I am definitely a product of the great American melting pot, but on both sides of the family, a Scots-Irish ancestry is prominent

(Some distant cousin with too much time on his hands traced my mother’s maternal grandmother’s line back to 1557 in Ireland. But come to think of it, if the distant cousin also had too much Guinness beer in his hands while researching genealogy, the family history may only go back to last August in Antarctica instead. No wonder we’ve never had any reunions.)

Understandably, I hope that Saint Patrick’s Day survives well into the future; but I see trends th...