Category Archives: Scotland

Always Look on the Bright Side – – –

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Jack scrapes in under the wire as he does – occasionally – – –
I’m involved in a couple of interesting projects right now – one is a video documentary of my life by my friend Dirk who engineers my weekly radio show ‘Celtic Clanjamphry’. The other is helping an older friend with his attempt to chronicle the early days of the Scottish folk revival in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Being of a certain age, now myself, there’s a good deal of poignancy as well as pleasure in recalling many happy memories of other friends, some of whom are no longer with us.
One of those is the wonderful singer Gordeanna McCulloch who was laid to rest just this morning in her beloved Glasgow.
gordeanna

Gordeanna with Wendy at our wedding. She let us use the pic for a story and song cassette.

She was one of the guests at our wedding twenty years ago in Auchtermuchty, and sang during the ceremony as part of the group ‘Palaver’. Another member of that group was Maureen Jelks who also sadly died recently. Others who were there and are no longer with us include John Watt and Duncan Williamson. When I first got interested in folk songs, John was my guide and mentor, while Duncan, a wonderful traveller storyteller and singer, became a close friend to us towards the end of his life. Also present then but now included in the ‘departed list’ are Mike Ward, who was a member of my old group ‘Heritage’ and Davy Lockhart, fiddle player with the group from the very beginning.
Despite this sad list, there are good reasons not to be gloomy, as many are still around and keeping in contact through the wonders of the internet. Another member of ‘Palaver’ was Aileen Carr, who kindly lent her gorgeous old house for our wedding and reception, and Davy’s wife Jean who handled the catering, my Best Man George Haig who still continues to amaze with his expertise on the autoharp, Colin who took many of the photographs (including the one of Wendy and Gordeanna, and drives the bus on my annual group tour of Scotland). And let us not forget the incredible Donna Marie, “Haint Mistress” of Abingdon, Virginia, who was Wendy’s Maid of Honor and had a grand adventure.
So, despite being well past the allotted ‘three score and ten’ (sounds like a song – and it is!) I continue to make new friends and take part in new adventures. That might explain why I remain in good health myself – much to Wendy’s relieved surprise!
Here’s to old friends and new, to memories and to new adventures –
Here’s tae us, wha’s like us – – – damn few, an’ there’s some o them deid.

To See Your Husband Honored

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lockerbieLast week Jack and I went to catch the final performance of The Women of Lockerbie by Deborah Brevoort. Central High School’s One Act team selected the play this year as their performance piece. Jan Thompson and Elaine Sheldon, director and choreographer, called in Jack to coach the team on Scots dialect and word choices.

Normally high school directors will let dialect go, Jan says, but since Jack was around….

It was love at first sight, between Jack and the students. The play is intense, set seven years after the crash when the investigations and recriminations are over, but the women in Lockerbie still find their lives in pieces from the trauma of that time. The women describe in graphic detail picking up body parts, seeing the sky on fire, having nowhere to put the grief of Americans who come seeking solace, or their own blame for America shooting down the Iranian airliner that led to Lockerbie as revenge.

The play is based on the true story of Lockerbie’s women petitioning to have 11,000 pieces of clothing, gathered from the crash sites and investigations, turned over to them to launder and return to the families of those on the flight. Families who never received bodies, because of the nature of the bomb and crash. They wanted to bring closure to a terrible time, but they also wanted to bring healing, mother to mother, woman to woman.

That part of the play, subtle though it might have been, was not lost on the high school students. Each time the play ended, the actors were still crying. The terrible sense of loss it carries, the recognition that we are sharing a world where we might have to suffer bad things because of others’ decisions, and the bittersweet win of the women being given the clothes of the crash victims, these are heavy things. The kids carried them so well.

What people may not recognize, unless they’re married to someone from Somewhere Else, is how much everyday life revolves around not bringing up the differences between life Here and There. Or the ways in which nationalities (or nationalism) divide us.

The affirmation of the high school students to my husband, shrieking and clapping and yelling his name, each time he was recognized as their dialogue coach, heals what others have said: he was a dirty foreigner who wouldn’t say the pledge of allegiance; he didn’t deserve to vote, let alone run for office; he didn’t have to pay taxes because he was using foreign money laundering. Silly stuff in a hatemongering world. Small politics we dismissed from our minds. Emphasis on small.

But these kids, they embraced Jack as they embraced a play about world sadnesses and cracks in the walls of our defenses, airplanes that fly over them, feelings that one cannot find a way to wash away. Except by affirming kindness.

I loved seeing Jack honored by the younger generation, who don’t play the games the older ones might want to teach them. I am sorry for high school students in this era who are inheriting a nation divided, a cowardly new world to have such leaders in it, but I’m so proud of them for not letting hate have the last word.

It wasn’t just a play. It was an affirmation that the future has some bright spots–as well as some bright young minds–in it. Go forth and be kind, kids. The world needs what you’re bringing it.

lockerbie playAnd: thanks for making my husband feel good about what he contributed. He is a man of many gifts, and I’m so glad he got to use some of them with and for you.