Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
)
Date: March 18, 2017 02:28PM
I bet OP gets invited to a lot of parties. :-/
A few plugs for Ireland:
I heard former President Mary Robinson of Ireland speak at Weber State yesterday. I had never heard of her (which just proves I really need to get out more!), but she spoke with great eloquence (on environmental sustainability, at Weber). If you also don't know about her, here's what I consider a pretty remarkable bio. She became a woman president of a country every bit as conservative and patriarchal as Utah, and I think was instrumental in changing Ireland to what it is today (see below)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_RobinsonIreland held a referendum on approval of same-sex marriage in 2015. People had to vote in person, so Irish citizens from all over Europe flew home to vote on the issue. There was a huge sense of celebration in the air, a sense of "we're going to make this happen". They did in fact make it happen, and Ireland was the first nation on the planet to approve gay marriage by popular vote. The vote wasn't even a squeaker.
Just two weeks ago, Northern Ireland held an election, and Sinn Féin came within about a thousand votes of outpolling the ruling Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). There are a fair number of people in Northern Ireland who would like to dump the UK and join the Republic, so they could stay in the EU, among other things. Considering the many decades of bitter antagonism between the two sides in Ireland, this is a jaw-dropping development of the "dogs and cats, sleeping together" variety.
Ireland has much to celebrate these days. Keep an eye on them. Interesting developments are afoot.
sláinte mhaith, y'all :)