St. Patrick's Day

 St. Patrick's Day

Today we celebrate everything Irish.  This is a runner at San Francisco's annual Bay to Breakers race in 2015 (also called Bare to Breakers because of the number of people who run naked).  He proclaimed his Irish heritage with a green headband, a shamrock tattoo colored like the Irish flag (green, white and orange), and green and orange socks.

Irish singer Joe Gabriel.

The 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards, televised from Belfast, Northern Ireland, were interrupted by a streaker running naked across the stage, who turned out to be Irish actor David Monahan.  The incident was obviously planned, because after Monahan ran onto the stage stark naked, he calmly chatted with presenter Hayden Panatierre before running off stage.

Ireland's most famous spot for nude swimming is called the Forty Foot, a rocky promontory on the north side of Dublin Bay.  For generations it was a "gentlemen's bathing place" where members of a men-only association swam nude (see video above).  In 1971 and later in 1989, feminists protested the men-only rule, and the place now allows women, but because of that, sadly, nude swimming is a thing of the past.

The Forty Foot figures prominently in the plot of the historical novel At Swim, Two Boys by Irish writer Jamie O'Neill. It's the story of two teenage boys from different backgrounds who fall in love in 1915, their fathers, who were army buddies but are now at odds with each other, and a rich bachelor living near the Forty Foot, where the young men swim, who had once been imprisoned in England for "gross indecency" (gay sex was illegal in England at the time).  It's all set against the background of World War I, which is raging in Europe, of Catholicism that dominates every aspect of life, and of the imminent Irish rebellion against English rule that's about to explode in 1916.  It's a complex, astonishingly good book, and I highly recommend it, though it's not an easy read.

Today we can all be a little bit Irish through "the wearing of the green."

When I was in high school, I chided my chemistry lab partner on St. Patrick's Day for not wearing anything green.  He said, "I painted my cock green."  I'm sure he was just being sarcastic, but who knows?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!