May today be a million and five times better.

p.s. Drive carefully.

In Liverpool’s Albert Dock, with the Port of Liverpool building, the Cunard Building, and the Liver Building in the background

Sheehan’s Irish Imports will be closed on March 17, but you can see your friends from Sheehans in the parade.

John Morris is performing at breakfast at The Gaf (71st & Wornall) on Saturday, March 17th from 9am-11am

The KC St. Patrick’s Day parade is on from 11am -1pm. Route is south on Broadway from 33rd to Westport Rd.

FOX 4 are showing live coverage of the parade on their sister station 4.2, with a 1-hour commercial free highlight show being aired from 4-5pm on Fox 4.

Fox 4 are also live streaming the KC parade on fox4kc.com

Lew’s Grill and Bar in Waldo are having their annual Irish Hooley spread over 2 bars (the other being The Well), starting with breakfast at 8am and then with Jonathan Ramsey performing at 1pm & 4pm, and The Kelihans (6pm), and Flannigan’s Right Hook (3pm). Basketball etc.

Rugby. In various places around the KC area there will be TVs showing live Ireland playing England at Twickenham (that’s in England) at noon KC time in the final game of this year’s 6 Nations. It’s only the 3rd time in history that Ireland are playing a test match on St Patrick’s Day.

ShamROCK with Us is what ‘new’ pub The Dubliner is calling their all day affair, from breakfast at 8am to Eddie Delahunt at 9am to Irish dancing on tabletops (noon), more bands (1pm & 6pm), and a DJ (10pm) before bed.

Westport is where perhaps most people will go. The website of WesportKC is using the Irish language to wish you all a Happy St Patrick’s Day, and impressively doing it properly unlike some Irish-related KC websites. Kelly’s, The Dark Horse Tavern, Street closures - all Westport events and details here

Eddie Delahunt is at new pub The Dubliner in KCPL district from 9am-Noon, at Mike Kelly’s Westsider from 1.30pm-4pm, and O’Dowd’s Little Dublin on the Plaza from 5pm-9pm

The Back Yard at the Beaumont Club are having a St. Patrick’s Day party featuring The Elders on Saturday, March 17 from 1pm to 4pm. Tickets are $5.

Bob Reeder is at O’Malley’s in Weston at 3pm and at 8pm, and probably much more.

O’Malley’s Pub in Weston has Tullamore (1pm-4.30pm), Three Dollar Band (5pm-8pm) and Connacht Town (8.30pm-midnight?) playing as well as Bob Reeder (3pm and upstairs throughout the night)

Flannigan’s Right Hook are playing at the at The Well in Waldo 3-5pm and then on to Llywelyn’s Pub (151st 1 block east of Metcalf) in Overland Park 7pm-close.

Walsh’s Corner Cocktails at 85th & Wornall has its annual St. Patrick’s Day Party featuring John Morris performing from 8pm.

The Elders annual Hoolie - their 10th now - is on at 8pm in the Uptown. Last time I looked there were still tickets available

The O’Riada-Mccarty-Manning Academy of Irish Dance will perform at halftime when Sporting Kansas City host the New England Revolution at 7:30pm on St Patrick’s Day in the team’s 2012 home opener at Livestrong Sporting Park.

A nice Irish story from Lawrence, Kansas on a local man from Ireland called Rhody Delahunty

Shindigz, a national party goods supply company, rated what it calls the top seven U.S. cities for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and it has KCK at number 7 with KC, MO not on the list.

The KC area Irish music band Kelly are playing in Salina.

Geraldine and John both grew up around Dublin, Ireland, and after moving to Kansas City 25 years ago, they now consider this area home.

The family likes to mix it up in the kitchen, and Geraldine occasionally makes traditional Irish dishes from family recipes.

It is easy to see from this true-color image why Ireland is called the Emerald Isle. Intense green vegetation, primarily grassland, covers most of the country except for the exposed rock on mountaintops. Ireland owes its greenness to moderate temperatures and moist air. The Atlantic Ocean, particularly the warm currents in the North Atlantic Drift, gives the country a more temperate climate than most others at the same latitude.

      There’s no Patty’s Day in Ireland
      There’s no St. Patty’s Day in Ireland
      There’s no St. Pat’s (Day) in Ireland

There is only St Patrick’s Day, very commonly called Paddy’s Day. That’s it.

Apoplectic Reaction
The reason I’m saying it again is that in the 4 and a half years since I’ve left the U.S. and returned to Ireland I have found it hilarious every year watching thousands of Irish people (in Ireland) discover, primarily through the medium of twitter, and get apoplectic that, their Irish-American cousins are prone to saying Patty in the context of our national holiday and saint.

Honestly - it bothers people
See here: Paddy, Not Patty
Someone even went and made a website.

I’ll do that after I finish a painting, for that is what I do - I paint and sell pictures of Ireland, here in Ireland, like this painting of Dublin. That’s a river Liffey scene by the way.

It’s an extraordinarily special day.

click to enlarge

It’s late, it’s the 3rd attempt, the light is poor, and the pink doesn’t show up, but hey, it’s a leaping lovely day.

(Not for Sale)

Today I launched a sale of my new Irish paintings. It includes some that were exhibited in the Europa Hotel in Belfast earlier in the year.

In this group of paintings you’ll see scenes of Dublin, Kerry, Mayo, Donegal, and Cork, and some birds on wires.

They launch at prices up to 50% less than normal, and will revert to normal prices at the end of the sale.

There’s 21 paintings in total, all of which are Irish scenes, and many more paintings are planned to be added into the sale.

At the time of writing this post 11 paintings have sold. If you’d like to be among the first people notified the next time there’s a big sale - add your email address to my mailing list in the sidebar when you go look at my Irish paintings sale

Once upon a time Halloween in Ireland was a bit like this.

We did, and still do, what you call ‘trick-or-treating’ but we called ‘trick-or-treating’ something else (Though, with the increasing Americanisation of the holiday, we’re increasingly dropping our terms for yours).

Take my Halloween in Ireland Quiz for a flavour of a certain time.

And this is how you pronounce Samhain

Other articles on my recent 12 week, 2,000 mile, cycling tour of Ireland in Irish and international media can be found on my Painting Tour site.

Dozens of paintings were completed on site during the tour. Others were started and are currently being completed, and will be posted online with all the Painting Tour paintings when ready.

Approximately 3,000 photos were taken, about 1 for every kilometer cycled, and to date over 250 have been posted online. More are being posted daily and added to the main collection of Ireland Painting Tour photos.

Over the next 3 months, once several commissions are finished, concentration will be on new paintings of Ireland coming out of the tour, and made available in a large December sale.

New commissions are being taken for starting in January and February - with January being close to booked up already with commissions received. The best place to stay up on news of new paintings and sales is to join my mailing list (simply enter your email address in the sidebar box on my personal Bicyclistic blog), or follow me eolai on twitter

With painting at the forefront IrishKC will continue to occupy a low priority with just sporadic postings, especially as it needs some backend updating before it’s in a position again for regular posting of Irish events in Kansas City.

For the most part the stronger regular events are already more than adequately catered for on FaceBook or elsewhere online though it’s still somewhat of a surprise to me that there is no site that attempts to pull together and aggregate content relating to all Irish news in the city rather than what is simply in its own interest.

Gavin O’Sullivan, customer service team leader for the project responsible for the certificate, on behalf of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade, asked me if I would share the Certificate of Irish Heritage website with you.

The certificate is available only to those who have an Irish ancestor and can provide required information about their ancestor and their Irish line of descent.

You may already have this information, or you may need to do some work in advance - for which help and guidance (online and by email or phone) is available from the project team.

The information and documents you submit will be checked and validated before your application is approved and your certificate shipped.

While a selection of design backgrounds are available - Emigrant Ship, West of Ireland, Celtic Knot - each Certificate shares the same fundamental design, which includes the Harp (the State emblem of Ireland), and a quote from Article 2 of the Constitution of Ireland.

The Certificates are signed on behalf of the Government of Ireland by the Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade.

The Certificate will be unique to you, showing your name and the names of up to 2 of your Ancestors who were born in Ireland. If you know their year and county of birth, this will be printed also on the Certificate.

The price of a standard Certificate is €40.00, plus delivery costs which are specific to each country - €15.00 to the US for an unframed certificate, and €22.50 for a framed certificate. The cost of a frame is an additional €60.00 plus delivery.

Visit the Certificate of Irish Heritage” website for full details on how to apply and information packs. It’s a very detailed website with genealogy resources and features.

People all over the 32 historic counties are volunteering to provide me with lodging in return for me doing a painting for them when they host me.

And people who aren’t in a position to host are commissioning me to cycle to a place of their choosing anywhere in Ireland in order to paint a scene for them - a limited service I’m offering for just €75. Already people from America, Australia, and England have commissioned paintings. There are only a few commission spots left.

The plan, the questions & answers, and the blog of the trip will all appear on my Painting Tour site.

When I lived in America I got very tired explaining to people who wanted literal translations that languages don’t work that way, to which the response was yeah, yeah, yeah, before embarrassingly inaccurate Irish would appear on websites, posters, t-shirts and signs. So I gave up.

click to enlarge

This t-shirt says:

Sea, Is Féidir and it means to be a translation of the Obama campaign slogan “Yes, We Can”.

And above that is an attempt to make Obama’s name seem Irish by, and I like this bit on an Irish language t-shirt, anglicizing it. If it was being Gaelicized it would be Ó Bama meaning literally ‘grandson/descendant of the non-existent Bama’. The O’Bama is what the English visitors did to Irish names because it they didn’t do those funny marks we put over vowels at certain times. I’ve seen genealogists write names beginning O’ on documents purporting to be in Irish (Gaelic) - you might want to question them when you see them do it.

A couple of things about “Yes, We Can” in Irish.

“We can” typically would be Is Féidir Linn - the ‘Linn’ bit being the first person plural which is absent from the t-shirt. Is Féidir without the ‘Linn’ means “It’s Possible”. Or it could be “We can” - if the ‘we’ is implied. If someone asked “Can we?” (think of it as ‘Is it possible for us [to do it]?) then the answer is Is Féidir (”It’s possible”) would therefore imply it’s possible for us, indeed, yes, it’s possible for us. Which is the same as “(yes,) we can”.

There is no literal translation for the word “Yes” in Irish. “Yes” is expressed through saying the positive form of a verb e.g. I do, It is, She understands, etc. As written here Sea (pronounced ’shah’) and sometime ’sea is a contraction of Is ea and is one of the 2 forms of how you say the verb “to be” in Irish, the one that expresses identification or classification - as opposed to the one that expresses a state or condition.

So all in all that means, who knows, but we do know that they mean it to be the equivalent of “Yes, We can” - just don’t go telling your friends it literally means that, because the chances are they’re not your friends.

Here is President Obama himself, due in Ireland tomorrow, saying those very words in Irish. Well, saying Is Féidir Linn

Courtesy of Colm Tobin, the man behind Langerland - which long-time IrishKC readers might remember.