It Says in The Bridge: March 2021

The first Bridge of the magazine's 51st year has a very positive front page, with two of our older ladies pictured at their Covid-19 vaccination appointments, writes Brian Byrne.

Kitty Reade and Sheila Peacocke are the early local indicators of a turn in the tide of the pandemic, and a real antidote to the all-pervading gloom of the past year.

That year is also the subject of a feature inside, where four locals discuss the year of lockdowns on a Kilcullen Diary Podcast — the views of Cliona Kelliher, Gerry O'Donoghue, Roy Thompson and Evelyn O'Sullivan highlight different ways our community has been affected, from their personal viewpoints.

The main feature this month goes back much further, with an engaging memoir from John Duffey about his former neighbour, Denis Doyle of Brewel, who went late into the priesthood and served most of the rest of his life in California. The Bridge delved a little further, and the feature also has another memoir of that part of Fr Doyle's life, from a parishioner in Ferndale, California.

In her regular slot, Mary Orford ponders on the occupations of people in the Kilcullen of 1901 and 1911, drawing on the census returns in which her own grandparents were listed as fishmongers. There's much to fascinate here.

The hobby occupations of a couple of today's Kilcullen young people also take space this month, the crafty entrepreneurism of Emma Swords of Calverstown and the wood skills of Deon Doyle from Cnoc na Greine, building for the birds.

Other pieces include the response to the news that Bank of Ireland is closing its branch here, understandably disappointing. Why Kilcullen is all to one side is explained by Brian Keyes in a republishing of his article of 1978. And the global teaching of English by Kilcullen's Rani Grennell is also explored.

In the regulars, Noel Clare explores The Lord's Wood near Baltinglass, Julie Felsbergs likens the Covid year to Walking in the Wilderness, and Sean Landers recalls some more of Main Street from his childhood days. The 20 Questions this month probe into Joe Dooley's life.

School pages are full of remote schooling art and artfulness, and while sport is just a tad short of not there, a thoughtful piece from Joseph Kelly of Milemill on the Gordon Elliott affair suggests lessons for us all.

As always, more, and more again, in the start of The Bridge's sixth decade, happily an age no longer old.

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