St. Patrick’s Day mass in St. Mary’s Listowel as legendary Listowel dancing master, Jimmy Hickey, dances before the altar with two of his star former pupils, Jonathan Kelliher and Patrick Brosnan.

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Meanwhile in New York

The New York Kerryman were out in force, joined this year by a Listowel Kerryman, Jimmy Moloney, Mayor of County Kerry.

Denis Hegarty sent us some pictures. That’s Denis back in his usual spot proudly carrying the banner of The Kerrymen’s association.

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People I met at the Parade

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A Puzzle

Is this the flag of Palastine?

Why is it flying in Ballybunion on St. Patrick’s Day?

Very strange?

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Some Placenames

Triopal…a bundle of rushes

Billeragh, Biolarach…A Place with cress

Ballygrennane, Baile an Ghrianain…the sunny homestead

Ennismore, Inis Mór, The big peninsula

Bedford, Ath an Turais, A ford on the way to the holy well

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A Poem from Joe Fahy

Exploitation

Culture to Cain, the importance of label
In expressing social status.
Economic power, its Everest, from the steppingstone
It’s foundation, the rock of exploitation.
It’s superiority, its status,
Who pays for the products on the table?
It’s resources from third world locations.
Mixed by and through manipulation,
Political in essence
The priesthood of power,
Political domination,
Economic exploitation,
Social and Cultural
Marginalisation.
Our menus,
From first world T.V. stations
Emphasis on ‘having.’
Children forever grieving,
Totalitarian values at the
Crucifix of consumption.
The two thieves of much
And more, on either side-
Twin towers of greed.
But resurrection is guaranteed-
The first of the Nazarenes’
Abel, in our era.
Remember apartheid,
Our contemporary Roman Era.
That fella of the sixties,
Nelson Mandela.
Romero in the eighties,
Ignacio Ella Curia in the nineties,
The new Holy Land Cuscatlán,
Meaning, ‘land of Rivers and Jewels’
El Salvador, our Saviour.

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