Category: Uncategorized Page 2 of 482

Dawn in Beale

Photo; Ita Hannon

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Entrance to The Garden of Europe, Listowel

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Scaraveen

(from a Facebook page called Biddy’s Day)

Scaraveen

The Scaraveen has commenced. From the Irish, ‘garbh shíon na gcuach’ (the rough month of the cuckoo), it is the period between Apr 15 and May 15 when weather patterns are often changeable and cold snaps common. In folklore it is said the Scaraveen is natures revenge on the newly arrived cuckoo for it’s appalling habit of supplanting its eggs in other birds nests.

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Whit weekend 2016

 

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Looking forward to a Great Summer

In this glorious weather there is nowhere else to be.

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An ICA Drama

I’m hoping someone will help me with the names.

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The Man’s Shop

Last week I published a black and white postcard of Market Street looking towards William Street. 

It prompted Ned O’Sullivan to remember this;

Moloney’s Garage was owned by FF TD Dan Moloney. The shop in the centre of the photo was owned by Paddy Finucane, Independent TD. 

My late father Sean bought it from Paddy and opened the Mans Shop in 1963.

Ned’s contribution prompted Marie Shaw to remember this;

Hi Mary,

In reference to Ned O’Sullivan’s memories of his father’s shop. I clearly remember Sean from when he had his business on Market St. and then on William St. He made a suit for my husband during a trip to Listowel in 1968. It came with a vest and two pairs of pants and cost £60. I honestly believe that someone somewhere is still wearing that suit, he just couldn’t wear it out. He eventually outgrew it and passed it on to a friend who wore it for years. Joe Shaw’s Irish made suit was the talk of the Brooklyn neighbourhood where we lived at the time

and as you can gather from this, my husband still remembers how much he paid for it.

Regards,

Marie

The old sign still over the shop

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Good News in The Kerryman

The Kerryman can reveal that a division of the Remcoll Group has bought the old site of the Listowel Livestock Mart – once slated for a development that was to have transformed the economic fortunes of the town in the boom. The Remcoll Group, which owns and operates a number of Direct Provision centres in the State, is not looking to locate a Direct Provision-style premises in Listowel, Remcoll CEO Paul Collins insisted this week.

Instead, the company envisages a complex focusing on the delivery of social homes – for the elderly in the main – based on what he said was the demographic needs of the North Kerry area.

Wild garlic and public bench in Gurtinard Wood

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People, at Last

Now that I’m vaccinated it’s lovely to get out and about and meet people again. I’ve even taken to bringing my camera when I go for a walk…the new normal?

Here are some folk I met in Childers’ Park last week

Meeting up with old friends is such a simple pleasure.

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Fitting Memorials

Whoever thought of the idea of commemorating founding members of Listowel Pitch and Putt Club with sponsored tee boxes was inspired. It’s lovely to see the people who gave so much to the club remembered in a place they loved well. Here are a few of those boxes and some of the magnificent trees those men planted in full bloom in the beautifully presented course in summer 2021.

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Tarbert on Facebook

The people at Tarbert Development Association at Tarbert.ie have been posting some great old photos lately. Here are a few from the days when the humble ass and cart was one of the preferred modes of transport in town.

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Praying for my former colleagues

Deceased sisters from the local Presentation convent are buried in a big grave at St. Michael’s graveyard. I called there last week.

 

Groundspeople of Listowel Pitch and Putt Club have been very busy during lockdown. The course is looking superb, ready for opening to members only today, April 26 2021. Here are a few pictures taken last week.

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First Motorcar in Tarbert

(From Tarbert on Facebook)

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Tim Kennelly Roundabout

The Kennelly family taken at the official opening of the Tim Kennelly Roundabout, Cahirdown, Listowel in December 201l.

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Memories

 This is Cathy Dunne in the convent garden on her wedding day, August 23 1963. 

She writes today of her Titanic connection.

Mary I was interested in your Titanic connection. My mother’s uncle, my great uncle died in the Titanic disaster. His name was O’Connor from near Armagh. .My mother spoke of him quite a lot and how difficult it was to get news. The local headmaster used to give my great grandmother his copy of the newspaper, which was a couple of days old. Unfortunately she never survived the shock of losing her little brother.

A Hare in Connemara

Photo: Ben Whitley, Irish Wildlife Trust

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A Sign of Things to Come?

The post box in Upper William Street where the old Post Office used to be, April 2021.

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An Exceptional Person you probable never heard of

In WW2, Cork’s Sr. Kate McCarthy, worked in the war hospitals in Europe, helping to smuggle Allied soldiers home.

When caught by the Gestapo, she was tortured and held in a POW camp.

In her daily task there, of having to make belts for paratroopers, she intentionally skipped every 5th stitch meaning when the parachute cord was pulled, the soldier would fall to his death.

In this role, it’s estimated she killed up to 40 Nazis per day.

 Photo and text from Oran OHalloran on Irish Folklore and History’s Facebook page

Sr. Kate was from Drimoleague.She was the eldest of nine children.  She joined the Franciscan nuns in 1913. She was only 18 years old, and she took the religious name Marie-Laurence. She spent the first of her years as a young nun in the Great War nursing soldiers and civilians in a little town north of Paris called Béthune. 

She soon joined the Resistance. The little group and sister Kate McCarthy was instrumental in freeing 200 British officers and soldiers. In October, 1940 they amalgamate with a very important group in Paris, the Musée de l’Homme resistance group. As well as moving escapees to Paris, Kate now began to get intelligence information. She also translated information she gleaned from the British soldiers.

Kate was arrested on June 18th 1941. She was held in solitary confinement for a year. She was tried in Lille and condemned to death. She moved from Pow camp to camp in a movement  known as Night and Fog.

She was interned in the only all female concentration camp, Ravensbruck where she escaped the gas chamber on four occasions. When the camp was liberated she was on the last bus out, exhausted and ill. She weighed only 4 stone. She eventually returned to Cork.

Sr Kate was decorated by both the French and British governments for her role in the war.

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Memories of Great Days with the Lartigue Players

Good Afternoon ,

(My name is Danny O Connor from Listowel 
I currently live in New York but come home to Listowel very frequently . 
I thought you may be interested in the following:)  . 

I found some Newspaper cuttings from the Evening Press dated March 1992 .
I was a cast member in a play called The Country Dressmaker by George Fitzmaurice .
It was directed by Danny Hannon .

I still remember it very well . When we performed in St. John’s Danny Hannon had a ramp erected up the front of the stage to use as an exit and stage entrance . There were couple bales of hay to make it look like you were walking up a country road outside the house .
What a magnificent production and an amazing crew . Anyhow following our sold out performances in St. John’s we were going to perform a couple of nights in Tralee . 
Danny Hannon created some of his magic and suddenly we were in the Evening Press on March 17th 1992 . The Lartigue Theater Co.  was and still is an amazing group of people .

In 1993 we performed The Year Of The Hiker and on top of our performances in Listowel and Tralee we also got to perform in Boston and Kansas USA.  Such great memories . 

(Thank you for your time . I have attached a couple of photos of the Newspaper cuttings which I took with my I-phone .) 

I Remain 
Yours Sincerely ,
Danny O Connor 

Swan in Flight

Photo; Paul Winter for Irish Wildlife Trust

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                  Egmond House

Egmond House is a familiar sight to Kerry people returning from Cork . It is an imposing building at the top of O’Brien Street beautifully preserved by its different owners over the years. It is very much a symbol of Kanturk and many people  like me will remember Corpus Cristi Benediction on the steps.

Here is the history.

Photo: Trish O’Neill on Kanturk Memories

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Market Street Fadó Fadó

Glin Historical Society posted this old postcard on Facebook and Ned O’Sullivan wrote the below comment.

Moloney’s Garage was owned by FF TD Dan Moloney. The shop in the centre of the photo was owned by Paddy Finucane, Independent TD. 

My late father Sean bought it from Paddy and opened the Mans Shop in 1963.

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An tAthair Tomás  ÓHiceadha R.I.P.

Below is one of the many tributes paid online to the late great Fr. Tom Hickey, former Parish priest of Moyvane

Photo; Moyvane website … Fr. Tom Hickey with the Moyvane Drama Group in the late 1960s

The late Rev. Fr. Tom Hickey from Rosemount

Late Rosemount Priest was “way ahead of his time”

There was deep sadness in Rosemount this week when news broke of the sad passing of one of the most legendary characters the village ever produced, the much-loved Fr Tom Hickey.

A fluent Irish speaker who celebrated the 70th anniversary of his ordination in June of last year, Fr Tom passed away at University Hospital, Kerry on Monday, in his 97th year.

A man who was renowned for his quick wit and great love of life, the late Fr Tom was appointed as Parish Priest of Ballyferriter in 1989 having spent the entirety of his priesthood in the Kerry Diocese, where he served in ten different parishes prior to his appointment to his beloved Ballyferriter.

Marie Burke (née Keenan) a native of Rosemount, and a good friend of the Hickey family, described Fr Tom this week as a man who was “way ahead of his time and a great character.”

She recalled how he made an annual trip to the United States every October right up to four years ago, when he was 94 years old, to visit his brother, Benjy, in New Jersey. “In the two weeks he would be over there he would take the bus into New York on his own seven or eight times to attend a play or a show on Broadway,” she said.

When Fr Tom Hickey was ordained in Maynooth in 1950 he was one of a class of 82 priests, so he went to London to study drama before returning to the Kerry Diocese to begin his ministry.

He was a founder member of Siamsa Tire in Tralee and had a lifelong devotion to drama which brought him into contact with both young and old in every parish where he served.

A superb raconteur, he could captivate a room with his great wit and sense of fun and Marie Burke recalled how his party piece was the witty ballad “I Belong to Glasgow” which he performed with great aplomb at many a get-together in his native Rosemount.

“Fr Tom and his sister, Maura O’Connor, who is 94 and lives in Limerick, used to return to Rosemount for every important occasion we had here up to the time Covid hit, so everyone in the village has many fond memories of all the great nights we had in their company” says Marie.

Only last year, Fr Tom was filmed practicing a Tai Chi routine in the kitchen of his home in Ballyferriter, and said at the time that regular exercise was one of the factors that had contributed to his long and active life.

He knew every town and village in Kerry, where he spent all of his adult life having received his secondary school education with the Christian Brothers in Dingle before he entered the seminary in Killarney. Irish was his first language and he never missed the opportunity to speak in his native tongue among his parishioners on the Dingle Peninsula.

One of the saddest aspects of Fr Tom’s passing is that the people of Rosemount and of his beloved Kerry will be unable to give him “the send-off he so richly deserves” according to Marie Burke, due to the Covid restrictions in place for the celebration of funerals.

“He was just an amazing man in every way, and we will never see his likes again,” said Marie Burke.

Fr Tom, whose late father, Ben Hickey, served as Principal of Rosemount National School from 1920 to 1959, will be laid to rest tomorrow (Thursday, April 15) in the grounds of St. Vincent’s Church, Ballyferriter, Kerry after a private family Funeral Mass in the Church at 2pm.

At a celebration in Rosemount to mark 70 years ordained to the priesthood Fr. Tom showed that he had lost none of his love of performance. The below clip has gone viral.

Fr. Tom Hickey

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Dogecoin in Ballybunion

I was in Ballybunion yesterday April 22 2021 and the sand artist was at work.

What was he drawing?

#Dogecoin.com

I looked it up for you. It’s a cryptocurrency that began as a joke and “is now worth more than Ford.”

Look at this latest news:

“Indeed, dogecoin owners have enjoyed a parabolic surge in the so-called meme asset that was engineered back in 2013 as a lighthearted riff on the bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.66% phenomenon. It is up around 6,500% so far this year. By comparison, gold futures GC00, -0.34% are down some 5.5% in 2021, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.29% and the S&P 500 SPX, -0.04% are both up by around 11%.”,

Make any sense to you?  

Me  neither.

Is Ballybunion in on the joke or is there something going on that we don’t know?