Another Festival in the Bonnie Glen

This is another lighthearted romp in the peculiar world of Scottish pipe band competition. If you're an insider to this world, enjoy the humor. If you're not -- well -- enjoy it anyway. With a glass of your favorite spirits. HISTORY HAS recorded that the events of the Second Annual Auchmountain's Bonnie Glen Yuletide International Invitational Grade 7 Extra-Loud Pipe Band Extravaganza and Highland Revue left our home galaxy changed forever. Seismologists the world around reported a cataclysmc event somewhere in Scotland; somewhat farther afield, a fleet of Zygorthian space invaders from the Beta Cassiopeiae star system turned their attack ships aside in mid-passage and high-tailed it for home at twice the speed of light. The story didn't end there, however. Now, on the eve of the Third Annual Auchmountain's Bonnie Glen Yuletide International Invitational Grade 7 Extra-Loud Pipe Band Extravaganza and Highland Revue, Dr. Les Blowhard and Drum Major Jesus Hamish Gonzalez, late of Mexico's Popocatepetl Highlanders, mellowed over sips of Laphroaig and Jose Cuervo and reviewed the extraordinary developments of the past year. Gonzalez's Volcanic Magma Hot Sauce did it, of course. After the Doctor recovered from his epic sneezing fit at the 1996 ceilidh, he craved Mexican food the way a weed craves sunlight; so he offered Gonzalez a year's tuition in playing the Great Highland Bagpipe badly, in exchange for a year's tuition from Gonzalez in preparing Mexican food badly. The result was a business venture, Espaldas Mojadas, Ltd., which on April Fools' Day opened a chain of "Tachum Bell" Scottish fast-food Mexican restaurantes. La Hacienda de Haggis, Gonzalez called it. "Your average Scot doesn't know the difference between gourmet cuisine and a Forfar bridie with HP Sauce," the Doctor said. "This business should take off like a scared rabbit." And so it happened. After opening "High Road to Garlic," a modest tapas bar in a condemned building half a block from the College of Piping in Glasgow (where the Doctor had received numerous honorary degrees), the Doctor and Gonzalez went into big-time production. "Our food does for your stomach what our piping does for your eardrums," the Doctor boasted in an interview on the BBC Scots Entrepreneurs program. The slogan caught on, and won an award from the Scottish Advertising Council. Hungry aficionados from Land's End to John O'Groats, from Orkney to Dover, flocked to ticky-tacky Tachum Bell shops which seemed to pop up at every major crossroads like poisonous toadstools after a spring rain. Brightly lit roadside signs and billboards featured a stylized portrait of the Doctor and Gonzalez, wearing chefs' toques and holding practice chanters the way a terrorist holds a semi-automatic weapon. They hired scores of young people, arrayed them in kilts, sombreros and red sashes, and taught them to prepare a daunting array of corrosive delicacies. They purchased grain in hides and corn in sacks, and fashioned Taorluath Tortillas, the staple elements of a menu which grew to include such house specialties as Red Speckled Burritos, Green Hills Guacamole, Redcastle's Refried Beans, Crunluath-A-Nachos, Jaggis con Jalapenos, and, of course, the Strathspey de Salsas: strong, weak, medium or weak -- your choice. IN SHORT, the Doctor put pipe-majoring on the back burner. In January he had left the Auchmountain Highlanders in the interim charge of Pipe Sergeant Johnny W. T. Bandylegs. And all year long Johnny taught pipers to read music and play gracenotes and doublings, to true up chanter scales and tune drones. He brought in a talented young drummer and patiently introduced the hitherto utterly foreign concepts of rhythm and playing to a beat. Locals were stunned to find themselves coming about to give a listen as the band struck up in rehearsal at the Royal Auchmountain's Bonnie Glen Military Academy. Small furry creatures popped out of their burrows and chirped in appreciation. "Well, mi amigo." The Doctor wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and grinned at Gonzalez. "Tomorrow's the big day, eh?" The Doctor had spent several months cultivating a Mexican-Canadian manner of speaking. "Once again we bring oot the pipes and tickle the sensibilities of music-lovers the world around, eh?" "Ay caramba, laddie," Gonzalez said. He had spent several months cultivating a Scottish-Mexican manner of speaking. "Eet weel be a wee braw bonny bit o' the Auld Nick." AND NOW, in the final rehearsal before the big event, the Doctor blew the dust off his pipe case and pulled out the long-suffering instrument. When Johnny offered to help him with tuning, he stared for a moment as if the daft man had just dropped a snowball down the front of his kilt. "Tune?" the Doctor said. “Tune?? Tune, shmune. Since when did we ever tune pipes around here? Next you'll be telling me to pay attention to dotted rhythms or some such nonsense. It's lucky I'm back in charge of this outfit. Tuning! How ridiculous can you get?" "Weel, Doc," Johnny said, "ye'll be hearin' a few surprises, I'll be bound." The Doctor harrumphed, adjusted the hearing aid in his good ear, gripped the blowstick in his teeth and mumbled out the cadence. The drummers executed two crisp three-beat rolls. The Doctor's pipes bleated and squealed during the first roll as usual, but all the other pipers struck up in perfect synchronization, perfectly tuned, and played a flawless march, strathspey and reel. A look of horror came over the Doctor's face as the music echoed about the Bonnie Glen. The Auchmountain Highlanders didn't have an iceberg's chance in Hades in tomorrow's contest, he realized. Why, the fools were playing on the beat! In unison! It sounded like music! There was no way, even with his formidable talents, that the Doctor could undo all the harm Johnny and his henchmen had done. Why had he trusted that two-faced sawed-off bowlegged ring-tailed illegitimate son of a tinker? The band came to the end of its set, and every pipe except the Doctor's cut off as if controlled by a switch. The Doctor's pipes gargled into asthmatic silence. He gripped the hilt of his dirk and marched up to Johnny, squared his jaw, and rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. "This is a joke, right?" he fumed. "Och, lighten up, Doc," Johnny said. "The lads and lasses and I decided tae try something different. Ye'll get used tae it.

A CHRISTMAS CEILIDH IN THE BONNIE GLEN

(This is a lighthearted romp into the rather silly world of Scottish Highland bagpipe band contests. If you're anything of a piper or a piping aficionado, see how many tunes you can recognize from the names. The rest of you ... well ... just take it wi' a grain o'haggis -- or a large single-malt.) IT HARDLY SEEMED possible a year had passed. The Second Annual Auchmountain’s Bonnie Glen Yuletide International Invitational Grand Championship Grade 7 Extra-Loud Pipe Band Extravaganza and Highland Revue was now history. All creation, like a dowager countess loosening her corsets, sighed with relief. It had been, quite literally, a resounding triumph -- not, as some Philistines had hinted, gross noise pollution. Dr. Les Blowhard, pipe-major of the Auchmountain Highlanders, had hand-picked a blue-ribbon panel of expert judges -- Baird of Auchmedden, Bob Pekaar and Angus MacKinnon -- and, with the help of industrial grade ear plugs, they had borne up bravely under the onslaught of the loudest in out-of-tune pipe-band music from around the world. Best of all, however, Auchmountain’s Bonnie Glen was now rid of mice, rats, lawyers, pigeons and other vermin for another year. “It’s a brilliant pest-control strategy,” a visitor said to the Doctor, “but what about the animals you don’t want to drive away -- livestock and domestic pets?” “Not a problem,” the Doctor said, turning up the volume on the hearing aid in his good ear so he could understand the question. “We take them to an underground bunker five miles outside of town the day before the competition -- except for the ass in the graveyard. What a lovely beast. He likes our music. He sings along. He’s quite good, really.” The Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Auchmountain’s Bonnie Glen Volunteer Fire Brigade, under the leadership of Mrs. Una MacIntyre, had organized a gala post-competition ceilidh in the Fire Brigade Social Hall. In the adjoining taproom, free-flowing ale, wine and single-malt whisky soothed many a frayed nerve-ending after the day’s excitement. Competitors, friends, families and camp-followers crowded into the hall, where tables groaned under the weight of delicacies brought from around the world. Even the local gentry -- most notably Rose of Kelvingrove and Lady MacKenzie of Fairburn -- had turned out in all their finery to celebrate the blessed return of silence to the Bonnie Glen for another year. Campbell had left Redcastle for a few days; and a talented fiddler had come from Inverness. When the fiddler took the stage and struck up a strathspey, the Doctor fiddled with his hearing aid for a moment, then interrupted the performance with a stentorian shout: “No, no, NO! Your rhythm’s inconsistent. First it’s strong, then it’s weak, then it’s medium, then it’s weak again. That’s not the way to play a strathspey. You’ve got to make up your mind. Here, let me show you.” The Doctor picked up his pipes and folks began edging nervously toward the door to the bar. As he began to play, the exodus became a stampede. “You call that a strathspey?” the fiddler said after the Doctor’s pipes had wheezed into silence and people began peering around the corner to see if it was safe to re-enter the room. “That sounds more like foot-shufflin’ soft-shoe.” “Nonsense, my boy,” the Doctor said. “Remember, I’m a Doctor of Just About Everything and you’re only a fiddler from Inverness. What could you possibly know about music?” The fiddler shrugged, put his instrument back in its case, then went to the bar and ordered a double Tobermory, neat. “An idiot with a red sash is still an idiot,” he muttered to the bartender. Meanwhile, Jesus Hamish Gonzalez, drum major of the Popocatepetl Highlanders -- Mexico’s loudest -- passed with a big tray of tortilla chips, jalapeño peppers and his special Volcanic Magma Hot Sauce. Seeing free food on the hoof, the Doctor lunged at the tray and helped himself to as much as he could stuff into his beard before Gonzalez, resplendent in sombrero, feathers, red silk sash and jingling spurs, snatched the tray away in alarm. What followed is destined to become legend in Auchmountain’s Bonnie Glen. As the story goes, the Doctor’s eyes lit up, his nose exploded, his tam o’shanter popped three feet into the air, and his sporran orbited his waist like a hula-hoop seven times. It became known as the Mother of All Sneezing Fits. “Scots wha HAE!” the Doctor sneezed. “Wha HAE! Wha HAE!!” “Gesundheit, señor,” said Gonzalez, wiping his face with a corner of his dress MacLeod serape. “Must have been that hot sauce,” the Doctor said. “I must compose a tune in its honor.” “Make it a strathspey,” the fiddler called from the adjoining room. “You’re so good at those.”

Requiem for a Village

Припять, Украйна 26 Апреля 1986 г. В 1:23:58 часов Pripyat, Ukraine 26 April 1986 At 1:23:58 A.M.

We slept with windows open that night, Our lovely land exhaling scents of pine and earth. The twins – Yurochka and Annushka – had played For hours in the sandy soil and now murmured softly in their sleep. Next week would be easy – Workers’ International Solidarity Days Would give Thursday and Friday as gifts of feasting and fishing. At sunrise today, we’d go catch small fry Where the power plant outflow pours into the cooling pond A mile from the Chornobyl No. 4 electric power station. We’d use the small fish to bait our hooks When we went after perch and pike on the Pripyat River During the holidays. The waters teemed with life. And so our little world glided happily along in delicious spring. We were as children skipping through the woods With no inkling of perils we could not see, hear, touch, taste. Two sharp detonations from Chornobyl No. 4 Stopped the clock for our poor village For the next twenty-five thousand years, Although for many the grace period was much shorter. We stared at the pyrotechnics several miles away, Like mice caught in the stare of Gadyuka, the viper, While isotopes of death gathered in our hair, On our clothes, in our childrens’ thyroid glands. Did you know ionizing radiation can give you an all-over tan, Even if you’re wearing clothes?

Another Thank-You

Adding to the Gratitude List: Thanks to Kathy Matisko for her kind words about my book on Amazon. Anyone who's experienced Kathy's narrative virtuosity would know that praises from that quarter are rare and precious gems indeed.

My thanks to Nathaniel Thomas, Wes Loder, Steve Page, Doug Arnold, Dennis Murphy, Frank Mulligan and Don Zeiter, for your kind reviews of Up Home on Amazon.com. Your encouragement is what keeps the sometimes reluctant pen moving across the page -- the laxative that keeps the vowels moving, if you please. I am most grateful.

I Speak Only Few Words of English

Я Говорю Несколко Слов По-анлиский Yes, I speak to you few words of English, my friend. Hell of language you have there, if I may say so. Academic commissars took eight-year-old girl in State school, Filled her head with strange alphabet, words said Not at all like written. And your grammar! Свяатой Бог! – Who can say I do that correct? (Так правильно? Не знаю!). Yes, yes, yours is language of Shakespeare and All his followers. God knoweth I stumble through Much of that in University, dictionary at my right – and Аспирин at left. But, friend, do you know Pushkin In original tongue? No matter. My English Is schoolgirl’s English; your Russian is schoolboy’s. But still – you see? – we communicate. Прекрасно! Clem Page 12.VIII.2005 На Ваёмиссинг, Пеннсилвании

A Sunny Day in Coal-Cracker Country

I've been neglecting my blogging practice, I'm afraid. Put it down to the chores of making a living and trying to market a first novel. I know, I know. Excuses, excuses, excuses.... Anyway, speaking of marketing a first novel, Eve and I took a very pleasant little sun-drenched book tour through the Pennsylvania anthracite country this afternoon. We made stops in Lansford, at the No. 9 Mine and Museum, Jim Thorpe (Old Mauch Chunk), and Eckley Miners' Village near Hazleton. I hawked the book with all my might, and confirmed a reading and book-signing date in Eckley on Sunday May 4. If you're in the neighborhood, you'd be most welcome to sit in. With the advent of daylight saving time and a brilliant, breezy afternoon, we came home happy to have put a perfect capstone on the weekend.