Everyone's Irish Today - Parades

Today – Everyone is Irish.

 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all. Today is the day of parades, pipers and dancers. It’s also Still under the sign of Pisces, the Dreamer. I have yet to write a story geared strictly to the Pisces Character, but two will be coming in the future. But I’ll throw in a cover or two of several of my books. Then I’ll talk about the parades I know about.

 

 

 

I live not far from New York City where they have a massive St. Patrick’s Day parade.

The New York City St. Patrick’s Parade is the oldest and largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade in the world. The first parade was held on March 17, 1762 — fourteen years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The parade is held annually on March 17th* at precisely 11:00 AM in honor of St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland and of the Archdiocese of New York. The parade route goes up Fifth Avenue beginning at East 44th Street and ending at East 79th Street. Approximately 150,000 people march in the parade which draws about 2 million spectators.

From its earliest days, right up to the present, the NYC St. Patrick’s Day Parade has been run entirely by volunteers, many of whom come from generations of families dedicated to the organization of the parade. It takes months of preparation and countless hours to run the world’s oldest and largest parade. We could not do it without the commitment of these great women and men.

The NYC Saint Patrick’s Day Parade is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Just around the corner from where I live, the town of Pearl River has a St. Patrick’s Day parade. There are also dancers and other events taking place.

Rockland County's Saint Patrick's Day Parade began back in March 1963. And since it's inception to the present, the Parade is the second LARGEST parade in New York State.Sunday March 18nd, 2018_

 The Rockland County Ancient Order of Hibernians St. Patrick’s Parade Pearl River will be taking place in Pearl River on Sunday March 18, 2018 at 1:30 PM Rain or Shine.  

 The parade leaves from the Pfizer parking lot, turning east onto E Crooked Hill Road, turning south onto N. Middletown Rd, turning west onto E Central Ave turning south onto South Main Street, and ending in the area of the Pearl River Post Office.  Roads in the Pearl River area are subject to closure up to 1 hour prior to the start of the parade. On street parking is available in the Pearl River area, but please check for any full time or temporary parking restrictions for that roadway prior to leaving your car.  Any parked vehicles that are found to impede emergency response or endanger public safety are subject to be ticketed and towed. Please ensure that you park properly and legally. Handicapped parking will be available in the Parking Lot of the Key Bank at 93 N. Middletown Road and the Municipal Parking Lot at the corner of N. William St and E Washington Ave. Please be reminded, The Town of Orangetown Town Code Local Law

No. 2 Chapter 10 states: Open bottles or containers in which there is an alcoholic beverage are prohibited by law.

 

There is one more parade I know a bit about since my daughter lives in Savannah.

 

The Parade will be held Rain or Shine!!

The St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Savannah will take place on March 17^th and will begin promptly at 10:15 AM.  Please see the parade map for the route of the parade or the link for Bleacher Seating for further information.  The schedule of events also lists several locations and times for all other events associated with St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah.  Please view the calendar for this information and we hope you can join us.  See you on St. Patrick’s Day.

My son-in-law says it’s a real holiday. They have viewing stands and also a magazine.

 

So that’s my bit about  St. Patrick’s Day Parades. If you know of others drop a note and tell me about them.

When Killer Vine meets Vine Killer, by J.C. Kavanagh



The Twisted Climb
WINNER, Best Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers' Poll





I am enthralled with nature. I marvel at its beauty, its harshness, its harmony.

 

I'm certain that my Irish heritage plays a role in my love of the land. I've mentioned before in the BWL blog that I'm a descendent of the Kings & Queens of Leinster (County Carlow, County Wexford and County Kilkenny). Sadly though, I have no crown nor royal lands. But, I digress.

 

Back to nature.

 

Here in Ontario, we're still in the grip of winter. As I look out my office window, 15cm of snow dresses my property and drapes the branches of thousands of coniferous trees. Peace reigns. Canadian weather changes week to week, heck, even day to day. Last week, the temperatures were well above 0 Celsius, melting all the snow. Today, we are back to a winter wonderland.

 

Last week, we roamed our snow-less woods, marking trees that need to be cut down and searching for Killer Vines. Have you ever seen these suckers? They resemble small, flakey-barked trees, and they live to kill - the host tree, that is. The killer vine will 'climb' the host tree (or multiple trees), growing and snaking and entwining itself until it twists and sucks the life out of the host.

 

They are the Killer Vines and I am the Vine Killer. I have no mercy.

 

The chainsaw and branch cutters become my best friends when I'm on my vine-killing mission.

 

I will save the trees.

 

And I will kill the vines.

Killer Vine is outlined in red.
Note it branched into two, and further upward, four sucker limbs.

Killer vine resembles young tree

Killer Vine succumbs to Vine Killer!
This one required the Jeep to pull it down, thus meriting
a triumphant drag-along around property.

 

In case you think I'm a wee bit cuckoo, you have to know that I'm also a bird saver. A few weeks ago, a Junco crashed into a basement window. I heard him fly not once but three times (birds really do have wee brains) into the window and when I arrived, there he was, lying on my lower terrace. The temp was about -20 Celsius. I spoke to him first, just to assure him that I was his friend (all the birds know me as 'Nana J - the bringer of bird food'). He blinked a few times, acknowledging my presence and then, with my Olympic woollen mittens, I carefully brought him inside and laid him on the warm brick beside the wood stove. After half an hour, me and my partner, Ian, brought him some water and a handful of bird food. Well, that brought him to life. He stood up, hopped a few steps and then onto the window sill. "Out," he said, or I guess, chirped. So I put on the woollen mittens and carefully scooped him back into my hands and brought him outside. I placed him on the terrace and said, "There you go, buddy. Fly!" And he did.

 

Now I have plenty of titles to my name:

Princess (!)

Mom

Nana J

Vine Killer

Bird Saver

Author

 

The sequel to The Twisted Climb - Darkness Descends will be published soon. Stay tuned!

 

Don't forget to take a moment and enjoy the wonders of nature.

 

J.C. Kavanagh

The Twisted Climb
BEST Young Adult Book 2016, P&E Readers' Poll
A novel for teens, young adults and adults young at heart
Email: author.j.c.kavanagh@gmail.com
www.facebook.com/J.C.Kavanagh
www.Amazon.com/author/jckavanagh
Twitter @JCKavanagh1 (Author J.C. Kavanagh)

Help! Limber Jim is Lost by Karla Stover

       
  
     Until the early 20^th century, the eastern portion of Indiana consisted of 13,000 acres of swamp and wetlands, and streams that flowed into the Wabash River. Parts of the swamp smelled like sulphur, prompting the name, Loblolly Marsh, based on a Miami language word. Miami-Illinois is an indigenous Algonquian language formerly common in the United States, primarily in Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and western Ohio. The wetlands’ mixed vegetation supported a rich biodiversity needed by local and migrating birds and insects, as well as other animals.

     However, when European Americans arrived, they described the area “as a “treacherous swamp and quagmire, filled with every plant, animal and human danger known — the worst of such locations in the central states . . . a vast forest and swampland legendary for its quicksand and unsavory characters.” One of those unsavory characters was Jim Corbus. Corbus went hunting one day and the spry fellow, sometimes known as Limber Jim, got lost. Friends went hunting for him with the rallying cry, “Limber’s Lost.” Reports vary as to whether Jim was ever found, but the name, “Limberlost” came to mean the swamp, which the European-Americans saw as an ideal place for farms, once the swamp was drained, of course.  For the next 80 years, the Limberlost was used as farmland. Then, in 1991, local citizen Ken Brunswick established "Limberlost Swamp Remembered," and a group organized to restore some of the wetlands.

     Meanwhile, in 1874, while the Limberlost  was being drained, twelve-year-old Geneva (Gene) Stratton moved to Wabash, Indiana with her parents and three unmarried siblings. Four months later, her mother died and from then until her marriage to Charles Porter, she lived with relatives. Gene's father and her brother, Leander, taught her to appreciate nature, and she roamed freely around the family farm, observing animals in their natural habitats and caring for various pets. Her particular interest was birds. She was also attending school on a regular basis and became an avid reader. At home, her sister Florence began teaching her banjo, violin, and piano. To complete her education, a local art instructor gave Gene private lessons. With so much going on, it's no wonder she `was unable to finish the last term of her senior year. In fact, because she was failing her classes, she decided to quit school altogether.

     In 1884, twenty-year old Gene took a trip to Sylvan Lake, Indiana, where she was attending the Island Park Assembly, a Chautauqua gathering. A Chautauqua "was an adult education movement in rural parts of the United States and included entertainment and culture by way of speakers, teachers, musicians, entertainers, preachers, and specialists of the day." There she met a thirty-four year old druggist named Charles Dorwin Porter. Two years later, they married.

     The Porters had only one child and by most accounts, Gene” took pride in her family and maintaining a home.” However, but she “opposed the restrictive, traditional marriages of her era and became bored and restless.” Since she had never lost her interest in nature, she began writing about it and selling articles to magazines as a way to earn her own income. In 1895, the Porters moved into the Limberlost cabin and Gene spent hours exploring, photographing, and sketching the swamp. In addition to her nature articles, she wrote a number of novels. The most successful was Girl of the Limberlost, published in 1909.  

     The Limberlost cabin was just one of many homes the Porters lived in, including one in Hollywood. Gene wasn’t happy with the various film adaptations of her books, so she started the Stratton-Porter Production Company and made her own movies. Eventually, various production companies turned eight of her novels into movies, the last made in 1927. 

     Gene Stratton Porter died in 1924. Among her lasting legacies was her early and outspoken advocacy for nature conservation. She supported efforts to preserve wetlands, such as the Limberlost Swamp, and saving the wild elk at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from extinction.   

   

                   bwlauthors.blogspot.com

                              
  

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking

In the early morning of March 14, 2018, exactly 139 years after Albert Einstein’s birth, the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away peacefully at his home in Cambridge, England, at the age of 76. That he lived to such an age, and that he accomplished so much in his time, is a remarkable achievement.

In 1963, Hawking, while a graduate student at Oxford, was diagnosed with a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease, which eventually robbed him of all motor functions, including the ability to use his voice. The following year, he became engaged to Jane Wilde, a friend of his sister. Hawking later said that the engagement gave him "something to live for,” since the doctors’ predictions of a very short and unproductive life induced a deep depression. The two married on the 14th July 1965, determined to face all obstacles in their way.

Hawking is most famous for his work regarding black holes, celestial objects so massive that nothing, not even light, can escape their clutches. Based on Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, Hawking, along with Robert Oppenheimer, Sir Roger Penrose and others, advanced our knowledge of the behavior of the Universe.

Their work suggested that, upon the collapse of a massive star, when it runs out of its own internal nuclear fuel, it undergoes a sudden shrinkage under the pull of its own gravity.  They predicted that the outcome of this collapse, as implied by Einstein’s theory of gravity, to be a space-time singularity: an infinitely dense and extreme physical state of matter, ordinarily not encountered in any of our usual experiences of the physical world. A massive star, millions of miles across, would collapse to the size of the dot in the letter ‘i.’

Einstein himself strongly opposed such an idea and conclusion, and for a long time, not much progress occurred in this field. It took the genius of Stephen Hawking, among others, to find that Einstein was in error, and that star collapse and singularity do happen. Thus, in the later 1960s and early 1970s, the study of quantum theory and gravity was revived.

Hawking was a regular visitor to Canada. The physicist permitted The Stephen Hawking Centre in Waterloo, Ontario, to bear his name.

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist,” Hawking said of the meaning of life. “Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," (www.yogazapper.com) published by Books we Love (www.bookswelove.com)