Author: Gerard Cunningham
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Risky business
Donegal Democrat “If we die, we want people to accept it. We’re in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.” – Gus Grissom, 1926-1967, killed when Apollo I exploded while waiting for take-off. Last…
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A tale of two citizens
Donegal Democrat ‘Bill Graves, Republican of Oklahoma City, has introduced House Bill HB 1504 that would require an anti-evolution disclaimer on school textbooks.’ – News item Once upon a time, in the wild, barren, mist covered boglands of west Donegal, there was born a man called Thomas Colin McGinley. In 1830 to be precise, in…
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Doctor Who?
Donegal Democrat The spire on O’Connell St, finally set in place this week, so naturally the pub quiz trivia question wasn’t far behind. Apart from the spire, what other monuments line Ireland’s premier street? Well, the first two are easy. There’s ‘the uncrowned king of Ireland’, Charles Stewart Parnell and ‘the Liberator’, Daniel O’Connell, bookending…
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The brother can’t look at an egg
Donegal Democrat So there’s myself, an Englishman, and a Scotsman, and we’re discussing the good old days. The Scotsman is relating how when he was a “bairn”, the teachers would give him a whack for speaking Scots Gaelic. Worse, having got the whack for speaking Gaelic, he then switched to the other language he knew.…
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Fit and fitter
Donegal Democrat There’s a different level of fitness among GAA players these days, but then again, there’s a different attitude too. I was talking to a footballer a while back, he rambled about an player from a generation gone by, who told him how the team would bicycle thirty or forty miles, play a game,…
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A licence to print money
Donegal Democrat When I originally wrote this piece, it was simply a way to fill a few hundred words in a weekly column. I wrote it, emailed it off, and thought no more of it. Last year, I found out it had come true. Someone out there really is making money off this idea. I’m…
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In Praise Of The Norsemen
Donegal Democrat A thousand years ago, a group of warriors set out by sea and land on a series of voyages that would change the world forever. During the Viking era, the Scandinavians were by far among the more advanced and worldly of European societies. Vikings were often multilingual; many had travelled the world from…
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Last of the Tallymen
Donegal Democrat Back last May, as the general election campaign was drawing to a close, I had an idea for a story. It was to be called Last Of The Tallymen, a soft focus look back at the unsung foot soldiers of Irish democracy, the men with the pencils and the clipboards. I’d hoped to…
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The Donegal Top Ten
Donegal Democrat The BBC has been making a lot in the last week of its list of ‘100 Top Britons’, with various fans exhorting viewers to vote for their own idols from the Top Ten. Some of the Irish national newspapers even got in on the act last Sunday, building their own lists of 100…
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The Rock & Roll Years
Donegal Democrat Yer man approached me over a quiet pint in the pub last weekend. He had a look of quiet seriousness on his face that bespoke the gravity of his mission. “I liked your piece last week,” he said, parking himself in the seat beside me. “Oh grand, thanks. I was just so fed…
