The Quiraing

Just pretty photos today...photos of the Quiraing on the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

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Update: Why this year was a failure

In regards to my recent post about wanting to see the aurora borealis, and it turns out that the lights were visible in Aberdeen where I spent a year a couple of decades ago.

I hate Scotland for having the lights now instead of then.

Fluer of Scoland...

Update: Craig Ferguson

If you hadn't noticed, the YouTube theme from the past week was Craig Ferguson's Scottish guests.

He's apparently had three more...

Back to Bunion and the Bond Bar

When I was a student at the University of Aberdeen - seventeen or so years ago now - there was a pair of old man guitar players who called themselves Bunion who played at the Bond Bar where I spent many an evening throughout the year. They played a mix of American, Scottish, and Irish country, folk, and Celtic music.

I'm feeling nostalgic, so here's a few of their tunes as played by far more famous folks.

TableTopics: #16

Today; question #16: What life experience has strengthened you the most?

There are a trio...

I can't remember whether I've related this story on the blog or not. If so, congrats to the regulars for being around long enough (six years, two months, and twenty-six days as of today) to finally hear me repeat myself. I'm sure I've never done it before...in this forum, anyway.

I'd spent much of my elementary, middle, and high school career unintentionally cultivating a tidy little persona as the smart alleck, smartest guy in the room. I was quick with a comment - most likely an unkind one - and snappy with a comeback to pretty much anything said.

I hadn't entirely noticed the totality of my self pigeon-holing until I came back for my first visit home from Wabash. I was at a friend's house -Todd Kanning's, specifically, if that means anything to you. Many of our group of friends was back together for the first time, and I found myself falling far too easily into the role that I seemed to have written for myself. It wasn't a happy feeling, and I decided to change who I was in my group. I can't say that I am not quick witted or that I don't tend to have a snarky comment at the ready much of the time, but I hope I at least recognize that I don't have to lead with those words all the time.

Next up comes the totality of my time at Wabash. I'll admit that I never felt in high school that there was anyone around smarter than I. I wasn't the valedictorian or anything, but I felt I could have been if I'd wanted to, and I was the best test taker (because that matters in the long run) at New Albany High School. I never felt that I needed to work at much throughout the course of high school. I cruised fairly easily through and ended up doing pretty well (I can still quote my class rank, my SAT, and my AP scores in case you're curious as to the depth of my immodesty).

When I got to Wabash, however, the professors generally weren't impressed. I was an intelligent young man, probably on the high side of the bell curve, but I was surrounded by intelligent young men, some of whom were clearly my academic superiors. Even at Wabash I wasn't necessarily working my hardest, but I was working far harder, at least. During the second semester of my freshman year, I took an English class about short stories. I thought myself a pretty good reader and a talented writer, so I assumed I was in for a breeze. Sure, the class was for juniors, but I was one of three or four freshmen in the class, and I wasn't worried. I got my only Wabash C in that class, and I was the better for it. Prof Stern was a creature I hadn't know before, and he demanded a whole lot more than I was ready or - at the time, anyway - able to give him, and I saw these things happening more frequently at Wabash. Sure, I was pushing work off until later than I should have been, but I was having to start the final push earlier and earlier, to work harder and harder, to spend hours in the library studying where I'd been able to do the same in twenty minutes in high school. Academically, Wabash pushed me, and I'm the better for it.

The single most formative experience for me, however, was my time in Scotland. I went overseas knowing almost no-one (there was one other Wabash chem major there, but Doug and I hadn't necessarily been tight in Crawfordsville, and I didn't anticipate being all that tight with him over there.) I was free to create myself as whomever I wanted to be. I could be more outgoing, freer with a drink, more pursuant of the ladies, more whatever, and through the course of the year I found out which aspects of my personality I was happy with, which ones I wanted to jettison (as much as that's possible), who I wanted to be and who I was comfortable being. I came back a much more confident, fully realized person who was ready for the world to begin. I can't think of any experience that was more transformative than my time in Aberdeen. I can't recommend overseas study high enough for anyone. I was revelatory for me, and the classes weren't bad either.

In case you're late to the party, here's the deal...

Here's what I've answered so far...

• #25 - "I Know What Love Is" by Don White
• #35 - no business 
• #36 - MLK, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech on the National Mall

Already requested answers...they'll be answered (probably in this order)...

• 19...22...24...27...32...37
  

Feel free to request other answers in the comments.

Gargle blarge blurge

Sorry, no real post today...got distracted by Sheena Easton

The pipes, the pipes

Danny Bhoy...no, that's not a typo...that's the comedian's name...

Things that mattered: Illusions

In a song that I came to know thanks to Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark once wrote a song about the objects that surrounded him and how little they might mean to anyone other than him.  The Lyle Lovett version is titled "Step Inside This House" and includes the following verse...

Here's a book of poems I got
From a girl I used to know
I guess I read it front to back
Fifty times or so
It's all about the good life
And stayin' at ease with the world
It's funny how I love that book
And I never loved that girl

The song is a beautiful one, something that speaks to me.  That verse in particular speaks to me of today's object that matters to me.

I've only ever been in relationships with four women, one of whom gave me this copy of Richard Bach's Illusions.  She was a student of Alma College in Michigan but was spending the second semester of her junior year at the University of Aberdeen where I was spending the entirety of my junior year.  I'd dated only The Girl when I headed to Aberdeen but had spent time with two other American students during my first semester, settling into a relationship with one of them when Kristin (or Kristen - sad that I can't actually remember the exact spelling of her name - I'm sure I could check the numerous hand-written diaries that I kept throughout that year) arrived on the northeast coast of Scotland.

I met Kristin (that's the spelling I'm going to go with for the remainder of today's post) on her first or second day in Aberdeen having been asked to assist with the campus and city tour for the group of students who were joining the program for the second semester.  She mentioned to me later that she'd noticed me initially but that I'd been dating another American student (Jenn "Ffej" Willis) at the time.

Things between Jenn and I went south not too long after that, and I found myself spending a bit of time - and eventually dating - Kristin.  The word love was used between Kristin and me.  At the time I felt right in using the word, but in looking back from my vantage point a decade and a half later, I know that the word was used far too early and far too easily by both of us.  We were together throughout the end of our time in Scotland and promised to see each other once we both returned to the States - she to Michigan, me to Southern Indiana - but never did.  I'm the one to blame there and wasn't willing to simply break things off cleanly when I started dating The Girl once I got back to the US.  The way Kristin was forced to end things between us isn't something that I am proud to have forced - through my inaction, admittedly - but it is something that I am able to acknowledge now.

I took only three books with me to Aberdeen - one of them I'll write about later in this series - and was looking for new reading material a few weeks into the first semester so I wandered to the local book store and purchased Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson.  The Thompson was because I'd read and enjoyed many of his works but hadn't read his first book.  The Bach was almost on a whim because I remembered the book from my parents' book shelves at home.  I didn't know anything about the book other than that I recognized the seagull imagery from those bookshelves that were then separated from me by a couple thousand miles.

Both of those book came back with me when I left Scotland.  They're on the downstairs bookshelves, but they're not the ones that matter.  Jonathan Livingston Seagull (JLS) did, however, lead to the one that matters to me.  In perhaps the most unlikely of outcomes, I very much enjoyed JLS, reading its slim length two or three times through.  The book is generally seen as a motivational book, a self-help, discovery, vaguely Christian tale - all characteristics away from which I would normally steer but which spoke to me for some reason.

I mentioned this to Kristin somewhere along the way, and she gifted me with Bach's follow up: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah.  Inside the front cover, she wrote an inscription to me.

At this point in the story, I should quote that inscription.  It spoke of her hope that I would enjoy the book whether she and I would be together.

But I can't quote the inscription.  I planned to do that, but I cannot because when I went to look for the book, I found that it wasn't on the bookshelves anymore.  So I went through the house looking for it and found nothing.  I also looked back at my post about those shelves and saw that the book wasn't in its place then, either. The book is gone.  I can't imagine that I would ever have gotten rid of it, but I just might have loaned it out to a friend.  If so, it hasn't come back yet.

I'd read its slim length- 192 pages - a dozen times before it disappeared from me.  I loved the words, and I loved the feeling that I got from the book, and I loved my memories of how the book came to me.

It certainly mattered to me.

Billy Connolly: what an accent

I would happily listen to Billy Connolly read the phone book.  His voice fascinates me that much.



That interview continues here.

Things that matter: Sea glass and coins

That's the view from above down into my mug of trinkets: sea glass, stones, and odd coinage from my times abroad.

I've lived most all my life near water, the Ohio River, to be specific.  Grew up in New Albany, Indiana, just across from Louisville on the Ohio River.  After a brief sojourn to Crawfordsville where the biggest water was - and still is - Sugar Creek, I packed up my things and moved to Cincinnati, an hour and a half closer to the confluence.

But I've only ever spent one year near the ocean.  See, my family wasn't the kind to spend a week in Florida every summer lounging on the beach.  We didn't, in fact, go on many vacations at all (New York City was a working vacation for my dad, the Arizona trip was to visit family, and Washington was the only other trip longer than a weekend that I can ever remember taking), so I wasn't a kid who ever fell in love with the beach.  To this day, I have no interest in spending a day at the beach just hanging around, playing in the sand and surf.

For nine months, however, I went down to the beach once a week because the long stretch of sand was a fifteen minute walk from home, and because I had a whole lot of time on my hands.  To fill those hands, then, I started picking up sea glass, bits of broken bottles that had been ravaged and beaten by the waves and washed back to shores probably far from whence they'd come.

 

There aren't any pieces that would be judged exceedingly rare or attractive, I'm guessing (at least not from what I understand from my minor reading about sea glass), but they're all pieces that I picked up.  They're things that I found while wandering the sands of Scotland - and Spain just after the new year.  They wouldn't matter to anybody else in the world other than the person who had picked them up.

Also in the mix are a couple of worn stones that I don't even remember where and when they came to me.  I remember thinking - as I still do - how gorgeous the longer, browner stone was when I picked it up because it had a single hole worn halfway through it, repeated drips in exactly the same place for years into the sandstone.  It could be from Turkey Run State Park or the Isle of Aran for all I remember at this point, but I wouldn't give it up for its weight in gold.

In that same mug - more on the mug in a moment - are the pecuniary remnants of my memories.  There are bimetallic coins from Italy, a last token from Aladdin's Castle (the second video game arcade that I remember), a golden penny from one of my many labs, a heptagonal 20pence piece from the UK, Deutsch marks, liras, pounds, French francs, US half dollars, a steel penny, a silver dime, coins from countries I've not visited and whose names I can't make out in the native language on them, even a penny slug.

They've all come to me in various ways - from our Pasta for Pennies campaign, in pocket change while I was in the nation, as a chance to play a few more games of Dragon's Lair, transformed by me from copper to 'gold', but they're all mine, and once every couple of years, I get them out and look through them.

They're mine..they matter.

As does the cup that that they're in...because it's my dad's.

Well, it was his anyway.  It was - I think I have this right - presented to him by his 1979 swim team.  I would've been three at the time and probably had been around the pool - which would've been the junior high pool back then, and he would've had another five years coaching before he hung up the whistle.

I can't imagine my students ever giving me a stein - a book or two, sure, but not a pewter stein.  I don't care about the mug because of itself but rather because it reminds me that I come from a pretty good teacher.

All in all, the mug and its contents matter to me.

Fluer of Sco-land...

Just Chewin' the Fat today, boys and girls...





















I do love the Scottish accent.

Today's culinary treat

In honor of this past Sunday's Burns Night, I offer up today's culinary treat: a recipe for haggis. (Crimson: You may want to steer clear as this is a dish for those with carnivorous habits only.) This is a necessity since it's been illegal to import a proper haggis to the US for the last twenty years.

It's been almost exactly fourteen years since I had my at my lone Burns Night supper in Aberdeen, but I do remember enjoying it quite a bit. The mashed tatties were tasty, as well, though the neeps weren't quite in my taste range.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn,
they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve,
Are bent lyke drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
"Bethankit!" 'hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him ower his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro' bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer,
Gie her a haggis!

And, in case you're in need of a translation...