Notes from a morning in Portland, Oregon, during which I continue to be perplexed about the fact that people make sporrans — Scottish manbags/kilt accessories — out of animal heads, after a visit to the Kilt and Thistle Shoppe in Salem. The next day at the Fresh Pot coffeehouse in Portland, I scroll down the […]
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Additional Badgers
Driving toward Salem, we seem to be heading straight into a rain cloud. It looms forbiddingly on the horizon. This Salem, an un-witchy one, is the capital of Oregon, home to a population of 140,000, a stately university campus and dozens of imposing government buildings. It also boasts an impressive tally of no less than […]
Learning Gaelic on a Texan Cat Ranch
“Let me tell you all the things that might put you off first,” says the email. Texas summer heat is not for the faint-hearted. Or for the easily burned. It is mostly triple digit temperatures and usually no rain to break the heat. This year is an inferno and we are having a drought.” This […]
Peacock’s Improved Double Dissection
I hop on a ferry to Navy Pier and head to the Chicago River. It’s time to experience another watery wonder of Chicago. As I stand in line with the hordes waiting by Michigan Avenue Bridge, Docent Rebecca Dixon smiles her way along the line, asking people where they’re from. She stops when she hears […]
The Ninth-Biggest Island in the World
By a coffee machine in a hotel in Chicago, I talk to a Hair Designer from Vegas. His hair rises in a four-inch-high, determinedly chestnut pompadour and he is wearing an inadvisably tight, sequin-studded sweatshirt that is remarkably similar to one I once unsuccessfully attempted to dress an unimpressed tabby in. The Hair Designer is […]
Who is the most awesome Scotswoman?
Ooh, look, it’s a poll! Vote now! [polldaddy poll=4913096]
No Knees in Memphis
At Memphis Scottish Festival, a large, boisterous man hustles me into a front row seat in what he tell me is “The History Tent.” I am alarmed to find myself equipped with a sheaf of lyrics to Jacobite love songs. I manage a tuneless drone along to “Over the Sea to Skye” and then start […]
Mosey on down to Kittrell, TN
At Memphis’ Scottish Festival, I get talking to a blonde woman in an olde stylee milkmaid type get up. She has the most Dukes of Hazzard accent I have yet heard in my time in Tennessee. I am delighted. I didn’t think accents like this were real. She asks me where I’m from. “Glasgow,” I […]
Eavesdropping in Memphis
Downtown Memphis is a half and half kind of place. Actually, three quarters and a quarter is more accurate. The majority of buildings is run down and ramshackle, while a select few are all slicked up for the tourists. A sign outside the Flying Fish instructs passers by to “Get Your Tails in Here” for […]
Plumbing in German
Berlin, Day 5 Some things are definitely harder in German. Such as simple domestic tasks. I discovered this today. After my attempts to assist with working the coffee machine resulted in both Adrian and I (and all surrounding walls, floors and kitchen appliances for 15 feet) being pelted with generous servings of boiling coffee grounds, […]
