’22 A To Z Challenge – G

 

 

 

 

 

 

I dropped a bag of Scrabble tiles, and picked up seven of them at random.  They spelled out

GLUDDER

Is that a real word??
Not only is it a real word, it is a Scottish word.  Like the multiple meanings of Flag in the last A to Z post, my thrifty Scots ancestors wanted to get as much out of a word as possible.

The way to tell an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scotsman in a bar pub, is to serve them a drink with a fly in it.  The Englishman will push the drink away, and order another.  The Irishman will shrug, dip the fly out, and consume the drink.  The Scotsman will dip out the fly, give it a bit of a squeeze, and shout, “Come on, give it up, ya wee sot!”  Hell, he’d probably down the Englishman’s first, if he could get away with it.  Which drunkenly brings us to the many meanings of a word which sounds like it was coined after several drams of Glen Fiddich in the local.

If you are north of Hadrian’s Wall, the word Gludder can, and still does, mean
a glow of heat from the sun;
a bright and warm period of sunshine between rain showers;
the sound of a body falling into the mire;
to do dirty work or work in a dirty manner;
to swallow food in a slovenly or disgusting way.

Scotland has never been the entertainment and excitement capital of the world.  My Ancestors had to have something to do besides count all their sheep, because they kept dozing off.  They tried tossing large rocks across the frozen surface of ponds and rivers, and invented curling.  They practiced knocking smaller stones into gopher holes with their walking sticks, and invented golf, which is just flog, spelled backwards.  Some time before they were forced to go home to the Missus at closing time, they dreamed up words like gludder.  May the banks and braes forgive them.  😳

WOW #68

I once knew a man named Isbister.
Thank you for your concern and condolences.

He pronounced it izz-biss-tur.  His first name was Murray – a good Scottish name.  It’s where the word ‘Mondegreen’ comes from.

They’ve killed the Earl o’ Murray,
And laid ‘im on the green.

His last name might have been Czechoslovakian for all I knew.  There was a Scottish housewife in town, with a brogue as thick as a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, married to a Polack named Mackowski.

I recently heard spoken references to another Isbister, this one clearly a Scottish citizen, referred to by another Scot.  This time, the pronunciation was eyes-biss-tur.  The family name is locational, coming from a village named Isbister.

The speaker also referred to another village named Fladdabister.  The Scots do have a way with language and pronunciation.  I kid (Sure I do) that the Irish are hard drinkers.  With names like that, maybe my lot were giving them lessons.  I mean, Scotch whiskey didn’t just happen.

Two towns with the word

BISTER

in their names – what could it mean??

Bister is a pigment obtained by burning (waste) wool.  It is/was used in paint and ink.  Apparently the simultaneous oxidation of lanolin and keratin, produced a deep, permanent black, similar to India ink.  It is no surprise that it is linked to the sheep/wool industry.  Other than growing oats, raising James Bond, and stealing magic rocks back from the British Parliament, there’s not much else to do in Scotland.

Scotland the Brae!  It’s a great place to be from.  Now, don’t get your kilts in a knot.  😉

Irish Humor

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, you get a dose of Irish humor. It would have been posted on Saturday, the actual St. Paddy’s day, but I’m still a little green around the gills, and just recovering from a Guinness hangover.  😉

1. When the Irish say that St. Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland, what they don’t tell you is that he was the only one who saw any snakes!
2. His wife had been killed in an accident and the police were questioning Finnegan. “Did she say anything before she died?” asked the sergeant. “She spoke without interruption for about forty years,” said the Finnegan.
3. Pat and Kieran were getting ready to go on a camping trip. The first one said “I’m taking along a gallon of whiskey just in case of rattlesnake bites. What are you taking?” The other one said “Two rattlesnakes!”
4. Seamus do you understand French, I do if its spoken in Irish
5. Two farmers were driving their tractor down the middle of a country road. A car comes around the corner brakes hard to avoid them, skids, tumbles twice and lands in a field. Jimmy says to Eamonn, It’s just as well we got out of that field.
6. Two drunks coming home, stumbled up the country road in the dark. “Faith, Mike, we’ve stumbled into the graveyard and here’s the stone of a man lived to the age of 103!” “Glory be, Patrick and was it anybody we knew?” “No, ’twas someone named ‘Miles from Dublin’!”
7. Twas the Irish what invented the pipes, you know, and they gave them to the Scots as a joke. And you Scots haven’t gotten the joke yet!!”
8. One night I was chatting with my Mum about how she had changed as a mother from the first child to the last. She told me she had mellowed a lot over the years: “When your oldest sister coughed or sneezed, I called the ambulance. When your youngest brother swallowed a penny, I just told him it was coming out of his allowance.”
9. I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.
10. 42.7 Percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
11. 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
12. If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving isn’t for you.
13. Honk if you love peace and quiet.
14. Remember, half the people you know are below average.
15. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
16. He who laughs last thinks slowest.
17. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
18. I intend to live forever – so far so good.
19. Borrow money from a pessimist – they don’t expect it back.
20. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
21. Support bacteria – they’re the only culture some people have.
22. Love may be blind but marriage is a real eye-opener.
23. If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
24. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
25. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
26. Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of cheques.
27. No one is listening until you make a mistake.
28. Success always occurs in private and failure in full view.
29. The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness of the bread.
30. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with the regularly scheduled A To Z Challenge – X. I X-pect to see you there.

I Confess

I went to confession after a long break I was feeling depressed, and life wasn’t going so well, when walking down the street I passed the church. It had been many years since I went to church, and just as long since I last went to the confessional. Perhaps, I thought, getting right with God would help fix my life.

I went into the church, and the dim light and smell of incense brought it all back. I headed for the confession booth and went straight in. Wow, things had changed in all those years.

There was a comfy chair, a small screen TV, the Wi-Fi password. Then I opened the cupboard and inside was a bottle of fine malt scotch, and some cigars! Suddenly the door opened and the priest appeared, and he said sharply “Get out, you’re on my side!”

Or maybe that guy is confessing because….

A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings, and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.

When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied: “Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.”

***

THE LAST SUPPER

And it came to pass that they were having a glass or two of vino. Jesus looked but only saw 11 disciples. Yet in the place of Judas was a six pack of Guinness.
“What is that?”
“That´s Judas´ carry out” replied James.
“Will he be along later?”
“I doubt it,” said Thomas.
“What about some music? Peter you are the Rock star. Play some heavy metal.”
And Lo, Peter did play some Nine Inch Nails.
“Why are you dressed in all of those dark clothes?” asked Jesus.
“I thought it was a Black Sabbath,” said Mathew, Mark, Luke and John.
It was a great night, though later on Peter let himself down a bit; you should never wait up for the cock.
And in the morning, Jesus Swept.

***

Texas
The Sheriff pulled up next to the guy unloading garbage out of his pick-up into the ditch. The Sheriff asked, “Why are you dumping garbage in the ditch? Don’t you see that sign right over your head.”

“Yep,” he replied. …. “That’s why I’m dumpin’ it here…
’cause it says: …. ‘Fine For Dumping Garbage.’ “

***

Ole was talking with his brother Sven, who lived next door, when Sven said, “Ya know Ole, you and Lena should really get some new curtains.” “Vy’s dat?” Ole asked. “Vel last night I saw you and Lena, vel you know…” Ole thought for awhile, then said, “Ha-ha Sven, da yokes on you! I vasn’t even home last night!”

***

On a recent lunch hour, I decided to take a walk down by the harbor. A big wave washed a lawyer off the dock, and he was drowning. Now I was stuck with a moral dilemma. Do I just ignore it, and continue with my lunch – or stay here and watch?

***

 

St. Patrick’s Humor

So, these two Irishmen walk out of a bar….
No, seriously, it could happen. 

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an
important meeting and couldn’t find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said,
‘Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass
every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!’

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

Paddy looked up again and said, ‘Never mind, I found one.’

****

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and asks the first man he meets,
‘Do you want to go to heaven?’
The man said, ‘I do, Father…’
The priest said, ‘Then stand over there against the wall.’
Then the priest asked the second man, ‘Do you want to go to heaven?’
‘Certainly, Father,’ the man replied.
‘Then stand over there against the wall,’ said the priest.
Then Father Murphy walked up to O’Toole and asked, ‘Do you want to go to heaven?’
O’Toole said, ‘No, I don’t Father.’
The priest said, ‘I don’t believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don’t want to go to heaven?’

O’Toole said, ‘Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now.’

****

Paddy was in New York.  He was patiently waiting and watching the traffic cop on a busy street crossing. The cop stopped the flow of traffic and shouted, ‘Okay, pedestrians.’ Then he’d allow the traffic to pass.

He’d done this several times, and Paddy still stood on the sidewalk.

After the cop had shouted, ‘Pedestrians!’ for the tenth time, Paddy went over to him and said, ‘Is it not about time ye let the Catholics across?’

****

Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend, Finney. ‘Did you see the paper?’ asked Gallagher. ‘They say I died!!’

‘Yes, I saw it!’ replied Finney. ‘Where are ye callin’ from?’

****

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest’s breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car.
He says, ‘Sir, have you been drinking?’
‘Just water,’ says the priest.
The trooper says, ‘Then why do I smell wine?’
The priest looks at the bottle and says, ‘Dear Lord! He’s done it again!’

*****

Walking into the bar, Mike said to Charlie the bartender, ‘Pour me a stiff one – just had another fight with the little woman.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Charlie, ‘And how did this one end?’
‘When it was over,’ Mike replied, ‘She came to me on her hands and knees.’
‘Really,’ said Charles, ‘Now that’s a switch! What did she say?’
She said, ‘Come out from under the bed, you little coward.’

****

David staggered home very late after another evening with his drinking buddy, Paddy. He took off his shoes to avoid waking his wife, Kathleen.

He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful.

Managing not to yell, David sprang up, pulled down his pants, and looked in the hall mirror to see that his butt cheeks were cut and bleeding. He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best he could on each place he saw blood..

He then hid the now almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed.

In the morning, David woke up with searing pain in both his head and butt and Kathleen staring at him from across the room.

She said, ‘You were drunk again last night weren’t you?’

David said, ‘Why would you say such a mean thing?’

‘Well,’ Kathleen said, ‘it could be the open front door, it could be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly …… it’s all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror.

2014

Happy New Years, Everyone!

I hope you’ve all had a Merry Christmas.  Now it’s time to celebrate a wonderful New Year.

I wish for each of us, an even better, happier, more productive, more remunerative, year in 2014.

I welcomed the stroke of midnight with a list of snacks and finger food so long that my diet tripped over it, and lay bleeding in the corner.  I toasted the change of calendar pages with a shot of Red Cinnamon Whiskey, and a bottle of Wychwood, Bah Humbug Christmas Beer, just to set the tone for the year.

I received my annual report from WordPress about my year’s posts and stats.  My Ego got so excited that it ran around WHEE-ing, and “accidently” fell on the “publicize” button.  Be careful!  The truth is out there.

2013 was a great blog-year, both reading and writing.  Thank-you to all those whose interesting prose I read, and thanx to all those who visited to read mine, and like, and comment.  Let’s do it again.    🙂

 

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,200 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

A Letter From Momma

Dear Son:

Just a few lines to let you know I’m still alive.  I’m writing slowly because I know that you can’t read fast.  You won’t know the house when you come home….we’ve moved.  I won’t be able to send you the address, because the Newfy family that lived here before, took the house numbers with them so that they wouldn’t have to change their address.

About your Father….he now has a new job.  He has five hundred people under him.  He’s cutting the grass in the cemetery.

There was a washing machine in the house when we moved in, but it isn’t working very good.  Last week I put 14 shirts into it and pulled the chain and haven’t seen the shirts since.

Your sister Mary had a baby today.  I haven’t heard if it’s a boy or a girl, so I don’t know whether you’re an aunt or an uncle.

Your other sister Margaret was pregnant, but had an abortion because she wasn’t sure the baby was hers.  The doctor thought it might be twins, but she’s never been on a double-date.

I had a hysterectomy last week because I don’t want any more grand-children.

Your Uncle Dick drowned last week in a vat of whiskey in a Dublin distillery.  Some of his fellow workers dove in to save him, but he fought them off bravely.  We cremated the body and it took three days to put out the fire.

Your father didn’t have much to drink at Christmas.  I put a bottle of castor oil in his pint of beer.  It kept him going till New Year’s Day.  I went to the doctor on Thursday and your father came with me.  The doctor put a small tube in my mouth and told me not to open it for ten minutes.  Your father offered to buy it from him.

It only rained twice last week.  Once for three days and the other time for four days.  Monday it was so windy that one of our chickens laid the same egg four times.

We had a letter from the undertaker.  He said that if we don’t come up with the last installment on your grandmother’s grave, up she comes!

I have to quit writing for now as I just broke my typewriter.  I don’t know what is wrong with it.  It just jammed up.

 

Your Loving Mother.

 

P.S.  I was going to send you $20.00 but I had already sealed the envelope.

Syke Haul Oh Gee

Psychology is most plainly described as using language to persuade others to think, feel, say and do what you’d like them to.  Not necessarily what is best for the masses, but what is best for the manipulator.  Merchandisers, ad-men, politicians and religious types do it all the time, causing you to buy anything from cars to cults.  We even use psychology on ourselves, to convince ourselves of something, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.

The son and I went out the other day, to visit two adjacent stores.  The outside temperature was right at the freezing mark, but it was easy for us to convince ourselves that we were only going from house to car, from car to store, we wouldn’t bother with jackets.  We received some very questioning looks from other shoppers, especially the little old lady bundled up in the Eskimo outfit, but we felt fine.  When we exited the first store, it had started to snow.  With no change of temperature or wind, I convinced myself that, now I felt cold.

I find *Believers* to be problematic.  If they *believe*, in anything, they’ve probably stopped thinking.  It’s almost impossible to see the scope of a problem or situation, when you’re inside the box.  Believers don’t just think that believers in other things are wrong, they often believe that no-one but them and their viewpoint exists.

Stories exist of Christopher Columbus’s first landing.  A tribe of natives at the shore, instead of being excited about the three ships, totally ignored them until confronted by Columbus and his shore party.  Three great sailing ships were outside their envelope of experience, and couldn’t exist until the acceptable men proved it.  A hundred years ago, a circus played a small Kansas (?) town for the first time.  The locals watched in amazement as things were unloaded.  Upon seeing a cage with a rhinoceros, a local rube sniffed and walked away, declaring, “Ain’t no such animal!”

Ignoring their own senses, those who have been psychologised continue to deny the existence of opposing opinions, and that’s all belief is, an opinion.  Even if millions, or billions, share it, it’s not necessarily the truth.  Worse than being ignored, is having the ego-damaged believers attack.  Using good psychological groundwork, they demonize those who are not like them, to justify their (pick one) imprisonment, punishment, forced conversion, ostracism, or even death.

There were already a dozen brands of de-alcoholised beer which had been quietly available in supermarkets when Molson decided to spend money to advertise their entry into the market.  Excel was flogged for about three months.  A woman in Toronto beseeched the Toronto Sun for help in saving her 12-year-old daughter and others from sin and depredation.  They had both *become aware* of Molson Excel.  Her daughter had gone to the corner store and bought and consumed one.

How dare this store sell such dangerous stuff to a child?  How dare the government not protect society by banning its open sale in stores?  It says right on the can that it’s “beer”, what else could it be?  Ignoring the other dozen brands of non-alcoholic beer, ignoring the dozen brands of non-alcoholic wine and spritzers, ignoring the fact that root beer says “beer” on the label, and ginger beer says “beer” on the label, and ginger ale says that it is “ale”, she had managed to convince herself that this innocuous fluid was somehow a valid threat.  A brother-in-law had trouble with his 18-year-old son sampling beer and whiskey at family gatherings.  With considerable misgivings, they allowed him some of these drinks.  He managed to grow up a reasonably well-adjusted non-drunk.

The gun-control group, most of whom are gun–banning people, claim that guns only have one purpose, to kill people.  Really?  Only kill, and only people?  There are a dozen reasons for the possession of firearms, from hunting to pest-control to target shooting to just the satisfied thrill of owning one.  They rail that there are three-hundred million guns in America.  And on one recent fateful day, the only one causing a problem was illegally accessed by a mentally unstable young man.

Nobody needs to own an assault rifle!  No, and nobody needs to own a car that can do 180 MPH, but a rich few of us do, and most of them drive at the speed the rest of us do.  High-capacity magazines allow higher numbers of dead!  And then a Chinese man, where firearms are tightly controlled, breaks into a school, with two knives, and kills 23 eight-year-old students, and teachers, and wounds eighteen others.

Guns kill people!  The number of people killed by cars is twenty times the death rate from guns.  But they only die in small numbers.  Yeah, sure!  A nearby van crash killed nine people.  A bus fell off a mountain in Colorado and killed 28.  But, they own a car, and maybe ride the bus, so they’ve convinced themselves that vehicle deaths are acceptable.  They don’t own a gun, and don’t think anyone should.  They see guns in the hands of careful, trained, legally licensed owners as evil, and dangerous.

When the first Harry Potter books and movies came out, I didn’t see the basis for the fuss that the Good Christians raised.  They are a work of fiction.  Even if magic were real – and it would take a gullible fool to believe it is – God created everything.  That would include magic, so why the heat and wind raised about it?  I found out that the theological hair-splitters considered themselves God’s representatives on earth.  God may have created magic but, if they couldn’t perform it, those who do, must be allied with Satan.

We convince ourselves and others of so many things, and allow others to make us believe many things.  Sadly those doing the convincing often have ulterior motives.  Even those with pure motives can be in honest error.  As usual, I advise thinking, objective thinking.  Don’t blindly believe.  Doubt everything!  It may feel comfortable to you, to just accept, but try to foresee the ills you can cause undeserving others.

Only In Canada, You Say

 

Only in Canada….can you get a pizza to your house faster than an ambulance.

Only in Canada….are there handicap parking spaces in front of a skating rink.

Only in Canada….do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions, while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in Canada….do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries…. and a diet cola.

Only in Canada….do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

Only in Canada….do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put all our useless junk in the garage.

Only in Canada….do we use answering machines to screen calls, and then have call waiting so we won’t miss a call from somebody we didn’t want to talk to in the first place.

Only in Canada….do we buy hot dogs in packages of twelve and buns in packages of eight.

Only in Canada….do we use the word ”politics” to describe the process so well: “Poli” in Latin meaning “many” and “tics” meaning “bloodsucking creatures”.

Only in Canada….do they have drive-up ATMs with Braille lettering.

Only in Canada….do we buy the kids’ Halloween costumes big enough to fit over a snowsuit.  (American SpellCheck doesn’t recognize “snowsuit”, but offers swimsuit.)

 

Forget Rednecks, here is what Jeff Foxworthy has to say about Canucks:

If your local Dairy Queen is closed from September through May you may live in Canada.
If someone in a Home Depot store offers you assistance and they don’t work there, you may live in Canada.
If you’ve worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you may live in Canada.
If you’ve had a lengthy telephone conversation with someone who dialled a wrong number, you may live in Canada.
If “Vacation” means going anywhere south of Detroit for the weekend you may live in Canada.
If you measure distance in hours, you may live in Canada.
If you know several people who have hit a deer more than once, you may live in Canada.
If you have switched from “heat” to “A/C” in the same day and back again, you may live in Canada.
If you can drive 90 kms/hr through 2 feet of snow during a raging blizzard without flinching, you may live in Canada.
If you install security lights on your house and garage, but leave both unlocked, you may live in Canada.
If you carry jumper cables in your car and your wife knows how to use them, you may live in Canada.
If the speed limit on the highway is 80km — you’re going 90 and everybody is passing you, you may live in Canada.
If driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow, you may live in Canada.
If you know all 4 seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction, you may live in Canada.
If you have more miles on your snow blower than your car, you may live in Canada.
If you find 2 degrees C “a little chilly”, you may live in Canada.
If you actually understand these jokes, and forward them to all your Canadian friends & others, you definitely live in Canada!

Only in Canada would we have, not one, but two huge Maple Syrup thefts.  I’m not talking about some guy who got over a fence, sneaked in the back door, and got away with a couple of gallon jars of sweet stuff.  We’re talking about millions of liters, and perhaps as much as thirty million dollars worth of purloined stock.

The province of Quebec produces between 70 and 80 % of the world’s maple syrup, and two-thirds of that is exported to the US.  Inventory losses at a Quebec bulk storage warehouse were traced to a company in New Brunswick.  The stolen syrup was impounded and returned to its legal owners.  An idea of the size of the theft, is that the police-escorted return convoy consisted of fifteen full-sized tanker trucks.

The second theft does not appear to be quite as large.  Police estimate 800 barrels, which is 36,000 gallons, which is 163,500 liters.  That’s a sweet lot of pure profit.  I’m astounded at the size of the first theft.  One truckload is understandable….but fifteen?

Truckload-lot thefts are more common than you might think.  Trucking firms in the area have lost as many as three trailers at once.  A couple of guys cut the chain on the gates, roar in, hook up to already loaded and waiting trailers, and are gone by the time security or police arrive.  Stealing maple syrup involves bringing your own tanker, and waiting till it’s pumped full, in the first robbery, fifteen times.

Young women in Quebec eat a lot of, both maple syrup, and French pea soup.  This may explain why they are round and sweet, all except Celine Dion.

One co-worker’s brother was a truck driver for a local Seagram’s Distillery plant.  About once a week, he was sent to Toronto to bring back a tanker load of rye whiskey, for blending or bottling.  When he pulled into the yard, he would connect the dump valve on the bottom of the tanker to a large flexible hose, and open the valve.  When the tank was empty(?) he would drive to the parking area, where his truck was obscured by other trucks.

He would place a clean plastic pail under the valve and reopen it.  After finishing his paperwork, he would go back out and pick up half to three-quarters of a pail of rye, collected from those last drops on the inside of the tank.  He filled easily obtained empty bottles, and sold them for half price, making an extra hundred dollars a week, and a lot of friends.

A trucker from near the Quebec border, who delivered to my son’s plant, also owned a farm with a woodlot.  He made his own maple syrup, and my son bought some from him for several years.  It was the dark, strongly flavored type, at a good price.  A new job means we now buy it, a gallon at a time, from Mennonites at the farmers market.

Trees used to be tapped and drip into buckets.  There could be contamination.  Nowadays all taps, several to each tree, are connected to plastic tubing, which delivers the raw sap directly to the boiling shed.  If you drive past a sugar-bush in operation, it looks like the trees are caught in a giant spiderweb.

That’s not all I know about maple syrup, but I know that it’s time to call for a rest.  Anyone hungry?  How about some pancakes or waffles?

Who Am I?

I’ve been arguing with my computer for about a week, and losing!  It needs a good spring-cleaning.  First it wouldn’t let me access my blog-stats via the front door.  I had to sneak in the Manage My Blogs back door and access them that way.  Now it won’t even do that.  Because of that, I’ve read more Fresh Pressed blogs than I would normally.  One was from a 100% Chinese female, born in the USA.  Who does she root for in the Olympics?  Aha!  A blog theme, and off we go.

Who am I?  I’m a Canadian mongrel mutt, and proud of it.  I am everyman, and every race.  I have the blood of so many races and ethnicities flowing in my veins, I feel like a bowl of Skittles.  I don’t understand “racial purists”, whether redneck white supremacists, or Sikh exclusionists.  There may be a few lost valleys of uncontaminated human DNA in the world, but, more and more, the rest of us are being run through the societal blender.  A recent study said that within a hundred years, the world skin color will be beige.  Even Hitler was one eighth Jewish.  People like the above-mentioned supremacists often are, unknowingly, what they claim to hate.

With three proven Scottish ancestors, for years I’ve told people that I’m one quarter English and three-quarters Scottish.  I am afflicted with the family name Smith, the second-most-common English name.  A surprising free week of study by my daughter on Ancestry.ca revealed that my “English” male ancestor was actually a Hessian who came over to fight for the British in the American War of Independence around 1776.  He survived the war, but didn’t want to return to Europe and managed to stay.  My English side started with a German named Schmidt.  He married a newly arrived English girl, and so did the next several succeeding generations, till Schmidt was changed to Smith, and one of them wandered north into Canada.

The remaining three-quarters Scottish is even more complex and interwoven.  The term Scottish is geo-political, and didn’t exist much more than a thousand years ago.  There is no Scottish race.  The Picts held most of what is now Scotland for centuries.  They fought and interbred with Gaels and Britons.  The Romans tried to sweep up into Scotland, and were swept right back out.  Over the centuries, invaders have found what the Russians, and many others, have learned about Afghanistan.  They could not take and hold the wild mountains and wilder inhabitants.

Many “Roman” soldiers were actually from other countries around the Mediterranean and Europe.  After the Romans left, the Celts and Welsh tried invading the Northland, with about as much success.  Later, the Anglo-Saxons tried invading, in an attempt to form one cohesive kingdom.  The northern tribes amalgamated to preserve their freedom.  Irish Gaels rowed over and slowly brought Christianity to the pagans.  This is why there is an Irish, and a Scottish Gaelic language, incomprehensible to each other.

The Vikings, from three or four Scandinavian countries, roamed the isles and mountains for many years.  Each of these waves of invaders left behind some men, and genetic deposits with local females.  The Spanish Armada, like the Roman Army was actually crewed by sailors of a wide variety of races, including black Moors, from North Africa.  When it was decisively defeated in the English Channel, several of the ships were driven north to the Scottish shore, where the survivors were integrated among the anti-English population.  The Moors were the origination of the term Black Scots.

My maternal grandparents came to Canada from Glasgow, where they were both weavers.  My grandfather was the Keeper of the Patterns, responsible for the production of all Tartans at his mill.  He was a Lowlander, living near the sea.  Several times he had ill words to say about highlanders, descendents of Gaels and Britons.  He claimed they were all stupid, useless oafs, good only for fighting among themselves, and with others.  Grandpa was a short, powerful, dark-haired man, unlike the tall, rangy, fair-skinned, red-haired uplanders.

It is possible (likely?) that he was descended from the disappeared Picts.  One day, when I was about four, our family visited Mom’s family.  The women were inside, doing women things.  My Dad and one of the uncles had started a game of horse-shoes.  The conversation had included another example of Granddad’s disdain for Highlanders.  Another uncle went into the house to get another beer, leaving me sitting on the ground next to the old man.  He was an intelligent, educated and well-read man.  Years later I remembered him speaking, if not to me, then near me.  If memory serves, he said, “They came among us with fire and sword, and drove us from our homes.  But we, the small folk prevailed, and live among them still, unbowed, unnoticed!”  The quote would probably be from a book, rather than from him, but it supports the Pictish background theory.

Who am I?  I am an inclusive citizen of the world.  The blood of countless races and cultures flows through my veins.  I am the result of great plans, and great failures.  I am like a fine Scottish whiskey, the synergistic total being more than the sum of the merely good parts, and the product being both pleasing and stimulating.  Not as hokey as Bill Shatner but, I am Canadian.  I am Me, and I am proud of both, and all the parts it took to make me what I am.