Shamrock shenanigans - 40 Shades of Green around the world

The green London Eye

After St. Patrick’s Day yesterday the greening of the world seems complete as the 17th March seems to have morphed into a “Greenfest” not just for people of Irish extraction but those who want to join in and be Irish for a day. Indeed in a sign of the mark made by Irish Culture many people from places as extreme as Ulan Bator to Wolverhampton feel they have a little bit of the Irish in them. The attitude is best summed up by an Irish Bar in Toronto which had the slogan “Same Ireland, different country!”


The green fountains of Trafalgar Square, London




Paddy's Day in Trafalgar Square London

The St. Patrick's Festival is Ireland's official celebration for its national holiday - St. Patrick's Day on Tuesday 17th March 2009. St. Patrick and St. Bridgid are the patron saints of Ireland but the former is better known due to the world wide Paddy Whackery which takes place on his feast day and indeed over a number of days. In my hometown of Dublin the festival now lasts 4 days – a far cry from many years ago when I used to stand with my Scout Group as part of the “Guard of Honour” in front of the reviewing stand at the GPO in Dublin's main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street, and watch a succession of commercial floats, Irish Dancing schools and over excitable American majorettes go by in a parade of dismal banality.








The Dublin Parade

The Dublin Parade has come on in leaps and bounds and is now an entertaining display of street theatre. In a tangible sign of the greening of the world several of the world's landmarks are turned green for St Patrick's Day, the annual celebration of all hues of Irishness. London's Eye and the Trafalgar Square fountains became green as did The Sydney Opera House, Toronto’s CN Tower and New York's Empire State building were lit up by green floodlights as part of a marketing push by Tourism Ireland. In Chicago the wonderfully titled Chicago River and Sanitary Canal is dyed green for a week.






The Chicago Parade



How green is my river? Chicago


Saint Patrick's Day (Irish: Lá 'le Pádraig or Lá Fhéile Pádraig), colloquially is the feast day which annually celebrates Saint Patrick (386-493), the patron saint of Ireland, on March 17. It is a national holiday in the Republic of Ireland (a bank holiday in Northern Ireland).


A green Sydney Opera House

Yesterday, Saint Patrick's Day was celebrated worldwide by Irish people and increasingly by many of non-Irish descent. Celebrations are generally themed around all things green and Irish; both Christians and non-Christians celebrate the secular version of the holiday by wearing green, eating Irish food, imbibing Irish drink, and attending parades. The St. Patrick's Day parade in Dublin, Ireland is part of a five day festival, with over 500,000 people attending. The largest St. Patrick's Day parade is held in New York City and it is watched by 2 million spectators. The St. Patrick's Day parade was first held in New York City on 17 March, 1756 when Irish soldiers marched through the city. Parades also take place in other Irish towns and villages. Other large parades include those in Belfast, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Coatbridge, Montreal, Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, Savannah, Pittsburgh, Denver, Sacramento, Scranton and Toronto. Large parades also take place in other places throughout Europe and the Americas, as well as Australia and Asia.


Yer Man himself, St. Paddy




NYC - A green Empire State of mind

The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade is remarkably now in its 255th Year. It is the Daddy of them All and of course after American Independence it became a focus of displays of Irish national spirit which could not be expressed in an Ireland which was then under British rule. On sale now for St. Patrick’s Day is a one-of-a-kind book which chronicles the Irish-American pride that has fuelled the NYC St. Patrick's Day Parade, the oldest parade in the country. This handsome book has been produced under the aegis of Quinnipiac University Press. Ninety minutes from New York City and two hours from Boston, Quinnipiac University is located next to picturesque Sleeping Giant Mountain in Hamden, Conn. The campus is home to 5,900 undergraduates and 2,000 graduate students, coming from 30 states and several countries.


The New York St. Patrick's Day Parade passing St. Patrick's Cathedral

Its President John L. Lahey was presented by President Bill Clinton with the Irish American of the Year Award by Irish America Magazine at a luncheon ceremony at the New York Yacht Club on March 15. "This is one of the greatest days of my life," said Lahey, who was honoured for his work in pioneering collegiate study of Ireland's Great Hunger and his remarkable commitment to promoting Irish-American heritage.

For more about the Irish Famine see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/gorta-mor-irelands-great-hunger.html

Lahey has been involved with the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade for more than 30 years and currently serves as vice chairman of the Parade Committee. He was grand marshal in 1997. "I am deeply honoured to be recognized with such a remarkable group of people," Lahey said. Lahey presented Clinton with a copy of the Quinnipiac University Press book, "Celebrating 250 Years of the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade." Filled with a detailed account of the parade through the years, with stunning historic images and photographs, this book preserves the past and celebrates the present.


I love green New York


Celebrating 250 Years of the New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade.

www.250yearsparadebook.com

For more about St. Patrick see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/03/st-paddys-day-blog.html





Green Angel of the North, Gateshead, England

Suze Rotolo

I was saddened to hear of the premature death from Lung Cancer at the age of 67 of Suze Rotolo (1943-2011) in NYC. The principled daughter of two American Communists she inspired Bob Dylan’s radicalism and worked for Civil Rights during the period they were together. She appeared with him on the cover of his breakthrough album “Freewheelin' Bob Dylan” walking down a snowy Jones Street in Greenwich village and he wrote "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Tomorrow Is a Long Time." about her.


A CD of the music inspired by Greenwich Village featuring a picture of Washington Square Park with liner notes by Suze Rotolo

She was a 17-year-old art- and poetry-loving civil rights activist from Queens when she met the 20-year-old folk singer from Minnesota at an all-day folk concert at Riverside Church in Manhattan in the summer of 1961. "Right from the start, I couldn't take my eyes off her," Dylan wrote in "Chronicles: Volume One," his 2004 memoir. "She was the most erotic thing I'd ever seen." Dylan later wrote that meeting her "was like stepping into the tales of 1,001 Arabian nights", adding: "She had a smile that could light up a street full of people... a Rodin sculpture come to life."



After the sudden death of Rotolo's father in 1958, her mother took to drinking. The teenage Suze began to take Sunday trips to Washington Square in the Village, joining the folk musicians, poets and political activists who took on the establishment in verse and propaganda. At 17, she caught the subway from Queens to the Village for a final time, "without looking back".

While still in high school, Rotolo volunteered for the Congress of Racial Equality, marching on Washington for civil rights and desegregation. At the age of 20, she made national news when she and four other students stood up for the "free travel of free Americans" by, in defiance of the government travel ban, heading over to Cuba. The group spent two months touring factories and schools and met Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. It was an incredibly brave thing to do.



Rotolo later wrote that Dylan "made me think of Harpo Marx, impish and approachable, but there was something about him that broadcast an intensity that was not to be taken lightly." So began a four-year relationship that was immortalised on a wintery day in 1963 when photographer Don Hunstein captured the young couple walking down a snowy Greenwich Village street, Dylan's hands thrust in his pockets and Rotolo's hands wrapped snugly around his arm.

"It was freezing out," she recalled in a 2008 interview with the New York Times. "He wore a very thin jacket, because image was all. Our apartment was always cold, so I had a sweater on, plus I borrowed one of his big, bulky sweaters. On top of that I put a coat. So I felt like an Italian sausage."

Paying my own personal tribute to Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo in Jones Street, Greenwich Village, NYC March 2012

The album displayed in a record store in Jones Street

The photo became the cover of Dylan's breakthrough second album, which includes the songs "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" and "Masters of War."


A Book Art piece by Suze Rotolo

Rotolo was born in Queens, N.Y., on Nov. 20, 1943, a so-called red-diaper baby whose parents were members of the American Communist Party. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she traded Queens for Greenwich Village after graduating from high school. She was working in the office of the Congress of Racial Equality — and had seen Dylan perform at a small club in the Village — when she met him at the folk festival. Rotolo, who moved into a tiny apartment on West Fourth Street in the Village with Dylan when she was 18, is credited with introducing him to modern art and poetry, avant-garde theatre and civil rights politics.


Suze Rotolo in 2007

She worked on the production staff at a local Greenwich Village theatre and when Dylan visited there to pick her up one day, he was introduced to the theatre work of Bertolt Brecht, the German poet, playwright and theatre director. In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan recalled Brecht on Brecht, a musical revue he saw there. He said Brecht had an enormous impact on his development as an artist. "My little shack in the universe was about to expand into some glorious cathedral, at least in songwriting terms," Dylan wrote, describing his reaction to the music. "They were like folk songs in nature, but unlike folk songs, too, because they were sophisticated." Dylan was struck in particular by Pirate Jenny from The Threepenny Opera.

Rotolo married Italian Enzo Bartoccioli, a film editor who works for the United Nations, in 1970. Together they had one son, Luca, who is a guitarist in New York. In New York, Rotolo worked as an illustrator and painter, before concentrating on creating book art, making book-like objects which incorporated found art. Remaining politically active, Rotolo joined the street-theatre group Billionaires for Bush and protested at the 2004 Republican National Convention in Manhattan. Her friend and Village Voice critic Jim Hoberman wrote that she died in her New York apartment "and the arms of her husband of 40 years, Enzo Bartoccioli".

Rotolo appears in Martin Scorsese's film No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, a documentary focusing on Dylan's early career from 1961 to 1966. She was also interviewed nationally in 2008 by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air to promote her book, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties.



Rotolo's book was published by Broadway Books on 13 May 2008. Rotolo recounted her attempts not to be overshadowed by her relationship with Dylan. She discussed her need to pursue her artistic creativity and to retain her political integrity, concluding: "The sixties were an era that spoke a language of inquiry and curiosity and rebelliousness against the stifling and repressive political and social culture of the decade that preceded it. The new generation causing all the fuss was not driven by the market: we had something to say, not something to sell."

Here is her website which features her artworks;

http://www.suzerotolo.com




Susan Elizabeth Rotolo


1943 – 2011

Requiescat in pace.

Well, Did you Evah!

Basildon Room - Waldorf-Astoria

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/08/basildon-park.html

The recent Blog on Basildon Park and how fixtures from it formed the “Basildon Room” at the Waldorf- Astoria in New York City brought back memories of my first night in America in 1981. For on that occasion I had a somewhat distorted view of America for I stayed at 301 Park Avenue within walking distance of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Rockefeller Centre. That address is better known as the Waldorf -Astoria and I was stunned at this 48 storey Art Deco landmark. I stayed in the Towers and before I got to enjoy the wonderful vistas from our room at the “top of the house” you experienced the basement car park with its wall-to-wall limos and its lift which could take Franklin D. Roosevelt’s car directly from the platform at the adjacent Grand Central Station as he went to the Presidential Suite where all US Presidents stay when they are in New York. Then you had to walk through six lobbies to get to the huge reception (the hotel has 1,450 rooms) where by tradition all reception staff are mother tongue French speakers. Only then did you go to the room in the Towers to enjoy awe inspiring views of Manhattan.


Waldorf-Astoria Park Avenue entrance



But above all what I remember is Cole Porter’s piano for this great American songwriter lived here for 30 years (he had family money and his wife was rich) and the Waldorf would only allow Cole Porter songs to be played on it. Cole Porter lived in several suites in The Waldorf Towers from 1934 to 1964, eventually settling on room 33A. This spacious and grand suite later became the home of Frank Sinatra. The Waldorf Towers are the super-luxury, high-security, residential “hotel within a hotel” in the Waldorf-Astoria.


Cole Porter’s piano

Cole Porter’s piano – a small mahogany Steinway with Louis XVI courtly figures – is on display in the Park Avenue cocktail terrace of The Waldorf-Astoria. If you’re a Cole Porter fan, it’s definitely worth a visit. He composed many of his most famous songs on this piano, including I’ve Got You Under My Skin.


Plaque

Cole Albert Porter (June 9, 1891 – October 15, 1964) was an American composer and songwriter. His works include the musical comedies Kiss Me, Kate, Fifty Million Frenchmen, DuBarry Was a Lady and Anything Goes, as well as songs like "Night and Day", "I Get a Kick out of You", "Well, Did You Evah!" and "I've Got You Under My Skin". He was noted for his sophisticated bawdy lyrics, clever rhymes, and complex forms. He was one of the greatest contributors to the Great American Songbook. Cole Porter is one of the few Tin Pan Alley composers to have written both lyrics and music for his songs.





On October 24, 1937, taking a break from a re-write of what would be his weakest musical, "You Never Know", visiting as a guest at a countess' home, Piping Rock Club in Locust Valley, New York, he was badly injured in a fall while horseback-riding. Both of his legs were smashed and he suffered a nerve injury. He was hospitalised for two years, confined to a wheelchair for five years and endured over 30 operations to save his legs over the next 20 years. During his recuperation he wrote a number of Broadway musicals.

On August 3, 1952, his beloved mother died of a cerebral haemorrhage. His wife, Linda, died of cancer on May 20, 1954. On April 3, 1958, he sustained his 33rd operation, and still suffering from chronic pain, his right leg was amputated. He refused to wear an artificial limb and lived as a virtual recluse in his apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. He sought refuge in alcohol, sleep, self-pity and sank into despair. He even refused to attend a "Salute to Cole Porter" at the Metropolitan Opera on May 15, 1960, and the commencement exercises at Yale University in June of 1960 when he was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, or his 70th birthday party arranged by his friends at the Orpheum Theatre in New York City in June 1962.


Cole Porter



After what appeared to be a successful kidney stone operation at St. John's hospital in Santa Monica, California, he died very unexpectedly on October 15, 1964. His funeral instructions were that he have no funeral or memorial service and he was buried adjacent to his mother and wife in Peru, Indiana. What a sad end for a gifted songwriter whose music more than anybody’s caught the zeitgeist of America over 30 years and whose legacy endures today. This rich and gifted man became a virtual prisoner in his gilded cage of suite 33A at The Towers of the Waldorf-Astoria.


Main Lobby, Waldorf-Astoria

At his best his songs use slang, bawdy allusions, irony, sarcasm and wit and for me they are best represented by the wonderful cover of Well, Did you Evah! These qualities are there in large measure in this wonderful version of my personal Cole Porter favourite by Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop. Debbie was the post-punk priestess of New York City and with Blondie produced some perfect pop songs, many of which celebrated the rawness and energy of The Union City. As for Iggy (yes I know it’s not his real name and he is from Michigan where he played in a High school Band The Iguanas = Iggy; geddit?) whether with Nico, Tom Waits or David Bowie he is an original force.


Debbie & Iggy



Well, Did You Evah! Debbie and Iggy in 1990.

Lyrics:

Debbie: I have heard, among this clan, you are called the forgotten man.
Iggy: is that what theyre saying? well, did you evah!
Both: what a swell party this is!
Iggy: and have you heard the story of a boy, a girl, unrequited love?
Debbie: sounds like pure soap opera. I may cry.
Iggy: aw...
Both: what a swell party this is!

Iggy: what frails!
Debbie: what cocks!
Iggy: what broads!
Debbie: what jocks...
Iggy: what furs! they’re beautiful!
Debbie: why, I’ve never seen such...
Both: yuppity!
Debbie: neither did I.
Iggy: its all just too...
Both: swellegant!



Andy Warhol's picture of Debbie Harry

Debbie: this French champagne...
Iggy: (domestic!)
Debbie: so good for the brain.
Iggy: that’s what I was gonna say!
Debbie: well, you know you’re a brilliant fellow.
Iggy: thank you, I am!
Debbie: he he, drink up Jim.
Iggy: so... have you ever been out to L.A. lately?
Debbie: well no, not recently.
Iggy: well, I went there and had a rent-a-car and all...
Debbie: oh, really?
Iggy: yeah and I got invited to Pia's house... Pia Zadora's house...
Debbie: really? oh.
Iggy: yeah.
Debbie: was it nice?
Iggy: well, I didn’t... I didn’t go!
Debbie: oh! He he.
Iggy: it would a been swell though!





Debbie: should a gone!
Iggy: it would a been elegant!
Debbie: elegant.
Oh wait, look... look who’s coming in now... can you believe it?
Iggy: ...I hear they dismantled Pickfair.
Debbie: they did.
Iggy: it wasn’t elegant enough. He he!
Debbie: yeah. probably full of termites.
Iggy: yeah.



Both: its great!
Its grand!
Wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wonderland!
La la la la la la la la la la la la la.
We sing so rare, like old camembert.

Iggy: have you heard that Diane Star - she got bit in the Astro bar.
Debbie: sauced again! well, did you evah...
Both: what a swell party this is!
Have you heard?
It’s in the stars.
Next July we collide with Mars.
Well did you evah!

What a swell party.
What a swell party.
What a swellegant elegant, (sm) party...
Debbie: smarty?
Iggy: party... yeah!
Debbie: a smarty party?
Iggy: I am! a smarty! Im pretty smart!

Debbie: you are a smarty for coming to this party.
Iggy: yeah, that’s right!
Debbie: well piss off.
Iggy: he he he, that’s good! I like that.



The Waldorf-Astoria

To check out the Waldorf=Astoria see;

http://www.waldorfnewyork.com