Volunteers are great. They add so much to the life of our region. They are the show-up, can-do kind of people that every place needs to feel vibrant and alive.

This week marks the anniversary of the greatest battle in the United States’ Civil War. That battle, at Gettysburg, was fought from July 1st to 3rd, 1863, and aspects of its legacy are still causing conflict in the United States today.

When you are in GAA outposts in Mayo like Achill, Ballycroy, Belmullet, Glenamoy, Louisburgh and Lacken, you get a great sense for how vast our county is.

There’s no fool like an old fool. There was I saluting Mr Trump for trying to secure peace between Ukraine and Russia. I should have known better.

There are times when I wonder – is it just me? Or maybe it’s that the world has lost its way, lost its connection to the essential truths that act as a kind of anchor protecting us from a sea of nonsense.

Louis Theroux has always possessed an uncanny talent for making monsters seem ordinary, but in his latest documentary, The Settlers, he encounters subjects who have already mastered that transformation themselves.

Half of Americans say they need at least $100,000 per annum just to live ‘comfortably’, according to a recent Bankrate survey, while some 54% of those already earning $100,000 believe they need an additional $50,000 to feel secure.

I collaborated on a project a few years ago that required the use of vintage cameras to capture the type of images I needed. I found it easy enough to source these old cameras and I was even able to get the type of film that they once used.

I have often rambled among the old derelict cottages of the Ox Mountains, many of them abandoned for decades. Amazingly, it is no surprise to see old roses still blooming among their ruins each summer.

Two pictures by James Crombie from the INPHO sports photo agency – one on the front page of The Irish Times and the other on last week’s Western People – provide a compelling and life-enhancing background to Mayo’s frustrating defeat by Donegal.