nother new kilt

Looks fantastic! Well done!

Where was the picture taken?

The pic was taken in my livingroom. I sent it to a friend who went mad with Photoshop. She even altered the shading on me to fit the background. I'd sure like to know where she found that. Other than changing the background and adjusting the shadows I'm unaltered :)

Beautiful Mike!!! Looks great on you!!!

Aw, shame! There was I thinking you'd found a nice Saxon church porch somewhere in Wisconsin... ;)

I wish there was such a thing here. Unfortunately, there isn't much around that is earlier than the early 20th century with the exception of a French trading post and mansion that's been preserved. This area was a wilderness til the 19th century :) btw, I trust you like this sporran better than the one I was using before . I also made a fur sporran in brown fur and added

3 gold tassels :)

Much more realistic! ;) I like the sound of gold tassels...

Our church here in Bredgar is early norman on saxon foundations. Here are a few pix:

Not mine, I hasten to add. Must put some of our pix of the church on the web site. James was Christened in that font! :)

I would hope it's more realistic. I bought the black leather sporran from a Scottish company :) The church is great. I do so love those ancient stone buildings. Some day I'd like to visit Kismul Castle on Barra. The place was restored by the previous Clan Chief and is open for tours now. Just imagine, the MacNeil Clan Chief has been American since after WW I .

This is one of the reasons we love our American cousins (mad governments on both sides notwithstanding!). They have lots of lovely dosh for repairing old ruins! ;P

Have you seen this one?

Another verynicely rebuilt one. These two have been continuously occupied for far longer, the first since the days of Macbeth:

Hi Kate,

How far are you from Drum Castle? I would love to visit there someday. I have several ancestors through the Irvines and one little genealogical branch reaches to David I of Scotland. Seems that once they migrated here, the name changed to Irwin.

I've seen pictures of Drum castle on the internet and it looks lovely.

Cindy in WV

The US isn't old enough to have any real antiquity. Check us again in 1000 years.

sure there's antiquity, just not of the European sort. Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Grand Gulch, Kahokia etc....

penny

Fantastic, Mike! Well done.

Very true. Don't forget the Vikings who were tromping around as tourists, either.

they left some monuments or rock work too, didn't they? I was thinking of structures and things like that.

penny s

Like so many tourists, they left only graffiti. Perhaps a few descendants, as well. ;-)

This is my Clan seat from where Raury the Turbulent committed piracy

Almost as far away as you can get without moving to France! I live half way between London and Dover... Picture the UK like a dumpy ole bloke sitting facing the Atlantic... Kent is where the bum would be, sitting in the English Channel! There are a few castles near us: Leeds is just at the bottom of the road I live on, about 6-7 miles away, Rochester is close, Bodiam not far away on the border with East Susses, and, of course, Dover is still sitting pretty on top of it's cliff... None of them are still lived in, really (Leeds is a conference centre and wedding venue, Rochester and Bodiam are Wromantic Wrooings, and Dover a brilliant day out, but definitely showing it's military history). I think a higher proportion of Scots castles are still lived in by the original families that built them, as MOST English castles were built by the king and held in his name by various barons who changed according to who was in favour at the time, and who had defeated which pretender to the crown... Scots castles tended to be clan or family strongholds, and even if the family were out of favour, the castle remained in their possession. It was a little more difficult to dislodge someone in a remote glen, holed up in a stronghold in the middle of a large body of water, or on an island protected by storms at sea! Geography has a lot to do with it north of the border.

It's a funny thing, trying to convey British nationality to Americans. Here, in a group od islands considerably smaller than one of your states, we have 4 completely separate nations, plus a bunch of affiliated islands, with their own cultures, their own religions, their own parliaments, their own languages, their own social mores, and their own histories, and on top of it we have acquired a bunch of incommers of all colours and all languages, from the 4 corners of the world. The wonder to me is not that there is so much racism and religious hatred here, but that there is so little. This is in no way to belittle the problems of those who do suffer from bigotry, just to put it into perspective. Compare our little, crowded corner of the world with others: where else does one find such a melting pot of races, creeds and ideologies? Most of the time we manage to rub along with tolerance and the odd scuffle. Anything more tends to be BIG news. I live in hope.

Here's a potted history of some of my lot:

And a wee list of some of their castles: There were rather a lot of us, and we were a bit unruly at times.

My mother is decended on one side from the Robertsons, and on the other from a Huguenot family, neither noted for their conformity to standard norms of the day!

I married a man of very obvious Norman decent, who's 18th C ancestors were highwaymen. If James turns out a badd 'un, we'll blame his genes! ;)

Funny I have other impressions over here.. hatred between the catholics and protestants spefically the troubles in Ireland, and much media attention to general negativity, violence and bigotry towards immigrants and people of color.

I"ll be the first to acknowledge that the media tends to look at negativity before they ever look at positive things. I live in a corner of the world that for many years was known for the HQ of the Aryan Nations bunch. But was the "counter" human rights acitivity ever written about?

penny s