Latest news with #Ursula
Irish Examiner
17-05-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
€920k Rushbrooke period home was a heady mix of Fianna Fáil politics and pleasure
A SPRAWLING Italianate-style villa, The Grove in Rushbrooke was tailor-made for a Brady Bunch-size family who had a welcome on the mat for everyone, including visiting politicos. Joe Dowling, entrepreneur, lifelong Fianna Fáil devotee, and onetime chair of Cobh Urban District Council, was in the thick of political activism, while his wife, Ursula, managed their busy household. The couple had been living on Murmont Avenue, in the Cork city suburb of Montenotte, when an auctioneer took Joe to see the sprawling Italianate-style villa, west of the port of Cobh. 'I was smitten,' Joe says. Ursula, heavily pregnant with child No 5, took a while to warm to the notion of moving to Cobh. 'I saw the house shortly before having my fifth child, and at that stage, I wasn't in love with anything,' she laughs. Nonetheless, the contracts were signed on the day their baby was christened. 'By the time our sixth child came along four years later, I was well settled into the house,' Ursula says. Built c 1880, the villa's first occupant was a Church of England minister, followed by a medic, Dr Scully. Next up was the Ronan family, with ties to the legal profession. After the Dowlings pounced, The Grove was introduced to a mix of business, politics, and pleasure. In 1974, six months after the arrival of their fifth child, the Dowlings moved in. On a then five-acre site, and with 4,000sq ft to play around in, the kids had a ball. They could roam about the grounds or lose themselves around the house, avoiding detection for hours. With two staircases and a glut of rooms, it was tailor-made for hide-and-seek. One staircase — wide, brightly lit and elegant — served the main house. The second is a throwback to the days when service wings were bolted on to the main residence to house the servants. The service bells are still visible at The Grove. The difference in look between the main home and the service wing is marked: Expansive rooms, high ceilings and plentiful windows versus smaller, darker spaces. Living room Ursula liked to escape to one of the smaller attic-level rooms where she could indulge her passion for sewing and cross-stitch. She still has a Bernina sewing machine, 'the Cartier of sewing machines', she says, bought secondhand in Wales, originally registered to an owner in Zambia, as per the certificate of guarantee. In between cross-stitching, politicking, running a business and a household, the couple still managed to fit in entertainment. Family room They recall black-tie dinners at The Grove, 'everyone in dresses and dress suits and dickie-bows', segueing between three elegant ground-floor reception rooms, or out onto the delicate ironwork veranda and gardens, while the kids watched from the safety of the stairs. Aerial view of cast iron veranda 'You could hear them scattering when anyone approached,' Ursula says. They had political visitors too. Taoiseach Micheál Martin and EU Commissioner Michael McGrath would have paid a courtesy call on the campaign trail back in the day. There are photos of Joe with the late Jack Lynch and the late Charlie Haughey, who flew in by helicopter for a press conference outside The Commodore Hotel in Cobh, on the occasion of the general election in 1987 (see pic, below). Joe Dowling and the late Taoiseach Charlie Haughey outside the Commodore Hotel in Cobh in 1987. Joe was chair of Cobh UDC The house and grounds are too big for the couple now, even though the site is a more manageable 1.6 acres, as plots were sold off over the years. Johanna Murphy of Johanna Murphy & Sons is handling the sale and expects national and overseas interest. 'I expect queries from the UK, the USA, and Dublin. It's a versatile property and could suit residential or commercial use. 'It could make a great wedding venue or a corporate HQ, or continue as a wonderful home,' Ms Murphy says. While new owners will need to invest, The Grove has retained many of the components that make it a beautiful period home, including that exquisite ironwork veranda, definitely worth salvaging. The grounds, which face the harbour, are in good order. Outbuildings include an original coach house, stables with loft space, and a separate store house. Rushbrooke Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club is just across the road from The Grove and Bunscoil Rinn an Chabhlaigh (primary) is at the top of the road. The train station, with regular commuter links to Cork City, is a 10 minute walk away. 'Houses like this only come on the market every 40 or 50 years (the Dowlings are a case in point) and people buy them to rear their family. When you buy a home like this, you are buying a piece of history,' says Ms Murphy, who is guiding The Grove at €920,000. VERDICT: A home of charm and character worthy of investment. Period elegance in spades
Miami Herald
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Review: Pondering matters of life and death in Zoetic Stage's ‘The Comeuppance'
Zoetic Stage's 'The Comeuppance' is a satisfying punctuation mark as the theater season winds down; an exclamation point to keep theater lovers satiated through the leaner times of summer. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for Drama (For his play 'Purpose'), created a challenging, almost surreal dramedy with layers upon layers of emotions in the present dredged up from the past. The setting is a porch in Prince George's County, Maryland ('in fall in the year of our Lord 2022,' Jacobs-Jenkins wrote in the play notes). Twenty years after graduation from St. Anthony's High School, a Catholic academy in Washington, DC, a group of friends are gathering to pregame before their high school reunion. This particular group had named itself the 'Multi-Ethnic Reject Group' (MERGE for short). It's Ursula's grandmother's house, but grandma has passed away and Ursula (Joline Mujica) is living there alone. She enters with a patch on her eye, carrying a pitcher of her watermelon-muddled 'jungle juice.' But, she isn't the first character we meet. That would be Death in his first incarnation, inhabiting the body of Emilio (Jovon Jacobs). The Grim Reaper appears throughout the play, merging with the bodies of each of the characters. Every cast member gets a Death monologue, just one of the many acting acrobatics that the playwright has devised to ensure that the play, heavy on dialogue, is constantly in motion. Director Stuart Meltzer embraces Jacobs-Jenkins' fly-on-the-wall sensibility. We can relate to Death's comments, 'I like to watch.' There's a wonderful undercurrent that's meant to make us feel like silent party crashers, eavesdropping on this group who are trying to make sense of fraught personal lives and revisit what they thought would be a fun reunion. But reliving the past is much akin to Thomas Wolfe's 'Look Homeward, Angel,' and the phrase 'You can't go home again.' There are more than a few comparisons to the 1983 comedy-drama 'The Big Chill.' Old college friends have been brought together for a funeral. The Vietnam War and its effects hover over the group. They find out that inevitable changes in their lives have made it impossible to connect as they once did. The same happens here, just in a different era. The millennials have gone through the horrors of Columbine and 9/11. Now, as adults, they are gathering shortly after COVID. 'How was your COVID?' is the phrase in this post-pandemic gathering. A classmate, Simon, who has cancelled on the group, calls in every once in a while. And although he isn't seen, he speaks for all when he says: 'Look at all the shit we've been through – It's like too much, Columbine, 9/11, the war, the war, the endless war, then Trump, then COVID, whatever the f— is going on in the Supreme Court… Roe v. Wade….' Emilio is an artist now living in Germany. He's in for the reunion but off to Manhattan, where his work will be shown in a biennial, presumably the Whitney. He's done well for himself, able to afford the luxuries of staying in a high-end hotel while in town. Caitlin (Mallory Newbrough) has married an ex-cop, a man older than her, who participated in January 6 at the Capitol. 'Michael was not in the group that actually stormed the Capitol,' she makes sure her classmates hear loud and clear. Kristina (Amy Lee Gonzalez) is an overworked anesthesiologist with five kids and a drinking problem, a carryover from so much time at the hospital during COVID. She dated Emilio in high school. She's brought along her cousin Francisco, aka Paco (Rayner Gabriel), who is an unwelcome guest because he wasn't part of MERGE. He's a military veteran suffering from PTSD after two tours of duty in Iraq; he has a past with Caitlin. The dowdy and shy Ursula is diabetic and has lost her eyesight in one eye. An orphan whose grandmother raised her, she's now alone and has a woman who stops by a few times a week to check in on her. This is a brilliant all-local Equity ensemble, Mujica's tenderly sweet Ursula, Newbrough's carefully calibrated yet lonely Caitlin, Gonzalez's 'I've had it' doc mom, and Gabriel's amped up Francisco, with each actor working off of one another with obvious guidance from Meltzer. This is how the complex characters Jacobs-Jenkins created develop throughout the two-hour and 10-minute show without an intermission (a difficult but wise choice since an interval would interrupt the necessary continuous momentum and worth every minute) When they must step out of their realistic portrayals to become Death, it is done with seamless precision so as not to seem out of character. It's a difficult tightrope and one that each of the actors maneuvers with finesse. It's not easy, mind you. Jacobs, who has appeared in productions throughout South Florida, makes his Zoetic Stage debut here and has the weightiest role. His Emilio is the protagonist and, although all the characters are given a shot at Death, Jacobs as Emilio is the most unsettling. He begins the play as Death and winds it up at the end. It is his Death that makes you wonder whose soul he has come to collect. The steeped in reality Emilio (in some aspects based on the playwright himself) is also the character who seems the least to have crossed over to adulthood. These two spectrums call for an actor with range and Jacobs aces it. The lighting design by Leonardo Urbina creates the atmosphere of the outdoors at dusk. During the tricky Death monologues, Urbina subtly shines a spotlight on the actor, while the others, frozen in place, are dimly lit, still able to be seen. Sound design by Haydn Diaz adds an eerie reverb to each actor's voice for Death. Then there's the realistic sounds of a neighborhood, dogs barking and birds chirping, a car driving up and a door slamming, a limousine speeding off. Costume design by Lorena Lopez fits each character's persona – the oversized sweater and long skirt for Ursula, Emilio's richly looking beige turtleneck, brown pants, leather boots, Caitlin's breezy dress, Paco's oversized suit, and a skirt uniform for military doc Kristina. Scenic design by Michael McCLain is a back porch filled with odds and ends shoved in a back corner, things that should have gone to the trash, but never did. At stage right are overstuffed garbage cans. There's plenty of places for the characters to move about in addition to the porch: a lawn, a picnic table. A non-realistic faux stump, which is used as a playing area seems out of place, however, affecting the realism. While some may find the 130-minute running time daunting at the outset, once the clock begins to tick, the play and this production, like life and death, have you in its grips, and it isn't about to let you go. If you go: WHAT: Zoetic Stage's 'The Comeuppance' by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Friday and Saturday; 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Through Sunday, May 25. COST: $66-$72 WHERE: Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami INFORMATION: (305) 949-6722, or is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don't miss a story at
Times
11-05-2025
- Business
- Times
In wake of VE Day, we need defence and security agreement with EU
Last week's VE Day celebrations served as a potent reminder of the fragility of peace. As the country paused to remember and commemorate the 80th anniversary of the day that relief swept across a war-weary continent, Europe today again stands at a turning point. The war in Ukraine has exposed Europe's military vulnerabilities. With uncertainty over future US security commitments, it needs to take greater responsibility for its own defence. • Defence review labelled a 'damp squib' after big decisions delayed The UK, as one of Europe's strongest military powers, has a unique opportunity to offer solutions, and Britain's defence industry stands ready to deliver. Industry leaders representing aerospace, defence, technology and business communities have jointly urged the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, and Ursula
SoraNews24
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- SoraNews24
Studio Ghibli releases new Kiki's Delivery Service collection with Jiji as the star
Watercolour design recalls the talents of painter Ursula from the anime film. Studio Ghibli's 1989 film Kiki's Delivery Service is all about a young witch stepping into her powers, but for many fans the titular star's popularity is often eclipsed by her co-star, a talking black cat called Jiji. This cheeky feline adds charm and humour to the storyline, and now he's bringing that same sense of whimsy to a new 'Kiki's Delivery Service Watercolour Flower' collection. There are five products to collect in the range, and each one features a design that looks like it's been finished in pastel watercolours, perhaps by painter Ursula, who also appears in the film. The series begins with the Square Pouch (2,860 yen [US$20.11]), which is the perfect size for carrying makeup and accessories. The soft color scheme on the outside of the pouch contrasts with the inner fabric, which uses a Kiki's Delivery Service-inspired bordeaux hue to create a sophisticated, adult aesthetic. ▼ Inner pockets help to keep things neat… ▼…and it zips up securely with Kiki on the zipper pull. ▼ Next up, we have the Tissue Pouch (2,420 yen). With a convenient front opening, this is a handy way to keep your tissues clean and easily accessible. In addition to holding small tissue packs, the pouch has a zip section for carrying small essentials like medicine and lip balm. ▼ Now we move on to the Slim Pouch (2,420 yen). The length of this product gives it extra versatility, so you can use it to store pens, brushes, combs, and long cosmetics items like mascara. ▼ Next, we have the Mirror (2,860 yen). The convenient folded design makes this mirror convenient to store and carry, so you can use it at home or on the go. ▼ Finally, we have the Pass Case (3,080 yen). Designed to hold travel cards and passes, this case comes with five pockets in total so you can store a lot within its slim shape. Perhaps the sweetest element of the design is the gorgeous reel that attaches to the case, allowing you to keep it secure and easy to use when rushing to board public transport. The collection is a beautiful homage to Kiki's Delivery Service and the sweet black cat who's so beloved by fans, and it can be purchased at Donguri Kyowakoku stores and online (links below) while stocks last. Source: Donguri Kyowakoku Top image: Donguri Kyowakoku Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Chicago Tribune
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Donna Vickroy: A little bit of chaos is life-affirming if it comes courtesy of the grandkids
You're never too old to grow. Sure, it's important for grandparents to share knowledge and skills with their grandchildren. From recipes to hobby hacks to family lore, there is much to be said for handing down treasures that can enrich a child's life. But, remember, the love supply chain goes both ways. In exchange for our time and attention, these little humans radiate joy, stretch our imaginations and introduce us to new challenges, all the while reminding us of what really matters in life. For example: Nothing warms the heart more than a smiling child running up your walkway because they can't wait to see you. Car seats are as heavy as the car and as complicated as a power grid. But we can meet the moment because they're counting on us and we've got places to go. It is essential to have a drawer strictly devoted to wound care, in assorted shapes, sizes and glow-in-the-dark colors. Because sometimes only a tie-dyed tourniquet will make a hangnail feel better. A sanguine smile turns a dropped popsicle, shattered Christmas ornament, trampled tomato seedling and the phrase, 'I almost made it to the bathroom,' into an easy fix. To truly dance with abandon is to be under age 10. If they can memorize 20 sight words, you can remember which characters are heroes and which are villains. Crash Bandicoot, Bowser, and Shadow all have interesting back stories you should know about. One way to inspire make-believe ideas is to Google the meaning of their first name. Everything tastes better dipped in peanut butter. You are never too old to wear face paint, an Ursula mask or a SpongeBob tattoo. Did you know that once you get the hang of making slime, you can easily slide into mermaid slime, floam slime, unicorn slime and spaghetti slime? Don't toss that ribbon/Styrofoam/cardboard delivery box away. 'I have an idea.' If you move tables, rearrange chairs, make several batches of popcorn and turn off all the lights, your house can become a movie theater. Of course, the youngest patrons get the recliners. Some kids don't mind getting dirty; others mind it a lot. Keep extra clothes on hand. The youngest player is so helpful. He will not only find you a great hiding place, he will promptly alert the seeker to where you're hidden. Hallmark can't compete with a birthday card made by a 5-year-old. A clean house is really a blank canvas, just waiting to be transformed into a fairy forest or a fancy restaurant or a lava-spewing volcanic park. So, 'let's get started.' No, it doesn't make any sense that you can have breakfast for dinner but not dessert for lunch. Children possess an inner filing system for every Barbie dress, Matchbox car, colored marker and polished rock. Don't think you can toss things without consequence. Hosting an art show with all of their recent works will make them glow – and your living room come alive. It doesn't matter how lopsided the cake comes out or how sparse the frosting job is, if they made it, you can't wait to eat it. If you say they can have 10 raspberries, they will look you in the eye as they count out 11. If you let them choose who sits where for dinner, they just might jump at the task of setting the table. Washing hands is so much more fun if you sing the birthday song while they do it. If they ask who you love most, tell them the answer is in the mirror. Spring flowers are 'beautiful,' including 'dandy-lions.' So, yes, grab a vase. You will never win the argument that a grandma going down the tunnel slide at the park is not a good idea. Parents may be wonderful but sometimes they need a break from the chaos — almost as much as grandparents need a visit with the chaos.
