Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
The severity of the overgrowth from the woods and old blackberry stalks is directly proportional to how long Ken has been away from the abbey. He had been away for quite some time, so the overgrowth was serious. Even the weed-whacker on wheels is defeated by blackberry stalks, so Ken took the chainsaw to them.
Paddington Station, London. Just look how clean it is.
I added up the number of hours of travel required to get from Acorn Abbey in the Blue Ridge foothills of North America to Stornaway on the isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides. It comes to about 28 hours. Of those hours, 25 hours were on a plane, several trains, a bus, and a ferry. Only three hours was by car — getting from the abbey to the Raleigh-Durham airport for the flight to London Heathrow. Can you guess which part of that long trip was the most unpleasant?
Purely by accident on this trip, the ferry was the most unpleasant. That was because storms and gale-force winds off the North Atlantic were blowing into the sea channel between the islands and the Scottish mainland. The ferry, which was not small, reared and bucked through scary wave after scary wave, with seawater crashing against the windows way up on the passengers’ observation deck. Everyone tightly held onto their seats, and there was a great and contagious chorus of gagging and throwing up, which would have been funny but for the exhausting work of keeping one’s eyes on the sea, one’s grip on one’s seat, and one’s lunch down. But, had the weather off the North Atlantic been more placid that day, then the ferry would have been a lark, and the worst part of this 28-hour trip would have been the drive to Raleigh over America’s rude highways.
Even the 6.5-hour flight, on a Boeing wide-body 777 operated jointly by British Airways and American Airlines, was not that bad. Those two airlines have figured out that the best way to keep passengers entertained on long flights is to keep bringing free food and drink.
While the U.S. continues to pave itself over with ever-meaner highways, the U.K. remains a nation of trains. Yes, the trains tend to be crowded. Passengers more than doubled between 1997 and 2014. The U.K. is investing billions to expand and upgrade the rail network. The rail system is a true network, with carefully constructed schedules that usually give you just enough time to change trains when your destination is off the main routes. The British people are brilliant at boarding trains quickly, so station stops are short. Often you meet interesting people. I had planned to sleep on the train from Oxford to Edinburgh, but I ended up having a long conversation with a retired gentleman from York who gave me a good perspective on how people feel about Brexit and the state of the world. Unsurprisingly, most of his questions about the U.S. were about guns and Trump, two facets of American life that Europeans have a very hard time understanding.
The U.K. trains are nicely tied in with the Internet. You can buy tickets with your smart phone. While you’re on the train, the Trainline app will use GPS to show you what train you’re on and what stations you’re approaching.
Where the trains don’t go, the buses will get you. Even on the remote western side of Lewis and Harris, the buses out of Stornaway dropped us off a short walk from our Airbnb accommodations.
In the U.S., it’s just a given that conservatives hate trains and love to kill them off. George Will once said, “the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.” Liberals’ love for trains is often attribued to “Euro-envy.” I enthusiastically plead guilty.
Note: I’ve had a number of things to attend to and haven’t yet had a chance to work up my photos and video from this trip. I hope to get that done within the next week or so.
⬆︎ Pork roll with Yorkshire pudding, Royal Hotel, Stornaway
Traditional Scottish cooking is strangely difficult to find. Many eateries — especially in places that cater to tourists — offer what I call “international tourist cuisine,” which is mostly Mediterranean and is pretty much the same wherever you go. On this year’s trip to Scotland I found that provincial hotels are the best places to find traditional cooking.
⬆︎ Slow-braised beef and Yorkshire pudding, Royal Hotel, Stornaway. The Royal Hotel at Stornaway definitely was the best dining room I found on this trip. When I sent compliments to the chef, the waiter said that there are three chefs and that all of them are Nepalese. I don’t know where they were trained, but they are very good.
⬆︎ Scotch broth, Royal Hotel, Stornaway
⬆︎ Bread basket, Royal Hotel, Stornaway
⬆︎ Oven-roasted salmon, Harris Hotel, Tarbert
⬆︎ Vegetarian haggis croquettes, Harris Hotel, Tarbert
⬆︎ I spent a day in Oxford on this trip. This is a salad from Quod restaurant in Oxford
⬆︎ Salmon patties, Quod restaurant, Oxford
⬆︎ Ravioli, Quod restaurant, Oxford
⬆︎ Vegetarian breakfast at Côte Brasserie in Oxford
⬆︎ Meat pie from the high street bakery at Dunbar
⬆︎ Vegetable-beef pie from the high street bakery at Dunbar
⬆︎ Vegetarian breakfast with fake sausage, Royal Hotel, Stornaway
⬆︎ Royal Hotel, Stornaway
⬆︎ Shortbread, Skoon art cafe, Geocrab, isle of Harris
⬆︎ Harris Hotel, Tarbert, isle of Harris
⬆︎ This is a home-cooked meal, made on a Coleman stove in a yurt. It’s mashed rutabaga with pork chop and pasta in orange sauce.
I wanted this burger to be a world-rocking experience. But unfortunately it was not. It was a perfectly decent burger. But yes, I could tell the difference. But recognizing that it wasn’t real meat wasn’t the problem. The problem — at least for me — was that the Burger King Impossible Whopper, like the burger from Beyond Meat, contains some sort of mysterious seasoning that is intended to make it taste like meat. I just don’t like that taste. It tasted artificial. I think this would make a much better burger if it was creatively seasoned to taste like what it is — a vegetarian burger.
Still, it’s not about me. It’s about what products like this can do to reduce the consumption of meat and to convince people that meat substitutes can be good.
Meanwhile, the world is waiting for a proper meatless hot dog.
Vintage Harris tweed jacket bought in Stornaway
The Scottish island of Harris is remote, windswept, rainswept, and underpopulated. How, then, did it become so famous? For Harris tweed, of course.
First, a technicality. The usual way to refer to this place in the Outer Hebrides is “the isle of Lewis and Harris.” That raises the question, are we talking about one island, or two? It’s actually one island. The northern part of the island is Lewis, and the southern part is Harris. Mountains form the geographical (and, to a surprising degree, cultural) boundary between the two places.
I have never particularly been interested in textiles. But what struck me about Harris tweed, as I learned more about it, is what an incredible model Harris tweed provides for a sustainable cottage-based industry. By law, Harris tweed comes only from these islands. All Harris tweed is woven by hand by the local crofters, at home in their cottages. (A croft is a small farm with its cottage and outbuildings.)
The production of Harris tweed peaked in 1966. But there are signs that it’s making a comeback, and production is expanding. The Wikipedia article gives a good brief history of Harris tweed. Crofters have been weaving it for their own use for centuries. In the 19th Century, it was discovered by the English aristocracy, and soon everybody wanted some. Everything came from the island’s own resources — wool from blackface sheep and dyes from wild local plants. Local mills spun the yarn. Once the cloth has been woven in the crofters’ cottages, the mills inspect, wash, and press the cloth.
I walked into a Harris tweed shop in Stornaway and was shocked at the prices. For handmade products of such quality, that is not surprising. Men’s jackets started at around £400 ($500). Even simple waistcoats started at about £140. I left the shop reluctantly, priced out of the market.
But fate stepped in. Upon returning to Stornaway some days later to catch a bus to the south of the island, a local man in a coffee shop struck up a conversation with me. He was wearing a Harris tweed jacket and waistcoat. After we had talked for a while, I complimented him on his jacket, saying that I’d love to have one but that the prices were just too steep. He told me where I might find a vintage jacket for much less. In fact, the shop was right nextdoor. In the shop I found a long rack of men’s jackets. The shop’s owner helped me try them on. The one I liked best fit me perfectly. The price was only £59, so of course I bought it. The cut is remarkably smart and modern, though the jacket was made in the 1960s or 1970s for Dunn & Company. The jacket is now at the cleaners, getting its buttons tightened up, along with a good cleaning and pressing.
To the men of this island (and elsewhere), where even in summer nighttime temperatures dip into the Fahrenheit 40s, a Harris tweed jacket is a year-round, everyday-casual item. I realized that, to be properly warm, the jacket should be worn with a waistcoat and scarf. I won’t hesitate to wear it to the grocery store this winter. I wore it to dinner at Oxford.
There’s a pretty good market for vintage Harris tweed items on eBay. I plan to look for a waistcoat there.
My post on Donegal tweed, September 2020.
A Hattersley loom. It’s probable that my vintage jacket was woven on one of these. Wikipedia photo.
Blackface sheep near the village of Ardmor.
A crofter using a Hattersley loom, c. 1960. The weavers are men as often as women. Wikipedia photo.
A Scottish meat pie bought at a High Street bakery in Dunbar. Click here for high-resolution version.
I’m home from Scotland, with stops in Edinburgh, Dunbar, Inverness, Stornaway, Tarbert, Uig, the wild west coast of the isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides, a quick pass through London, and a day in Oxford in merry old England. I plan several posts: a picture post; a video post (which may require a few days for editing); a post on finding traditional Scottish cuisine (not easy, but we found some); and a post on Harris tweed (which, of course, comes from, and only from, the isle of Lewis and Harris).
Though I had my ever-so-heavy Nikon camera with me, I found myself reaching again and again for my iPhone XR. Not only does the iPhone serve as an excellent camera for wide-angle shots, it also shoots superb high-definition video. On this trip I tried to capture, in video, as many of the sights and sounds as I could — screaming gulls, crashing waves, bleating sheep, thrumming ferry boats, a Scottish cat or two, and even a Scottish congregation singing a Sunday morning hymn.
But first, I’ve got to soothe a certain American cat hoarse from grieving, get some groceries, deal with some political obligations, and catch up on a few chores.
I also had my first Burger King Impossible Burger after returning to the U.S., so I’ll have a post about that, too.
As usual, I felt no cultural discomfort in the British Isles, which I think always feel like home to the Celtic psyche. But returning to America through the Raleigh suburbs was a terrible jolt.
I’m off to Scotland with my camera and walking stick. I’ll return to blogging the last week of August.
The destination this year will be the Outer Hebrides — the islands of Lewis and Harris. I’ll also have a couple of days in Edinburgh and a day in Oxford. On the way to the west coast of the Outer Hebrides, I’ll pass through Inverness, Ullapool, and Stornaway.
Deciding what to read on this trip was difficult. I wanted fiction set in Scotland. I finally settled on a historical novel by Nigel Tranter, Sword of State. It’s set in the 13th Century and has to do with Patrick (a future earl of Dunbar), and King Alexander II of Scotland. Tranter, I believe, is well known in Scotland. He wrote something like 90 historical novels, which is a lot of novels to crank out.
These are interesting times in Scotland and the United Kingdom. The U.K. has a new prime minister, and Brexit is looming. The Scottish people are very worried about Brexit and are rethinking the 2014 referendum in which Scotland voted against becoming an independent country. It is possible that, if the referendum were held today, Scotland would vote to break with the United Kingdom.
Summer here in the American South has been brutally hot. I’m looking forward to some cold, blowing rain off the North Atlantic and a bit of moor and bog.
Denial will be released September 16
Acorn Abbey is proud to have Jonathan Rauch as the newest Acorn Abbey author. The book is Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul. The book will be released September 16 in a paperback edition and digital editions.
This actually is a new, revised edition of this book. It first was published in 2013 by The Atlantic Books. Acorn Abbey is the exclusive publisher of the new edition, which includes a new afterword by the author. From the book’s description:
A young boy sitting on a piano bench realizes one day that he will never marry. At the time this seems merely a simple, if odd, fact, but as his attraction to boys grows stronger, he is pulled into a vortex of denial. Not just for one year or even ten, but for 25 years, he lives in an inverted world, a place like a photographic negative, where love is hate, attraction is envy, and childhood never ends. He comes to think of himself as a kind of monster–until one day, seemingly miraculously, the world turns itself upright and the possibility of love floods in.
Jonathan Rauch is the author of seven books and the winner of the National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. He is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and is a contributing editor of The Atlantic. His most recent book other than Denial was published last year by St. Martin’s Press: The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After 50. His most recent article for the Atlantic is in the August 2019 issue: “Twitter Needs a Pause Button.”
The paperback edition of Denial is available now at Amazon for pre-order: Denial: My 25 Years Without a Soul.
Periodically I hold my nose and look at the Facebook group of the Republican Party in my county. It’s a swamp of hatred and stupidity. There’s a sample above. Notice that someone named Sam Hill calls Democrats “Demoncrats.”
Is the racism study cited above legit? I believe it is. Right-wing media made much of the study and naturally interpreted it to mean that Trump truly is making America a kinder place. That seems to be true where racism is involved, but not in the way that Republicans suppose. Trump’s true believers, a group that I’d estimate at about 35 percent of the population, are feasting on the official approval of their of hatred and meanness. But everyone else is increasingly disgusted. That disgust is liberalizing people other than Trump’s deplorables. People are seeing that racism is real and that racism is dangerous. People are seeing what Republicans are trying to do.
In other words, Trump’s endorsement of hatred and racism is backfiring, politically. While feeding red meat and meanness to the deplorables, Trump is driving all the kinder people away. Trump is far too stupid to understand this, or to care. But one would think that there are Republicans in Washington who can see that Trump actually is hastening the end of the Republican Party.
Dan Hopkins, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, writes about this at Five Thirty Eight. The article is “White Americans Say They’re Less Prejudiced.”
Hopkins writes:
But in fact, there is evidence that Trump’s election did not make Americans more racist; instead, it may have emboldened those who were already prejudiced. As FiveThirtyEight contributor Matt Grossman wrote last October, the research doesn’t show “an overall increase in racist and sexist attitudes among white voters; rather, the evidence shows that liberal-leaning voters moved away from [Trump’s] views faster than conservatives moved toward them.”
Though these are hard times for decent human beings to live through, and though the dangers are rising as Trump and his deplorables lash out, we can hope that Trump is expediting our return to a decent America, just by showing decent human beings how ugly the worst of us can be.
The white deer is now well known in this area and is frequently seen on game cameras. I had not had a chance to photograph her in a while, though. She came through this morning with this year’s fawn. This would be at least the second year that she has raised a little one, and maybe the third. Everyone in the area looks out for her, and hunters have sworn to leave her alone.
