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
During my recent Kilkenny stay with my family, we had the big birthday party on the Saturday evening. I couldn’t really take too many photos but here are a few as the lighting (mostly candles) was being organisaed before the banquet.
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For the Troubled Times that are in it
A Rider at the Oval
Eduardo Montes Bradley
A stranger rode into the hall of power, a weary traveler from a battered land. He came not to beg, but to stand, bearing the weight of his people’s sorrow.
Yet cruelty met him at the door, words like stones, cold and sharp, not from foes upon the battlefield, but from hands once stretched in promise.
Oh, how the world watches in silence, as dignity is trampled by arrogance. But the rider will ride on, for his people still stand.
And history will remember— not the cruelty, not the insult, but the unbroken spirit of those who will not kneel.
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From the Internet
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The Irish Echo 2019
An entrepreneur must lead: Somers
News April 29, 2019
Sean J. Somers will be honored at the 2nd Annual Small Business-Big Impact Awards in Boston on Friday.
By Peter McDermott
Empathy.
That what Boston’s Sean J. Somers believes is top of the list of qualities that makes the entrepreneur.
That might seem strange from a businessman who stresses “winning” and a management style that “motivates winners.”
And Somers, someone always on the technological cutting edge, espouses what seems another counterintuitive view: dialing back on the digital helps create the ideal pub.
But first, why empathy?
Well, that’s the way in to discovering what the customer thinks, whatever his or her circumstances in life.
“You must really listen to a problem they’re having – not give an answer just to give an answer,” said Somers who is involved with Somers Pubs of Boston, Keel Premium Vodka, U-Out Inc. and Canary Inc.
“[The entrepreneur] must put themselves in the other person’s shoes,” he added. “They have to understand what the market is going for.”
Some people might suggest today that an entrepreneur is not a team-orientated person.
“‘Entrepreneur’ is a trendy word these days,” said Somers, an honoree at Friday’s 2nd Annual Small Business Big Impact Awards. “You hear people say ‘I’m a one-man show, I’ve no employees, I’ve no office,’ blah, blah, blah.’”
Whereas in fact, he said, “an entrepreneur is someone who can lead – who can lead from behind – someone who doesn’t need to be always in the limelight.”
Words of wisdom from a Listowel man.
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A Fact
Gamophobia is the fear of getting married or being in a relationship.
When I was in the park last week, the coucil outdoor staff were busy clearing fallen and dangerous trees.
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Lixnaw
A man called Alan Young posted this photo and the following text on a Facebook page about disused railway stations.
LIXNAW was a station in County Kerry on the line between Tralee and Listowel. Lixnaw closed in February 1963 when passenger services were withdrawn between Tralee, Listowel, Newcastle West, and Limerick. Goods services were then withdrawn in stages from the route, and the section through Lixnaw was closed to all traffic in January 1977. I took this photograph in April 2008 .
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Pick Yourself Up and Dust Yourself Off
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More from Kilkenny
Jenkinstown House is located in a lovely wood and forest park, popular with local dog walkers. On the Saturday of our visit some of us went for a stroll.
There were historical artefacts like this all around but no explanation nearby to satisfy our curiosity.
Anne and Aoife posed in front of a more modern shelter cun picnic area.
Aoifew having her nails painted in preparation for the birthday party.
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Date for the Diary
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Mattie Lennon on Pat Ingoldsby R.I.P.
By Mattie Lennon.
“In 1893, W. B. Yeats referred to Zozimus as ‘the last of the gleemen’ but he obviously failed to foresee the coming of Pat Ingoldsby- an old fashioned travelling bard to rival the best of them.” ( The words of Bobby Aherne in his book , D’you Remember Yer Man ? A portrait of Dublin’s famous characters.)
Irish film director Seamus Murphy made a documentary film about much-loved Dublin poet Pat Ingoldsby.
Pat has presented children’s TV shows on RTÉ, written plays for the stage and radio, published books of short stories, and been a newspaper columnist but is mostly known for his unconventional and often humorous poetry.
The award-winning Murphy, speaking to RTÉ Entertainment, Murphy said, “Pat is suddenly back in fashion. I talk about him any time I’m doing interviews because I’m trying to raise money for the film but also because I’m trying to build his profile back up again and then there was a poetry festival recently where people were re-enacting his work.”
Writing for the website Just Six Degress, Murphy has said: “I got to know Pat while I was making Home is Another Place, a short film I made for The New Yorker over the summer in Dublin in 2013.
“Pat appeals to our reason through invention and surrealism, in a voice understandable to everyone. He is a rare and sympathetic witness and champion of the underdog – of which there are many in Dublin. Above all he is very funny.
“There is no better company than Pat and his poems to roam with around the streets of Dublin; absorbing its stories and conspiring with the mirth and darkness of the city.”
Murphy says that Ingoldsby, who has recently passed away , was initially reluctant to appear on screen again.
“He wouldn’t appear because he doesn’t want to appear in front of the public but these performers were performing his poems so there seems to be a bit of a comeback without him doing anything,” the director said.
“His poetry is extraordinary and every year he produces another book, self-published, and he could really have done with a good editor so this film will really try to pick out the best of him.
“He said to me, `you can make the film, I’d love you to make the film but I’m not going to be in it’. I said OK, it was almost like the PJ Harvey thing, but slowly I’d go out to him and I’d recorded him and we got to know each other and slowly he started trusting me and now I’ve got lots of stuff.”
“I’ve almost shot all I need of him, it’s the other stuff I need to do.”
Most of Pat’s poems are about his personal experiences, observations of life in Dublin, or mildly surreal humorous possibilities.
Topics of personal experiences vary from the death of his father, or the electroconvulsive therapy he received (c. 1988), to his appreciation of the natural world or his pets (mostly cats, but also some fish).
Observations of Dublin are mostly humorous conversations overheard on the bus, or the characters he sees and talks to while selling his books on the streets. Some observations are not so cheerful as he also sees the drunks and the homeless of Dublin city, and the some aspects of modernisation which he isn’t pleased with.
His most distinctive style of poetry is his humorist style. A recurring character, Wesley Quench, appears in roles such as the driver of a Flying See-Saw Brigade. Another poem, “Vagina in the Vatican,” depicts a vagina sneaking into the Vatican unstopped because no one knew what it was – except for a few who couldn’t let slip that they did.
He also occasionally produces stories for children. These are a childish version of his mildly surreal style.
During the rapid increase in the use of mobile telephones, he offered a “Mobile Phone Euthanasia” service on the streets of Dublin, where he would destroy phones for annoyed owners.
His cousin Maeve Ingoldsby is a playwright.
When Pat is selling his books, more often than not, he can be found on Westmoreland Street.
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His poem For Rita With Love was selected as one of the Ireland’s 100 favourite poems as voted for by readers of the Irish Times.
You came home from school
On a special bus
Full of people
Who look like you
And love like you
And you met me
For the first time
And you loved me.
You love everybody
So much that it’s not safe
To let you out alone.
Eleven years of love
And trust and time for you to learn
That you can’t go on loving like this.
Unless you are stopped
You will embrace every person you see.
Normal people don’t do that.
Some Normal people will hurt you
Very badly because you do.
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A Fact
Until 2008 Nelson Mandela was banned from entering the USA and needed a special waiver any time he wanted to visit.
This photo of John B. Keane and Mick Lally was shared by Eric Luke. He took the photo in the pre digital age, sometime in the 1980s.
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Ever hear of Turfuel?
McHenry Brothers from North Brunswick Street, Dublin were well known fuel merchants, founded in 1925. They began delivering turf on behalf of Bord na Móna from the 1930s and especially during the war war years, when they delivered turf to Dublin. Their trucks were coloured blue and during the 1970s they also used a fleet of blue AEC trucks to haul turf and briquettes to Dublin, making their deliveries throughout the city with a fleet of blue Bedford “flat tops”. This above is a Leyland lorry from the 1970s.
McHenry Brothers of Dublin also supplied turf around the country and this ad for turf probably dates from the 1940s. It’s for Turfuel, the name they gave machine turf from Lyrecrumpane, Co. Kerry. This was one of our earlier works opened in the 1930s. McHenrys also sold briquettes from Lullymore and they were baling our briquettes with flat wire straps long before we started. Due to the decline in long term contracts and the ban on smokey coal in Dublin, the McHenry firm was liquidated in 1990 after 65 years in business. They were also general hauliers, transporting cattle, sheep, pigs, building materials and timber during their time in business.
In a previous life, when I was a teacher of English, one of my pet hates was the misuse of the word “literally”.
Well, my chickens have come home to roost. All of you who literally die of embarrassment or literally kill someone have won.
The Oxford English dictionary has, like me, accepted defeat and added a new meaning to the word “literally”. It is now accepted as a expletive, used for emphasis.
“This newer, disputed usage (describing something non-literal, as a form of exaggeration) has become more frequent over time, and is now sometimes used quite deliberately in non-literal contexts. ” (OED)
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Only in Kilkenny
Photo from Twitter
The annual blessing of the hurls at St. Kieran’s College, Kilkenny. Have we hit upon their secret ingredient?
