Robin Hood

I looked at the charred rafters. It was a home that had burned a few years back and a man had died in the fire. Today was the first time I felt the spirit of the man had found rest and the house was finally at peace. It was early evening, late January and the sun was low. The sky was still bright blue at half past four. The trees now dark and splendid had a vitality within them as they waited patiently for their first buds to swell and unfold in February.

I coughed harshly......the remnants of a bad cold that has stuck with me for a week. I coughed again and remembered we had a late breakfast. The front door knocker sounded.

"Are you expecting anyone?"

"No"

Mary opened the door and there was the friendly patter of talk by someone trying to identify himself in a jocund, lighthearted and conspiratorial way. When he mentioned Coxsackie I knew they were on common ground and into the kitchen walked Finbar Coleman. It had been thirty seven years.

In 1986 we travelled to New York for the Summer. We stayed in Earlton in an old wooden house beside a slow moving creek where we swam long into the warm evenings beneath the leafy trees that grew on its banks. Squeals and shouts and dares-to-jump reverberated throughout the dell til sunset.

Alice Gatt, Mary's aunt put me in touch with a man originally from near Kinsale in Cork. Finbar Coleman had sold up the family farm and moved to Coxsackie with his family in search of adventure and the dream of a better life and prosperity in the land of opportunity. He built a very fine, large wooden house on top of a hill in the countryside on the west side of town. My work for the Summer was to coat the wooden house with a protective stain before the exterior cladding was added. The weather was hot and dry but because of the elevated location I always had a strong breeze to keep me cool. Each morning I was invited in for coffee with Finbar's wife Nollag and his mother, Nanna. Our conversations were pleasant and her home baking was scrumptious. The weeks passed quickly though and soon it was time to return home. Mary came to collect me at quitting time on my final day of work. We were saying goodbye to Finbar when he presented me with a very generous cash bonus. It was such a very kind gesture. And Mary was given a gold neck chain in a gift box. This was so typical of the man, generous, warm hearted, caring and genuinely kind. He was managing a few laundromat and car wash businesses for a businessman called Jon Flach. 

Life was good, his children were doing well at school and he was studying for his real estate license. He was living the American dream !!

And here he was now, after all the time that had passed, standing before me in the kitchen of our house.

It was startling !

"I can't stay," in his warm, melodic Cork accent. 

"There's people outside in the car there waiting for me"

"I have always asked Alice how you guys were getting along"

"I did"

"I always did"

"I will be eighty next year"

"I only retired last year!"

"My son John took over my concrete business"

"My niece is married  to an Emyvale lad, the son of Kathleen and Sean O' Brien. You know them...."

"And the lads too, Danny....& your other brother,.....what's his name Billy"

"And Chrissy ? She went into the police force I think"

"And your other sister, aye Kathy. How is she ? She has a beautiful voice"

"And how is Nollag?" I enquired.

A pause, 

"Oh Nollag died four years ago. She was seventy one"

"And Nanna lived to be ninty nine"

"And I have another niece married to another Emyvale lad, Edwin Corrigan"

"Do you know him? You do" 

"They met in Cork !!"

 

Such a coincidence !!

The conversation ebbed and flowed.

I took him out to the studio and Finbar as always, who marveled at the gifts bestowed on other people, was warm in his appreciation.

I gave him a wood-burnt picture of flowers.

We exchanged numbers.

"Next time you're over come and stay with me!! I have a big house and only myself in it"

"I will" 

 

And I will.

And then he was gone. 

My cough returned. My throat was dry and my voice was weak again. I took my antibiotic and steroid medicine and we marveled at our morning guest. 

We couldn't settle. We traveled towards Monaghan town, past the estate walls of Castle Leslie that are being buttressed to prevent further damage, past the house with the charred rafters and on to the old Armagh road. 

Mary's mind drifted to memories of her childhood in Coxsackie, her friends, Sheri and Tina and their little singing group called Wandering Joy. Which also included her younger sister Kathy, the one with the beautiful voice.

A memory surfaced. Back in 1975 I  traveled by bus to Galway University to enroll as a first year student. I would be studying there for a Science degree. I sat in beside an elderly man in a plaid jacket and brightly coloured pants. He wore a hat and appeared to me to be the type of gentleman that would doff his hat to a lady to convey respect or perhaps wore it to add the perception of height to his small stature. We got into conversation but I quickly retreated back from him. His breath carried the fusty odour of cigar smoke and strong whiskey. He knew Coxsackie he said. His pale blue watery eyes smiled when I told him my girlfriend had lived there. 

"Coxsackie Correctional Facility is in that area" he added,

"In Greene County."

He looked watchfully out the window at the Garda car hurrying in the opposite lane. 

"That's a maximum security prison that houses the worst, the most dangerous criminals in the state," he continued.

"Inmates there have the least freedom of any institution because they are violent........and dangerous.... murderers, armed-bank robbers, sex offenders. All felons incarcerated there are bad men, the worst of the worst!" 

He nodded. 

He tipped his head forward, his hat covered his eyes and he slept. 

 

type of prison where prisoners have the least amount of freedom because they are considered dangerous and are not trusted not to escape.

Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

                  Coxsackie Correctional Facility, Greene County
 

 

On we went, past the remnants of an ancient Round Tower and past Bessmount House. 

"Did your family live in Coxsackie ?" I turned and asked Mary.

"No about ten minutes drive from it. We went to that school district and we went to church there. Alice lives there still. In Apple Blossom Lane"

I remembered Alice and Tony's house. A happy place with lots of keepsakes, remembrances and tokens from Ireland.

"Do you remember the bank heists in Coxsackie in the early 1990's" I say.

"Of course !!"

"I wonder if the Pinocchio Bank Robber was incarcerated in Coxsackie Prison."

 

  

Police sketch of  "Long-nosed bandit"

 

The notorious  Pinocchio Bandit also known as Big Nose had perpetrated a string of bank robberies in upstate New York. He had hit fifteen banks in all, including Schenectady, Troy and Colonie in the previous two years. 

"Don't know. Maybe"

 

                            Police investigating a bank robbery

 

After a heist in East Greenbush in late 1996, a sharp-eyed State Trooper Scott V. Schriner, spotted a man fitting the robber's description sitting in a car in Schodack. He questioned the suspect who told him he was headed to a local high school for his child’s sports event.

Schriner and another agent also went to the high school. The man was near his car when they arrived.

"We approached him and started talking with him--and he confessed to having just robbed the Hudson City Savings Institution," Schriner said.

"We asked if we could look in his vehicle"

"Sure"

They did and found the $7,200 from the bank stuffed under the driver’s seat. 

The suspect was arraigned before East Greenbush Town Justice Charles Assini and remanded to Rensselaer  County Jail without bail. 

An affidavit filed on December 11th in the United States District Court stated that the defendant admitted stealing $81,230 from 14 other banks throughout the state since April 1995.

He had displayed what appeared to be a gun to the teller on at least two occasions during the robbery. He never spoke but wielded a note demanding "All large bills now."

The man known to police as the "Pinocchio Bandit" was eventually sentenced to 85 months in prison for robbing the 15 upstate banks.

It turned out the gun he used was a pellet gun. 

And it turned out also he was Irish, from Cork and had the same first names as one of our sons, Daniel Finbar.

Daniel Finbar Coleman, 51 years, of West Coxsackie was also ordered also to pay $81,230.50 in restitution to the banks he robbed.......

One of the nicest men I have ever met. 

I hope he likes the pyrography picture of the flowers. 

I hope he displays it somewhere in his house. 

I intend to check when I visit him, next Summer in Coxsackie.

The road meanders on, into Monaghan and we make plans to go for coffee in Coffee Break With Barbara...... right beside The Courthouse in the centre of town.

                                   

 

 

maximum-security facility that houses the most dangerous criminals in the state. In New York, there are 15 correctional facilities that are deemed maximum security.

Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

maximum-security facility that houses the most dangerous criminals in the state. In New York, there are 15 correctional facilities that are deemed maximum security.

Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

maximum-security facility that houses the most dangerous criminals in the state. In New York, there are 15 correctional facilities that are deemed maximum security.

Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

 

a maximum-security facility that houses the most dangerous criminals in the state. In New York, there are 15 correctional facilities that are deemed maximum security. O

Read More: 6 Prisons With Most Dangerous Inmates Are In Hudson Valley | https://wblk.com/hudson-valley-ny-maximum-security-prisons/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

 

Step By Step

 

I was browsing through the trinket cabinet yesterday and I found this piece of design work that I put together back when I got my first computer, a Dell I think.  

I knew very little about how to use a computer and so I spent a summer figuring out what it could do. I could not type and I still can't but I get by.

Through trial and error I managed to come to terms with it in a very limited way. My biggest fear was pressing the wrong button and breaking it.....or allowing a virus contaminate the works !

Looking at the parchment sheet with the sunset and tree brings me back to the great excitement I felt just using a simple programme to create this image as a background for the poem I had written.

 

By the shore of a bay

Stands a great maple tree.

There is a golden chain on that tree

Fastened to a ring of gold.

By day and by night

An ancient thinker walks ceaselessly

Around the tree

Bound by the chain.

As he moves to the left

He recalls a glimmering moment long past.

As he moves to the right

He gilds each falling leaf with 

Evening rays of sunshine gold.

 

 

 

 

 Kernow/ Cornwall

A rugged and rocky coastline

Lands End

Always.

Mousehole.

St. Michael's Mount. 

Laylines.

Cosy harbours and gift shops,

Sennen Cove.

Old Stone and brick ventilation chimneys

For tin mines on hilltops.

Newlyn-coloured-painted skies.

The Red Lion.

The Pirates of Penzance.

The Hawks Well.

Thunderous clouds within touching distance 

of our upraised hands.

Proud-pale-eyed-seafaring people.

Familiar Cornish spirit with Celtic fragments

Creating an affinity.

Hand built homes put in place by hardy men

With stone from local quarries.

Statements in granite.

Piers and lobster pots, hanging nets and

Cottages with small rooms.

Broad white chimneys.

Outside, stone-hewn steps leading to cosy lofts

Where Winter nights were wild

And people spoke in subdued murmurs.

Onan hag Oll.

One and all. 

 

 

 

            Mousehole

 

 

 

             Sennen Cove 

 

 

 

             Cornish Sailors 

 

 

 

            Our house in Madron

 

 

           The Causeway, St. Michael's Mount

 

 

 

 

           Lands End

 

 

Legend has it that St Piran "discovered" tin smelting when his black hearthstone which contained tin bearing ore got hot enough for the tin to melt out. The white liquid tin rose up to form a white cross on a black background as it did from the dark stone, which became his emblem; the St Piran's Flag.

Mr. McCarey and The Payhens 

Gary rapped the studio door.

I was mid thought.

"Will I call it Ink and Imagination again......or go with Ink Trails, Forests and Fields?" to myself.

He came in.

I turned around.

"Is Mary about. She might be able to help this man. He's lookin'  a note on the Tidy Towns page."

I went out.

"Can you put a message on the Northern Sound?" he asks.

"My wife can."

Explanations and confusion.

Briefly.

"Oh, aye!" he finishes.

I went in to get Mary.

She was fixing her boot on over the broken toe.

Only retired two days and this happens.

"Do I hear voices?"

"Norah's outside and there's a man who has lost two peacocks."

"What!"

He's a nice man, typical of north Monaghan.

"They were last seen in Tirnaneill," he offered.

"They're payhens, not paycocks. I paid €150 each for them aye."

 

"What will they eat now?" asked Norah. Concerned.

"Anything they can git hold of," he chuckles.

Mary is jotting down.

"If someone sees them what should they do?" I ask.

"Mebbe they could lay a wee trail of meal into a shed and ta coax them intit that way. But close the door after them. Cause they can fly out over a half door!" 

"How far can they fly?" I ask. 

"Ach, they could fly up onto that roof of that house!"

He nods across to Murrays. 

"They could fly up onta a hay shed and sit there for hours."

"How long are they missing now?" asks Norah. Concerned still.

"Two weeks! They've been seen all over the places."

"Some one is bound to see them around," we all join.

"Aye, surely," he nods.

"Will you put that in the Northern Sound Missus?"

"I'll put it in the Donagh Notes, and the Tidy Towns page on Face Book."

"Facebook, aye, right."

"And we'll all share it," says Gary.

"Right, good enough," he says.

"Now how much have ya ta get Missus?"

"Oh, nothing. It's free. Have they any names ? Are they pets?"

"Ha! Divil a name them have," he chuckles. 

"The paycocks at home on his own. He never left with them."

"You'd think he would be the first one to fly away!" someone added. 

A dig at the men.

Gary googled a picture of peahens

"Aye that's them. They're a brownish colour. They're near ready to start laying ! Aye you'd get a hundred euro fer the small ones! An' I saw someone payin' £1, a €1 I mean for a feather of the male. Aye, ta put it in their hat!"

 We'll all keep an eye out.

"Good enough."

The two men headed back towards the petrol pumps.

Mary and Norah headed to the kitchen for tea.

"I just had tea. Don't go putting on no kettle for me," says Norah.

But she did have hot water.

I headed back to the studio. I took a cursory, inquiring look down the garden. 

Why not !

No peahens!!

We once had a swan landed there......& couldn't take off again.

But that's a story for another day.

 

 

 

 

  

Goodbye, goodbye.

The truest gift he gave me was the gift of having met him.

And having worked closely with him.

I had been working for ten weeks as a substitute art teacher in Summerhill College, Sligo. It was where I had attended secondary school myself.

The school was staging the musical, The White Horse Inn. I ended up painting two scenes...one to the left of the main stage and one to the right of it. Two stage extensions had been built to ease the pressure of space and to help the production flow better. I think I painted two Alpine scenes.

Joe saw the show, inquired as to who the artist was and he sought me out. He asked me if I would help out painting the stage settings for the Sligo Musical Society show. Little did I know he meant for me to design and paint the complete set single-handed. The backdrops I had painted for the Summerhill College shows were the only large scale work I had ever done but I had the confidence of youth and agreed.

(.......I digress for a moment...... I am just now recalling how the live orchestra stirred me. Not for the brilliance of their music, but for the loveliness of the instruments too. 

The music cases. 

The rich, shiny ebony, maple and willow wood. The strings and bows agleam in reddish-orange browns. 

The double bass. And violins. The cello. 

 

 

The clarinet and the flute. 

The creamed sheet music lit by warm ambient lighting. 

The sea-shell lampshades. 

Silver. 

Dress suits, formal wear. 

Some very Protestant names. 

Nervous tuning of instruments. 

It was special and so magical..........)

 

I was part of it all now and I was valued as a scene painter....and so young, they said.

I even had my name printed in the programme. 

Scenery Painter.......Nelius Flynn.

I felt so worthwhile with my limited talent, and lack of experience.

Joe gifted me the confidence to paint huge backdrops that I never dreamt I could do.

No matter what I produced  for him it was always enough. He never expected more than I was able to give.

I don't ever remember thinking I would not be able to fulfill the many diverse tasks he set out for me in musical theatre and other shows. He steered me through and together we were a team.......and I was his confidant.

We worked together with the carpenters, the lighting crew and the director of the show. But we were separate.

Joe was stage manager.

And strict with flighty chorus singers and dancers who might be heard chattering by the public in the front rows of the audience. 

Or who might be tempted to look out at the audience through the centre-opening in the front curtain.

 

Somehow on opening night there was always a finished set for the latest production. The Merry Widow, The Pirates of Penzance, Guys and Dolls, Where's Charlie, Viva Mexico. 

Always. I would be handed a prop half an hour before the show was due to start and asked to paint it. It was not unusual for me to be painting on stage  as the orchestra started to play the overture and Joe would be saying,

"Clear the stage! Clear the stage!"

I always muddled through and I learnt something with every passing production. 

We rehearsed the scene changes. 

Like clockwork we performed magical tasks behind the scenes. Together with some freshly recruited stage hands we (dressed in black) set up for the next act in record time. 

Always quietly. 

And when the curtain was drawn back we listened expectantly for the minor gasps, and chatter of appreciation from the audience. 

I became familiar with the backstage vocabulary: flats, cut-outs, proscenium, french brace, legs, fly curtains, house lights, sight lines, stays  and cleats. It all had a charm that I devoured.

I was twenty one or twenty two years of age.

When we moved from Sligo to Monaghan to start my art teaching career the thing that I missed most was working with Joe on shows.

The excitement and magic of life backstage has stayed with me throughout my life. I have performed, done stage make up, directed shows and designed scenery many times.

Yesterday we laid you to rest in Sligo cemetery Joe. You carried your many gifts lightly. You exited the stage in the quiet way you had lived.

It all went off smoothly. 

No unnecessary drama. 

You would have approved. 

No fluffed lines. No missed cues. No props dropped !

The stage is bare now but I listen and hear the strains of Josef Locke singing out

"Goodbye"

 from 

The White Horse Inn. 

https://youtu.be/2JvUkzVFKmY?si=Y4g4VEZKghbq-bsO&t=41

 Joe and Mary at the launch of Eye Level in 1987 

I had my first public art exhibition in 1987 with Mary Quinn.

It was called Eye Level. 

We asked Joe, as a director of The Hawkswell Theatre to speak at the launch in the Emyvale Leisure Centre. He travelled from Sligo and of course he did a great opening for us.

I decided a few months ago to have my second Emyvale exhibition this year in the same venue over the May bank holiday weekend. 

It is titled: Ink & Imagination

It will be on view 4th. and 5th. May. 

I have fond memories of both Mary and Joe. 

The exhibition is dedicated to them both.

 

 

 

Evening Visit near Castle Leslie Estate

See above us a small but very brilliant moon, high in the sky, shining through the scattered clouds and onto the lake. It is a night sky, bright with stars and moonlight, a night sky that you only see in the countryside in Ireland.

 

 

The waves seen through the woods were all a ripple.

They glimmered.

And

Sparkled.

It was on such a night that I imagined as a child Joseph, Mary and the Infant Jesus fleeing to Egypt.                                               

Joseph had been warned in a dream that King Herod was intent on killing the child and so he took the baby and Mary to safety.

  

King Herod the Great killed all boys under the age of two in the hope that the new Messiah would be among them.                                         

It was a massacre of the innocent.

"A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more."  Matthew 2:18

 

It was chilly as we walked through an arched tunnel cut through the hedge. I observed a stand of tall trees like black-paper-cut-outs close by me.

The Scots pine trees are now maybe 30 metres in height.

They always give me a feeling of well being.

We had finished our meal in the comfortable old world ambience of The Hunting Lodge.

It was a pleasant two and a half hours in Conor's Bar. The milk chocolate glossy woodwork and warm, pale mustard painted walls complimented the exquisite food.

We were seated at a small, square glass-topped table. Beneath the glass on display was an arrangement of Victorian cutlery. We surmised about the handles...maybe ox horn, bovine bone, or stag antler....the larger pieces had inscribed and pierced detailing on the blade surfaces.

 

The silverware was of the big house era long before stainless steel flatware and later disposable plastic.....eating utensils.

 

Homeward bound.

A Palestine flag, on the border between the northern border towns of Emyvale and Aughnacloy, shuffles a little.

Uncomfortably. 

This was normally the domain of  two other conflicting flags.

I shuffle a little too.

Uncomfortably.

But helpless.

 

The Israeli military offensive against Rafah, Gaza's southern border town is imminent.

One million Palestinian refugees are sheltering in this area.

My great fear is that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu's troops mount a ground assault there will be no Joseph to lead the innocent to safety.

No Egypt.

Only border patrols....and high walls with razor wire.

No room at the inn.

No wise men.

No star to follow.

 

A voice will be heard in Rafah, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeps for her children; as she refuses again to be consoled, because they are no more.

 See above us a small but very brilliant moon, high in the sky, shining through the scattered clouds above the city. It is a night sky, bright with stars and moonlight a night sky that you only see in Palestine.

                                 

 

Photos:

From top:

Castle Leslie grounds: Nelius Flynn

The Flight into Egypt: Vittore Carpucchi

The Rest on The Flight into Egypt: Rembrandt van Rijn

Massacre of The Innocent: Leon Cogniet 

Victorian Cutlery: Curious Atelier

A Full Moon Over Palestine:Tim Frank

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Honour Thy Father & Thy Mother

 

The third year student's rooms were above the chapel.

 

 

It was said that Fr. Finnegan had seen the devil there one night when he went in to pray. It was all over the college the next day.

It frightened us.

The wooden desks in our classroom had seen better days. Each one had a bit of history, of something, or someone inscribed on its surfaces. One of the first things I did whenever I sat at a new desk was read it.

We had come up to collect our school bags after playing soccer in the alleys.

 

There were older boys there doing some study. I wondered why they hadn't gone to study in their own classroom but I said nothing.

Class was done for the day.

We were in good form and I only caught the end of what one of the older lads said....

"....because of your appearance"

"What's wrong with my parents?"

Eyes burning

With a piercing rage.

Right fist raised.

Tethering on the brink of a white knuckled assault.

That muscled arm, strong and hand normally unused to any violent action was trembling fiercely.

Twitching.

Wired now for justice.

For the honour of his lovely parents.

I could see his urgent need to protect their integrity after this affront to their good name.

It overshadowed all consequences of what might unfold in the principal's office later.

"I said your appearance not your parents!"

My friend dissolved.

Embarrassed.

Shrunk.

The fight was gone from him.

He had not seen a trinity on that pedestal.