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The tale is fishy, even if viewed through a fish-eye lens. (As is the three-part holiday set in the Notes From The Beat.) On Good Friday, I was back to going Lutheran, which is what I grew up as, since no fish was to be found. Taco Tuesday, typically, is on the other side of the week. But hey, on this day even the ailing pope skipped his usual walk through the park of the dozen holy stations, or to a distant dining room. So there’s hope for the rest of us?

This is the Thank God It’s Good Friday that was. Or was it … Where in the holy mackerel was

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Holidays are more than ham, though that’s great too, but you have to wait. Or fish when later in this week comes. And turkey comes a-calling? What happens when after a season of waiting expires, and there is the meaty meal of the day, and then another offering on the eve, and then a prime third choice, on the next (seventh of the week) day? Ham thus takes a back seat to all the other buffet bounty that is out there, now that Easter comes around. Lamb, lambast it, even goes on the lam. Lean and mean. (See below for more fake foodie stuff.)

Where’s the beef? It is here. My sister-in-law went far beyond the usual ham for a meaty holiday dinner. But

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A history lesson, with five if not four or six, letters laden down with language like that in a big, bad legislative bill. But how many past and current presidents have a name of that many letters, (five which itself is actually spelled out in four digits), and not with doctorate degree added, and various potency, by level, was “shown.” This post, if you rest your ADHD, contains many dozens of terms, nouns ideally, in this letter format. And another post with such play on numbers if not word is about a dozen down.

What is in a name? And what follows may be like this exercise, a bit longer than more four-letter words,

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One place became an Oasis in downtown Hudson as St. Patrick’s Day had its last hour, and tales of ancestry were re-hashed, with corned beef rather than the potatoes being mashed, while people were still sober enough to figure out their lineage percentages. But for further fodder, factor in New Richmond and its pre-finale parade.

There was little after-party, as it was early on St. Patrick’s Day that revelers in downtown Hudson got bombed, literally.

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Now that St. Patrick’s Day is in the books, we will acquaint you with more history from the plat books. There’s more to the story than that published in a post a few stories below. Erin Prairie is more than 15 percent Irish and it shows, as the two town staples, the Catholic church and the longtime Irish pub that has fed off it for patronage, have been around since the platting of the area often called Jewitt Mills — fittingly named as you will see — one of the first such efforts in Wisconsin, though on its west end.

The little town of Erin Prairie is as Irish as the Midwest gets, with those two Wisconsin staples making up

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Irish eyes are smiling and they produced sun on this pre-St. Patrick’s Day, even if we had to wait till past high noon to get the gloom to rise away. (As I write this in the a.m. of The Day itself, there are leprechauns blowing in the wind.) So it became there as gold for the St. Paul parade, co-hosted by my new labor of love, in this wee-bit sponsored content, the Irish Gazette, with which I am crossmarketing, so see more there and in their online version too. Blatant plug. They were lumenaries at the parade attended by many thousands, but wait, there’s more … You can continue to get your Irish on.

What, it’s not quite St. Paddy’s Day yet?!? The Irish are already out and about, green garb and red hair

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These jokes involving St. Patrick’s Day (see what was inside) go beyond four-letter words. Up it by 50 percent and you get past five to six letters, like Nikki Sixx, and is he Irish like Van Morrison? But as far as its parades, that are so populated that you can’t find the pavement beneath the very many people, they run east from the Dakotas, to Minnesota, to Wisconsin. Here is the rest of the story, and where to find even more!

I will now offer a running or should I say marching joke of more than, see the headline of the

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Gee, if you go by McGee, what you can find running up and down the likes of County G. Gold on St. Pat’s Day, to color your world, at the end of such south-to-north rainbows. McCabe’s in New Richmond passes muster as the perrenial parade hosts, and you can search for a wee bit more than 46 and 2 leprechauns in River Falls. Music too, for fans of bands from Irish to U2 to Tool, and back. (Inside, to raise your ire, matching bad dad humor — like rap? not rad? on Mr. (Top)Hat-Shamrock? — and word-length-play.)

In both River Falls and New Richmond, although 20 miles apart south to north, as you well know, the many

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Catholic church and the stateland of Ireland. At an area pub where its all come together. And thus its been together, right here in The States. As in very rural — potato farming? — Erin Prairie population and its almost 20 percent Irishmen and women. As there is less then a mile between the church and the Irish tavern, the two biggest and mainly only things in town — so you can’t say it ain’t quaint — and they hold all the sway.

The town is like a more than wee bit of Ireland, when counting its population percentages, in the midst of

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