Category Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

Time to Select Reverse

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Jack finally gets a Wednesday blog post up on time – – –

Back in the 1990s I was working as a middle manager in a local Scottish community college. I was head of construction crafts, and that department was fairly low in the pecking order. So I decided to find a focus for us that would boost our profile.

I had been interested in environmental topics for a while and did some research. That resulted in a series of projects funded by the EU and with partners all over Europe. The college senior management supported me and I traveled regularly from Belgium to Denmark and Germany and Italy and even eventually to Romania and Vietnam.

earth image

But I worried continually that I wasn’t always producing the educational outcomes that I had promised. It was many years later that I discovered that these were never the expected outcomes in the first place. It was always just about getting people from different countries and cultures to interact and talk to each other!

This brings me to the real point –

I discovered a few weeks ago that my hard-won US Citizenship can be arbitrarily taken from me at the drop of a hat and the whim of a faceless bureaucrat. This seems to mirror what’s going on in Britain right now as well. Not just there but all over the world there seems to be a resurgence of the fear of ‘the other’.

Of course I don’t expect to be deported any time soon. I’m not black or Hispanic. Not Mexican or Muslim. Not Catholic or Italian. Not Irish or Chinese. I’m a white guy from Scotland – – –

So come on folks. It’s time to put all this nonsense behind us. We inhabit a tiny dot in the universe and we need to look after each other – and that tiny dot too!

“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.” – Douglas Adams

 

There’s Ayewis Some’hin’

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Jack is very late this week with his Wednesday post – – –

Following the thorough disassembling, cleaning and rebuilding of our dishwasher yesterday I got to thinking of all the things we’ve done here since moving in just over a year ago.

The first job was to install a cat flap so our felines could access the fully enclosed porch. Then it was redecorating the library and guest room. Soon after was when we discovered Paul, everyone’s handyman and he created our extra parking area off the driveway. Then I constructed our fire pit in the back yard.

fire

Next was building the shed to house our riding mower –

shed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And then trimming the trees that were about to bring down our power line and telephone line.

branches

Replacing the washing machine was only thanks to good friends with muscle power!

Talking of friends reminds me that we’ve found many good ones here in Wytheville while managing to retain our existing ones in Big Stone Gap.

Two friends – one from near here and one from Big Stone – helped us replace our lovely Narnia style back yard lamp post recently.

lamp

Just before that we had two big trees taken down and another two trimmed back. They were all ominously close to either our house and garage or our neighbor’s.

I almost forgot the rebuilding of our antique and rotted benches –

bench

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mostly it’s been just us, but sometimes with help and occasionally with professionals.

The next job will be completely re-doing the bathroom – so definitely professionals!