This blog is a personal take on Listowel, Co. Kerry. I am writing for anyone anywhere with a Listowel connection but especially for sons and daughters of Listowel who find themselves far from home. Contact me at listowelconnection@gmail.com

Tag: Cork Page 6 of 7

Ballybunion, some wild life and Tae Lane Listowel

Ballybunion from the Sea

Photo: Ballybunion Prints

Ballybunion Goats




Mike Enright took this great picture this week.


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Remember these in the bog?

Photo; Timothy John MacSweeney, wildlife photographer

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The Quad, UCC

(Photo: Random Cork Stuff on Twitter)

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William Street Upper

There is no problem finding a parking space in this corner of town nowadays.

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A Little visited Corner of Listowel….Tae Lane




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So Proud




These are my twin grandsons with their new neighbours.

 Why am I so proud?

Because they are pictured walking a section of the Camino de Santiago. They walked 15 kilometers. The walk was an organized one with pit stops, drinks, cake and bands. Well done boys!

They are only 9.

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Cork’s English Market. Fr. Liam Hayes and KDYS Nativity Parade 2014

Listowel’s 2014 Christmas Tree


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Listowel Garda Station December 2014





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Passing of an Unsung Hero

This is Fr. Liam Hayes who passed away recently. He was the son of Mary Nolan of Dromurhur, Moyvane and Paddy Hayes of Cappamore, Co. Limerick.

Fr. Hayes was the founder and administrator of several Cheshire Homes for children and adults with severe physical and intellectual disability in Oberá, Argentina. His passing at the aged of 65 is a huge loss to his family and to these people whom he always treated with dignity and compassion.

Senator Rónán Mullen, who knew Fr. Hayes paid him fulsome tribute this week:

“After studies in UCC where he was Student Union President, Fr Hayes went to Maynooth and was ordained a priest for the Divine Word Missionaries.

In the mid-1980s, he travelled to Argentina to do parish work in the province of Misiones in North-Eastern Argentina, where he would spend the rest of his life.

In Misiones he came across many children and adults with physical and intellectual disability who were severely neglected.

Some were abandoned and some were with family members unable to take care of them. Fr Hayes had sleepless nights about this.

His religious order and the local bishop gave him permission to work full-time in caring for these abandoned people.

This led to his foundation of several Cheshire Homes, places which he once described as ‘centres of prayers and centres of care’.

“They were certainly places where some of the world’s most forgotten people were loved for themselves,”

….

Fr. Hayes was helped by many people at home and abroad in his mission and he welcomed people of all creeds to be part of his work.

“Former President Mary McAleese and various government ministers from Ireland also visited over the years and the Irish State was generous in providing capital towards the development of the homes along the way.

Many people in Ireland and Britain raised money in their parishes and elsewhere towards the running costs of the homes.

In recent years, the importance of the homes and of Fr Liam’s work was recognised in Argentina and there has been increased support from within Argentinean society.

Senator Mullen recalled, “Fr Liam was fully committed to his work in Argentina but leaving Ireland was hard for him too. He missed the simple things like the feel of the local newspaper in his hand and the sweets or foods that you could only get in Ireland.”

Leaba i measc na naomh dá anam uasal

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Cork



Spotted at the corner of Castle Street.



I hope they never get rid of these old pillar boxes. They are so classy by comparison with modern post boxes.

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In Cork’s English Market


The market was a buzz with activity on the day I visited. It was early in the morning and the traders were setting out their stalls for the day. I was struck by the camaraderie and banter among the neighbours. It must be so much nicer to work here where you are surrounded by other stall holders than in a shop on your own.

This inviting array of confectionery is on a stall new to the market. Hassett’s Artisan Bakery from Carrigaline are now in the market. In case you missed this piece of news, Jacobs have this year removed the jelly star biscuit from their Afternoon Tea tins. The jelly star was everyone’s favourite biscuit and was eagerly awaited by people at Christmas time. The good news is that Hassett’s make a jelly star biscuit even tastier than Jacobs and you can now buy tins of jelly stars in Cork’s English Market.


The vaulted ceiling, the Farmgate Café and the fountain are all landmarks in this popular area of town.

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KDYS Nativity




KDYS posted these and some other photographs of their Nativity Parade 2014.

Christmas in Cork, Ballybunion castle and A living Crib in St. Mary’s

Christmas in Cork


On a recent trip to Cork I photographed a few of the Christmassy features to share with you.


 This is the Tree of Remembrance in Patrick Street. Each yellow ribbon commemorates someone lost to suicide. It is a timely reminder that Christmas is not a happy time for everyone.

 Santa’s giant post box at the entrance to the GPO in Oliver Plunkett Street.

Stylish doorway into a very stylish shop.

A group of carol singing school children were gathering outside the now closed Moderne.


Keane’s jewellers on Oliver Plunkett street looking resplendent

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And Then…….



Patrick Street in the 50s and 60s from a site called random Cork Stuff

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Job Finished

(photo: Ballybunion Angling and Coastal Views )

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Dancing on the Roads

(photo: Thomas Holmes Mason is the photographer and the photo is part of the Irish Archeology collection)

The year is 1909 and the place is a mountain outside Ventry, Co. Kerry.  A group of people is  dancing on the road and another group is watching from the nearby roadside bank.

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Daniel and Majella, the Listowel Connection




Jackie and Máire from Listowel Writers’ Week met up with Daniel and Majella at The Irish Book Awards recently. Majella O’Donnell’s book, It’s All in the Head, won the John Murray Show listeners choice award.

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In St. Mary’s yesterday




Everywhere I looked there was a shepherd. I was in St. Mary’s for the Youthreach Nativity pageant. The weather was wet and dirty so the parade was curtailed and the children gathered in the church for a lovely Christmas ceremony.

Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork and the Sky Garden and an emigrant’s tribute to his Kerry father

Here comes summer!

Last weekend I took a trip to the real capitol. I took in a gymnastics display, a trip to Fitzgerald’s Park and a day out in Fota.

The display was in the hall of the local Ballincollig Gym club. Over 100 young people gave a world class display.

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One of my favourite topics this summer is the Diarmuid Gavin designed Sky Garden in Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork. My regular followers will remember that I was there for the grand opening. I visited again a week later and found that the precious garden had become a playground and all the plants were trampled by children climbing on to the stainless steel globes.

 Now, not even a month after the fanfare that attended the official opening, we have bare earth where plants used to be and we have the big silver globe removed and replaced with a semi globe. 

You have probably noticed that there are no children playing in that space anymore. That is because the steel was hot enough to fry an egg on Saturday last.

In another part of the garden stands this feature.

That’s my granddaughter in front of it trying out her hurling skills. Last weekend there was a lot of talk of hurling in Cork. The three lovely and extremely talented young men from my home town, Kanturk, accounted well for themselves in Cork’s win against their old rivals, Clare.

 When in Rome…..even Rory McIlroy tried his hand at a spot of hurling while he was in Fota for the golf.  (photo; Indosport)

The sky pod of the original design has become a river pod and is very popular with young and old.

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Last Sunday was Fathers’ Day. Niall O’Dowd of Irish Central wrote a lovely essay to his own father to mark the day.

The last time I saw him was from the
railway line that spanned the Boyne River in Drogheda. thirty miles from
Dublin. The year was 1978.

He was a speck in the distance,
standing in our small garden waving goodbye for the last time.

He was not an emotive man, but
incredibly protective of his children and the loss of another would go hard on
him. He would not cry, but go quiet, withdrawn for several days.

Moments later the train swept me away
to America, first to Dublin then an Aer Lingus plane across an ocean to a new
world.

I wasn’t lonely, I was full of life
and piss and vinegar and anxious to get going. Life’s vista was opening up and
I was in a hurry to blaze my trail.

Like millions before America was
calling. His wish for me to stay home, stick to a teaching job, marry and
settle down, could never compete.

Now I wonder how he felt that long
ago fine June morning as he watched his third son disappear in the distance,
losing another son to emigration. He knew what it was to say goodbye.

He had grown up one of fourteen in a
three-room house on a small holding in Gaelic-speaking West Kerry. The kids had
scattered to the four winds as soon as they were able, but he had stayed home
and become a teacher.

He raised seven kids with my mother
and at one time five were away, scattered like his own family before him.

We spoke only once after I left
before he died. It was frustrating,he was quite deaf, and I knew he could
hardly hear what I was saying.

A few weeks after I left he was dead
of a heart attack, I was on a Greyhound bus to California at the time, unaware,
stopping off in many American towns on the way on a long mazy trip across
country.

The year was 1978 and there were no
cell phones, only old-style landlines in Greyhound bus stations where calling
Ireland was impossible. I was uncontactable.

I reached a fork in the road in Salt
Lake City bus station. Los Angeles was one bus destination, San Francisco the
other. I felt him urging me to take San Francisco. It was the night he died.

Was he with me on that long journey
across the salt lakes, to the Nevada Mountains and beyond?

I like to think he was. He loved the
stories of the old West and here I was landing in the self-same territory
inspired with the same version of the American dream that drove so many Irish
before me.

Back home he had followed my progress
west on a map, living it vicariously. I wrote to him about Cheyenne, Wyoming,
the badlands and Tombstone City, places that fired his childhood imagination.
He did not live to see the letters.

He was a writer too, I took so much
from him, and today am lucky I can still hear his voice reading his short
stories in Gaelic on the radio long ago.

This Father’s Day I will put on one
of those CDs and for a moment the years will roll back as that powerful Kerry
accent and beautiful lilting Gaelic can be heard again.

Then I will raise a glass to the old
man, with the granddaughter he never knew and for a moment the world will be
full again.

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Beautiful, beautiful Ballybunion

Sunset captured by John Kelliher…awesome!

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Solved!

Thanks to everyone who helped identify the people in this old photo. The man playing the harmonica is Jackie Faulkner and the boy is the late Ned Walsh. The photo was taken on the day before the first Fleadh Cheoil in Listowel in the 1970s. The place is Freezers. Ned Walsh passed away in 1989.

The photo stirred a good few memories. Thanks everyone.

Ballybunion, Writers Week launch, mixed media VEC class and Pres’ night at the dogs

Ballybunion from the air;




Ballybunion Castle from the air in a photo on Irish Air Corps Facebook page.

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People at the launch of the Writers Week 2014 programme


David Browne with the O’Flynn family
Anthony Garvey, Dick Carmody and Gabriel Fitzmaurice
Seán MacCarthy perusing the programme
Eilís Wren
Artists
Anne Keane, Elaine Keane, Mairead O’Sullivan and Brenda Woulfe
Brenda with Michael Lynch and Nora Relihan

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Sewing Bee

I made a second visit to The Family Centre to see the mixed media class in progress. Priscilla Sweeney teaches this class and the students are working on some beautiful crafty projects.

Sewing projects, patchwork, felting and  stained glass were just some of the skills I saw.

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We’re going to the dogs

The staff and pupils at Presentation Secondary School are planning a big night out on Friday May 2. We are all heading off to the Kingdom Greyhound track in Tralee for a night of fun and dog racing. There will be something for everyone on the night, with bouncy castle, face painting and lots of spot prizes. First race is at 7.50p.m. Tickets €10 from the school or at the turnstile on the night.

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From The Examiner archive Patrick’s Bridge and Patrick Street, Cork in 1956

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