My band is meeting this Sunday,and we'll be marking the occasion by playing Irish music. Since we are an early-music group, I'm including Carolan pieces, since he's eighteenth century. Today I wrote an easy harmony part and a bass part for Eleanor Plunkett.

O Give Me Your Hand is even earlier, so I believe we'll do that too, but with no easy parts. The beginners will just have to tough it out.

After quite a few mild days, the weather demons turned on us and sent a cold and snowy day for the St. Patrick's Day parade. So my neighborhood, which is the traditional place for drinking green beer after the parade, was calm today. I bet the police department is thanking the angels for that.

Every year I wonder why the Parade Committee can't honor a saint whose day is in May or late September, when the weather's nice. Maybe the police are against it.