It Says in The Bridge: Feb10

(Apologies for being late with this regular feature this month. I really have no excuse.)

There are celebrations from two ends of the age spectrum on the front of this month's Bridge. The headliner is for Bridgie Aspell, who celebrates her 100th birthday this month, and the front page leads to a profile inside by Bernard Berney.

The second congratulations is for the young scientists of Brannockstown NS who won first prize in their category at the recent BT Young Scientists Exhibition in Dublin's RDS.

Both stories are good examples of perseverance against the odds, and of hope and commitment. If there are parables needed for our current times, which really are a small segment both in Bridgie Aspell's life and the span of life which the Brannockstown schoolchildren's are likely to live in the future, they are both very apt.

And then we go inside to find the antithesis of those stories. In the Editorial, which is written to be positive, and overall is, there's a comment on how cutting corners in a local estate built during the Celtic Tiger left a number of homes in danger of flooding from their attic because overflow pipes were left too short. And in the Environmental News page there's a note that a building on Main Street which was erected with considerable variations from the original planning permission has been granted retention. Both those last reflect badly on our local authority, which doesn't seem to be able to monitor development to which it gives permission.

Moving back to the positive side of Kilcullen life, and how it often spreads beyond the town, there's a piece about the progress of local help for the upcoming European Transplant & Dialysis Games. Kilcullen folk can act as volunteer helpers for the event in August, or help with organising a Day Trip to Kildare which is planned.

In features, Shane Nolan gives us an update on 'Camphill Greenacres' in Dublin, where he went to live in 2005. Billy Redmond goes off the cuff on looking after older people in bad weather, younger ones coming out of the discos not at all dressed for the freezing weather, and 'recitations', of which he also gives an example of his own, on set dancing in Kilcullen.

Bernard Berney's profile of Granny Aspell is above all a tale 'of happy consequence', heart-warming and well told, but then he had the best of material to use. Instead of the seven deadly sins, he finishes with the seven secrets of longevity which he garnered from his discussions with Bridgie.

Sean Landers, apparently glad to be back in Taiwan after a 'hectic' two weeks home in Kilcullen, retails his return to work at Annie's English School. The annual prizegiving, an evening when Sean reports having managed to remain relatively sober, was followed by the Great Analysis of the Big Tests. An occasion of humble pie to be consumed, if one's students hadn't done well.

Sean also gives us a report of the destruction of Harristown House by fire in March, 1891. From the 'Kildare Observer' of the time, 'the gaunt walls of the noble mansion were standing, the interior being filled with smoking and charged debris'.

The Schools pages include a report on an ice skating excursion by pupils of Scoil Bhride, as well as their day at the Hallelujah Concert in the RDS. Brannoxtown NS reports on their Science Week organised by the pupils of Third and Fourth Class, while the CPC page leads with the South Leinster Trophy being retained by the school's Senior Boys GAA team. The pupils and parents also raised over €1,700 for Haiti relief, and sent the proceeds of a walk to Old Kilcullen to their regular charity of a C&P sisters medical centre in Lima, Peru.

There are the usual sports reports, from Kilcullen Canoe Club, the Bowling Club, Crookstown Millview Athletic Club, Kilcullen GAA, and the Soccer Club.

And finally, in Robert Dunlop's Pastor's Piece, a description of 'Conscience' from an American Indian. "It is a little three-cornered thing in here" — he laid his hand on his heart — "that stands still when I am good; but when I am bad it turns around and the corners hurt very much. But if I keep on doing wrong, by and by the corners wear off and it doesn't hurt any more."

Brian Byrne.