Go For The Green Friday, St. Pat’s Parade In Black Rock

Greetings from Dagupan City, Pangasinan, Philippines, OIB fans!!! …where it is 3:14 am local time and I’m jet lagged like no one has ever seen before! Dagupan City is the epicenter of the Bangus (milkfish) and the annual Bangus Festival in the entire world (world’s record of any bbq lineup, even beating Peru for a record 3,305.64 feet of 20,000 pieces of Bangus/fish barbecued at one time, see Google, of course), and it is where I grew up from age 2 to 12. Happily, at this hour there’s nothing better to do than to open up my laptop and check in with Lennie G. and all of you OIB fans!!! So, it’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Friday, March 14. Oh, too bad, I need to stop by Rick and Michelle’s Harborview Market for more of their fab choco chip and the oatmeal cookies!, I’m gonna miss it because I don’t land at JFK until March 15…but I have some random thoughts to share this early, quiet morning, temperature by the way is a very tropical 80 degrees with a light sea breeze…St. Patrick’s is as American as apple pie to celebrate St. Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland and to acknowledge and celebrate the many contributions and lives of all the Irish immigrants who came to this land I(USA, USA!!!) n search of a better life for themselves and their descendants, the millions of Irish-Americans of today (Kiss me, I’m Irish t-shirts, green beer, etc…research the Great Famine, there was a great museum in Hamden by Q University, don’t know if it’s still there?) I attended a Jesuit high school (Cranwell School, Lenox, MA, 1970-74) staffed by New England Irish-American Jesuits, mostly from Dorchester, MA and to a college also run by New England Jesuits (Holy Cross, Worcester, MA, 1974-78), almost all of my classmates and friends were Irish-Americans. I was the only filipino-American in both schools. In the Navy, I served aboard two ships: the USS CAPODANNO (FF-1093), that’s Italian for New Year (Capo di Anno, get it?…named after the second Navy Catholic chaplain to be awarded the Medal of Honor who was KIA in Vietnam alongside his beloved Marines, Fr. (Lieutenant) Vincent R. Capodanno, USN of Staten Island…parents form Gaeta, Italy) and the USS O’BANNON (DD-987). I was the only Filipino-American officer on both ships. Sidenote, the first Catholic Navy Chaplain to be awarded the Medal of Honor is a Jesuit math prof from Holy Cross, Fr. Joseph T. O’Callahan. The ship USS O’CALLAHAN (FF-1051) is named after him…in the Spring of 1974, a library display at Holy Cross about Fr. O’Callahan’s life inspired me to join the Navy (not the Jesuits, I could not and still cannot handle Chastity part of the Jesuit 101 Rule of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience…the poverty and obedience thing, I could tolerate, but yikes!, chastity???…I don’t think so…but I digress again)…the rest is history…I failed to qualify as a ship fighter/driver due to seasickness and the Navy made me a weekend warrior, desk-bound intelligence officer for the balance of my 20-year naval career. Did embassy work, we ar/weree derogatorily refered to as the “intel weenie, cookie pushers” because you attended a lot of “fancy pants” cocktail parties at embassies around the world and if you speak some Spanish, you get great duty assignments like Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, the works, for good food, good music, great dancing partners…and not much at sea time. Anyho, to my point tonight…in over 100 hundred years of Filipinos/Filipino-Americans serving in the Navy, there has been no US Navy ship named after a Filipino/Filipino-American because historically they have been limited to only being “Stewards” (basically kitchen and housekeeping duties where they always competed African-American and Hispanic sailors for the most menial and non-combat shipboard duties in the 1910’s to WWII and the 1960’s…(how do you win a Medal of Honor flipping hamburgers and washing bedsheets on a Navy ship???) but there is some hope that could be axed anytime now in the new Pentagon Age of No More Wokeness or DEI is dead…in 2022, the Pentagon announced the naming of the USS TELESFORO TRINIDAD (DDG-139) to be christened in 2026 and commissioned in 2028…but that could be DEI-terminated any day now under the new Pentagon of no more DEI policy…afterall, the history of the naval service of women and other so called ethnic groups are being erased on a weekly basis these days. Meanwhile, for the Irish-Americans in all of us tonight that is still being celebrated and surviving the new no Diversity, no Equity, No Diversity of the “America First” Century…I say to you: Erin Go Bragh, take your filthy hands off my green beer!!! Happy St. Patrick Day Parade!!!