Today, two comic oldies in one. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Bringing Up Father, also known as Jiggs and Maggie, ran for 87 years in newspapers, until 2000. It was a well-known strip when I was a boy, although past its prime. In that prime, the first half of the 20th Century, it was an innovative, amusing and beautifully rendered comic strip, although much of the slap-stick violence would be considered frightfully inappropriate today. If not for the current unpleasantness, we might be discussing the Irish question today, the day we are all Irish, except perhaps for the powers that be in the United Kingdom. Ireland, of course, remains a staunch member of the European Union, while the UK is exiting. The nature of the border between Ireland and the UK state of Northern Ireland has been the single most contentious issue in the process we have come to know as “Brexit,” and it remains so, even though the process of the UK’s official departure from the EU is well underway. Will it be the peaceful, open border that all parties have enjoyed since the modern EU came into existence, or will it be the hostile demarcation that existed prior? The people of the Irish nation and even many of the UK citizens in Northern Ireland have grown quite fond of the friendly, easy nature of the former. However, authority in the UK, while not wishing a return to open hostility, is leery of any arrangement that might, so to speak, weaken the border between its Irish citizens in the north and the citizens of the nation of Ireland. And that is our report on Irish issues for St. Patrick’s Day, 2020.