Claddagh Design News, Reading The Advertiser and An Emigrant Returns

Photo: Ita Hannon

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Boston to Boston with Delta Airlines

( and the Listowel Connection)

This is the very talented silversmith/goldsmith Eileen Moylan of  Claddagh Design

Eileen is well known for her award winning jewellery and one-off presentation pieces.

Eileen was in Boston last week on a really exciting adventure.

 She was the guest of Delta Airlines because she was chosen to be part of their celebration. I'll tell you the story from Paula who writes the Claddagh Design blog.

Eileen Moylan of Claddagh Design joins forces with Delta Air Lines on their upcoming creative project: Boston to Boston Souvenir Shop.

The concept behind this exciting project: Bostonians love Boston. So much so, why would they ever want to leave? With Delta, they don’t have to. If you love Boston, Delta can take you to other Bostons around the world.

Delta and Wieden+Kennedy New York celebrate the pride Bostonians take in their city with The Boston to Boston Souvenir Shop.

The mobile souvenir truck will be making it’s way around the city over three days, offering a limited edition curated collection of Boston themed pieces. Each piece from 10 different artisan makers, merchants, and creators from Boston destinations Delta travel to around the world.

The collection includes Eileen’s very own limited edition Claddagh Ring, handcrafted in our Claddagh Design workshop. Representing Boston Ireland, Eileen will share the Claddagh Design story. Her beautifully handcrafted Sterling Silver Claddagh Ring will be available to purchase.

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Catching up with the Listowel news 

Reading The Advertiser in the Indian summer sunshine in Listowel's Main Street.

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Welcome Home, Noel

I finally met Noel Roche in person. Noel Roche is a loyal and appreciative friend of Listowel Connection. I met him on William Street with his sister, Dolores and his old neighbour and friend, John Hennessey.

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We Won Silver

Our Mayor, second from left in front, receiving Listowel's silver award in Entente Florale 2019

Moyvane, Lixnaw, Wartime Rationing and Roddy Doyle in Listowel

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Moyvane, Then and Now

The creamery now and then

Crows on Main St. then and now

from https://moyvane.com

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Lixnaw and the Fitzmaurice clan

Kerryman 1957

If you would like to learn more...

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Been There, Done That

With all the talk of food shortages if the U.K. crashes out of Europe, I thought it might be timely to look back to a time when there were food shortages in Ireland.

Above is a wartime ration book. Certain foodstuffs and other stuff like fuel were in short supply so the government issued books of coupons to people. Coupons could be exchanged for these rationed goods.

A little known fact is that the health of British children improved during the period when rationing was in force. When I see the list of goods that will be in short supply after a hard Brexit, I think we might see the same unintended consequence.

Another fact that is not widely known is that food was also rationed in Germany. This poster from 1916 illustrates, in cartoon form, the range of foodstuffs rationed there.

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Fighting Words

Kate Kennelly, Kerry Co Council Arts Officer, Roddy Doyle and Jimmy Deenihan.

Roddy Doyle was in Kerry Writers' Museum on Tuesday, September 24 2019 to promote Fighting Words, an organisation that he co founded to promote creative writing among young people. Fighting Words workshops have been running in Listowel since 2017. The workshops are held outside of a school setting, are free of charge and facilitated by adults who are not necessarily teachers. All you need to be a volunteer is a love of stories and a desire to help young people to write them.

If you would like to volunteer, contact Cara at Kerry Writers' Museum.

Bernie and friends at Fighting Words Launch

Listowel Races 2019 and Kerry Hospice Coffee Morning in The Listowel Arms

Season of Mists and Mellow Fruitfulness

My young visitors picked some of my apples for me before we headed to the races.

My house guests, Sean and Killian Cogan and Seán and Clíona McKenna met up with Mary Moylan in the Small Square.

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Photos I took on the Friday of Listowel Races 2019

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More from Kerry Hospice Coffee Morning on September 19 2019

Apologies for all the shadows. The sun was strong.

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Names for girls...Take 2

Hope I'm right this time

Front row Ann Gleeson
Mary Keane,Noreen Scanlon,Noreen McSweeney,Geraldine Flaherty
Angela Breen,Bride Given, Kathleen Kenny
Maisie McSweeney, Eileen Scanlon

Hospice Coffee Morning, Green, Ballybunion and Oneday in St. Johns'

On Culture Night, Sept 20 2019, Listowel Writers' Week had a novel ideas. We distributed poems on cards to passers by.

One of the poems was called Green by John McAuliffe and it was a brilliant poem about a golf lesson in Ballybunion. The golfer was as green as the fairway and finding the green was the task in hand.

Green

There's the flag. Now,

have you a line?

Don't look up. Head 

down. Pine cone, broom,

the tee, the rough, wind,

the grip, the lesson,

Cliff House, no-one's beach,

Nuns' Beach.

Loop Head, concentrate,

or it could go anywhere,

Titleist, the pockmarked moon,

The Bunker, the Leithreas,

the seaweed bath, the transmitter,

the Hotel, asylum -seekers,

the castle, the slots, last

and not to be found,

the Tinteán, the house built on sand,

and closer to the tee,

remember the line,

the graveyard, forget

the westerlies,

the playground, the pool,

presidential bronze, grooved steel,

the straight long undulating road,

America level, God above,

the Atlantic, the Atlantic,

and the verge where  I live,

planting my feet squarely.

Now, swing.

Follow through.

Try again.

With all the distraction I think that lesson may not have gone well.

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Ladies Day 2019

Here are a few more images from the Island on the Friday of Raceweek 2019

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Kerry Hospice Coffee Morning

There was a great attendance at the fundraising coffee morning in The Listowel Arms on Thursday Sept 19 2019. The sunshine made taking photographs a bit difficult but I'm not complaining.

(more tomorrow)

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Oneday, Today, Any day

I went to see this unusual play in St. John's on Thursday last. It was very thought provoking. The play was about stories from the newspapers on a specific day, March 13 2012.

As I watched Shane Connolly's energetic, energy sapping performance, contrasted with Richard Walsh's relaxed casual director on stage role, I was struck by the similarity to today's news.

Occupy were sitting in in Galway in 2012. Seven years on the farmers were camped at the gates of the meat plants and students were marching in an effort to alert us to the reality of climate change.   Huge salaries paid to TV hosts are again making news and outraging people. Civil wars are raging everywhere, politics and money dominate news in the US, in Ireland people are losing their homes, people are being murdered by strangers they meet online and on the day I was at the play a horrific accidental murder had happened as a man in a remote rural area was driven to violence by the fear of a thief in the night. All of this mirrors what was happening on one day in 2012.  And then there is the universal truth that everywhere people are driven to madness by the trauma of war or by fanaticism for sport.

"Young Willie McBride, it all happened again, and again, and again and again and again,"

This is a three man show, all three onstage at all times. The space is dominated by the performer and when he is quiet while the director calmly tells  a story, we are constantly aware that he is hovering in the background ready to spring into life to animate another news story. All the time the percussionist is marking time, heightening and lowering the tempo as the news stories unfold.

If you missed it in Listowel and you see that it on somewhere, go.

Máire Logue, artistic director, St. John's, Richard Walsh, writer director Oneday, Joe Murphy, former artistic director of St. John's and me, Mary Cogan.

Richard Walsh with me and his parents, Eily and Johnny

The ensemble relaxing over a pint in Christy's at the  after show party.