St. Patrick’s Day cards

Listowel Fire Station in March 2024

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St. Patrick’s Day Cards from An Post

A Post have come up with a scheme that seemed to me like a great idea when I heard about it on the radio.

You go to the An Post website and you choose to send a St. Patrick’s Day card. You are given a choice of categories and then you will be given an AI generated image for your card. You write your greeting, the name and address of the recipients. Then you pay €4 and An Post will print and deliver the card anywhere in the world.

Brilliant!

I have these lovely friends whom you met here before. They are Wolfgang and Anita Mertens. They live in Germany. They love Ireland. Since I met them for the first time last year they have kept in touch and send me greetings, cards, photos and stuff.

So I set to make my greeting card for them.

Wolfgang is a scholar in the field of Anglo Irish literature. His special field of interest is the work of Listowel’s Bryan MacMahon. So the first category I chose was “literature” and the above card is what AI generated. Not so much literature. Lots of Paddywhackerry…rainbow, pots of gold, four leaved clovers masquerading as shamrocks. It was just short the leprechauns. I was definitely not choosing that one.

So next I chose the category St. Bridget’s Cross. The AI bot who made the above didn’t know too much about Saint Brigid since she numbered a pot of gold, a guitar and tricolour among her assorted artefacts at the foot of her very elaborate high cross. I rejected this one too.

I settled for my third and final choice, green landscape. Not very Irish but very very green. I thought I detected a few camels at the foot of those pyramids but who am I to question AI?

An Post had better up its game or I won’t be going there for my Easter cards.

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I met Two Famous Men

At lunch in Behan’s last Thursday I ran into Billy Keane and Michael Healy Rae having a chat. I disturbed them to bring you this.

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From Pres. Yearbook 1988

1987/88 was a great year for sport in the school. There were many exceptionally talented basketballers and footballers among the pupils.

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A Very Grim Fact

1740 to 1742 was the longest period of extreme cold in modern European history.

With rivers frozen, coal could not be delivered to ports, Animals and fish died. Birds fell dead out of the sky, having been frozen to death in flight. Starvation and hypothermia killed thousands of people.

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