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AMERICA AT LARGE:IT TOOK me 65 years to figure this out, but this week I discovered the safest place to spend St Patrick’s Day is on an airplane bound for London. A strand of bright green beads draped around the neck of one of the stewards was the only visible acknowledgement of the occasion, and all things considered it was a reasonable means of escaping the embarrassment of what has, in its American incarnation, turned into an annual puke-fest traditionally celebrated by amateur drunks.

Thus it wasn’t until I arrived at my hotel Tuesday night that I saw the news clips of Barack Obama, sporting a green tie, communing with his cousin Brian from Offaly. The same dispatch revealed that the occasion had been otherwise commemorated by dying the water in a White House garden, a stroke reportedly undertaken at the behest of Mrs. Obama, who, having spent her formative years in Illinois, where the Chicago River turns green each March 17th, probably thought it would make the Taoiseach feel right at home.