It's an Irish story not an American story

  "It's not an American story. It's an Irish one."

Brad Pitt - The Devil's Own

It can be hard to live among stereotypes of Ireland that look like the cartoon above. 

When the images of Ireland that are ingrained in my mind and memory look like these images...

My homeland is a romantic and mysterious Island but it has never been simplistic....

Ireland is rarely gentle and even more rarely comic. My homeland is a land of harsh realities and it's beauty lies in the tragic rather than the comic......

This was the most common scene with a Green Suited Stranger standing in the foreground, would you follow him to the end of this rainbow?

And this is what it often looked like when a few men from the Emerald Isle painted the town red. Would you want them to come to your St. Patrick's Day party?

My home isn't a Downtown Bar, and my people aren't bearded Cartoon Figures, promising riches you didn't work for. It's a complex place that defies simplistic answers and laughable T-shirts.....

If you want to have a sense of my homeland this St. Patrick's day you ought to watch the 1997 film "The Devil's Own" with Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford. One of my favorite movie quotes is in this film. Brad's character explains to Ford's Character the difference between an Irish story and an American story....