The Irish are coming!!

Last week while you all were waiting for up to date posts, I was down in Pearl River, NY at the Bi-annual New York State AOH/LAOH convention. The Hilton Hotel, very nice, so nice it cost $.49 a minute for the internet. Everyone knows just how slow I type so it would have cost me a fortune to post a blog from the convention. Besides all the Hibernian business that had to take place, there was some Saratoga things to do as well. Two years ago the Saratoga Hibernians decided to take a run at bringing the convention to our city. I started working with the Saratoga County Convention and Tourism Bureau. Together we set up a plan, Last week that plan went into action. The convention starts with an icebreaker dinner on Wednesday night. The Toga boys and I wore our kilts and Saratoga Irish shirts to dinner. We passed out as many of our Saratoga Irish pins as we could. That night we headed to the hospitality suites to campaign. I walked into the Nassau County suite, our foe for the week, and showed just how classy we Saratogians are. The whole week we never made any discouraging remarks about our downstate brothers and sisters. I told them that no matter the outcome, there would be a convention in 2013 and we would all have fun. On Thursday morning it was time for the presentations. They had won the coin toss and went first. They made some mistakes. They showed a slick video that showed all of Long Island. They said you could take a short train ride to Montauk (93 miles away, short?). When they were done it was our turn. I went to the podium with six members of the LAOH and a representative from the Convention Bureau and from the Holiday Inn. I invited them all to Saratoga, I explained that the last AOH Convention in Saratoga was a National Convention in 1906, and at that Convention a resolution was passed to form the Ladies organization, I invited the ladies to come back to their roots. I then introduced a video that, I told them the Hibernians had made to show them what to expect when they came to Saratoga Springs. Sometimes it's easy to get a laugh if you know your crowd, sometimes even if you know the crowd they don't laugh. As the photos of the Saratoga Battlefield came up on the video a voice over said, "The British came to Saratoga..............once, and with the help of Timothy Murphy.....we sent them packing!". The room broke out in laughter. We were on our way. The rest of the week we smiled, talked about the great city of Saratoga Springs and how much fun the people would have if they came. Nassau County was running scared, they couldn't keep up with us. Everything they did, they did second. The desk clerks were wearing Saratoga pins, they had to run over and give out I love Long Island buttons to them. We were unstoppable. On Friday night at the awards dinner the bagpipe band came in to play wearing our pins. The Ladies have a fundraiser every convention. Each county makes a basket to raffle off, the Saratoga men all bought tickets, wrote "Vote Saratoga" on them and put them all in the Nassau County basket. We waited anxiously as the tickets were pulled but to no avail, we did not win the Nassau County basket. That night I told the Nassau County women what we had done and one said, "I wish you had won, that would habe been the funnest thing ever". Saturday morning rolled around and we went to vote, now the waiting began. We headed off to lunch still not knowing. In the middle of lunch my phone went crazy, Saratoga wins. Saturday night was a great celebration. We could not have done this with out the help and support of the Schenectady LAOH, the men and women from the Albany, Troy, Watervliet AOH/LAOH our brothers and sisters across the state.

Now the real work begins. The Irish are coming to Saratoga Springs 2013.