B-SIDES: This St. Patrick’s Day column is ‘craic’

day nyc parade patrick s st

B-SIDES: This St. Patrick’s Day column is ‘craic’
By Mark Bennett
TERRE HAUTE — I’ve never lived in Ireland.
So when a true Irishman recently began explaining the virtues of something that sounded like “crack,” I worried about where that conversation was headed. Yet that’s the beauty of “craic.” It’s a Gaelic word, meaning “frivolous talk about nothing,” the guy explained. “It’s entertainment.”
Fittingly, craic has no English translation. In America, witty conversation requires a point. In Ireland, conversation is the point.
Tom Morgan, a native Terre Hautean, discovered that when he transplanted himself into The Old Sod for a three-year stretch in the 1980s. Barely a day after arriving, Morgan ventured out to find a post office. He asked a woman for directions. He wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but that didn’t matter to her. She persisted, asking where he’d come from. Exasperated, Morgan gave in and told her.
“So, you’re a Yank then,” the woman answered.
That’s all it took. A lengthy craic followed.
“I was kind of depressed when I went to Ireland, but I got over it very quickly,” recalled Morgan. “And it wasn’t the food, which is still very good. It was the people. You’d meet people through the day who want to be conversational and want to talk.”

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 12:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

8 Responses to “B-SIDES: This St. Patrick’s Day column is ‘craic’”

  1. Paulene says on March 17th, 2008 at 7:39 am :

    I think that maybe there ought to be a filter that looks at the words in a submitted headline. If the headline contains the “usual suspects” — “incredible”, “unbelievable”, “top x”, etc. — the submitter should be warned. He/she could still submit that headline, but with a warning.Also I think it’d be a good idea for submitters to have to preview their submissions before submitting, so as to cut down on misspellings and such.

  2. Aureole says on March 17th, 2008 at 8:29 am :

    I’d much rather see funny pictures than more outrageous, deceitful political blog posts.

  3. Janella says on March 17th, 2008 at 9:20 am :

    that you’ll see today, anyway.

  4. Kayleigh says on March 17th, 2008 at 10:11 am :

    Elitist redditers are the interweb equivalent of the ignorant hipster wearing an ironic t-shirt and blogging about the stupidity of everyone they meet and never bother to know. Telling redditers what not to post is insulting and unlikely to work. If you want full control over which articles matter, manage your own damn site. The reality is that in a busy work day picture posts are time efficient, involving a limited amount of procrastination for the payoff of an inticing(or not) image. The problem is not a lack of IQ, it’s a limited attention span approach to procrastination. Making the page more stark or inaccessible will not change that. Be nice, post well, and get over yourselves.

  5. Barbra says on March 17th, 2008 at 11:01 am :

    Me : Digg submitters are the bigger culprits, I think. With all their hyperbole. (And bad grammar!)stu: http://digg.com/videos/people/The_Most_AMAZING_dog_you_will_ever_see_MUST_SEEme : mmmhmstu : http://digg.com/videos/comedy/Best_shadow_puppets_ever_A_MUST_See_AMAZING http://digg.com/offbeat_news/The_coolest_shoes_EVER_And_I_m_not_kidding_PICTURES?t=8190048me : :(stu : http://digg.com/design/AMAZING_BEST_GUIDE_2_POSTING_EFECTIVE_DIGG_STORYS_EVAR_me : ha!

  6. Rebeccah says on March 17th, 2008 at 11:52 am :

    My question is, why tell someone what to post and how to post it.Isn’t the point of reddit that the community decides what gets to the top page? Certainly if this was an issue then people would vote those stories down into oblivion.

  7. Yashmine says on March 17th, 2008 at 12:42 pm :

    I’d rather see several different and interesting photos than an endless stream of Ron Paul articles and ‘omg police state!’ crap from infowars.com.