Garden of Europe and Evelyn O'Rourke's Dear Ross

Recently I took a stroll through the lovely Garden of Europe. Several lovely trees came down in the February 2014 storms.

Two men were working clearing the fallen wood on the day I visited.

They told me that they were using the wood pulp as mulch for the remaining shrubs and trees.

These hardy daffodils were blooming on regardless.

Two dogs were enjoying the early spring sunshine.

I spotted these on a tree on the path from the Garden to Gurtinard. Nest boxes?

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This is definitely the end of my WIM Weekend coverage

I know that that is not really a headline but I thought it might be a relief for some of my faithful followers to know that normal service is bring resumed next week.
Before that I have to tell you that I met my friend, Evelyn O'Rourke in Ballybunion.

Me with Evelyn O'Rourke

Evelyn with her mum Peigí, her aunt Eileen and  friend Mairead

Her anxious mum watches as Evelyn relives a very hard time in their lives.

Breda Boderick from Listowel is a fan of Evelyn's and maybe its this selfie craze but I seem to be in far too many photos of the weekend.


Evelyn has written a book, Dear Ross, telling the story of a year in the life of her family. Evelyn was still on maternity leave with her first son, Óisín when she discovered she was pregnant. She was thrilled. The thrill only lasted a very short while as, within a week, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  
Evelyn wrote a series of letters to her unborn son, Ross, telling him how much she and his dad, John loved and wanted him and wanted to do everything possible not to compromise him in any way.
In the book we read of the horrors of chemotherapy compounded by the discomforts of pregnancy and the trials of looking after a small child.

In Ballybunion we saw Evelyn, the surviver, read movingly from some of the letters. We met Evelyn, the campaigner, passionately promoting the cause of breast cancer research. We  met Evelyn, the family woman, wallowing in the love of her old and her new family. And we met Evelyn, the great communicator standing before us, a testament to the triumph of will, of love and support and modern medicine over this terrible disease.

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During the weekend the local Creative Writing group took the opportunity to sell a collection of their works, A Little Life Music.

As part of the weekend too we got a taster eco tour of Ballybunion.
Danny Houlihan is a man of many talents. He told us about history and wildlife in a really interesting trip to the Cashen and the Castle Green. Below are a few photos from the tour

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Writers Week 2014

The programme was officially launched last night in The Seanchaí. Great night, lots of photos to come but I had to share this one.

 Eilís Wren and Máire Logue of Writers' Week fill in my lovely granddaughters on who's coming to this year's festival.

New Media symposium in Ballybunion

"Come and verbally attack me"

I wrote that headline because I was in Ballybunion on Sunday last April 13 2014 and I learned the importance of a headline.

I was attending the marvelous Women in Media Weekend and a man called David Labanyi gave us a lesson in the current state of mass media in Ireland. He was brilliant, well informed, a great communicator but what he had to say was  a little bit frightening.

This is David Labanyi on the far left with Mary Dundon, Head of Journalism at UL and local native, Shane Phelan, Public Affairs Editor  for The Irish Independent.

On Sunday morning they gave us a glimpse inside the newsroom of the future. The pace of change in this area is dizzying to someone like me who remembers a time when I nearly had to bring a wheelbarrow to Flavins to bring home the Sunday papers. The newspaper of the future (and the future is yesterday so fast is this happening) is a platform agnostic medium.  I picked up a bit of the jargon while I was In Ballyb and this means that we don't really care where we get our information, but we want it now.

Newsrooms now are employing as many developers as journalists and journalists nowadays have to be able to photograph, make podcasts, video, write live blogs, create data visualization graphs etc. etc. The days of the liquid lunch are long gone.

Our attention span is about 5 seconds so we have to be hooked at the first chance, i.e. the headline. I am so bad at all this that I didn't, until recently, write any headlines at all. Today I have resorted to pure sensationalism but it does have relevance, if anyone is still with me when I get to it.

 I am going to give you the words of Mickey MacConnell's great newsroom song. I'm sorry I couldn't find any clip of him singing it but here are the words;

Boys of the Byline Brigade

It’s four in the morning, the paper’s in bed


The Newsroom’s as quiet as the tomb.


When the old man gets up from his seat by the door


Another day’s nightwork has been done. 


Like a greying old shadow he peels on his coat


And he knocks off the lights on his floor


And he melts with the shadows into the grey dawn


Just before the presses start to roar.

Chorus

And the glass in his hand feeds the pain in his eyes


Alone, insecure and afraid


A victim of booze, overwork and old age


And the boys of the byline brigade.

That morning the byline brigade will arrive 


Those bright keen young men -about -town. 


And they’ll shout into three different phones at one time


And get the whole damn thing written down. 


When the country edition’s being flogged on the street


And the City’s being checked on the stone, 


That old man who once interviewed princes and kings


is quietly drinking alone.

And he stands at the bar and remembers the time


When he was as good as the best. 


In those days when his shorthand was clear-cut and plain


and he’d work twenty hours without rest.


In the days when his copy ran just as it stood


lead stories and bylines galore.


The first with the angles, the first to the phone


the first with his foot in the door.

If he'd only licked more arses and got drunk with the boss


God knows where he might have been today. 


Not manning the doomwatch at the dead of the night


and curing the shakes half the day.


He had died on the day that his shorthand broke down


From too long pushing pen, soul and mind. 


And they’ll bury his body along with his pride


In six lonely lines on page nine.

Deirdre Walsh of The Radio Kerry, who introduced the panel, remembered back to when she started her career in The Kerryman. Her tools were a typewriter and a landline.

Deirdre was based in Macroom and Neville's bread van used to bring her copy to Tralee She remembers the fax machine as a innovative tool!

Finally I'm back to my headline. The online editor of The Irish Times told us that getting the headline right is more important than being first with the story. Most people nowadays don't go directly to the Irish Times page to get the news. They come on the news through Twitter, Facebook or a search engine, so you must have the right words in the headline so that your platform is where the consumer will see the story. All newsrooms now have a studio to record live interviews. News stories are fed to us piecemeal. We don't want to wait for Prime Time anymore. We want to see our resigning chief executive or embattled minister grilled now this minute.

When I came home from Ballybunion, buzzing with all my new found knowledge of how we "consume" news stories nowadays, I settled down with my cup of coffee and my Sunday Independent.

"Come and verbally attack me,"  bayed John Waters from page 5.  No, of course he did not say that in so many words but he might as well have done. What he actually said was, "I don't believe in Depression. There is no such thing. It's an invention. It's bullshit. It's a cop out."

Unable to believe my eyes, I went to the internet and there was a living example of my new found knowledge of media…online the live interview with Niamh Horan.  I now had not only read that John Waters had made these awful statements. I saw him and heard him making them.

( more from WIM Ballybunion tomorrow)

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The next Michael Flatley?

Well done, Seán Slemon on coming second in The World Irish Dancing Championships in London.

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Be Thankful

This is a school in Afghanistan. The photo was on So Bad so Good.

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Summer's on the way!

Women in Media Weekend in Ballybunion

Mothers and Daughters at WIM Ballybunion

Vourneen and Keelin Kissane with Róisín and Anne Ingle

It was Saturday, April 12 2014 and instead of reading Róisín Ingle in the Irish Times, we were sitting in Kilcooley's Country House in Ballybunion, Co. Kerry listening to her talk about another favourite journalist and author, Maeve Binchy.

Róisín Ingle is now Daily Features Editor of The Irish Times, a mantle which sits lightly on her shoulders. She was in Ballybunion to take us back to another editor and to help us live again the enjoyment we got form Maeve Binchy, the journalist. Róisín has recently edited a collection of Maeve's pieces for the Irish Times and so she is a bit of an expert on Maeve's best bits. She described getting this job like getting a job in quality control in a crisp factory.

Róisín did not give us my favourite anecdote about Maeve on The Late Late doing battle with a formidable lady on the necessity of etiquette and decorum but she read for us Maeve's account of an incident when she encountered a business man sitting in the Ladies' Toilet  in a posh hotel. He had mistaken it for the lobby.

Maeve's description of her first dress dance at age 16 is still hilarious today. Maeve's coverage of Princess Anne's wedding made us all regret that she had passed away before the recent state visit.

Róisín decided that Miriam Lord with her "irreverent but affectionate" approach to serious subjects is Maeve's best successor today. I think that Róisín Ingle with her ability to mine the minutiae of everyday life and produce entertaining and self deprecating pen pictures has a lot of Maeve Binchy in her too.

This is Róisín with a local lady called Christine. Christine came to Ballybunion to meet Róisín because Róisín once wrote about her. If anyone reading this knows Christine will you get that story for us please?
(more from WIM tomorrow)

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I spotted this picture of Ballybunion Lady golfers on Perfect Pairs page. Looking good, ladies.

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Mike Enright took this perfect picture of sunset in Ballybunion last week.

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All will be revealed!

On Thursday next at 7.00 p.m. in The Seanchaí the Listowel Writers' Week programme 2014 will be launched.  Come along to hear what great things are in store for us on the June bank holiday weekend. 

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spotted in a shop window on Church Street