Easter Weekend: The Isle of Mull and photographs

 Easter Friday

Two magnificent  eagles soar in the Mull sky.

We hear the 1800 ferry to Mull was cancelled due to high winds. We were lucky.
 
Saturday

It is almost totally still and calm; and indeed a mist is wrapped around the morning landscape.



Sunday

The drive to Craignure is through idyllic weather. There the ferry is sailing serenely out to Oban.The mountain tops of Glencoe gleam white with snow in the sunshine. We buy marmalade. Back at home two twin lambs have just been born and stand unsteady in the field.

The evening sun is magnificent







Easter Monday

We walk to the village of Bunessan and back, with some shopping in between. About 4 kilometres in all.

(Condensed, and slightly adapted, from the Professor Sir Tom Devine lecture at http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scottishenlightenment/introduction.asp)



"What made the Scottish Enlightenment possible?

It’s a real puzzle - because if you look at the period before the Enlightenment, Scotland was a poor country. They even executed witches a few decades before the Enlightenment and killed infidel blasphemers and heathens - the Ministers of the Church were not very tolerant. So how come a country like that contributed to one of the greatest cultural developments in 18th century Europe?

Three things. The first is, for many centuries, Scotland’s scholars had links with Europe - they had gone to European universities from the 13th century onwards and they were plugged into the ideas developing in those institutions.
One example: the great Edinburgh University medical school which was world famous in the 18th century (and still is) - it really started as a consequence of its founders having gone to university in Holland which was previously the most advanced centre.

The second thing is that after the Reformation, the reformers decided to establish a school in every parish. It didn’t happen immediately but by about a century and a half after the Reformation (which took place in the 1560-1570’s) many parts of Scotland had a school and that meant that there was a general respect for learning in this society.
We know that almost all children went to school in some areas for about three, four, five years. (One has to remember this was not compulsory and it wasn’t free and it was not universal,) But over time this eventually fed into a society which was comfortable with matters of the mind, which in a sense what the Enlightenment was all about.
So, during the period of the Enlightenment, a lot of the old barriers to cultural development began to collapse. The Presbyterian Church of Scotland, which had previously been fanatically opposed to new ideas, began to become more tolerant.

Thirdly (and related to the first two points) the Scottish thinkers, the scholars, the intellectuals, did not have to take political or religious sides - they, even David Hume, were able to discuss things reasonably freely. It was a civilised and sociable atmosphere. You could have an argument between two of the major figures but afterwards they would still remain friends.

All these things came together in a mix that helped to produce the Scottish Enlightenment.
It was, arguably, part of a general flowering of the world of the mind,
Unarguably, there was a degree of tolerance that had not previously existed."

See http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/grateful-for-the-chance-to-vote.25360271

Festivity

A story of festivity: from Joan and Iain

 This time of the year can be lonely when one is old. But Joan and Iain
had Gaby Leao and her husband Rafael Drummond (probably a man of  -very
long distant - Scottish ancestry) with us all of Xmas. We live in
Glasgow; they flew in from Recife in Brazil to spend some time with us.

 Now how did that happen? More than 20 years ago (1992), Gaby's mother
Ana came to study for a few months with us at the University of
Strathclyde . And we (Joan, Ana and I) became friends. 3 years later
(1995)  Ana returned for a year to do a masters degree, this time with
her 10/11-yr-old daughter Gaby. I met them at Glasgow Airport and Ana
said "Gaby has only one word of English". Gaby, using her only word of
English,  said "Hello, Iain". By the end of the year 1996 the mother Ana
had acquired her masters degree and daughter Gaby, having spent a year
in a local school, spoke immaculate, if very Glaswegian, English. I
sometimes had to translate Gaby's Glasgow English into English English
for her mother Ana. (As in "fling me doon me jackait ma")

 In 2002, Gaby returned to Glasgow for some months in between school and
university and lived with Joan and me. Studied English and did a bit of
partying. We watched the 2002 World Cup together - which was won by
Brazil. We put a big Brazilian flag at the entrance hall to our house;
and said that it would stay there until Gaby returned. Which it has.

 Two years ago (2011), Joan and I went to Recife to attend the wedding
of Gaby and Rafael. We had a great time. Of which the Sunday Herald made
a bit of a story.

 Yesterday (2013) , Gaby and Rafael flew into Glasgow via Lisbon and
Paris. Today we walked down to look again at the place in Glasgow where
she and her Mum had lived so many years ago and to see again the school
she had attended. And we then had a Christmas dinner together.

 So that is how it happened, but why did this happen?

Well, of course, the technology of the
late 20th century and of the early 21st century has helped us to stay
together as this extended family over what is now twenty years:
Facebook, Blackberrys and all that stuff. But mostly we have used a
technology that has been around for thousands of years: the (greatly
underused) human capacity to enjoy and respect and love each other's
company.

I hope you like this story.