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: Fr. Pat Moore Page 3 of 9

St. John’s, Volunteers in Second Time Around and some more turf shed theatre

St. John’s, The Square, Listowel






February 27 2018 was a freezing cold day but the light was perfect for a photo of this iconic Listowel building.

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Spring, a Season of Renewal



On the 28/2/2017 Fr. Pat Moore posted on his blog.



Blessed are you, spring,bright season of life awakening.

You gladden our hearts with opening buds and returning leaves as you put on your robes of splendour.

For in your life no death can survive as you exchange places with winter.

You harbour no unforgiving spirit for broken tree limbs and frozen buds.

Season of hope and renewal.

Wordless poem about all within us that cannot die.

Each year you amaze us with the miracle of returning life.

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Second Time Around



“The salt of the earth” my friends in Listowel’s St. Vincent de Paul shop

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Turf Shed Theatre Remembered



Marie Shaw took a trip down memory lane when she read accounts of the entertainments staged by Listowel children in the 1950s. Here is what she wrote;

Smiling while reading the Vincent Carmody bit about turf theatre. Remembering when we were teenagers In Clieveragh and a bunch of us kids decided to stage a play in Louis Connell’s garage. We made up our own script from a story we read somewhere called “Christine’s Necklace”


Joseph Power, John Hartnett, Michael O’Connell and Michael Broderick built a stage and made some kind of seating. Artie Chute who worked for Louis O’Connell’s law office typed up some very impressive programs for us, we raided all our closets to come up with costumes and a stage curtain and were then ready to stage our play. Only one thing went wrong, the garage didn’t have a light so right before the scheduled performance we were left with a dark garage. Not to worry, Louis O’Connell came to the rescue by moving his car right in front of the garage and shining the lights directly at the stage. Many years later I wondered if he killed his car battery through his concern. We even had a cast party in O’Connell’s kitchen afterwards. Louis and Mrs. O’Connell had so much patience with us and indulged us so much. I will always remember them fondly.

Regards,

Marie


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Dilligently Rehearsing



Listowel Folk Group are busy practicing in their new location in St. Mary’s for their biggest gig to date. They will sing the mass as Gaeilge when St. Patrick’s Day mass from Listowel is broadcast on RTE at 11.00a.m. on the National Holiday.

Snow, Storm Emma, Writers’ Week team, Some words of wisdom and some old stuff

The Week we went Mad


Today is March 5 2018 and Ireland is picking itself up after one of the strangest weeks I have yet witnessed. We had an extreme weather event when a snow storm from the west met a wind storm from the east and we witnessed blizzard conditions.

We went mad. I think everyone ate sandwiches and soup for a week as supplies of sliced pans and vegetables sold out faster than they traditionally do on Christmas Eve. 

Slimming World  and Weighwatchers will make a killing from this.

Marie Moriarty took these photos in Garvey’s Super Valu, Listowel on March 1 2018 at 10.30 a.m.

………

Then we went outdoors and we made snowmen, snow women and snow dogs, igloos and even a sneachtapus.

A Kerry snowman…more specifically a Kilflynn snowman.

A Lithuanian/Kerry snowman

An igloo under construction in Kanturk. Igloos and snow sculptures were popping up everywhere.

 sneachtapus

This creation trumps them all.

A video appeared on Facebook of downhill skiing in Moyvane.



Aisling and her sisters made a Cork snowman in Ballincollig.

Meanwhile my Kildare based family were snowed in.

I am so lucky to have neighbours who look after me. Eddie Moylan shovelled the snow from my drive and Helen Moylan brought me a delicious dinner when our trip to Allos had to be called off.

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Glentenassig by Deirdre Lyons

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Ladies Who Lunch


No, they are not really ladies who lunch. The Writers’ Week team were bidding farewell  to their German intern when I met them in Scribes last week.

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On 3/4/17 Fr. Pat Moore posted on his blog.


Worth repeating 

“Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you will not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now.”

Rilke

Everything that is in God, is God”

Meister Eckhart 


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Listowel girls?



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Drink Aware

Billy MacSweeney found this poster which was issued as part of an anti drink campaign in 1919. I think they’d put you off drink alright.


Listowel Library, a piece of doggerel, a funny picture and a great night out on February 27 2018

Photo: Ita Hannon

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More Library Memories from Billy McSweeney

Billy has shared some more of his family and library memories with us.

Here is what he wrote;
Attached please find a copy of a brochure issued in 1995 about the

opening of the ‘New’ Kerry Co Council Branch Library. You can see that

‘Fake News’ about the burning down of the original Library in the Bridge

Road was still being spread in 1995.



I also include a photograph of my mother Maisie with my Grandparents Ned

and Annie Gleeson (nee Carmody). Annie was the very first Librarian in

the Bridge Road. She was later also Town Clerk.



You may not know that the top floor of the Church St Library was used

extensively as an infant classroom for the National School ; the teacher

was Mrs Scanlon (nee Pierce) from Market St. It was also occasionally

used for putting on ‘Entertainments’ by an adventurous group of locals

which, to my knowledge, included John B. Keane, his brother Eamon (‘The

Joker’) the actor and the Stack brothers of William St, among others.

The members of this group were the forerunners of the ‘Tom Doodle

Society’ of later fame.



Kind Regards,



Billy McSweeney




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Thunder and Lightning Author unknown

The thunder crashed

The lightning flashed

And all the world was shaken;

The little pig curled up his tail

And ran to save his bacon.

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Humour from the late Fr. Pat Moore

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Mill Lane Store has moved


from here



to here


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Night out with the Writers’ Week gang

We had a great team night out for nibbles in Christy’s and the Johnny Cash tribute concert in St. Johns.

Here are a few pictures of the local groupies.

Marie, Jim and Liz

Rose and Seán

Seán with the newly elected head of Kerry Vintners’ Association, Christy Walsh

We were not the only posse of Johnny Cash afictionados in the theatre. The ladies below are from Ballybunion.

I sat beside these lovely enthusiastic music fans who travelled from further afield to enjoy the show and enjoy it they did.

Fr. Pat Moore remembered, Basketball in the 1980s and Jack Flavin has passed away


Photo: Chris Grayson

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After we are gone


I was clearing out my inbox when I made the discovery. I came across an old notification from WordPress that Fr. Pat Moore had posted a new blog. It was the lovely piece that I have reprinted below. As soon as I read it I wanted to read more so I went to the his website and ……

you guessed it…..all gone.

It is apt that this essay is about birth, death and regrowth. Enjoy it.

There has been wonderful moonlight these last few nights. Go to the window in a darkened moonlight night and you see a shadowy reality outside, then turn on the light in the room and the world outside becomes totally dark. I remember John Moriarty making the point that in the same way we can be looking for answers to questions with the wrong search lights. If I want to see the fox passing in the night from my window,the light on in room won’t help. As John said,”It is with that that eclipses God that I seek God .” But God isn’t the fox that passes in the night!

Jim Kennelly tells me that when a kitten is born it’s blind for nine days. In the same way there are inside of all of us, huge awakenings. It’s as if we’re here to wake up as we begin to realise why we are on the planet at all. So that might be why we are here at all. We have to wake up from waking as Jim always says. “When your heart speaks,take notes.”

Over fifty years ago alot of neighbours around here visited the friendly garden centre in Beale, Hannons, where famously they ‘sell every blooming thing.” The Hannon family introduced the countryside to the Asian plant  cordyline. Lots of these plants started to appear down Littor Road. There was one planted in our front garden. It grew over six feet high. Then when we got severe cold weather four years ago alot of the cordyline died, including the one in our garden. This spring when we cleared away the growth seven new trees have grown and are thriving. From the death of the old plant, new life, seven new plants! Is it any wonder Jesus used the image of the seed dying in the earth and from that comes forth new life when he explained the mystery of life?  

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Correcting the Tiger  by John Gardner


The tiger is a perfect saint

As long as you respect him:

But if he happens to say ain’t,

You’d better not correct him.

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Basketball  in Pres in the 1980s


If you are in this photo, please remember that we are still looking for reminiscences from the 1980s for our Pres. commemorative book.

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Another Familiar Face gone from Church Street




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Turf Shed Theatre


Vincent Carmody remembers a time when every boy in Listowel was a performer, an actor or a scriptwriter.


I would assume that Billy McSweeney is right, as Eamon Keane used usually take his walk up and down the Bridge Road and around Gurtinard. His memory of Turf Shed Theatre was identically repeated in most backways of the town. We in Pound Lane had a thriving theatre group, with plays and concerts being regularly performed in our back shed. One memory is of my sister Nora, having been sent out to get turf, stopped a performance which was in full flow, then proceeded to tear up the stage which we had built  on what turf  was left in the shed. The show had to be abandoned. As the paying customers were leaving, my neighbour and friend, Liam Nolan, lifted a clenched fist as Nora was leaving with her turf and shouted, ‘The Stage will never Die’, to which Nora replied, ‘Its dead now’.




Duagh Parish Live Crib 2017 and an aerial view of Listowel in the 1950s

Sheep at The Gap of Dunloe

Photo: Chris Grayson

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Duagh’s Live Crib


The best of all the Christmas cribs is the one in Duagh. It gets better every year . This year my visit was tinged with much sadness as we missed Fr. Pat Moore from a place he loved so well.

Here is a link to Fr. Pat in 2015, when he was on a break from his treatment, introducing the crib;

Duagh Parish Crib, Christmas 2015

A large photo of Fr. Pat greets you as you enter the crib and his presence is everywhere in this lovely place. I hope that the local people, who are still grieving his loss, continue the tradition of the live crib for years and years. It was a project of which he was very proud and he was so so proud of his friends who worked so hard on this project, year in year out.

My boys posed for me with this lovely window in the background. I taught them about the candle and the welcome and we felt the welcome and the hospitality on our trip to Duagh.

There is lots to learn in Duagh. A visit to this crib is a time to linger and ponder the story of Christmas while we revel in community, family and remembrance.

The entrance is through a magical leafy path  which creates the atmosphere of a cave.

The first stable was a kind of cave.

Inside it’s dark and intimate with the crowing of the cock and the smells of the animals bringing the story to life.

The crib tableau was a gift from the cathedral in Killarney. It forms the centrepiece of this lovely scene.

After our visit to the live crib we went into the church. It too was in all  its festive dress.

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Poles Apart


Bernard O’Connell follows this blog from Brampton, Ontario in Canada.



Julie Evans follows from down under in Sydney, Australia

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Listowel in the 1950s



Ned O’Sullivan posted these photos of Listowel in the 1950s on Facebook

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