
A Corner of The Square
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After the Greenway Cycle
Marlene and Liz met up with their friends, Mary and Miriam for a bit of well earned rest and recovery. Miriam sent the pictures.


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Eileen Moylan, Designer in Gold and Silver and Precious Stones

Photo credit; Ger Holland
For a few years Eileen Moylan was the designer commissioned to design and make the presentation piece, named for John B. Keane and sponsored by Mercier Press which was presented by Listowel Writers’ Week to the person chosen to receive recognition for their lifetime contribution to the Arts.
These pieces are one-off treasures, researched, designed, customised and lovingly made at Eileen’s studio in Macroom. Eileen’s attention to detail in all her work is legendary.
If you win an Oscar you just get a statuette, the same as everybody else’s. If you won a Lifetime Achievement award at Listowel Writers’ Week you got something unique, an absolutely beautiful hand made bespoke piece from a silversmith at the top of her game.
Fr. Antony Gaughan was the recipient of one such piece. He absolutely loved it, as did everyone who was lucky enough to get one. Fr. Tony has donated his piece to Kerry Writers’ Museum where it is on display for us all to see and admire. It is even more special for Listowel people than the beautiful Edna O’Brien piece because Eileen’s design incorporates so many lovely Listowel landmarks.
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A Poem for Our Time
Still I Rise
BY MAYA ANGELOU
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I’m including this great poem today as a tribute to Kamala Harris who has risen to top rung of the ladder.
Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak is the genealogist who traced Barack Obama to Moneygall. She has spoken out on the subject of Harris’s family tree. Detractors have pointed to slave owners in her pedigree as well as slaves. But it is a horrid fact of slavery that owners regarded female slaves as their property to rape at will. Rape was a fact of life for female slaves. Not only their owners, but sons of owners, foremen, friends of owners and other random white men saw it as their right to rape slave girls. So the fact that she has slave owners in her ancestry is no surprise to genealogists.
It’s simply a fact of life.
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A Postbox in Kildare Train Station


Victorian, I presume. Still in use.
Does anyone know why they used to put postboxes in train stations?
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A Fact
A greeting card that can play Happy Birthday has more computer power than existed in the whole world in 1950.
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