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: WW2

Parents and Friends Garden Fete, the horrors of war and a quiet night in St. John’s

Finally some photos from last Sunday’s Garden Fete

The children did a great job on the scarecrows. There was a Suarez complete with an impressive set of gnashers and a  Paul Galvin holding a football in one hand and a duster in the other. There was even a real living scarecrow mingling among us.

There were great prizes for the Grand raffle. I got no phonecall so I’m presuming I did not win.

My friend and blog collaborator was browsing among the books.

There was money to be won in a variety of ways at this stall.

T

Some people just came to dance.

(More photos next week)

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NKRO posted this picture to set the scene for our wartime commemoration to take place on Saturday. This is a British position which has been captured by the Germans in 1917. The two German soldiers, probably cold and wet, are wearing British issue great coats and it looks like they took the boots off the feet of the dead soldier in the forefront of the picture.

Isn’t war obscene?

Belgium 1917, the Menin Road, Passendale. The walking wounded straggle back to base past the prone bodies of injured survivors who are waiting to be taken to a field hospital.

Cherrytree in bloom in Cherrytree Drive, Listowel this week.

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This is a great article by Sean Carlson. He is writing about the global reach of an Irish village and the village he knows best is Moyvane;

http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/generationemigration/2013/04/25/the-reach-of-a-single-village/

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Interesting snippet I learned from The Kerryman.

Well known Listowel natives, Maurice (Monty) and Patricia Reagan are in the news again.

One of their horses, Falling Sky has been selected to compete in The Kentucky Derby tomorrow night. Having a runner in the race is a huge honour  as over 2,000 horses were originally entered to compete.

You can read all about it here :

http://www.kentuckyderby.com

And you can even watch the race live. We will all be cheering if the Newton Anner Stud Farm pair pull off a massive coup.

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One thing that never ceases to amaze me about Listowel
people is this. While we have one of the loveliest little theatres in the world
and we have one of the best literary festivals in Europe, why don’t Listowel people
support theatre in town.

Joe Murphy brings shows to St. Johns that pack theatres
elsewhere, but play to very poor houses in Listowel. It’s nothing short of a
disgrace to us all.

 Are we so parochial
that we will only support theatre if it’s a local play with local actors?

Are There More of You? was the very ironically titled show I
attended on Wednesday evening.  It was a
massively entertaining thought- provoking show, a tour de force by a brilliant playwright and actress, Alison Skilbeck…and she played in Listowel to 4 people.

Let me tell North Kerry people what you missed.

Alison played all the parts and she became a different
person each time she changed costume.

The themes of the play were betrayal and redemption and
there was a lot in it that referenced Macbeth:   an ambitious woman, a kind of witch, some bloody hands and a sleep that “knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.”

Are there More of You? is a play about one  woman who is betrayed by her
husband and redeemed by Art; another Italian -English woman who betrays her Italian
Mama but finds redemption in her Italian roots, cooking and opera; a therapist
betrayed by her client and finally an ambitious ball breaker of a woman who is
redeemed through friendship.

This one woman show is continuing its tour so you can see it
in Dingle tonight Friday May 3 2013;  in Birr on Saturday; in the Millbank in
Rush, Co. Dublin on Sunday and all next week from May 6  to Saturday May 11  2013 in the Viking Theatre over The Sheds pub
in Clontarf.

I strongly recommend you try to catch it.

The lovely Alison joined her audience for a chat after the St. John’s show. That is she with the pink hankie. The audience is Noel Keenan, Helen Moylan, Jim Cogan and me behind the camera. 


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We have a new bishop of Kerry. We will be getting to know Raymond Browne in the near future.

WW2 in Life magazine, Listowel Vintage Expo

 Today’s post has little obvious Listowel connection.  However, whereever  we are, we cannot fail to be moved by these awful images.

Buchenwald was liberated on April 11 1945. To coincide with this anniversary last week, Life magazine published photographs taken by the war photographer, Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke White was the first female photo journalist allowed into combat zones.  Here are a few examples of her work, lest we ever forget. These photos were not published at the time and even now they are very hard to look at.

Emaciated men look out from their bunks, unable to comprehend that they are going to get out of that hell hole alive.

This poor man, nearly dead from starvation, staggers against his bed as he tries to stand.

Horror of horrors; the incinerated remains of some poor souls.

This is a photo of horrified, appalled and sickened good German people forced to confront what had happened a few short miles from their town, Weimar.

Here I quote from Life magazine:

“In one of the signal moments of his long career and, indeed, of the entire war, an enraged General Patton refused to recognize that the Weimar citizens’ ignorance might be genuine — or, if it was genuine, that it was somehow, in any moral sense, pardonable. With Olympian wrath, Patton ordered the townspeople to bear witness to what their countrymen had done, and what they themselves had allowed to be done, in their name.”

 If you want to read more, the story is here: 

http://life.time.com/history/behind-the-picture-bourke-white-and-the-liberation-of-buchenwald/#1

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Jim Halpin is gathering together a collection of war memorabilia and he is displaying it in Church St. I took these pictures of part of the window display.

On the May bank holiday weekend there is a vintage expo planned for town, with a model soldier display, vintage cars and farm machinery and much more. When I have any more info I’ll bring it to you.

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