The Stroock's Books St. Patrick's Day Spectacular

On this St. Patrick's Day, like every St. Patrick's Day, we're wearing orange. On our mum's side we're descendent from a long line of bible-thumping, Scotch-Irish* Presbyterian Ministers who got a land grant from Orange Billy after the Battle of the Boyne. These came to America in the 1750s, settled down in Orange (ahem) County, New York and founded the town of Thompson Ridge (our middle name is Thompson). We were Tories. Our grandfather, George Hunter Thompson, always told our mother to wear Orange on St. Patrick's Day.

Sooner or later we'll get to World War 1990: Thatcher's War. At the end of The Final Storm, the IRA is going to make Maggie really, really mad. Readers who hate the IRA will find this book emotionally satisfying with IRA prisoners getting 'enhanced interrogation' and IRA bars in Boston** blowing up. Ingham doesn't like the IRA and there's an SAS character who'd be perfect for gangster hooliganism, don't you think? Shin, meet rubber hose.  And we haven't even brought up 3 Commando yet...

Okay, Okay...when the Stroock family visited Ireland in 2019 we had a fabulous time. Our childhood friend has lived there for neigh on 20 years now. We rented a home in Howth (on the coast and yes, the town and coast looked like what your thinking) and spent tonnes of quality time together. We went around Dublin and the Irish countryside and many a church, castle, cathedral and neolithic site we saw. In this part of the country Ireland really does look like what an American tourist thinks Ireland should look like. We told an English friend of ours about our tour of Kilmainhamm Goal, to which she replied, 'What lies are they telling?' Heh.

*Yes, that's how you say it in America. 

**This blog hates Boston and everything in it.

Baldoyle Rainbow Rising

So we stayed in Baldoyle, are charming town on the Irish Sea filled with working class....

Actually its a rich suburb filled with people who commute to Dublin.

That said, it was loaded with Irish charm. We were on a shallow bay that slams into a great man made seawall which we walked almost everyday.

In the afternoon the tides goes out and one may walk the bay.

Like so.

That was endless fun.

To the north things were green and mountainous and boggy:

Oh and we got this too:

Not staged.

Ireland: Initial Smaoinimh

Those of you following us on FB saw the pics. Irish August is like Yankee September. Summer? What summer? Every day there was a possibility of rain and every day that possibility was realized. But don't worry, as fast as the rain came, it left. Don't like Ireland's weather, eh? Just wait a minute.

We stayed in a lovely house in Baldoyle, northeast of Dublin. Baldoyle lies on an inlet lashed by Irish Sea winds and shrouded in mist. One need only look out upon the water to imagine Viking longboats approaching, for a thousand years ago approach this place they surely did.

A decade and two daughters ago the Fami de Stroock went to Ireland, and we came away thinking, this looks like Pennsylvania especially after our drive from Dublin down to Cork. But here, and throughout our tour of the countryside, Ireland looked like Ireland. It was green, hilly and felt like Middle Earth, or Westeros anyway, which makes sense.

Dublin...ahhh Dublin. When we were there a decade ago we were impressed. To be honest, this time, not. We'll go into more detail in a later post, but if one is looking for Olde Dublin one will only find it at Disney's Epcot Center. Dublin has lots of bums on the street and a graffiti problem. They better get Rudy Giuliani there quick. Dublin is also globalized, we saw the hijab.

The people looked... as expected. Still, every once in a while we'd see a faire Irish lass, red of hair,  with big blue eyes set in high cheek bones themselves splashed with freckles. We'd nod to ourselves and think aye... Most of the young men were skinny, like American Millennials, but the older blokes were stockier, with hard, weather beaten faces. In every instance these people treated us well.

Stroock to Michael Collins: Drop Dead

We understand that Dublin [which we'll be gracing with our presence this summer ] is worried about Ireland's relationship with the UK post-Brexit.

In response we present to the reader the Stroock Plan: Ireland joins the UK.

Think about it, trade and tariffs disputes legislated away and the Northern Ireland dispute resolved in one fell act of Parliamentary Supremacy.

We proffered the Stroock Plan to our man on the Emerald Isle.

This is a family-friendly blog...

[The fuck you say?-Ed]

...so we won't relate the string of curses that followed.

Sadly it seems no one shares our vision.

[I should bloody well hope not-Ed]

The Irish are Whimsical Part III: Irish Eyes aren't Smiling

The previously mentioned Irish Journalist, Benny Lewis, takes exception to American Exceptionalism:

There is no best country. But those who go on about how America is No. 1 tend to be those who have never traveled or are lightly traveled.

How about saying America is great or even … "awesome"? I think patriotism is an excellent quality to have, and we should all be proud of where we were born. But nationalism (believing other countries are inferior) is a terrible quality. 

Get fucked, Paddy. We'll take no lectures on national greatness from people that on the great issues of the 20th century didn't really have much to say. Hitler? Stalin? Whatever...and change the telly to the 10 PM lottery announcement.

The number of countries inferior to the US of A is far too long to list in it's entirety, but we'll start at the top: Ireland. Christ almighty, Ireland was a Third World country until the 1990s.

You want greatness? Take a look a the fuckin moon, there boyo. Look up at the night sky. There's an American satellite traveling in interstellar space. Too far away is it? How 'bout the Panama fuckin' Canal, or the Eire Canal, or the Hoover Dam, or the brand new Tappan Zee Bridge. The internet? We fuckin built that. How 'bout the fact that you aren't some dumb Krauts shoe-shine boy, or the Irish Independent Oblast, the most insignificant part of the Soviet Union.

Lewis also hate's America's is car friendliness:

America is a terrible place for pedestrians. It's the worst place in the world to live if you don't own a car.

You're goddamn right this country is built for cars, Potato shitter. It's 3,000 miles across the goddamn continent. That's longer than your stupid effing metric numbers even go. Americans think nothing of packing the kids into the minivan and driving 1500 miles to Disneyworld. It's called Holiday Road, asshole. Fuck you.

Lewis goes on to say that Americans are always in a hurry: 

Americans are also very punctual, because of course time is money. So many of them could do with stopping to smell the roses and arriving late because they took their time. 

Yeah, we'll stop and smell the roses in our huge goddamn backyard behind our four bedroom 2400 sqr foot house when we get home from work.

Lewis thinks being on time is an American thing, Jesus wept. We'd rather be in a hurry than sit around some god-forsaken train station arguing about the best way to Innisfree. That's why we had 'time' to build the aircraft carrier USS America. There will never be a carrier named RoI Ireland.

Fucking parochial Irish crap like this is why we created a whole plot line in the World War 1990 universe just so we could wright a novel about the British blowing the feck out of the Irish...again.

Ireland Objects

The Times of Israel tells us the Irish are fightin' mad about this whole Gaza thing:

Ireland summoned the Israeli ambassador Tuesday to communicate its “shock and dismay” over the deaths of dozens of Palestinians during clashes with Israeli security forces along the border with the Gaza Strip the day before.

Goodness me. It's like Saturday night at a South Boston bar* after a Celtics loss.

Sorry Ireland. No one should take human rights lectures from a people that sat out the 20th century. A nation that on the great issues of the day, Hitler...Communism....really didn't have a strong opinion one way or another.

How unbelievably smug.

*Thatcher should have bombed for being IRA bagmen.That's why in War of the Red Sea the peace activist media-whore is from Ireland.

Screw Ireland

So on our mother's side we are Scotch-Irish...

[Scotch?-Ed]

In America the term is accepted vernacular for Scots who left Ireland and came to America; Scotch-Irish.

Anyhoo we fought with Orange Billy and the Duke of Shombourg at the Battle of the Boyne and received a land-grant from the great William III as a reward. The Thompsons of Ireland left that blighted land in the 1750s and settled in orange county New York in the Hudson River Valley. We were good Tories during the American Insurrection.

Your Friday Flag on Sunday

Our maternal grandfather, George Hunter Thompson, Thompson is our middle name BTW, was descended from a long line of Scot-Presbyterian ministers, and he always told our mother to don orange on St. Patrick's Day. We do.

But that's not why we hate the Irish.

Ohhhh the troubles....ohhhh Bloody Sunday....ohhhh the English hung me grandfather they did, now let me bore the hell out of you over a pint or 12....Ohhh that poor Bobby Sands...

Good lord the way these people wallow in The Troubles, the way it just consumed the whole damn island. You get a lot of this with the breakaway IRA terrorists in Patriot Games. PJ O'Rourke mocked the hell out of the Irish Wallow in his tour of Belfast chronicled in Give War a Chance,  an important book in our own life. At one point O'Rourke refers to the 'Kill Happy Irish' walking out of funerals becuase the clergy denounce para-military violence.

You get a whiff of Irish-despair over here in America, where all Irish songs have three themes:

-Let's get drunk and kill the limeys.

-Let's get drunk and talk about how bad Ireland was.

-Let's get drunk and talk about how much we miss Ireland.

Oh,  also mother.

We happened to be in Ireland a few weeks before their referendum on joining the EU in 2008. We saw all the sites. For the record the Guinness at the Dublin brewery is only slightly better than the Guinness over here, and the bar on top of the brewery serves Budweiser.  Bud? What the fuck is wrong with these people? When we saw Sinn Feinn signs urging 'No' we knew to support Irish entry full throttle. Anything those Marxist bastards oppose has to be a good idea.