ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for March, 2010.

St. Patrick’s Day

And so today March 17 marks the anual St. Patrick’s Holiday in the United States. St. Patrick (AD 387–461) was the missionary who brought Christianity to Ireland and converted them from their “pagan” ways. The holiday which began as a catholic holiday is now very secular and, like the Mardi Gras, has become a day of revelry and celebration of Irish culture. In Ireland, it is a public holiday. In the United States, it is just a day where people wear green, where the fountain in front of the White House and the Chicago River among many waters in the country are dyed green.

It doesn’t however mean that everyone who wears green or gets drunk on Guinness on this day in the US is of Irish descent or knows anything about Ireland. More often than not, it is just the chance to belong. There was a St. Patrick’s day parade last weekend in Chicago, and I’m sure in many other American cities but I couldn’t attend. I asked one of my students to name five famous Irish citizens. He didn’t know. The ones I can remember are John F. Kennedy, George Carlin, George Bernard Shaw, WB Yeats, Conan O’ Brien, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Jonathan Swift, among others.

And he was impressed with my ability to come up with those names spontaneously, much to my surprise.

St. Patrick’s Day was published on March 17th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Academic, Soliloquy category. There are currently 10 comments on this article so far.

Wednesday!

Prof. R. McClinton, Associate Professor of Native American History, Department of Historical Studies.

Picture taken a few days ago at Starbucks where she’d kindly invited me for a cup of coffee. She’s seventy.

Wednesday! was published on March 17th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Art, Fun category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Tuesday!

In bed, reading Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sister’s Street. First impression: A brilliant story. Great writing.

It started this way:

“The world was exactly as it should be. No more and, definitely, no less. She had the love of a good man. A house. And her own money – still new and fresh and the healthiest shade of green – the thought of it buoyed her and gave her a rush that made her hum.”

In Yoruba, that should be:
“Ilé ayé rí gẹgẹ bó se ye kó rí. Kò sí àseju bẹẹni kò sí àìtó. Ifẹ rẹ n jẹun lokan ọdọmọkùnrin ọmọlúàbí kan. Ilé kan. Àti owó tirẹ – tó tuntun yanranyanran pẹlú àwò ewé té rẹwa tó sì jọlọ – rírònú nípa rẹ lásán mú inú re dùn dé ibi wípé ó bẹrẹ sí n kọrin laìlanu.”

Tuesday! was published on March 16th, 2010, with the tags , , , , under the Academic, adventures category. There are currently 5 comments on this article so far.

Tuesday!

In bed.

Actually,  I got up at around 4am in the morning to follow the #EnoughisEnough youth rally in Abuja Nigeria through the web video stream. I lost interest after a while, and not only because after about three hours, I couldn’t see the live video from the event anymore, or that my eyes were closing by themselves, but because I was also getting blood pressure increases from the procession of the protest, and it’s direction. As much a success as I will always agree that the event is because of its being eventually able to get the youths off their bases to make their grievances known in person, after a while, it failed to rouse me to the level of total and reckless surrender. Why? After a while, the purpose of the march seemed reduced to one purpose of getting into the National Assembly, and/or getting the elected representatives in the National Assembly to show up and address the crowd. This was not only unnecessary, it was distracting. I could be wrong but rallies have been known to be effective without being confrontational.

Tuesday! was published on March 16th, 2010, under the Uncategorized category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Monday!

‘The Ides of March are come.’ ‘Aye, Caesar, but not gone’ – Julius Caesar

Work resumes today after one week of Spring Break. I look forward to the last quarter of my teaching experience which should be easier than I thought before. From the result of the mid-term test from two weeks ago, I think we’re doing well so far. It’s time to take it easy and just have fun. Yes, fun.

I got a few more books to read, just as soon as I finish Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sister’s Street which I’ve just begun. They include Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things (my second copy), Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come, Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns and The Kite Runner, the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa’s In Praise of the Stepmother, JM Coetzee’s The Life and Times of Michael K, and Paula Varsavsky’s No One Said A Word.

Is it strange or not that my colleagues in other parts of the country are just beginning their own Spring Break today?

Have a nice week everyone.

Monday! was published on March 15th, 2010, with the tags , , , under the Academic, Observations category. There are currently 2 comments on this article so far.