Fun with geography

As I was sitting here racking my brains to find something to blog about, here arrives an email from my Schatzi Emerson that made me realize how much of Scottish island life there is still to exploit in my attempts to entertain all of you.

Let's start with geography. A little known (to the rest of the world, except people to whom I've sent postcards from here) part of the isle of Lewis is the so-called butt of it. Yes, the Butt of Lewis. (I'll know the Calvinists have succeeded in brainwashing me once I stop smiling at the name, but so far I continue to smirk every time I hear it).

Here's how to find it (in case you want to have fun with GPS or find yourself sailing across the Atlantic with nothing better to do):

TGN Full Record Display, English (Getty Research): "Lewis, Butt of (cape)

Coordinates:

Lat: 58 31 00 N  degrees minutes
  Lat: 58.5167  decimal degrees

Long: 006 16 00 W  degrees minutes
  Long: -6.2667  decimal degrees

The Butt of Lewis is located at the north-west corner of the island -if the earth were indeed flat, this would be the last stop before the edge. There's a light-house and an old Viking/Celtic chapel and, most notably, a high cliff, in front of which there are several rather high tower-like rock formations, to complete the phallic imagery.

I haven't been back to the Butt for some time (some would say this is a good thing), but when I do, I'll be sure to post a picture.

So, thanks to Emmer for the inspiration, and stay tuned for my response to his second request for information regarding that wonderful substance called peat.

Classified:

Happy Birthday, H!

Say Hello to Edna

Gobble gobble gobble

Happy turkey-fest everyone!

I hope you enjoy all the food and football and whatever else.

I never thought I'd miss it -as far as poultry-eating holidays go, I much prefer a St. Martin's goose- but i wish i could be there for a big helping of marshmallow sweet potatoes!

The semiotics of Scottish island behavior

As I was just saying in my email to Erika (who faithfully reads this blog, so shout out to her! :-)), I feel like I'm stuck in a semiotic limbo with regards to deciphering some of the everyday interactions I'm having. In other words, just what do thing say/do mean?

Here are some of my most urgent questions:

*When people invite you to dinner/tea, do they really mean it or are you supposed to turn them down several times before accepting or are you supposed to turn them down completely?

*Similarly, when someone starts to make tea about 1 1/2 hours into your visit, does that mean that you've actually been staying too long and they're breaking down to offer you some tea, or is that just the amount of time after which tea gets served?

*Would it be polite or an affront for a younger person like myself to pass candy to older people in church? What if you don't have enough candy with you for everyone in the pew? What if someone passes you candy and you don't like it and/or you brought your own?

*When people tell you to stop by any time, do they really mean it? And what are socially acceptable visiting hours?

*When are socially acceptable phone hours? (E.g. in Germany you simply cannot call anyone between 8 and 8:15 pm when the news are on)

It's really all very confusing. As they like to say, more research needs to be done!

Top Ten Things Learned So Far

Ok, as promised, here are the top-ten things I've learned in the first month (or so) of being here:

10. You really only need to let the clutch come up a tiny bit to go in reverse in a car.

9. English people are genetically prevented from pronouncing guttural sounds, while German and Gaelic are apparently very similar.

8. "For best results, sponge should be used wet and with soap"

7. Everyone is a cousin, in some way.

6. Children shouldn't eat too much sugar, but a bag of potato chips is a perfectly acceptable snack.

5. When in doubt, boil your food into submission.

4. Church is very important, but getting home after the service is also, so that you may need to push your way through the people in front of you to make it outside first.

3. An act as simple as walking down the road is being observed from many vantage points, and will be commented upon later by people whose names you don't even know.

2. Figuring out when to put out the laundry to dry is a complex scientific calculation, the result of which is an obscure phenomenon referred to locally as "drying", as in "there isn't much drying today".

1. It's not a social event until you've had tea and cookies (...no matter how many times that day you've already had tea and cookies).

Sometimes winter arrives over night...

Well, kids, I think I’m officially roughing it, and not just according to the fridge magnet Heather gave me freshman year (“My idea of roughing it is when room service is late”). It got freezing cold here, and snowed on and off all last night and today, and the walls of my glorified trailer suddenly seem to be made of cardboard. All the heating is electric, and all the electric is controlled by a greedy meter, which you feed with coins. I cook wearing my winter jacket (no heater in the kitchen), and my biggest daily challenge is getting out of my pajamas in an unheated bathroom to take a shower. My breath comes out in little white clouds. Forget about how many words the Eskimo have for snow, what about their words for feeling cold?

Sometimes you really wonder how Britain ever managed to become an imperialist power when they continued living in the modern equivalent of caves…

I'm still alive

Just in case y'all were wondering, I'm still alive. Not that you've been beating down my door for another post...

Mainly I've been busy trying to learn to drive Edna (I put her into 5th gear for the first time last night!), which was a bit frustrating at first. I'm also trying to make myself do the dirty work of anthropology (fieldnotes etc), which isn't much fun, either. Plus, there's always the hibernation issue to contend with -it's so dark so early and so cold and windy that it's really tempting to just go to bed at 6 pm and eat lots of fattening food in case you won't wake up till February.

Anyway, wach this space for pictures of Edna and an update of the top-ten things I've learned so far (with no academic reference to be found)!

Anthropological brownie points

Well, I hope I've now earned some brownie points in the bank of anthropological legitimacy. There is that thing in this discipline that the more you suffer for your data, the more valid they are. Of course I don't have nearly the balance in that account as some of my friends who are battling malaria, Maoist insurgents, crazy Quebecois-French school boards, etc. and I'm not sure I'll ever reach that level of scientific validity here, with my electricity and Thai cafe and running water.

But on Thursday, I made myself leave the comfort and light of my glorified caravan to take a trip on the bus to town in the evening in order to attend a community outreach gathering by representatives of the Scottish parliament. At the time, I thought that this meeting might reveal anthropological riches without which my dissertation would surely be inferior to the point of reverting into a freshman's Anthro 101 paper.

The weather was a atrocious, the way you'd imagine: stormy wind gusts blowing chunks of water through the air (not quite sure if they were rain or just the remnants of earlier rain whirled about by the wind), and I swear there was hail and snow earlier. Plus, it had been pitch-black since 4:30. Thankfully, my trusty waterproof rain coat (see below) fit over my down jacket, and I was wearing two pairs of socks. Of course, the bus was a little late, and then I still had to hike from the bus station to the council building at the edge of town.

The meeting was pleasant, and I probably understand the political process in the Scottish parliament a bit better now than I did before (when I didn't really understand it at all). There was the omnipresent tea and biscuits. The second part of the meeting was in Gaelic, discussing the proposed future of the Gaelic bill which would make Gaelic an official language of Scotland. I tried to listen to the Gaelic presentation and the simultaneous English translation on the headphones at the same time, to see if anything interesting would leap out (not sure what that would be, really), and then I left a bit early to catch the bus b/c I wasn't going to spring £10 for a cab home.

And that was it. I'm still not sure if it was worth it, although i'm starting to get the sense that this thing called fieldwork is mainly a series of mini-events that are almost non-events, punctuated a by a few moments of ethnographic brilliance and incisiveness. But hopefully I earned some anthropological brownie points nonetheless.

It's a girl!

On a rainy Hebridean morning, I bought my first car (with a loan from the bank o' dad). She's a blue Rover, 4 doors, stickshift and steering wheel on the right. She looks very British, and more like an old lady, so I think I may name her Edna.

Hopefully, we'll have lots of fun together!

Classifieds (sorry, Kate -imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! :-))

Happy Birthday to Scott, Sarah, and my cousin Katharina in Germany!

[What's up with the birthday clusters among your friends and family, anyway?!]

Take it from the foreigner!

Ok, people, instead of sitting there and reading my blog, go vote. While you have my deepest sympathy for not having a ballot the length of a typical American supermarket receipt like we civilized Europeans do, there are no excuses for the abysmal voter participation in the US. Unfortunately my honorary American citizenship (thanks, Sarah :-)) won't get me an absentee ballot.

Of course with the time difference, I won't experience any of the excitement of watching this thing unfold live (or sitting through ling lab while world-changing events are going on, as the case may be). So hopefully when I wake up tomorrow, this whole thing will be settled.

But, just to announce this to the world now, I've been calling the election since June, and I think it'll be a solid win for Bush. Now go and prove me wrong -this is the one bet I'm more than happy to lose!