Ah, Wetmachine, my child. How I have neglected you. You, who have been so much a part of my own renaissance, deserve a renaissance of your own. Perhaps you shall have it, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let us rather do the least we can do to uphold our most sacred Wetmachine traditions, one of which being the observation of the annual elision of the name days of Saints Urhu and Patrick, a happy pairing that brings pride and joy to all of us Finno-Irish Americans. Whatever your heritage, dear reader, welcome. And take courage, because for the duration today and tomorrow, at least, we are all Finno-Irish!
And now, to save me the trouble of writing something new, here’s a recycled Wetmachine Urhu-Patrick piece from days gone by.
That great annual harbinger of spring, that mid-Lent quasi-Catholic dual name-day celebration for two saints (at least one of whom probably existed), that diphthong of drinking excuses, the elision of St. Urho’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day is again upon us. This, more than even the setting of the clocks ahead, gives us to know that we have survived another winter.
Now, it’s well known that Irish Americans can be very loud and unsubtle about celebrating their (our) heritage of leprechauns and bullshit artists and crooked politicians from South Boston and great singers like Ella Fitzgerald. And so of course everybody in America and around the world knows that tomorrow is Evacuation Day, I mean St. Patrick’s day, in honor of the great Romano-British Christian missionary who returned to the land of his captivity and bondage as an apostle of peace and went on to drive the serpents into the sea, (or maybe not), and so Guinness will be consumed, and cabbage, and yea, Harp Lager too, begorrah.
Alas throughout much of this country that is not the upper Midwest, the name day of St. Urhu, who drove the grasshoppers from Finland (today, March 16) is sadly neglected, to the point that we can expect virtually no mention of it by color commentators in television broadcasts of today’s NCAA basketball games. But let it never be said that Wetmachine has forgotten the confabulated patron saint of the Finno-American diaspora (of which I am a proud member), the great St. Urhu, whose famous utterance Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, mene täältä hiiteen (grasshopper, grasshopper, buzz off why dontcha?) still stirs our hearts everywhere.
That saintly collusus!
It’s OK to mark this day without alcohol, but consumption of traditional all-starch foodstuffs is encouraged. So if you can find some Karjalanpiirakka, go for it.