Special occasion for ICA members
WEXFORD ICA has presented its members with awards for a novel competition based around the theme of opening a tea room.
The ‘Special Occasion Competition’ saw members complete tasks relative to the theme and the initiative, which proved very popular with members all over the county, was organised by Competitions Secretary, Catherine Dunleavy.
The competition was sponsored by Wexford Home Preserves and the results were announced at an event in Shamrock Hall, Kilanerin, that was co-hosted by Kilanerin and Ballyfad guilds.
A spokesperson for the ICA told this newspaper that 20 guilds participated in the competition and the presentation ceremony was compered by the Federation President, Mary D’Arcy.
The first task presented to the members was to compile a newsletter article announcing the reopening of a tea room and outlining the reason for its closure.
The winner of that challenge was Mary Devereux, from Cushinstown guild. The second challenge saw the members having to create a table floral display for the official opening of the tearoom; that task was won by Catherine Leacy, also from Cushinstown guild.
The third task had the members creating a bakewell tray bake and presenting it in sections for sale. The winner was Ann Doran from Oylegate guild.
Susan Breen, from Monaseed guild, won the fourth challenge which was to create a machine-sewn half-apron complete with a front pocket to be worn by serving staff in the tea room.
Naming of a business is always an important component of any new venture and the fifth challenge presented to the members was to name the tea room, using any medium, suitable to hanging inside the entrance of the business. The winners were members of Davidstown guild.
There was great excitement leading up the overall results being announced and Ms D’Arcy complimented all of the guilds for their efforts.
Cushinstown emerged as the overall winners while Davidstown and Oylegate followed closely in second and third place, respectively.
While the adjudication process was taking place those in attendance were entertained by Michelle and Castlebridge Choir; Niamh and Eoin Murphy (dancers); Ali Bushe and Tara Boukima (singers); Myles Carroll (comedian); Katie Cunningham, Aisling Fitzgerald, Derbhla and Róisin Noctor (music group); Tom Clare (sketch) and Maggie Morrissey (recitation).
A visual treat on the day was the display of an intricately detailed tapestry that was created by Kilanerin guild - assisted by other local ladies.
Love is part of our make up, our genetics, our existence, our direction. Our sanctity, our salvation and our desperation. It can give us reason to breathe, or, it can drive us to breathing our last. For as long as mankind has looked and seen and felt, we have been the beneficiary or the victim. Or both.
It cuts, it ignites, it stains. We are the harvesters of whatever is thrown or blown our way by Eros, Cupid or Venus, that thing that remains impossible to tame, to predict and sometimes to understand. Difficult to fight, a joy to behold. It can warm the soul, launch the ship, blossom the bud, and at the same time twist the heart into a fierce unyielding knot of torture.
We sing about it being a crazy little thing, how we can’t buy it, the power of it, it being all we need. Love is the drug, love is the answer, it is the battlefield. And in the end, when the heart’s battery beats it’s last and the sun dips or disappears, is that it? When one of us is gone and the other left holding on, what then? How then, do we experience that love? Surely it cannot be possible to live the deep interpersonal affection when alone. It may be lost or dim down to the point on the chart somewhere between faint and forgotten, unless somehow, we capture it.
But how is it captured? How are all the emotions and electricity it had generated, held?
Shakespeare did so hundreds of times with testimonies to love and loss in his sonnets and plays. Or the complexities of the heart in the novels of the Bronte’s. Rubens and Rembrandt countless times on canvas, or who would not be moved by Klimt’s ‘ The Kiss’. But a work I have chosen to exemplify the total intoxification and consequence of love is a piece by our own William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).
The poem ‘Memory’, in 34 words, perfectly paints and frames the legacy of loss. Yeats takes a mountain of carbon and compresses it into a beautiful small diamond. The rollercoaster ride of romance, with it’s inevitable ending, is contained in a single written ache. Memory One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm, But charm and face were in vain Because the mountain grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain.
Would any animal or creature leave a lifelong imprint in mountain grass? Of course not. It is the poem’s single metaphor. Logic and life and more importantly, time, should cure all indentations. But that’s his very point. To the captor, in whatever the art form, logic, life and time do not apply, and they certainly provide no cure.
In six short lines, with a simple a,b,c,a,b,c rhyming scheme Yeats has said it all. Can you imagine just for a moment, a poet of his stature and depth, stepping back from the page and dropping the pen, after so few words, and being satisfied that here, he had said just enough? That he need add no more.
Yeats is declaring that he’ll never stop loving the woman and witnesses and endures that nothing in human life is forever – like life itself. The words are gentle and almost innocent, without any rage or anger, as tender as soft blown grass, but yet behind the tenderness, lies a devastating loss. He wrangles with the truth that he is now left without, and there will never be, a moving on. Only the total permanence of what was and remains chiselled into his very fabric.