St. Patrick’s Day Selfie

The shirt is one of many memorabilia I’ve collected over the years of Bullseye shooting at various clubs sandwiched in with business travels. It’s from the Old Colony club in Massachusetts. I was pleased to support their club through the nominal cost of this keepsake and while the Xs I shot that evening are long gone from my senior-ifying memory, the shirt lives on.

By rough calculation, I’m at least a pint Irish with 6.25% of my genes inherited from Martha Cunningham, my great, great grandmother on my father’s line who was born there in 1826. According to family history, Martha was from a well to do Irish family but ran away with John Cunningham when her family would not approve of him. Martha would eventually emigrate to Canada “by herself” to the Kichener Ontario area where her daughter, Martha Jane Cunningham (seen below), would be born in 1841.

But my percentage of Guinness-inbued ancestry is almost certainly higher. I have an ancestor from Scotland, James Watson, and one from England, Hugh Skinner, in the next generation who emigrated to the same area in Canada in 1854-1855. These three families intermarried and those with the Skinner name moved, over various generations, to Brooklyn, Detroit, Memphis and, finally, Phoenix. But given the proximity of Ireland, Scotland and England, it’s likely each of these ancestors carried their own “bit of the Eire” in their own family trees as well.

I celebrated St. Patrick’s day with some green on my food: Wasabe on sushi.

Martha, James, and Hugh might’ve turned up their nose at the raw fish, but I think they would’ve agreed it’s an improvement on haggis.

Or maybe not.