Too Long for the Comment Box

(Google rejected this response to Barrett Bonden that I tried to make in the previous post's comment box, so I have turned it into a separate post. I hope that doing so does not make my response more important or weighty than it is intended. I am too long-winded for my own good, at times, and this might be one of those times.)

BB, my dear friend,

I take issue, Friend, with your use of the word antipathy in describing my comments to you. I don't dislike you (- yet - and there is a big, teasing grin attached to that. I'm wise-cracking, BB.) I made my comments in teasing friendship, though in the one case, I likely misunderstood what you meant, that regarding squashes. (In my ignorance and misunderstanding, I didn't know if you were saying you couldn't eat them [for health reasons], or if they were unavailable to you [some squashes have a long growing season and need hotter summers than I thought England might have]. It didn't come across to me that your comment might mean you simply didn't like to eat them.) For me to continue on about squashes, at this point, though, would be like beating the proverbial dead horse.

So let's move on to the other two issues: the tongue-in-cheek remarks I made about the Irish-Americans in New Orleans on St. Patrick's Day, and your bread-crumb comment from an earlier posting about being of two minds regarding the independence of the American colony.

First, let me say that I believe American Irish are as different from Irish nationals as American Africans are from African nationals. We are Americans, who wear the trappings of our motherlands: trappings, burdens, prejudices and third- and fourth-generation memories. Both groups have romanticized views of what it means to be Irish and African, respectively, that are based not on first-hand experience gained from living in those countries (for the most part - always dangerous to speak in generalities, isn't it?) but on the biases of our cultures and the not-always-objective histories handed down to us. Make no mistake, however; we all are Americans, whether one sees that as a blessing or a curse. I think it's pretty cool, myself.

My understanding of the impact of the hostilities (civil war, really) between the Irish and the English in Northern Ireland is, obviously, not going to be the same as it would be for you. So let me apologize if my off-hand, meant-to-be-funny, remarks about Irish-Americans and their social ecumenicism - which lasts for the twenty-four hours of one day out of the year and is meant to be a sharing of fun and the joy of being Irish in a land where it is okay to be proud of your ancestral nationality - might have touched a heretofore unrecognized-by-me source of discomfort within your heart. I wrote that part of my post with a few people in mind, one of whom is you. The other intended targets who read this blog and are of Irish descent or from New Orleans would recognize the self-deprecating humor in the comments about what the Catholic Irish descendants in New Orleans might give thanks for and what the non-Irish Catholics might give thanks for. I had hoped you would take up the gauntlet, but I didn't know my remarks would be interpreted as antipathetic.

One of the things I most enjoy about our correspondences is that you, perhaps unintentionally, perhaps purposefully, drop little sparklies that catch my crow’s eye, leading me to investigate further. One such splinter of brightness was your reference to Barbara Tuchman’s history of the American Revolution. I quote: “Just reading a Barbara Tuchman account of how Britain lost that particular colony and, you know what?, it's left me in two minds.”

What a curious thing to say, I thought at the time, in response to a post about soup. I'm guessing that what triggered your comment was your expressed thought that you didn’t think anything could be bought for 32-cents anymore in the US, but still, it was the leap from discussing soup to political history that I found intriguing. Hence, my pursuit of that leap with you, which led, I think, to your second response above.

I think you do Americans a disservice in the paragraph which begins, "There is one further matter that needs clarification for US readers." Not every American is as ignorant as am I, BB, and - therefore - needful of clarification. But even I know the accepted view is that the British Empire began to unravel not with America's triumphant war of independence, but with the loss of its crown jewel, India, in the 30s and 40s of the past century. However, if Edmund Burke(*) is to be believed, it can be argued that the first snags in the cloth of the Empire actually began with the imperialism of the East India Company in the mid-1700s, which manifested in its heavy-handed dealings with the peoples of that nation. Certainly, the EIC's oppressive actions sowed the seeds of discontent that were, 200 years later, to bear fruit in India's fight for independence.

So, my dear friend, have I made my muddled thinking clearer, or have I made things worse? Have I misunderstood your intentions, your thoughts, again? And, finally, would you prefer we take any further discussions along these lines to email?

(*) I like to think it was Burke's education in a Quaker school that helped form his democratic – egalitarian, really - views of how to deal with one's citizenry. Too bad King George didn't listen. Too bad His Majesty's "star chamber" of advisors had taken control of the king. Any truth to the rumors that King George's mind was being systematically destroyed by poisons fed to him in his meals and wine, by members of his own family?

Martha