[Photo: Paul Finnegan with Carole King.]
We are coming to the end of the week of St. Patrick's Day. It was a good week for me, I can't complain. The only thing I lacked was enough sleep, but I soldiered on!
Here are some highlights:
- I spent the evening of the 16th in Washington DC at a gala event, on active duty for the Irish Echo news service. Joe Biden, the President of the United States, spoke eloquently and lovingly about Ireland and the Irish people, his Irish-American identity, and his Irish-American family. His mother's maiden name was Finnegan, and it was great to hear him speak about the great woman she was. Being a namesake, though, didn't get me a photo opp with POTUS. But I did get to take a selfie of myself with living, singing legend Carole King! (By the way, this event was also where the Irish prime minister, the Taoiseach, Michéal Martin, was discovered to have gotten COVID and had to be spirited out of the banquet room.)
- I took the Acela back to New York on the morning of the 17th to march with the Irish Business Organization. (I had to be up early for that train, ugh!) This year I am the president of this great organization, and I was honored to march up 5th Avenue with them. It rained heavily at first, and then after the rain stopped, the wind picked up–so we got a wash and a dry! After that we had a great 'after party', which was, shall we say, a lot of work to organize for everyone involved. At one point in the run-up to St. Patrick's Day, I felt my new Board and I were being hazed by the 'afterparty' planning committee. In the end, the party was great and my new Board and I have now passed our probation. Yea!
- And then there is are the two articles I wrote that were published in this week's Irish Echo. I invite you to read them:
Writing is the craft of spilling your undisciplined thoughts "willy-nilly" out of one part of your head and into another, where they are marshalled and sequenced and gotten into shape before being dispatched along to your fingers in an attempt to communicate. The better the communication the better the writer. (And the more beautiful the communication the more genius the writer.)
And this is why I love to write. I really enjoy the craft, and the art of communicating. It's also why I do my podcast the way that I do... because, as I tell people, when you listen to my podcast, you are listening to my writing!
This coming week, I'll be writing for my March episode of CenterPieceNY. It won't be easy this month, though, because I'll be writing my goodbyes to my BFF who died recently.
Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone, named for the patron saint of a nation that is the poster child for refugees. Let's go Ukraine!
-Paul
