St Patricks Day in Baltimore/Maryland

For the last week or so there have been pics on the main website page here with people dressed in green and drinking :thumbup:
[where is the animated icon with the pint gone???]

So I'd just like to ask is St Patricks Day a big thing in Baltimore and Maryland?

Here on the news we see the parade in New York and the Chicago river turned green.
And our elected leader goes to to White House every St Patricks Day, been going on for decades.
But that's all we see

Are a lot of you wearing green and going drinking on Saturday?
Or is it just another day?

Just wondering :)
I probably wouldn't have thought to ask only for all the pics on the main page here

Oh yea, it's big alright. They've been celebrating it here all week-lol.

My birthday is in 35 mins so I just missed being born on St Patty's day. Im
not Irish or Catholic but mostly everyone else is around here.

Maryland was supposed to be founded as a refuge colony by the King for persecuted Catholics in England that came over.

But after years the Puritans arrived here and started a war with the Catholics. Many Catholics left. Finally they came back and after years things became settled as Maryland finally became a refuge colony.

Even today, most of Maryland is Catholic so the holiday is big here.

Nothing but green - even the beer. The bars and restaurants will be jammed pack from early morning til after midnight and beyond.

A great time by all.


http://americanhistory.about.com/cs/...landcolony.htm


http://catholicism.org/maryland-hard...catholics.html

Here's some interesting facts about Edgar Allen Poe, father of the Ravens name,
and his family.

His grand father, David Poe, was famous for driving the Tories out of Baltimore. They were British sympathizers during the Revolutionary War and
many were Catholic and loyal to the King for setting MD up as a refuge colony way back when.

For his efforts he was named Assist Quarter Master and purchasing agent to secure weapons for the Army. Wash eventually promoted him to General for
his assistance and guidance to Lafayette during the southern campaign.

Of course he had a son named David who had a son named Edgar and author of the famous poem. Most Ravens fans never even read the poem when they came here-lol.

Poe's grandfather had dealings with a French agent during the war who had contact with Benjamin Franklin, our ambassador to France. He was appointed because he was internationally known for his famous inventions and often traveled between America and Europe.

A new ambassador of a not even recognized country just doesn't walk in to the King of France and say hi man, how you doing. We need some weapons like some AK-47s, grenade launchers and a few tanks if that's OK.

Unknown to a lot of people, Franklin was quite a womanizer and even had an illegitimate son. In fact, it was his son flying the kite with the key on the string and not Ben who was safe in a shed or house.

So once in France, Franklin got to the King by womanizing all the ladies of the King's court. As a international celebrity he was the Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise of his day. Seriously. They were crazy about him. He was caught with a teenager on his lap and he was 57. The guy who saw him was a painter and painted a pic of it and it's still out there. It shows her fondling his genitals.

Anyway, there was one woman he couldn't score but she was infatuated with him enough to get her husband to introduce him to the King. Once in the King's presence, Franklin used his diplomacy skills to secure the weapons we needed as the King wanted payback for the British kicking them out of Canada and North America.

So one could say that Ben Franklin literally and physically f*cked his way into the King's court.

The weapons arrived just in time for the Battle of Saratoga and stunned the British Commander who didn't expect such fire power.

It was the turning point of the war but has reaches all the way back to
Maryland and Poe's grand father who helped secure weapons for the
young Army.

http://www.essays.cc/free_essays/a5/dli90.shtml

That's interesting

HBO did a series called John Adams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Adams_(TV_miniseries)
DVD's are available or in all the usual internet places

Tom Wilkinson played Benjamin Franklin and yeah, there was a fair bit of womanizing, flattery and charming at the French Court.
All part of diplomacy I suppose, it helps to be a charmer and bend people to your will.
Wilkinson is a superb actor

A good watch anyway, would recommend. :)

Yea, thanks. I'll get it. I just got X-finity and I can get all the
old HBO movies including The Wire which was
filmed in Baltimore. I was actually an extra in that
movie. All you see is my hand and college ring on
a phone but I made $50 after standing out in the freezing rain
all night for a 5-min part.

I also got a T-shirt that says CAST, THE WIRE with
my name on it. It looks really cool in the gym.

Franklin also gave his wealth back to his country. He started the first Public Health Hospital in the country for people that were dying and couldn't afford health care and the hospital is still there and operating in the same
building.

Now there's someone with a health care vision but it was financed
with private funds, not taxes. That's the way things were done back then. Even in the panics of 1907 funds from JP Morgan's crowd bailed the banks out.

Can you see Warren Buffett and George Soros using their private funds to bail the banks out? Morgan and Rockefeller did it and Franklin started the country's first free hospital with private funds over 200 years ago.