William Walsh's UNKNOWN ARTS, James Joyce, Post-St. Patrick's Day Leftovers

Link to the soundtrack of William Walsh's UNKNOWN ARTS.

Fictional works inspired by the works of James Joyce abound, but this may be one of the more interesting I've seen lately.

Link to Garrison's Keillor's comparison of St. Patrick's Day and St. Olaf's Day.

Use the other links to move around his site and find the music on the show.  Irish music, it is, and simply gorgeous.

This weekend on A Prairie Home Companion, an Irish Stew for all the fair haired Emerald Islanders in celebration of the feast of St. Patrick. The late Frank McCourt reads from "Angela's Ashes," Billy Collins reads "Afternoon with Irish Cows," and Karan Casey sings a song she learned from Frank Harte called "The Brown and Yellow Ale." Martin Sheen appears in The Lives of the Cowboys as James Joyce, Sean O'Driscoll sings "Farewell to Ballyshanny," and Altan performs "I Wish My Love Was a Red Red Rose." Plus, what "Irishness" means to Lake Wobegoners and grab the hankie for dear old "Danny Boy."

Listen to Pat Donohue's "Irish Blues" at this link.

Saturday, my wife made Irish stew and a low-fat Shamrock Creme Pie.  We're both part-Irish along several lines, but it goes back a long, long way.  Like most Americans whose descendants were here before the American Revolution, we descend from many different ethnic groups.

One of my ancestors was the Irish Indian trader, John Owens, who, according to Benjamin Franklin's Gazette, married a daughter of Tanacharisson, the Seneca Half-King--that is, the commercial diplomat for the western Iroquois in the 1750s.

Owens was a remarkable man and left a small journal with expanded accounts of the credit extended to the Native Americans he dealt with, first in western Pennsylvania and later at the lower Shawnee town.  His papers reveal an irreverent sense of humor too, to judge by the names he called his customers.  And in his journal he referred to his neighbors, the Eckerlin Brothers, the notorious frontier evangelists, as "the goddamned holy brothers."

I don't think I look particularly Irish myself, but my wife, whose picture adorns this blog profile, certainly does.  I look more like the horse she's talking to.  Anyway, we love Irish music and Irish literature, and thus we are grateful for the chance to celebrate this holiday.