Today, on the day the world traditionally turns green in honor of us and Saint Patrick, blue and yellow will also be dedicated to their place in solidarity with Ukraine.
In fact, since Ukrainian color combinations can manage, as any kid will tell you, to turn them green, there is something particularly apt, even profound. , in distilling our independent national color into two of its ingredients this year.
After all, colors make statements. From national flags to football clubs and from everyday products to specific global concepts, color conversations.
Peace is white, grief is black, cowardice is yellow. Meanwhile, think of Manchester United or Coca-Cola, and you immediately see red, while Guinness, as the TV commercials tell us, will always be “black”.
When it comes to green, like all colors, there are conflicting meanings. On the positive side, it signifies friendliness to the environment and nature. However, green is also the color of envy and it accompanies all kinds of military overtones.
In my twenties, my closet was a completely tree-free zone. All those early years of wearing a green school uniform was enough to pay the price for any affection for color.
As Kermit perfectly put it: “It is not easy to be green”.
Slowly, however, my own green color returned – a couple of decades ago, actually, enough to be the focal point of my wedding day in the shape of a green velvet dress. sparkling.
However, for many years now, when the color green has been on the mind, and always during St. Patrick’s week, it’s been a different time and place that my thoughts inevitably turn.
Arriving in Belfast on Saturday 19 March 1988. Before the brutal murders of two young British soldiers. And in the words of the late great journalist Mary Holland, who claimed to be a witness to the horrors of that day when Corporals Derek Wood and David Howes were placed when they accidentally drove to an IRA funeral, were dragged out of their cars, brutally beaten, and shot to death.
“A man in a light green sweater was pulled and pulled over us, his face covered in blood,” Ms. Holland wrote shortly after that embarrassing day.
But it was her words about its lasting effects that stayed with me, as she explained that forever more, whenever or wherever she sees green, she She knew that the absolute barbarism of that March day would overwhelm her mind. Again.
Color speaks volumes, in real time and in image memory. And as we wrap the green flag around us today, truly delighted to be able to properly celebrate our national holiday once again, we all happily acknowledge the blue and the yellow of Ukraine. .
I will also recall the other green halo on a street in Belfast just two days after another Saint Patrick’s Day all those years ago – a day in which I felt anything but pride. are Irish.
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/colour-talks-and-this-st-patricks-day-the-message-is-clear-41455842.html This color conversation and St. Patrick’s Day, the message is clear
