On March 17, ...... 2008 (today), women, children, and men who are Irish -- whether by nature or nurture -- celebrate St. Patrick's Day. It's an occasion for parades, like that on which we posted last year. This year, it's a day for sending our heartfelt commendation to Keltic Dreams, the transnational Irish dance team from P.S. 59 in New York's Bronx borough. The team's preteen dancers are from families with roots not in Ireland -- it appears from an article in the New York Times that only coach and teacher Caroline Duggan may make that claim -- but rather from places Belize and Puerto Rico and any number of countries on the African continent. Yet all have embraced the percussive excitement of the dance form, morphed as it's been with strains of salsa and hip-hop. And my transnational foremother, Grace O'Malley, would be delighted to learn of their visit to Broadway's "The Pirate Queen." Keltic Dreams' is story that uplifts; would that there were more of them.
... 1948 (60 years ago today), the Treaty of Brussels was signed in that Belgium capital by Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The treaty, which entered into force on August 25 of the same year, provided that the states parties would "cooperate" on matters of economy, society, culture, and collective self-defense. It thus proved a forerunner to subsequent treaties leading to close European integration.
