from the 1820s, and was removed from Ireland stone-by-stone and reconstructed on the site.

The Irish Hunger Memorial site sits on a half-acre piece of land, significant as a clause added to the Irish Poor Law by Sir William Gregory during the famine meant that anyone who owned more than a half-acre of land was not eligible for any aid or relief. Many of the starving were poor but owned a half-acre, forcing them to abandon their homes in order to obtain food."

After walking through the house you enter a garden surrounded by stone walls.

A winding path ascends 25 feet from the corner of Vesey Street to the western end of the garden.

From this vantage point you can look down at the house and then continue walking up the path. 

The memorial contains over 60 varieties of Irish Flora such as heather, bearberry, foxglove, and gorse, that give the visitor a taste of the harsh but beautiful landscape found in the western portion of the country.  I visited in early March so much of the flora was still dormant, and I've read that anything that does not survive the harsh NYC winter is replanted in the spring. The memorial is maintained by Battery Park City Parks Conservancy.

The Action Center To End World Hunger, visible from the top of the memorial across Vesey Street, on River Terrace, reminds visitors that famine still exists in the world.

The path leads to the top of the memorial which overlooks the New York harbor 25 feet below, and has a panoramic view of the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and New Jersey.

The site also contains stones from all of the 32 counties of Ireland -- look closely and you can see the stones are marked with the county in Ireland from which they came.

The memorial's sense of abandoned starkness made me empathize with the bleakness the Irish famine victims must have felt and the desperation they must have had to leave their country to travel to other countries to find employment so they could feed their families.

Visiting The Irish Hunger Memorial is really a unique experience for all, but especially if you are of Irish descent.  If you are an American of Irish descent there is a very good chance that your ancestors came to America during the years of the Great Famine Diaspora.

As we celebrate the Patron Saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick, on March 17th, we can also honor these ancestors and rejoice that they were able to overcome adversity, and by hard work flourish in America and help make this country great.

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