White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

An Authentic Dublin Pub Crawl in Celebration of St. Patrick’s Day

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People who are no more Irish than the King of Siam or the Paramount Chief of the Bumangwato will, come March 17, celebrate an island nation famous for its skill with words and its fondness for drink.

It all began, of course, in the 5th century with a Romano Christian missionary from Britain, Patrick, who brought Christianity to Ireland. As a bonus, he chased the snakes out of Ireland. Where the fondness for something brewed, distilled or fermented came from is not recorded, but it is an intrinsic part of Irish life.

Life in Ireland often revolves around having a drink. It is treated much as we would treat having a cup of coffee. In Dublin once, I ran into a friend who I had not seen in a year: a serious man with a big job in government. He thought, in the Irish way, that we should catch up over a glass of something, although it was just after 10 in the morning. “I think Murphys is open,” he said as naturally as someone in an American city would have said, “There is a Starbucks on the next corner.”

In Ireland St. Patrick’s Day was, until recent years, a somber religious festival. It was in America where the idea that the Irish could have a huge craic, as the Irish call a party, took hold.

Even so, the biggest celebrations, to my mind, are in Boston, Chicago and New York. But there are celebrations everywhere the Irish have set foot from Hanoi, Vietnam to Ushuaia, Argentina, off the tip of South America.

But if you are very lucky, you will celebrate in Dublin. And what better way than with an authentic pub crawl.

I know just a bit about pub crawling in Ireland because I was lucky enough to be involved in a wonderful Dublin pub crawl in 2012. It was not a bunch of celebrants struggling from one pub to another, but rather a work of planning art.

I was in Dublin for an engineering conference which coincided with the 60th birthday of one of our number, Sean O’Neill — by birth an American, but otherwise through and through Irish.

A pub crawl was organized by the engineers with precision: times, distances, and safety procedures.

There was a map and the 12 pubs were selected with fiendish skill. The early ones were fairly far apart. But as the crawl went on, they grew closer together, and the last two were next to each other — in consideration of possible loss of mobility.

We were urged to go with a buddy, eat something about halfway and, in case of pub fatigue, to call a taxi.

If you get to Dublin and want to try the engineers’ crawl, here are the pubs in order: Toners, O’Donoghues and Doheny & Nesbitts on Baggot Street; Dawson Lounge on Dawson Street; Kehoes on St. Anne Street; Davy Byrnes on Duke Street; O’Neills and O’Donoghues on Suffolk Street; The International Bar and Stags Head on Wicklow Street; The Long Hall on Georges Street; McDaids and Bruxelles on Harry Street.

I think I made it as far as The Long Hall, one of Dublin’s most famous bars, before I cried uncle, refused a last drink and hailed a taxi. Others persevered and, amazingly, lived to tell the tale.

You probably know that Ireland is so lush that its flora is supposed to support 40 shades of green.

Well, there is another shade of green not mentioned in the tourist brochures. It is the 41st shade and you see it in the bathroom mirror the day after a pub crawl. Surely, some of you will see it on March 18.

 

Photo: DUBLIN, IRELAND – SEPTEMBER 5, 2016: The Long Hall on September 5, 2016 in Dublin. The Long Hall is a famous landmark in Dublins cultural quarter visited by thousands of tourists every year. Editorial credit: Millionstock / Shutterstock.com

When Love Happened on a Snowy Valentine’s Day

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Thinking back on Valentine’s Days past, there is one which was not marked by flowers, chocolate and champagne. But there was love; total, absolute love. The purest love money can buy: Yes, money did change hands.

It was Feb. 14, 1983.

My wife Linda Gasparello, although it was before we married, and I lived in the horse country of Virginia on 5 acres that backed up onto vast conservation acreage, so we felt land-rich. We had two horses and one dog: a difficult but loved Siberian Husky named Woo. I thought, what better Valentine’s Day gift for Linda than another dog?

It was a mean evening, cold and snowy. But on my way home from Washington, I made my way to the animal shelter in Leesburg, Va., 28 miles from our home in The Plains.

I was driving a rather clumsy Ford F-250 pickup, which I had bought for towing a horse trailer. It was, of course, rear-wheel drive and it slid on snow and ice. But I was determined.

Shelters are not for the weak of heart; so many dogs deserving to be set free. That night, as I recall, there were about 20 all crying in their way,“Take me! Take me!” Each pleading for the protection of a forever home.

I told the young woman attendant that I was looking for a Husky or Husky-type dog. She showed me a tan-colored, cock-eyed inmate and insisted that it had Husky lineage – maybe because the shelter was about to close.

The weather window was about to close, too. So I scooped up the dog, a two-year-old female, paid the $12 fee and we were off.

It was a drive from hell. I fought to keep the truck from sliding off the road — no anti-lock brakes. My new charge fought to assure me that she was the right pick by licking my face, trying to position her 60 pounds on my lap and commenting between licks. Love can be pushy when it comes on four feet.

At home, she, still nameless, took over and established in minutes, including to Woo, that she was the new proprietor of the house. What to call her? Valentine, of course.

Valentine was not, perhaps, the prettiest dog – our vet thought she was a German Shepherd-Airedale Terrier mix — but she was right up there with the most loyal, the most caring and easily the one of the most gifted dogs we ever owned. Intellectually gifted, you might say. She got flustered when she saw Linda cooking in the kitchen but speaking on the television in the living room.

Valentine did it all: boating, running alongside the horses, keeping tabs on wandering Woo, or just sleeping near the fire.

On day one, she climbed the stairs to sleep at the foot of our bed, as she did for the 12-year span of her life. When arthritis hobbled her, she struggled up the stairs of our 18th-century house.

Valentine’s Day is about love. Love is waiting at the nearby animal shelter — reach out and be loved.

All the Rage for Gin and Tonic

If you are a gin and tonic person, you probably know it is as much or more about the tonic than it is about the gin.

All the rage among G&T aficionados is Fever Tree, now a hot stock on the London Stock Exchange. The secret: cane sugar, more quinine and natural ingredients. It is available in U.S. supermarkets.

Adventures in Flying: The Grand Canyon

I once flew into the Grand Canyon, where three people have been killed in a helicopter crash. The thermals are wicked there.

I had rented a Cessna 182 RG from Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix and took three passengers flying early one morning, before the famous thermals were due to develop. The tower at Grand Canyon Airport had warned me to remain 1,500 feet above the lip and to be aware of thermals.

I asked if there were any pilots’ reports – called “PIREPs” — of turbulence over the canyon. He said there were none.

I told my passengers we were in luck: It was going to be smooth flying. Off we went, overwhelmed with the sheer size and splendor of the great tear in the earth.

Then the airplane fell, maybe 200 feet, then shot up pitched to the side. Then up, down and sideways.

We were all over the sky until I got back over the rim and everything smoothed out. I do not believe any of my passengers flew in a single- engine airplane again.

The Things They Say

“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” — Ernest Hemingway, from “The Sun Also Rises”

Blame Robert Burns for Your New Year’s Hangover

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Most of you are going to drink more than usual on New Year’s Eve. For some of you, it will be the only time you drink in the year; and for accomplished drinkers, well, get a designated driver — and maybe a designated bed. Things can get way out of hand.

Everything is stacked in favor of excess New Year’s Eve. Everything.

There is a long tradition of tippling. Maiden aunts hit the sherry; fathers start on dry martinis, and do not always make it to midnight; and French children are allowed watered wine. Trust the French. Also, you know you do not have to work the next day; although you will be ill-equipped to start implementing New Year’s resolutions, beyond the one never to do it again, or at least not for a year.

That other day of indulgence is March 17: St. Patrick’s Day. Do not confuse it with New Year’s Eve. St. Patrick’s is for the seasoned imbiber not the milquetoast church deacon who says “just the one” and after many flutes of Champagne, has to be helped home. New Year’s belongs not to the Irish but to the Scots. That old reprobate Robert Burns (1759-96) has his fingers all over it. He provided the excuse in a poem, “A Man’s A Man for A’ That” and a poem and song, “Auld Lang Syne.”

After the Act of Union in 1707, merging a reluctant Scotland and England, Scots’ pride was damaged and their language headed for extinction. It was the hard-living Burns who gave them back their pride and some sense of the specialness of Scotland and its clans.

The romantic movement Burns helped to ignite was further developed in the following century, when Queen Victoria showed a special affection for Scotland. She spent so much time at Balmoral Castle that some wag put a sign on Buckingham Palace which read, “This Desirable Residence To Let.” If the Queen, it is argued, had been as fond of Ireland, it might have remained part of the United Kingdom.

Be that as it may, the Scots influenced the English in the celebration of the New Year (known as Hogmanay in Scotland); and the Brits carried the Scots tradition around the world.

Of course, they also carried the native brew of Scotland around the world: Scotch became the ubiquitous drink it is today.

The Scots have always shown admirable dexterity is accommodating their Calvinism with strong drink and hard living. In the 37 years of his life, Burns fathered 14 children, nine of them with his wife, Jean; and he rivaled the English poet Lord Byron in his amorous imperialism. He also had an extravagant regard for New Year and for whisky.

The Scottish romantic movement — apart from getting us soused on Dec. 31– also spread the tradition of “first footing,” said to bring good luck to the first person across the threshold of a Scottish home on Jan. 1. Traditionally this was supposed to be a tall, dark person with a gift of salt. Standards have slipped, alas, and the revelers are more likely to be seeking more drink — or coming round the next day to apologize.

In the bad old days of journalism, when every day was a kind of New Year, there were theories aplenty of how to survive late into the night and to be in shape for the morrow. They include the following:

1. Do not mix grape and grain. Stick to wine or spirits. Do not turn yourself into a cocktail shaker.

2. Start the evening with a glass of milk, or swallow a pat of butter. This slows alcohol absorption.

3. No matter how bad you have been, take two aspirins before bed. That way you will not have to lie to God about reforming. He has heard it all before.

4. In the afternoon, read Dorothy Parker’s delicious short story, “You Were Perfectly Fine.” That should persuade you to see in the New Year in front of the television with a cup of herb tea. Cheers!