Churches still feel the impact of the pandemic

Fri, Jul 01, 2022

Lest we think that the implications of the pandemic are items of the past, maintained on video for retelling in some future decade's episodes of Reeling In the Years, there are still many walks of life that have felt the blow of the lockdown and restrictions, and which are unlikely to ever recover from them.

Never was the stretch in the evening needed so much

Fri, Mar 25, 2022

For a world that has been in hurt to some degree or other for a few years now, there is a comforting lick for us all from the soft-creeping light bursting its way through the curtains these Spring mornings.

Time to show the spirit of lockdown to our welcome guests

Fri, Mar 11, 2022

There have been many reasons why we have been collectively shocked by the horrors emerging from Ukraine. There is the visceral evilness of it all; the relative proximity.

Let us embrace the Ukrainians in our hearts and in our homes

Fri, Mar 04, 2022

This time two years ago, who among us knew that our capacity for awe was about to tested? For a generation or two, we had just suffered setbacks on an economic scale.

A man who brought wonder to the kitchen tables

Fri, Feb 18, 2022

Although, I am sure he would chuckle his famous chuckle at the notion, the late Billy Horan brought more wonder to the homes and families of South Mayo than Walt Disney ever managed. For a few hours every week, his work brought the people of his place to a standstill, sat at the kitchen table, papers spread wide, fingers thumbing through the district notes detailing the beautiful structures that make up community life.

Greater flexibility with employees can change the way we live and work

Fri, Jan 28, 2022

It is hard to believe that we are just five or six weeks short of the second anniversary of when the vast majority of the country's employees were sent home and instructed to carry out their duties from their kitchen. This was often done through poor broadband with little notice. It was done at a time when employees had to share this poor broadband with schoolchildren who had been evacuated from their classrooms and forced to learn instead at the kitchen table.

Working from home back then was a novelty — a sort of free day every day. A new challenge, impacting their own sartorial choices, and creating a new sort of work schedule which differed vastly from what would have been experienced in the office.

Some new freedoms which we must respect

Fri, Oct 22, 2021

While we had suspected for a few weeks that this morning would not bring the widescale lifting of restrictions promised back in late summer, there is still a significant shift in what we should or shouldn't do. None of us are too surprised that everything was dropped and life resumed as per pre-pandemic, especially at a time when our local hospital is under severe pressure because of a Covid outbreak affecting two wards.

Social media outage gave us a glimpse of a life without

Fri, Oct 08, 2021

For five hours on Monday night, the world was thrown back in time a little. Not for the first time in the past few years have we lost something which we had taken for granted. And it bothered people.

Ye are men of Mayo, ye are men of steel

Fri, Sep 10, 2021

So here you are again. This time it is is different. Every year it is different. Last year the lights were on. It was a darkening Dublin evening. This year, the warmth of September raises the hairs on those tensed arms. Feel yourself, feel the sheer bulk of you. Look around and hear the power of what lies around you. See who lines up alongside you. The stands are heaving, just half the crowd normally here...but look to the skies and you feel where the rest of them are.

There's nothing that floors us like a bit of heat

Fri, Jul 23, 2021

There are only a few things in life that can floor the Irish. A small fall of snow. A few flakes and we're closing roads and skiving off work and school. The second thing is a draught. There's seemingly nothing as fatal to the Irish person as the draught that you sat in a week or so ago and which now has ya at death's door. And the third thing is the heat. The heat. The heattttttttttt.

Outdoor dining is restoring the hearts of our community

Fri, Jun 11, 2021

I have always been fascinated by the audio offerings that come with whatever car I have had. From the first cassette players to the smoothness of the CD drives, sucking in the discs; to the Pioneer speakers which I had drilled into the doors. As times has gone by, what passed as extraordinary in those cars are now de rigeur, the norm. This year when I changed my car in Galway, I discovered that my new car and its complicated audio system had an even newer feature that ordinarily would be like a lighthouse in the Bog of Allen, brilliant but useless.

Ye are Mayo, ye are men of steel

Fri, Dec 18, 2020

So here we are again. This time it is is different. The lights are on. It is a darkening Dublin evening. Feel yourself, feel the sheer bulk of you. Look around and hear the power of what lies around you. The terraces and seats normally heaving with passion lie empty...but look to the sky and you know that it is not.

E-paper

Read this weeks E-paper. Past editions also available from within this weeks digital copy.