On the Streets of Glasgow

The Glasgow Underground
Called the Clockwork Orange by the locals after its characteristic orange cars.

A small and simple system that basically circles the center of the city with trains going travelling both clockwise and counterclockwise. Combined with an extensive light rail network and frequent buses, The Orange greatly reduces the need for cars in the city. Many Glaswegians never use anything else.

St. Vincent Street (I think, though I'm probably wrong) going east.

Glasgow has many buildings made of the warm toned stone pictured here. Whole districts, like the area around the University, Hillhead, Kelvingrove and other parts of west Glasgow, were built almost exclusively from this stone. The city feels all of a piece as a result.

The Duke of Wellington as well willingly participates in the Scottish obsession with rearranging traffic cones for artistic purposes.

The residential areas are full of little nicks and crannies like this one in the Hillhead district of west Glasgow. The cats tend toward the large and many are black with white markings. Very friendly as well, in that open Scottish way

Busker on the street near Glasgow University

A working, living city encourages street performance as a way of humanizing urban space. Most American cities try to 'regulate' or even forbid street performers.

'Nuff said

Buchanan (pr. buckkannon) Street The main shopping district of Glasgow
Every fancy shopping experience you would want.

Happy Birthday

A busy day in the birthday icono-pantheon

Tim Burton (1958- )

Filmmaker

AAACK! AAACK!

Elvis Costello (1954 - )
Musician, Poet, Raconteur

A serious man in a frivilous business

Sir Sean Connery (1930- )
Actor
Advocate for Scottish Independence

Star of my two favorite romance pictures for guys,
Robin and Marian and The Wind And the Lion
Made me cry. What a guy. And I did.

"The name's Bond, James Bond."

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

Composer, Conductor, Educator

His Young People's Concerts Sunday mornings on CBS introduced this small town Indian boy to the joys of classical music for which he has my undying gratitude.

A Foolish Consistency.....

via Billmon at Whiskey Bar:

"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu" . . . "We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm's way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies."

Editor & Publisher
American Legion Declares War on Protestors
August 24, 2005

(via Atrios)

______________________

Dear Mr. President:

The American Legion, a wartime veterans organization of nearly three-million members, urges the immediate withdrawal of American troops participating in "Operation Allied Force.''

The National Executive Committee of The American Legion, meeting in Indianapolis today, adopted Resolution 44, titled "The American Legion's Statement on Yugoslavia.'' This resolution was debated and adopted unanimously.

Mr. President, the United States Armed Forces should never be committed to wartime operations unless the following conditions are fulfilled:

• That there be a clear statement by the President of why it is in our vital national interests to be engaged in hostilities;

• Guidelines be established for the mission, including a clear exit strategy;

• That there be support of the mission by the U.S. Congress and the American people; and

• That it be made clear that U.S. Forces will be commanded only by U.S. officers whom we acknowledge are superior military leaders.

It is the opinion of The American Legion, which I am sure is shared by the majority of Americans, that three of the above listed conditions have not been met in the current joint operation with NATO ("Operation Allied Force'').

In no case should America commit its Armed Forces in the absence of clearly defined objectives agreed upon by the U.S. Congress in accordance with Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution of the United States.

Sincerely,
Harold L. "Butch'' Miller,
National Commander

American Legion
Letter to President Clinton
May 5, 1999

Our Dear Leader is a manly man and thanks to his tragically abbreviated time in the Alabama Air National Guard, understands what veterans of foreign wars have gone through during their heroic service to their country. But, since Clinton had never been in combat and therefore had never experienced just what it means to be under fire, all military decisions he made were by their very nature suspect.

Happy Birthday

Durward Kirby (1912-2000)
Professional Second Banana

Versatile TV funnyman Durward Kirby for years played second banana on "The Garry Moore Show" Kirby could be sketch actor, singer, dancer and, with ease, switch from slapstick to suave sales pitches for a sponsor's product.

He became so well-known to TV viewers that the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons had a plotline about the search for "Kirward Derby," which could make its wearer the smartest man in the world.

A Favorite Place

Well, Lass, I got to Loch Lomond afore Ye.....



By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond
Where me and my true love were ever wont to gae,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

Chorus

O ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road,
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.
But me and my true love will never meet again,
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.

‘Twas there that we parted in yon shady glen,
On the steep, steep side o’ Ben Lomond.
Where in deep purple hue, the hieland hills we view,
And the moon comin’ out in the gloamin’.

The wee birdies sing and the wild flowers spring,
And in sunshine the waters are sleeping:
But the broken heart, it kens nae second spring again,
Tho’ the waefu’ may cease from their greeting.

Poem of the Day

Night Mail by WH Auden

I
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.

II
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.

III
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

IV
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:

Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Clone of handdrummer

One of the interesting joys of Scotland was seeing many people of my general phenotype in great abundance on the streets and in the shops. Due to our culture of many immigrants from many places, it isn't often in the US that we see ourselves reflected in those around us. That said, this particular fellow was carrying it to an extreme. I mean really. I had to check in a mirror later to make sure I hadn't beeen magically bodyshifted or something.

Poem of the Day

Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg by William Wordsworth


. When first, descending from the moorlands,
I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide
Along a bare and open valley,
The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.
When last along its banks I wandered,
Through groves that had begun to shed
Their golden leaves upon the pathways,
My steps the Border-minstrel led.
The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,
'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;
And death upon the braes of Yarrow,
Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes:

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,
From sign to sign, its stedfast course,
Since every mortal power of Coleridge
Was frozen at its marvellous source;

The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,
The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:
And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,
Or waves that own no curbing hand,
How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!

Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,
"Who next will drop and disappear?"

Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,
Like London with its own black wreath,
On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking,
I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.

As if but yesterday departed,
Thou too art gone before; but why,
O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,
Should frail survivors heave a sigh?

Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,
Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;
For Her who, ere her summer faded,
Has sunk into a breathless sleep.

No more of old romantic sorrows,
For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid!
With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,
And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.

Cartoon of the Day

Happy Birthday

Barbara Eden (1934- )
Actress

My longest held crush

Poem of the Day

Caledonia by James Hogg

Caledonia! thou land of the mountain and rock,
Of the ocean, the mist, and the wind-
Thou land of the torrent, the pine, and the oak,
Of the roebuck, the hart, and the hind;
Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens,
Though bleak thy dun islands appear,
Yet kind are the hearts, and undaunted the clans,
That roam on these mountains so drear!

A foe from abroad, or a tyrant at home,
Could never thy ardour restrain;
The marshall'd array of imperial Rome
Essay'd thy proud spirit in vain!
Firm seat of religion, of valour, of truth,
Of genius unshackled and free,
The muses have left all the vales of the south,
My loved Caledonia, for thee!

Sweet land of the bay and wild-winding deeps
Where loveliness slumbers at even,
While far in the depth of the blue water sleeps
A calm little motionless heaven!
Thou land of the valley, the moor, and the hill,
Of the storm and the proud rolling wave-
Yes, thou art the land of fair liberty still,
And the land of my forefathers' grave!

Hume Reconsidered

A statue of David Hume participates in that peculiar Scottish art form,
the repositioning of traffic cone.


A joke making the rounds of the Scottish Worldcon last week:

Three philosophers on a train journey in the lowlands of Scotland notice a cow through the train window.
The first, a famous Chinese philosopher, says, "Note that the cow is black. This allows us to observe that all cows in Scotland are part of the eternal dichotomy between black and white, good and evil and that all cows partake equally from this balance."
The second, a renowned German philosopher, replies, "Nonsense. All that we may say is that at this particular time on this particular train looking out this particular window at this particular cow is that it is particularly black."
The third man, a most important Scottish philosopher, responds, " I am sorry, but ye both are wrong. All that we may say with any certainty from this observation is that the cow is black on this side."

Truly the essence of the Scottish philosophical tradition.

Happy Birthday

Ray Bradbury
Author, Fan, Poet, Screenwriter
And a gentle and wonderful human being

A Favorite Place

Fleshmarket Close, Edinburgh

Tea Time in Glasgow

The Mackintosh Tea Room
Glasgow, Scotland

With an interior designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Tea Room is a superbly civilized place to take a break from the slog of sightseeing and over- indulgence in vivid cultural phenomena. Sadly, with prices in the stratasphere, it is also a place I could only afford once during my 10 days in Scotland. Well worth the 25 quid, though. Once.

A Favorite Place

Another photo of the kirk in Ettrick.
Taken this trip.

Ettrick is about as remote as one could get in southern Scotland. 45 miles due south from Edinburgh, 5 or 6 miles away from the next nearest village, my family left in 1675 when our smallholding was enclosed by the local laird.

Happy Birthday

Aubrey Beardsley

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (August 21, 1872 – March 16, 1898) was an influential English artist, illustrator, and author. He was born in Brighton, England.

Beardsley was aligned with the Yellow Book coterie of artists and writers, and produced many illustrations for the magazine. He was also closely aligned with Aestheticism, the British counterpart to Decadence and Symbolism.

Most of his images are done in ink, and feature large dark areas contrasted with large blank ones, and areas of fine detail contrasted with areas with none at all.

Aubrey Beardsley was the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau era, renowned for his dark and perverse images and the grotesque erotica, which themes he explored in his later work. His most famous erotic illustrations were on themes of history and mythology, including his illustrations for Lysistrata and Salome.

Beardsley was a close friend of Oscar Wilde and illustrated his play Salomé in 1893 for its French release, it was release in English the following year. He also produced extensive illustrations for books and magazines (e.g. for a deluxe edition of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur) and worked for magazines like The Savoy and The Studio. Beardsley also wrote Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale based loosely on the legend of Tannhäuser.

Beardsley was also a caricaturist and even did some political cartoons, mirroring Wilde's irreverant wit in art. Beardsley's work reflected the decadence of his era and his influence was enormous, clearly visible in the work of the French Symbolists, the Poster Art Movement of the 1890s and the work of many later-period Art Nouveau artists like Pape, Mucha and Clarke.

The Peacock Skirt

Beardsley was a public character as well as a private eccentric. He said, "I have one aim — the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair."

Beardsley died of tuberculosis in Menton, France at the age of 25, working right up to the end.

]

Poem of the Day

Scots Wha Hae by Robert Burns

Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your gory bed
Or to victorie!
Now's the day, and now's the hour:
See the front o' battle lour,
See approach proud Edward's power---
Chains and slaverie!

Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward's grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?---
Let him turn, and flee!
Wha for Scotland's King and Law
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Freeman stand, or Freeman fa',
Let him follow me!

By Oppression's woes and pains,
By your sons in servile chains,
We will drain your dearest veins,
But they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!---
Let us do, or die!

Hell Is Other Customers

Those of us who have done our time in the retail mine will find much to agree with in this savage little muttering from the NYT Book Review. And the rest of you would do well to ponder as you laugh. Are you the guy with the cell phone yakking away in the meditation book aisle or the amoeba-like creature flowing across the row and stopping me from reaching the poetry shelf? If so, cut it the hell out, or I will take action. You have been warned! [;>)>

from NYT via ksm:

Hell Is Other Customers
By CHARLES TAYLOR
Published: August 21, 2005

WHEN did bookstores turn into flophouses? Just try to navigate the aisles of any of the big-chain booksellers on a weekend afternoon, or a weekday evening for that matter, and you're apt to feel like Vivien Leigh in that famous shot from ''Gone With the Wind'' as she attempts to get through the streets of Atlanta, which are choked with the sprawling bodies of the Confederate wounded.

The bodies at Barnes & Noble or Borders aren't wounded, but they're so immobile they might as well be. Finding an aisle not littered with outstretched legs, or a bookcase without someone leaning back against it and blocking the bottom three shelves, is like trying to step back for a good gander at the art in the Guggenheim. The chain bookstores have been designed to accommodate lots of people, and to make each one comfortable for hours. That's precisely the problem.

The new-style ''mega'' complexes in which the shopping mall meets the community arts center have bred a new bookstore culture where it's virtually impossible to do the thing that used to lure most of us to bookstores: browse.

It's not just books on sale anymore -- it's CD's, DVD's, greeting cards, stationery, sundry gifts, coffee and baked goods, and very likely health and beauty aids or tires in the not-too-distant future. More products means more to advertise. Trying to browse or, for the really hearty, trying to actually read is to enter an endurance contest in which your ability to concentrate is pitted against whatever new CD the chain is pushing. Is that new novel worth the 25 bucks the publisher is asking? Which travel guide best provides the information you'll need on your vacation? You'd like to find out, but who can tell while ''Kristin Chenoweth and Bryn Terfel Do It to Frank Loesser'' is blasting in your ears?

If music isn't playing, that's likely because the store is sponsoring a reading, amplified of course. Instead of browsing to music, you find yourself listening to the live sounds of the volubly disaffected cheering Chuck Palahniuk as he reads from ''Conniption: A Fit,'' or agreeing in righteous indignation as Nancy Grace declaims from ''String 'Em Up!''

These, though, are mere distractions. The essential Sartrean lesson that modern bookstore shopping teaches us is this: Hell is other people.

The comfy chairs Barnes & Noble and Borders have placed around their stores, objects that daily inspire the equivalent of the Oklahoma land grab, are limited in number. Therefore, aisles and floors become the designated drop zones. The unlucky chairless sprawl against the shelves or between them. Often it's impossible to stand within three feet of these living obstacles since, arrayed around them, they have their cellphones, their Blackberrys, their coffee, 10 or 12 books they've pulled from the shelves (whether or not there are other copies of a particular title and whether or not they are looking at those titles), and frequently there are accompanying boyfriends or girlfriends with the same accouterments splayed around them."more

Returned from Scotland

The kirk in Ettrick, my family's home village.
(about 45 miles south of Edinburgh)
(obviously taken on a previous visit)

Home at last!

I have successfully flown back across the Atlantic.
(After being bumped twice in Detroit and having to stay overnight Wednesday)


jetlagus extremus

More later.