Friday, March 16, 2007

St. Patrick's Day In Chicago

Everybody in Chicago is Irish on St. Paddy's Day. Every year on St. Patrick's Day, the Chicago River is dyed green. The Pipefitters Union uses fluorescein dye which can also be used to study moving water. While in 1962, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dye were used, more recently the amount has been decreased to about 40 pounds (18 kg). This video gives a bit of history about why St. Patrick's Day is so special for the Windy City.

9 comments:

Stardust said...

Here is a great Simpson segment where the whole town of Springfield gets drunk and rowdy (including Bart!)

The Simpsons - St Patrick's Day

Unknown said...

If your interested in owning a Leprechaun. Take a look at

www.catchaleprechaun.com

its well worth the visit.

Happy St. Patrick's day.

Stardust said...

alan, that site is great. LOL! Humans can think of the most clever ways to make money. :-D

Andrea said...

Hi Stardust! Hope you have a great St.Patty's Day weekend:) Any excuse to drink, right?

Just wanted to pop in to say I'm alive and well. Can you believe the baby is a month old already? And he's cute as a button too, starting to coo and everything.

I hope to try to get back to blogging at Decompression at some point. There's been a bit of a new development, in that I told one xtian friend that I'm now an atheist. She didn't reject me or anything like that, but she did say she evaluated her beliefs and it strengthened her faith. I kind of have mixed feelings about if I should bother discussing religion with her at all, as her beliefs are purely for emotional reasons.

Anyway, things have kinda settled down after the initial shock of having a newborn again, so I'll be poking around here more often, hopefully:D

Stardust said...

Hey Andrea...hi!

I can't believe your baby is a month old already! Seems like you were just waiting for him to be born!

Won't be drinking on St. Paddy's day, I am on medication and can't even have a glass of wine anymore. :-(

As for your friend, of course she will say that it has only strengthened her faith because she has built up resistance to anything that will try to take her god beliefs away. She is saying that because she feels threatened by your atheism. If she wasn't threatened she wouldn't feel the need to even defend her stance. But when a little doubt starts to crawl out into the open, they have to put the lid on it.

If you value the friendship it would probably be best to avoid the subject altogether and agree to disagree on that subject. My sister and I have to do this, and we get along fine as long as we don't talk about it. (She says she feels sad she cannot share this with me, and I feel it's too bad she is making her sad over something I feel is totally unnecessary.)I don't discuss religion with any of my good friends who are christians as it would only cause problems. So, as long as they don't proseltyze to me, I just leave it alone. (If they start trying to tell me how great god is, and trying to convert me, then I have to speak up and ask them please to not talk to me about it -- which has regretfully caused a few extended family members to cut off communication.)

Andrea said...

I think you're right - I probably shouldn't discuss religion with her. I only told her about my leaving xtianity because she had blogged about the tremendous pressure she felt within that faith. She was having a bad day, I guess. I told her she didn't have to feel that way. It's unfortunate that she can't credit her own inner strength as a decent human being for rising above crappy circumstances - everything has to be attributed to "God." Oh well.

Hope you have a great weekend, despite not being able to partake in the best part of St.Pat's! (I can't either, since I'm nursing)

Stardust said...

I told her she didn't have to feel that way. It's unfortunate that she can't credit her own inner strength as a decent human being for rising above crappy circumstances - everything has to be attributed to "God." Oh well.

Andrea, it's good you got it out in the open so you don't have to feel like you have to pretend anymore and sit and be silent while hearing god this and god that. Though people know where I stand now about religion, I still have to bite my tongue and not say anything when xian friends and relatives complain about problems or struggles in life and have to keep myself from saying "well, where is your god to help you, or comfort, or keep you from being lonely?" When I was a xian whenever I heard the song "What a Friend We Have In Jesus" I wondered to myself..."where is this Jesus anyway and why are people still so sad and lonely if they have a friend in him?"

Krystalline Apostate said...

Aye, kiss me, I'm Irish!
I actually am part Irish.
Me great-grandparents hailed from County Cork.
& whenever great-grandpa would have a tiff w/great-grandma, he'd tell her, "Aye, & you're mother's maiden name was Fitzgerald!" Which would send her into a tizzy, it would.

Stardust said...

KA - My mother's side of the family are German-Dutch...My grandfather's family immigrated here from Berlin, and my grandmother's family from Holland -- but they were here for a couple generations before my grandmother was born.

But my father's side have been here since the late 1600s and are all Irish-Scottish...mixed in with a few Cherokee Indians. (How is that for a mixture?) The Irish ancestors hail from County Down on the east side of Ireland.