Tag Archives: Ireland

Operation Trixie Flight

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It’s been on-again, off-again figuring out how to get the dog to Scotland. Her name is Trixie, and she is the princess that sounds like. She’s a pom who weighs 12.5 pounds, and she stands 14 inches high.

The United Kingdom doesn’t let people fly their pets in the cabin of a commercial airliner, aside from service dogs and active military. A lot of people go to Ireland, which is in the European Union, and then take the ferry across to the UK.

Only one airline flies dogs internationally to Dublin: KLM. Which is a Dutch airline, so globalization does actually appear to be saving the world after all. Go figger.

There are the requisite paperwork pieces that have to be filled out not only in triplicate but in a timely manner and in order. Microchip, rabies, tapeworm, health certificate, clearance to travel, within 10 days of travel. No pressure, kids.

Then there’s the fact that the average underseat clearance on a KLM aircraft is 11 inches. My friend Amelia and I went to Petco and held a lengthy consultation with our phones and Google search dogs-flying-to-Ireland before selecting a carrier that is exactly 6 centimeters too long for a perfect regulation match, but conforms in all other ways.

I’m throwing dog treats into the back of the carrier and we can just get Trixie in. It’s cramped, but it’s better than flying cargo. Nobody puts Trixie in steerage.

I hear that the “strict” regulation about dogs not being allowed out of their carriers at all, ever, not no way, nohow is entirely dependent on the flight attendants on your flight and the person sitting next to you, once you’re airborne.

So we shall see. I have visions of Trixie in a smart little coat and tam (Royal Stewart tartan, of course) prancing on the end of her lead along the boardwalk that runs past the North Sea. She will greet the neighbors graciously. Once we get here there.

I’m flying back from Scotland in October to fetch her; she’s staying September with her first mum. Fingers and paws crossed, everybody.

Here, There and Everywhere

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In time honored fashion Jack’s Wednesday guest blog post is a day late –

I continue to be somewhat amazed at how small the world has become, and it’s not just the number of people from far afield who visit our wee bookstore in rural Appalachia – even this week when it was snowing.

Just yesterday I had an email conversation with a gentleman in Rome, Italy called Massimo. It started first thing in the morning with a request for the words of a song I recorded with my old group Heritage on our second album back in the early 1980s. I was intrigued and in a subsequent message he explained he was a big fan and had spent years collecting all the available recordings that I and the group had made over the years. As of this morning there are two CDs he didn’t know about winging their way to him via the USPS and Poste Italiane!

A few weeks ago I was contacted by the presenter of a folk music show that airs on a radio station based in SW Scotland and we have begun to exchange programs. The ones I’m sending him are mostly digitized copies of cassettes that were made of a live show that I did back in the 1990s on a different (and now defunct) station in Scotland. But these cassettes were stored here at WETS which is the station where ‘Celtic Clanjamphry’ is based, because back then I sent them over to be re-broadcast here. So a show that originally went out live to rural Perthshire has gone through a series of different technologies, traveled the Atlantic twice and is being heard by listeners of Folk n’ Stuff over the internet in (among other places) Tallahassee where there are, apparently, a loyal group of fans!

Sticking with the radio theme, I had the great pleasure of interviewing a lovely Irishman called Liam at the WETS studios on Monday morning, who is a visiting professor at ETSU just now, and made a good friend in the process. We concentrated on two themes that are part of his research focus and will also be the subjects of presentations he will make here. One was the importance of the culture of small geographical areas and the other was the challenge of Brexit for Ireland (North and South).

On Tuesday Wendy and I had our guest blog post for the Birthplace of Country Music Museum published and that also has a transatlantic theme.

Follow the Ballad: From Scotland’s “Lord Gregory” to The Carter Family’s “The Storms Are on the Ocean”

Meanwhile I continue to fine tune the arrangements for my annual small group tour of Scotland at the end of June, which also entails a fair amount of international communication.

It’s all a mad gay whirl I tell you – – –