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: Moments of Reflection

An Inspector, An Outlaw and An Artist

Listowel Town Square, September 2024

Highlight of September 2024

The biggest night of September 2024 for me and my family will be the launch of my new book in The Listowel Arms Hotel on Sept. 21 at 7.00p.m.. Moments of Reflection is a collection of reflections, previously broadcast in the Just a Thought slot on Radio Kerry. The Thoughts are accompanied by some uplifting photographs.

The book will cost €20

Listowel’s Monday half day

Remember we had this poster last week and I wondered about the year. Dave O’Sullivan to the rescue. The year is 1913 and the measure was not universally popular, as Dave uncovered in the following newspaper stories.

Monday January 27 1913 , Kerry Evening Star

And then on Friday, November 9 1934, Irish Press

Castlemaine

Castlemaine’s most famous son is Jack Duggan, aka The Wild Colonial Boy, who terrorised Australia according to legend.

Cora posed with the statue of the outlaw she had never heard of.

Tony O’Callaghan Bronze Plaques

This picture was shared on line by Gerard Leahy. Carol Broderick also has one of these. The names in the “book” would appear to be the names of the founders of Writers’ Week.

Do other people have them? Were they some kind of souvenir/reward?

Fireman

In the early 1900s this is how a fireman dressed so that he could get nearer to the fire to better extinguish it.

A Saturday Serenade

The local Knotweeds group, John Kinsella, Mary Murphy, Paddy MacElligott, Mike Moriarty and Denis O’Rourke performed in the Square on Saturday August 31 2024.

A Fact

In AD79 Vesuvius began erupting on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

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A Little Known Listowel Panto

St. Patrick’s Hall in late August 2024

Ta Dah!

It’s here…my beautiful new book, Moments of Reflection, is all done and ready for launch. Paul Shannon of Listowel Printing Works did an excellent job once again.

Mark this date in your calendar

Saturday September 21 2024

Please join me in The Listowel Arms at 7.00 p.m. We will read a few reflections and we will have a few songs.

And, of course I’ll be signing the books.

Charles’ Street Cinderella

The late Mrs. O’Keeffe of Charles Street was a great lady for holding on to newspaper cuttings. Her daughter found this treasure among her collection. Rose (Guiney) Treacy shared it with us. We don’t have the exact date but sometime in the 1970s.

A Stag in the National Park

Photo; Chris Grayson

This magnificent animal is pictured surrounded by ragworth. This yellow “weed” is everywhere this year. Once upon a time you would be fined if you allowed it to grow in your fields or ditches.

Ragworth is loved by pollinators. But it is poisonous to horses. Strangely, sheep thrive on it and in some parts of Kerry, farmers used to bring sheep down from the mountains to clear the fields of ragworth before putting the cattle out to pasture.

Maybe, over time, animals have become immune to it. I hope so, because, with the amount of it flourishing in roadside ditches this year, the emerald isle will soon be the yellow isle.

In the Square is this really big postbox. I hadn’t seen one this size before.

Sad to see many of the shops in this corner of town are now closed but the owners have painted them in bright colours and decorated the windows with scenes from times gone by.

Date for the Diary

Lartigue Monorail Museum will feature on Nationwide on Wednesday next, September 4 2024, on RTE 1 at 7.00p.m.

A Fact

According to readers’ letters in The Guardian on August 29 2024, expectant mothers in England in the 1950s, 60s and 70s were routinely prescribed a glass of Guinness a day.

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