Update: Read The Clever Pup's excellent post on St. David's Day. Well done!Tomorrow is St. David's Day, the Welsh National holiday & I totally forgot. My annual desperate search for daffodils (ubiquitous every other dang day in the pre-spring/spring) was forgotten. I do have leeks, as always, in the house. I wrote a post for GG's blog to publish tonight & I'll just have to scrape stuff out of that...& excuse it as bricolage...I have a bone to pick with those Welsh, Anglo-Welsh, American-Welsh poets who complain about all the other festivals & sit on their rears & do nothing. I've cheerled (is that a word?) & worked on getting something going in DC (something as much fun as Burns Day at the local Royal Mile Pub or St. P's almost anywhere but in my neighborhood, McGinty's--real Irish-owned) for a few years & give up for now. Too busy.
From GG blog (later):
St. David's Day snuck up on us, it's tomorrow (March 1). Must run out to buy daffodils, braise some leeks, & watch out for red dragons on the loose. As a child/teenager, GG's editor put in hours of choir rehearsal relearning songs in Welsh for an annual appearance at a Pittsburgh Welsh "old people's home." We cringe to think that's how the senior homes were described back then. The older folks were so pleased to see us every year & one or two people always asked, wistfully, if any of us grew up speaking Welsh, or even knew it? Maybe? We had to say no...but they were very complimentary about the performance & asked lots of questions about our lives as "you young people." Lovely people, lovely dinner, loads of daffodils on all the tables.
Dylan Thomas' unfortunate public behavior in America (& everywhere else) still irked/embarrassed many of the older Welsh but they chose overlook it so as to recite Thomas (many could by heart). Do Not Go Gentle...must have had great resonance for them, as it did not for us--then. Seamus Heaney read it at Ted Hughes' graveside in a rainstorm after the funeral & we remember thinking, "fitting, very." For many reasons that are best left to readers of actual poetry books & biographies. Here is a post earlier this year about Welsh hero Owain Glyndwr & one on current Welsh heroine, Duffy.
(Lovely photograph of a real Welsh daffodil by Jan/brynmeillion)
cariad! (kisses)
There then, guilt absolved. Sort of. ciao