The Bridge - June 07

Sorry to be a bit late with this report, but it's been a busy couple of weeks and I missed the weekend publication of the latest issue.

There's a lot of new stuff, from new writers, which is encouraging for the future of The Bridge. And, since I cut my journalistic teeth on the magazine three and a half decades ago, that's important to me.

The lead story in this issue is the celebration of the 10th year of the Kilcullen Lions Club as an entity in its own right. I should put that into an earlier personal perspective in that my Dad, Jim Byrne Jnr, was one of the founder members of the original Naas-Kilcullen Lions, and so, the anniversary of Lions in Kilcullen is actually much longer than a decade.

That's not to take from the fact that over the last decade the Lions as now constituted has played a very active role in the community, as evidenced by the sheltered housing project in St Brigid's Avenue, the support for the KARE development in the former Cross & Passion Convent, and the upcoming Solas Youth Cafe to be based in the Tennis Club.

And those 10th anniversary celebrations are expanded inside the magazine in words and pictures from the event held in Fallons.

Other front page stories are not so positive. Under the general heading of 'Chaos in Kilcullen' the magazine reports the loss of the voting franchise for many in the town during the recent elections, and the traffic problems during the First Communion.

"The two examples ... show how poor we are at local and national level of planning what should be reasonably simple events," the writer notes.

Other news items include an admission by Kildare County Council that it actually has withdrawn a litter collection service from Kilcullen, the 433 euros presentation to Brannockstown Tidy Towns Committee by the Aerial Committee from the same village, and a pictorial view of the 8th annual Seminar of the County Kildare Federation of Local History Groups which was recently held in the Heritage Centre.

The various schools pages include a piece on how skipping is good for you, by Aoibhin Tutty-Bardon from Scoil Bhride; a statement that Confirmation Day 'was brill' from Grainne McMullan of Brannoxtown NS; and some pictures from the Kildare Steiner School from the recent talk about Waldorf Education, 'Putting the heart back into education'.

There are also First Communion pictures, a piece about the Bethany Group -- Trained to Listen, Here to Help; and, in sports, pages of pictures from the recent activities of Kilcullen Community Games.

There's an article from Jim Collins recalling the creator of the St Brigid's Well sculpture 30 years ago, Fr Henry Flanagan OP (whom I remember well from my own days in Newbridge College). In the course of which, Jim asks for advice on what should be done with the much-vandalised and valuable piece ... and my own view is that it should be removed to the safety of the Heritage Centre and a plaster facsimile be made for the vandals to play with.

The features in this issue reflect a mix of old contributors and new. From the former, Sean Landers does his thing from Taiwan in pensive vein on a 'life cluttered with discarded leaves'. He also comes close to home on a subject which is familiar to me, the Kilcullen Turnpike Road, eventually put out of business by the railways.

Bernard Berney does part three of his profile on 'The Kings' Neill, now well on the way to being a full book if everybody tells the stories they remember of that now-dead character of Kilcullen. They better tell them quick, because many of those who remember the 'Kings' are now ourselves heading towards the final furlongs ...

'The Spout' pumps again its creative writing spills from the members of the group based in An Tearman. From the pages, the Diary commends to you 'The journey of a soldier' from Colm O'Brien, aged seven. Remember that name, it has the potential for posterity.

Michael Moran is another contributor there, but he also journals in his series on 'Living in Kilcullen', where he introduces Esker Lea.

New scribes, at least to these eyes, include Eleanor Farmer, who profiles Fr Andrew O'Sullivan on his time in Kilcullen, soon to end. There's also a profound piece from Liam and Jackie McCarton on some of their experiences working in Sri Lanka after the tsunami. And Catriona from the multi-talented Poufong family shows serious journalistic promise in her report on the launch of the information report of the Youth Cafe project at CPC.

I honed my ability for this kind of piece through the 80s, when I was a writer/presenter of 'It Says in The Papers' along with Tom Savage and the late P P O'Reilly.

At that time I had five newspapers to draw on to write a script of five minutes' duration. The Bridge today easily provides at least as much information for such a script as did those five newspapers then.

At the Diary we think that's great. And we wait, exhausted, for next month.

Brian Byrne.