Hello Neighbor
"Won't you please? Won't you please? Please won't you be ... my neighbor?" sigh Mr. Rogers. So goddam insistent. You had better be his neighbor, or the next 30 minutes is going to be ... well, pretty awkward. Here Comes the Trolley C'
The Paris of Appalachia
Our tour guide, George, counts them off on his fingers. "You got the City of Bridges. More bridges than any city on earth, including Venice. The City of Tunnels. The City of Champions. The 'Burgh. The Steel City. The Dirty 'Burgh. Hell With the Lid Off. Sixburgh,
Walking Around
It's my last day here in my 6 month Scotland adventure. What have I learned? Well, I have learned a shit-ton about Mary Queen of Scots. I learned she was kept in a tower for years and years, and they kept all the embroidery she sewed during this
Lunch
When you think of UK food, you think Yorkshire puddings, blood sausage, a big roast beef, maybe some scones with clotted cream. You think of lords and ladies sitting around the dinner table wearing pointy hats, gobbling a mutton leg dripping with gravy, and throwing the bones in the corner
Cheers
Dave, my hair guy, has a pretty stable Edinburgh accent, having lived here all his life. I have had 3 haircuts with him. The first, in April, I could barely understand him. The second, in June, I understood about 50%. And then last week I had my last Scotland haircut,
Well, Craig
It is fairly unlikely I have Scottish blood, despite reports to the contrary (see The Reverend John Dorcas). I was neither born nor raised in Scotland. I hadn't even set foot in Scotland until I was 51 years old. But my name is all over the friggin'
Imposter Syndrome
It was April. I was standing on the edge of the Salisbury Crags, the plateaus which jut out underneath Arthur's Seat, the highest point in Edinburgh. I surveyed the entire city of Edinburgh, its beautiful stone work, its ancient church towers and clocks, the blue Firth of Forth
The Library of Mistakes
It sounds like an Anne Tyler novel. The first time I saw the Library of Mistakes advertised in the e-newsletter Edinburgh Genealogical Society (who are nuts about all-things-researchy)... I said, "Ah! The Library of Mistakes! This is the place for me!" I love mistakes. I make them all
Nae Gatekeepers
The Usher Hall staging of St Matthew's Passion involved 150 chorus members, a full orchestra, and an enormous authentic pipe organ. It was a spectacle beyond compare. And Festival audience members experienced it in the way Bach intended: ... with a big ol' beer in their hand. If
The Edinburgh Festival: A Primer
The first thing you need to know about the Edinburgh Festival is ... It's big. Big, big, big. It's bigger than big. Bigger than a bread box? Oh yeah. Bigger than life? You bet. Bigger than the sky? Just about. Even with the festival barely started (it&
The Main Point
Next to pub crawling, the most popular Edinburghian time-whittler is reading. Rare and used bookstores are all over. Readers with paperbacks are scattered across the parks in summer. Add to that the Edinburgh Book Festival which is held in August concurrently with the other Edinburgh festivals. This is a town
The God Particle
OK, so I'm reading a Higgs Boson Particle infopanel in the National Museum of Scotland when a 10 year old boy stands next to me and starts reading too. "Do you understand any of this?" I ask him. "No," he says. He walks over