When again is St. Patrick’s day? WHAT?

by Grant Martin on

So, as Gadling’s certified alcoholic (I have a signed document by one Mr. J. Glow if you want to see it), I figured that I had a pretty good idea of when St. Patrick’s day was. March 17th. The day after my birthday, right? Two days after the Ides of March, right? And I’m pretty sure that there’s an LCD display at Connor O’neils downtown that counts down to midnight the night of the 17th. I thought that this was obvious.

But I just checked the Wikipedia page and about three other sources and have now verified that St. Patrick’s day is on March 15th this year. March 15th! Says Wikipedia:

“The date of the feast is occasionally moved by church authorities when March 17 falls during Holy Week; this last happened in 1940 when Saint Patrick’s Day was observed on 3 April in order to avoid it coinciding with Palm Sunday, and will happen again in 2008, when it shall be held on 15 March.”

But that means that it’s on a Saturday! So we can all go out and drink all day without having to worry about going to work the next day! Oh Holy Week, clever like the fox you are.

I wonder how many bars and pubs will acknowledge this change stateside. At the very worst, this is a good excuse to get hammered on the 15th AND on the 17th.

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It’s hard to cook a whole turkey in Japan

by Jamie Rhein on

Today I helped a Japanese friend of mine clean a turkey. She and her family are moving back to Japan in two weeks after three years of living in the U.S. She’s not too thrilled with the move since she fits well into life here. Plus, there’s the turkey.

As we pulled off the left-over meat from the bird she cooked for us as a good-bye lunch, and I explained how to make turkey stock from the bones, she said this would be the first and last turkey she’d cook. It’s not that she didn’t like cooking the turkey, but in Japan she won’t have an oven big enough. There she’ll have a microwave/oven, possibly not even big enough to cook a small chicken.

This got me thinking about the foods we enjoy when we live in another country that we either can’t cook or don’t cook when we arrive back home. For me, it’s the chura gerte (pounded peanut and rice porridge) I used to eat for breakfast in The Gambia. I don’t have a large wooden mortar and pestle for pounding the peanuts and rice together. I suppose a food processor would do, but there was that thwack, thwack thwack sound of women pounding grain in the early morning that added to my chura gerte experience. Perhaps, it’s the aesthetics of how it’s cooked that makes a dish a so special when we travel elsewhere.

After I put the bones in the pot, filled it with water and turned on the heat, I cleaned off the wishbone and gave it to my friend explaining the tradition of making a wish. In her case, the wishbone is going to Japan with them, intact as a souvenir. If you want to cook a turkey Japanese style, stuff it with sticky rice and put it in an oven bag to cook it. Yum!

Love from London: Luxury camping at British music festivals

by Iva Skoch on

Last year, some of Britain’s best music festivals got flooded (read: people – tents – muddy mess). This year, the UK is ready to cater to a traveler’s every need, even the ones that require 300-thread cotton sheets in their “tents.”

The Times offers a few tips, from luxury tepees with furniture and furs to carpeted cabins, via your own 10-man tour bus complete with booze rider. Read more here.

Here is the festival timeline for this summer:

  • Donington Park, Leicestershire, June 13-15

  • GLASTONBURY, Worthy Farm, Somerset, June 27-29

  • WAKESTOCK, Blenheim Palace, Oxford, June 27-29

  • CAMP BESTIVAL, Lulworth Castle, Dorset, July 18-20

  • THE SECRET GARDEN PARTY, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, July 24-27

  • CROISSANT NEUF, Usk, Monmouthshire, August 15-17

  • ELECTRIC PICNIC, Stradbally Estate, Co Laois, Ireland, August 29-31

African-American heritage tours

by Jamie Rhein on

With Leap Year we get an extra day for Black History Month. Even so, February is not enough to highlight all the places one might go to find out about African-American contributions. With just a few hours left, here are several tours designed to provide a scope of African-American history and culture. You don’t need to wait until next February–these are any time of year offerings.

In Washington, D.C., the company, Sightseeing Tours–The African American Tour specialists has three walking tour options: Walking in the Footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr. Tour; Duke Ellington’s Jazz Tour; and the Historical Educational Tour of U Street. U Street was the heart of the African American community from 1920-1950. The photo is of the Duke Ellington Mural on U Street. The company also has bus tours. The African American Heritage and Culture tour covers 200 years of history.

The African-American Heritage Tour in Durham, North Carolina includes North Carolina Central University, the first public liberal arts school for African-Americans and Stagville, a former plantation that is now a center for study about African-American life during slavery.

For a do-it-yourself itinerary of African-American sites in Mississippi, here are some suggestions. One place to stop is the Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center in Jackson. Here’s a place to learn about the “work, lifestyle and contributions of African Americans. One of them is Richard Wright who wrote the book Native Son.

The Quest for Freedom, Living History Tour in Columbia, Pennsylvania covers includes stops on the Underground Railroad.

In Savannah, Georgia, the African Influence Tour includes slavery, Gullah culture, Underground Railroad landmarks and the oldest African-American Baptist church in the United States.

The African-American Heritage tour in Detroit, Michigan has a menu of three tour options that encompass the scope of historical sites and landmarks.

The Black Heritage Trail tours in Boston, Massachusetts are offered by the Museum of African American History and cover the 19th century African-American community in this city.

What I’ve listed here are not all of the African-American Heritage tours by a long shot, but they are a place to start.

Love from London: The biggest tourist traps

by Iva Skoch on

I have been to London so many times, I don’t usually do the touristy thing any more. Sometimes, however, it is fun to visit the beaten path places just for the sheer humor involved.

With that premise, I attended a tour of Kensington Palace yesterday. My review? Save the £12 ($24) or spend it on beer instead. Yes, even warm beer. The tour must be one of the worst ways to spend your money, aside from–perhaps–investing in the Canadian dollar right about now. (This is, of course, coming from someone who chose journalism as a career, so clearly, my financial advice is to be taken with a grain of salt.)

I am here to report is that the Kensington palace consists largely of Princess Di stuff. And not even good stuff. Princess Di pictures, Princess Di wedding video, a few of her dresses and…that’s about it. A few of the preserved state rooms are worth seeing but overall this is a big disappointment. I don’t mean this to be disrespectful to the late princess, but I find it appalling that her personal tragedy has turned into such a great source of income for people.

Which brings me to my next point. I hear that nothing beats the London Dungeon tour in the biggest tourist trap ranking. Then again, tonight I am supposed to join the Jack the Ripper tour and I could easily see that one winning this competition. Stay tuned!