I was out bright and early with camera.

Danny made an extra effort for the big day. He was rocking the Jedward look today.

Evanna and Angelica made the effort as well and came in green.

I’m off now to the parade and later to the Tea Dance so I’ll have lots of snaps for you on Monday.

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Meanwhile a little light reading for you:

I took this from CNN on the web in an article about Irish writers returning home.

Returning to a literary hometown

Although
he now lives in England, poetJohn McAuliffeoften returns to his childhood home inListowelto visit family and to recharge his
writing. On the surface a typical North Kerry market town, Listowel has a
literary tradition inspired by the playwright John B. Keane and fiction writer
Bryan MacMahon. Keane ran a pub where writer Michael Hartnett and other writers
and townspeople would gather, now operated by his widow and son.

To a
young boy, Keane and MacMahon both seemed of the town and outside it.
“They were after something penetrating, subtle and comprehending when they
wrote, unsentimentally, about the town’s hinterland of farming villages and
about the positive impact of modernity on old hierarchies: wised-up insiders
with a natural sympathy for the outsider,” says McAuliffe, co-director of
the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester, editor of “The
Manchester Review” and author of “Of All Places.”

For the
visitor: “When I’m at home I walk Market Street, past John B’s (pub) and
into the redesigned town square where the terrific converted church, St.
John’s, hosts theater and music every week,” says McAuliffe. “I walk
past the Listowel Arms Hotel — where Charles Stuart Parnell made his last
public address — under Listowel Castle, whose ruin is now attached to an
interactive museum, which documents and celebrates the work of John B. (Keane),
(Bryan) MacMahon and other writers from the area.”

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In case you missed this lovely photo on NKRO ‘s Facebook page

 Timothy J. O’Neill , pictured in 1876, was a fireman in New
York for 40 years. He was born in Lisselton. The photograph was sent to NKRO by
Kathleen Price.