My image of the South and the Civil War was formed in part by the movie Gone With the Wind.  RTÉ, our one channel when I was growing up in Ireland, ran movie classics on Sunday afternoons. It was one of the features I enjoyed watching with my mother. 

After all these years in America, I still feel like an immigrant. Though I proudly hold American citizenship, it is other immigrants that I most readily identify with.  “Where are you from?” I ask waiters and cab drivers, even a woman on the subway (we were so caught up in our chat about how “there is no place in the world like New York City” that I missed my stop). 

After all these years in America, I still feel like an immigrant. Though I proudly hold American citizenship, it is other immigrants that I most readily identify with.  “Where are you from?” I ask waiters and cab drivers, even a woman on the subway (we were so caught up in our chat about how “there is no place in the world like New York City” that I missed my stop). 

As I write this, the sound from a lone bagpiper comes through my window. Not as unusual an occurrence as you might think. Irish America’s office is up the street from a church, the St. Francis Friary, the cornerstone of which was put in place in 1844, and where the friars still feed the hungry (what better way to remember your ancestors this St. Patrick’s Day than to give to a food program?) I don’t know if the piper is heralding a wedding or lamenting a death. Is he/she part of the annual celebration of mass for the laborers’ union, or just someone practicing for St. Patrick’s Day? There’s a fire station across the street from the church, perhaps it’s one of the FDNY Emerald Pipe Band making his pipes ready for the parade?

“An Irishman’s heart is nothing but his imagination.”
– George Bernard Shaw (John Bull’s Other Island)