Category Archives: folklore and ethnography

Beam me over Scottie!

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Jack’s weekly guest blog

Here I go again, a Scots-born American by choice, off to visit the Old Country for a month.

Regular readers will know that I came to live in the US some 11 years past and became a citizen in May 2012. Over here everyone thinks of me as a ‘Furriner’ with an accent so strange I’d have needed an interpreter had my bid for Town Council been successful- not that anyone here has an accent ;0). They also tell odd stories about me not saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

And yet, annually as I go over to my country of birth every year to conduct a small group of folk around Scotland, things have shifted more with each passing year. When I first started doing the tours it definitely felt like going ‘home’ but now it’s much more equivocal – where exactly is ‘home’?

ginnie 2Here in Big Stone Gap I now feel very much at home, and comfortable. The surrounding hills (they call them mountains here, sweet people) remind me of Scotland and the locals have so much Scots blood in their veins that I have no difficulty relating to them. Indeed, these American friends have become the foundation of my life now!

And yet – when I do go back to Scotia/Caledonia/Alba/Scotland/Ecosse it’s rather like boarding a time machine, as I consciously re-calibrate my vocabulary and grammar now that I understand (most of) the differences between American English, British English, and Scots.

So I’m beginning to think, now, of what it is that might actually feel like home to me? Is it a place that shares my politics? Ha! None do. Culture? But I like everybody’s music, dancing and food. It’s not religion, if  ‘good Christian values’ are defended by lying about others – oh no, thank you. I’m tempted to say that living rural does it, but I have very good friends and some truly great memories tucked away in cities.

So, what?

Maybe it’s a combination of the world being a much more connected place now, and me getting older (and wiser?). What got me on this track was a conversation Wendy and I had last night. She will join me in Scotland for a week after this year’s tour finishes and we were talking about old friends we’d want to visit. I found myself looking at this through her eyes and thinking, “Does she feel at home in both places, Scotland and here? Or does  she think of going back to Scotland as a holiday, rather than revisiting our first home?”

So I asked her, and she gave me an enigmatic look. “You’re asking where home is? Honey, human hearts don’t beat with accents. Home is you and me, together.”

Well, yes.WENDY&CAT2

OK, That was FUN!

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DSCN0400Nothing clears the air like a good murder. So we had one last night at the bookstore–although I thought I might have to kill someone before it began.

It started badly: the victim (a secret to the rest of the participants) hadn’t gotten his character information, nor asked us to send it again. He arrived knowing nothing of what he was to do in his complex role.

The girl detective and her mom were detained by a few road adventures and pulled in ten minutes after start time – but we hadn’t started because another character with a big important part thought it was Saturday night, as he explained when my husband called him to ask, “Dude, WTH ARE YOU?”

In the midst of it all, Our Good Chef Kelley hauled me into the kitchen with a crestfallen look on her face. One of the desserts she’d made for the killing had failed – and the plot needed all three.

So Jack raced to Food City to buy a cake while the rest of us did some impromptu introductory activities waiting on the last character, and the victim locked himself in the bathroom to read through his part.

DSCN0402And then it all just came together. One woman used a fake French accent, and the first time she turned “Li’l Bubba” (the victim’s nickname) into “Leetil Boo-Boo” the group fell out laughing. The girl detective had to outline the body, and as she rounded his bum, the victim said, “Hey, that tickles!” Chalk and guffaws flew everywhere.

There were insider jokes (How many Mullinses does it take to change a light bulb?) as Garden Club President Lady Smythe was exposed as a fake from Bold Camp (uhhh, sorry, but Bold Camp is just too hard to explain if you don’t live here) and Guy Smiley’s oration from GOD BLESS THE CROOKED ROAD OF AMERICA was funnier each time he re-started it. (So was the aging ingenue’s audition line, “I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies.” Her husband in real life is an OB-GYN.)

And there were obvious jokes. Annie DoGood, chief protestor, held up a sign demanding “Reusable sanitary napkins” just as everyone was tucking into their dessert jellies. You never saw so many spoons hit the table at once. (But she had others. “Equal rights for cows” during the cheesecakes was generally acclaimed as the crowd favorite.) And then the rival chefs–Kellie Piercing of Third Time’s the Charm Cafe versus Lisa Cupcake of Gerry’s Deli: serving Big Crooked Road for forty years–bonded over a turkey baster.

DSCN0405At least, we think it was turkey baster….

The gang sorted Bulgarian prefab chocolate sauce from Bavarian chocolate sauce, and the poisoner got caught– except there were two poisoners working independently, and oh, who cares, it was ever so much fun!

Besides our terror that the whole thing was falling apart at the opening, some of the characters had arrived in full stress mode. One had a nasty altercation with her daughter’s coach. Another has such a high-powered job, a stress-less day would signal a coup d’etat. A third has been dealing with the terrible illness of a loved one.

So it’s true what I always say: nothing beats stress like a good murder. And last night’s was a real hoot. Just ask Leetil Boo-Boo.DSCN0403