When I was 27 you were still 3 years away from being born, though it would be almost another 3 full years more before I would know. And then you were great. Unremittingly great.

Happy Birthday so.

Maybe one day someone will have the decency to tell you the truth.

Here we are again. St Patrick’s Day. But a Pandemic Paddy’s Day, so it’s indoors. And without other people, depending on where in the world you live - but especially here in Ireland.

It certainly means you can’t come to Ireland to join us. Because you’re not allowed. And there’s nothing to join. The Festival has gone online this year. Once upon a time I would have gone into town to watch the parade. No one goes to town any more. I walked the 5 miles in to get my bike repaired last summer. Haven’t been on a bus in over a year. Like most people.

So I just wanted to remind you, that if looking at Ireland is your cup of tea - you can go online and see pictures of our landmarks bathed in green light, because that’s very 2021, but you can also look at Killarney and the Ring of Kerry, West Cork, Connemara, Donegal, and Kilkenny, the Cliffs of Moher, the Antrim coast, the Rock of Cashel, and both sides of Dublin city, the Dingle Peninsula, the Burren, the Sligo of Yeats, the flatlands of Kildare, the Wicklow Mountains, the majesty of Mayo, wonderful Wexford, the Copper Coast of Waterford, and Howth Head, Leitrim, Monaghan, Limerick, Down, Carlow, Derry, Longford, Louth, and I could go on. I’m talking about the places in Ireland that I have been to and painted. So you can look at the paintings, Irish landscapes and towns from all over the Ireland. And you can buy them. Well, not the originals - all of the original paintings I’ve done in the last ten years have sold out (bar one of Dublin from December gone, tick tock) - but you can buy prints. And mugs. And throw pillows. And t-shirts. And greeting cards. Of over 400 of my paintings of Ireland. So go on then. At least have a look. And maybe tell your friends. My paintings of Ireland, hundreds of the things.

Listen, if you’d like to keep more up to date have a goo at Facebook where you’ll find me under the name LiamDalyArt

Thanks. Be safe. Safer than you’ve ever been. We’ve lost too many people.

At this time all of the original paintings are sold, bar two: “Kilmore Quay” (Wexford) and “Passage East” (Waterford), so this collection links you to the prints. But not just prints - you can also get the paintings on mugs and throw-pillows and t-shirts. So do. Please.

There are 28 paintings in the latest collection, of which 26 are of Irish scenes. That’s just this collection. If you click around you’ll see I have 374 paintings in total on there - many in collections pertaining to just one county, like Cork Paintings and Dublin Paintings and Galway Paintings, but nearly all Irish counties are represented in the 374 paintings - and that’s a lot of Ireland.

Stone Wall, Cottage

See all of my Irish Paintings available as prints. Who knows, if enough people in KC (or Missouri or Kansas, I’m not that fussy) buy prints of my paintings of Ireland maybe I’ll find myself painting a series of specific Irish Kansas City scenes. Meanwhile, enjoy your day - by which I mean St Patrick’s Day 2018.

After performing in Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris, it was in the Soup Kitchen in Manchester’s Northern Quarter where I saw them perform. They would go on to finish their tour the following night in front of an 800-capacity crowd in London, before returning to Chicago.

While sometimes performing with a full band, Iris Temple on this tour performed just as a duo and, such is the quality of their songs and their talents, the two Quinns pared down sounded no less polished and soulful than the EPs they put out. They were enthusiastically and appreciably received by the fans of Xavier Omär.

Their 30-minute set was comprised of new songs as well as older tunes, including their first track to pass the one-million stream mark on Spotify (Lemonade). They also happened to play all my favourites, but then I might be biased.

As I watched my son sing on stage, songs that he and Quinn eile have crafted, I felt as fantastically proud of him as I have done for so many years. Apologies for the quality of this photograph, I may have had something in my eye. (Or maybe I’m just not very good with a camera).

p.s. Xavier Omär himself was ridiculously nice, rocking, and rather excellent, but for me the main act was on first.

No, the Irish were not slaves too.

No, the Irish didn’t have it as bad as Africans. Or worse.

It is utter nonsense. A myth that at best perpetuates a misunderstanding of history, and at worst enables and fuels a racist agenda.

Yes, in colonial times there were Irish who had it very bad in the Caribbean. There were also English, Welsh, Scottish, and other white Europeans. Horrific at times, and great suffering, yes, and it shouldn’t be made light of - but that was servitude. Indentured servitude. And servitude was not the chattel slavery reserved for Africans. Slavery in the Americas was racial.

This is not semantics. Servitude was temporary and non-hereditary with practical and legal rights. Chattel slavery was permanent and it was hereditary, with no legal rights because legally you weren’t even human - you were livestock.

Yes, there are many forms of slavery, and we use the term today often in a general sense, but if we’re going to compare peoples in the same time period and the same places, like the white Irish with the black Africans, in colonial times, there was no comparison. Being a servant, an indentured one, Irish and white, was far better than being a chattel slave, African and black.

So by all means, and on this day, remember this horrible dark time in history for the Irish - but do not use that to play down the greater suffering and oppression of Africans and their descendants, nor the racial significance of it.

On that note, Happy St. Patrick’s Day - whatever that means to you. I’m not in Kansas City myself; I haven’t been for ten years. I’m at home in Ireland being Irish.

Anyway, this is just a nostalgic way to say somebody’s got post. Or mail, if you’re American.

All 22 paintings are of Ireland, and are available as simply prints, as framed prints, as greeting cards, or printed on a whole host of products such as mugs, cushions, notebooks, tote bags, t-shirts and even skirts.

Below is one of the paintings, of a County Mayo scene I saw when cycling once.

“Mayo Cloud”

The original paintings are all sold, with all but two of them selling during the 3-day online sale at the end of 2016. There will be a new collection of paintings ready for another year-end online sale that will take place in mid-December 2017 on LiamDalyArt on facebook. These paintings will also all be of Ireland - of places such as the Burren, Connemara, Donegal, Mayo, Waterford, Dublin, and West Cork.

There are of course many more of my older Irish paintings - with well over 200 of my paintings of Ireland available as prints.

I used to see a lot of this stuff when I lived in Kansas City. On tea-towels, on stained glass, on tattoos, on signs at festivals, and on t-shirts.

You could see it coming too. People would look up dictionaries, or single word translations online, or ask me the meaning of a word while dismissing context and grammar and anything that might actually be relevant to that meaning.

But this is particularly hilarious. Like the writer of the post I spent a while wondering what on earth was trying to be said on this t-shirt - but I never got there, despite knowing what each of the three words mean.

The way to reverse translate this nonsense is to do it the same way it was translated i.e. one word at a time, in isolation, looking at every possible meaning of that word in English, as if it were a code rather than a language.

The post needs to be read until the end, because it’s not just wrong, indeed very wrong, but in fact in the only way it’s right it’s still wrong and fantastically funny in how it is wrong.

For what they think they mean, and for just how bad it is, read Even Racists Got the Blues by the Geeky Gaeilgeoir.

Because that’s where the people who care are.

And there’s rather a lot of them.

p.s. Dog-dog is still alive.

And how am I spending my Paddy’s Day 2016 in Dublin? I’m leaving. In fact I’m leaving the country. Going to what some people call the capital of Ireland. But that’s a joke. Mostly.

I’m going to England today.

In the 1851 census 83,000 people born in Ireland were living in Liverpool. That’s born, not descended from people who were born. And a million or so people from Ireland passed through Liverpool as they moved on to North America, Australia, and elsewhere in the UK, fleeing what is known as the Great Famine of the 1840s. Wind the clock forward and today you have an estimated 75% of the population of this city in the northwest of England with Irish roots.

And yet I’ll be able to have a peaceful drink tonight. My kind of town and I love it.

Wherever you’re choosing to be Irish, I hope you have a good time. Look after each other.

Why?

From 7:30am to 11am (When the big parade starts) there is live music and a heated tent.
From 11:30am – 3:30pm there is Irish Music by “Scarlet Town and DJ Kim”

Meanwhile there is all manner of Irish-styled food, including a sandwich named after George from Donegal, Irish Coffees, Soda Bread, Barry’s Tea, Irish beers, Irish Screwdrivers, Potato Soup, Shepherd’s Pie, Guinness Brats, Corned Beef - on a sandwich!, and Browne’s take on the newly traditional Irish Breakfast Roll.

And all the while you can also buy Irish t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, scarves, Irish decor, and some of those Irish rashers and sausages (Don’t let anybody tell you we call them bangers) to take home and cook yourself.

Visit Brownes website for all the details.

Broadway will be closed from 31st Street to 47th Street beginning at 9 a.m. Crossing Broadway is discouraged after that time. The parade staging area also will be closed prior to and during the parade, beginning at 8:15 a.m. This includes Linwood from Main to Pennsylvania and Broadway from 31st Street to Linwood. All cars parked in any of these areas must be moved before 4 a.m. Thursday, March 17, 2016.

Numerous officers will be patrolling the parade route and nearby areas. Police remind parade-goers that open-container ordinances remain in effect during the parade, and citations will be issued for open consumption of alcohol. Police also will conduct a sobriety checkpoint on St. Patrick’s Day.

“After the parade, police will dedicate numerous officers to provide extra security in the Westport entertainment district.”

It’s what our patron saint would have wanted.

Thursday, March 17, 2016, and the pub says it is Irish for the day. Which makes you wonder what it is all the other days.

The cover charge for Kelly’s is going to helping Welcome House KC, which is rather excellent.

If you want to actually get inside Kelly’s on Paddy’s Day you’ll want to have joined a line for it around about this time last year. (It’s popular)

They’re also saying no green beer - which is what everybody with a modicum of self-respect should be saying.

Route:
The 44th annual Kansas City St Patrick’s Day parade starts at 11am at Broadway and Linwood. It runs south along Broadway and ends at 43rd.

Duration:
About 2 hours. The days when it lasted several years are long over.

Theme:
Blarney on Broadway.

Viewing Stand:
The viewing stand is on the west side of Broadway at 40th Terrace.

Parking:
Well it’s not the Royals, but still, the earlier the better. A lot of local businesses have been persuaded to open their parking facilities to the public, and many are. In some cases you will be charged, and in some of those cases the fees raised are going to charity.

Grand Marshal:
The 2016 Parade Grand Marshal is Pat O’Neill

Weather:
My Norwegian sources (I know you’re nowhere near Norway if you even know where it is, but they’re good at this sort of thing), say it i Kansas City, Missouri will be about 50F when the parade starts and 57 when it finishes, with no rain on the day.

Buses:
The buses are messed up, man. RideKC has the details of all bus routes which have been altered due to the Paddy’s Day parade and revelries. Additional KCATA buses will be available at 39th and Broadway/Main to help ease pedestrian traffic at the end of the parade.