It is said that everyone is Irish today – St. Patrick’s Day. Since I am not Irish, drinking regular or green beer was not a tradition growing up on my family’s Mennonite farm – and I love to get historical perspectives so I looked up St. Patrick’s Day on Wikipedia. I was astounded to learn how long and how widely it’s been celebrated around the world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Patrick%27s_Day.)

One of the myths of St. Patrick is that he drove the snakes from Ireland. That’s considered highly unlikely because there probably weren’t any there to begin with. This idea is believed to have originated from his zeal and success in converting the Irish to Christianity. So he chased the “serpents” of devils, demons, and paganism from the land.

With all the negative news around today we need to drive the serpents of cynicism and helplessness from our lands. One of my favorite business writers at The Toronto Star does an excellent job of that with his optimistic perspective on the world economy. Read his article at http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/598050. Let’s leave the green out of our beer and put it in our global economies and environmental actions.