Page 5 - John Connell News Today

Everything moves in cycles, in the great wheel of time, where past and present meet and the great rituals of life connect us to home. It’s Christmas week and already, millions are travelling around the world to get home in time. The pubs will be full of familiar faces and rural Ireland will come alive.

The bankruptcy of bus maker Proterra has set back Raleigh-Durham International Airport’s efforts to go electric.

How the NASA-lead SABERS initiative is advancing the battery technology needed to support electric flight.

I was walking in the fields this week to look at our two mares on the hill farm of Clonfin in east Longford. There was a fog settled on the fields and as I walked through it I came to find the mares. In the fog I found a clumsy beauty, as the writer, Thomas Merton put it. I like that phrase, ‘clumsy beauty’: it implies that not everything is perfect, not everything is whole but it is there and real and concrete.

It is one of the deadliest drugs in the world. For some, it is disgusting; for others, a bad habit. The cigarette has been with us for centuries. Tobacco was long used in religious ceremonies by indigenous people in the Americas and was introduced to Europe in the 16th century.

Rural Transit, Area10, Monroe County, Putnam County, Owen County, Lawrence County, Bloomington Transit, Section 5307, Section 5311, federal funding, FTA, Federal Transit Administration, John Connell, Chris Myers, Julie Thomas, Trent Deckard, WIlliam Ellis, Ellettsville, town council, equitable funding, ARPA, American Rescue Plan Act

W e all love a good deal. A bargain that gives us a nice, smug sense that we got one up on The Man. Maybe it’s a coat, perhaps some electronics, or a bundle of discounted books.

To go and sit in the dark was part of its magic. It held us, sheltered us and entertained us. To go to the cinema and be transported across the world, across multiple worlds and to give us for the briefest of moments an insight into living another life from a Tibetan reincarnation of a Buddha to a Roman soldier.

There was a time when the Amazon evoked images of lush jungles, a time when the mention of the word summoned a startling array of images that spoke of wildness and rain, of animals and native peoples. But for most of my life the Amazon has meant the edge of something – the edge of destruction, the edge of wildness and the end of wildness too.

It’s a strange thing – we long for far-off places. We make odes in our minds to the sun and sea, to a coffee in a metropolitan cafe and perhaps a cocktail in a beach bar. We Irish love our far-flung destination holidays, but of late I’ve been thinking more and more about why I treasure the Irish autumn.