The West's Awake
by Cormac MacConnellRSS 
Recent Posts
- An open letter to President Obama - some handy local tips for his visit to Ireland
- Some wonderful discoveries - relishing Irish trad session, The Gathering visitors and more
- The swallows return, beard competition, historic crimes and other musings
- A new taste of spring in Ireland- Tayto crisp’s cheese and onion chocolate bar
- Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth and the two Marys - Now it the time for a woman Prime Minister in Ireland
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There was this skinny young fellow from Dublin who came down to Connemara in the early seventies to manage the small and struggling co-operative project in Corrnamona in the heart of the mountains.
The place was dying on its feet in a mountainy region with one of the highest emigration bleedings in all of Connemara, and the times were hard. The lad looked vaguely familiar when I met him first when doing an article on the area for The Irish Press.
The fact the lad was from Dublin was not strange at all. The strong Gaelic-speaking community in Dublin at that time provided many of the young energetic managers that came to the Gaeltacht areas like Corrnamona.
We have always enjoyed our general elections, especially the winter ones where the politicians have Rudolph noses and cold hands, but dammit this upcoming one will be a stimulating humdinger altogether.
I can't wait for it to get going properly. Then we can totally relegate the recession to the backburner until Easter.
The incredibly enduring Old Moore's Almanack foretelling the year ahead is in the shops again. The years change but Old Moore never does.
The flimsy emerald green paperback is the same as always as it surrounds the list and dates of the horse and cattle fairs and markets, the Tides Table, all the other perennial commercial information that touches our lives for the next 12 months.
