My Aqua-Vitae Bottle

Another midsummer brings another --the seventh --production a theater company called Shakespeare in Clark Park. This is an image from the closing night of The Merry Wives of Windsor. It's a play that I'm not familiar with and tonight I wandered by not to sit and follow it but to enjoy the atmosphere and get a blip. I don't like watching something like this alone. One line caught my attention, so I looked it up later:

"I will rather trust a Fleming with my butter, Parson Hugh the Welshman with my cheese, an Irishman with my aqua-vitae bottle, or a thief to walk my ambling gelding, than my wife with herself..."

It was the second time within a few days that I thought of myself as Irish. My Mom's side of me is all green, as both her parents were natives. Hearing the line I remembered a scene at home, when my sister brought her English fiancée home to meet the family. He's a regular comedian, so he told a joke, with a Black man stereotyped as affable but very dumb.

It was (for those days) pretty mild stuff, but Mom shot back, "If you were telling that joke to your friends in London, it would be an Irishman, wouldn't it?"

"Yes. it probably would," Kieth admitted. He's been my brother in law for close to forty years now --still a great guy.

The other time when I "got my Irish up" was during the week, listening to a radio interview. An author was explaining how both potatoes and the blight that destroyed the potato crops in Ireland during the 1840s were alien species, coming originally from the Americas. He mentioned it as one of the massive and unforseen results of trans-Atlantic shipping, starting with Columbus in 1492.

I think it was unintentional, but the remark was misleading at best. Food supplies are disrupted by natural forces all the time, but famines are human creations. There has never been even one exception --least of all the Great Hunger of Ireland. British government policy caused the Irish peasantry to depend on potatoes only, and British government policy caused about a milion people to die of hunger and disease after all the potatoes turned to slime.

Thinking about the Great Famine makes my blood boil every time. Jokes about drunken Irishmen amuse me as much as anyone (provided the jokes are funny).

Here and Here are earlier blips of live plays in our wonderful park.