Campbeltown and Kintyre

A lovely ride past Loch Lomond, through the hills, down to picturesque Inveraray, and on to the end of the Kintyre peninsula. The purpose--a family history pilgrimage. The landscape is high, stark and beautiful, with the sea visible everywhere and thousands of sheep dotting the landscape. I wondered why people would leave such a beautiful place, but if you're starving (thanks to poor agricultural practices and the Duke of Argyll), Canada looks good, despite the mosquitos, hot summers, and other negatives. We found the cemetery and the marker, the farm, and probably the church. The religious wars in Campbeltown were complicated, making it more difficult to be certain about the church. The Heritage Center was closed until later in the spring, as were some other attractions.

In addition to family roots, Campbeltown is home to the Springbank distillery, the only whisky manufacturer remaining out of 30 in operation in 1900. It is really good stuff, too--light but rich and smooth, with just a hint of peat and smoke.

We stayed in the Dellwood Hotel, a small two star that turned out to be on the border of the farm we sought. It came complete with a six toed cat, well-cooked plain meals (including the gargantuan Scottish breakfast--kippers available upon request) and a very comfortable(heated)room. Heat is good.

St. Andrews

St. Andrews, in Fife, is a beautiful and ancient university town. With monuments such as the castle, with a mine and counter-mine used to ward off 15th century attackers, and the remains of a massive cathedral, and the golf links, object of many golf pilgrimages, St. Andrews is a grand day out. Joe High School, sprung for the day from Dalkeith High, climbed the tower, crawled through the mine, and got thoroughly chilled. OLGS and I wandered through the town, visiting a lovely used bookstore, having tea in a Christian tea room with plenty of tracts, and hearing the St. Salvator Chapel choir practicing.

The university students in the choir wear the red academic robes of St. Andrews--most other students we saw did not. Anyone know why? The chapel has a famous organ--one of two modern Austrian organs in the UK. Just wish I could have heard more of it--the bits we heard were from the choir practicing some romantic piece with lots of harmonium--hardly a workout.

The wind blowing off the North Sea is cold. But the sun was shining, an added benefit after the cold and damp of Dalkeith.

Sheep

There are allegedly nearly 15,000 sheep producers in Scotland. Most of the animals become mutton or lamb, with a few being kept for their wool. The wool, now generally made into high-end textiles, used to supply the world. But China and other countries now top the charts in wool production.

In addition to wool and meat, sheep have a valuable role to play in the tourist industry. These lovelies, for example, live on the lawn at Dalkeith House, keeping the grass down and providing hours of family fun for the Yanks who temporarily live here. The lambs are very cute, at first barely able to stand but already eating grass. Both mums and babes watch the student volleyball games with a critical eye.

Mind the queue

Even though the Scots are fiercely nationalist, and fly the Scottsh Saltier, rather than the Union Jack, almost everywhere, a few things adopted from the Brits persist. The queue is one of these.

Example: waiting for the bus during rush hour on Princes Street in Edinburgh. On one long block are three separate bus stops. Once the correct bus stop is found, join the correct queue. How people know which bus will arrive next, and thus which queue to join, is beyond me. So OLGS and I stood side by side, trying to read the numbers on the oncoming buses. The standing side by side, rather than in line, clearly troubled a lady standing behind me. She kept motioning OLGS to move ahead. She then spoke to me, in an impenetrable Scots accent. I think she was talking about the queue. Fortunately, the number 86 A (Dalkeith via the Royal Infirmary) finally pulled up.

BTW, the bus does not open the doors before it reaches the beginning of the queue. So don't even think about it.

Dalkeith High School

Joe High School began life as a student at Dalkeith High School on Monday. DHS is in a new building, the result of a controversial partnership between the local Catholic high school--which is state supported in Scotland--and the state run non-demominational high school. The religious wars are still very close to the surface here--on his first day, Joe was urged by one of his mates at the non-demominational side of the school to enter the Catholic side and give a Hitler salute. He declined to be a pawn in their ongoing game....

He wears a uniform of sorts--black sweater with the school name, black pants, and a white shirt. Today he rebelled and wore a striped shirt. We'll see whether the fashion police get him....

There is no homework, partly because the teachers don't want the books to go home....

Dalkieth

When you think about it, a jump from Minneapolis to Dalkeith, Scotland, is a journey both in miles and in time. Nothing in Minneapolis is much older than the US Civil War, and there's very little of that about. The palace in Dalkeith, Scotland, where Joe High School, OLGS, and I are now installed, is built on the foundations of a 12th-13th century castle. But it's not just the age of the structures that differs. It's an attitude about how one should live that appears foreign, even though the house is equipped with wi-fi, and KLM will deliver the missing luggage to the front door. The issue of resources, especially heat and electricity, is a big one in this house, with warnings everywhere to turn out lights, turn off the space heaters (don't ask), and guard against the insidious dripping of faucets.

Americans live in a land of seemingly inexhaustible resources, with cheap access to almost everything. There are cheap meals, cheap gas, large cars, cheap housing, and a throw-away attitude about all of these things. In the rest of the world, most middle class people do not live in large detached houses with three car garages. It's incomprehensible to most peoploe that they could, or should live like that. And the Brits, while certainly immersed in the modern world, still exhibit a slight WWII rationing mentality. Hence the notion that there is a cost, however, slight, to using heat, eletctricity, etc. We could probably use a little bit of that.

On to Istanbul

For those of you who don't have the intestinal fortitude to read this entire blog, a glossary: OLGS stands for "Oldest Living Graduate Student". His books, his professorship, and the respect of his colleagues world wide (or at least in the UK and Israel) matter less on the domestic front. I'm waiting for the empty wine bottle with the dripping candle. And I still love the guy.

Anyway, OLGS is at it again--he's now off to Turkey. Clearly, he's trying to get in all the travel he knows will bother me before I show up in Scotland. A PhD is actually worth something.....the man is smart.

And the US State Department--the same guys who brought you weapons of mass desctruction--have declared Turkey safe, or at least not a place to avoid. Why don't I take more comfort in that?

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Israel: tourism no matter what....

OLGS went to Israel. I talked him out of it last summer, when things were pretty bad, but once he was in Scotland, and out of my clutches, he answered the call of Hebrew University to do a book talk. Based on the reports, the book talk took about an hour. The rest of the time he spent being a tourist.

We forget, amid the Middle East disaster the US has helped create, that there is a thriving tourist industry in Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, and other places. Interestingly, a lot of the tourists are evangelical Christians, following the Bible through archaelogy.

OLGS visited sites featuring King Herod, a hero to left wing Israelis. He floated in the Dead Sea. And he made a new friend.

Swimming Sectionals

Joe High School is off to the second round of Twin Cities section swim meet, the purpose of which is to identify the swimmers who will proceed to the state meet. Joe will not make it to state--there are several powerhouse swimmers from Cretin-Durham Hall, a few from St. Paul Sibley, and a couple from Southwest. But he acquitted himself well--coming in 5th in the 500 yard freestyle, and 9th in the 200 yard freestyle, placement that qualifies him for the second round. And in both, he swam his personal best--at 5:26:83 in the 500 free, and a 2:02:xx in the 200.

I never thought that I would become one of these obsessive parents who cares about 100ths of a second. But he is pleased, although, as always, he said, "I could have gone faster." I no longer ask him why he didn't--it adds nothing.

Cold enough for ya?

Finally--a Minnesota winter day. The temp is stuck well below zero, the weather guys on the radio are orgasmic about having something interesting to report, and that wonderful sense of Minnesota virtue is present everywhere. I got Joe High School to wear his puffy down jacket--otherwise an indicator of total suburban geekdom, and not cool. I can have meaningful conversations with neighbors: "Your heating bill was HOW much?" I can think idly about plugging up the draft under the doors with a throw rug. Even the old tom cat doesn't want to venture out except for his most immediate needs.

I grew up in a place that wasn't terribly cold, but did have lots of snow. While the words are different, the song remains the same. My conversations with my elderly parents in that far-away place usually begin with the weather report. "You got HOW much snow? 15 inches? Wow!" I member the snows of my youth--Six foot piles at the end of the driveways, perfect for constructing dug-out snow forts. On very cold days--15 or 20 degrees (nothing to a Minnesotan) girls would be allowed to wear pants under their dresses, receiving extra time before school actually started to take them off.

I can tell I'm approaching geezerdom. Why does everyone love to talk about the weather? Is it because we can't control it? Or are we genetically wired to be concerned about it?

Minnesota motto: It's too cold to snow.

Scottish swans--apparently not royal

Why don't we have the president's swans? It would a lot better than other things the current prexy and his gang have given us. Or maybe we should bite the bullet and have a constitutional monarch. Then there would be some limitations on what the leader of the free world could do.

Back to the royal swans. Apparently the queen does not have jurisdiction over Scottish swans, but only those in England and Wales. Click on the title of this post for some arcane info. about royal swans.

Feline victories

Life is made up of small victories. I now have one of these in the cat medication department. After months of trying to give our elderly female cat thyroid pills, and failing, I found a solution. Literally. The solution is to have the medication ground up in a fish paste solution, and then drip it carefully--not too much--on each cat kibble piece. This sounds tedious, but it's significantly better than the previous efforts.

These efforts involved trying to get her to swallow the pill. Let's just say that for an indoor cat she has very sharp claws. Then we tried grinding up the pill ourselves and hiding the pill dust in cream, ice cream, chicken soup, anything. She would eat the delicacies, and leave the pill crumbs. Then I tried giving her the fish paste by itself, heating it up a little to release the irresitable eau de haddock. She would look at me and laugh, in her funny cat way. She's smart, for an old broad.

The fish paste mechanism costs $60 a bottle, and she will go through a bottle a month for what I hope is a long life. The vet warned us, menacingly, that if we didn't do something, she would die. And indeed, she was down to about five pouds, with a ratty looking coat. Now she's sleek, and while not precisely fat, she no longer looks like a cartoon alley cat.

It's worth it. She's a good cat. And, I'd probably do something foolish with that extra $60 a month, anyway.

Wisconsin in Scotland--Students Arrive

Apparently the pub directly outside the manor house in Dalkeith has a banner, Welcome University of Wisconsin Students, flying proudly out front. Conveniently located, the pub allows students to stumble home in about 100 yards. You can take the students out of Wisconsin, but you can't take Wisconsin out of the students....they drink wherever they are. The first official event for them was a one hour lecture on responsible drinking. All faculty were also required to attend....

Scotland Forever

Students arriving at Dalkeith are greeted by a piper. I suspect Scotland has raised more money from the tourism/piper industry than it ever did from coal or oil. But bigger even than the pipes is the Scots diaspora--from the 18th century on, an overwhelming number of people left Scotland for greener pastures (actually, any pastures), in Canada, the United States, and Australia. Scratch almost anyone in these places, and you'll find a displaced Scot. So maybe the students have a genetic thrill to the sound of the pipes.

Bush comes to Minneapolis

As part of his initiative for American competition, Bush showed up in front of a hand-picked audience of 3M employees yesterday. He said nothing, promised nothing, but had his piacture taken with the well-scrubbed, nice looking 3M types, several of whom were black. That boy never misses an opportunity to pander to almost anyone. That's why he's so popular with the hard right types--the plutocrats clear their throats, and GW bends over. It's kind of like a wind up toy--they cough, he bends....