It is dark outside when I push the trolley through the opening doors.  The place is vast and has a high ceiling, lined with an almost blinding white light that reflects off the floor. The only colours are the blue of the hanging signs and the red and green of the pathetic tinsel strewn across the endless line of shelves. I look left and see that there are only two tills in operation. A very bored looking girl sits examining her nails. Behind her is a man scribbling something. They are both wearing a blue t-shirt. Thankfully, the place seems empty. The only sign of life is Mariah Carey singing from above. If I remember correctly, the turkeys should be on a separate shelf in the meat section at the very back next to the dairy aisle.  Wasting no time, I push the rattling trolley deeper into the white maze. I pass sweets, cereals, pyramids, signs, more tinsel and I finally reach the milk aisle. They should be right here. Mariah sings louder. My heart flutters as I turn the corner. “Baby all I want for Christmas . . .” The shelf is empty. ON SALE and BEST VALUE signs point to nothing. “一IS YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU一” Her voice is shrill and it stabs my skull. I cover my ears and grimace my face. I feel an anxious pang in my stomach and my throat dries as the lights start glaring and my temple is about to burst and the room is spinning and I need to steady myself on the trolley so my quivering legs don’t collapse.  I take a deep breath and steady myself. This cannot be happening. I am still trembling and my temple is pulsating. Surely there is another one somewhere? The...

I stared at the ‘M’ and it stared back at me. The glistening golden arches: a beacon of light amidst the darkness. A lighthouse in the fog. There was no greater blessing in life than a McDonald’s down the road. It was a reminder—a routine—that no matter how bad life got happiness was but a happy meal away. It was especially wet that miserable Monday morning. I was cold, knackered, and soaked to the skin. I was also disappointed that I still hadn’t managed to get enough diamonds despite mining all night.  Ten minutes.  I checked the timetable again just to be sure. Ten minutes until the bus arrived. I slumped onto the bench, sighed. I looked over at the McDonald’s down the street. They had posters advertising their new Caramel Cappuccino. In that moment freshly ground, roasted, steaming coffee smelled like heaven’s nectar to me and I had found myself in the McDonald’s before you could say ‘Bada da da da daaa.’ It was the same as always. The tiled floors. The rows of seats, some lofi-beats. The abstract walls, placed between dining areas. The laminated wood counter. Some ginger who looked like he had been getting high in the back alley. The store was barren, not another customer in sight – which was rare. It was always busy. I made my way up to the register. The order was simple. Americano. Been a while since I last had one (was more of a Monster Energy person). I found an empty seat, sat down and waited. A black tray had slid itself onto my table and with it my coffee plus a thin wooden popsicle and packets of milk and sugar. I looked up at the waitress. “Order number one?”  And that was...

“Ender’s Game” is one of the saddest books I have ever read. It brings together childhood innocence and hardcore science fiction for a truly memorable read.  The premise is this: Earth has been attacked twice by an alien race known as The Buggers and both times humans have just barely fought them off. To prevent a third onslaught Earth’s fleet recruits and trains the brightest children in a space station called ‘Battle School.’ Ender is his parents’ third child, commissioned by the fleet after his siblings were shown to be extremely clever. Sent to Battle School at an extremely young age he is manipulated by the adults into becoming a weapon of war. Orson Scott Card creates a truly wonderful but depressing story with a shocking end. This is one of the hallmarks of modern science fiction and I would truly recommend giving it a read. There are also sequels set in the future: “Speaker for the Dead,” “Xenocide,” and “Children of the Mind.” Plot: 9 Characters:10 Writing:8 Concept:8 Total...

                       I write this at an unusual time of the sixth year experience; the intermediate period between the graduation and the Leaving Cert itself, both traditions very different this year than before. As I prepare to conclude my time as a student of Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh, I am compelled to reflect on my time in this school, and all that it has given me. My secondary school experience always had a healthy dose of the unexpected and unplanned. From the dreadfully unseasonable rainout on the heights of Mangerton to the abrupt closure of schools in fifth year to the surreal experience of having to watch a graduation ceremony rather than experience it in the traditional way, unpredictability was a constant theme of the past six years. I’ve struggled unpredictability in the past. Ever since my early childhood, I have always preferred structure and planning to more chaotic situations so you can imagine the chaos wrought by a deadly pandemic and recurring lockdown – interesting to say the very least. But, truth be told, if there’s something I’ve learned from my adolescence it’s that life will always be finding new ways to challenge you. I started my journey on a Friday at the end of August and I prepare to finish it another Friday this week. Countless tests, excursions and exciting situations are enclosed within those six years. Every school year brought its own unique challenge. First Year of course began with the daunting experience of beginning a whole new chapter of my life while Second Year brought a clear idea of the kind of work that would be expected of me. Third Year had the Junior Cert. which seemed monstrous back then yet rather quaint through rose-tinted glasses. Transition Year tampered with the...

Courtney Weaver writes in the FT Weekend Magazine (Oct 3/4 2020) that a huge part of Donald Trump’s support is the Evangelicals. Before you wonder who they are, just consider that there are an estimated sixty million of them in the US and it’s judged that about 85% of them voted for Trump in the 2020 election. That’s, well, a lot! So who are they? Well for one, their numbers are increasing because of “growing support among non-white evangelicals.” Latino immigrants to the US sometimes come from socialist countries in Middle and South America and are not impressed by the Democratic Party’s occasionally socialistic leanings. (For the best exploration you’re likely to find anywhere of what socialism is, see “Socialism: What is it and why do we need it?” by Graham Harrington on this website.) Evangelicals are preachers who claim to know God and often come on radio and TV telling people about God. They argue that the Bible should govern how we live our lives. They’re often represented by figures like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell. Graham was so popular he was called “America’s Preacher” and Falwell, well you get an idea about him from this quote in reference to the 1954 Supreme Court decision to end segregation in schools: “If Chief Justice Warren and his associates had known God’s word and had desired to do the Lord’s will, I am quite confident that the 1954 decision would never have been made. The facilities should be separate. When God has drawn a line of distinction, we should not attempt to cross that line…The true Negro does not want integration…. He realizes his potential is far better among his own race.” (Source: Britannica.com) Check out Martin Luther King’s Letter from Jail, also on this...

I just read all of the Book of Ecclesiastes though it mostly makes no sense at all. Several times it does reveal the true purpose of existence though, which is nice.  “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil,” it says; then he (he is only known to us as “a Royal Philosopher”) says it again a slightly different way: “I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.” Then he says it again: “Likewise all to whom God gives wealth and possessions and whom he enables to enjoy them, and to accept their lot and find enjoyment in their toil – this is the gift of God.” And then he says it a fourth time: “commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil though the days of life that God gives them under the sun.” Now, you might be thinking, “Alright, alright, we get it,” but just in case you might say so without really getting it he tells it a fifth time but this time with a twist: “Go, eat your bread with enjoyment and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved of what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head.” It’s likely that those people who think being gay is a sin because it says so in the Bible won’t get so bothered about not...

Frances E. Willard is little known now; I only came across her myself recently and only today did I read her wonderful piece of prose about the bicycle called “A Wheel within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle.” Who knew that the bike was a political as well as a leisure pursuit? Willard recounts how she was free and wild and able to grow stuff in her garden and follow “the occupations of the poulterer and the farmer ” because of her “inveterate opposition to staying in the house.” She was what we might call nowadays a “tomboy,” a term which I suspect is no longer politically correct. But everything changed for at the age of sixteen at which point she was entrusted with becoming a young lady: “the hampering long skirts were brought, with their accompanying corset and high heels; my hair was clubbed up with pins,” she had, in other words, to “cop on” probably so that she could find a husband. “My work then changed from my beloved and breezy outdoor world to the indoor realm of study.” Enter the bicycle! Cycling wasn’t entirely new to her at the age of fifty-three, a time when she was without her mother who’d died and was feeling that her “mental and physical life were out of balance.” She had tested out tricycles – the ones with three wheels – which women were more suited to, presumably because it was near impossible to fall off them. One fascinating reflection on the bicycle is that it was the means by which people who could never afford either the danger or the cost of a horse could nonetheless experience through “this bright invention […] the swiftness of motion which is perhaps the most...

Martin Luther King was imprisoned because the peaceful direct action in which he was involved and which he asserted was necessary was deemed illegal by law in the state of Alabama. His letter is addressed to his “fellow clergymen” because he believes their criticism of him is “sincerely set forth” though he admits he doesn’t usually respond to such criticism since to do so would take up all his time such is the volume of opposition to his activities. The outsider myth His argument in his letter is that he is not an outsider, not least because there are 85 affiliated organisations in the South with which he has legitimate business. (This charge of being an outsider is very cleverly taken up again later in the letter.) He was invited to the South because of these “organisational ties” which I think is a challenge to the church leaders who were likely threatened by the sheer force of his personality and the “inescapable network of mutuality” he identifies in Alabama and elsewhere. Are these detractors worried that they are those who “stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevances and sanctimonious trivialities”? Toward the end of the letter King expertly comes around again to the notion of the outsider in reference to “the early Christians [who, when they] entered a town [discommoded] the people in power” and suffered accusations of being “disturbers of the peace and outside agitators.” Underlying conditions and effects He is in Alabama and he is in prison because “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere” and “whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” This style of his of echoing (you see it repeatedly in the letter – no pun intended!) comes from the Bible which is often written with the...

The authors argue here that GDP is not a good indicator of global health or happiness. It also rises in line with population and population has exploded – from 1.5 billion in 1900 to almost 8 billion in 2020. Our behaviour, especially when it comes to consumption, means that we’ve passed the “safe operating boundary” for three earthly activities: climate change; biodiversity loss; and the nitrogen cycle. Our ecological footprint, the land we need to make the stuff we want and to absorb the waste products of that activity, is heavy and large because our practices are unsustainable. Dietz and O’Neill successfully guide the reader through a story of where we’re going unless we change and while the book is certainly not jargon-free, what technical terminology there is is well-explained. For instance, the EROEI is simply “energy return on energy invested;” in other words, what’s the ratio of benefit to cost with respect to resources. In 1930, the EROEI of oil (the benefit of having the oil to use compared with the cost and effort of its acquisition and refinement) was 100:1; in 2005 that ratio was 15:1. Put another way, using oil has become more than six times less efficient in 75 years. We’re told – some are reminded – that GDP (gross domestic product) is linked directly with pollution: the more GDP, the more pollution, and yet we think GDP is synonymous with happiness but it’s not. Sure, income is good; we all like to have money to buy the things we like to have but this is only true to a certain point beyond which there are ever-decreasing returns. You only need a certain amount of money to be happy; after that it just becomes about competition, wanting to have more...

It’s ravishing isn’t it The word beautiful is dull in comparison This majesticness of a summer’s dusk, Can you not feel it? How the distant hills line with the ocean of the sky Which is not a screaming blue but a quiet pink As the layers of some hard candy, Though itself is much softer to the eyes It echoes a silence in my heart that drowns my recent unrest, For in these times nature still prevails To remind us once more of what it means to be alive....

One of the books I got recently is James Gilligan’s Why Some Politicians are more Dangerous than Others. He’s a psychiatrist and was trying to work out why there are periodic spikes and dips in lethal violence in The United States. He was able to use data to demonstrate that there’s a direct correlation between Republican presidents and rises in lethal violence and falls during the tenures of Democratic presidents. He tells us on page 3 that “When [he] subjected these yearly changes to statistical analysis, [he] found that in all three cases – for suicide, for homicide, and for total lethal violence (meaning suicide and homicide rates combined) – the association between political party and lethal violence rates was statistically significant.” What’s more, the data shows that murders and suicides rise and fall together which is remarkable because, as Gilligan rightly says, we don’t see suicides (the people that is) as being very similar to murderers. Suicidal people “are generally considered to be either sad or mad; they are patients usually seen in a psychiatric office or hospital. People who commit homicide are usually seen as criminals and considered to be bad. They are commonly regarded as needing not treatment but punishment, and they are found, for the most part, in prison, not mental hospitals or private offices.”  On the subject of motivation for murder and suicide, Gilligan argues that “shame [is] the proximal cause of violence, the necessary – although not sufficient – motive for violent behaviour.” He wonders whether “unemployment, relative poverty, and the sudden loss of social and economic status have been observed to increase the intensity of the emotion of shame.”  Orwell on Nationalism Then I turn to George Orwell’s essay, Notes on Nationalism. He writes that this is...

The Monroe Doctrine This was what would now likely be termed an isolationist policy adopted by the Americans which stated that the Europeans had no business interfering in any way on the continents of the Americas – that is, Central and South America. The Americans supported independence movements in Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Mexico. They were the first to recognise Brazilian independence in May, 1824. The British approached the Americans in 1823 to make a joint declaration to the effect that ex-Spanish colonies in the Americas were irrecoverable to Spain. In the end, the Americans decided not to make a joint statement but a separate one stating, in a word, “Hands off the Americas, Europe!” (Source: The Treasury of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Viking Penguin, 1992 Brain Surgery Henry Marsh, in his book, “Do no Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery,” admits to causing harm to a patient in an attempt to help her. His efforts to remove a tumour from her brain resulted in paralysis. He writes that “[He] had been insufficiently fearful.” He wouldn’t feel at peace again until the next successful operation had been completed. (Source: Marsh, Henry, Do no Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery, Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 2014 Ezra, the Scribe After the Judeans were banished sometime around the 6th century B.C.E. they were allowed to settle in Nippur, near Babyon. One of their tribe was Ezra, a scribe. He and some followers were tasked with going to Jerusalem by Artaxerxes, king of Persia. They had his protection but his interest wasn’t altruistic: he wanted them to establish an imperial outpost. Ezra was horrified by what he found in Judea: it was nearly deserted, and those who did live there were ignorant farmers who’d shed their...

The stars they spread their gaze on the platter we live, They see me but I fail to see, It is the uncertainty I have been told, They say the weather is not suited for the occasion, Weeks, years, months I am a boy longing for the sight, Is it selfish to ask, is it selfish to want the sparkles they have? To shine so bright like a black...

Phrases letters sentences full stops, They bring order like nature, though nature is hard to master, I find it daunting nonetheless,  a little less advantageous but by others your ideas are considered ranch, indigestible. Sorry, I can’t master the sea of words,  No one has taught me the ropes,  And the tides are now so much rougher than before, I hold my head higher than the tides looking out to the plot of land, Stretching my hand as far as I can in hopes for just a touch of what it has in offer,  But my hands like the rain get lost  Absorbed by the spongy...

Creatures live, Creatures die, Creature become sick and tired of lullabies, They cry, they wage wars, They even run your corner stores, They build buildings as tall as mountains,  They destroy them into ash fountains. Why you might ask? For the grass that grows or is it for what grows on the grass? I reply with an answer as simple as the intricacies of life, Ask my dad.  The face of...

This is the 4th year of the Schools Travel Writers competition sponsored by Aer Lingus. It is affiliated with the Lismore Travel Writers’ festival held in Lismore between June 12th and 16th (inclusive.) The prize for the winner is a Chromebook and an Amazon voucher worth 100 euro. Students need to write a 500 word “Letter to Home” about their favourite holiday or journey. The winning stories will be published in Cara, Aer Lingus’s inflight magazine. There are two categories – Junior Cert. and Leaving Cert. For more information please go to...