Blue Moon

Last night the world never got dark. Yes, I mean last night, December 31, Hogmany as it’s known over here, what should be almost the longest night, usually so dark that you could be looking into a deep well where you can’t see the hand in front of your face. Not last night. Around midnight Amber and I stood outside the house and looked around, surprised that we could see our snowy landscape extending all the way to the horizon in every direction. Nothing moved in the whiteness, unless it was that lone car winding its way on a country road to a Hogmany party. Or a dark haired bloke going “first footing” --- the custom of visiting your neighbour, whisky bottle in hand. It brings good luck if the first footer has dark hair, which is why with my brown hair, I don’t do it. Call it being DQ’d for life.



Under the hazy skies you can’t see the moon; you wouldn’t know where to look. The lighting appears to emanate from every direction and casts no shadow. Perhaps it emanates from the Earth itself from its unbroken snow cover. What’s going on? Isn’t it supposed to be dark? Well, yes, but once in a blue moon --- the name given to the second full moon in December --- it doesn’t get dark in winter. The Earth covered in a thick layer of snow acts like a mirror, a source of lighting that reflects the diffuse moonlight, scattering the rays isotropically. There’s the scientific explanation. Does it satisfy you, or would you rather stand with us in the winter midnight twilight, quietly, and look around you at every detail, the bushes sticking out of the snow, heavily laden tree branches, houses half buried, flustered sheep wandering around in the nearby field. They can't make anything of the twilight either. Look at them all so that you don’t miss a unique moment, one that won’t return.


Morning saw a new snowfall, that erased all signs of several days of snow shovelling and buried our access road. Our car’s lost somewhere in the whiteness. The icicles dangling in front of the study window grew another foot, some of them now almost four feet long. We’re in a snow house as in Lean's Doctor Zhivago, except that the house in the movie set had fake snow and was filmed in the boiling Spanish summer. The actors did a good job shivering and looking cold. At Cottarton we have the real thing. It started falling about December 20. This is the longest siege that the local people remember, but them they tend to say every year. The house stays warm thanks to a wood fire in the living room stove. My mother sits in her chair nearby where she can stay warm and look out over the snowy landscape. She's been with us over a week, keeping us entertained with her often acerbic humour. To her the landscape has an unearthly beauty. She’d like to go to church today but we probably won’t be going. It’s New Year, the world is hung-over, still asleep, including the snow ploughs and road gritters.






Outside, it’s begun to snow again.

A New Life --- Up the stairs

There’s something almost religious about building on an upstairs room to a house, especially if you undertake the project soon after leaving an office job you’ve done for over twenty years where you mostly sat in an office staring at a screen. Now you have to use your hands, make them work as more than appendages for your brain. They have to hold a drill, a hammer, a saw, a drill. You are building a new floor onto an existing structure, making the place where you’ll eventually move. Maybe you’re also preparing the space for the greater move that you’ll make sometime between now and eternity.

Enough of philosophy. We have to thank Pat Grant for the seed idea, that our attic could be somehow transformed into an attic. But it took more than waving a magic wand to accomplish it. About two winters and two summers. Philip Anderson built our stairwell, and the first walls. The first winter I created the space for a bedroom and bathroom. The bathroom space was originally a crawlspace only three feet wide, up against an old, slanting roof structure. To make it larger took some sleight of hand.

In the picture you can see the slanting roof under the shelving. Elsewhere they're hidden under the marble countertop.



The first job --- and it was a job, was to move the attic beams to open up the area, side beams a few inches left or right, top bracing beams up by six inches. 40 beams. It was cold, uninteresting work that left numb fingers, and me wondering if this was going anywhere. Not until Louis Charron arrived in early Summer and needed an architectural project did I get the oomph for the next phase --- even less glamorous, to trim out a beam and reinforce the roof structure for skylight windows. We had to grind off protruding slate nails, bolt on 2 by 4s to roof beams, insert cross beams. Our friends, the Ashtons and Roys cut two holes in our roof, inserted the skylights, and rearranged our roofing slates. Daylight appeared in the attic. We laid down a temporary floor. We barely started to install foam insulation in the ceiling when Louis left, and I had to wait for the next kid to show up --- Santiago my nephew. He grew up in the high Andes and is an accomplished carpenter. Makes amazing kitchen cabinets. Alas, I’m not ready for cabinets, only for insulation, 2 by 4s and sheetrock. When Santi was not riding the lawnmower --- he loved the riding lawnmower, he was up with me cutting up the insulation board or screwing in the sheetrock. Again the work stopped and had to wait until Jordan Poole arrived. Each kid had his passion, and Jordan’s was spackling (plastering as it’s called here). We were starting to see the rooms taking shape.

Around that time I managed to find a plumber and a sparky (Scottish for ‘electrician’). It wasn’t easy. Tradesmen generally don’t like coming out to work in the country. They’re busy people and prefer to work in town. We had several plumbers come out to look at out project, drink tea with us, and talk enthusiastically. But either the estimates never arrived or were so high as if trying to dare us to take them. Come on, make may day! I asked Paul F to do our plumbing, a good kid who had come out before. He wanted the job and did it well. Luckily we knew a good sparky. Once he was able to extricate himself from a heavy work load he came out --- two months later than scheduled, but he did appear. He did a great job and provided good conversation about my favourite Orcadian writer, George MacKay Brown.

Last summer I finished the plastering, endless sanding that made me look each day like a snowman, and then came the painting. The laminated wooden floor went down. Then the Swedish drawers were built into the wall --- Louis's idea, and --- Ta daaaaa!!!! Where’s the fanfare? Ah yes, there are no stairs! Philip Anderson, our joiner, is in Jersey, imprisoned by a dastardly laird who won’t let him out until he has finished building his castle. Christmas is coming --- argh! We need those stairs. So we contact various joiners. They come out, drink tea, look at our space, mutter something about planning permission to which I shrug. They go, and we wait for something to arrive in the mail or a phone call. One estimate did arrive, a high estimate.




Our neighbour Anne Christie mentioned Neal Donald, a joiner in the glen. He comes, and takes the job…and those are his stairs.


Amber and I now live upstairs, a cosy room that feels like a treehouse. We’ve hung up our Navajo dreamcatcher, and we’re expecting some big dreams.

The March of the Sheep

When people think of the Scottish countryside, they usually think of sheep; masses of them crawling like tufts of cotton wool over grassy meadows or wandering the heather covered slopes.Where you don't see sheep, you'll find black cows, the Aberdeen Angus in our area, or endless barley fields. Dotted around the valleys you often see abandoned stone cottages, sometimes with a slate roof, but often little more than the walls still standing. They point to a dark episode in Scottish history. Two hundred years ago there was a different landscape, many such cottages with two or three generations of a family and a few acres of land that grew potatoes, oats, barley, some root crops, hay to feed a few cows, and several scrawny sheep bearing little resemblance to today's fluffy Blackface sheep.There were few if any of the towns you see today. It was a tough life, living at the mercy of bad weather, potato blight or other farm diseases. As most smallholdings were rented from a laird, there was rent to be paid no matter the weather. Every ten years or so when crops failed there was widespread famine.

What changed it all? The march of the sheep. Beginning in the 1750s, they came from the south, a relentless white tide that swallowed up farm after farm. Landlords, who often ran up huge debts from dubious financial gambles, soon realized that a large sheep farm would give them four times the income and much less bother than the rents from so many smallholdings. Wool fetched a premium price as did mutton, with very little outlay of cash. New sheep breeds appeared that had more meat, ample wool, and withstood the frigid Scottish winters. As often happens, the financial factors were only part of the reasons for change. Poor people, living on the land where you can't control them, are inconventient for politicians. The Clearances lasted over a hundred years, a slow process of forced eviction and land confiscations leading to the establishment of the large farms you see today. The population density in the highlands fell, while the sheep population soared. During a particularly dark chapter, violence broke out between the people being evicted and the sheep farmers. Land administrators, known in Scotland as factors, were known to burn cottages to prevent them being re-occupied. Economists suggested that people would just fit into new jobs on the new farms, but mechanization resulted in much fewer people being needed. More benevolent landowners resettled their tenants in newvillages that took root in those days. Many emigrated to Canada or to the States.

What about the future? Todays farms are scarcely profitable; many exist for mainly two reasons 1. Cheap diesel oil and fertilizer 2. European Union subsidies. When the price of oil rises, as it must when the effects of peak oil become felt, the high price of diesel and fertilizer will make the present system unsustainable.
George Monboit, a writer for "The Guardian" looks at one scenario.

Higher food prices already are making people see the advantages of growing their own. Vegetable allotments so popular that, in big cities you often have to wait for years to get one. Some cities are changing their parks into allotments. It doesn't take much imagination to see the trend extend into the countryside. We may be coming full circle, back to the old crofting days.

Riding the train with Dundee United

Returning from Scone last weekend, after being two days with mum, Amber and I expected a leisurely train ride back to Huntly. Arriving at Perth Station we encountered a crowd of mostly young men with flushed faces, cider bottles in hand and wearing football colours. Several tall policemen and women paced back and forth trying to look impressive. We knew that the lads were coming home after a football game, but had their team won or lost? If the latter, they could be mad enough to trash the station, or anything breakable in their path. Where were they heading? You guessed it, our train.

Waiting among them on the platform, we were treated to a chorus of chants. Less musical than Gregorian chants, with parent advisory lyrics, what the chanting lacked in musicology it had in sheer volume and emotion. You didn’t have to know the lexicon to know that the team had won, and yes…”Weeee’re the Dundee boys”. I yelled to Amber, who stood bewildered and deafened by the spectacle, “Here’re a bit of local culture.”

Train pulls up at the platform. With sinking hearts we see that it only has four carriages, and it’s pretty full. Doors open. Covering Amber with my left arm, we board, are able to take two steps before the horde presses in behind us, sandwiching us on all sides. “Can you breathe, my dear?” I ask. It gets tighter. I have visions of winding up beneath a stack of bodies, when I notice that we’re up against a pair of doors leading to First Class seats. We don’t have tickets, but so what. I open the door. Rushing in with the crowd falling on top of us we find two seats, which we grab. At least we’re sitting down. Dundee United squeezes into the aisle. Slowly, as if feeling its extra load, the train crawls off and lumbers over the Tay Bridge.

A lone voice intones, “We’re Dundee United….” And ten others join in. With the cops gone, beer and cider bottles multiply, get swigged, passed around. Names of players appear in chants, how this or that hero slew one of the Celtic “c—ts” I ask one of the guys what the score was, 2-1. They are ecstatic about the win that came from behind. Other passengers, like us sit bemused by the spectacle. No train conductor shows up; in that press no one can possibly move.

After half an hour we pull into Dundee and the fans stagger out of the train. We watch them disappear down the platform, still chanting. Silence, except for a giggle from a couple of little old ladies. The experience made their day.

EVERYONE’S A CLIMATE EXPERT

It’s been a pleasant autumn at Cottarton with long stretches of dry warm days. The farmers are happy, because they were able to harvest their barley ahead of schedule. Our vegetables this year were stellar: gigantic zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, parsnip. Amber greets them in the kitchen with a mixture of elation and dread. More pickling to do? This year’s success story is our chrysanthemums --- still going strong, decorating every room in our cottage. We give many bunches to our friends.

These days I’m engaged in the long job of forking over the vegetable beds. Our neighbour, Hugh, is delivering a load of dung that will be spread out over winter so that it properly rots in, to be ready for next spring’s planting.

Meanwhile I’ve taken out a library card at Aberdeen University to study the Earth’s climate. Not the global warming thing. I want to know how the climate changed over the past 100 million years, and why. The story reads like a whodunit. As a geologist I’ve studied for twenty years the oceans rise and fall, because these result in deposition of sandstones and shales that we drill for to find some reserves. Its no secret that every 20-100 thousand years during the past 10 million years the oceans go through a cycle of rising and falling. The Earth gets warmer and cools, mostly a result of changes in the earth’s tilt. But several extraordinary anomalies are evident. During the Eocene, 50 million years ago the Earth was 6 degrees warmer than it is today --- but the sun was somewhat cooler. What gives?

Before I offer an explanation I’ll say that I am not a climate expert. The internet is full of those who make that claim. If you check out the blogosphere you’ll find that everyone who has taken a science course is out there pontificating about climate change, claiming to be a expert. In their recent book, “Superfreakanomics”, Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, two economists, argue that global warming is nonsense. Even if it’s true, then why not spray some stuff into the air to counteract global warming? A much cheaper solution than for us give up driving our SUVs. I have a Master’s in Astronomy and one in Geophysics, two disciplines that are necessary if one is to understand climate change. Yet I feel totally inadequate to enter into a scientific debate on the subject. Remarkable that those economists who have less background in the field, don’t have such srcupules. Their book will no doubt be a best seller. There’s also the science fiction writer Michael Crichton who wrote “State of Fear” a SF novel that suggests that the global warming movement is a global conspiracy. The guy was called to Capital Hill to testify in front of the US Senate as a “climate expert.” I can think of many people they might have chosen, but then those --- real experts, might not have given the Senate committee the answers they wanted to hear.

So why was the Earth so warm in the Eocene? One source I consulted suggests that it was caused by a sudden emission of methane. Then, as today, there are large amounts of methane stored under the ocean floor in the form of gas hydrates. A small warming could release the methane into the atmosphere. Once there, methane, even more than carbon dioxide makes our atmosphere more impervious to heat, so that our earth behaves like a greenhouse. All this makes me think of what might happen to the gas hydrates that I saw in seismic data while I worked for ExxonMobil, should a small increase in our present temperature result in an analogous warming. It would be scary. I’m no climate scientist, so I’ll defer to those who are in that line of work.

Meanwhile, I’m reading about the recent ice ages. I’d like to know why the last one came to an end about 14,000 years ago, to give us our present, very pleasant climate.

What Does It Mean To Be Of Service?

Everywhere we are talking about a peaceful humanity, a peaceful world. This is not from prayer, not from technology, not from money, not from religion, but from mother. This is my fundamental belief. Mother, I consider, our first teacher. (Women of Tibet, The Great Mother), Dalai Lama

My sister in law Munia lives with the poor in Ecuador. “I am not necessarily a good person,” she says. “I was just born fortunate. I had a good mother, a good father, food, education, and love. It is my duty to give it back.” Not everyone is called to live and work with the poor but everyone is indeed called to something greater than themselves. Whether or not we hear the call, or even recognize the call is another matter entirely.

So what does it mean to be of service? Is it volunteering your time to a local charity? Calling in on the sick? Tossing the proverbial 10% at the collection plate on Sunday morning? We all periodically do this throughout the course of our lives, but this is not what it means to be “of service”.

Being of service is a relationship, a state of mind, a way of life. (Which might in fact include the above, volunteering, visiting the sick, etc. but not an end unto itself). It is a meditation of unending gratitude for those of us who have to keep us ever mindful of those who have not. I believe that in this gratitude, this eternal state of gratitude lies grace and out of grace is born compassion and compassion gives rise to empathy. “Why do we complain all the time?” asked Munia this morning over coffee. “We have so much,” she said. “Yes, but still wanting more, still incomplete,” I added.

She was only here for one night, visiting Cottarton with her beautiful daughter, Anita and her twin girls, Teresa and Margherita. It was as splendid as any ballet to watch the two of them in concert with each other, laughing, singing, sharing the responsibility of the babies. I got the feeling that they knew each other so well they didn’t even need words to communicate the next step. Like Nureyev and Fontaine they glided across the floor from cue to cue. The hungry cry, the sleepy cry, the wet cry, and the frustrated one they responded artfully, intelligently with humor and fatigue.

It is truly a remarkable occasion to witness the numinous in the domestic. The numinous at table, in a small kitchen feeding a hungry baby and then the peace that comes with the last bite.

Not all of us are favored with the presence of a good mother, in fact some of us are actually injured by the birth mother who was never taught or never learned how to mother herself. I have a small photograph in my collection of framed pictures on top of the china cabinet in the hallway that very few ask me about, which surprises me because it’s obviously antiquated and doesn’t look anything like my family or friends, but Anita did – she asked. “Who’s this?” “That’s a picture of the fantasy mother and me,” I said. “It’s a picture of the way I would have liked it to have been. An image.”

I’m sure you’re wondering now the link between service and mother and it’s this.

If mother is the point of entry, then mystery is the point of exit. It is the relationship between the good mother and the Great Mother, the mystery that beckons us to be of service. Like Munia and Anita in the dance of the mother at my kitchen table last night, the good mother reflects the magnitude of the Great Mother in her attention to that what is vulnerable in all of us. It is our cue as humans to listen for the call from the Great Mother, the mystery to listen for what we should be giving back. We must give back – it is the road to home.

PS Munia is Rose’s daughter and Anita is her granddaughter. I have been gifted in the company of women that have come into my life through marriage; Theresa, Basia, and Ciocia Renia….how fortunate am I.

10 percent in 2010

In the UK global warming is seen as real, and not a left wing conspiracy, supported by radical scientists. The summers of 2007 to 2009 saw unseasonal rainfall and flooding, people losing their houses. The affected County Councils are spending money to shore up flood defences to prepare for rising seas. Latest studies of Greenland glaciers show those glaciers are melting at a much higher rate than predicted by current climate change models. If they melt, sea level could rise within the next 100 years by several meters.

A natural Earth cycle or a result of human activity? No argument will silence all doubts. The debate will continue until the last debater is shot. As a geologist I can see that natural climactic cycles, visible in the rock record, are part of our Earth's history. Regarding the present changes, I defer to scientists who have studied the data. With few exceptions, they speak with one voice, that the present climate changes are due to the human impact on natural ecosystems --- burning fossil fuels and deforestration being the chief activities. This has become particularly acute because of our growing population.

Politicians talk and debate. In London, they discuss whether to cover the island with wind generators or put them all offshore. In Copenhagen, they bluster about who should make the first carbon dioxide cuts --- Americans, Chinese or Europeans who caused the problem in the first place? The Brits propose that we pay third world countries not to develop technologically, so that Brits can go on, business as usual. A convenient solution. One can conclude only one thing from the debate--- that we'll all fry before policicians come to an agreement that's likely to make any difference.

Or, the people can take action and show the bastards how it must be done.

Last week, "The Guardian" daily newspaper threw its support behind a grass roots movement, for every household to cut its carbon footprint by 10 percent in the year 2010. So far 10,000 people have pledged their support including many multinational corporations, all of Gordon Brown's cabinet, movie stars etc...According to the climate models, an immediate 10 percent global cut in carbon emissions is what is required to avoid an increase of 2 degrees celcius in our global temperature. Such an increase is likely to cause ecological changes that will result in further temperature increases. The carbon cuts have to start somewhere. Given that the UK only produces 3% of the world's carbon emissions, a 10% cut is not a large portion of the global budget. But it may generate the political impetus for other countries to follow suit, and for politicians to take meaningful action.

We may be too late. Arctic ice is melting more rapidly than predicted. Are we past the point of no return, where the Earth will grow warmer regardless of what we do? Nobody knows. To accept this scenario as true and to do nothing, will make a disastrous global warming of several degrees celcius an inevitability. Or, we can bury our heads in the sand and hope that none of this is real. That God will come to our aid, or that the sun will cool off. We can hope we'll all be dead before the disaster comes to roost.

I think about my children, the legacy we are about to leave them. Will they see scenes of mass starvation, wars fought over scarce resources, and mass migrations all because our generation was unwilling to make the right choices? The latest scenes from Bangladesh where 20 million people will have to move from areas inundated by rising seas, are a sample of things to come. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/8240406.stm

Amber and I are taking the 10:10 pledge. We are not sure how we will make good on the pledge but we will do what we can. We may cut down on car journeys, take the train more often, install more home insulation or fly less. We have more options than many people. We will keep you posted.