Editor's Corner

By Mary E. Adair

January 2012

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

Perhaps that says the same thing Mark Twain aka Samuel Clements said, "Worry is like paying interest on a loan you may never have to make." At any rate it encourages one to proceed through life looking ahead to pleasantries, not disasters, so let us all do so as we head into this new year, seeing it full of promise and excitement.

We offer congratulations to one of our former authors, David Schleicher, and applaud his launching of a unique new experiment designed to bridge the gap between classic storytelling and new technology. The Stone Premier Issue - featuring great stories from Jack Lehman, Amanda Perino, Christopher Tait, and David - is now available exclusively through the Kindle App for only $1.99 (USB) Here's the direct link to Amazon's Kindle Store to buy: direct link. If people need to download the Kindle App (for free) first, they can use this link: free Kindle App. More info can be found on The Schleicher Spin..

This issue being the last one of Volumn 14 and the first of 2012, makes it the Omega-Alpha, doesn't it? Our columnists have submitted their thoughts, some addressing the new season, others looking backward, and have included some unusual tidbits. Check out "Irish Eyes" by Mattie Lennon; "Consider This" by LC Van Savage; "Introspective" by Thomas F. O'Neill; "Angel Whispers" by Peg Jones; "Cooking With Leo" by Leo C. Helmer; and "Eric Shackle's Column" by, of course, Eric Shackle plus his article, "Amazing Grace Now Amazing Race." The other article by LC Van Savage who celebrates the first as her birthday, is a glimpse at human nature, "On Lovejoy's Pond."

Ten poems help round out the Table of Contents with six from John I. Blair: "A Garden Never is Forever," "Little Victories," "Taking The Sun in January," "Trash at Five A.M." "Poet of The Small," and "WinterSpring."

Bruce Clifford sent along two of his melodic poems, "A Mixed Bag," and "Now I Cry." The poem "Half Past Dead" by M. Jay Mansfield, aka Fire Eagle, was written back in June while his Air Conditioner was out of commission, and is included here to remind us how we wished for winter back then. Wendy Shepard-Kalan speaks of "When The Past Is No More," and to many of us will bring echoes of our various loved ones, family and friends, who have become the victims of Alzheimer's Disease. Did Wendy intend this to help us understand?In my own family, my maternal grandmother Carrie E. Joslin and both her daughters, my mother Lena Carroll and my aunt Linnie Jane Burk are part of that list of victims.

Mark Crocker has begun his second book of Rabbo and the first chapter, "Departing" can be found under the segment for Stories as it is serialized. To read the first Book of Rabbo, click his name and find those chapters.

See you in February.

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Click on Mary E. Adair for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.

This issue appears in the ezine at www.pencilstubs.com and also in the blog www.pencilstubs.net with the capability of adding comments at the latter.

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Angel Whispers

By Peg Jones

Angel Message for 2012

I have asked the angels to share a message for our new year coming up. I have felt that they have something for us, that they would like to share with us.

They say that they have 5 points they would like to share with us. The points have to do with how to survive this next year without panic in anyway. They say that the hype of all that is to happen this next year, 2012, have made some people quite nervous. They want to assure us that all is going to be fine and that our journeys will still be in process.

• 1. The angels want to remind us that we are Children of God. That life is precious and that God is with us always, even when we don’t feel his presence. They also say that each of us were made his image and we too can co create, what we want in our life. He will help us to grow to be the best we can be, because he will always love us.
• 2. The angels say that there will be an out pouring of love in the world. That the world will become more cohesive in many ways. We see this already in the demonstrating that has been happening. The common man wants more equality for all living in the world, not for just a few. The issues with the world economy will be highlighted for all to be concerned with and there will be more demonstrations because of the way the 99% is being treated worldwide
• 3. There will be new thinking on what the purpose of our lives, is all about. But then they say, not so much as new thinking, but a clearer understanding worldwide what this purpose is for us as individuals. There will be more of a conscious effort in thinking how our individual contribution affects the masses. There will also be more service to those not sure what is happening on a global level. Books and articles will be written in explaining what is happening. There will be more global projects occurring to include all, rather than a few.
• 4. The internet will play a big part of bringing communication on a global level. This already happening, but we will see so much more of this, in the coming year of 2012. The internet will help to close some rather large gaps of communication around the world. The internet has already brought people from around the world together. Who would have dreamed this happening twenty years ago?
• 5. The younger generations of the world will have a much bigger voice of their place in the world. They have started to already express what is truly on their minds, concerning the environment, the equality of all jobs, the 99% vs the 1%, and the world economy, are some of their concerns. The angels tell me their voices will help the world to become more aware of all that is happening and how it will affect them in the coming years.

The angels remind us that most of these pointers have been put in place in the last few years. They say that we will truly feel these pointers a bit more intensely this next year of 2012. The angels encourage us to continue on our desired path and that will be with us to help us complete our vision we have for ourselves and for our loved ones.
By Peg Jones, ALC

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Click on Peg Jones for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.

Consider This

By LC Van Savage

Bumper Stickers – Not For The Faint of Heart

Guess what? If you see a smutty, sexist, obscene, vulgar, or racist bumper sticker attached to someone's vehicle, there's not one thing you can do about it. Nothing. And that's the truth, folks. Well, I guess you could heave great clots of mud on it, but otherwise no, you cannot legally do anything.

Want to know why? I'll tell you. Messages on bumper stickers are protected by the Constitution. Whatever the message. Yes friends, it’s considered free speech.

When we're behind a motorcar that carries an offensive (to us) bumper sticker, we almost feel compelled to read it, right? We can’t resist. Oh now, I can hear you saying we're in no way forced to read the words, or to look at the disgusting pictures that often accompany the repugnant stickers, and you'd be right. Sure, we can pull up at a stoplight behind a car with a gross, loathsome statement glued to its back end and keep our eyes heavenward. But do we? I don't think so. I sure don't. And how do we keep our very literal grandchildren from reading all those things? And how do we answer them when they ask “But Gram, what does XXXX mean on that bumper sticker on the back of that guy’s car ahead of us?”

OK, I know what you’re thinking. Obnoxiousness and offensiveness are subjective things; what inflames me might fill you with self-righteous pridefulness. But in my opinion, some of the bumper stickers out there shouldn't be out there and please, don't accuse me of prudism. Honestly folks, I don't have even a nodding acquaintance with that.

One sticker comes to mind, and I'll soften and slangize its ninth word. It reads "If you can see the pimples on my arse, you're too close." Now that's objectionable. I mean just the mental picture of the driver's be-zitted backside is enough to cause a fatal accident or at least an involuntary gack of one’s lunch which can then be followed by a fatal accident. Is that bumper sticker funny? Wellll--yeah. Sorta. Sorry, but that doesn't make it any less indecent.

Today's bumper stickers can (and do) display the most atrocious of obscenities, including the inimitable S and F bombs. Once so taboo they were only juicily scrawled on the sidewalk in chalk well after dark followed by the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps, (mine,) they're now used so casually they've lost all their punch, their forbiddance, and have become ho-hum and completely impotent.

To a point. While few of us crumple to pieces any longer when we see or hear those words and all the others, they can cause some embarrassment when you're oh, say driving your elderly grandmother to her weekly Bridge club, and you're stuck in traffic behind one of those low-life dimwits for whom filthy language is obviously high - class entertainment, so he's put a whole lot of it on the back of his vehicle. Idle conversation turns to frantic babble while Granny's eyeballs and yours too, desperately search the skies for something to watch so you don't have to watch *it* until you can finally get away from that nasty prose.

Do we have to accept someone's poor language choices while we idly idle at a red light? Our venerable Constitution advises that we do. People who wish to festoon their vehicles with obscene sayings and sexual suggestions have the legal right to do that, and while it is our prerogative to object, we are prohibited from stopping the practice. It is the rights of the moron driver ahead of you which say they can shoot off their entitlements and be gross in any verbal way they wish. Even if it offends. And apparently especially if it offends.

One of the stickers I find particularly vexing are those aimed directly at tourists that say, "Welcome to (Wherever.) Now go home."

Who's the sub-Cretin who thought that one up? I doubt it could penetrate this simpleton's small and obviously calcified brain that the tourists are buying his or her wares, perhaps even giving him or her a job, keeping taxes lower, forcing highway improvements, giving countless employment to people, paying for services--the list of positive things tourists do for us is very long. I think there should be a law against the habitual, unfunny and rude practice of insulting golden geese. Talk about biting the hand.

I would personally love to see the abolishment of those stickers that gratuitously deal with sex, violence, and obscenities that only reflect the mental machinations of the imbeciles who plaster them onto their vehicles. They apparently also have the right to glue on racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist, war mongering and any other inflammatory opinion statements. What a world!

When we espy an offensive sticker and raise our voices in objection to its blatant grossness, the attitude (generally shouted by drivers) is "Hey! S. happens!" And, of course, it does. But you know, I'm not entirely sure the framers of the Constitution really had any of this in mind. Maybe if the Colonials had pasted obscenities on their horse's arses, or their wagons and carriages, those worthy gentlemen would have quickly reframed. I'd like to hope.

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Click on LC Van Savage for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.

Irish Eyes

By Mattie Lennon

From Finuge To Leinster House

Via Croke Park

Finuge, Finuge, Oh golden wood.
Your meadows wild and green,
With the soft kiss of moonlight
On the cross of Coolnaleen

...Words written by the late Sean McCarthy; a man who immortalized the north Kerry village and who is commemorated annually by the Sean McCarthy Memorial Weekend. A key figure in organising the event for the past twenty years was Finuge native Jimmy Deenihan. Jimmy is now our Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht. He is the most able person to hold the position since Michael D. Higgins, who went on to become President of Ireland, was appointed in 1993.

Jimmy’s sporting career started when he scored a point in Sullivan’s field, in Finuge, as a seven year old in 1959. (“I still recall the sense of achievement I derived from kicking a football over the bar . . . It was a defining moment in my development as a footballer and I remember running home excitedly to tell my father about it.") And it finished . . . Hold on. Is it finished yet? On 08th October 2011, a few days after his 59th birthday, he togged out with an Oireachtas team for a charity-match in Croke Park. As I watched from the stands, when he faced an opponent from the opposing Media Selection, I wondered was our Minister thinking of his five All-Ireland medals or was he once again a seven-year-old in Sullivan’s field?

Despite a busy schedule he has now written his autobiography My Sporting Life. It was launched in the National Museum on Tuesday 13th December by former Dublin captain and Jimmy’s one-time rival, Tony Hanahoe who said; “Jimmy and I met by accident in 1976.” He was referring to the day he was playing in the forward line in Croke Park and made involuntary contact with the man from Finuge.

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He was asked to bring Gaelic football's all-Ireland cup to New York in 1981 to have it photographed with the World Series baseball trophy and American football's Superbowl prize. He didn’t want to take responsibility for what was, for years, a Kerry trophy but he was eventually persuaded. He brought it to Gaelic Park in the Bronx where it was stored in a safe while players from the Feale Rangers team socialised. After a match between Feale and Ardboe of Tyrone the next day, Jimmy went to get the cup only to be told by the caretaker that it had been taken from the safe by someone unknown to him that morning.

Jimmy Deenihan with the Sam Maguire Cup

I have heard him tell the story or some of it several times but in My Sporting Life he writes about the intervention of the FBI and "When I called to Gaelic Park the following morning at 11am, the Sam Maguire was in the bar wrapped in a black plastic refuse bag." I won’t spoil it for you. You’ll have to read the book for the full story. Proceeds are going to the Lartigue Restoration Committee...
Full monorail fund details.

The Listowel-Ballybunion Railway was opened in 1888 at a cost of £30,000 and it ran for 36 years until it was closed in 1924.It was a unique rail-system designed by a Frenchman, Charles Lartigue. The train carried passengers, freight, cattle and sand from the Ballybunion sand-hills. Among the passengers were Ballybunion school children going to the Listowel Secondary Schools, Kerry and Limerick people making their way to the beach resort of Ballybunion and golfers going to the fledgling golf course at Ballybunion, which was to develop into one of the greatest golf courses in the world.

The Original Lartigue Monorail

The Lartigue was the only railway of its kind in the world. One Kerry historian described the design as follows, "Loads had to be evenly balanced. "If a farmer wanted to send a cow to market, he would have to send two calves to balance it, which would travel back on opposite sides of the same freight wagon, thereby balancing each other."

Bottom of Page: Lartigue's demonstration at Westminster in 1886.

1988 saw the centenary of the opening of the Lartigue and several initiatives were taken to celebrate the event. Among the most valuable of these was a history of the Lartigue written by local politician and Lartigue enthusiast Michael Guerin. Michael Barry of Lisselton had already assembled 50 metres of salvaged track and an original carriage and Michael Foster had written a valuable book on the Lartigue. From this time a feeling emerged that a restoration of the Lartigue should be attempted in some form. As a result, in the mid 1990's a Lartigue Restoration Committee was set up under the Chairmanship of Jimmy Deenihan TD, with Jack McKenna, who had traveled on the footplate of the original Lartigue, as President.

After much work and fundraising by the committee, work started on the building of the new Lartigue on the site on John B Keane Road in November 2000. The construction work was carried out by an excellent team of FAS employees, under the direction of members of the Restoration Committee, and the train went in to operation in June 2003.

The Lartigue today

My Sporting Life is not confined to stories about Fine Gael and the GAA. Jimmy introduces the reader to such people as FW de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Joe Jagger (father of Mick) and Alfred Hitchcock. As a young man he didn’t have any political ambitions. So, how did he end up in the Dail? Perhaps the question is best answered by the other great man of letters , Kerryman, Con Houlihan in his introduction to My Sporting Life, "His winning speech as captain of Kerry in an All Ireland final was heard by Garret Fitzgerald who marked him down as a young man with a future in politics."

While teaching in Tarbert in 1982 (the year he missed the All-Ireland final due to injury) Jimmy was asked to run as a Fine Gael candidate. Before making a decision he sought the advice of that great Listowel sage, John B Keane..

"Because of my trust in him, John B's advice would be crucial to my decision, His first reaction was one of surprise that I should even consider going into politics. He advised me that politics was a tough game, that your own party members could be the most negative and hurtful towards you... as I have discovered since."

As on the field, whether on the opposition benches or in Government the Finuge man gave a good account of himself. As one reviewer puts it, “When he entered political life, he embraced the concept of sport for the many and not just for the few, undertaking extensive examination of the role of sport in the lives of Irish people. He also details his organisation of sporting events involving his Dáil colleagues and their counterparts in other countries.”

What’s it like being a Minister in these turbulent times? This Kerryman has the answer, "Playing sport at a high level prepares you for anything that comes your way in life."

Google "My Sporting Life" and a Happy 2012 to you all.

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Click on Mattie Lennon for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.

Cooking With Leo

By Leocthasme

For The New Year Celebration
And All The Cold Weather That Follows

OK, I’m still on a drink kick, let’s face it it’s that time of the year for such things,.and it’s time to gather round with friends and neighbors and enjoy the New Year. So, let’s have a holly, jolly time and break out the spirits. Well the New Year is the time to celebrate and enjoy the new things coming our way. Every New Year is a time for New Things. Kick out the old and ring in the new. So while we enjoy doing our thing let’s enjoy some spirit help.. You friends, neighbors and\ guests will enjoy these cold weather uplifts and rate you high on their best cat in the neighborhood list. And that should last till May or June when you fill up the pool in your back yard and at least the guy next door catches you out back cleaning up the BBQ Pit. Have fun til then.

Red-Hot Apple Cider

Combine 2/3 cup red cinnamon candies and 8 cups apple cider; stir occasionally to melt candy. When ready to serve, mix in 1 cup brandy and add thin apple slices.

Mulled Red Wine

Mix two 750-ml bottles dry red wine such as zinfandel, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 5 whole cloves, 4 cinnamon sticks, 4 allspice berries, and 4 peppercorns. Serve with fresh-cut orange slices.

Winter Tea

Mix 2 1/2 cups water, 2 cups orange juice, 1 1/4 cups cranberry juice, 5 star anise, and 1/2 cup brown sugar. When hot, add 6 cranaple tea bags, steep 8 minutes, and remove bags. Add 1 3/4 cups spiced rum.

Sugarplum Kiss

Combine 3 3/4 cups peach nectar, 1 3/4 cups prune juice, 2 1/2 cups sweet white wine, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 6 cinnamon sticks, 5 whole cloves, and 5 cardamom pods. Serve in sugar-rimmed glasses.

Enjoy It All Till The Birds Start Singin’ Again, Whenever!

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Click on Leocthasme for bio and list of other works published by Pencil Stubs Online.