Skerries by Éamon ÓMurchú

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Home on the Range

On my recent trip home Mr. Jiggs and Tana came for a chat.

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Upper William Street

I posted this photo of Sheahan’s on Facebook and it prompted Gerard Leahy to share the below photo of his grandmother, Mary Ann Relihan at the door of her pub which used to be next door to Sheahan’s.

This is what Gerard said “I don’t have any photos of the inside but great memories. The concrete floor, the “grocery ” part of the shop in front, dry goods: sugar, tobacco, snuff, flour etc. and the little pub counter next to it and the dining room and kitchen further back. Outhouses in the back and the gate to the backway close to the creamery.

My grandmother was a butter maker at the creamery for years and her husband Jack was the creamery manager in Coolard, it got burned down. Jack went to America and spent most of his adult life in NY. He used to come back on visits. Mrs. Quirke would send a note up to Mary Ann to say he was back. He would stay there until invited up to Pound Lane !!!

Donie Finnucane bought the place around 1976-77 after she passed.

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Wild Flowers on the Pitch and Putt Course

I think this is a nice idea. They have planted wild flowers around the base of the trees. Another lovely feature of the beautiful course.

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Lest we Forget

Auschwitz (Sixty Years On)

by John McGrath

Auschwitz!

Even the word is bitter

in this godless place.

No happy endings here,

only the ghosts of

poets, peasants,

doctors, lawyers,

fur-coated frauleins;

their single crime,

bloodline.

Children plucked from mothers,

snuffed like kittens in a sack.

Brick and barbed wire

mock survival for a few,

screams in striped pyjamas

dying time on time

before the works of death

are stilled forever.

Silence then

and silence now.

After the speeches

and the flickering candles,

after the ashes of a million dead

are scattered in the snow.

Old women, old men,

hold each other close,

look for answers

in each other’s eyes,

find only

disbelief.

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